RP Story Discussion

*NOTE* this is not an attack - nor am I trying to start an argument please read carefully what I am trying to put forward *

This RP was full of twists and was really, really good, great plan by Qa'han and I think it is exactly how things would have happened the only thing that sticks in my jaw is the Clan Mother.

When I watch a movie - TV show whatever if they are going to sell me a plot twist they really have to sell it.

It may be just me but I find it hard to believe the Clan Mother would have chosen an Argonian to be the Leader of a Khajiit clan which also happens to be made up of every an assortment of races... over a Khajiit who gave her no reason to refuse him. He had a lot less support but a wise clan mother may have possibly noted that the meeting was stacked :p Suddenly all Ri'saari's fans jumped ship - or left the RP. She was prepared to form a clan just not Ri'saari as leader.

But what is done is done.

So to explain this... my thoughts are

1. Was she was paid off? - I dont think so unless she is corrupted which I would think a proud Khajiit woman of morals & principles would be immune to gold or any other kind of bargain.

2. Could this be Mo'haji in another disguise of Qa'han's - I like this one because if fits really well. Where was Ice-eye at the time? eh, eh? This presents problems like: Is real clan mother held captive somewhere? Or is she dead ? Has her mind been erased or perhaps enthralled so she cannot denounce Qa'han if she is set free etc. (This may go against Qa'han's alignment/nature to use coercive manipulation so that would not work).

3. Qa'han/Rune-tail, (I dont know who he was this was so confusing) I think mentioned to me quickly ((OOC during RP)) something about him being raised by Khajiit etc, and the Clan Mother is not racist so maybe we can go with that, it is the least problematic.

I know these things are not scripted but we do have to keep it within some kind of believable framework I think. I mean only last week I was ambushed by people telling me: Sylva cant do this and cant do that & that I took things out of Officer Chat when I most assuredly did not and do not and I am very careful not to use what I know OOC in RP despite what people may believe, and yet this week I was left feeling (right or wrongly) there was possible manipulation behind the scenes.

Okay that said, i still like how this played out, I'm not arguing- it is good drama a fantastic turn of events, but I just want to hear a really good explanation because if I am thinking this I guarantee you others are too.

I'm now frantically trying to figure out what Sylvaswift is going to do LOL I am loving the creative challenge.

Very well said, Sylva. I believe the reason is because the Clan Mother said for any that are present may lead the clan and that Hoblin was actually Qa'Han in disguise, so he used that to put himself forward for consideration. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

As I have said before elsewhere, we need to settle down in to these IC organizations so we can begin more 1 on 1 RP with normal members and so they know what's happening.

Yes I too wondered how an Argonian who was not even part of the group asking to form the new clan became Clan leader. I had moved my character away for a moment to answer some whispers I was getting and suddenly Qa'Han was Clan leader and Ri'sari was gone. So right now I'm not even sure where Sahlaa now fits in...

I am open to pretty much anything in continuing this rp. Any of those reasons above could be played out if we want them too.

However the reason Qa'Han was chosen was because he had the support of most of the members present, a large majority in fact (it seems that most who followed Ri'sari abandoned him due to his prior actions or left with Ri'sari and just were not present at the time.). It was not the decision of the Clan Mother who lead the clan. The clan had the decision themselves, I was just there to help with that decision after the clan was approved which was right after Ri'sari threatened me, due to the reactions of the majority of the clan.

Also when I asked Sylva and Qa'Han to present themselves and say why they want to lead, Sylva just preceded to insult Qa'Han due to this race(I get why you did this and it does make sense but it is the only thing he said pretty much) meanwhile Qa'Han actually said he wanted to protect all the members and never see them betrayed because that is what happened to him.

Reason 3 seems the most accurate atm but I am open to rp it differently if we want too.

What Ri'sari said is correct, the goblin put forward Qa'han as a candidate after no one else stepped forward.

