#afk desert temple

[mysaldate]

Church of Light, Mauler Temple, and the characters associated with them – Part 1

I thought I was done with all the stuff I had to say regarding the Church of Light, Mauler temple, Antandra, Lucius, and Belinda, but apparently I still have more thoughts on the matter. So here’s a more detailed breakdown of why I think the AFK lore is amazing and nuanced and why I don’t think a single character in the Church of Light or outside of it is objectively morally correct or wrong. And why I don’t think Antandra is as much of a moral authority as people seem to like to think of her. But let’s take it one by one.

This is gonna be a long post, so I’ll be putting it under Keep reading.

Church of Light

The Church of Light sucks. That’s once consensus we can all agree on. It’s corrupted and terrible and absolutely doesn’t deserve to hold any sort of moral high ground over anyone at all. But regardless, it exists, and the general idea behind is not an evil one. CoL is meant to guide humans to humility and to enforce peace and prosperity with the help of celestial magic. They take in orphans, give them education, jobs, and some stability in life despite them not having families. Outside of the church, the only other organization we now of that sort of does something similar is the Violet Orphanage. But where the VO focuses on forcing children to enter life-threatening situations to bind to demonic powers, CoL raises children in the presence of the divine and allows them to grow their own connection to it at their own terms. Furthermore, CoL roots out demonic cults and violent groups across the Lightbearer Kingdom that could, and often do, threaten the peace of the common people. They track their origins to the first worshippers of Dura and the celestials during the first Hypogean war, and they strive to give hope to people and allow them to live in faith that something or someone is watching over them. All in all, the general idea behind CoL is a noble and good one. It’s just that, much like everything ran by imperfect people, it got horribly perverted over time.

As things stand, CoL is a horribly misguided organization. This is an important detail because I don’t actually believe most of CoL members are malicious or causing suffering on purpose, even though I agree that the people in charge probably are terrible and disgusting and deserve to be wiped off the face of Esperia. Their first crime would be how overly careful they are. Someone who hid a criminal is not necessarily a criminal but the chance is always there, and for the CoL, even that chance is too big a risk. In a way, I believe this comes from a place of fear. They know how easily humans are corrupted, and thus they don’t trust the local authorities to deal with violent dangerous criminals on their own, and they don’t believe they would put them trough honest trial either. Just the possibility of a violent criminal escaping justice thanks to their money or talking skills or just because they don’t seem like they would be one of those people is too much of a risk for CoL to take, and it is really not that hard to see why.

The church protects people and connects them to the gods. That’s their entire purpose and the reason for their existence. It’s only natural for people to try and justify their own importance in the world, to try and prove that they are needed. Now, should this ever come at the cost of purposely creating enemies and ruling with fear and iron fist? Of course not. But at the same time, you can’t blame an organization based around protecting an insanely large amount of people for being careful and trying to eliminate potential threats as soon as possible. Sure, the people hiding the cultists may not be a part of the cult now but if they were left alive, they might decide to continue the work of said cult, sewing more evil and distress to society.

Another thing that I think doesn’t get brought up enough is that there is a place within the kingdom where CoL has close to no influence. That place is the city of Rustport. And far and wide, it is known as a hellhole of chaos where you will get robbed or murdered in broad daylight if you’re not careful or powerful enough. Anything from petty crimes through illegal alchemy to slave trade is on the market here and the absolute freedom is terrifying. The survival of the fittest is the only law that applies here, only further highlighting the importance of CoL for the kingdom. Twisted as it may be, CoL provides stability. The good priests and priestesses shine as beacons of light, hope, morality, and humanity while also teaching others to be humble and considerate, and supporting the ruling power’s laws.

Mauler Desert Temple

The Mauler society has a very different set of rules and codes than the human-based Lightbearer kingdom, and what more could we really expect? The Maulers are a people who were treated less than poorly, and were nearly slaughtered by their own creators before they decided to fight back for their lives and honor, and both of those remained a huge part of their culture ever since then. Maulers are a tribal society that has very little in terms of centralized structure. There is the Mauler Chieftain who can order the other tribes to unite against a common threat but such alliances inevitably fall apart when the Chieftain dies. The only other constant across all the Mauler tribes are the voodoo priests working for the Desert Temple.

