[Pontifex_Maximus] Relquen Character ban 1 month

[WTFismyname]

Byond account and character name:Relquen Haskel
Discord ID (if applicable):
Banning admin:Pontifex Maximus
Ban type (What are you banned from?): Character banned
Ban reason given:Vore murdered 3 people.
Ban length: One month
Approximate time ban was placed (including time zone): AEST 12/09/19 2100
Your side of the story: After having a scene with Lauren I proceeded to do my usual activities, attempting to procure a hyper battery for my stunprod so that I was able to do some non-con scenes, as I have done in the past with flashes and stunprods. I had noticed that Kylraaz had in their OOC notes that they liked bullying and being pulled by preds while being eaten and had begun planning to kidnap them. During my attempt to get a hyper cell I checked Atmos APC, as it is the most likely to have such a large cell, only to find out it only had a super cell. After that, I simply broke into science and printed one from the avaliable research. Following this, I wandered around station for a bit, attempting to charge the cell via APCs and other means to find it has got to be the slowest thing on the planet if not using the proper charger. I relented and moved to robotics, breaking in through the door to charge the cell. When the cell was charged I moved out and was greeted by Kyraal, who was the only security member at the time. Seeing the opportunity, I went along with them willing until we reached the middle floor of the tether, where I proceeded to stunprod them into unconciousness, cuff them and drag them away into maint. While I was dragging them away, Pi had spotted us and reported the incident to security. When I had dragged Kyraal aside they had stated that they only had 15 minutes, so I asked if they would prefer if I simply let them go. They declined and said, " Kylraaz Tarnishedscales: Nah, sure go ahead! Just bad timing, as I can't do a full scene" so I proceeded to begin posting. At this time Pi and Aly had walked in and I LOOC'd asking if they would wait, literally, "Can you don't?" as I thought they were going to taze before asking questions. I asked if it was okay if I ate the sec member before I was arrested and they stated it was fine, so I proceeded with the post and digested Kyraal. After the arrest, there was no security avaliable for a proper brigging, as I had eaten thgem, and Iceaka was left to put me into a cell. Knowing that we had scened in the past multiple times, I asked if he'd prefer a CV scene, to which he declined at first but after some light IC prodding, he accepted. Yen then arrived on the scene and reached solitary, confused about why I was arrested to which it was plainly stated by myself and Alyssa that I had been arrested for eating a security member. During this whole time, Pi was stating they were scared, and I was responding in kind stating that there was no reason to begin fearing now as there was no reason to really wait. This went on for a little bit, but wasn't over the top. After Yen had let Haskel out of his cell, I LOOC'd asking if he'd want to get overpowered by a smaller pred. He did not respond, but accepted an obvious trap to enter the cell with Haskel and take a seat. This led to another non-con vore scene which was discovered by Denali. I had roleplayed most of the digestion out already, so when an icky-pak was mentioned, and yes, I am aware this was greedy, I put digestion on 6/6. This led to a rather funny moment of Haskel being shaken while vomitting up the items. From there, I thought little of it, Haskel had been brigged, I had moved to central, and I expected maybe a week or two of character ban, when I recieved this message, "Admin PM from-PontifexMinimus: While I personally think you just did it to greytide and the LOOC kind of indicates that, you did do vore scenes, I suppose. However, at this point and the loudness, I did talk to Ace about this and he agreed that Haskel will need a temporary suspension and psychiatric evaluation offscreen." Which I accepted at the time as the round was ending. Following the round, I attempted to message Dragor saying that if he saw my actions as Greytide, how could I improve to which he stated he was, "Not doing this song and dance again." and after a few more times of questioning, blocked me, which I understand, I can be rather annoying to deal with when I want an answer for something. After talking to others, they voiced that they thought a month was far too long for such things and after a night of evaluation, I found myself inclined to agree.
Why you think you should be unbanned:
Honestly, I just think a month is far, far too harsh for two non-con scenes that got caught. I've seen multiple people get caught for non-con scenes and never get a character ban, at most an IC psychological review and a job ban, but an outright character ban is something I felt is uncommon. I think Dragor may have simply assigned a motive to me that I didn't have. I have thursdays and fridays off, and I wanted to get as much scene time in as I could during my days off as I struggle to get on at night after doing dinner service and Friday Borderlands 3 came out, which I was looking forward to. I recieved a discord message implying someone thought I was simply doing it for IDs, and while I used Lauren's ID to attempt to charge the hypercell and get the hypercell in the first place, the goal was not just for the ID. I can easily break into the CD's office as I have done multiple times before when needed or when I was going through that exhibitionist phase where I enjoyed having sex on head's of staff's desks.I think a motive has been given to me when my only motive was that I enjoy vore and I was aroused and I found someone whose OOC notes stated that they also enjoyed such things, and it just happened to line up in such a way that I was exposed to them at a time I was being arrested. Alyssa can state that after being arrested, instead of fighting I handed over all contraband. If I was greytiding, why would I hand over the items and why would I ask my prey if they wanted to be let go when they didn't have a lot of time.

