Attention: Saftan leaders

At least one public complaint of Aerveas’ attack will go up on the forums on Wednesday or Thursday. There is a possibility for Safta to officially involve themselves in the war. Will they send aid, attack Aerveas’ territory, or do something else? Will they choose not to respond and remain neutral?

Please use this post to discuss and come to a decision by Tuesday, March 5th. This may affect where the berserkers and hunters end up.

On Tuesday, everyone from City Hall is evacuated. Queen Omid and her paladins return to her castle in Bastantown. The press will be kept at a distance, but there are snippets of Omid and Harriet et all on the footage played by the news later that day.

On Wednesday, the US government meets with Queen Omid and the Sharifa to discuss negotiations. The following parameters are agreed upon:

- Queen Omid is protected by diplomatic immunity. However, the US holds the ability to declare her a persona non grata, meaning they can kick her out. Because Everea as a country is still in Zenderael and warping others between worlds is not possible, that means she may be held in probation or shipped to another Earth country that is willing to take her if she is declared a persona non grata.

- Zendereans in Fall City and Underwood will fall under Queen Omid's jurisdiction.

- All Zendereans will be required to register in a census of the Zenderean population in Fall City and Underwood.

- The hostages of City Hall will be monetarily compensated by Queen Omid.

Additionally, the US government will suggest that the Sharifa act as a diplomat between the original Earth population of Fall City/Underwood and the Zenderean population in Fall City/Underwood. Harriet is given three days to respond. The US government will expect an answer on Saturday.

The meeting's topics are not immediately shared with the public.

(Omid does not want to leave the building with cool air for her castle because it is humid as fuck. She looks fabulous anyway. Fuck you, Keidra. )

Harriet will be escorted by female bodyguards supplied by the US government**unless players would like to offer their character(s) in the place of NPCs. These characters must be ICly approved. Please discuss in the comments.** EDIT Harriet will be covertly monitored and protected by members of the diplomatic security service.

On Thursday, the US government makes an official press release about what has been decided. Queen Omid also makes an appearance, giving a remorseful speech of apology and promise to work together with the government and the people of Fall City and Underwood.

Harriet's offer to become a diplomat is not publicized.

Public opinion on Queen Omid is in the negatives. The friends and families of those held hostage are especially outraged, but there is nothing legally apparent that they can do.

There has been no date mentioned for what has been titled by the media the Zenderean Census. The US government has to set up an office with Queen Omid's kingdom. You know how these things go... Zenners who were on Earth around mid-April AND were working for X-DAV are already registered as Zendereans (as mentioned in this week change of yore). More recent Zendereans may or may not have gotten identification. That's up to you.

Those in Zenderael can keep track of what's going on with online news articles and videos.

We're open to questions!

In the early hours (read: 3 a-motherfuckin-m) of Monday morning, all those snow animals everyone's been making become animated. They will act in accordance with what their sculptor had in mind when making them. (This includes the snomid and the khsnowrriet.)

They do not have voices! They cannot breathe fire. They can, however, breathe snow. Unlike the snow trapping Harriet et all in City Hall, these animations can be destroyed by mundane or magical means.

Only the snowmen/animals/monsters made before 3am will come to life. No snowmen/etc made after 3am will come to life.

Naturally, this causes a bit of confusion, excitement, and a few car accidents.

The spell will end at midnight.

Enjoy your Fourth of July/day before summer session!

Question for the playerbase.

Would you like a list of what professions alts were able to have learned when they were played? (Professions in this case are things like blacksmithing and enchanting--a set of non-combat skills completely unrelated to your character's skill tree, usually used to craft items.)

At the beginning of the game it was stated that professions existed, but were limited to certain classes. However, which professions existed and which classes could learn them was never officially decided.

Players would have been able to choose two professions, but were not forced to choose any, and professions were notoriously troublesome to grind to a decently useful level, so it's entirely reasonable your PCs wouldn't have bothered with any, or would've only taken one and focused on it.

If you have concerns about your character getting retconned into losing a profession you've stated they have (I'm reasonably certain we have everyone covered though?), feel free to let us know what you headcanonned so we can work it in.

If there's no interest in having a defined list of possible professions, then we will just continue as we have been, with people assuming professions that make sense to them.

We have been working on expanding game information and the following is a list of changes that have been made thus far: ( Changes and additions )

( Feb 7 updates )

Changes to the wiki can be found on the wiki activity here

Zero voted yes; two voted no; four voted neutral.