The Desert Temple, much like CoL, has many roles and comes from a very good place. It heals the sick, it provides support and wisdom to the fighters. It can help settle disputes in a non-violent way in a culture that is very much based around violence. And unlike CoL, it has a deep understanding of both life and death and a great respect for both, that can clearly be seen in its practices. The game even directly tells us that voodoo magic is one of the oldest forms of magic that exist in Esperia, one that is not bound to a god or an element but rather one that is innately a part of the world and that allows itself to be seen and used only by those who are familiar with and respect the natural order of life and death. Even the Wilders were not able to tap into it, and it might be because they chose to run to save their lives rather than to fight for them and embrace the possibility of dying for the cause they considered right. Furthermore, DT has proven itself as the helping force to drive back calamities and natural disasters, with its members willing to put down their lives to protect or help others. However, even here we see many imperfections.

As with most things with Mauler society, DT is inevitably based around usefulness. If you aren’t useful to the temple, you aren’t welcome in it. If you are a burden, you are better off dead. Emotions aren’t useful, only raw power is. The temple demands children from many tribes be sent there to serve as temple warriors from a very young age, and then trains them to only be loyal to the temple. In the process, they strive to destroy their empathy and stun their emotional growth, essentially crippling them in that regard. This is one of the reasons why Antandra never hesitated to kill someone she grew up with for something she considered the right thing to do. These children are raised as killing machines, doing simply what the temple tells them, or what the temple instilled in them as the “right” and the “just” causes. It demands blind obedience though, especially from the temple warriors themselves. Antandra gets banished not because she killed but because she drew her blade without an order. The DT is authoritarian and absolute and doesn’t allow for any free will.

Sadly, we don’t have nearly enough lore on the Maulers as a whole to talk about a place without their influence to see whether they have some wider role in the society like CoL does, but a lot is likely going to come with the promised artbook. Until then, I will go off the note that nearly all the tribes seem to have deep-rooted respect for the temple. Aside from the Chieftain, the temple really seems to be the only thread connecting the wild and untamed Mauler society and possibly to be the only organization capable of making it work closely together, although they are yet to properly use this power of theirs. Or perhaps it is good that they didn’t yet. The religious zealotry that CoL pursues would end up devastatingly when combined with the Mauler temperament and sense of honor, so perhaps a part of their role is making sure the religious tensions never reach such an insane high. All of this is just pure speculation though.

I could go on and on and talk about all the characters in a single post as well but this is already getting long and Tumblr text editor has horrible delays on posts of this length, so we’ll end part 1 of this massive analysis here. I might post the next part tomorrow or later or I might not get to it at all but I needed to get at least this first part off my chest. I hope you enjoyed my ramblings and I’m looking forward to seeing you at the next one!

[empires-recap]

Weekly Recap: Sept 12th - 18th

A/N: Hello and Welcome to Weekly Empires Breakdown 1! Sorry I don’t have many episode breakdowns to attach to this, I go really in depth and with 3 tests in 4 days this week I just didn’t have the time to dedicate to all the episodes to give them the breake=down they deserve. I will get to them eventually, but this overall my main focus. One week of Empires Video’s Lore all nice and summed up for you guys. So look out for these every Monday, covering Sunday to Saturday so people have a chance to watch all the videos the videos and I’m not spoiling the vids that only came out yesterday. Also, perspectives of events will only be sited if it was released in a episode in this timeframe. Duplicate events may be included week to week based on what creators upload. And feel free to let me know if I missed anything important. So, let’s get into it.

Videos Included this week:

Gem Episode 13 (Fri)

Jimmy Episode 15 (Fri)

Joey Episodes 18 and 19 (Mon, Fri)

Katherine Episode 20 (Sun)

Lizzie Episode 15

Pixl Episodes 22 & 23 (Mon, Fri)

Sausage Episodes 29 - 31 (Sun, Wed, Sat)

Scott Episode 19 (Fri)

Shubble Episodes 16 & 17 (Sun, Tues)

Major Events - Multi-person Lore Events 

The Phantom Joins? The Assassin’s guild - Sausage meets the Assassin, who seems interested in joining the guild but is anti-demon, though doesn’t show his stance outright. Sausage asks him to fulfill a contract and bring him the head of an Empire’s Ruler. He then immediately kills Sausage with blue firework rockets (Such a power move omg). (Sausage 29)

Meeting of Scott’s Allies - Scott calls all his allies to Rivendell to propose a plan for their corruption: put it in a box somewhere far away and forget about it. Katherine volunteers her box of corruption, incased in obsidian in the mountains. They all put their corruption in the box and walk away. In a later scene, unknown to the characters, the box begins to leak corruption (Gem 13, Katherine 20).

