First I would like to see a history of this group.

I always imagined COL as organized crime.

Instead of collecting items like, amulets, wands, white robes etc and placing them on the altar as offerings. You would get these items, sealed packages or silvers and make deliveries around the nations to other COL agents etc. During this society task you could run into trouble. Like being Hijacked by a rival organization.

Collect protection money from venders, bath houses, gambling establishments etc etc.

Instead of answering questions that can be easily found if you decide to browse the internet. You could deliver messages to COL operatives in towns. Or collect their "spy" information and deliver it back to the Phoobah.

The Dark Assassin, in my mind is the enforcer. I personally have never seen him in action in recent years. I do believe that I did see an assassination many many moons ago.

Why not make a society task having the player be this Assassin. Example: The town of Wehnimers has arrested one of our operatives and is going to hold trial. If convicted he or she will be executed. We can not let this happen. The town officials have in protected custody a key witness. It is you duty to take whatever action is necessary to ensure they never talk. You would then travel to Wehnimers to search for the safe house. But before you do you have to pay off the constable. Doing so would allow you to search for the safe house. This search could be done similarly to how Grimswarm Warcamps are found. Maybe you have to pay off another official or clerk where they will give you the name of the street where the house is located. When found, you would raid the house. When you find the witness you could either give them silvers to keep them quiet or... silence them permanently.

Another task could be that a rival organization is moving in on our turf and has setup a base of operations at such and such a place. Your job is either intercept their shipments of supplies, weapons, or silvers or to eliminate their foothold.

Upon completing tasks you would gain prestige within the organization. You would also receive silvers as payment. You could also become "wanted" as you gain prestige. NPC bounty hunters could try and track you down. To back off this attention you are getting, a silvers donation to COL's "lawyers/clerks" will be needed. These funds will help take that unwanted attention off your back.

Peace
Zhelas

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(Lord Paladin walks around Droit examining his equipment.)
Lord Paladin: How does he....How does he work?

Really creative ideas, but it sounds like you're describing a brand new society to me. I don't see this working for CoL, which already has an established history and niche. Not that CoL couldn't use some fleshing out, mind you, but your ideas would completely change the society. I'd rather see something new than totally rewrite CoL. Part of the character and nature of the society is that it's true nature is secret, even to rising members. If members were expected to carry out blatantly criminal and evil activities, that would pretty much tip the whole thing off.

I like the ideas, though.

~ Heathyr and friends

At this point in time, I have a friend who is currently going through COL because she doesn't have a society reset and can't rejoin sunfist. And doesn't want to do voln. So she has joined COL and has to wait 90 plus minutes between steps so she can't master too quickly.

Skin critter, check...
Collect amulets, wands, greaves, white flowing robes, gold lockpicks, etc etc.. check..
Answer a question.. check.. sleep 90 plus minutes


Peace
Zhelas

---

(Lord Paladin walks around Droit examining his equipment.)
Lord Paladin: How does he....How does he work?

>Until one can see the written history of the group it is really anyone's guess.
Zhelas


Not really, no.

There is an established history. Whether that can, or will change in the future is entirely different than 'nobody knows what the history is', which is what you're stating. You've played GS for a long time. You should know that simply because a history doc isn't on the website available to players, doesn't mean there isn't a guideline that's being used for past, present and future development.


-farmer
>"Mine lights my character on fire and makes her all glowy." -Raelee

It was linked to the Unlife, something which doesn't exist in Gemstone after the De-ICING. That's why the consequences of membership is so meaningless.

If you all want to discuss this we can, but the Unlife translates to the ultimate, unambiguous evil. CoL has nothing to do with the Undead directly, but the power of evil through spirits and souls powers them.

It actually has a rather easy parallel. Your spirit is beholden to your masters. When you die, in the end, and go demonic, with demons and the demonic also using this power of evil, that translates into your powers. The souls of the little animals you kill and your tainted spirit siphons power for the demonic.

You don't have to call it Unlife. Vathors, demons, extraplanars like ithzir and the Vvrael and their anti-mana are all forms of the evil power that gives life to the Council's power and how it's bestowed upon it's membership.

