The Sword's Edge

Issue 21: 9th October 2017 - In Ferro Veritas

This last month has flown by, and now it is officially Halloween season! How we will fit in all we are already doing as well as whatever Halloween treats are thrown our way is certainly going to be tough - but I am sure everyone is ready for the extra challenges.

Activity in the cabal has settled after the initial peak rush from the re-launch, and this last week it has been very encouraging to see more of our members initiating things going on in the cabal alongside the efforts already being made by our leadership team. We continue to be thankful for all the efforts everyone puts in to ensure that our time in Secret World Legends is fun and never boring.

We hope you enjoy reading this months issue of our newsletter! ~ Katelin

Dev stream on Twitch

Do you watch the dev stream on Twitch? A highlight of the week for many Swords, the dev stream is usually packed with updates for us about what is incoming and what the dev team are currently working on.

This coming week, starting October 9th Orochi Tower will be patched in, furthering the story in Kaidan. We were also informed that next week will see the introduction of a brand new lair in Tokyo - and the HALLOWEEN event!

Why not take a peek at the following links so you can catch up in full?

Text summary of the stream from Andy:
https://secretworldlegends.com/news/the-buzzing-info-roundups/3/

Watch the recorded Twitch stream
https://go.twitch.tv/videos/180163697

Head over to SWLRP for an amazing, and always incredibly comprehensive summary from Rovena.
http://www.swlrp.com/forum/m/43796106/viewthread/31049905-streaming-ones-october-10th-2017

SWL in the Real World!

By Olea

We recently gained access to the Orochi shipping crates in Kaidan. The crates contain many surprises, including monsters, distillates, clothing, and… sparkling owls?

Three new pets have arrived in our Secret World, and they're all glowing owls. The owls have the standard bird animations, but are also constantly surrounded by a cloud of glittering sparkles and glowing feathers. This makes them very noticeable in a crowd, and quite beautiful when following their owner.

It is rare that something appears in our game world without it having a connection to the real world.. and these owls are no exception.

Akasha

Akasha, the green owl, is associated with the æther, the sky, and space. This owl is gatekeeper to “the Akashic realm”, which is likely some sort of etheric compendium or library of knowledge and history. The in-game description for the owl also tells us that Akasha is an old soul, a keeper of ancient wisdom and gatekeeper to the Akashic realm. The Akasha owl is ever watchful, perceiving the truths hidden amongst the shadows. (More information about Akasha via Wikipedia)

Preta

Preta, the blue owl, is an interesting twist on the “hungry ghosts” also known as Pretas. Normal Pretas are ghosts that are constantly hungry for various foods, as punishment for having lived lives of deceit and greed. Preta the owl is also constantly hungry, but her target is the starving souls of the greedy and corrupt. Essentially, Preta eats Pretas. The ingame description goes on to tell us that the Preta owl is led through the night by an extreme hunger and thirst for souls devoured by greed, corruption and deceitfulness.

What may also be interesting to you as we find this owl in Kaidan - is that in Japan, Preta is translated as gaki (Japanese: 餓鬼, "hungry ghost"). In the modern Japanese language, the word gaki is often used to mean spoiled child, or brat. In a game of tag, the person who is "it" may be known as the gaki. The parking garage may get scarier if we are ever given a combination of brats and owls!! (More information about Preta via Wikipedia)

Naraka

Naraka, the orange owl, is fuelled by fires from the many hells of Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism and Buddhism. These hells are places of intense torment and suffering, but Naraka the owl can see through the pain and “purify the remnants of ashes”, which seems to imply that she can ease or end the suffering of the tormented. The developers obviously drew a similar conclusion with their in-game description stating that it is able to see through the pain of the world, the Naraka owl purifies from the remnants of ashes. (More information about Naraka via Wikipedia)

Halloween Screenshot Competition

Who doesn't like taking screenshots?! Swords, we know you all love taking screenshots! And there is always a lot of appreciation in our forums when people post them. So, get your screenshot taking fingers ready! We want to see your best Halloween screenshots!!

Enter your screenshot here and The Sword’s Edge team will pick a 1st, 2nd and 3rd prize winner (to be announced in our November edition on the 9th November 2017). For rules, prizes and more information, check out this link!

Knowledge Base Expansion!

Timeline projects finally realised

By Katelin

The start of October has brought us an unexpected massive development to our Nine Swords Knowledge Base, with a burst of energy and effort being invested into our much discussed timeline project. The discussion is over - we have working timelines thanks to time, patience and programming from Tazetta, as well as the implementation into our site by Durendal. The solution is two fold, a Secret World Timeline and a Nine Swords Timeline. 

