Tuluk, Nub City?

Rofl bards posting songs on rumour boards...

"Citizens all answer His call; such as you, as you, as you!"

..Well they -did- until you closed the arena, and stopped running the actual Citizens Call at least...

I'm going to go ahead and claim I did that on purpose.

You know though I got to say that I've never have hated Tuluk. I came to hate some aspects of it, such as the mindbending plotkilling templars and the controlled crime but I always really liked the place. I think if they did away with Qoriyas in the future it would be a great place to play. I know alot of people recently have been calling for its closure, heck sometimes i feel like joining them considering the state its in now but still I like the place. I was recently talking to a friend who told me about a rogue mage  a while back outside the gates of 'nak. Now what was most fustrating to my friend about this guy was how this particular mage would go up to character and sometimes ask them why they weren't shivering in their boots, why they weren't pissing their pants. The mage of course had invisibility and was either whiran or possible a sorcerer but for sure a douchebag who criticized other people RL ICly. You see they were asking this of other mages... gemmers at that...with equally amounts of strange magickal power...who live around other fucking magickers...all the fucking time.  My friend thought they were staff but alright i digress, douchebags like this used to be more common after all.

A person would roll a fucking mage, and expect everyone around them to stop everything they were doing and go shiver where they stood. Every fucking time they entered the damn tavern. God this got old quick. The copper wars, the end of the world plots...full of fucking mages expecting your mundane to bend over and offer their ass otherwise you were considered a badly rped twink. Tuluk was the last  bastion in what used to be a sea of mages. A place where your dumbass warrrior or ranger could still truely mean something and their skills and abilities truly be respected. You read up on people like shattered (the will of zalanthas, seriously? uguh) and other stupidly strong people i'm glad that don't exsist anymore, and I can't help but think, wow all that fun for such a small group of people who are good friends with staff but what loss for anyone just playing a regular mundane. It was a common complaint back in the days of the X-men and CAM, where mundanes were basically being tramped on by hordes of magickal super men and women. Just the fact you could avoid all that obscene overpowered shit made playing in tuluk so attractive, to me at least.

I love the idea of dark occult Tuluk, but I still don't think it would resurrect the city for Armageddon.

By the docs, Tuluk is a city run by a benevolent ruler whose will is enforced by his stable of omnipotent gestapo-esque Templar. A city whose citizens share a cult-like love of their benevolent leader, and anyone who stands out of this fold mysteriously vanishes (not real mystery, everyone knows what happened). A city where ones life can easily be bought and sold via a state-sponsored, legal contract.

It's not a bad setting, really, but it translates poorly into a MUD because: 
 
1) Templar omnipotence kills plots. I won't go into this, there's already a wealth of examples and complaints about Qohiya(?however you spell it) doing this.
 
2) The cult-like populace translates to the "in-crowd" mentality previously described. There will be a handful of Mary Sues who sit around in the Sanctuary honing their emoting skills to perfection, and spending months carefully scripting their performances in a text document so that they can have the most ego stoking, setting-ignoring performance there. (TLDR; f-me's doing nothing.) When a truly intriguing character comes along, he'll likely want nothing to do with this headache, and act indifferent to them thus drawing their ire and pooled resources to murder him or drive him away, so that they can return to planning for the NEXT festival. This isn't a video game setting - this is high school.
 
3) State-sponsored assassinations are neat, except that the only people you'll likely want to assassinate are the in-crowders who will either be protected on high from Nyr, or on low from some Templar who really likes the way they take 3 sentences describing their fingers, despite the fact that their lyrics are god-awful and no one besides them can seem to figure out how they're supposed to rhyme. Either way, you'll be Bad Luck Brian; "tries to take out a contract on someone's life, gets assassinated for it." (Note: I have no idea if this is how shadow artistry actually plays out. All I know is that I wouldn't trust the system. At least not in that city...)

--

So now we take this already flawed system and make it into Dark City meets 1984. Muk Utep kills, rapes, and eats the first born of every house (in that order, if you're lucky), and does it all while maintaining a facade of "benevolent ruler." His harem of psionicists keep a tight control of the city, carefully sniffing out any rebellion. The citizenry still maintains an occult-like fervor, but now there's more behind it for merely sounding insincere about it, let alone questioning the system, is enough to get you killed. Your life may still easily be bought and sold in contract. 

So, this setting is 10x cooler than current Tuluk, but also 10x more unplayable. 

1) Muk Utep truly being such a bad guy would be a staff horded Easter egg. Despite it being the crux of this entire political system, there would be no hint of it beyond the imm-boards. Nyr would likely break his tiny cock whacking to this oh-so-scandalous secret. (Evidence: Tektolnes. Nough said.)

2) Omnipotent Templars would still kill plots - although now it would be even more so in line with their role to do so. Every Lirathan would behave like Qohiyasdf.

3) The in crowd wouldn't change; they'd likely only become more vicious because it would now be easier to kill anyone who shows a lack of zeal for the Sun King, let alone indifference.

4) Shadow Artist system still sucks. 

5) Allanak is still an option for players who don't want to put up with this shit.


 

Pfft! Red Storm FTW.

rs is just the burbs of nak, same diff unless ur playin mul like my nigga hawk or goba (RIP i crai evry tiem pourin this 40')

you need to find the right scene. or slowly try to make one yourself. i've tried RS probably more than most people. i like it. but it is depressing to log on and have nobody to play with when you logged on in the first place to play with other people. i like the rinth more personally