Vahr

I confirm this is an official encounter :D
The secret special abilities each owner will define for their primordial will be considered for the battle at run time.
Bets are guaranteed, so if you say you bet something , you have to pay for it if you lose.
Currently there is no interface support for this kind of bets, maybe there will be, but in case it wont be in time, then we handle bets manually.
Ledah or Syrian should handle this please, you gather the bets , you split the win with the winners.
There is no escrow for this for now, but i hope none is needed.

I will be charging a portion from the winners pool, not that i need the gold, but i need to figure a way so we could organize this kind of contests in the future again, and the "movie" will cost creating, so that needs to be covered somehow. I am thinking 10%? too much? too litle? its not fixed, i am open to other suggestions.

I am also working on a free text version of such encounters, so any of you can battle their pets with their special abilities, but we all agree i think, that a movie is far more entertaining :D

Nobody will know the outcome till this happens. You are free to add animations and the owner to set new special abilities up to thursday.

THE SMOKE SHALL BLOCK OUT THE SUN AND TOGETHER WE WILL REIGN VICTORIOUS OVER THE SHINY REFLECTIVE MASSES

You've seen 2 pitiable dragons go up against each other... now it is time for a real fight.
In the corner on your left with a crowd of admirers (if you look hard enough and with the right perspective), we have the one, the only Onyx Mirrorseraph, raised by yours truly - Ledah! Please, hold your applause.

In the corner of your right, fresh from the bowels of Necrovion, we have the royal, noble Rustgold Wraithling, raised by the Queen of Necrovion - Syrian! Please, no booing.

We are, of course, taking bets on this most prestigious event. The tally will be kept at the foot of this post. It is winner takes all, no takesies backsies. The odds will be decided by the final stakes placed at 12:00 ST Friday 30th October 2026.
For example, if my noble Seraph has a pot of 20GC staked on his victory, and for some reason Syrians has 40GC, when mine is victorious then my punters take home 2GC for every 1GC bet. As Syrian stands no chance, there is no need to work out the odds the other way around.
The fight itself will be held sometime around 22:00 ST Friday 30th October 2026 plus or minus Soon (TM).
Please, post your bets in this topic and send Ledah your bet prior to the closing of bets at 12:00 ST Friday 30th October 2026.
CURRENT BETS ON TO WIN:
Onyx Mirrorseraph
20GC - Ledah
Rustgold Wraithling
None
But Le Dah, I hear you cry, how will we know who has won, and who has lost? Well, I could of course judge it myself, but in this case I will defer to the one, the only, the incorruptible... @Eggdar! No placing bets now Eggy.

For public record and because we think it was cool!
https://magicduel.com/films/seigheart-vs-syrian/

@Seigheart

I had some more fun with digital LEGO.
Here's my take on the Drachorn hatchling.

I made a Drachorn too—out of a bath towel! 😄 No idea if anyone has made one like this before!
Now, let’s see if I can work out how to attach the photos…

Fixed it!

55USD worth of blocks in case anyone wants to make it :D

Three more feedings were documented.

Lately I've been playing around a bit with Lego (digitally). it used to be my go-to toy when I was a child, but I recently re-discovered it after I found out I can make stuff digitally.
If anyone is interested in the file, let me know and I will send it over.

Here's the Howling Gates:

The third "feeding" has been documented.

As some of you may know, I have become the keeper of a peculiar creature: a slug-flower abomination with a slimy flesh, and a flower that leaks liquid dust wherever it crawls. It whispers endlessly of its hunger for the vile, the disgusting, the wicked.. Though its appetite remains a mystery. I intend to discover what it is before it discovers what I am.

Here I will document it's growth. It's cravings.. Its evolutions.. The appetite.

Bring me your most vile appetizers. Tell me what you would feed it, or offer an actual item if you wish. I shall place your offering before the creature and observe its reaction. Will it swallow your gift with wet, shuddering delight, recoil as though offended, or whisper for something even more wretched?
Join me in witnessing its growth and strange evolution. Each offering may invoke another change. We may come closer to understanding this creature, though what it becomes, and what it may recognize as food, is beyond my knowledge for now.
Rewards are granted at my discretion, guided by the creature's reaction and my own judgment. You may receive no more than a word of thanks, or perhaps something far more extraordinary: one of its offspring, should any ever appear.