One of my concerns is the new members that have just joined our ranks, I did like three or four interviews in the days leading up to this event and in those interviews I directed the individuals to a place that they would fit with they character in the guild. Good to merchants, not so good to the Clan. I just hope that doesn't cause confusion to those hoping they were joining a guild for their bad characters.

I think the real knowledge of the plot twist or how we could "Sell" it as Syla has so eloquently put is having our members be able to easily and fully keep up with the RP arc of the guild. I read a lot about how there were difficulties informing the members of Qa'han's death. That could have played a part in the members full appreciation of the events that happened during Friday.

I think thats why Ri'sari has us posting the recaps to the RP now. I think in order to sell these things we just need more people involved and knowledgeable. Which it looks like we are well on our way to. I mean who understands a plot twist when they jump in half way through the movie?

I regret not having Qa'iit stand up and try to take over the Clan, but as it already was Qa'iit turned down Ri'sari's invitation to the clan ;so, I just had him show up hiding his face behind a helmet. I feel you Sahlaa I'm not quite sure where Qa'iit fits now too.

Ri'sari will just have to make the Clan Mother see "reason" then. : D

I see a good way of getting this to where it needs to be as something like this:
Ri'sari and those with him capture the clan mother.

• They bring her to Qa'Han
• She is forced to dissolve Qa'Han's clan
• She is forced to make the Sugar-Tooth Clan official
• She is taken away as captive for RP later. (Rescue perhaps)
• Ice-Eye, Qa'Han, and any other integral characters officially form the Merchant's Commune as an independent organization

.

This sets up the Sugar-Tooth Clan being nefarious, provides positive backstory about how Merchant's Commune tried to save people, and leaves us with a good RP for later in the form of the captive clan mother.

Just a quick question, how do you plan on forcing her to do these things. Note that she is not very afraid of death so threatening her own live will not do much. (You could threaten others perhaps.)

Something very extreme like cutting off her tail at the first sign of non-compliance.

Capturing her child or children, grandchildren?

Forcing her to drink and become addicted to the Blue Skooma?

Gnarlus feels the clan mother being captured is his fault since he interrupted and made bad cat... I mean Ri'sari mad at the Clan Mother. HE wants to fix it without Qa'han's help for a change. He doesn't know where the clan is, but he knows where they are going to be: I set it up when Qa'han was named Clan Leader that he and the Clan Mother had to meet with the Mane and to have the clan recognized as a clan. So Rawl'Kha. That's where Gnarlus believes they will be as that is where Qa'han told him he had to go.

To distract Qa'han, Gnarlus invited his family to Skywatch which will lead into Thursday's Special Event of Spy Hunt: Qa'han calling for help to round up the Goblins. Hijinx to follow.

I talked briefly about this in officer chat in-game but wished to talk further about it.

Understand this is my perspective as a player, and that I have read and understand that the conflict needs to calm down. So please to not take offense; I know on a meta level that all-out war is a no-go and by pointing out these points of contention it is my intention that we head in this direction. But here are the reasons I think we need a stronger reason for peace than we have already been given.

1. The Clan-Mother is a sacred position in Khajiit hierarchy. She is not only effective as a leader but also as a religious and cerimonial figure.
2. Chopping off her tail should have angered every self-respecting Khajiit. (Granted, most of us are not self-respecting). It's already the primary talk of the Commune, as per last night's meeting.
3. The Clan and the Commune, being based out of the same city, puts them directly at odds and extremely close to each other. What keeps this from boiling over?
4. I understand that only the Merchants really knew how to make Blue Skooma. Is this an issue that we will see crop up in the future?
5. If the Commune stands in support of the Dominion, and the Clan operates openly...

Well, basically what I'm asking is this;

What's the good IC reason that keeps the much-larger Merchant Commune from grabbing swords, sharpening knives, and actively trying to retrieve/liberate the Clan-Mother (the only thing that kept/is keeping them from open war) from Ri'sari? I'm not talking about New York level street violence, I'm talking about subterfuge, directed strike-missions, actively undermining the clan? This is something that I feel needs to be addressed in a reasonable, IC way; at the moment, war seems not only inevitable but also imminent.

