Was thinking.. why isn't there an evil magical background? But then I
answered my own question. For religious powers.. you're largely a
representative of the god, and therefore, an extension of his powers. In
theory, there could be powers derived from ambivalent gods, or gods who
fall beyond the categories of good and evil.

Magic however, the division could be more structured and unstructured. The
current guilds seem largely based on organized groups that aid in training..
and then, also act as its own police force. Think of it like the military
where inductees are given certain powers they normally wouldn't possess
but have a structure and rules forced upon them which is rigidly policed.
(arguably)

So..

If a new background was to be made to compliment the magical, it would
something along the lines of unstructured or.. unpoliced. Calling it
chaotic would bring too much baggage as its already too strongly associated
with evil religious.

Even structured vs unstructured isn't quite right in that most guilds have
trainers or someone to guide you along the path. All these ideas could be
incorporated into the current magical background
but there seem to be some guilds which would have congruent beliefs.

Guilds falling under this category i've been playing with would be blood
mages, necromancers, soul-trappers/binders, dreamers/mystics, chaos-mages

-Blood-mages derive their power from their ep or hp.. and can even draw
spells from the blood of sacrifices or enemies.

-Necromancers are.. well necromancers. Binding and controlling.. trafficking
in souls.

-Soul-takers are similar but more demonic in intent. They trap creatures and
warp and corrupt them. Bind souls into devices. More enchanter.

-Dreamers/Mystics have found a method of tapping into the power of the gods
through dreams. They flit through the essence or aura of sleeping gods and
siphon power to use.

- Chaos-mages could more appropriately called chance mages. They grab whatever
power is at hand and throw it about without control. These are the most
unstructured and even their capabilities are unpredictable.

Basic idea behind blood mages is casters who can exchange hp or ep for sp.
I think hp would be the most.. appropriate choice tho not that beneficial
in that most casters dont have that much of a hp base.. tho it could
motivate some more unconventional racial choices for caster...

-at any rate.. basic idea would be that you run down your sp then start
casting using your hp on some sort of ratio.

-Blood mages derive a lot of the ritual from themselves.. one of their
abilities would be to draw from themselves instead of material components.
So any spell that needed materials could use sacrifice instead.. whatever
was needed. a minor ability..

-Blood mages ritually scar themselves and imbue these scars with a certain
amount of power. Predictably enough, this leaves them looking less than
beautiful. Was thinking there could be some +/- thing considering how
scarred up the mage is. Possibly invokeable abilities depending on the
amount of scarring on the mage.

-Was wondering a split in Blood mage mentality.. having 2 paths to choose
from and therefore different abilities. The Path of Sacrifice, and the
path of Suffering. One method leads the mage to draw more of his power
from his own blood and injuries while the other method focuses more
on drawing power from victims.. be they willing or unwilling.

-Was toying with an idea of having a blood pool. Essentially sacrificing
victims in an area with a body of water and staining the water with blood.
This is an incredibly evil act but gives the mage a pool of mana to draw
from. It would also require a method of storing blood or leading a
sacrifice to the area etc.. more a fun idea but hardly practical .

-I think the path of sacrifice would be more involved with personal
improvement. Buffs from energizing your own blood and such but wiht personal
cost.

-The path of Sacrifice would be more attack based.. an ability to.. magnify
a critical and tear the wound open more, vampirism or blood siphoning and
tapping into the blood loss of an enemy to regain mana or that sort of thing


Just quick thoughts for my own enjoyment. I have a general idea about the
guild with more than a couple abilities borrowed from various sources.

The greatest, most powerful magics are those fueled by the spark of life.
Blood magic, the tool of the bloodmage, entails sacrificing part of one's
vitality for magics that are beyond the ability of normal wizards. It
promises great power over the essence of life and death, an enticing prize
indeed.

Such knowledge comes at great cost, however. Blood magic finds its ultimate
source in the lower planes, and the lords of darkness do not give up their
secrets easily. A prospective bloodmage must carry out a ritual that involves
treachery and the sacrifice of innocents; furthermore, as the bloodmage
progresses along this path, he will almost certainly be the cause of more
death and suffering to those in his path. Such is the nature of blood
magic; even if the physical scars may heal, the acts they perform will
inevitably leave their mark on the bloodmage's psyche.

NPC bloodmages are rarely seen, but far more common than might be thought.
They lead a secretive existence, as most nations and cultures would destroy
them on sight. Most are sorcerers, who possess great innate magical power
but may lack the schooling to realise the danger of blood magic before it's
too late. The next most common are wizards, who have rummaged in libraries
of ancient lore and stumbled across the scrolls detailing the necessary
steps to become a bloodmage. Rarest are fallen clerics and druids, but
these are not unknown.

