Sanctification
Sanctification In Character
The Gods of the Aether have called for a Sanctification.
Conflict between mortals has reached an unresolvable point where traditional legal, political, and religious structures are not sufficient. The only solution now is a cleansing purification where all feuds and disputes have been resolved by death or diplomacy.
Do not pray to us for redress of grievances. This is now a matter for mortals to resolve in the manner they understand best: self-destruction.
Once a Sanctification has been declared, all mortals must declare their role:
1) Sanctifier. These individuals are actively involved in the sanctification process. They engage in violence, murder, and other physical conflict or directly aid/assist those involved. This includes healing, enhancing, providing conflict impacting goods and services, or any other direct aid to a Sanctifier. Once you make this declaration, it is permanent for the duration of the Sanctification.
2) Envoy. Envoys include non-combatant diplomats, agents, lawyers, representatives, negotiators, or any similar type of individual who chooses to be involved in the substantive discussion, debate, adjudication, and resolution of the Sanctification through verbal means. An Envoy can opt to become a Sanctifier at any time, but it is too late to simply bear Witness.
3) Witness. These are the mortals who bear witness to the necessary horrors and misery of Sanctification. They tell the tale to future generations so the impact of Sanctification is not forgotten. They may discuss events among themselves, but they do not participate in negotiations or public debate, and they certainly do not aid or abet Sanctifiers or Envoys. Some Witnesses find themselves ultimately swept into the conflict and become Envoys or Sanctifiers. Once that happens, they can no longer simply bear Witness.
The period of Sanctification is fixed and limited. When it ends, so too ends all dispute and discord. All justifiable grudges and bad blood end when Sanctification ends. Future conflict can only be justified by new word and deed.
Violating the Sacrament of Sanctification is Heresy. Heretics shall be slain as painfully as possible and their worldly possessions seized. Heretics shall be denied any and all aid and comfort from the faithful. Any who aid heretics are heretics. The faithful shall not suffer a heretic to live. Heretics shall nev
Sanctification Gameplay
Sanctification has a specific ending day/date/time. It may have a specific beginning, but it is more likely that things evolved IC such that it is deemed to begun upon declaration to include and incorporate current events.
DON'T CHEAT! Don't do anything even close to cheating. Don't use your alts for advantage. Don't use triggers or macros to win fights. Don't do anything you know is unfair, exploitative, lame, or cheezy.
Absolutely NO discussion of IC events is permitted outside of Threshold during Sanctification. Just don't do it. No DMs, IMs, social media, text messages, phone conversations, Zoom, Discord, AIM, ICQ, smoke signals, carrier pigeons, or anything that conveys information from one person to another. Obviously we cannot control you outside of the game, but we are asking that you respect this rule and violating it *can* have repercussions in game (or to your account). Honor the community and your fellow players by resisting the urge to discuss IC things out of game for the short period of time Sanctification is happening.
Please respect the fact that situations like this do not come along often and potentially hundreds of people will be very emotionally invested. This is likely a very historic moment in the game that people will talk about for years or even decades. DON'T RUIN IT!!!!!!!
During Sanctification, there are three types of characters.
1) Sanctifier. You can only have 1 Sanctifier character. Your alts can be nothing higher than Envoy. This gives you permission to participate in all forms of conflict/PK/PvP against other Sanctifiers. General PK rules are no longer applicable between Sanctifiers but you must obey game rules (clients, triggers, macros, OOC/IC, etc.). It is basically a free-for-all between Sanctifiers. One rule always applies: think about the overall health of the game and the enjoyment of your fellow players. You can be ruthless but you should not try to run people off the game or harm the community.
You must declare this with a public post on the Adventurer Board. This is a permanent choice for the duration of this Sanctification. You must use the SANCTIFIER pretitle.
2) Envoy. Envoys can participate in roleplay to discuss, debate, and attempt to resolve/end the Sanctification. You cannot participate in combat/PK whatsoever - this includes distance healing, buffing, enhancing food/gear, or anything that helps Sanctifiers engage in combat/PK. You are a completely non-violent, pure roleplay participant. You can help your church compete in favor or other indirect things that might benefit a Sanctifier, but nothing direct. If you have alt characters that are Envoys of a Sanctifier, you must do everything possible to AVOID access to information that would help your Sanctifier. You can roleplay, but you should not use your alts' influence to manipulate situations or convince people to do things that will help your Sanctifier.
You must use the Envoy pretitle.
If a Sanctifier catches an Envoy helping in a manner described in the Sanctifier section, they should report them by email and treat them like a Sanctifier (e.g. kill them if you want). Do not use the Envoy title as a way to cheese, cheat, or gain advantage.
