How do you explain soulsphere collapse?

N'rella

I know that essentially Underlight was a PvP game, you could be collapsed, and quite often as well (Ugh, Mares *shiver*). What had me a bit confused in Underlight was the explanation for collapse and the re-entry into dream with Underlight.

Is it not a common premise in most cultures and beliefs sytems that, if you die in a dream, you die in real life? So where are the negative effects? It always seemed rather strange to me that I'd get killed then would pop right back into Dream as if nothing had happened (granted, the first time a mare took out my character, she was hysterical for a good hour or two afterwards and you couldn't have dragged her out of the safe zone with a truck and a winch).

How do you all explain collapse, individually, to make some sort of sense and not ruin the rp? How do you explain taking out another Dreamer and yet they reappear again with no ill effects shortly thereafter?

StrikesBrain

That is a very complicated question, you'd get slightly different answers depending on who you asked.  There are people with elaborate theories on essence and whatnot.

In your core essence as a dreamer, you are a soul sphere.  The original dreamers were all soul spheres out in the roiling chaos, until one bright cookie found out how to form dreamsoul into an avatar, it gave him a means to interact with the dream and to protect his essence.

Essentially your avatar is a construct created by your soulsphere as a programed reflex action thanks to the work of the ancient original dreamers who came before us.  It is so natural to control and and use that everyone just thinks of it as their body, or an extension of it.  When it takes damage, it drains from your dreamsoul, when you run out of dreamsoul, you run out of the fuel to sustain your avatar and it collapses.

Now, what's left depends on who you ask.

Illuminate are more prone to claim that the soulsphere is just that, the essence of your exposed soul.  Without energy it remains collapsed into the simple shape of a sphere unable to interact with the world around it, a ghost if you will.  You remain in that form until you get into a sanctuary which grants you enough energy to reconstruct your avatar, or someone donates some dreamsoul to your essence, either through drainself or through restore.  (though I've heard that drainsself has been changed)

Freesouls will merely claim something more along the lines of your avatar lacks the energy to manterialize and collapses into that immaterial sphere.  You may still move about but you have no form.  Freesouls generally believe there is no soul in the dream since the dream is non-real and non-existant.

Being defeated in underlight is not death, it can be humiliation though.  And it DOES leave your exposed essence and soul, or mind, depending on what you believe, open to assault.  In UL there's only one art that can capitalize off this, dreamstrike.  Dreamstrike is an art that in OOC terms, deletes accounts.  It permenantly damages whoever evokes it though and an e-mail to support is nessecary in all cases where dreamstrike is used to prevent grief striking.  It ALWAYS requires a valid RP leading up to the dramatic death of such and such.

When you collapse you drop your essence.  Now people look at it in different ways.  The Striker was an old dreamer taught by his house lyrans to really treat these things with a degree of reverence and respect, they are a piece of the person who fell and in the right hands they can grant power over that person.  I haven't seen these things used in any form outside of roleplay, until they introduced the art "Vampric Drain" which requires an essence.  Darkmares collect them for foul ceremonies.  A lot of dreamers consider it a capital insult of a darkmare actually uses a part of THEIR body to perform some dark sinister deed.  It's like being violated.

Once gathering of the eclipse was holding a large party.  The Striker was invited and naturally came along, the facade was loaded with dreamers.  Now this one dark sinister fellow came in, we endured his presence.  Now this guy was a true showman, I'm kicking myself for not remembering his name, but he gets up at the top of the steps of their facade, he poses for dramatic affect of course before ordering his men to attack.  What followed was absolute chaos as several of his men who had insinuated their way into the wild party suddenly whipped out chakrams and began firing them random people.

My char was a vet of several wars and he tried his best to try to defend them in a lengthy battle, it was almost an attempt at futility, the party was as packed as a mosh pit,  not enough room to swing a cat.  They were being discriminate my char had to single them out.  What he DID do a lot of was collecting essences.  He must have snagged well over 20 dreamer essences and miscellaneous items, taking time to return all of them to their owners.  He even managed to save someone's wedding band.  It is kind of interesting the reactions you get for returning essences.  Some people are VERY thankful that you return them.  Others are grossed out at you presenting them with their head on a silver platter.

What the house Lyran of DoL taught about essences of dreamers is the proper way to dispose of them is to leave them in a quiet calm place so they can naturally evaporate.  You should never destroy talisman a dreamer essence, that shows highly improper respect.  At least the way that guy taught it.  The thing is everyone has different ways of dealing with essences.