I'm saying that the Commune was the Clan for a while, and had it stolen from them by Ri'sari, instead of the claim being unchallengable. Now, the claim is weak and needs something to strengthen it beyond the presumed apathy of the Commune members. I know the event got out of hand, so to speak, and that things did not under any circumstance go as planned. I'm stating that there's story-fodder here. Pretty goddamn epic story fodder. This is the stuff high fantasy is made of; the evil overlord captures the princess and forces her hand in marriage, and now the heroes have to climb the tower, slay a dragon, rescue the princess, and banish the overlord to the abyss.

I am automatically assuming this isn't what you were really going for.

Where we were supposed to have a smooth clan leader nomination - Ri'sari was supposed to get it - IC events changed that. Now, Ri'sari holds it by trickery, force, and also by torture and flying in the face of tradition and general decency. I get it didn't go the way we wanted it to. Shouldn't we find something to mend the gap, or give people a good reason not to actively and seriously plot the end of the Sugar-Tooth clan and the arrest or murder of all who helped found it?

What are we planning to do, if anything, to quench the fire before it starts burning hotter, aside from OOCly warning people away from pursuing it?

Minor addition based on something that happened/occurred to me in-game as I was RPing with Sumar, the Redguard.

Why wouldn't the Clan-Mother call for an end to hostilities for the good of the clan?

That would... more or less do what we want. If she weren't under duress and there were witnesses from both parties, it could be a semi-peaceful resolution, though there would still be a massive enough divide.

I mean, if I'm the only person hung up on this, feel free to slap me about a bit and tell me I'm over-reacting or reading too far into the situation.

More about this here

http://www.blueskooma.com/forum/m/22417574/viewthread/13193370-stabilizing-roleplay

I will try to address what I can to the best of my ability/knowledge...

Answers in RED

Gallant wrote

1. The Clan-Mother is a sacred position in Khajiit hierarchy. She is not only effective as a leader but also as a religious and cerimonial figure. And yet she chooses a lizard over a khajiit? it is quite believable she was bribed by Qa'han
2. Chopping off her tail should have angered every self-respecting Khajiit. (Granted, most of us are not self-respecting). It's already the primary talk of the Commune, as per last night's meeting. Sugar Tooths tried it the right way didnt work, no matter we/Ri'sari gets what he/us want. That is why we are together.
3. The Clan and the Commune, being based out of the same city, puts them directly at odds and extremely close to each other. What keeps this from boiling over? Another reason to calm things down in a believable way - this is our guild home town now
4. I understand that only the Merchants really knew how to make Blue Skooma. Is this an issue that we will see crop up in the future? As far as I know Ri'sari discoverd Blue Skooma in a vision/dream and learned the secret ingredient.
5. If the Commune stands in support of the Dominion, and the Clan operates openly... by means of bribes, coercion, murder, cleaning up any trails that would lead the authorities to them - like any kind of organised crime etc

1. Nothing is scripted.
2. We are trying to simmer things so people are not forced to choose sides and basically split RP events down the middle.
3. If being true to you character means you will pursue this, perhaps you do. I dont believe Ri'sari wants to dictate to you how you play your character. I know I dont.
4. There was a plan to have peace-keepers, these might arise out of this.
5. The merchants as a whole focus is most likely to make money and so they perhaps swallow the bitter pill in service to greed. (for the most part - not trying to generalise)
6. As far as I know Ri'sari is the one who discovered Blue Skooma (I could be wrong though - Read RPback-story and also Ri'sari's back-story) If not Sylvaswift kept a bottle of Blue Skooma with the plan to seek out an alchemist to discover the formula, therefore making his mission a success and redeem his life. (His failure to succeed = death - see his notes) so yea Sugar Tooth Clan does not need the merchants. Its about adapting the story-line in a believable way, that fits. That way the RP stays fluid and dynamic.
7. Stablising the factions is a priority, but allowing a third group that is purely lawful good, neutral good would be the peace-keepers that know they are in outright opposition to Sugar Tooth Clan.
8. The Merchants are more neutralish, maybe chaotic good/evil - it is fairly open to most characters.
9. Do not want a niche guild, we want everyone who has a character to be able to play that character, how they created that character to be.
10. J'vani may lust for justice but not all would necessarily follow her, maybe a handful, voila the peace-keepers are born.
11. This only just happened and we are still ironing out stuff, so if you are not happy still at the end of this discussion, sit back and see how things roll out.

