I agree with many points that the others have made. It is a hectic time of year, and while this game has been excellent, and I enjoy it, and I do want it to keep going, it's a fact that it's no longer "shiny and new". I do think that has somewhat diminished everyone's motivation to get posts up ASAP, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. When we started, it was usually quite easy for me to write something for Ah-shahran, because I only had a few concepts in mind. As he becomes more fleshed out, with more history, and more interaction within the game, he also becomes more complicated to write. Not all the time--sometimes a situation is simple and his reaction is obvious--but it's enough to make a difference in my overall posting speed.
And I definitely agree that our current scene is quite difficult to navigate. I actually got paralyzed with trying to figure out how to translate the thoughts and feelings that I came up with for Ah-shahran into an effective IC post, and have failed to do so multiple times. I think that's largely because the PbP IC format doesn't lend itself well to this scene. I'm sure all of us have a lot of conflicted thoughts and feelings, and without being at a table, where we could read the moods of others, see how expressions change as we start saying something, it's just hard to throw something out as a definitive statement.
So maybe we should hash things out behind the scenes, out of character, in this thread, before going back to the IC thread. It's not something we'd normally want to do, but this is not a normal situation. It's a critical junction in the story, in Velani's development, and likely in everyone else's development as well.
With that in mind, here's what I've been thinking.
First, there is absolutely no way that Ah-shahran would offer himself to this ritual. The cycle of life, death, and rebirth is very important to Devas in general, and it's extremely important to Ah-shahran. There's a part of him that wishes he could let go and "be the solution", but he can't bear to interrupt that cycle for himself (even temporarily--see below). On top of that, Ah-shahran is nearly certain that he's close to falling as a Deva--that is, if this lifetime goes down the wrong paths, his next incarnation would be as a Rakshasha--and he's not about to take a drastic action that is so closely tied to darkness.
Second, despite all that, Ah-shahran has surprisingly few qualms about the idea of someone becoming a Revenant. Unlike normal undead, who defy and defile both the life/death/rebirth cycle (very important to the primal source) and the afterlives of the divine, Revenants are only a temporary stay on such paths. A Revenant always has a purpose, and when that purpose is complete, the Raven Queen sends the soul involved back to the normal flow, likely modified by their actions while they were a Revenant.
If we can work something out where these unnatural undead will give up that abberant existence and return to eventual rest, Ah-shahran is for that. Someone willingly sacrificing their life to accomplish great deeds is a long established tradition, and one he can support. He's conflicted because he's not sure he can countenance the sacrifice of Velani's baby, even if Velani is willing, and he's unable to offer himself in her place to null that decision. If he could be assured that the baby would in some fashion or other be taken care of, and if Velani was then willing to go forward with this, he'd be absolutely supportive.
Other people's thoughts?
t~
