Direction
We handled player investigations & appeals this week, internal audits, and department organization.

• MonMarty performed individual direction for staff members and server upkeep & maintenance.
• LumosJared performed individual direction for Lore members.
• Birdsfoot_violet performed individual direction for Lore members and handled player reports.
• BillyTheScruffy performed individual direction for PR members.
• Derpadillo performed individual direction for Quest members and continued the Ezekiel megaproject.
• CS_Birb performed individual direction for Tech members and performed server maintenance.
• QGMK performed individual direction for Game members, hosted Survival Staff meetings, and created the Survival Staff Website.

Lore
Lore Updates:
Changes Submitted by Birdsfoot_violet, Scribbe & MonMarty

We’ve identified an issue with folks having trouble connecting to the server/crashing in certain parts of the city if they have not updated to 1.17. We recommend if you are having this issue and have not yet updated, to update, and if you are still having the issue on 1.17 to make a ticket so we can help troubleshoot.
It looks like this may be an MPM bug. Make a ticket providing Birb a crash report file if it persists.

If you see Jimmy in Regalia, please do not hit him. He’s a bit of a rogue NPC and he belongs to a different world. He has feelings. And he will hit you back.

Minor change regarding Ailor cultures. If you don’t care about Ailor Cultures, you can skip reading this.
Imperial Culture has been renamed to Regal Culture on page https://wiki.massivecraft.com/Regal. Regal Cultures (group) has been renamed to Crownland Cultures (group). Fineclass Cultures (group) has been renamed to Pompland Cultures (group) on page https://wiki.massivecraft.com/Cultures

An additional paragraph was added to Regal Culture “controversies”:
Furthermore, they also believe that the very act of colonial exploitation and imperialism, the act of settling and annexing foreign lands and stripping them of resources, creates animosity that makes the Empire itself immensely fragile. Regal cultured believe that every region in the Empire, no matter how far from the capital, should immediately transition towards a heartland province, so that they may have the same rights, laws, and economics applied to them. They believe that the culture war extends itself also to a concept of “foreign otherness”, where those in the Archipelago do not truly consider Ithanians as Regalians, but rather as subject people’s, an attitude which in turn wavers Ithanian loyalty to Regalia, and results in diplomatic incidents as diplomats are unable to contain their sense of superiority over the provinces. It should as such be made abundantly clear: The Regal culture is the only Ailor culture that rejects the concept of Colonialism and Imperialism through the scope of exploiting foreign lands and cultures and peoples for the benefit of the homeland. The Regal culture wants desperately to create an intellectually and emotionally equal society by uplifting the realms that currently lack loyalty through inclusion.

So why is this being done? Well, someone raised the point that optically speaking, “Imperial” as a word has connotations. Thinking back of even pop media like the Galactic Empire, Imperials were always the bad guys. Imperialism as a term itself also still continues to make victims in the real world through the aftereffects of centuries of colonial abuse and exploitation. The irony however is that the Imperial Culture is in fact the least Imperial out of all cultures, what with the New Regalians and Ithanians being the most colonial-hating and the Velheim not even acknowledging sovereign boundaries. To fix this issue, we opted to rename Imperial Culture to Regal, and then also include the above paragraph to reinforce, and also make it clear to those who skim the text and don’t read between the lines, that Regal Culture is strictly anti-Colonialism and anti-Imperialism, but rather about urbanization and centralization.

Small modification to Mai-Allar speciation:
Mai-Allar are anywhere between slim and muscular, while having a general aquatic body. For the majority of the subrace, heads are shaped like those of specific marine species (orca, most shark species, hammerhead shark (including the head shape), dusky dolphin, or dunkleosteus). They can also have any of the aforementioned species skin/scale colors and patterns (including a shark-like appearance, with orca body coloring). There exist also a smaller minority of fish species, with heads shaped like any type of fish (there are some exceptions, fish that look too alien or un-fishlike may be non-canon, if you are unsure, please make a ticket on the Discord to discuss availability). That being said, those wish fish heads (due to their lack of predator physiology) are generally seen as the less-efficient more “gremlin-like” variant among the Mai-Allar, though they can also use different Body Shapes than the more common predator Mai-Allar.

