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The Arx Secrets Thread
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Bliss had four secrets, but they were built around two things that were incredibly public knowledge by the end:
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Her duel with Everard Telmar, the fact that she won the Telmar House Sword from him, and the fact that it was stolen from her by him dishonorably after, leaving her shoulder maimed.
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Her fame with the Nox’alfar after finishing a folly.
Those were definitely enough fuel to drive a character forward, and while I was actively playing the game, I did a lot of scheming, putting together a quiet alliance of nobles to pressure and press on Telmar, working with the Nox now and then, and just doing fun things. There was more I could have done, ways I should have been less averse, but playing a character who on the one hand was ready to burn it all down for the drama who on the other hand took Whisper House and made some major moves that set the scene for future Radiants is enough for me. She had her moment in the spotlight, and then when real life flared up, I got out of it and did my best to let others shine.
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After asking about Bhandn’s secret, I am so glad I did not give in to @Narson trying to get me to swear Vows.
Vows are trouble, everyone. You heard it from this guy, the previous-life vowbreaker. (No relation to that piece of the Will of Baalphrigor.)
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@Jumpscare said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
I think I was the third player of Lady Lilia Grimhall.
Good Ansel was a demon that was bound to Lilia and spent his days telling Lilia things only she could hear.
Playing Lilia and Ansel was basically like being Bea and Luci from Disenchantment.
Kinda delighted someone got that vibe from the secret. I don’t think most of the other Lilia’s cared for it tbh, which I found a bummer since of the couple dozen Secret Buddy secrets I wrote, this was one I particularly liked. Secret text:
"Lilia was alone in her room in the Granite Suite at the Grimhall Longhouse, waking up in the middle of the night from the sound of the door opening (which was unusual, as it was locked), and then the sound of Good Ansel the Pocket-Sized Dog scampering down the hall. In the middle of the night, with a surprising absence of guards, she remembers following down after the dog and the little thing had bolted all the way towards the Thrax estate, stopping at a park bench on the way and hopping up on it, barely visible in the overcast, moonless night sky. And then, as she approached, the little dog began to glow.
Not just glow, but burst into light, with a rainbow prism of colors streaming out and sparkles and glitter (glitter?), with little stars bursting around, as the dog floated in the air. Good Ansel spoke in a high pitched, child like voice suddenly yelling, “GREETINGS PRINCESS, YOU ARE VERY LUCKY AND HAVE BEEN CHOSEN TO BECOME A MAGICAL GIRL, BLESSED BY THE GODS TO…” And then suddenly the light all stopped and the dog dropped to the bench, staring at her in shock. “Lilia? Shit! I was expecting one of the children of Thrax royal family to wander along. Damn it! UGH! Fuck, you saw all of that?” The tiny dog groaned and flopped over on its side in disgust, letting out a big sigh, “Well, cat’s out of the bag now I guess, this is awful. Wait, you’re with Aetheris right? I remember that! You’ve been getting notes from the Rex! This could still work, okay. We can do this!” The little dog paced back and forth, its brow furrowing in thought before it stopped and seemed to come to a decision.
“All right, so I don’t actually go by ‘Good Ansel’. What a stupid name. Arn wasn’t very creative. I’m Norm’argal’valthryx. Technically, I’m not a dog, but I’m an imp. A major imp! I run imp operations for Aetheris in Arx. You know, the whole convincing people talking animals are the best thing ever and becoming their familiars to guide them? That kind of shit.” The little dog shrugged its tiny shoulders, “Truth is, things are not great. Sure, the imps are still doing operations, like we have a cat thing going on throughout the city to gather primum, but Azazel just fled the city, and I think things are going to get bad. -Real- bad, and I have zero interest in being screwed over as everything comes crashing down.” The tiny dog looked up at her, “How about you and I make a deal? I keep the Aetheris imp actions on the down low, and we start making plans to not get killed when the Despite finally collapses? Which it absolutely will. The imps are all scared about it, but they are just going through the motions now. Only a matter of time before someone starts trying to hunt down talking animals and all.” The little dog looked at her speculatively, “You need a familiar? Yeah. You need a familiar. You can trust to old Norm with that. I’ll keep up this ruse, and as things get messy, we’ll figure out how to get through this together. And don’t worry, there’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’.”
There is, however, an ‘I’ in ‘imp’."
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@Apos said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@Jumpscare said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
Playing Lilia and Ansel was basically like being Bea and Luci from Disenchantment.
Kinda delighted someone got that vibe from the secret. I don’t think most of the other Lilia’s cared for it tbh, which I found a bummer since of the couple dozen Secret Buddy secrets I wrote, this was one I particularly liked.
I particularly loved it! It was like I had lucked into the perfect roster for me, haha.
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Leta was the Horned God’s great-granddaughter? Something like that? I might have the exact generation wrong, I stopped poking at it because everyone told her not to and she suffered from a surfeit of respect for authority figures.
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WHO WOULD BE UNINTERESTED IN A SECRET BUDDY?
I always had a personal happy little backdrop to all my RP with Norwood. Either Pimsley Happy he was doing things right, or being ticked off and giving him an EARFUL that only he could hear.
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@peasoup There has been a lot of that unfortunately. People being warned not to look into their secret.
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suddenly want to have a tournament bracket with a bunch of secret buddies…
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I was JUST informed Arx ended. A round of applause. Truly. It was an immense effort, and it looks like it paid off wonderfully.