Basically, alts are a gigantic problem whenever there is large scale conflict. If you have a character directly involved in conflict, do everything possible to keep your alts as far away from it as possible. It is our recommendation that if possible alts of Sanctifiers should just be Witnesses. But sometimes this is impractical or illogical, and if you are responsible and careful and ONLY talk/roleplay with an alt, it may even contribute positively to the overall RP.
IT SHOULD ABSOLUTELY NOT BE A GOAL OF YOUR ALTS TO HELP YOUR SANCTIFIER IN ANY WAY. YOU SHOULD ACTIVELY AVOID THIS. LOG YOUR ALTS OFF DURING A CONFLICT IF NECESSARY.
3) Witness. You generally want to stay out of the conflict but perhaps are interested enough to discuss and talk about it - either now or in the future. You are here to bear witness to the events so you can share them in the future.
This is honestly the BEST place for alts of Sanctifiers (or even less than a witness if you want). Strongly consider having your alts park here rather than Envoy.
Witnesses should not help a Sanctifier in ANY WAY.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Choosing to be an Envoy, Witness, or nothing at all is not a shield against being PKed. The regular PK rules are still in place. If you get yourself involved, behave in an aggressive (or aggressively defiant) manner, and there is active roleplay involved, you can still be PKed during a Sanctification.
What Happens When Sanctification Ends?
Everything that happened during Sanctification is real and part of the world's history, but it cannot be used as justification for any future PKs. Similarly, any actions taken, grudges, bad blood that existed BEFORE Sanctification do not carry over post-Sanctification as justification for a PK. They still happened. They still exist in people's memories. They are still perfectly legitimate reasons to dislike or plot against someone. They just cannot be used as justification for a PK.
All PKs that happen post-Sanctification required *NEW* RP. That NEW RP might be just a continuation of the same OLD RP (if two people still hate each other, they are probably going to start shit with each other right away for the same old reasons - that's fine). But you need some actual NEW back and forth RP before the PKing can start back again.
Consider Sanctification a line of demarcation historically.
Goals of the Sanctification Event
Provide a fixed period of time for a large conflict roleplay situation to reach an exciting crescendo and resolve itself.
Provide an ending time so people who find conflict anxiety inducing or fun ruining a light at the end of the tunnel when they know it will be over. Some people may even find they enjoy the big conflict RP if they know it won't go on forever and their ability to enjoy Threshold won't be indefinitely dominated by having to hide or deal with PK.
Put more focus back on the roleplay. When you know you have to eventually wrap it up, it makes you think about your end game, your goals, your specific demands/wishes, etc. It means running around killing for the sake of killing has an expiration date, so you're much better off figuring out an interesting way to resolve things.
Reduce the abuses of alt characters. This is a tremendous problem in conflict situations. People with alts always feel like they are doing a good job, but the truth is, they rarely are. I'm not sure I've ever seen a large conflict situation where people with alts didn't wield a gigantic advantage no matter how hard they tried to play fair. It is just nearly impossible. Choose your main character for the conflict and put your alts in the background for however many days/weeks the Sanctification will last.
Some Final Bullet Points on Sanctification
1) If you are truly a participant in the conflict, don't try to cheat by choosing a lower role than your actual participation. If you are really in deep, just choose Sanctifier. Go for glory. If you are truly JUST a diplomat who wants to RP solutions/resolutions, Envoy is fine. Don't choose Envoy, Witness, or Nothing and then sneakily help the Sanctifiers on your side. Admins reserve the right to simply declare you a Sanctifier if your actions make it apparent that's what you are.
2) Similarly, if people have clearly opted out of the combat side of the conflict, respect that. Don't PK someone just because they have the same church or clan as someone who is a Sanctifier. If they are violating #1 above, then sure, that's fair game. But a lot of people really dislike PK and for the sake of their enjoyment of the game, respect that.
3) Don't rules lawyer this.
4) Don't cheat to "win." Remember that the only real way to "win" Threshold is to have the most historically awesome and widely remembered character. It is not who is highest level or who killed the most people. Nobody cares about that. The real legends are the people who played fascinating characters with a reputation for both OOC integrity and IC depth and consistency.
5) Don't hyperfixate on "What ifs" in advance. Let's see how this goes. My general attitude is to trust this incredible community to make the best of roleplay and fun opportunities.Call me naive if you want, but I actually think and expect this to go extremely well. I think players are going to embrace this new opportunity and challenge and it will be a really exciting 2 weeks. I choose to believe this until proven otherwise. I have faith in you all.
6) If this goes well, we will do this periodically to "reset the clock" on conflict in a healthy way. We actually have some significant code support for this now (including a toggle!) so we can utilize this when needed. Please do everything you can as players to make this go well so it can be a fun RP tool in the future.
