Forming a Group in Syliras?

[Shiyami]

Would Shiyami be useful for the...(borrowing a name from Mondaiji Tachi) No Names?
I mean, he watches over Syliras already(out of boredom), and he himself is neutral to everything normally.

[Genryuu Senkou]

I think we're going with The Masked Brotherhood for now, Brotherhood of Masks suggests that the purpose of the order is about masks which ain't right. Unless there's some major dissent, that's what we're going with.

And Ronan's idea to wear the mask whenever on duty works for me too. So for those wanting to join the brotherhood, i suggest you start choosing your masks now. Google either "Chinese masks" or "Japanese Masks" or "Korean Masks" to get yourself started. Know that you are not limited to those types, just really any mask that would cover your face and inspire fear. You will soon have to post this on our official OOC thread when we make one (NOT HERE).

And Shiyami, I'm sure we can make some use out of you... (even though right now it just seems cool to have a ghost on our side) so stick with us for sure!

[Shiyami]

As a ghost in general, there is a problem with masks...unless he stays Materialized for an indefinite time, which he does not have the capability to do so.

But, his left eye, when opened, changes him. So perhaps that could be counted as a mask? XD

[Radiant]

As a ghost player myself, you can just change your appearance to as if you're wearing a mask.

[Sigriet]

I've got to agree, Shiyami, that it does seem cool that there's a ghost that might be with the group. But yeah, it seems like the kind of group that there will be a use for anyone who's interested. ^.^

[Wanda Endust]

This sounds like a really great idea! I'd love to get Wanda involved in it somehow. She should be learning a bit of unarmed combat in the future, but til then, if y'all can fit a masseuse into your plans, I'd love to participate! :) Either way, it should be interesting to watch this organization develop.

[Crypt]

I've been watching this thread for a while, and it looks intriguing. Here are some thoughts I've been pondering.

1. Goal and purpose of the organisation: This is quite important. So far, I've only seen a general idea/ideas about this organisation - so could you try stating it explicitly? Is it the one in the first post of this thread - the Vagabond part?

2. Skills required: If you're going to be venturing out of Syliras far enough that the Knights can't protect you adequately, there needs to be a minimum level of wilderness survival and basic combat skills. I understand that there is a group of Syliran Knights based in the Bronze Woods, but there'll still be plenty of chances to do good.
You could still try to wing it in a group, but spending long periods out there is inadvisable. Of course, if you're a ghost, then it won't really matter unless you meet a hostile Master Spiritist

3. Active PCs: This will determine if your organization will last or not. There's been a few PC organisations in the past, but most of them have pretty much petered out due to lack of interest and/or inactive PCs. A few people need to be running this organisation and also be actively posting and creating opportunities for members - the last part STs could do though. Now, this might be a little too early to be thinking of such things, but if you're keen on making this whole thing work, do try to be on Mizahar as long as possible - and posting on a regular basis helps too.

4. Relationship with the Syliran Knights: Well, you'd have to deal with them sooner or later. They might see you as muscling on their territory, they might see you as a big help... If this organisation is going to be active, I think you might want to appoint someone to act as the liaison, the go-between to settle anything between them.

5. Income! Ahhh, mizas, mizas, mizas.... But in all seriousness, how is this organisation going to settle this? If you were, say, a volunteer organisation where people can sign up for duties and do good things for free, then it wouldn't be so much of a problem. But making this into a legit, for-profit organisation could require a proper headquarters, financial and other resources, and maybe even hiring trainers to train members (or members could train other members). And would you want to make this be a job for the members i.e. they get paid every season and all? Earning money would be hard, and you might have to make this a business to settle this problem. Then again, the Syliran Knights could fund you. Another option would be to support the organisation with part of your own personal incomes. The organisation would collect a seasonal fee from all of its members and try to use it. This, I think, is a viable idea.

6. Masks: Now, don't get me wrong, masks are awesome. I've been to Venice once for the Carnival and it was awesome. Intimidating masks, masks that inspire fear, wouldn't really endear the members on duty to most people - OOC-ly, this isn't much of a problem, but IC-ly, you might be trusted at first, and there could be a problem with trying to raise your reputation.


To be honest, I'm glad you're not doing something terribly overdone - like an assassin's guild. Not that that would even work in Syliras. This idea of yours has great potential, and if we can hash something out of all this discussion, I'd be glad to help develop this further IC and OOC. Crypt is going to Syliras as soon as he's done with the Kalea Regional Quest (I don't know when that'll be) and he could possibly join in with the fun. I hope this can go somewhere, so good luck! Cheers!

[Ronan Dugal]

Hello Crypt. First of all, thank you very much for the questions. They should have been asked much sooner so thank you for that. As for the answers I'm about to write out, they're just how I see it going and are in no way official or final.

1. At first it will be just to do whatever odd jobs come their way, then it'll go into contracts for just about everything and finally it would be nice if we could settle our group/organization/business as a sort of security force that starts it work where the knights stop working. And where the knights do work they will continue to complete the jobs they have been doing since the start.

2. Some of the potential members have already stated that they will need time to train and practice beforehand but I agree with you that, in order to function in their security jobs, the members will need to learn wilderness survival. Maybe we could arrange some mass wilderness class sometime in the future with a (N)PC teacher. Or maybe we just wing it and learn as we go?