This hasn't, shouldn't, and inevitably will not change. The mafia angle was somewhat tried. That is a perfectly acceptable "front" to the occult demonic origins of the society. The Council of Light is an evil organization, even if the membership doesn't know that, realize that, uses it, or seeks to betray it in the end. It is wholly evil in the end and the mafia angle doesn't support that aspect in the deeper levels of it's existance, only on the surface.

-J of G

<<<You don't have to call it Unlife. Vathors, demons, extraplanars like ithzir and the Vvrael and their anti-mana are all forms of the evil power that gives life to the Council's power and how it's bestowed upon it's membership.>>>

Interesting take, but I don't think the Vvrael are a good example. When they threatened our realm, Arkati of both Lornan and Liabo united to hold them back, including Luukos who is so often associated with CoL. The Vvrael are something beyond evil, much akin to the Borg of Star Trek, or a killer black hole. Soulless, relentless, insatiable. I can't see anti-mana having anything at all to do with the Council, honestly.

~ Heathyr

>It bothers me a bit that we can and do change our societies so freely. Not sure if this can be changed even if the player base desired it. Maybe more society specific storylines would help.
WOLFFC3

I agree with you that it's disappointing things like society can be changed at a keystroke. However...

Collectively, people (generally speaking) refuse to deal with consequences of any sort. RP, mechanical, etc. Look at banishment, for example. Ain't no GS player got time for that!


-farmer
>"Mine lights my character on fire and makes her all glowy." -Raelee

>The Dark Assassin, in my mind is the enforcer. I personally have never seen him in action in recent years. I do believe that I did see an assassination many many moons ago.

Sorry to Necro a 2 year old post, but i had to comment.

I saw more than you did. :P I saw no less over the past 10+ years than 12 assassinations.

Most of them were a GM Controlled Player Character, but they also had a critter version of the dark assassin that they occasionally threw in, that was like, totally buffed and impossible to beat. period.


And most of them were in connection to the storyline that former GM Khaladon ran in the landing when the original bathhouse went bye-bye.

Honestly, it was never a dull moment when you saw Lacheis.....if you saw Lacheis. hehe.

I wasn't as involved with that storyline as i could have been due to life stuff, and work, back then. I just wish we could do some more stuff like that.

Basically, Lacheis needs to come out of retirement. :P All of my CoL characters are still waiting for the debt to be called in. I would have thought Cross into Shadows would have been a perfect time for that. I'd love for another CoL storyline.

Yeah....you know how dumb people were...I can remember getting a message from the Poohbah thanking me for remembering my oaths...after two loudmouths were discussing the "family business"

Just wondering....is that still an acceptable use of the report verb?

It's been a while since I went through the Council, and I would have sworn that when you learned Hopelessness you were told that it drained ten (10) Life Levels (what Spirit Points were called, at the time). (Bear in mind that this was before Enhancives.)

Which seriously ticked me off when Krakii wound up with 12 spirit--again, this was before Enhancives... so it was a program bug at some point--and I wanted to test it. And yes, it killed me. :)

Now, with Enhancives as common as they are, I suspect that the wording has been confirmed to make clear that it will drain 'all', however many you may have.

.

Other methods of Spirit Drain (and therefor, death) existed:
- Kree had the sword that would drain from everyone in the room,
- Spirit Slayer/230 would drain twelve (12) on a successful cast--again, before Enhancives the most that a person could have was 10... you had to either scamper to find a Well of Life from a Cleric, or be a Dwarf/Halfling and hope you got really lucky with a pulse while the spell ran--but it only took one per round and rounds, like currently, had a certain... elasticity,
- Undead could potentially take one on a successful hit,
- probably some others I'm forgetting.

.

Hopelessness was a normal death, but had an immediate decay effect. The only time this was an issue was if you had managed to get down to no deeds. (I start getting twitchy if I have fewer than 5.)

I too believe the demonic aspects of the group is the current day power source.

