Welcome to the House of the Rising Phoenix

Established 5091, Wehnimer's Landing, Elanthia

The House of the Rising Phoenix is dedicated to combating the forces of the Unlife in Elanthia, standing steadfast against the agents of Chaos, releasing the tortured spirits of the Undead from their eternal torment, and dedicating ourselves to the protectection of Elanthia and its citizenry. We strive to maintain honor within the lands, leading by good example. Keeping the records of time and knowledge, we share our libraries of lore and history for the further edification of all who seek knowledge.

“ ...and the coming of the Unlife may take many forms. Some may garb themselves in shapes of terror and evil and dwell in the forgotten places of the world and in the realm of the dead. Others may come among you with secret words of power and mystic symbols to lure even those who would fight hardest against them. ”

Light the Fire

Posted on November 11th, 2009

We're glad to announce the full opening of the House of the Rising Phoenix website. A special mention to Mirarte for maintaining the most recent one, Lauraellen for the first one I can remember, and all those before and after us. This has allowed us to pool all the information together again to present everything. The reasoning for the new website was primarily that Mirarte's service provider lost her data and she wasn't able to spend as much time. Again thanks much to Mirarte. Our thoughts and thanks go out to her. Evialla is the primary Webmaster at this location. All the rest of us are just content providers. :)

Our goal of the website is not to provide information that you can join our House and this is what we're about, while we do provide that information, the hope and overall goal is to provide a community location for members of the House to come and communicate, share stories, and get assistance. Our motivation in adding to the site will be in hopes of attaining that goal by providing tools to encourage and facilitate that relationship.

I have long felt that within Elanthia the House of the Rising Phoenix had such a rich fantasy iconography. Phoenix is both a legendary symbol and a living spirit. As a gaming scenario it has always been one of the richest backgrounds from a lore standpoint in Gemstone IV, in my opinion. You have all sorts of good vs. evil situations and heroic figures who have been members of our Household to reinforce that. We've also showed humility, compassion, and personal loss with Lythe's Folly. I could probably write an article on this alone, but the rich images that are conjured whenever I think of the total picture that is our House it's always been inspiring as a player and grounding as a roleplaying perspective.

Now, we need your help. You can be RP lite or a hardcore roleplayer, you may only be interested in mechanics, or being a merchant, it doesn't matter and we're built for all those types of players, but we want to hear from all of you. Please drop by and register for the forums, drop us an email, anything to show us that you *Hear* us, and know we are here. The House Roster is on the site here, on the forums, and we will post data for all those active through the doors in the past 60 days as a way to shoutout who is active day to day. If you are leaning towards ignoring this call, I'd make a personal request that you find another House. There isn't any pressure on anyone, but if you are that disinterested in the community there are more fitting places to go in Elanthia.

We also need your input. My top request is that people submit in-game logs of recent events, those are always some of the best ways to take the pulse of the world we're in. If you have summaries, written lore stories, or character biographies those are always fantastic also. We'd like the information to be unique, guides and things such as the Undead Catalogue on the forums are productive because they are specific to Phoenix, a guide with room data for herbs is Virilneus realm and he has a fantastic website detailing that data. Most of all we want to hear from all of you in any way you care to be involved.

I look forward to this and hope many of you are excited by this news and spurred to act on those impulses. The plan is to entertain, enjoy, and have a great time.

-Geijon Khyree

The Arkati are Coming...

Posted on October 19, 2009

...to our Quiet Temple.

As we begin to carefully unroll old scrolls and dust off ancient tomes, the scribes are busy at work placing them with great reverence into our Quiet Temple. area of Enlightenment. As always, more shall be forthcoming soon.

Rescuing Ancient Tomes

Posted on October 17, 2009

Much work has been going on behind the scenes, retrieving, salvaging, restoring and preserving ancient tomes and documents before their imminent destruction by malevolent forces.

(After more than a decade, Yahoo/Geocities is slamming the doors shut on all of the free-sites hosted there. These sites will be blithely removed and destroyed on Oct. 26, 2009 if they are not converted to pay-sites. We have managed to save copies of those files which we have had there in the past.)

Visions of dusty tomes and fading scrolls

Posted on October 13, 2009

A sudden yearning for knowledge tickles your mind as it swims with visions of dusty tomes and fading scrolls in a library. You can't shake the thought that the winds of change are blowing.

The desire for knowledge returns, this time stronger. You envision yourself turning aside cobwebs and brushing away the dust from a bookshelf that has built up over centuries.

Visions return to your mind's eye as you see the spires of a shining city before you. You feel the need to pursue the knowledge contained within its walls.

Fash'lo'nae's Gift (1750) Released!

For his own reasons, it has forever been Fash'lo'nae's wish to see knowledge disseminated among the lesser races of Elanthia. Yet this desire was undermined by mortals trying to guard the Grandfather's greatest arcane gift. The specifics of this spell were hidden away in the libraries of Ta'Illistim for centuries, but they have resurfaced. And to make up for lost time, Fash'lo'nae has spread the knowledge of this spell as well as the rest of the Arcane circle across Elanthia like a wildfire.

The spell, Fash'lo'nae's Gift, grants ultimate arcane knowledge to the caster. It allows the caster to prepare a spell he would not normally know. The spell must be commonly found on scrolls in the treasure system. The maximum spell level that can be prepared is 5 + (success margin/5). The caster can prepare the spell one time, but gains additional opportunities to prepare it for every 25 success margin beyond the minimum required to prepare the spell.

If the caster is able to activate Fash'lo'nae's Gift with extreme success, a 100 success margin beyond the minimum required to prepare the selected spell, the caster can prepare the spell as many times as he desires for 10 minutes. This duration is increased by one minute for every 10 more success margin.

For example, if the caster is able to achieve a 120 endroll (success margin = 20) when activating Fash'lo'nae's Gift, he can then prepare a spell of level 9 or lower once (5 + 20/5 = 9).

Another example, if the caster can achieve a 210 endroll (success margin = 110), he can prepare any spell level 25 or lower that is commonly available on scrolls, but the number of times he can cast the spell depends on the spell's level. Choosing a spell of level 7 means the caster can prepare it as many times within 10 minutes as he chooses (110 - 10 = 100). Choosing a spell of 17th level means he can prepare it three times (110 - 60 = 50, 1 + 50/25 = 3).

GM Oscuro

Old Books, New Covers

Posted on August 26, 2009

We are making new covers for old books.