[Gossamer's Scrapbook] The Ethereal Canyon I

[Gossamer]

Lol. Shut up Eosi. I love you. Gods I missed you.

Nival I'm at work now but ill look late tonight after I'm off.

[Nivel]

No rush intended Goss, you probably want to rest when you get home.

[Gossamer]

I love this quote. Its so approproiate when I get done exchanging PMs with people that don't like to hear what I have to say and inform me they realize I didn't actually say what I just said but that I meant what they wanted to hear. Arrogant much?

Anyhow... think about this. In my mind its so true.

“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”
-----Harlan Ellison

[Eosi]

No further explanation is necessary.

[Gossamer]

Striders
verses
My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic
A long overdue post to clarify a few things that people STILL don't seem to understand.

It is very clear to me that not many people on this site understand horses and even less of them understand Striders or the Drykas Culture as a whole. In a way it makes me furious because I've spent a goodly amount of my time talking about the Drykas, lecturing about them, talking about the web, describing it, working it into plots, etc. And yet, still, there is a huge gap in understanding. Yesterday, on a scale of one to ten in terms of rage - where ten is pretty much me in a full blown rage - I was peaking around fifteen to eighteen. I'm still a bit miffed today but I've calmed down enough to actually post this post. This is something everyone should understand who's Drykas or lives among the Drykas culture even as an outsider.

Cyphrus and its massive Web is like a closed system. Lex hates it. Why? Because it takes souls out of his cycle and keeps them in a smaller more defined closed cycle. Normally when you die on Mizahar, you go before Lex and are judged. Mysterious unspoken things happen and you can have any number of things happen. You become reincarnated, hang out as a ghost, rest, or who knows maybe he snacks on you like a hostess twinkie.

It's different for the Drykas. They cheat the system. A long time ago they developed webbing and a lot of mages have contributed to the web since its formation. Its probably the closest thing to a perfect artificial biodome for souls there is. Why? How? The Drykas are tied into the web when they bond to a strider. Once part of that web, they don't die normally. They die and instead of going before Lex, they get sucked by those ties back into the web. It's like the huge lumbering mississippi river of souls and everyone is together having a party all the time. Its a huge resource of energy made up of the souls people and the essence of those people - their djed. When a Drykas wants to be born again, they have two choices... come forth as a human or come forth as a strider. Striders are special horses, fairly intelligent, but not sentient. They are tied into the web a lot like San Fransisco trolley cars are tied into their trolley lines and powered along through that fragile connection. That is why they can go incredibly fast across Cyphrus where there is web laid down. They tap and utilize the energy of that web to speed up.

Now there's a couple of ways to escape this system. First, a celestial god can steal you for their realm's playground... and you become an Eth to Leth or Syna in their realm. That leaves you with a past life as a Drykas but no current ties to the web unless you get retied to the web as an Eth. You can be stolen back by Lex if you are careless (or die too far from the web). You can also be taken by Uldr or any number of creatures that want your soul and take it. I'm sure there's a couple of other ways too.

Getting into the system is harder. You can be born in the area through whatever reason and then eventually bond to a Strider and get tied to the web by a webber due to earning that right within the Drykas culture. The Drykas bring in outsiders, especially since storytellers routinely give them plagues, kidnappings, slavers, etc... and decimate their populations. So the Drykas steal people and bring them into the system. I'm talking humans though, especially women and children. If you were born on the Sea of Grass to a non-Drykas person, odds are you won't be Drykas, but if you grow up there, you have a high chance of bonding to a Strider because you have your whole childhood to prove yourself to the striders... especially if you aren't a predator.

But ultimately the striders decide. They are horses. Horses are prey animals. They don't trust easily and they aren't always approachable or warm. Drykas horses are even harder because life on the Sea of Grass is rough. Making them tough, suspicious, and iron willed. It's very very rare to find other breeds of horses in Cyphrus because for the most part they don't thrive like the Striders do. Normal horses can't outrun danger, predators, and even things like weather. There are Mele horses, but they are tough as well and sheltered because as fast as Striders are, they aren't as strong as Mele's andthey can't simply pull the weight of the wagons the Drykas own that hold their pavilions and all their household goods. Needless to say though... when the Drykas are on the move and endangered the Mele are the first to fall after all the other random breeds out there, and the striders are the get-away vehicles. An ideal situation is a traveling camp that can be totally packed on striders, not pulled on wagons by Mele.