I am not looking for an overturn, merely a reduction, I think a week to maybe two weeks is reasonable, I don't think a month is appropriate.

Admittedly, I have sent the link to this thread to people I feel may have input on the situation via observation or participation, and I am asking them to comment to state the validity of my claims, but please be aware I have actively invited them to comment on the thread.

Thank you for your time.

[igNOR me]

i mean, i dunno if my post will carry much weight saying as my account is brand new, but Haskel tends to use stunprods, flashes, whatever the fuck to do non con scenes like this. Personally had it done before and wouldn't call it greytiding with the amount of LOOC confirmation that goes on before.

[Mashi]

To me this generally sounds like something that CAN be seen as fishy, and should probably be worthy of a warning of the behavior as of why it's going on, and that it's bad... (Specifically what would be nice in this context.)

A full month ban on this from a character is unbelievable to me of a choice, a week at most, or possibly a warning would seem fine enough to me.

Seems very heavy handed, and honestly makes me somewhat scared to even attempt non-con scenes currently due to if they are "Grey Tide" enough that it would result in a character ban.
This is literally vore crime that is all accepted ooc'ly, and I have no idea why this is even warrents a full month ban...
As well as seemingly not a very... "caring" admin reply from the situation... "I suppose" and "I talked to x" just seems very not correct for the context that would involve a month character ban.

[Heroman3003]

Well, techincally being one of the 'victims' of the 'crime' that author of the thread was banned for, I am more than allowed to reply in this thread, regardless of the invitation. And it primarily raises one question in me, that being "What in the actual fuck?!"


Well, before getting to my view and opinion of situation, let's get the facts of my perspective of the situation out on the table.

That shift I was playing my main character, Lauren Zackson, tauric edition, as Chief Engineer, from the very beginning, having expected no engineers to be present at that time of day. I was wrong, but that doesn't change much, me and other engie set everything up, I showed them some pointers on RCON, they waved goodbye and left, I was alone. At that point there were no engineering duties, and time was somewhat close to late-ish but not there, so I decided to stick around in case something happens, though only half active in public place. Relquen noticed me, and was surprised to see Lauren as a taur, so we had a little chat about it and potential stuff to do with it in DMs. Eventually Haskel approached Lauren with intriguing proposal of helping lighten his load... To which the catslut easily agreed, welcoming him to his office, where Lauren was bloated like a blimp. Entire scene throughout has been a full, proper, roleplayed scene, with longposts, even if I had a bit of technical difficulties with byond deleting my messages before I could send them. Entire thing was also fully willing IC and OOC, and I was actively expecting it OOCly after the comments on Lauren's new look in DM. Regardless, by the time the sex part of scene was over I was feeling pretty sleepy, although was willing to continue longer. The scene transitioned into cockvore scene, which I made sure of ahead of time, removing all CE-unique equipment to leave in the office, and PDA with ID, to make sure Haskel could leave afterwards before continuing on with the scene. I was slowing down, so after the cat went down the shaft, churning was slightly more rushed than I normally would do, but I'm glad it was, especially considering amount of post that came from Haskel's side with such speed compared to what I was slowly chugging. ICly, Lauren was melting in his post-climax relaxation, figuratively and literally, OOCly I was yawning as I watched Haskel try to find hypercell. Eventually digestion finished as Haskel entered the bar, I hit QTR, wished him goodnigth and went to sleep. The only way it could be seen as fishy was from perspective of Dragor's, who just saw the Haskel be in atmos, and then leave it with my PDA while digestion noises resounded around him, but anyone with basic log access would know what kind of scene it was and that it wasn't greytide-y in one bit.



Now facts are out of the way. Here comes a juicy rant, with some good amount pf swearing sprinkled in and (in my opinion) rather justified fury at even idea that situation occured. This will be heated, but I feel this all needs to be said. Caution reading further and all that.


