It's come to my attention via numerous complaints that some of you were
offended by one of Sartan's shouts that referred to rape the other day.
I can understand and appreciate that some people would be offended by
this. However, I hope you'll look at Achaea and note that generally
speaking, we're pretty strict about issues of rape. People have been
shrubbed for it.

Having said that, anyone who has read the history knows that rape has
played an important role in Achaea's history. The most influential race
in its history, the humans, were created when the Aldar, Maya, was
raped. Would we put up with a character running around raping other
characters? Definitely not. Would we put up with a well roleplayed rape
that had a point to it, and in which the player behind the character
being raped consented? Probably.

The point is that while I do understand that rape is offensive (though
I'm unsure why the frequent murders here aren't more offensive), and
while we definitely do restrict that sort of thing in deference to the
strong feelings it arouses, you can't expect to exist in a world with
other people and never be offended. It will happen sometimes, I
guarantee it. We control the more egregious offenders, but balancing the
offensiveness of something with good roleplaying is a legitimate
concern. We're willing to tolerate some people being offended by some
things, and, in fact, don't have a way to stop it unless we took away
everyone's ability to communicate in any manner at all. Even then,
people would figure out a way to offend each other.

A famous case was in Ultima Online, where a player spelled out 'FUCK
YOU' with fish or some other item. Was there a way for the
administration to anticipate that fish (or whatever) could be used to
offend someone? Not reasonably, no. And the situation is even more
uncontrollable when you're dealing with free communication, such as
says, shouts, tells, channels, and so on.

In any case, we're sorry some of you were offended, but please note that
that sort of thing does not happen publically very often at all.

Penned by my hand on the 19th of Mayan, in the year 281 AF.