Thanks to the coding team and classleads/combat council, a number of
recent updates to announce!

GENERAL
-------
- Merentesh has recently placed for sale in the Miscellaneous Artefacts
shop in Delos an artefact drinking horn, which replenishes itself with
30 draughts of ale every Achaean month. It costs 150 credits as-is. The
type of liquid with which the horn refills may be customised with
additional credits -- you could have it refilled with bourbon, whiskey,
wine, jasmine tea, and more. See HELP ARTEFACTS MISC for details.
- The SHEATHE and DRAW commands have been reworked to allow these
variations: SHEATHE <sword#>, SHEATHE SWORD|<sword#> IN <scabbard#>, DRAW
<sword#>, DRAW <scabbard#> from which you wish to draw.

APOSTASY
--------
- The DEMON REFUGE command can no longer be stacked; i.e., if you have
begun a refuge, issuing the command again will do nothing.
- The DEMON TRACE command now requires that you have equilibrium to give
it. Both this and the above are meant to prevent being forced to stack
the commands to your detriment.
- A successful CATHARSIS will now increase the killer's necromantic
essence.

CHIVALRY
--------
- The SWORDPLAY ability will now function even if you have something
wielded in your other hand, as long as it is not another weapon. (A
shield does not count as a weapon.)

HARMONICS
---------
- PERCUSSIA now respects the elevation in which it was played.
- Also, if you are deaf, PERCUSSIA will only stun you for half the
normal stun time.

GROVES
------
- Quarterstaves summoned from now on will have a higher to-hit, 160. Be
warned that this may be tweaked, or the quarterstaff damage may be
lowered, if this proves to be too powerful.
- Grove BEES will now return to their hive when killed.

HEALING
-------
- Attempting to heal insomnia, deafness, or blindness from someone who
does not have those "afflictions" will no longer give them a message, to
prevent flooding the target with those messages.

METAMORPHOSIS
-------------
- You can now target bodyparts with the MAUL command, i.e. MAUL
<somebody you hate a lot> HEAD.

NECROMANCY
----------
- You can now DRAW HEART from a corpse which has been stripped of its
truename by an Occultist, where you could not before.
- Traps were, under some special circumstances, stopping blackwinded
adventurers. No more.
- DECAY damage to denizens and creatures has been increased.

OCCULTISM
---------
- You can now draw a TRUENAME from a corpse that has had a heart drawn
from it, where you could not before.
- Traps were, under some special circumstances, stopping astralformed
adventurers. No more.
- WARP damage to denizens and creatures has been increased.

RUNELORE
--------
- If an implanted totem has been designated the property of an
organisation, runelorist members of that organisation may now sketch
runes upon it, even if the totem is not loyal to them.
- Runeblade runes sketched outside the arena should no longer disappear
upon exiting the arena.

SPIRITUALITY
------------
- ANGEL TRACE and ANGEL REFUGE have been changed to require that you
possess equilibrium to issue the command, as per the corresponding
Apostasy commands.
- Similar to the change to Apostasy Catharsis, ABSOLVE will now return a
measure of devotion to the enacter.

TAROT
-----
- DEATH tarot now stops when the target leaves the room by flying or
entering the trees or enters blackwind/astralform, or the tarot flinger
is feared out of the room, or the target dies for another reason before
Death completes.

VISION
------
- TREEWATCH no longer shows those who are phased.

THINGS TO COME
--------------
More skills updates are forthcoming, including:
- improved Bard bashing,
- rebalancing of the formula for Disembowel to prevent one-shotting,
- prevention of stun via Hugalaz rune,

and more. In NON-skills-related news:
- new areas continue to be developed, and you should expect to see more
being discovered soon, though much of our efforts have gone towards
building islands which can only be accessed via
- ships, upon which currently any spare time I have beyond day-to-day
maintenance and skills updates is focused.
- We also have several RP events large and small in the works, as well
as
- more new artefacts to come.

If things seem quiet for a while, that only means that we are plotting
something!

Penned by my hand on the 22nd of Ero, in the year 452 AF.