Striders recognize people who have been in the web or are tied to the web. They don't have any particular 'thats a good person' detector or get knowing vibes on a persons character. They only know your part of or have been part of the web. You feel like it. You buzz with it. The web has a taste of your own essence in it as well. That's the tradeoff.

Now... why am I pissed? People are using bonding with striders as a Deus Ex Machina. They deny it. They say its just rp. They say joining the Drykas was the right thing to do, etc. But the truth is... you are using a plot device to bypass a ton of potentially great rp in terms of being an outsider. Here's a refreshment on what a Deus Ex Machina is.

de·us ex ma·chi·na
ˌdāəs eks ˈmäkənə,ˌdāəs eks ˈmakənə/
noun
noun: deus ex machina

an unexpected power or event saving a seemingly hopeless situation, especially as a contrived plot device in a play or novel..

Now... this is particularly infuriating to me when Kelvic predators do it. Why? THEY ARE PREDATORS. Horses wouldn't tolerate them near. Everything on the Sea of Grass tries to eat them. They could be conditioned to accept them over time, but that would take a lot of rp in the form of physical time and writing. It also puts the strider in danger of letting a real predator close enough to attack due to said conditioning.

IF you are Kelvic, part of you thinks like an predator. Horses are delicious. Foals even more so... juicy tender meat... easy pickings. Sure you are sentient, but if you are even a little hungry, malnourished, etc then this is a huge temptation. Horses know it. And whenever I read these threads, its like these horses turn into friendly giddy little My Little Ponys who love EVERYONE and who practically crawl into the pocket of the said character and hang out there without a care in the world.

Its bad enough most Kelvics deny their nature, refuse to bond, or claim they aren't interested in a bondmate (mostly for ooc reasons). IF you don't want to rp the race, play something else!

Bullshit.

Horses aren't stupid. Yet people keep insisting on playing them as stupid. Kelvics have no reason to be tied to the web past or present and while they might want to join the Drykas culture, they should have picked Drykas as a beginning race. There are, truthfully, very few actual real Drykas in Endrykas when you start looking at the numbers. I really want this to stop. So I've made bonding to a strider as an outsider a HD Ticket situation. Sorry but I've seen too much of this and I want it to stop.

[Gossamer]

Just a quick note to remind or inform everyone that Mercury is indeed in retrograde. That means weird shit will happen out of the blue. People will be bafflingly butthurt or go crazy. They will pick fights or decide you are Satan's Concubine. Try not to take it personally unless it really is. Just ride out the weirdness, the shock, and all the angst that is trying to blindside you. We have sixteen more days of this madness to survive.

[Ball]

Ugh Mercury needs to be nice to me lol

I hope everthing is going well for you Jen.

[Gossamer]

Fair Warning

If someone is uninvited from this site, they are uninvited for a good reason. I only ban people for two reasons. They are bothering someone or something or they are breaking rules that are firm or established for them. If someone gets booted from Mizahar its to avoid their drama. Don't let yourself get involved in their drama. If you love them, you are more than free to rp with them elsewhere.

Just remember, there are two sides to every story. And what you don't know can hurt you. Once I ban someone I don't change my mind for years no matter what people say or do. I just won't. So I want to nip the gossip in the bud right here and say no matter what is happening behind the scenes, it is what it is.

You have to do something very bad or be someone pretty terrible to get booted off Miz. Think about that. So, stop PMing me about the shitstorm you think is going on. It's just momentary drama. I don't give a rats ass if someone has been here a few months and poured their heart and soul into the site. If they can't behave themselves, they are getting the boot and I'm not changing my mind.

People come here all the time pissed off about an old site and how they are treated. When they leave here the same way pissed off about how WE treated them, then perhaps the sites aren't the problem. Perhaps the way they approach the staff and treat people behind the scenes are. Don't be fooled by a pretty face or a nice attitude. You might be interested to learn that not everyone had the same experience you had and that some people clearly say that if they have to continue to put up with someone in their region they will leave. If they act better than the people that they refuse to put up with, the people they refuse to put up with get the boot.

Goss

[Gossamer]

Summarizing The Drama

It’s been an interesting few days for sure on Mizahar. But again, interesting is what keeps people coming back. I had a sneaking suspicion it would be, not only because of who was involved but because of the fact that Mercury is in Retrograde. I’ve mentioned it before and it holds true almost every time.

Darkstar Astrology is one of my favorite Astrology sites online. I love her take on things. Here’s what she has had to say about the retrograde this time, especially and ironically after the 15th. We have until the 26th of Jan to go. But honestly, today Mercury squared with Pluto and we’re done. Boom. I’m glad this only happens three or four times a year.