These are my thoughts and assumptions not necessarily correct.

Others should add to this, agree/disagree where I am right/wrong.

:)

I appreciate the amount of thought everyone is helping put in to this. It can only make things better.

We will have to focus on where we want to settle in fine detail at the next officer meeting.

I would like to get everyone accustomed to an environment where their character is living in the city of Woodhearth. I think it will go a long way to getting more pick-up RP going on outside of events and allowing people a familiar place to socialize.

Lol, did you have to put it in red? It seems so mean.

1 and 2 are me simply trying to elaborate what a massive thing that cutting off a Clan-Mother's tail is supposed to represent. At this point whether it was bribery or whether he had the popular support isn't the point - the point is that the Clan-Mother is canonically very important. I'm stating that it is (or should be) objectionable to a large part of the guild. It isn't, which is why there are ten (I think it's ten?) listed members who are following Ri'sari as Sugar-Clan members (you included). As you mentioned, this is for in-character reasons.

After all, we're *all* thieves of one measure or another, so it makes sense there would be some thieves willing to go the full monty, and I'm not objecting to that.

My point is that, as has been listed in this thread, the practice(s) like this lost Ri'sari the nomination in the first place and judging from the Commune discussion a couple of days ago (which I did not personally have a large part in, but listened to) a reasonable amount of the conversation revolved around retrieving the Clan-Mother.

That translates to me like this; "The fight's still on."

I wouldn't disagree with a peacekeeper clan of sorts, in outright opposition. J'vani herself was/is very offended, though I like to think of her as more of a CG type of person than LG or NG. Tagging onto your 9 and 10, though, I wouldn't necessarily want a third faction, or we'd be meandering back into the 4 faction territory we just got out of.

I'd more be in favor of introducing a semi-unifying, or at least pacifistic event that would bury at least some of the hatchets floating around out there.

I'll try to put it from my stand point as I have taken on the role of two Major Roles it seems.

Right now Qa'han is leader of the Merchants Clan. While Wednesday I TRIED to explain (as Gnarlus the Goblin) during the role play gathering why Qa'han wasn't taking an active role in saving the Clan Mother, it was ignored (By bloody Peanuts and Cookies)

First and for most, Qa'han didn't bribe the Clan Mother to make him Clan Leader. As it is explained in the recap, the Clan Leader called upon those of the Clan if they would follow Qa'han as their Guild Leader, to which they announced they would follow him over Sylvaswift. Greedy as he is, he rather have those follow him in loyalty (so he can pay them less)

Now, Qa'han is the kind of person who forces bad memories into his subconscious and forgets them. Since the Ri'sari got his way, yet Qa'han still has the loyalty of those who follow him, he is trying to forget everything that led to him forming The Broken. That's why he took them to Woodhearth, to be away from Ri'sari and his clan (Unaware that they are also situated in Woodhearth), to be away from any thought of the Clan Mother.

Meanwhile, Gnarlus believes he is at fault for the Clan Mother being taken Hostage because of he was the one who originally caused the Clan Mother to retract her decision to make Ri'sari Clan Leader when they first approached her. During Gnarlus' time with Qa'han he had noticed Qa'han hides his emotions, and won't do anything to fix them. As a result, he creates a plan to save the Clan Mother without Qa'han's knowledge. Thinking Ri'sari only cares of money and power, he makes the plan to simply buy the Clan Mother back from Ri'sari.

