Nep

I grew up in a very toxic family environment, which resulted in a serious inferiority complex, among other things. After I grew up and started working, I have noticed that I'm simply... doing better than the people who were criticizing me all my life, and the people I was compared to all my life. And not even by a small margin. Shockingly, it wasn't even that hard. And, I'm just getting started... After some years, the people criticizing me started to die off, or wrecked their own lives in various ways. The cousins I was "competing" with are all living underwhelming lives, and I hardly meet them anymore. It's as if their opinions never mattered in the first place. Basically what I learned is that you shouldn't define yourself based on what others think. Though this can be hard when you are still a child and don't have any point of reference apart from your immediate environment. You define what you can and can't achieve. Since most people are not actors, but only reactors to outside events, you can make an awful lot of change in the world just by putting some effort in it every day.

I think it would be easiest to explain to them in terms of a human lifespan. Average life expectancy right now is about 72,6 years. 72,6 * 12 = 871,2 months. 871,2 * 4 = 3484,8 weeks. Therefore, a week is about 1/3485 of a human lifespan.

I think that it would be a serious mistake to get rid of the mist until we figure out what it can be used for. Therefore I suggest we collect it into containers. I have designed a device that could be used to collect said mist. Here is how the prototype would look like, more or less: How it works: I would capture it like I'd capture gas in a chemical experiment. We'd need a big outer container, inside which there is a smaller, upside down glass cylinder. Both of these are filled with water. The idea is to get the mist inside the inner glass container, where it "bubble us" to the top, displacing the water into the outer container. This is based on the assumption that the "mist" is lighter than water, but more dense than air (which is probably true, given that it hovers above ground). Of course, the mist won't be getting into our container on its own, so the device has an elastic tube attached to it, that ends in a bulb pump (the kind you see on older blood pressure monitors, or maybe more relevant - gasoline hand pumps) and a funnel. Pressing the pump creates a vacuum, which after releasing it will suck in whatever is inside the funnel. After which it goes straight into the inner glass cylinder through the tube. The inner container even has a cap on it so that we can remove the mist when we need it for something (experiments, storing it in even larger containers, etc.). The cap can also be used to release any air accidentally sucked into the container - since it is lighter than the mist. As you can see the device is quite large, it even has shoulder straps. This is because I want a single person to be able to collect a large amount of gas, since we don't know how much of it will show up and where. Materials needed: The outer and inner containers would be made of thick glass, kinda like a big alembic. I have previously thought about using some kind of metal but then we wouldn't be able to tell how much mist or water is inside. That said, the parts holding the inner container in place could be made out of metal, to make it more durable. Both glass and iron exist in MD, and there is precedent for various alembics and such in the lab. We just have to make bigger ones. The shoulder straps could be made out of ropes that can be found on GWI or a similar material. The funnel can be made out of metal too (iron ingots?). The water needed to fill up the containers already exists in the realm. The only part I'm not sure about is the tube and the pump, since both of them would need rubber which I have yet to see in the realm. But I'm sure we can figure something out. How to collect the mist: I'd pay a few people to use my device to collect mist until we figure out what it is and whether or not it is harmful. Like I mentioned before, the device is this big in order to enable few people to do a lot of work with it. But we can make it smaller later if necessary, maybe even a handheld version If the mist proves to be harmful we will be forced to deal with it on the "government" level, which means paying for its collection won't be my problem anymore. If it proves to be useful, people will collect it without incentive. If it proves to be harmless and useless we can just leave it be.

I think Ledah is the first actually At least according to the WP log.

Some small stuff in the underground:

Alright, I checked No man's land too:

Checked Loreroot. The are screenshot only, but the coordinates are visible. Some of these are hard to notice at first, I suggest refreshing by clicking on the compass on the left while focusing on the image. If this format is acceptable, I can do more when I have time.

Just to clarify, is this strictly MD related, or can we write about anyone who influenced us greatly (even IRL)?

Okay so... First off, a forced vote is bad in my opinion. It forces people to pick someone for their good/bad vote even if they haven't made a particularly strong impression. This causes some people to get more points (positive or negative) than they normally would. And it even causes some people to get undeserved (imo) negative scores because some people just dump their negative vote on characters that just log in and never communicate much. So, in my opinion the vote would make more sense if you made it optional, BUT maybe made it so that you can vote on everyone BUT ALSO added an "indifferent" option. That way you could get a general feel of how the realm feels about each character, not just the one that each person likes/hates the most. The scores acquired in such a way could be used for certain roles, or achievements.