The last few days of Mercury retrograde things get fierce again as Mercury stations direct on Pluto and the T-square with Lilith is even tighter then it was at the station retrograde. At least though Mercury is no longer square Mars. Instead Mars is trine Neptune and the Sun is on Altair which is much more fortunate than Mercury being there. Sun on Altair “Public honor, notoriety, favors from superiors, many friends and some envious ones who cause trouble through writings..” This might be when the back-firing I mentioned earlier happens. The envy mentioned here could signify trolling, spiteful comments, or press smears not having the desired effect.

Yea. That about sums it up. I hope everyone had a good chance to air all their dirty laundry and vent all their frustrations and frankly hate. Regardless of what it was you said, did, or the sides you took hopefully it was a cathartic experience for all. I know I had fun. That might surprise you, but truthfully all of you took time out of your day to write – a lot – on your feelings and just exactly what your stance on Mizahar and more importantly my actions are. I hope you all felt empowered and the mob mentality you jumped into stroked your need to engage in herd behavior. Relevant Magazine has a great article on Mob Mentalities on the Internet. Here’s a little quote.

What the Internet has really done is muddy the waters of where our trusted information comes from. We can pick and choose these sources based on our preferences and what we want to hear. We can create our own echo-chamber, allowing us to read blogs or news sites that only agree with our opinion. We can follow people on Twitter whom we only like or agree with. We can even filter our friends by whose interests and opinions we value most.

The end result of this filtering is a lopsided view of truth, where instant information that makes us emotionally charged is only further validated by the other sources we're filtering. This can cause us to be less discerning about how we then receive counter-information.

So… what now? I know you’ve all been holding your breaths, speculating, and wondering what in the hell I’m going to do with the dog and pony show you’ve all provided in my scrap. Well, first off, I’m going to give you a little history lesson.

Once upon a time, back in 1991, I sat down and created a world. I created it at the University of Montana in an all-girls dorm with a lot of fellow college students laughing at me. They were into makeup, who they were going to marry, and some of the lame ass majors I’ve ever seen. I wasn’t deterred. I made maps, had a history, and even some cities flushed out. Why? There was a boy to impress, or rather several, whom I wanted to get close enough to in order to get invited into their D&D Tabletop Game. You see, winters are long in Montana. You have subzero temps and you often have weeks of deep snow. If I remember right, Missoula is at around 3,500 feet so double that normal trouble and add in some Rocky Mountains.

Soon Miza’Har was born.

I’d overheard them complaining about the same old D&D worlds and how they wanted something more. I was a friend of a friend, just some natives I hung out with, and eventually when I was ready I presented them with the material.

They loved it. And while I was there, the whole five years, we gamed in Miza’Har’s world. Then, when I graduated it got boxed up and we all moved on. Back then we were playing Muds online and I was really into Dragonlance, including working my way through all the novels.

Fast forward a few years to 2006. I stumbled upon a site that was a play by post through the dumbest means. I was looking at horses for sale and for some reason this RPG site had a barn RP going on with sale horses and that hit my google search. I’m not even sure it was google back then, but it was certainly something. I investigated, was charmed, and joined. By then I was married, settled, and had time to seriously game.

I played this site for a few years… 2006 to 2009 and made a lot of friends. My best one was an Italian guy who played another female PC that became the bestie of my female PC. They were like sisters and had the absolute best adventures together. We joined the staff. Then we were running things in a very sad situation where the site owner was gone. I’d tried other sites. I met other site owners. And universally I found two truths. Either they were almost impossible to get ahold of or they were tyrants. So, when our absentee site owner came back, destroyed years of our work, and then commercialized our rpg site, I got mad.

The evil site owner did a lot of ‘you can’t succeed’. And well, truth be told no one has ever told me that and had it end well for their words. I don’t fail. I haven’t ever and I won’t ever on things that are important to me.

I talked to all my friends. I wanted my own site. I wanted something where I could make the rules and it could be free and have none of the goddamn bullshit that went on with that other site. I had no idea that my best rpg buddy was so talented. I knew he was a computer science major, but that meant very little to me. He’d gone through college, was in his master program, and all while I knew him he tackled his PHD program. He got a little account, played with it, and fairly soon had the skin of Mizahar up and running like you see now. Only… we didn’t know what to call it.