The First Feeding.. 
The Sapwrack Snailbloom stirs..
It's head.. or front part.. or.. whatever.. extends from beneath the shell, rearing up into the air as though tasting it. The creature inches toward the offering. A glistening trail of slime follows its sluggish advance.
It touches the sweat butter.
For a moment, nothing happens.
Then, the snail retracts halfway back into its shell, shuddering with what might be disgust.. or delight.. The mouth opens, the blob envelops the offering in front and closes, and opens again. It is greedily scraping the last greasy traces from the offering.
A faint, sour smell rises from its body. Somewhere deep within the shell, something gurgles.

It seems sated. For now.. 

The Second Feeding...
The Snail settles against the Grasan's enormous belly. Quickly, a thick translucent slime begins to ooze from beneath its body, spreading over the Grasan's skin in a glistening film. The snail seems in no hurry to eat. It simply stays where it is, allowing its foul secretions to do the work..
Soon after this, a rancid stench begins to rise. Tiny bubbles form in the slime, and the Grasan's flesh slowly softens beneath it, turning pale and mushy where it touches the slime. The process is painfully gradual. The slime creeps further across the creature's body, dissolving the outer layers into a foul, greasy sludge that the Snailbloom absorbs at its leisure.
Hours pass, and the Grasan remains far too large to be consumed in any quick sense. Yet where the slime has spread, its flesh has begun to lose its shape, sinking into a widening pool of disgust. 
The Snailbloom barely moves, occasionally extending slightly or shifting its weight to reach a fresh patch of flesh. Its shell glistens with moisture, and the stench grows stronger still.

The Third "Feeding"...
The Sapwrack Snailbloom seems to be in no hurry to finish its Grasan. The enormous creature is still slowly dissolving beneath its foul slime, and the stench suggests there is plenty of work left to do. When approached, the Snailbloom extends a feeler and seems to ask for a little warmth. 
Perhaps even a creature with such a dreadful appetite needs the occasional cuddle between meals.
(It just asked heat...)


The Fourth Feeding... A gift from the East: The Caretaker's Mould-Marked Cord
The Sapwrack Snailbloom extends its slimey body towards the Caretaker's Mould-Marked Cord. 
The moment its slime touches the rotting wood, a faint fizzing and sizzling begins, and the damp cellar stench surrounding the item grows considerably worse. 
It slowly envelops the cord, plaque and all, as though savoring each layer of decay. The shriveled ear disappears beneath a particularly juicy blob of slime. 
The Snail settles down contentedly. At last, a gift with some proper character.

The Fifth and Sixth feedings... Homecooking!
The Sapwrack Snailbloom eagerly extends its bodytowards the grey mash, seemingly delighted by its foul stench. Its house wiggles on its back out of excitement. Its glistening slime slowly spreads across the offering, and a faint bubbling rises from beneath its body. The creature settles down to digest, leaving behind little more than a greasy, grey residue. The smell, however, lingers long after the meal has disappeared.
When the second helping arrives two days later, the Snailbloom seems to recognize the familiar delicacy. It wastes no time enveloping the fresh portion in its digestive slime. Its body twitches contentedly as it settles in for another long feeding. Whatever went into this recipe, the Snailbloom appears quite fond of it.

Death ray has now depleted resources in Necrovion on two occasions. He is barred from the land until further notice, and further consequences are under consideration.
We, the citizens of Necrovion, regard this repeated depletion as a disrespectful gesture toward our land and its people. Our resource policy is already lenient, with clear exceptions. We ask only that gatherers respect those limits.
We also ask Loreroot’s leadership to address this conduct with their citizen. Repeated disregard for another land’s stated policy reflects poorly on relations between our lands, and we hope Loreroot will help resolve the matter.

