Sandbox Discussions

[DanielH]

I was reading the new pixiethreads, and I was just trying to figure out who Quickbright is when I got to the explanation of its name. Is Quickbright a Tony? It doesn’t always seem to act like one, but the name {quick/bright} fits so well I had to ask.

Actually, I was too distracted when reading Veil by my unfamiliarity with the setting that I haven’t been able to figure out if Jowan is a template in anything but that and now Spectre. Usually I’m able to pick up unfamiliar glowfic settings far better than I have that one any of the times we’ve seen it. Could somebody give me a summary of it? It’s a fanfic setting, I think; what’s it based on?

[Aestrix]

Veil is set in the land of Dragon Age. Jowan originated there, I have refurbished him and made him less awful, and now he is a template who is a bad decision wizard.

[Kappa]

Quickbright is a Liselen.

[DanielH]

OK, that fits the name slightly better and matches the behavior much better. I have trouble thinking of minor templates when trying to identify them.

Is Jowan’s bad decision using minor blood magic, or being caught doing so? Is blood magic actually inherently evil in the setting, or just heavily stigmatized?

[Kappa]

Blood magic is heavily stigmatized for some pretty good reasons - you have to walk a pretty narrow path to do blood magic ethically and without significant risk of turning into a demon-possessed abomination. And with the circumstances of his life such as they were, his chances of getting away with it (not getting caught dabbling, I mean) were spectacularly low.

[Ezra]

Yes, but it's prototypically about food, and venom is not consumed in the same (conceptual) way. (Fairies drinking each other's blood also doesn't work, though vampires drinking fairy blood does. Destroying other people's stuff, including their food, does not do the thing either.)

Destroying things sometimes vassalizes through debt instead though? Promise says here that debt (or losing a game) can vassalize, and here that breaking things can create a weak form of this debt.

[Alicorn]

Debt/game is basically on the honor system. If you are in a lot of debt or lose a game where names are stakes you can turn it into a fight or go namefully. On average one loses half of fights (well, fights which resolve; but running away into the yonder has its own costs), and well-behaved vassals tend to have better treatment; you really shouldn't put up your name for a game of Rain Dice unless you are super into that.

[DanielH]

Yeah, doing it where he could be caught was a bad decision no matter what. I guess if you can be possessed by a demon for doing blood magic (presumably this applies for blood magic where you aren’t directly harming anybody except by you taking your own blood or that of a consenting, informed volunteer), it is more dangerous than I thought.

I should probably read up on the Dragon Age setting and then possibly re-read the relevant glowfic if I think I’ll understand it better this time.

Oh, and there are a few typos in the top-level post for Tranquility (“DDn't” and “he opinion”); since it’s a top-level post and those are fixable I thought you might want to know.

[Aestrix]

I will go fix those! Thank you <3

[linkhyrule5]

So, rereading the exploratory kidnapping sandbox, and now I'm curious - did Draconic just catch ialdae?

(And if the answer is "spoilers," I would prefer the answer to be in threading format :p)