Knights Of Enaerai

Proposal (from Yendri and Taesuke): Change in Knight Focus From align/ethos to Stones of Power

Reasons for:

• The stones of power provide a far, far more accurate representation of the balance of power between alignment and ethos than the number of players logged on at any given time.
• Encourages a more even dispersal of the stones: It's still extremely common for one House to have all ten stones for weeks at a time.
• Encourages more interaction between Knights and House members.
• Makes asking characters to leave our MUD no longer a viable way to restore the balance.

Reasons against:

• involves changing stuff that works (mostly) and has a history of play behind it
• reduces balance concept from the broader universal concept to "who is the toughest pking/house-raiding house" (could be a pro reason too, I guess--balance concept can be changed as needed)
• it can be hard enough for Housed characters to raid and get stones... making knights have to balance stones may be even harder than their current hard-enough role, esp. as power/elite players tend to avoid knights and play in houses
• takes away some of the philosophical/conceptual roleplay that is a fun part of the experience for some knights. Hard to philosophize about balance of a pile of stones. :)

Other thoughts:

Handling Knight Interactions: As a rule Enaerai doesn't appear in Avendar to mortals. Interactions and guidance of knights is generally handled through the NPC Irionne, former priest at the temple of Enaerai who now serves as healer in the knight fortress. Irionne has typically been played as a seeming senile and doddering old water scholar with occasional moments of clarity and wisdom.

When Enaerai does favor a promising knight with interaction, it is through Enaerai's immortal room (1261: A White Plain), where Enaerai appears in vision-like fashion to the knight through the tri-stone upon the hillside. In even rarer cases Enaerai comes through the tri-stone to interact with a mortal. However, in Enaerai's concept of balance, immortal interaction should be limited less it exert undue influence, and so as painful as it is, Knights are given free reign to run the order (unless they really muck things up, in which case they may be disbanded for a time, as happened in the summer of 2002).

Origins: The knights began some two years after Avendar opened, as a player-led group coordinated by me (Dovolente). I had been brainstorming ideas about a militant order dedicated to upholding balance, and another player (Stimmy) had developed the idea of Enaerai, a balance deity, and we decided to collaborate and invite other players to join us.

The initial group of knights was led by my character Tessolos, and met in the arien way inn. There were eleven or twelve players involved after a few weeks, and the concept impressed Jolinn enough that he kindly added a temple of Enaerai and a knight compound to Earendam.

The first group of knights eventually died out, but an occasional player or two would take up the role.

When I re-immed in the fall of 01, I chose to take Enaerai as my immortal role, and made the knights a more formalized part of the game. The knights now form something between a band of Enaerai followers and a House (they have they various house features in the code, aside from a vault that utilizes the stones of power. -Dov