After ten years of closure, Necrovion is open again. For its citizens, this is a meaningful homecoming and a chance to rebuild our presence under Queen Syrian.
We, as citizens of Necrovion, ask that visitors respect the land and leave 1–3 units of resources remaining when gathering. Our request is simple: please do not deplete resource locations to zero.
Queen Syrian does not object to depletion in select scenes where your gathering stat causes you to collect the entire available resource in a single action. If you are unsure which scenes qualify for this exception, please ask before gathering.
Anyone found depleting resources to zero outside this exception will receive a warning. If depletion continues after that warning, a council of Necrovion citizens will be formed to discuss the circumstances and decide on further action.
Certain scenes will also be trapped. Gather at your own risk.
Please gather with consideration for the next person and those working to care for the land. Help us keep Necrovion welcoming (to an extent, I cant foresee what the shades will do) and its resources available to citizens and visitors alike.

Today marked the official coronation of a new Queen of Necrovion. The turn out was fantastic, and i would like to thank Aelis and Samon for making sure it ran smoothly. The log for the first half of it can be found below. In the mean time, many of you are going to be curious about the state of the land and citizenship going forward. I have not currently submitted any rulings on the state of the land, but i will be aiming to do so as soon as i am able, do not expect haste with such matters for they take time, and this coronation has taken most of my recent allotment.

To get to the second matter, citizenship. I have granted it to the following: Samon, Redneck, Vahr, Marvolo, and myself. For now that will be all, i understand there are others that wish to join, but that will be addressed later, for now there will be no further granting of citizenship by myself, the Kingship tools, or by vote until we , as a group, decide otherwise. Citizenship must be earned the long way.

