Hello Empaths!
As some of you may have noticed, there isn't a new Empath shop this year at guildfest. We did get Goods for Life updated -- the bone armor is now based on modern templates, and a few food-shaped weapons were added as well, which I hope you'll like.
This year I sank my energy into developing an alteration system for the alfar warrior.
First, it doesn't make sense for Empaths to be able to freely alter the appearance of the alfar. Alfar are sentient beings with their own preferences and agendas, who would not take kindly to "alteration." The alteration system, from an in-character perspective, just allows the Empath to forge a deep bond with a particular alfar. This alfar just happens to look how the player would prefer. I hope that makes sense to you all. With that established, how do you go about forming a deep bond with a particular Alfar?
How it works: over the millennia, items of great historical or personal value have been lost to the fae. If an Empath finds such an item, and chooses to return the item to the fae, the fae will owe that Empath and debt and will vow to personally answer the Empath's summons.
How do you get your hands on such an item? For now, probably via auction, though they may occasionally be release via other means (raffles, rare loot, etc). When you do, you'll have an out of character consultation with a GameMaster to approve your desired alteration, after which you can return the item to the Fae to redeem your "alteration." These items may have a time deadline, as well, at the GameMaster's discretion, which will be visible on the item via STUDY.
What can be altered?
1. Custom name
2. Custom appearance (e.g. a short alfar warrior with a jagged scar arcing across its face). This should be no more than 100 characters. It's analogous to the TAP on an item.
3. Custom adjective (e.g. burly). These must be less than ten characters for backend reasons.
4. Custom description (e.g. This warrior of the fae is unusually short, its colorless hair cut in jagged spikes. Its eyes are a cold, wintry blue... &c.) This is limited to 511 characters, including spaces. And remember that in Elanthia, we double space after each sentence. This is analogous to the EXAMINE on an item. It is what people will see when they input DESCRIBE warrior.
What can't be altered?
1. Armor is hardcoded and cannot be changed.
2. You can't indicate a gender, the warrior must remain genderless/indeterminate.
3. You can't use this to have your warrior be anything other than an alfar -- so no rock trolls, colepexies, elves, or anything like that.
4. It has to remain a warrior, so you can't create "an slender alfar savage" or alfar avenger, or anything like that.
5. As with most things, the alteration is at the GameMaster's discretion. We can't stray too far from the generic alfar look, this is just to make the alfar slightly more personalized.
The altered alfar is summoned using CAST CUSTOM, so this will replace your current custom cast. You can also only have one alfar alteration at a time; if you get an alfar alteration and then get a second one, the second one will overwrite the first one.
And this should be obvious, but you must be an Empath and know the guardian spirit spell to use this. Despite the special bond, you still cannot summon the warrior if you're permashocked, sorry!
Let me know if you all have any questions about this.
Melete
You'll probably find
that it suits your book
to be a bit cleverer
than you look.
Observe that the easiest
method by far
is to look a bit stupider
than you are.