Now, Qa'han and Gnarlus share one huge similarity: They both hate violence (Gnarlus adopted that trait from Qa'han during their time together). He only duels and fights for the fun of it, and never aims to kill. For example, Twin-Catch, his Dual-Pronged Dagger is completely dulled. The Enchantment on it only gives pain (Irresistible is translated to pain). That is why he and Gnarlus isn't actively attempting to save the Clan Mother, and Gnarlus trying a more Diplomatic Approach.

((Just a note, While I did intend to get some laughs, I did not intend to so thoroughly disrupt your "meeting" as I did with Ansaari. I am sorry for that. Though the cookies were Forney's fault and Ansaari cannot be blamed for her actions while under the affects of catnip cookies :P ..... mmmmm cookies .....))

Ansaari wrote

((Just a note, While I did intend to get some laughs, I did not intend to so thoroughly disrupt your "meeting" as I did with Ansaari. I am sorry for that. Though the cookies were Forney's fault and Ansaari cannot be blamed for her actions while under the affects of catnip cookies :P ..... mmmmm cookies .....))

Well, just know your character is about to be the target for something

sounds fun ^.^ so long as it doesn't kill her >.> I am sure she can manage to turn it around somehow muahahaha

LOL J'vani the red was just to stand out, not to be mean or angry :)

As the Clan Mother, I had already tried to stop the boiling over of the fighting at Monday's rp. IC of the Clan Mother, she will definitely continue this pursuing of peace and trying to convince both sides to stop fighting when the situation presents itself.

I think the clan mother should be returned in some way so we can have some relative peace for now and characters on both sides can RP together more freely. :)

I've explain to The Broken that we are buying back the Clan Mother. Most seemed relieved that the Qa'han determined a peaceful solution.
HOWEVER. I'm leaving it open to be brought up for conflict later. I've shown The Broken the old "Lead-to-Gold" trick alchemists used to do. Of course if you know your history, this does not make real gold and only the illusion, and Qa'han knows this through and through. But everyone else seemed convinced.

I wasn't there for the whole thing, since I had to diffuse that whole sudden-injury situation and also walk the dog in the middle of it. (Very inconvenient).

I've -heard-

• * The clanmother won't be sold to the Broken Bottle (From Qa'iit - and just whose side are you on, anyway, by the way? Aren't you the Commune's Mercenary Captain?) I was told this came from Ri'sari himself, an overheard conversation.
• * As of two days ago, Sumar was going to bring up a sort of visitation right for the Commune so they could visit the clan-mother if they wished.
• * Who is going to do the write-up for the merchant commune meeting? I think we should start keeping better action-point notes. I wasn't there for the whole thing so I'm not 100% sure all the positions that got handed out or the things that went on.
• * The Broken Bottle plans to buy the Clan-mother back. Etc. You just said this, Ed, of course, so I know it's true - I'm not sure if it's going to float, so this is more directed towards Ri'sari; is it?

How true is all this?

The thing about the Merchants Meetings is that everyone tries to make it about them right from the very beginning, and as a result, nothing gets done. It took nearly an hour for me to announce "We are going to buy the Clan Mother Back by using fake gold." Because the Silver Order showed up, Ra'zacc came back injured, Ansaari throwing peanuts, and my spies reporting back to me.

I keep telling the spies to report via Ring Ingame Mail, but only one complies.

I'll start pushing that method too. It doesn't make sense for spies to walk up to you in broad daylight in front of the entire group.

We got some pretty crap spies, bro.

I only have 1 real spy in the Sugar-Claw Clan. Only 1. Everyone else acts on their own. They hate Ri'sari

Ansaari doesn't hate anyone :P

You need to promote people IC to handle different things in the company I think.

Agreed delegate some things, but also make sure others go to those delegate rather then bypassing them for you.