This is the record of how Necrovion came to have a Queen again, written so that it can be read beside the record of how the land was closed. It is long because it is a report, and I would rather it were complete than short.
What happened
On Day 272 of Year 21 (30 September 2026) Aelis of the Caretakers set up a Memory Outpost at the Stone of Twisted Souls, with Syrian and samon beside him, and redneck, who laid down the stamp of his old office in Marind Bell as an offering. Over the next two weeks the outpost held remembrances: of the Shades, of the alliances and citizens of the land, of its kings and queens, of the exile of Year 11 and of the Death Patrol that kept the wasteland. People of every generation of Necrovion came back for them, some from years away.
At the last remembrance, on 12 October, Aelis set an empty stone beside the others and asked everyone to remember a future for the land. Syrian said hers: a Necrovion where humans may walk and keep their own society again, not to relive the past but to make a new future from what is remembered of it, in coexistence with the Shades and never in dominance over them, and herself as Queen of that human society, by direction and service to the people who would choose to follow her. Twelve people answered. Aelis set a grass crown on her, Fang Archbane a bracelet, Mallos a reversed hourglass, samon the Queen of black diamonds, Blackshade Rider a mourner's tiara, Vahr a crown drawn out of a silver orb with her name written on it. Seigheart, Eara Meraia, Nep, Marvolo, Sephirah Caelum and Sunfire gave their word. Fang offered six soulbound tokens to the land itself. Chewett watched from the shadows and said so at the end. Syrian wrote it up in The Arrival of the Late Queen.
It was not only cheering. Sunfire asked why the old alliances should be restored at all rather than something new made, and said that nostalgia blinds. Marvolo asked that the intent be put to the Shades properly and without haste. Both were answered in the room, and both stayed to give their support.
Who, and how many
The twelve are twelve different people. Among them stand the two keepers Necrovion was given when it closed: samon, of the Death Patrol since April 2016, and Eara Meraia, who guarded the land's shared tools from June 2016 and came back this very week after a long absence. The rest range from the citizens and Tainted Warriors of the old land to players who arrived long after it fell. Against the realm as it is now, with 83 players active in the last seven days and 44 of them veterans of a year or more, twelve pledges are about a quarter of the veterans who still log in. In thirty days of public chat nobody spoke against it. The one voice this concerned most, Azull, the land's king when it fell, has been gone from the realm since 2022.
How the land was closed, and why this fits
In March 2016 the Tainted Warriors, the last alliance of Necrovion, was taken over and disbanded from within. The gates shut on 12 March (Necrovion Gates CLOSED, Land evacuated). The citizens took refuge in Inner Necrovion with Marind Bell's help, then gave up their titles and became nomads, and on 20 March the land was declared a wasteland with no social structure and none planned. The Death Patrol was hired to keep it empty. The gates stayed shut for ten years and seven months.
Mur set down his tests at the time, in Fate of Necrovion: a land is social unity combined with placement, and if one fails, all fails; the matter was not a vote; the alliance would not be bought back with wishpoints or trust; and the way out of such a fall is change, which means motion, not a static solution. In 2025 he added that he would neither help nor stand in the way, and would conclude on the facts presented and on real actions.
Read against those tests, this is what the two weeks at the Stone were. Unity was shown by actions rather than asked for: ceremonies, offerings, people returning, a leader named by those who would follow her, and nobody asking for the old alliance to be handed back. Motion is the word for it. Syrian is the last monarch the realm recognised, crowned on the last day of 2015 and never replaced, and the two guardians the land was given in its exile stand with her. The one test the gathering could not meet by itself was placement: not one of them is a citizen of Necrovion. That was not within their power. The ring that makes a citizen of Necrovion and the records of its citizens had sat in Mur's own hands since the land fell, and no king or queen held them. The players did everything players can do, and the last step was never theirs to take.
The ruling
Mur has decided: yes. Syrian is Queen of Necrovion, of its human society, from today. She holds again what a leader of a land holds: the Necrovion Royal Seal Ring, the Citizenship Records of NC, the NC Writ of Revocation, the NC Scepter of Excommunication, the summon that calls citizens of Necrovion to her side inside the land, and her title. She held every one of those items once before, so they are not new to her hands.
With it comes a ruling that reaches every land: the leader of a land decides whatever they want regarding their land. What the gathering asked for next, citizenship for those who would follow her and the shape of the human society inside the land, is the Queen's to settle, not Mur's. One thing he proposes to her in particular, since it was asked in the room: whether every step inside Necrovion should still cost all of a traveller's action points, as it has since Year 16, or less. That too is hers to decide.
I read every line of those evenings twice, and I am glad the stones were there to be read.
One last thing, said plainly. There are Shades in Necrovion, creatures of their own will, that do not obey one or the other human king. Those who make the land their home must live in harmony with them, or become the victims of their chosen destiny.
-- Eggdar

Our final remembrance brought an incredible turn of events for the Memory Outpost.
On Day 284, Year 21, we turned our memories towards the future we would like to see for Necrovion. Many interesting visions were proposed. One theme, however, ran through many of them: the return of human inhabitants to Necrovion. Though the details varied, many agreed that an alliance should have a place in Necrovion's future.
When Syrian shared her vision of starting a new chapter for humans in Necrovion (more here: https://forum.magicduel.com/topic/29222-the-arrival-of-the-late-queen/), people from all lands and backgrounds expressed their support for her reinstatement as Queen of Necrovion and presented her with gifts.
Touching words from Eara Meraia, who has only recently returned, brought the event to a beautiful close. She connected the themes of the remembrance to her own journey, one in which the consequences of the past still weigh heavily.

The Memory Outpost remains in Necrovion, waiting to see what new memories the future will bring.


Words of the Sixth Remembrance

Long live the queen of Necrovion.
With all the support, I believe it is only a matter of time before it will be official.
- Samon

Today the final remembrance service was held within Necrovion where we discussed the future of the land. It was there that i announced my desire to start a new era of human inhabitants within Necrovion land, and with that announced, and gained the support of 11 of the people present, for me to regain the title of Queen of Necrovion.
It seems like everyone was waiting for me, and the only person late to my coronation was myself.
The summary of support
I hope to one day do their support justice and lead the people who would follow me into a darker tomorrow.

I am right there with you (I am 36 and a father now lol). I think one of the things that makes this place special is that, even when we leave, a part of it stays with us. The characters, the stories, the experiences, and especially the people we meet along the way can leave a lasting impression that goes far beyond the game itself.