Re-solidifying an Alliance - Pixl heads to Katherine to re-solidify their shaky alliance. They do this by heading out to the desert and collecting rare mob heads Katherine does not have (Katherine 20, Pixl 22)

The Bloodlust of The Lost Emperor - Joey, taken over by the bloodlust of the crown gifted to him by Xornoth, goes out and kills both Shubble and fWhip (Joey 18, Shubble 16)

Meeting of the Corrupted - Sausage and Joey meet up. They gush over the power they have been gifted before Joey suggests capturing people. They scout out their targets: GeminiTay and Scott Smajor, while Sausage informs Joey on what he knows of the two. This mainly includes the Dragon Egg, the lack of corruption on one side of Rivendell, and the brotherly relationship between Scott and Xornoth (Joey 28, Sausage 30)

The Capture and Rescue - Joey and Sausage meet with Xornoth to talk about the plan of capturing Scott and Gem. He says they can do what they want with Gem, but Scott must be kept alive as he’s part of the bigger picture. Scott and Gem are talking around Gem’s Embassy at Scott’s when Joey comes up to them. Joey tries to get them to follow him but they refuse. Sausage, who was sneaking up on them, come out and hits them with sleeping potions. Scott and Gem wake up with Mining Fatigue in Sausage’s dungeon, where they are questioned: Gem about the dragon egg and Scott about the brother thing. Gem is actually killed twice during this. Sausage and Joey try to get them to hand over the egg and stop trying to stop Xornoth and they refuse. They leave them there after Scott points out they can’t do anything while trapped. Jimmy, coming to Mythland to brag about how tall his wall is to Sausage, finds the two and frees them. (Gem 13, Jimmy 15, Joey 19, Sausage 31, 

Gunpowder Boys Prank - fWhip meets with Pixlriffs to trade and share demon discoveries and how they have been utilizing the corruption to their own benefit. They then work together and put two elder guardians in Mythland: one in The Dark Tower and one under his house in the dungeon. They try to get a third by his afk hole in the Iron Farm, but it dies. This series of clips also confirms Pixl either has no idea about The Phantom or is denying his knowledge about to fWhip, who seems to acknowledge the incident with Sausage and The Phantom.(Pixl 23, Reaction in Sausage 31)

Battle Arena - Pearl and Sausage build a battle arena between their based, however twice - once proposing the idea and another time during their first fight in the arena - Sausage gets possessed and turned into a more corrupted version of himself. Sausage does not remember anything during these blackouts. Also, Pearl wins the fight (Sausage 31)

Demon Watch - What is happening with corruption, the demon itself, and the resistance efforts against it

The Eyeball has moved, the last known location of it being Lizzie’s base. Crystals have also popped up around the server floating above people’s builds, usually important ones (this is pointed out in Sausage 30). Xornoth physically appeared in 3 episodes this week: Joey 19, Sausage 31, and Shubble 17. To Joey and Sausage, he appeared to over them assistance in their plan to kidnap Scott and Gem, and also to tell them not to touch Scott. He appeared to Shubble, taunting her first by calling her a coward and killing Lord of Mars (o7) but also by showing the power he could gift her if she joined his side. Considering he destroyed her last kingdom, she refused and then he killed her. Resistance stances have been mixed. Gem still has possession of the egg, with no indication if it will hatch anytime soon. fWhip has turned the corruption into fertilizer. Pixl has observed that copper slowly kills the corruption  by turning it into a harden substance and, when struck by lightning with a copper rod, can petrify the tentacles in a fossilized state. Katherine had tried to cure the tentacles with the potion that cured her flowers, but it and the new Moat have failed to stop their advancement.