3. I'm sure everyone always sees themselves as active players when they start something like this. But you never know what might happen IRL. I personally would have no problem running part of the organization and accepting (read: inventing) jobs and problems for the members, in case an ST is not available. As you've seen Radiant has been very helpful and willing to ST for us, at least at the start. Whether or not this organization will flourish or die depends entirely on the players connected to it.

4. I'm hoping that we can become a big help to the knights and I wouldn't mind if they dropped all their shitty problems on us. Although my character doesn't like the knights, I'm sure he will be able to put his personal feelings aside in order to establish a good relationship with the knights. After all, without that relationship I doubt we'd be able to do anything at all in Syliras, really. As I've said before, I'm willing to put my character up as the talking, business-y, liaison-y, accounting guy for the organization. From what I've seen from the CS' he's also the most qualified for those things, I think.

5. At first, I think we'll have a job board somewhere, or a person with all the requests sitting behind a desk somewhere. Whenever someone posts a job, they pay a fee to post the job, depending on the job and they deposit half of the reward for the job as well. The fee goes to the organization. When the job is completed whoever completed the job will get the rest of the payment from the client and can get the deposit from the office as well. The organization takes another percentage from the final payment as well. I'd say somewhere between 5 and 15 percent? But all this is only after we've managed to start things up, of course. Depending on Ronan's funds at the time of creation, he'll be willing to invest part of his personal money into this. The rest might come from other members or will be loaned from the city. When we start off I don't think an official headquarters will be needed but over time slowly building up an official gathering place and possible barracks would be nice as well. I also think we should register the final organization as a business but I'm not sure yet as to how and what, at the moment.

As for personal income, members can register themselves OOCly as mercenaries and then use the organization to do their job threads. They can also do extra jobs on the side to earn extra income based on the organization's job boards and payment arrangements.

6. As for the masks, I'm personally not sure yet what type of masks we could be wearing. Perhaps we all wear a mask we like but carry some form of identification on the mask? Or we all wear the same mask? And what we wear doesn't matter, since it is our actions that make us trusted and like by the people. If we decide to all wear a red mask with devil horns and a goatee then people will (hopefully) come to respect those masks as being part of our group. Sure, at first they will be scared but so will the bandits and all the evil dudes we'll be busting (hopefully, again).

Thank you for reading through all this rambling. I hope it sort of makes sense the way I wrote it. I just went with whatever seemed to blurt out of my brain. I think it makes sense, hmm? As I said before, this is all what I personally think how it should/could be done and in no way represents the final product.

[Radiant]

Amazing coordination you guys put here. I would give my support for this group to prosper, after you're all set up and all, perhaps you should PM Accolade to get your very own headquarter, perhaps an apartment first?

[Genryuu Senkou]

Hi guys, sorry i haven't replied much lately, been busy trying to apply for a Gnosis mark and other stuff...

As for the new round of long discussions, I more or less endorse most of what Ronan has said, with minor editions:

1) I like the whole idea about "a force that starts it work where the knights stop working." In fact, that could even be one of our major tenets But the main idea is basically to help look after the things that the Knights find as either too tedious, too tenacious or out of their jurisdiction (ie we patrol outer regions of the city unguarded by Knights to ensure travellers' safe arrival, we also help inner-city folks with their day-to-day problems that probably won't warrant the attention of the knights)

2) We probably would need some of the Outer-Patrol members to have wilderness survival EXP but I believe it would not be to a huge extent (read 1<x<10) as I think most of the patrols would be travelling in groups. One of our members, Wade, already has some experience in this so i believe he would be able to help with that. (N)PC training may be necessary, but we will cross that bridge when we come to it. Developing skills is of course one of the key requirements to ensure this Brotherhood's success

3) I don't mind the idea of people using this brotherhood as a primary source of income, but my ultimate vision is that this is a civil militia, not a professional mercenary crew (that doesn't mean we will be weaker that professional mercenaries, just that it is not our sole livelihood. Which means: don't count on us as your sole source of income. The Brotherhood will support and look after you in times of need, but you should still try your best to find a permanent steady job, and perhaps the missions from us would be like a cherry-on-top

4) I prefer to think more of ourselves as sort of the people the Knights may outsource some of their less-interesting-but-still-important jobs to. For example, our first job (according to Radiant) would be to hunt down a small group of Bandit Grunts and bring them to justice.

5) I think our "official headquarters" so to speak will be initially just a table at some tavern, but as we gather more funds, we may be able to appropriate necessary funds to procuring a small office and etc. Genryuu has a stable job now, and will donate whatever funds he has to spare once he receives his salary (at the end of the season)

6) The masks are for when members of the Brotherhood are on duty or in battle. This is to create a sense of unity and to help make us easily recognizable by the public. We will most likely have a fixed location for citizens to submit requests for help, and if they want to approach us in public while we're on jobs wearing our masks, we would still probably direct them there to ensure a smooth linear flow of paperwork.

either way, Ronan will be ideally handling most of this clerical and logistic work IC as he is the most suited out of all the current members so far for that task. He will not be alone, of course. Assistants will be provided as deemed necessary. So in a sense, Ronan, you're more or less gonna be the Manager/CEO of this brotherhood (I'm sure we'll think of a more attractive title IC), whilst Wade and I will be more or less some of the more hands-on people.

There may be others that I haven't mentioned yet, but don't worry I haven't forgotten you! Official assigning of duties will be alloted once I create an official OOC thread for our organization. Don't forget to shop around for masks in the mean time!