Many bloodmages are twisted by their association with blood magic, if they
were not so originally: prone to fits of rage, great callousness or
cruelty, or terrible nightmares. Most consider it a worthwhile price to
pay. Some regret their decision to embrace blood magic, but are resigned
to their fate. A very few are repulsed at the acts they have committed,
but are trapped nonetheless.

--added for flavour from another source-- seems to be more attuned to the
Path of sacrifice idea.

Umm..

this is mostly for my own entertainment because i don't think we'll
see a new guild any time soon... let alone attention paid to any of the
guilds that need work. Realistically most imms have too much rl
obligations to dump the time it would take to come up with a new
guild..

Hats off to the work that IS being done.. i know the game doesn't
magically run itself.. and Genuinely excited for new Shinarae content
but last new guild was Tree navs.. a revamped pre-existing and prior
to that was animists? coming up on 7 years

I'm hardly one to complain in that i've barely sampled the guilds already
in the game because i'm anti-reinc. Tho Tarken's informal poll 78 did
suggest that new guilds and midbie content are the most desired.

Anyhow. i. like the concept part.. so i'll probably keep putting up
stuff like this.

So next on my list of guilds is.. necromancers. Not really any explanation
needed.. mages who draw power from the plane of death.. negative material
plane and.. raise the dead!

I was kicking aroudn the idea of the guild and how it could be designed
so that it'd be more interesting than just another version of a pet guild
when one of the old old players mentioned that there already WAS a
necromancer guild. He then went on to explain a couple aspects of it that
I had thought of and a couple things that i hadn't.. the whole thing
sounded wonderful..

Unfortunately this was done pre-conversion so you're talking about way back
in the by gone days of 97? It was also mentioned that there had been talk of
bringing it back into the light of day..

A shame that if most of the heavy lifting has been done.. it would seem
easier to bring a pre-existing guild (one that sounds ... like lots of fun)
up to speed rather than build something from the ground up.

But there are a lot of variables in this stuff that i know nothing about..
Such as people are aware of the.. general.. unfinished quality of ships
but apparently shipcode is the war and peace of coding and fiddling with
it has been known to cause earthquakes in china.. so hands off on that.

But Necromancers!

I'd kicked around a couple ideas..

-having a negative rep system... or rather imagine death magic as leaving
a stain on the mage. The effects could be determined.. character penalties
or taking on the characteristics of an undead race. you get the idea.

-Drawing magic from the deadlands.. being able to use them as a sort of
teleportation system. WAlking the grey roads to get from place to place.
Tho the worlds very nature eats at the living.

-Building abominations. Harvesting body parts.. grafting them together to
make things that should not be.

(20:58) Hair tells you 'muah, i was a necromancer for a good long while
when i started this game was a fun fun guild' (Fri Apr 21 17:11:16 2017)

Not that there are a lot of players that have had the experience, but
i've heard comments from 2 people now who thoroughly enjoyed the guild
from 20 years ago.

Considering magical background is one of the most barren guilds in terms
of variety, it would be fun to have that option added to the magical mix.
Tho it falls between evil-religious and magical, ER seems to have more
variety in terms of choice already.

Possibly a multi-background caster option? That might raise too many
possible combinations..

The more i chat with people about guilds in limbo, the more guilds
i hear about. I'm curious out of all the not-quite guilds that have been
designed,
which ones are people most interested in?

So far i've heard of Nergal, Samurais and Necromancers.. i'm sure that
there are others as well.

Necros were bit tedious and unbalanced; lots of staring-at-phonebook level
excitement to gather huge frank army, and then ability to essentially solo all
eqmobs without tricky specials.

Of the historic guilds that are no longer with us, probably old locs gets
nostalgia award, although for playable guild example, shamans were pretty
amusing (it had a pet that would actually tank for you; mage-shaman was amusing
combination), although I guess animist is its modern successor.

The act of stealing a creatures soul is generally an evil act. A soul
binder has devoted his life to learning how to not only steal souls from
creatures but also on how to warp the soul into a cage sealing the entire
creature into the binders target. Soul binders are able to apply the natural
abilities of creatures to weapons Armour and other creatures this way.

Soul binders often seek out powerful creatures to seal inside themselves
and to make themselves stronger in turn. because of this mentality a good
aligned soul binder is hard to come by. The act of sealing away a creature
isn't an easy one either and most soul binders who go in haphazardly are
often disposed of quickly

These mages take various objects ie- bags,pouches,chests,safes that are
empty and use them to trap creatures of various levels of power. Another
possibility is to use gems as a temporary repository for these.. souls.
As designer sees fit. They don't learn spells in a typical fashion but are
forced to track down various creatures with the ability to cast a spell and
.. absorb them through the eating of that creatures soul.

The idea behind the guild was the soul takers of folklore.. Who also put
a use for those containers that flood the game to no apparent use. As
evil arcanists (or enchanters) they could serve as a way to bring enchanted
armour and weaponry into the game.. tho i'm sure many players cringe at
the idea of yet another soul taking guild.