What amazed me the most, is that the solution we dismissed 5 years ago - has now turned out to be the solution that we have been able to use thanks to the updates we have made to our website in this last year and the higher flexibility we have to build in external resources and mods.

Massive thanks go to Elil and Naite, who have allowed us to use the data they have been collecting from The Secret World, The Park and Secret World: Legends to provide for us a solid resource to move forwards with and link up with the ongoing efforts for the Nine Swords Bestiary. Gebbeth specifically has committed to working on our Bestiary resource - though I am sure he is hoping more Swords step up to aid him with his mammoth task!

As described above, the working solution has also allowed us to finally move forwards also with our Nine Swords Timeline which will be provided by a secondary timeline resource. LeMort has been working on collating data for this - so we are definitely excited to be able to put our five and a half years, as well as our future endeavours into an incredible visual display.

For the short term, the project will remain viewable internally by Nine Swords members. As the resource is built upon, it is definitely something we will of course be ensuring our community can access and enjoy. Thank you again to all who are involved in making this project a reality for our cabal!

What's your name?

By Keksimus

Why the name Justin "Keksimus" Wang?

More like what's the hardest part of playing a game that lets you create your own character from scratch? Without a doubt, it's finding a name for your character. Are you gonna go for a witty name? A name that could be a talking point with strangers, perhaps? Maybe with a pun thrown in for good measure, too? These were the questions going through my head as I was fiddling with possibilities on the character creation screen in SWL. Much deliberation ensued, and I finally decided to look at some famous historical figures for inspiration.

After going through a dozen candidates like Harblz the Rap God—who had such great hits as the Internet Hate Machine and Oops, I Divided by Zero—and Dsfargeg, the misunderstood plush mime from the seventies with a penchant for high-speed drag racing, I finally settled on the great Keksimus Maximus, otherwise known as Maximus the Mad, the legendary Roman general who, according to some rumors, single-handedly crushed an army of men in skirts.

The thing that appealed to me about him the most is that he wielded the power of memes, even before memes were a thing. Some say he even had forty keks in his arsenal at some point. Here's an artist's illustration of what he looked like every time he scored a victory against his foes. Just look at that sensible chuckle, isn't it mesmerizing? 

Oh, Justin Wang? It's just some random Asian-sounding name that I came up with on the spot. Doesn't have a real, authentic story behind it or anything.

Looking for a cabal?

Nine Swords is an active multi-faction Cabal in Secret World: Legends. Our cabal is continually searching for fun team players to join us in experiencing everything that our secret world has to offer us. If you are interested in joining Nine Swords, click the JOIN 9S link in the navigation of our website!

Did you already head beyond the wall?

By Katelin

We are not talking north of the wall. We are talking another kind of scary – one that is filled with nightmare inducing rabbit-head wearing people. If you haven’t yet headed Beyond the Wall in Tokyo, you may want to think about adding it to your list of things to do, and keeping it on your list.

In the Kaidan Docks, you will find among the shipping containers a new activity for you to get stuck into! Via side missions you can run throughout Kaidan, you will receive keys as part of your reward. While they are not much to look at on first glance; the filth encrusted container key icons can also transform into beautiful butterflies… no ... ok not this time, but they do transform into something you want to get your hands on! The generic keys, transform them into keys to unlock the A, B and C Shipping containers. Once the owner of the key has unlocked a container and defeated the monster lurking inside.

The monsters drop an array of different gadgets, clothing items and pets. You will also very likely get your hands on distillates – but the reward that makes running the missions to open the containers especially nice, are the SHARDS!

The number of shards from each type of container varies drastically, from 1200 to 12000. As you can imagine, your shard balance will therefore increase rapidly if this is an activity you invest some time into. It was not long, until our cabal chat was busy with people talking about upgrading their museums. I personally think this is a great idea, especially as achievement hunting is already a much-loved activity in Nine Swords.

If you have never set foot in your museum yet, you can find a great guide about them on http://legacy.tswdb.com/ – and although it is a guide for TSW and not SWL, you will at least glean from it where to go and what the Museum is about. 

If you need an extra incentive, then you should also look at the bonuses you can gain for yourself by upgrading each wing to its center pieces – as an example, in the Strains of the Filth Wing, the classic center piece installation will give you a percentage change to do additional damage on a creature that is featured in this wing. This appears to scale with more wings and likely also with the the Superior and Paragon Center piece upgrades.

At the moment there are few dedicated runs for achievement hunting asides the monster hunting runs, and lore target runs that Yuriksha and Katelin have been organizing – but that does not mean we cannot have more! A poll has been set up in this thread here to gauge your interest in embarking on another series of events like we had last year with our Nights in the Museum event. Or perhaps we find an even better idea through discussion! Let us know what you think.