Improving the House of Helterists

One of the things I've learned as a rising faction starter is that its incredibly important to postulate your idea and leave it open to discussion and criticism. That way you can craft your idea to accommodate the community's interests better.

Your faction should always have a reason to exist. "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." Thus, it is important to have a solid foundation upon which to rest your idea. A backstory is paramount. Also, what contribution would this faction make to the galactic community? A faction should inspire interesting RP opportunities, considering our goal here is to have an awesome time RPing. Thus you shouldnt design a faction solely after 'being a nuisance to humans' because that doesnt have a great amount of depth. Perhaps something more like 'protecting avian interests' which offers more expansive RP opportunities. The former focuses on humans, possibly excluding other races from the picture and limiting the possible unforeseen paths your faction could take. The latter is more realistic, while allowing a wider range of RP opportunities.

Another thing is make sure there is something that makes your faction different from the others. For example, if I am correct, the Holy Fleet is an avian thing and serves to protect Avian interests. Possibly that spot is already filled and your faction would be redundant.

In conclusion, Find a niche for your faction to fill. If there are none, thats okay. One will surely come up. When that niche is found, develop your background and offer it to the community for criticism and fine tuning. In my opinion this is the best way to create a decent faction (even though I am a total noob to RP, hopefully I have offered some insight and stuff). Wish you luck!

And thus the engineer ceased his ramblings.

 

What I mean is find a proverbial 'hole' in the galaxy, somewhere there could be something great but there isn't. Again, think about why your faction would be formed. Perhaps an anti-religious group like you said, against the Holy Fleet. This is an example of a niche or hole. Recently there has been much animosity felt toward the fleet because of racism and stuff, and many have come to dislike them. Those are the types of opportunities to look for, take advantage of social trends.

A faction's popularity obviously depends entirely on what the community wants. Find that, and you have a firm foundation for your fabulous fanatical faction.

 

Personally, I don't mind the anti-human aspect and this is actually a possibility. Holy Fleet-USCM tensions are rising. I say go for it. It may be able to be improved, but keep in mind that you can't please everybody.

 

Yes, good.
Suggestions instead of destructive criticism.
You get a million points and a free coupon to use at your nearest object store.

I agree, though, this would work excellently as an anti-Holy Fleet group, maybe working in coalition with the Floran tribe, or being it's own entity with beliefs far more radical than those of the Knight's Order, etc.

On another note, this is actually calming me down a bit. I was a bit worked up over this entire mess earlier today, but seeing it from an outside, MWAHAHAHA-ish perspective is actually quite nice.

 

This post is so big that I have to split it in two. Brace yourselves.

Lemme break it down for you from each and every single section of how it's described in the Wiki:

This is pretty much the tip of the iceberg in the long list of problems this faction has. I'm not against the RP of kidnapping/torture/assassionation/etc., but it should not be the main focus of your faction. There's a very good reason for this: It's going to make your faction look bad right off the bat, and because it's going to make you guys look bad, you won't be able to genuinely influence anything in the long run, which is exactly what the endgame of your faction exists for. "Oh, but we know that they'll never make it that far! They're just an antagonistic force for the sake of <insert reasoning here>!" That's all well and good, but bear in mind: Giving your faction a purpose that is doomed to fail, and giving them no purpose whatsoever, is exactly the same. The point of a faction is to constantly strive to something; if you make it so that the thing they strive for is doomed to fail, and will never, ever happen, then what's the point of the faction? Just be randomly crazy and shout at people randomly and do random acts of malice? I could make a character that does that all on their own, easily. What point would there be to join?

Secondly, this using the aforementioned as ways to aggravate the humans (or any other race) to go to war with the Avians is completely, utterly needless. There are a variety of ways to coax these feelings without having to go into these methods that will actually make you guys look good! Literally, there are various pockets and groups of people who have expressed discontent with how the Holy Fleet does things, and that alone is already enough to sow discontent. Propaganda, pamphlets, "educating" people on what is to come, that's how it should properly be done.

Thirdly, you need to really re-address what a cult actually is. A cult doesn't have to be filled with completely crazy people: A cult in itself is usually just a smaller religious group that is not part of a widely accepted religious group. There can be people who are mentally unstable within your group, but above all, for the type of cult you want to get into, you need to embrace the concepts of brainwashing and recruitment. Repeating verses daily of whatever tome you derive your material from ICly, rituals, repeated actions that occur daily that reinforce the notion the cult stands for, that's what actually makes people start to lose touch with reality, but also strengthens their loyalty to the cult itself. If you recruit purely crazy people, what makes you think they'll stick with you to the end? What ensures that they will speak in the name of whatever ideal and thought-form you prescribe them? If you answer is "because they enjoy random violence", you are doing something wrong, especially since anyone can be randomly violent whenever they want without the necessity of having a cult to secure their feelings about it.