Personal Events - Buildings, Trade Deals, Personal or Single-Person Lore not including the demon

Gem - Gem builds the embassy at Scotts. After returning from being captured, she calls on friends from other servers to help protect her and the egg: Three White Dragons with purple wings now circle her wizard tower.

Jimmy - Jimmy builds a tower next to his wall, officially taller than Sausages, and plans out the border for his wall/mega-base to surround his kingdom. He also promises one diamond to anyone who brings him a cod head.

Joey - Joey works on the start of the interior of the water temple. It’s not finished, but he also talks about his goal as emperor of the lost empire is to build up the temples of the 4 elements - Fire, Water, Earth and Air - to reunite the kingdom in harmony again. He also is still jealous about the amount of corruption other empires are getting, and is also jealous of when empires have a lack of corruption as shown with his meeting with fWhip.

Katherine - Katherine might bring Pixl in to the plushie business, but at the very least has a sale as he wants a husk plushie in his empire. All other events in her involve the corruption or other people.

Lizzie -  Lizzie builds a tunnel from her empire to Katherine’s, decorating the inside to make the steady train ride more enjoyable. In the dessert section of her tunnel she girlbosses tricks Joel and Scott to do the manual labor for her. She also receives Sausage’s “Thank you for Helping to Kill the Dragon” present

Pixl - Pixl returns to Pixandria after several episodes of self imposed exile. He has a brief interaction with Sausage when the man drops off his “Thank you for Helping to Kill the Dragon” Present, basically telling him you are not welcome here.

Sausage - Sir Carlos finally arrives in Mythland, warning Sausage that he cannot escape becoming fully corrupted. He gifts him an artifact he needs to keep in his inventory to escape the spirit realm Bubbles will guide him through after he fully dies, although he is a bit frustrated that Sir Carlos doesn’t tell him who gave him the information or the artifact. He takes a stealth mission to gather information on the other empires, saves the bloodsheep that have been disappearing since Xornoth came to full power, and got the Great Staff of Mythland gifted by a friend.

Scott - Scott shows off his embassy buildings and gets conned by Lizzie to build her tunnel for her

Shubble - Shubble focuses on building a mushroom house for one of her future villagers, and builds the embassy at Scott’s base. Xornoth also gifts her a villager, mainly because he wanted her to kill it testing out her gifted powers. 

[endergf]

i’m afk fishing rn but my new world is going so well!! i’m not very good at mc and i already raided a desert temple, jungle temple, and dungeon!

[deiupvote]