Necrovion is a religion of peace, no bully

If it's still open: 1 X Item 2: Anni custom pin badge - 10 plushies. 1 X Item 6: Avatar goldening Token (can be used to make any avatar gold), Price: 40 plushies 8 X Item 7: Lock in choas Spellstone - 12 plushies = 96 plushies 1 X Item 11: 16th anniversary piece of cake. Price: 5 plushies Total: 151 plushies.

Item 8 - 104.

Item 8: 80 plushies

I have a question. Are the item slots mentioned here meant for item stacks, or total items? For example, can an item space of 500 store 500 different stacks, or only 1 x 500 pieces of lumber?

I was thinking, maybe we could make actual bricks... MB: Clay -> Brick. Tool: Some kind of shovel Processor: Furnace The reasoning behind this is that clay is most commonly found in/near riverbeds and lakes, which MB has plenty of. Molding that into the shape of a brick then burning it at the right temperature should yield some solid bricks we can use. Ah, Fyrd beat me to it with the clay idea, oh well

I was thinking of something similar. LR: Lumber -> Wooden beam and/or planks. There are a number of sizes you can cut a tree into: We probably don't want to go that deep, however I feel like at least the two I mentioned should be possible. If not, then just "building planks" should be fine like you suggested. Tool: Felling ax. A hatchet is too small for this task imo, a felling ax is bigger and sharper. We could also use a two-man saw, but I have no idea if it's worth implementing. Processor: Lumber mill. I was thinking something like this one from Skyrim Basically a huge saw operated by a water wheel.

All rewards have been distributed (check your ingame inbox for the CTC)! I handled the silver notes through the chat because I could: I'd like to thank everyone for participating, it was an interesting experiment.

Yes, adding pictures won't change the score, I didn't want to make it a factor because many people don't like to draw. That said, thank you for submitting it Here is the breakdown of your score: Anyway, sorry for the delay, again. (I've been rather busy with the tax man lately.) I'll submit the scores to Chewett in a few minutes.

And finally, @Fang Archbane. I have to say, this design is by far my favorite. Essentially a magical roomba that detects memory stones on its own Too bad it lacked the level of detail some of the other submissions had. It was also the first entry, at which point I did not know what level of submissions I can expect, so I did not send it back for more details. On the other hand, I felt like it wouldn't be fair to send it back for reconsideration AFTER someone submitted a more detailed design (hell, I could have done that to everyone after DG submitted his...). So, here we are. A fun design regardless. I'd love watching this thing fall off a cliff, splash into a lake or enter the necro gate while you aren't watching... Anyway, here it is:

4th place from @Kaya:

Third place, @Pipstickz. One of the 2 people who actually sent me an illustration!

Second place by @Yoshi :