I unboxed Miza’Har and Tarot laughed at the name and instantly changed it to Mizahar. Something about apostrophies being ridiculous on domain names. I bought the domain name and soon we had the site pointed there. It was coming along smashingly. I uploaded maps and the circle of friends we had divided up the map each taking a slice of the pie. Tarot picked Sahova to develop because he was working hot and heavy on the site coding. More things came in every day. It was super exciting! We had the best time. Cayenne took Falyndar. Colombina took Eyktol and later Kalindor because she had a thing for spiders and those two worked on those projects a little at a time until they were going. I started in Sylira, and just as a joke named the main capital of Miz, Syliras, after of course the god Sylir.

Gillar took Kalea, and later helped me out in Ravok. In exchange for his help with Ravok, I developed Wind Reach. Then when I was bored with Syliras, I started on Cyphrus because it felt big and empty to me. Somehow poor Novallas and Karjin never got touched.

I designed the skill/level system. Gillar approved it and made some suggestions. Colombina insisted we have no dwarves, elves, dragons, etc. Tarot wanted functionality and a magic system that was freebase enough that people could have originality.

Liminal, who’s always been an odd duck, claimed the Akvatari Isle and said he’d help if he could make the most outrageous race of all. We let him because if you know Liminal, you know his sense of the insane and his love of word play and emoness knows no boundaries. Mizahar wouldn’t be the same without the butterfly seal mermaids.

Tarot discovered a love of magics because of his beloved Isle and soon started writing magics like crazy. I did a few, but my pet project was gnosis. I’d developed it for the other, more ungrateful site, and was glad I never implemented it because they frankly didn’t deserve it. With the gnosis marks came the pantheon and we all started developing Gods. I think we went a little crazy until Tarot put his foot down and told us to do other things instead of gods.

I got Syliras playable and by August of 2009 we were ready to go. We only took five months or so from deciding to do it to opening. I wrote my ass off and developed the vast majority of the races and city concepts, doing a little in each city to get enough of a shell open to get these cities playable. Tarot coded his ass off, and then did his best to learn some serious techniques to get search engines to crawl us, index us, and put us on the map. He worked some serious magic.

It was a dream team. But nothing is forever.

Cayenne’s family fell into terrible financial problems and she dropped off, a little annoyed and completely finished with PBP sites at the time she did. She was heavily into real time online table top and that’s what she stated doing. There was more to the story, but no need to rehash it here. Colombina finished law school and drifted off shortly after she passed the bar. She got married, had a baby, and overall it was a crazy time. Gillar and I stood here, Tarot as well, and Liminal drifted off due to real life pressures, etc.

Tarot graduated with his PHD and suddenly launched into the ‘real world’ with a very important job and took up violin. We love seeing his violin videos, but he grew more and more apart from the rpg side of the site as time passed because he had new commitments with his new life. He’s always been here, quietly watching over, and he’s always only an email or a text away if we need anything.

Gillar started working graveyard and hasn’t been around much in recent years, though periodically he’ll write a gnosis or work on lore in one way or another. He still loves Miz, just hasn’t been a full time mod. And I’d say hes been the number two contributor to the site lore in the last few years. I’ve been number one.

So currently Gillar, Liminal, and Tarot are all still here in one capacity or another and can for the most part (probably not my college years) verify all I say here. I own the domain names. Tarot has the site account and manages that. He also manages the donations which he doles out as needed to pay for anything from domain names to upgrades on our server to new memory etc. I get copies of the donation notification emails and what we use the funds for. He’s also accomplished the hellish task of migrating us to various new servers over the years seamlessly so you players hardly even felt it.

Who’s in charge? Well, theoretically any of the Founders have an equal say. However, 99% of the time you’re stuck with just me. Good, bad, indifferent… I make the decisions for the site because no one else is here. That includes most of the staffing (for a time some of the RS’s made some decisions too), who stays, who goes, and what gets put in. I almost exclusively take care of all the Help Desk Tickets, and I’m the one that separates squabbling players, squabbling staff, and any problems that arise. I have tens of thousands of hours put into this site and I’m not ashamed to say its my blood sweat and tears built on Tarot’s one hell of a rock solid site frame.

You can’t fire me. You can’t push me away. You can’t separate Mizahar from me. When you play this site, you are in essence playing with my heart and soul brought to the forefront in one capacity or another. That is especially true if you’re playing in one of my cities, acting out one of my races, or worshiping a god or using a magic, or invoking a gnosis. You can’t even remotely vote me off the Island.