BFA has been riddled with bugs, imperfections, game system flaws and design choices that can be frustrating to say the least. But in the first few weeks of BFA I've noticed a trend where these things seem to change very quickly if its made public on a place like reddit where blizzard lose control over the negative publicity. (They don't seem to care much at all about their own forums, especially not the EU side. Bug reports for the dungeons and raid were to be found there in enormous numbers and yet they were never fixed or even adressed or mentioned.)/r/wow frontpage mentioned for example that Azerite pieces felt awful to not be able to trade, which then not two days after in the Q&A was adressed and fixed. Other cases include the parrot mount which had its saddle covered with the parrot texture instead of the saddle texture. which was fixed yesterday in a hotfix. This had been reported long before since the model displayed the same texture even in the mount inspect tool where you can inspect mounts before you own them. Even more recently we had the case of the weapon drop from Taloc which was then converted into a transmog item, which was promptly reversed after Blizzard noticed that the community expressed well-deserved outrage over the fact.So with this in mind, I figured I'd point out a few other things Blizzard might be interested in knowing. First are bugs that can be quite baffling, later they get a bit nit-picky.Bugs/features, who really knows at this pointIn waycrest manor, AoE Abilities like Divine Star and Halo (Halo in particular) for disc priest, so I assume many other abilities for other classes as well, sometimes pull the mobs in the basement even when you're upstairs and theres no way to deaggro them except for just dying.In waycrest manor, dying at the maggot packs that spawn more maggots out of you and releasing will sometimes (read: most times) cause the maggots to spawn at the dungeon enterance with you where you respawn.In freehold, if you cast a knockback on the brawlers that you need to slay before the 2nd boss while on the bridge, they can fall off and AFK in the water for a couple of minutes before finally despawning and then respawning so you can continue with your life and pull them again. Conversely, sometimes by doing this all of them despawn and you just skip the entire thing and the game gives you the pirate hat for the council without any effort.In Uldir you can try to pull and reset MOTHER by running back into Talocs room, which wouldn't be that strange... if it wasn't for the fact that if a havoc demon hunter does it and double dashes then she sometimes doesn't despawn and you get to do her fight in Taloc's room with 0 room mechanics.If you have a 370 staff weapon as a caster, and a 370 held in offhand or dagger drops for you, Personal Loot does not allow you to trade it since you own no dagger or offhand, only a staff. Why this is in the game is beyond me, but I guess Blizzard really resent the idea of us sharing loot amongst each other like... I don't know.. whats the word? A community?If you have a 370 ring and a 370 ring drops, you can not trade it if you dont have a 370 ring in your 2nd ring slot. In order to counter this mechanic you need to equip every item level increase in Rings in both ring slots (move the item up and down once) so the game thinks you own a ring for each slot. Then you outplay the personal loot system and you can trade rings again. This works the same for trinkets.The mechanical golems at the start of Motherlode that you would like to scrap as an engineer to get pieces for the new engineering mount dont count as scrappable. When you hover over them it says instead that they're "skinnable", but skinners can't skin them either. (This one I haven't confirmed if they've hotfixed or not yet, this was a couple of days ago.)In Temple of Sethralis, the orbs sometimes dont respawn if a Guardian tries to replace it on its pedestal, and your only choice is to reset the key because there is no way to continue the instance.The second to last boss in Shrine of the Storms, where you need to soak orbs to remove your mind control, doesn't remove the mind control debuff even after soaking all the orbs. It sometimes does after soaking 6 orbs or more, but that requires you to soak 1 full wave of orbs and then a bit of the next. Which means that the guy after you operates on incrementally fewer orbs at their disposal. This is however not consistent, sometimes you dont lose the pre-mindcontrol buff at all. (Edit: apparently this is a feature? Its hard to know sometimes so I hope you'll forgive me.)If the same fight finishes it also sometimes takes up to 20 seconds until the squid goes off your head, which might be a feature or a bug but who knows at this point. You can't attack the eels which is the next pack while you have it on you in any case.Taking the boat that goes between the different ferrey-stops in Tiragarde Sound can sometimes result in you running into one of the larger ships that sail about, resulting in your tiny boat getting stuck on the bigger ship, waiting for the bigger ship to move at an angle where your smaller boat is freed.Death Gripping the Purification Construct on the bridge towards the entombing boss room in King's Rest while its casting its laser Purification Beam will cause it to reverse the direction it was going rotationally, only to then correct itself 3 seconds later and go back in the direction it started off in.This one I'm not sure if its a feature or a bug either, but in Siege of Boralus at the last boss, the cannons block Line of Sight which makes healing the fight beyond infuriating. It's not a difficult addition to the fight since the rest of the terrain is fairly open, which is why it makes me think its more likely a bug than not. It only makes life awful for the healer as they run around the object in circles looking for angles to heal everyone. The same cannons (or atleast same model) in Tol Dagor do not block line of sight.In Temple of Sethralis, the Guardians at the last boss seem to spawn Sanguine. Maybe