For a long time, it’s been kind of an implicit lore thing that only older players remember that Eronidas that enter Regalia from outside are made to do hard labour for the Empire. Since that came up in a prog, it seemed kind of important to typify what exactly these camps are, what they do, and what the Eronidas think of them. Link here!: https://wiki.massivecraft.com/Eronidas#Eronidas_in_Regalia

World System Updates:
Change submitted by MonMarty

A new micro function for the System!
Non-Family Courtiers have been added to the Imperial court page: https://wiki.massivecraft.com/Imperial_Family#Non-Family_Courtiers entirely comprised of retired Noble Characters/retired Noble Houses. These Characters have progression functions, and can be interacted with through progressions for the specific skills they have.

(Note, Dianne Black is still pending, I got overly excited about her presence and put her up there, but Darkarely has not replied yet to my request for inclusion, so she may be withdrawn if things don’t pan out).

Future retirees with adequate function that I can re-use for the system may look forward to also being on this page:
https://forums.massivecraft.com/threads/armies-navies-marshals-cabinet-explained.98275/
https://forums.massivecraft.com/threads/court-jobs-explained.98278/

Event Updates:
Change submitted by Dedjok

The Regalian Volunteer Guild’s list of quests has been updated! Four new quests have appeared, with repeatable ones sticking around a bit longer so everyone who wants to get involved with it can. From here on out, new quests will pop up every Monday unless posted otherwise. Thank you so much to everyone who’s been involved so far!

Roleplay Updates:
Changes submitted by Birdsfoot_violet

https://forums.massivecraft.com/threads/to-be-dutiful-chancellor-mandate.98247/
https://forums.massivecraft.com/thr…-15-uncomfortable-choices.98271/#post-1028775

Game
Worked on the Essa spawn rework, vote crate additions, a new feature for factions called “protected factions”, and future additions to the Ezekiel event. Upon a 6th+ mute offense, a player will be muted for 1 month each time instead of proceeding to being jailed. More information can be found here: https://www.massivecraft.com/rules. Invisibility Potions are now craftable along with other potion types by placing the ingredients in a crafting table with a bottle of water!

• Fiend_Of_Massive – Assisted players, built for the Ezekiel event and Essa spawn reworking.
• wynstiel – Assisted players, helped with the Essa spawn rework.
• Sevak – Assisted players, tested new factions feature, worked on future event planning.
• Effloresce – Assisted players with tickets.
• skhosh – Worked on Isldar Races Dungeon, assisted players, tested Sieges.
• Rahm_Kota – Assited players, built for the Ezekiel event and Essa spawn reworking.
• MoistWhenWet (BlueChaos)– Worked on Mythic Mobs.
• Njmcr – Worked on Essa spawn, ticket investigations.
• QGMK aided players, handled appeals and reports and tested Sieges.

Quest
More work was done on the 1.17 blocks quest, mainly bug fixing and reducing line-bloat. Additionally, quest writing was done to support an upcoming Regalia event. This week also included a high focus on player support through the ticket system.

• Derpadillo: Player support through tickets.
• Iyyiushi: 1.17 Block and Regalia event quest writing. Player support through tickets.

PR
This week PR mainly focused on preparing future projects, player spotlights etc. Social medias have been updated as usual.

• Obilvaify: prepared future survival announcements and worked on the Kingdom Plugin and Ingame Economy player guides.
• Femma: Did social media upkeep, posting to both Twitter and Pinterest.
• Ocularum: worked on resource pack testing, spotlights, and did some event acting.
• seoulmate: posted player spotlights, announce the new decoheads, and got the secret santa lore item out!
• slurmancer: did PMC upkeep, aminoapp research, started new roleplay spotlights

World
World Staff have been picking up the pace, and the department is spread out over several ongoing projects:

• MonMarty: finished construction on the third noble cluster and started on building a castle on a cliff nearby.
• WaterDruppel: worked on estate decoration, fixed up world edit artefacts and rebuilt burnt city houses.
• SpunSugar: decorated the gardens of the third noble cluster and decorated the inside of the first estate there.
• Bunemma: worked on estate decoration, removed the mercenary keep and did event setup.
• Patsie: worked on large event setup for the upcoming magic fair.
• EdnaMode_: worked on large event setup for a Lore event.