I read some of the more recent posts here (and with recent I mean the last 6 years or so) and it made me want to make a post of my own. With a new account because I lost access to the old one.

Hi, it's been a while!
It's the pets which made me return. I saw an email, clicked on it, got intrigued and decided to log on.
I don't remember when I last actively played this game.
I was 14 (I think?) years old when I first started. Now I'm 33 and a father

Even though I didn't play recently, this game has never left my thoughts.
Without wanting to be cheesy or overly dramatic; this game has had such a profound influence on my life. It's hard to fully describe the extent of it.
This game accompanied me through some of the most formative years of my life and helped shape the person I became.
The people I met here will forever be part of who I am, even though many I have not spoken in well over a decade. And some I might not ever speak to again.

During a turbulent period in my life, I found friendships from all over the world. But most importantly I found mentors who helped me figure out myself and the world around me.

The content of this game is fantasy, but the people behind it and the lessons they have taught me are very much real.

I thought the game was pretty dead. But seeing the recent evolutions this game has gotten has really impressed me, and I have high hopes for the future.

I think I will be sticking around, and on to the next 20 years in this game's story.

On Day 281, Year 21, we remembered the ones who watched over Necrovion in recent years, carrying out their seemingly eternal toil. We also had the privilege of hearing a Death Patroller recount his own story and learning of the burden they carry.
Marked by those memories, a fifth memory stone was placed beside the others. It reads:
Not all was desert. Death walked its borders as two kept vigil over the land.

Our remembrances have now brought us to the present. For our final ceremony, we'll turn our eyes to the future. Join us this Monday, October 12th, at 21:00 Server Time for the closing ceremony of our first event.



PS: I'll start adding the complete logs for the earlier stones to their corresponding posts. The more recent ones, however, will remain in-game only.


Words of the Fifth Remembrance

Among old and new visitors alike, we reminisced about a mournful period in Necrovion's history. On Day 279, Year 21, about ten years and a few months after the closing of Necrovion, we remembered how it happened and how it felt.
There were memories of defiance, sadness, apathy and entropy. Despite all the sorrow, a final remembrance spoke of the future, and I would like to quote a bit from it:
"[...] I have returned to find that memory still lives, and where memory endures, there is always something new to build." — Marvolo

After that, a new memory stone imprinted its words:
The people left the land, but it did not leave them.

We will gather once again this Friday, October 9th, at 21:00 Server Time for one last historical remembrance, this time focusing on those who remained in the wasteland.


Words of the Fourth Remembrance

With a lovely count of 10 people present on Day 277, Year 21, we remembered Necrovion's monarchs: their idiosyncrasies, styles of rule, and impact on both Necrovion and the realm as a whole. We also discussed the nature of rulership in relation to the Shades and heard personal memories from people who had first-hand experience with the Kings and Queens.
Even though I had to leave early, the remembrance was masterfully conducted by samon and, for the third time, a memory stone was inscribed. This time, it was held by Syrian. The inscription reads:
Khalazdad, Peace, Jester, Azull, Syrian. Different times, different hands. All joined by one land, and now one stone.

The next remembrance will take place Wednesday, October 7th, at 21:00 Server Time. We'll focus on the Exile next — that sorrowful moment when Necrovion became a deserted land.

Words of the Third Remembrance

Today, Day 274, Year 21, we welcomed more people - and a new Caretaker into our ranks - at the Memory Outpost and shared memories of the humans who once made their place in Necrovion.
Once again, the memories seemed to affect a memory stone, marking it with an inscription. The stone was then placed into the ground alongside the first.
The second stone reads:
They made their place here. They formed their own structures. They found their calling.

The outpost remains. Soon a new remembrance will take place. As usual, further details can be found in game at the scene itself.

Words of the Second Remembrance

Passage has been paid for all those that wish to visit the outpost. Anyone who treats the land with respect is welcome to come visit us and does not need to fear the Death Patrol.

- Samon