[crystalsouls]

So, I felt inclined to add in a bit on this, as the founder of said clan in this post. I play the nymph merchant Stahza who founded the troupe along with a couple of other fantastic Roleplayers who I can sincerely say are a lot better at the bard and theater stuff than I am. I was, however, a rich merchant and could act as sort of a patron of the arts and provide various services that helped the clan along. The main reason I wanted to speak up is just because I felt like only talking about the final performance didn't quite do justice to what an experience the whole thing has been.

This was something we spent weeks preparing, and even the day of myself and another were running around preparing last minute souvenirs (in the form of completely customized player-crafted clothing items and jewelry) and refreshments (completely customized food and drink items). We spent the better part of the day before the performance just getting all this work done because the character that hired the clan got the designs to us the day of. This sounds bad, but I just wanted to emphasize that this all happens with real players doing real work. None of it is automated. You want clothes or snacks there, you need to make the designs and recipes. You need to set aside the time and energy to devote your character to making them. In the end, it just all adds up to a bigger feeling of accomplishment when you pull something off. Be it an event like the ones our clan specialize in, or any other type of entirely player run event. It's also important to note that we had a good chunk of the work done for us because the songs performed were provided to us by the character who hired our clan to do the job. She held a contest for songs glorifying her guild, and then we took these songs and added stage effects, emotes, instrumental verses and so on and so forth to go from basically a line by line poem into a full on experience. Credit where it's due though, a bunch of other players besides our clan contributed by coming up with songs for us to perform.

I got a bit off track there and wanted to talk more about the RP behind our clan in particular. Clans in NWs are not cheap and you need to invest a lot of money and have been around awhile to get one. There's no mandate to what a clan has to be, it can be simply a group of like-minded individuals with a broad purpose, or you can be a very specific clan like ours, or the bastion of erudition (this clan focuses on criminal defense and provides legal counsel in the games player-run court system, but we're not talking about them). Satyrs and Sirens started out with just 3 members, and though upon founding we got some attention, we've had to claw up from the ground over the past half a year, and it felt like the performance the other night was a culmination of that.

Make no mistake, we've done all sorts of performances across Ateraan. Individual members have taken turns playing wandering bards, just singing for the loose coin or two in Gahlen's Tavern. I myself put on a show in the Suden city of Darmahk, which got a bit tense because the Traders of Darmahk tend to have a bit of rivalry with the Merchants of Gahlen, and my character ended up stepping on a few toes while he was down there. We've done campfire storytelling, been hired to provide music at balls, and sing shanties upon a floating fair out on the high seas. Little by little our 3 person clan has built up a reputation based on nothing more than roleplay. Our clan doesn't fight, it doesn't seek political influence, we're pretty much a nonfactor if you measure us in most tangible ways. Still, little by little we built our reputation up with these performances here and there, taking commissions in as they came, and the jobs got bigger and bigger. Honestly it's been exhausting at times. There have been weeks when I didn't even want to think about 'the next performance' just because each one can be so much work. The amphitheater performance really did feel like a massive pay off though, a reward for all those months of work. The playerbase turned out in a huge way for the show, and cheered for the work me and my clanmates put into it. In the end, I suppose I just want to say that it's been a hell of a journey, and though it's already created one of my favorite memories playing NWs, it's not over yet.