Rinel’s FIRST secret was that she could access a secret room in the Labyrinth that contained a book that was being constantly updated–possibly by Vellichor? I don’t know. But I was too scared to do anything with it, and so I never did any actions, and that ended up spiralling into Rinel getting removed from the Scholars and banned from the Labyrinth. Staff was kind enough to give her a second secret, which was:
…I don’t remember. I think it was magic. She did the cleansing ritual and got told to fuck off by the Gods for her various and sundry heresies, which had a pretty profound impact on her mental health, and she ended up going down the path of the druids, for a bit, while still worshipping the Gods in her own heretical ways.
I loved that character; I loved Arx. I’m glad it concluded instead of winding down into inactivity. Stories are always better when they have an end, no matter how sad.
There will always be a little bit of Rinel Tern in me, and I’m genuinely grateful for it.
bird's still the word
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@Rinel said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
There will always be a little bit of Rinel Tern in me, and I’m genuinely grateful for it.
The rest of the world may have different opinions on this particular fact
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@peasoup said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
I stopped poking at it because everyone told her not to
Maybe this was already a thing and I just missed it but I feel like secrets needed a big disclaimer telling you to ignore other players when they told you this.
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@Babs said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@peasoup said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
I stopped poking at it because everyone told her not to
Maybe this was already a thing and I just missed it but I feel like secrets needed a big disclaimer telling you to ignore other players when they told you this.
I think it got better later on, but there was definitely a group of us who unfortunately misunderstood that extremely reasonable IC advice as OOC advice.
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I made a random necklace out of weep crystal when I was just a player and as an NPC had it do some spooky things in a scene (and got accused of being edgy for that. Which yeah it’s Despair magic. It will be edgy). But I gave it to a wonderful player and it made me so happy a couple of years later when they asked me questions about the necklace.
ETA: As an addendum a focus of my NPC ended up switching hands to a PC I have never interacted with and I love that.
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@Rinel said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@Babs said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
@peasoup said in The Arx Secrets Thread:
I stopped poking at it because everyone told her not to
Maybe this was already a thing and I just missed it but I feel like secrets needed a big disclaimer telling you to ignore other players when they told you this.
I think it got better later on, but there was definitely a group of us who unfortunately misunderstood that extremely reasonable IC advice as OOC advice.
I mean, it was often a ton of OOC pressure as well as IC pressure from some corners unfortunately. some people would absolutely insist that you not only not poke at a thing but also never ever get anyone else involved, and they’d say it was all about your character’s safety but like…a lot of the time it pretty honestly felt like they just didn’t want anyone else to have something cool or share the cool thing they themselves had access to, frankly.
but whattaya gonna do, there are toxic players in every game really.
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This is not a secret, but Smile’s post reminded me of it! As Jael, I made a creepy ASCII item that was a portrait of a Laurent relative, and based it off of a creepy-ass portrait my grandmother had in her foyer. The main feature of the portrait was that it had an overall green hue (like the RL one). It had absolutely no plot meaning whatsoever.
People were BEGGING the Laurents to come look at it and speculate on its deeper meaning and metaplot implications. Would not take ‘it’s nothing’ for an answer.
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Titus managed to obtain what I call a patron from a powerful NPC (Evelynn) when he messed up one time (that happened a lot). That relationship blossomed into something that culminated at the end him giving his life to protect them and Oblivion when they asked, and by sacrificing himself he contributed to protect all the stories in the world rather than just his one story.
Except for Azazel, because fuck that thing, that story should be fed to Oblivion so it never happens again. Sorrynotsorry.
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I remember very clearly being told not to look into some information/secrets of Esme. So Esme did what any good, God-fearing zealot would do.
She smiled. Said of course.
Then in secret became a legendary occultist to understand the secret/information better. Being shot down IC (and a bit OOC) just branched her story in a new way.
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@Wizz Well, you see… if nobody else is investigating their own secrets, that leaves the STs free to only do plot for the folks who are tricking others into not investigating!
My insane work schedule didn’t help, and I shouldn’t expect people to drop everything and answer my stuff now, but needing to find an ST to run plot and then the wait list didn’t help keep my squirrel brain focused on the MU. There was lots of ‘oh that’s cool’ and ‘we should meet to talk about things’, but actually putting plans into motion… I could never really commit at the right time, in the right way.
When I’m not bogged down at work, I’ll go dig up the secrets for Ysbail as far as I understood them, but any deeper meaning beyond it is anyone’s guess.
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@RightMeow I feel this. I was often warned off of trying to dig in to reincarnation stuff as Azova. And the last thing I wanted to do was cheese it and try to get an NPC to tell me. I regret not taking that leap, honestly.
Until the very end, it was a pretty pervasive thing it feels like, to discourage people even if it was just IC. Only so many times an avenue of rp is closed off before you give up OOC as well.
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The IC discouragement (provided it was just IC, which, sigh) made total sense with a lot of secrets, but could definitely get overwhelming and if people were already hesitant about digging into metaplot, it was really easy to accidentally push them into shying away from it. It’s definitely something that needs to be considered going forward, even if Arx 2 ends up not having character secrets (if it does, they’ll probably be handled differently anyway), or on any game with a similar idea.
That said, there are very few things that irked me more than players putting OOC pressure on other players to stay away from their own plot hooks.