<Though I think it's a total cop out having your soul torn apart and the death goddess just stitches it back together. ;)>

Yer, there are quite a few aspects of CoL that have become horribly out of date. At least when death mechanics worked the way they did in the early 90's there was an RP justification for Hopelessness even if it was otherwise useless.... now it's just useless (causes you to decay while dead according to the Wiki.... whoopee, I can give myself a harsher death penalty with one command rather then two...).

Without getting into a mechanical comparison of the three societies, it FEELS like CoL masters are kind of gypped. The other two both provide reasons and mechanics for continuing on with the RP after mastering them (gaining favor for Voln and like level hunting anywhere for GoS), in CoL you're just called a fool and kicked to the curb.

I think Masters of CoL should be allowed to use all those skins folk have had to collect to make belts that capture the souls of critters we kill, then those souls could be used to put temporary flares in weapons, armor, shields, etc. Heck, I'd even be happy if the flares only worked for CoL members.

Starchitin

A severed gnomish hand crawls in on its fingertips and makes a rude gesture before quickly decaying and rotting into dust. A gust of wind quickly scatters the dust.

A fluffy evil cat gaze would be a must. Why did we move off demons so fast? CoL has a storyline, it just isn't followed that strongly. People don't usually go all the way evil and nuance in CoL allows for a redemption path or a hehehehe I'm not that evil giggle angle. I always kind of associated Althedeus or any of the big demons as the current Council mover and shakers.

speaking of dark assassins, I believe there was an invasion of them a long time back and they had black-hilted dirks or something to that effect? I think I've still got one in a locker somewhere.

I think an interesting way to update this would be as follows:

It would keep its nice but oh no evil! feel this way, too. First, the regular steps would work the same. Then, a few steps in, you'd be tasked with rescuing a child, just like with the adventure guild, and returning them to a special guy in town instead of the guard. Yay you're noble!

A few steps later, you're tasked the same, only instead of bringing the kid to the associate in town, you take them to a special temple near HQ. They'll be giving the child a special blessing to make sure the wounds heal right. Man, you're nice!

Some more collecting, etc, and you're tasked with child three. You save 'em, bring 'em to the special place, but it turns out, they are being sacrificed by evil. It's your first real indication, and maybe you want to leave with that? But hey, at least it isn't entirely your fault.

For the last step then, after more skinning and shopping trips, you're asked to bring yet another "lost" child to this place, but you must perform this sacrifice yourself. Now the blood is on your hands.

I don't really know about the why for those ideas, though a lot of the current why is a bit iffy. It would make characters a lot more culpable though, and most importantly, help explain why all those children are constantly going missing. "Ran off" indeed!

Anyhow, that's just my current thought of the day.

<However, it would not necessarily be PvP, and we DO have all these (non-lethal) disablers nowadays....)>

I can tell you right now that if this became a thing and someone tried to prevent me from completing the task, I'd hit them with 720 way before I'd even consider using 706.

Starchitin

A severed gnomish hand crawls in on its fingertips and makes a rude gesture before quickly decaying and rotting into dust. A gust of wind quickly scatters the dust.

I'm generally in favor of what I've called the "Misadventure Guild", though I'm inclined to it being helping all of the separate dark factions rather than one central society. The Krolvin want slaves, the Sheruvians want human meat, the Spider Temple wants sacrifices, the Phantom Gatekeeper wants souls, the nedum vereri just want someone who can love them right without leaving them, and so on. It would give some IC relevance to all of the background history in the game that is just sitting there now.

With the Council of Light I want to see some coherent, understandable malevolent purpose whatever the nature of the tasks. Maybe even keep the soul corruption.

- Xorus' player

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>A voice in your mind says, "A pleasure to meet you Dreadlord."

There should be a special guild just for gnomes...

-- Robert

The town guard exclaims, "What do I look like, a scholar from Biblia?!"

<There should be a special guild just for gnomes...>

Bah, guilds are just an excuse for pointy eared freaks ta feel special an tha otha giants ta emulate them. Us proper heighted folk dun need no stinkin guilds, we already know we're better then the rest!

Starchitin

A severed gnomish hand crawls in on its fingertips and makes a rude gesture before quickly decaying and rotting into dust. A gust of wind quickly scatters the dust.