We're pleased to bring you the next phase of the shrine system update. There is one more phase following this, which will involve the introduction of a new conflict system to facilitate large scale clashes between the various divine orders of Achaea (along with an array of new shrine powers!). Sharpen your swords and blunt your clubs, because glory awaits.

There are several significant changes to how shrines work in this phase. Here are all the details:

Listofferings
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The previous listofferings system has been entirely redone - the old version was entirely unsalvageable and made it near impossible for us to make any kind of significant changes. All current functionality is tied up in the LISTOFFERINGS SUMMARY command now that will take a variety of arguments. Offering logs are now automatically cleared on a yearly basis.

Divine Essence
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There are now two types of essence. Both of course are drawn from your god, but this allows us to resolve a lot of the historical problems. The first type is personal essence, and the second type is order essence. Due to the recent events, all essence has been reset.

Additionally, essence yields when offering have been adjusted fairly significantly down, so the numbers are less extreme to deal with in all cases. We'll be monitoring this closely, as adjustments will almost certainly be necessary.

Personal Essence
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Personal essence is the essence granted to individual members of the order based on their contributions. I.e. the more you offer or kill people as a member of the mark, the more essence you'll generate (as previously). Personal essence does not have an upper limit.

Order Essence
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Order essence is generated along with personal essence, but there's one major difference: order essence is capped. Offerings can never push an order passed 3000000 maximum essence. However, sovereignty can push you above this limit (see sovereignty below).

You can use the ORDER ESSENCE command for information about your current essence and how much your order has acquired in their primary pool.

Shrine powers
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We've split shrine powers into two categories: lesser miracles and greater miracles. It's always been very hard to justify a lot of the shrine powers because certain ones (naming no names worldburn) outshine all the others by such a significant degree. Lesser shrine miracles will now draw from your personal essence reserves, and greater miracles shall draw directly from the order's essence reserves.

This has made the greater miracles a lot more costly for an order - you are going to notice using these. The only current greater miracles are worldburn, erecting shrines, and judgement (see judgement in the defiling section below). You can expect more greater miracles in the next phase of the shrine update. Every other shrine power now draws from personal essence.

Raising shrines
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* An area can now have no more than 6 shrines raised in it in total. This is six shrines total, not per order.

* Each order can now only have a maximum of 20 shrines raised at a time. This number raises by 2 for each area an order claims sovereignty over (see sovereignty below). The master shrine for the order does not contribute towards the number of shrines that an order has raised for the purposes of this limit.

* The more shrines that an order has raised, the more costly network-wide shrine powers shall be to initiate.

* The willpower cost on raising shrines has been removed when raising outside of territory owned by either a city or an order. When raising in territory owned by a city or order, it still costs 50% of your maximum willpower.

Sovereignty
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An order that has a 4/6 shrine majority in an area will claim sovereignty over that area. Sovereignty shows up on survey.

Each area you claim sovereignty in increases the number of shrines your order can raise by 2. So if you have sovereignty in 4 areas, you can raise a total of 28 shrines rather than the standard 20.

Every Achaean day, all those orders that hold sovereignty over an area shall gain essence directly for their order's essence reserves. This is the only way to push order essence reserves above 3000000. The max you can achieve through sovereignty is determined by how many shrines you have - for each shrine your order has raised, you can gain up to 100000 more essence above the base cap (so if you have 20 shrines, you can max out at 5000000 essence through sovereignty). So that you guys are aware going forward, there will be a very compelling reason to obtain as much essence as you can.

Defiling shrines
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* When a shrine is CONSECRATEd, that shrine may not be DESECRATEd for 1 hour. This is only the case when consecrated by a player; the auto consecration mechanic does not convey this protection.

* DEFILEing and SANCTIFYing in an area where an order has claimed sovereignty (and it is not your order's sovereignty) will cause your offerings to be worth less in terms of essence (takes longer to raise/drop shrines in that area).

* When you have dropped a shrine to the dormant state through defiling, you now have two options. Using denizen corpses is now insufficient to push a shrine to the point of complete destruction, so you may:
1. Use a player corpse to finish the job. The player whose corpse you are using must be at least a Logosian (level 80), unless they're alternatively a member of the order that the shrine you are defiling belongs to.
-or-
2. You may use the new JUDGEMENT shrine power. This power can only be enacted at a dormant shrine of a god and is an investable order power. Beseeching your god for judgement at a shrine is fairly costly in essence (much more so than using a player corpse), and consecutive uses over the course of an Achaean month will scale the cost up for each use to unsustainable levels.

This is a pretty significant update with a lot of values having changed, so we'll be closely monitoring this over the coming days and making adjustments to get everything in place for the final phase.

Penned by My hand on the 2nd of Sarapin, in the year 729 AF.