What mares were you fighting anyway?

N'rella

I like complicated questions - they allow for a lot more scope of rpability as everyone has their own ideas, so thank you for sharing that with me.

As for the mares, I honestly have no idea, I remember being shown around some house and I'd only been dreaming for a half hour, and this mare appeared out of nowhere and started slaughtering everything that moved. I imagine it was a player-driven mare, either way, it seemed to take quite a bit of joy in ignoring everyone else and aimed for me first. I can't remember but I think I was collapsed several times before they managed to sort the thing out.

That was...fun.

I've got a few ideas for character concept so we'll see.

StrikesBrain

Well it obviously wasn't a lesser mare then.

Lesser mares are computer controlled things.  They are MUCH easier to drop then the greater mares.

Greater mares come in two flavors, darkmares, also known as Kotoke in their native tongue (if I recall correctly my Maren), and there's daymares otherwise known as Dotoke in their native tongue.

Darkmares used to be the only flavor of human controlled mares.  Darkmares are all Gm controlled beasts, they generally have rather nasty powers.  Some of them took a small army to get under control.  These are your big bad evil bosses.  Some MMORPG's have their boss type monsters as some critter with a unique name and cranked stats.  All the big bad bosses in UL have a human at the helm.  If you know the maren tongue, you can actually attempt to communicate with Darkmares, a lot of houses and organizations frown on this practice, citing that all mares are beasts of chaos and can not be trusted and any discourse with them will come to no good ends.  The house Keepers of the Eternal Shadow has been traditionally though a house that will deal with at least some darkmares.  Incidentally Pliktok is maren for a very naughty word, "Pliktok <Darkmarename>" will really tick'em off generally.

Daymares were added later when a lot of players wanted to try out being a ravenous monster.  Daymares are payed for by the 15 minute increment.  Depending on how much you pay you get either a bogrom, a agoknight, or a shamblix.  Name is from a randomly generated array.  All the things you can say are just a list of various common lines and phrases which get translated into maren when you say them.  All dreamers show as "male dreamer" and "female dreamer" and you cannot understand what they say.  So there's only one thing to do, bust skulls and get more powerful, darkmares do NOT have spheres and just keep getting more powerful with each kill, they get heavily nerfed experience from regular mares and can only really power up fast by dropping dreamers.  Thing is, if you look unique enough with your dress and emblems and you are an easy kill for fair experience, a daymare may target you more readily in a group because you cough up more experience.  After 24 hours a daymare resets so the players of them can be a tad glutonous, especially considering if you play more then a half hour in a month as one, the cost adds up REAAAAAL fast.  So, at least you can take comfort in the fact that daymares don't stay out long in a lot of cases.  If you see one at low levels, duck into a sanctuary.

Granted with luck on your side and fast moves, and a poor controller on the daymare and you might actually stand a chance.   I made a new character, and I had intentionally played a few clueless in combat, but this guy I had decided would be a scrapper, so I wasn't going to pull any punches.  He had managed to get his hands on a few low level chakrams.  So this mare comes around while this guy was chatting with people at the UOTC house.  mare shows, up they put up a fight, those who were there pull back, leaving my guy alone with the mare.  Instead of running I opened up with real low level chakrams and managed to nickle and dime some injury into that mare, I wasn't able to finish the job, but when they finally managed to remuster and come back into the room they had a few warriors with them and they managed to repel the beast.

UL is strange like that, just having a high level doesn't mean you'll be a superior fighter, you need moves to match.  A HUGE help is turning your turnspeed as high as it'll go.  It's still very clunky to control though.  I'm hoping RC will institute mouse look for a much more organic feel.

In fact though, if you got brains about it, you can give a daymare or darkmare grief with sanctuaries.  They an enter sanctuaries but they cannot fight and it BURNS them, I mean it does some serious hard core damage, the more powerful the mare is, the more nasty the damage.  With (the ever so annoying) room hopping mares my GK took to using wards intellegently to herd them towards lesser known sanctuaries    Sometimes just diving into a sanctuary in a confusing plane is enough to trick a greater mare into frying itself.

Daymares can NOT locate individual dreamers, they can sense large groups of them ala sense dreamers.  Being as such they tend to go for the highest populated planes.  Where there's prey there's predators.  They don't come out all the time you were just unfortunate there.