this is intentional, but no other dungeon bosses that I've found that include adds spawn Sanguine. This falls down under maybe bug I guess.This one is very minor, but the champions worldquest in Voldun which spawns near the bottomleft, edging on the desert where theres a tiny hole into the ground, last time it was up, spawned about 2 snakes every 2 minutes that 15 horde and alliance players had to share kills on. It took 15 minutes for me to finish the world quest because the azerite shards you click on the ground as part of this same world quest (the variant where you acquire %, not the heal 5 wounds one) stopped spawning after you collected each respective node once too.Disc priest mastery snapshots. If you put up Atonements and then use a mastery-giving trinket, your atonements do not take more healing appropriate to your new Mastery, but to the mastery you had when you applied them. Fuck knows if this is a feature.In Freehold, the turtle miniboss before the Ogre boss sometimes leaves a single shell that never stops bouncing.This might be a feature, but in Island Expeditions (I have not confirmed for this reset), healers pull an obscene amount of aggro that can be next to impossible to overthreat as a DPS. Healers definitely generate more threat in this game-mode than others, but this has never been explained anywhere so might be a bug so worth mentioning in case it could then get fixed. It could have something to do with Blizzards new AI made out of tibetan gold wanting to prioritize healers.In Island Expeditions, the resources gathered bar up top measuring your progress and the enemy team's progress sometimes spawns slightly outside the screen so you can't read the numbers.Like previously mentioned on this sub today, weapon enchants are listed under ring enchants on the Auction House.In Motherlode, the last boss casts a gatling gun which you need to dodge to get the achievment Ready for Raiding, but at the last second of the cast he abruptly turns to hit the tank with the last two ticks which makes the achievment impossible to obtain for any tanks, and incredibly confusing for non-tanks as well who stand behind the gatling gun the entire way only to immedeatly be met with it cancelling its animation to shoot them out of nowhere if the tank is trying to get the achievment with them.In Underrot, Cragmaw, if tanked closed to the edges of the room, can throw parasites outside the boundries of the map where you can't step on them to stop them from hatching.In Underrot, the last boss if tanked at the walls of the room shoots his vile spray backwards instead of the way he's facing because the spell can't find enough room ahead of him. So you can just stand AFK the entire fight and nuke him.Minor inconvenience, the Disc priest talent Sins of the Many doesn't say in its tooltip that your damage dealt increase only diminishes down to 3% and not 0%. You need to google this or constantly check your buff in combat to figure it out. Its a three-line tooltip, you really couldn't fit that crucial bit of information in there?This is just a few of the things I've found since launch and I'm but one player. I invite the rest of you to contribute with other bugs or strange design choices you've found that have probably been reported hundreds of times on the Blizzard forums, in the PTR and BETA clients, and in game on live too so that we might catalogue them. Maybe if we concentrate them all here in one big mega post that people can actually see then something will be done about it.Like I said, feel free to contribute with your own examples of absurdities you've found in BFA so far. And on a larger scale it might be worth discussing whether or not the fact that these things only gets fixed when great public attention is turned towards them is a good thing or bad? In Legion we had similar behaviour from Blizz with for example the getting stuck in the cages in m+ on Maw of Souls which was there at launch and remained unfixed until it one day happened in the MDI.Its honestly fairly depressing that we need to muster all our efforts to form a public outcry for many things to get fixed, let alone CHANGED. Do we need to collect signatures to prove to Blizzard that we want to be able to choose between Personal Loot and Master Looter so people who like each can use their own system? Collect signatures to show that there is a demand for classes to not be what arcane mage has become, where its close to a one-button spec? Collect signatures so bosses like Hyrja dont oneshot at Tyrannical unless you're an immunity class? Maybe I'm being unfair.EDIT: EDIT: The vote-brigading has been counteracted upon but I'll leave /u/elmaethorstars list here regardless:Adds on the last boss in Temple of Sethraliss, as well as dropping sanguine as you mentioned, also contribute to trash percentage which are likely the same bug or some sort of flag mix up.Likewise, adds on Lockwood in Siege of Boralus also count as trash percentage which I doubt is intentional.Sanguine pools from the tunnels in Tol Dagor can hit people upstairs with no visual indicator.Numerous Azerite armour tooltips do not display the correct values. For Holy Priest: Everlasting Light, Permeating Glow, and Twist Magic all consistently heal for more than they say they will without any +modifiers to healing active except versatility (and the differences are not the versatility percentages).Hunters still have animation lag on instant abilities when using guns or crossbows as a Tauren and several other races. This bug was introduced during patch 7.2 and has still not been fixed. It is particularly awful throughout Alliance BfA levelling because every ranged weapon reward is a crossbow.Power Word: Shield occasionally just fails on Prot Paladins with no indication of why.Hand of the Protector consistently fails to account for missing health and thus does incorrect healing. Coupled with the above bug, this makes this healer/tank combination very annoying to play.Divine Star on Priests continues to bug out on certain terrain even when there are no visible obstacles. via /r/wow