First off, a submission by @Demonic God. This guy is very thorough with his explanations Although the submission is very long, it did not receive first place for that alone, as you will soon see: Memory stone possess the ability to store "thoughts" and specifically, spells. A compressed memory stone can store spells with less cast amount. Studying further interactions: A spell can't be stored with insufficient casts The cutoff point is 5 spells - any less casts and you'd need a compressed stone. The stone stores but a small amount of casts, 2 to 3. This does not seem to correlate with how many casts you have - even a spell with 50 casts will give just 2-3 upon enchantment. The condensed tablet is capable of storing even spells with just 4 casts The condensed tablet can only store the same amount of casts as a stone One needs 80% of their cast count left to make a stone A failed store does not degrade the stone From these behaviors, I theorize that memory stones have a fixed capacity - and the compressed version simply enhances its "writability". Writing a thought to a memory stone would require repeated exposure to the spell itself - with repeated casts required to imprint a single cast. The process to determine a stone as a memory stone Trying to store a spell to it, and successfully, would certainly prove a stone to be a memory stone. This simple concept is not very useful - we want to obtain raw, untainted memory stones. However, certain things could be done to improve upon this method. Particularly, we require improvement in these aspects: The method may not alter nor degrade the quality of the stone The method must be able to fully determine if a stone is a memory stone, with high confidence The method must miss as little memory stone as possible The method needs to be fast and convenient We can break these requirement into two separate methods working in conjunction: A method to quickly eliminate normal stones and detect potential stones The method needs to have as low false negative rate as possible The method needs to be able to scan extremely fast, ruling out as many stones as possible The method needs to have a reasonable false positive rate, to reduce work load for method 2 The method needs to alter the stones as little as possible A method to conclude if a stone is a memory stone, with high confidence The method needs to be able to confirm a stone as a memory stone The method needs to not miss any memory stones The method needs to not alter the stone in any way These two methods, in conjunction, should be able to efficiently scan for memory stones. An indefinite numbers of intermediary methods could be added as further filtering steps for efficient mass production, if needed. A conceptual design: We rely on these two main characteristic of a memory stone to design the detector: Memory stones are meant to store thoughts Failure to store casts will not ruin a memory stone This allows the possibility to purposefully try to badly store a thought into the memory stones, and observing the result. I'll take the liberty to skip over the exact interactions, different "thought" experiments (hehe, pun intended), and go into the immediate results: The heat spell, granted by heat stones, is capable of slightly heating up memory stones. The locate spell is capable of making the memory stones echo a strong signal that quickly degrade with distance The heat spell will be used in conjunction with a sensitive heat detector to quickly determine stones that responded on a large scale. The locate spell could then be used to ping each stone, and recording if there's a strong response. Components These major components forms the core working mechanism needed for a memory stone detector: A thought broadcasting matrix capable of mimic the effect of spells. A matrix capable of sending out a thought wave resembling the heat spell This cannot be considered a functional spell The matrix needs to elicit a heat response as strong as possible on memory stones By designing a thought highly incompatible with the stones itself, the "thought" attribute lessen in favor of the "heat" effect, improving efficiency A matrix capable of sending out a thought wave resembling the locate spell This cannot be considered a functional spell The matrix needs to be able to "locate" the stones itself By altering the idea behind "locate" to an inanimate object, the spell causes a stronger "bounce" against memory stone, useful for detection Sensory devices capable of analyzing the stones' response: A heat detecting sensor A signal analyzer Amplification devices to enhance the matrixes Focal devices to control the thought-broadcasting area A passive heat collector, capable of gathering heat used to cast the spells Feedback devices to alarm user of potential spell stones. Various housing and interconnecting component Mechanism: Upon activation, the heat matrix sends out a pulse directly in front of the emitting matrix The heat sensor will capture the immediate heat response - with stronger heat feedback indicating a potential memory stone The feedback device will emit sound based on the captured heat response The user collects stones with high probability Each stone is tested individually Each test consist of placing the stones on a pedestal The pedestal is the focal point of the locate spell The sensor is placed right below the surface of the pedestal to prevent signal decay The focused spell is casted The sensor records the response, and outputs a high confidence audio feedback. Commentary As all stones were originally memory stones decayed by the elements, many exhibit behaviors similar to memory stones under tests As such, the components of a memory stone detector are highly sensitive, as well as a lot of data were gathered to improve testing accuracy Needless to say, they are very complex and delicate!

The results are in! I'd like to thank everyone for their participation. Without further ado, here is the result I came up with: Allow me to explain the logic behind the scores. The winner is determined by total points. The "detail" column represents how well you explained your concept. Everyone starts from 10 points, the subtractions represent details I was missing (in most cases this was because you explained "how" a certain thing works, but not "why"). I also took into consideration how well you explained your concept relative to the other submissions. The "lore / realism" column also starts from 10 points, but in this case you get points subtracted for inaccuracies regarding how things work in MD, OR if the mechanism you describe is somewhat questionable in my opinion. Since nobody really knows how a memory stone detector works, this is a very grey area. And because of that, it's nearly impossible to get max points for this, so keep that in mind. The "Uniqueness" column has 5 points as a maximum (equal to the number of entries, so 1 point per entry). How it works is that you get 1 point subtracted for every other player who submitted a similar concept. There were only 2 cases like this, both of them used heat signals but other than that they are pretty different too... Also, please keep in mind that these things are very subjective. Just because you did not win this time, doesn't mean I do not like your design. Anyway. I will start posting the submissions in short order. You have until tomorrow 23:00 server time to contest the result (11th of May). If nobody complains until then, the result will be final and I'll submit it to Chewett and I'll begin handing out rewards as soon as I can. Those of you who did not make it to the top 3 will get a 10 silver note each from me for your efforts. As for the submissions. When I came up with this quest. I was hoping for one of two things: Either some kind of common theme in the submissions that would hopefully help us determine how the damn thing works. OR A different idea for each submission. The latter happened basically Even though 2 of the submissions use heat signals for detection, that's about the only things they have in common... What this means I do not know, but it was a fun experiment regardless.