All you can do is decide if this place is for you. I’ve seen lots of sites. I’ve played quite a few. I even interact heavily on sites that are designed just for site admins to help each other work out site problems similar to this one. I can tell you with a certainty that I’m far lesser of some of the evils out there in regards to admins and site owners. And that is reflected by the sheer size of Mizahar and the people that play Miz day in and day out.

People take offense at my forthright manner. That’s unfortunate. I don’t play games. I don’t bs people. I don’t lie. I just tell it as I see it and move on. And I have to tell you, frankly, that I’ve been beyond amused that so many people have put so much emotion into saying I’m what’s wrong with Mizahar. I’m one of the big reasons Mizahar exists. I’m one of the reasons it continues to exist and has survived for going on eight years. And I’ll be the reason it will still be here ten, fifteen years from now… maybe even longer into the future.

I’ve gamed here when no one else has been here. I’ve gamed here when we’ve had twenty people online. I’ve gamed here when we’ve had hundreds. A couple of days ago we had 95 online at a time. That was a big deal. So win or lose, like my politics or not, you are stuck with me. You’re also stuck with my decisions. This isn’t a democracy. I’ll hear you out but that doesn’t mean I’m going to take it with a grain of salt. If you can’t stand any of the above or even me, you know how to log out and look further. I might be biased however, but I don’t think you’ll find better. You can’t remotely hurt my feelings. You can’t even change my mind once its made up. I see a lot. I hear even more. People talk to me. I have a close circle of friends and we game. I know you have a similar circle of friends. You aren’t entitled to be here. Your being here is a privilege. You can always go and you can always take your friends with you. Sometimes sites aren’t a good fit. Sometimes ideals clash.

If you do leave however, I hope you do find what you want in that mythical democratic kind fair and honest admin. I hope you find likeminded rpers with solid systems. And if you can’t, you can always build yourself a site. We did. It worked out pretty well for us too. Regardless I’ll wish you luck. And if you find your name greyed out, don’t try to sweat it too much. We… or rather I… voted you off the island and usually for a really good reason. And I realize some of you think we’ve lost THE BEST mods we’ve ever had in the last little bit, but I’ve seen FANTASTIC mods and those were not it. Indeed it does sadden me that you haven’t seen mods like I’ve seen. Tarot was one of the best. But that doesn’t mean the dream team won’t still happen. It can at any moment and right now I know we have one of the finest playerbases we’ve had in five years. No, I don’t include those naysayers who’ve posted hate and envy and dirty laundry among those people. I include the people who have lavished support on me the last few days and laughed with me while you guys have spit fury and shallow petty words into ears that are deaf to your rage.

What a waste. So I’ve let this run its course. You’ve all aired your dirty laundry like I’ve said already and hopefully you’ve all read what others had to say. I’ve let you cheer, agree, and herd up to do your worst. I’ve also been surprised by a few champions I didn’t know I had and several voices of reason. And as horrible as it sounds, one of my biggest flaws is that I thrive on the attention. The more you hate the merrier and more incredulously charmed I get. That’s especially true of the people that I have never interacted with. I chalk it up to envy on their parts, offsite and probably off net stress, and the inability to even remotely socialize and make friends. I understand it’s your tv raised video game spoon-fed generation. I completely and utterly can’t believe you give me that much power over your happiness. And I think you are a fool for doing so. But you won’t forget me. And you’ll take time, even in the face of a ban, to pour out your negative emotions when that energy would be so much better served doing anything else other than raging at a stranger on the internet for any perceived slight they’ve caused you.

I’ve removed all the posts, cleaned out the trolling drama, but left little gift copies of your words in your SS threads (Good bad or indifferent – hate or misplaced advice – even the encouragements) so I’ll remember who doesn’t merit my time or effort and who does. Any further posts will be transferred to SS threads and removed from this scrap. If you want to spread that shit, do it in your own scraps or on your own site.

Better yet, save it for your roleplay. That’s what I’m here for. It should be, after all, what you’re here for too. And thank you for those that reached out - off site, in PMs, on AIM - and supported me. I got to meet some new people. I got re-acquainted with old friends. And had a fantastic show of support. Thank you for mostly keeping it out of my scrap too. I was not interested in a battle. I was more interested to find out who, in this day and age, was so insanely unhappy or stupid enough to actually get involved.

[Aleron]

I enjoyed the origin story you wrote about this site's beginnings. I didn't know it had such humble roots in D&D, or why the founders drifted off beyond what you told me about Gillar. I understand now why everything is so personal after reading your story. In a way, I like the site even more now.