As such, the paladins will remain the only guild with an auto-revoke method.

Thanks for voting!

[ edit: closing 1/20 sunday at 6pm pst!! ]
[ edit: 2 no + 4 neutral = 6 closed! ]

A player inquired about the ability to leave one's guild.

Because their connection to the guild is through the god-organ, and they have no control over the god-organ, an individual cannot choose to leave the guild and sever their tie to it in such a manner. Every guild leader has a method for severing the tie of an individual to the power of the god-organ.

Another method of severing one's guild connection is by joining another guild. The act of joining another guild and receiving access to that guild's god-organ automatically snaps off the connection to the original guild's god-organ.

Yet another method is found in the paladin's guild and is unique to this guild. By violating their code of honor through murder, a paladin instantly loses their connection to the god-organ.

We were asked if another guild has an auto-revoke like the paladin's guild does. As we were thinking about the matter and how late into the game it would be implemented, we'd like to ask you the following:




If the majority vote yes, then the players of characters in a guild will be expected to come to a consensus on what would constitute an auto-revoke of that guild based on that guild's philosophy and/or practice, and also past actions so as to avoid contradictions. Mod approval will be required to make the auto-revoke official. Neutral voters will be expected to work with their fellow players unless they truly do not care what the revoke is.

If the majority vote no, then we will leave the auto-revoke system unique to the paladins.

We thought it would be prudent to make a post to clear up a few questions we've been getting lately and to correct some things we've seen that hint at misconceptions and confusion.

( Rule changes and clarifications )

( Mini-FAQ )

It's Thursday and we're just getting started on the week's major event (the rescue effort). Some people are still backlogged by holiday inactivity, and the game's general activity is just now starting to pull out of the holiday slump.

Thus we have decided to poll you folks and ask if you feel like weekchange needs to be pushed back another week (making week 23 a 4-week week). This is to give people the opportunity to play out the rescue, any Saturday fallout, and to finish up things they're still backlogging before the next weekchange.

We'll go with majority opinion on this. Vote once. Mods will not be casting votes.

Remember that world damage we talked about in the week change?

As of Thursday, June 16, it has stopped. The oceans are quiet and the world has stopped trying to tear itself apart.

The Safta coastline is missing from Zenderael and is out in the Pacific ocean, about halfway between Hawaii and Central America. New York City is missing from Earth and now merged with the central city of Mianeh. Enjoy your taxis and hotdog vendors.

All of Sandsea is now above Underwood, but it's still crumbling with sand and crabs. Silly gravity!

Due to several factors, we've decided to extend this IC week by one RL week. Next weekchange will be January 6th and this week will be a 3 OOC/1 IC ratio. The weekchange post for week 23 has been altered to reflect this.

The factors behind this decision include: the holidays creating a lull in activity, many players spending a lot of week 23 time in Friday/Saturday of week 22, and Friday of week 23 holding a major game event (the counterattack on occupied Bastan). Basically we wanted to give everyone the chance to play out the consequences of the current plot without missing out due to holiday obligations.

Happy Holidays!

1. On Tuesday, 6/7, late night, all the X-DAV employees that were handed over to the UN are found dead an hour after their meals were served.

Reports about this will pop up in the news on Wednesday. There is a lot of finger pointing at the United States. Were they trying to hide something...?


2. Tablets from the alchemist's guild are solar powered!

WHOOPS I have company over for the next couple weeks and Yoiko has been busy IRL and so the event has not been proceeding quite as quickly as we'd have needed to get to weekchange this Sunday.

Seeing as we're still waiting on some events to post up what happens Saturday, we've decided it's probably best for us to push weekchange back to the 18th. We'll give you the announcement for Saturday whenever we have enough info to decide what happens, and the day we post that will also be the start of IC Saturday.

THERE IS A WIKI NOW.

Because I was staring at the info overhaul and all the stuff we'd been asked to add and just threw my hands up and decided a wiki would really be a lot easier to maintain in an environment with a lot of player-created material going around.

Make an account, edit your stuff in. I'm still working on transferring things over. If there's a page you think we need or something that would be better served on a different page, let me know here.

Once all the info's transferred over, I'll change our directory post to link to the wiki pages.

Okay, this is kind of a major thing and we need your help with it. Any lurkers who've been thinking of joining but haven't, we need your help too. You can speak up anon, we don't mind.