Finally, there's the purpose of the whole thing in the first place. I took a moment to dig up the wiki page of the leader in question, and here's how it's generally outlined:

This contradicts a couple of points you've established. For one thing, if humans are destined to win, wouldn't it be easier to /help/ them instead of provoking them? You could sit back and say, "Oh, but provoking them will make them pull their guns out and fight back!" Yes, except there's one problem. They won't point their guns at the Avian race as a whole. They'll point them at your faction. This is the equivalent of presuming that by poking a hive of bees, the bees will in turn retaliate against every single human being ever. People, when threatened, will only go after the thing that threatened them in the first place, and nothing more.

Then there's the details about what race sides with who. If the Hylotls and Apex are siding with the humans, shouldn't they be banned from joining as well? After all, if they're with the humans, then that must mean that they're destined to also battle against the Avians, which puts them in the same category as the humans. Why have them join the faction as well? There are way too many discrepancies in this.

Fix it.

 

(Part 2)

If humans are the target of all this, they shouldn't be able to join the House at all. The rest is fine, though while the weapons thing is good, the primary focus should be to have locations that enlighten others of the cause you want to present. Think Scientology, which is an excellent example of what you want to pull off.

This entire thing falls apart when you bear in mind that the Human Empire has just recently collapsed after the destruction of it's homeworld through ooey-gooey tentacle madness 7 years ago. The Apex are more likely to fall under this description, since it would clash more easily: There's even lore on the friction of the concept of Big Ape vs. the existence of Kluex, thanks to Rochard Hawkings. This needs to be completely re-written; the end-game doesn't have to change, but this whole thing does, for the sake of making it more believable, which ensures that people can actually be brainwashed into joining this thing in the first place.

You should avoid a Hierarchy until there are more people in the faction. Keep it simple as Xewyck being the cult leader, and everyone else just being simple followers given specific tasks from him. Once you get around 8-9, then you should start making a proper hierarchy. Otherwise, you won't have anyone else to deal with the other jobs that should be dealt with: There is such a thing as multitasking.

Now that I've dissected this thoroughly, here is my advice:

• Adjust the belief and flip it around. Instead of splitting all the races in two teams against each other, have them all side against one race. This would entail flipping the role of the Avians: Instead of having the humans win and receive whatever Avians survive as their masters (which let's face it, will never, ever happen), have all the races seek out to destroy the "Avian menace", and then what remains of that race can be given to those in the cult promised a new land, which is whatever remains of Avian culture. You get all of the genocide, keep all of the madness, yet maintain the practicality of the idea and even go as far as to open your doors to /anyone/ who wishes to bask in the glorious light of what is to come. Otherwise, you will literally have this end the same way as the real-world scenario: Everyone dies, and the leader is put to death. Not so fun, is it?
• Use as much propaganda, psuedo-science, and psychological manipulation as possible to get people in your ranks. Pamphlets, devices that measure "the amount of purity inside you", hypnosis, powers of suggestion, public presentations, public speaking, everything, anything within your power that compels not-so-smart people to sit back and drool and go, "Oh hey, I think they're nice people, let me join them." Use brainwashing within your ranks to reinforce loyalty, as a proper cult should. It doesn't even have to be physical: Simple prayers, hymns, group meetings about the nature of what you do, all of that can bring about the mentality of "hey im in something pretty cool" in someone, and influence them a lot, while enforcing a feeling of community amongst members.
  
• Do not use torture as your primary methods. Do not endorse it publicly, do not talk about it, don't even have your members bring it up casually. This isn't to say don't do it at all, but rather the most effective ways to have it done is either a) Doing it to prisoners, or b) Integrate it as part of the brainwashing protocol or punishment for "misdeeds", like a Flagellant. Come off to others as friendly as possible, which is a great appeal, especially for broken youths.
  
• Make the lore of the cult as you go along. Have your leader think up religious documents, receive holy messages, etc. for added dramatic effect. Use current political happenings as part of the lore you make up; Floran expulsion from Liberty Mills, the Holy Fleet, everything you can get your hands on. He is the leader, and it is his belief that compels everyone else.

As for the knee-deepness of the roleplay that you're in, you should've probably addressed it first before doing any moves. The most I can suggest is to do some light retcon involving what was said and then re-structure it so that whatever is changed reflects whatever changes you want to do.

I hope this helps, because while this idea has some promise (as deep as I had to go to dig for it), it really, really needs some fixing because otherwise it will explode in the faces of everyone participating in it.

 

Pretty much, but you don't have to be pacifists. Just don't make the focus completely on torture. I also stated to go against the Avians as a whole, not just Kluex, but if you want to do that, then be my guest.

 

Torture is, more or less, mostly just one tormenting a man both physically and mentally for their own amusement. While they'll reason they can get answers from someone and teach them a lesson from it, which they can, it ultimately will and always will be just for the sadistic joy the torturer feels.

Granted your faction could torture folks, though depending on how they go about it (And if it's anything like how I do it), it won't look good on their image and will make the Helterists just look like a bunch of insane people. Unless they can justify their torture and make it not look like they want to do it but /have/ to do it, then that could work, however.