Maelstrom - Retaliation, AKA The Picnic
Have you accepted the Lady Sky as your personal saviour?
So, that's another year of Maelstrom over with, then.
'Retaliation' was enjoyable. Like aquarionical, I'd been having something of an OC crisis of faith earlier in the year: the lack of feedback from my god was starting to make playing a priest not fun. However, I decided to take the same tack as Aqua and choose to just get on with it, regardless of the apparent results. Religion is all about faith, after all, so I'm now getting on with just talking to the faithful and prosyletising. When Lady Sky is ready to talk to us again, I'll be there to listen, but I'm not going to keep shouting to the abbyss if she's not listening at the moment.
At the end of Event 3 we renegotiated our working hours at the Jade Lotus, because working so long at the restaurant was hindering our religious duties. I was getting a little tired of being asked so often by punters "So, what's it like just being a waitress?". Xian is a sodding high priest, and pretty much the most powerful priest to her goddess (in all Her forms) in all the New World. Not a waitress.
So, at Event 4 moose_biscuit and I were excused from the JL on friday night and the saturday lunchtime noodle bar, which gave us the first night and all of saturday until 5pm to talk to people about religious things. On friday the House of Whispering Reeds invited us into their tent and we had a good talk with them, which we'd never managed before, despite them being part of the People's Republic. They're a bunch odf scientists and engineers, so we were discussing the similarities between religion and science, and they're very interested in taking part in one of our drug-fuelled vision quests, approaching it from a scientific standpoint.
We spent a fair amount of the saturday in the company of Troubador, a Weaver eidelon who's very interested in us and keen to help in any way he can. He did cause some confusion though, by mentioning several times that he served Lady Moon, so we took him to be a (surprisingly calm and friendly) Huntress eidelon, Lady Moon being the Kamakuran name for the Huntress. It turned out that he'd simply got his names wrong, and thought that Lady Moon was the Weaver. We had lots of discussions with him in our shrine (and he brought several other kami to see the place, including Mardocai, when we weren't about). He also took us out and about to meet lots of other Weaver followers and see their shrines, and I gave him the two People's Temple prayer books I'd made him, which he was very pleased with and plans to show to lots of people. I do have prayer book envy, though, because a Mil-enese prieste showed me her Weaver prayer book which contained about a hundred benisons and prayers, while mine only has about 20. I plan to write a lot more in the next six months, so that I start the next Maelstrom year with a much-expanded version.
Sunday was cut rather short because we chose to flee at 11am, shortly before the mass Wasp attack. It's the first time we've not held a sunday morning Weaverite meeting in about two years, which felt a little odd, but the majority of the Weaverites were preparing to defend their camps against the Wasps, anyway, so turnout would likely have been low if we did go ahead with it.
The Wasp attack was the first major player v crew battle PD have thrown at us, and they swear it won't be a common thing - player actions over the past year or so simply forced them into doing it. As a very ocassional thing, I'm not opposed to this sort of crew attack, when player actions demand it.
There was lots of paranoia flying about, and the People's Republic are very susceptable to scaremongering - we love to throw around tin hat theories. There were stories of system resets floating about, where everyone would be killed by the bug attack, but considering the backlash PD would get over something that extreme I doubted those rumours. The more sensible rumour was that the bugs were only coming to swat those that had actually been making trouble, rather than attacking unilaterally. That would mean they shouldn't bother us, a bunch of peaceful little farmers, but we were slightly concerned that the bushi Kamakurans had been annoying the bugs and we might get mistaken for them, what with being camped right opposite them and, you know, looking Kamakuran.
So, rather than put ourselves in danger's way, we heard that there was a way out (apparently the rumours that all of the paths out of the festival had been blocked were actually false, but we didn't know that at the time), and Sacuza were willing to guide us out (with Troubador tagging along to make sure we got out safe), so with ten minutes' notice I grabbed our religious icon and we all got the hell out of dodge.
Also, apparently next year Xian is going to be wooed. By Nagimo-san, our Minister for Law and Lore. This should make for some entertaining RP.
So, quite an eventful year over. My plans for next year are to keep on keeping on. I do have two character concepts planned should Xian die or I just decide to give her up, so I might work on some kit for one or both of those over the winter - it will always work as secondary kit until I'm ready to roll out a new character.
