This has been discussed a bit on the "Learning Arcanis" thread, but I felt it was needful to bring it up here as well. Pathians can get a lot of RP (especially if we're war mages) but Pathi itself has been on the dead side for as long as I have been around - little to no RP happening there for many months ave gotten around that I've been hoping to get not a time.
Also, most new Pathians are mages, not custos. I'd really like to see more custos - I'd really like to see more bonded pair *Pathians*. And I think a way to do that is to open up Pathi a bit. It's already possible to be a 'late blooming mage' - that is, take the ARC-CT gift outside of chargen. Unless you've saved up a LOT of points from chargen, such mages are always going to be behind the chargen (raised in Pathi) mages; it basically takes nearly a year to cast one simple spell, two years if you have to include all the prereqs. That's two OOC years, and that's enough Special time for chargen, I think. Probably more than enough. MUSH time is supposed to be faster than RL, not slower.
It may've been getting around that I've tried getting a not-from-chargen custos at least once, too. This, however, which you'd think would be easier than a not-from-chargen mage, is actually harder; the gift is chargen locked. I think this rather unfairly limits the role of custos to "alt designed specifically for one character", rather than allowing organic relationships to form.
We are, again, talking Years Of Training - but Custos is merely a five point gift. Which, past chargen, means five months RL time. Is this too short, for someone coming to the gift 'cold'? We could add prereqs - say magicsense is required, or a fight bit (meaning the Academy of Iron doesn't have to teach you to fight PERIOD, just add the necessary skills to fight as a CUSTOS). Or a fight-lore requirement, or a quest where one gets signoffs from the mage one wants to be custos to, some training scenes with the academy of iron, tests of ability… or some combination of all of the above.
I think the custos is a very neat idea, and I think Pathi would be served as a prop by allowing it a better chance to be demonstrated in RP. Right now when I bring the term up to someone who hasn't played a Pathian, I get "What's a custos?" in return.
The prop is unlikely to grow if we're just the Land of Squishy Mages. (Men In Skirts Division.) I think that the option should be there, particularly since there are often fighting-type characters around who find themselves wondering what to do, how to grow. We could make 'custos' an option (provided there's a mage around for them to be a custos TO) and Pathi as a prop could possibly gain some IC weight on the grid.
Thoughts?