The basic gist of this is, the game setting and premise has changed so much from when we originally started that the game info has become outdated. We feel that currently it's kind of a big confusing mess, especially for new players, and may be prohibitive to them deciding to join the game.

We are going to undertake the massive project of completely overhauling the game pages, and we would like you to tell us what you think needs to be changed/added/removed. We're too close to it to be able to have the same perspective as a player, so we need your objectivity to tell us where the info's confusing, lacking, or just plain outright wrong.

This is also the place to tell us what you'd like to see that we don't already have an info page for. Player-created headcanon, a better picture of what each guild's limitations are, etc etc. Even if you've brought it to us before and got shot down, we'd like you to bring it to us again.

The to-do list at current (will be updated as suggestions are received):
- A plot timeline, listing only the plot-important events, to supplement the game timeline Done: here. Tell me if there's anything you think doesn't belong or needs to be added
- A method for collecting player headcanon on the info pages Done...? Let me know if it's needed anywhere else, we have it on the guild and Zen-setting pages now.
- Guild page overhaul including new class descriptions that better outline the abilities and limitations of each class also done? Ask if there's any confusion.
- Zen setting page overhaul to ensure information is clear
- Make future-tech more clear on Earth setting page(?)
- A 'who's who' guide for characters in the game
- An index of game-specific vocabulary
- Casual observer reference for what's going on in the world(s)
- Update premise page to reflect new information

We've re-evaluated player activity based on current trends and we have decided to adjust our AC requirements.

Since the player/alt divide is much less important now, instead of splitting the activity on a player/alt line, we're going to start splitting it on a Zen/Earth line. For the most part, this actually means decreased activity requirements overall.

So the new activity rules are as follows:

Characters on Earth: 2 logs (20 points)
Characters on Zenderael: 1 log (10 points)

The points system as outlined in the AC post still applies: logs are worth 10, posts 5, comments 1. Dragonmails are treated the same way, similar to PMs: the original post is 5 points and the comments to it are 1.

Plus two new rules:
- Hiatuses max at one month, unless it is an extenuating circumstance
- 3 AC failures in a row means we drop that character, alt or PC. The count on that starts this month.

Alright, as decided here, we will be extending the current IC week by one RL week.

Next weekchange is on September 2nd, last weekchange has been edited to reflect this.

Okay so this came up in chat, and basically Yoiko and I have been a little burnt out and need a bit of a break, while Snapple's return means she has a boatload of stuff to catch up on.

We discussed it and expanding this IC week to be three weeks instead of two sounds like a nice idea. It'll give me and Yoiko some time to lay low and recharge, and give y'all time to get caught up on all the shenanigans you want to do without getting stuck weeks behind in backlogging.

So what this means:
- Not really a strict 1 day IC = 3 days OOC rule, but just mark all your posts with the IC date they happen. Time becomes a bit nebulous this week.
- It is for just this week, but we reserve the right to pull this out again in the future if we need another break like this. I don't expect it to come up too often.
- Next weekchange will be September 2nd instead of August 26th.

BUT we don't want to do this if you guys aren't cool with the idea. So:

Hello players! There is something your mods would like to talk with you about.

We understand this game has had a lot of mystery elements and unexpected turns in it. There are also a lot of unanswered questions that are being answered over time. Our goal is to have new things for players to react to with every week change.

However, we do not wish for players to feel limited to the information they are given, nor limited to reacting to the events presented in week changes. We would like to give you a few reminders:

- The NPC account is open to all players. (username: "zenpc" | password: "rememberme!") This can be used for online forum posters and Zenworld NPCs alike.

- If your characters wish to pursue certain lines of action, let the mods know (e-mail or chat PMs work best) and we will do our best to accommodate you. We are not opposed to going off rails if players and their characters succeed in doing so. This also includes requesting logs with guild leaders, Queen Omid, King Aerveas, and X-DAV.

- If you have plots you'd like to run or see us run, contact the mods and we'll discuss this with you, and also help you fit it into a week change where it will not be overshadowed by mod events.

- While we cannot make hard promises in this area, if you see things happening in the world and would like to request receiving a certain Hand of Mod in relation to it, let us know. Events are frequently flexible.

In general, please feel free to come with us about any desires and goals you may have with your characters and we will do what we can to give it to you as long as it doesn't contradict coming events. Thanks for playing in our game and happy RPing!