May Lady Sky walk with you.
So, that's another year of Maelstrom over with, then.
'Retaliation' was enjoyable. Like aquarionical, I'd been having something of an OC crisis of faith earlier in the year: the lack of feedback from my god was starting to make playing a priest not fun. However, I decided to take the same tack as Aqua and choose to just get on with it, regardless of the apparent results. Religion is all about faith, after all, so I'm now getting on with just talking to the faithful and prosyletising. When Lady Sky is ready to talk to us again, I'll be there to listen, but I'm not going to keep shouting to the abbyss if she's not listening at the moment.
At the end of Event 3 we renegotiated our working hours at the Jade Lotus, because working so long at the restaurant was hindering our religious duties. I was getting a little tired of being asked so often by punters "So, what's it like just being a waitress?". Xian is a sodding high priest, and pretty much the most powerful priest to her goddess (in all Her forms) in all the New World. Not a waitress.
So, at Event 4 moose_biscuit and I were excused from the JL on friday night and the saturday lunchtime noodle bar, which gave us the first night and all of saturday until 5pm to talk to people about religious things. On friday the House of Whispering Reeds invited us into their tent and we had a good talk with them, which we'd never managed before, despite them being part of the People's Republic. They're a bunch odf scientists and engineers, so we were discussing the similarities between religion and science, and they're very interested in taking part in one of our drug-fuelled vision quests, approaching it from a scientific standpoint.
We spent a fair amount of the saturday in the company of Troubador, a Weaver eidelon who's very interested in us and keen to help in any way he can. He did cause some confusion though, by mentioning several times that he served Lady Moon, so we took him to be a (surprisingly calm and friendly) Huntress eidelon, Lady Moon being the Kamakuran name for the Huntress. It turned out that he'd simply got his names wrong, and thought that Lady Moon was the Weaver. We had lots of discussions with him in our shrine (and he brought several other kami to see the place, including Mardocai, when we weren't about). He also took us out and about to meet lots of other Weaver followers and see their shrines, and I gave him the two People's Temple prayer books I'd made him, which he was very pleased with and plans to show to lots of people. I do have prayer book envy, though, because a Mil-enese prieste showed me her Weaver prayer book which contained about a hundred benisons and prayers, while mine only has about 20. I plan to write a lot more in the next six months, so that I start the next Maelstrom year with a much-expanded version.
Sunday was cut rather short because we chose to flee at 11am, shortly before the mass Wasp attack. It's the first time we've not held a sunday morning Weaverite meeting in about two years, which felt a little odd, but the majority of the Weaverites were preparing to defend their camps against the Wasps, anyway, so turnout would likely have been low if we did go ahead with it.
The Wasp attack was the first major player v crew battle PD have thrown at us, and they swear it won't be a common thing - player actions over the past year or so simply forced them into doing it. As a very ocassional thing, I'm not opposed to this sort of crew attack, when player actions demand it.
There was lots of paranoia flying about, and the People's Republic are very susceptable to scaremongering - we love to throw around tin hat theories. There were stories of system resets floating about, where everyone would be killed by the bug attack, but considering the backlash PD would get over something that extreme I doubted those rumours. The more sensible rumour was that the bugs were only coming to swat those that had actually been making trouble, rather than attacking unilaterally. That would mean they shouldn't bother us, a bunch of peaceful little farmers, but we were slightly concerned that the bushi Kamakurans had been annoying the bugs and we might get mistaken for them, what with being camped right opposite them and, you know, looking Kamakuran.
So, rather than put ourselves in danger's way, we heard that there was a way out (apparently the rumours that all of the paths out of the festival had been blocked were actually false, but we didn't know that at the time), and Sacuza were willing to guide us out (with Troubador tagging along to make sure we got out safe), so with ten minutes' notice I grabbed our religious icon and we all got the hell out of dodge.
Also, apparently next year Xian is going to be wooed. By Nagimo-san, our Minister for Law and Lore. This should make for some entertaining RP.
So, quite an eventful year over. My plans for next year are to keep on keeping on. I do have two character concepts planned should Xian die or I just decide to give her up, so I might work on some kit for one or both of those over the winter - it will always work as secondary kit until I'm ready to roll out a new character.
May Lady Sky walk with you.