I'll admit that rest of the story I only heard from this post... But regardless, the question that I initially posted remains. "What in the actual fuck?!". And that question is primarily directed at the banning admin and, if the situation really was fully communicated to Host as the banning admin said, and was communicated in actual full, then that question is to them as well. Since when in the fucking world did VORESTATION started BANNING people for going on well-RPed VORE streaks?! Last I heard, the only acceptable punishment for that was a brigging, and not just brigging, but brigging with time for the charges being OOCly handwaved, so that pred can go out and eat more folks. If you guys really did pursue anyone who just goes on big and blatant streak of eating lots of people in one shift, you'd have no pred population left on server at all beyond maybe one or two quiet endopreds who only do it in dorms and only consensually. Since when the fuck does it matter how much fuss they raised in process when the situation was vorish, and seemingly, everyone but Dragor and their character was okay with it (and Dragor and their character were regular engineer who would have 0 reason to be involved in whole arresting shabang or remain near Haskel to begin with). If we banned people for raising too much fuss, Dragor himself would probably not have their Sam Michels slot available at this point. Also, fucking PSYCH eval for hunting predding. PSYCH EVAL for being a pig as a hunting PRED. Listen to that. Listen to that and think about how retarded that idea sounds on VORESTATION. Also blocking a player who literally was asking "how do I not do this bad thing again" (to reiterate, the thing they did wasn't fuckign bad at all to begin with), is literally worst type of thing admin could do when posed with that question. I do have past experience interacting and scening with Relquen, and just because some people's sleeptime aligned with him doing vores on them so scenes were rushed is a shitty reason to ban the pred for predding. Admins have such thing as logs, and one look at them, OOC communications and IC posts would show rather clearly that there was no 'greytiding'. Its not the first or only time a pred pigged themselves on bunch of crew including sec and heads. What, you will ban a person from a character every time that happens? Are we "no vore allowed" station now? If Dragor felt uncomfortable with vore happening in such manner near them, the solution is to maybe not stick around and just try to find another place to be in rather than removing the person in question from the game.

I disgree with author of this thread in one serious aspect though. I don't think ban should be lowered to 1-2 weeks. I think that ban shouldn't have existed in the first place, because the moment you think about the situation, you realize how bullshit this is. And even more so if you apply it to countless other examples of similar things where similar things happened, everyone involved enjoyed it and nobody got banned. So what in the fuck happened this time? I dunno. And I do genuinely hope that if Ace did approve of it, it was due to little/mis- information about what was occuring being recieved rather than genuinely being informed of the whole situation, because if he was... Well, when the owner of the server approves banning people for doing a vore-chain, this ain't a vore server anymore. And while I do think I believe I know why such thing even could happen, it would grow too irrelevant to that appeal, and more of general statement to the state of headmin team if I talked about it so I will stop there. I know this wasn't most calm and collected response, but as someone passionate about vore aspect of the server, I don't believe this situation has anything to be calm and collected about.

tl;dr of the heated part: This ban shouldn't have happened, Why the fuck are we banning people for doing vore chain on vorestation, What the actual fuck.

[PontifexMinimus]

TL;DR : Yes, the punishment is too harsh, I goofed up, let's talk about alternatives.

Well, here is my perspective on it. I try to keep it somewhat short because else I will be just rambling.

The temporary month suspension has been personally assigned to me and relayed to the admins at the time - including people who have personally witnessed it on the staff team. They tended to agree, so I thought it is a fair punishment for something I would've assigned even more time. Why? I will get to that soon.

However, first on why I think it is greytiding - or rather powergaming under the guise of scenes. I used the wrong term for it and I am sorry. However, it is a pattern noticed before with the character Giny (and to a lesser extent Saul) of first making a distinct, even likable character and slowly devolving into a more and more "greytidy" character, as in breaking in, exploiting relatively inexperienced security, gloating over it later in OOC (at least you stopped that one) and gaining access to areas through scenes. Which is fine. We are here for scenes! It's what we are here for. We like scenes, they're fun.

To explain further, let's recount the round.

I joined relatively late with Lauren as Chief Engineer, considering I figured I didn't have to fix any outstanding issues. His windows were blacked out so I thought he's in a scene. He was, with you, since I see LOOC everywhere. Which is nice! You both are good roleplayers and have the same interests, so I figured you both are a good match. Lauren says he is going to sleep after this, so no resleeve needed or something to this extent and uses the quit round verb (thank you for that, using it is actually very helpful!)

Anyway, there is grub times, so I begin hunting them down from the usual places, mostly the atrium, engineering and atmospherics first, considering they're big powerhogs and if atmos or engineering goes dark it's a bitch to deal with since the engine is actually dependent on its APC depending what it is. There I see Haskel. Oh well, he either broke in to help with the grubs, since he just killed one. Which was nice. Then he took out Lauren's PDA ( which has a very similar model to the ID, so I thought it's just that) and left. Oh okay, he has the stuff from the Chief Engineer. That's okay, I just told him he might want to bring that to security or something to that extent.

However, as I was making my rounds around listening for grub sparks, I seen Haskel bust through the window of Science to make hyper cells in Research, presumably powering through the tech levels as Chaplain. I don't quite know, I didn't stay there long (Please don't do that in the future, it's a bit powergamey). I wanted to report to security, but ionospheric disturbances knocked that one out. So I got a camera and photographed it instead.

Went up to the security officer in the lift, who was too busy with his PDA, so I brought it to the Forensic Tech to relay it because I didn't want to play lift ping pong too much. Security was notified, I was asked if I know where Haskel is. I had no idea, since he wasn't in RnD anymore and repaired the window. I had the hunch that I might be able to hear the ping of the CE's PDA, considering he took the ID already, so it wasn't that far off to presume. It came from Science, so I guessed you were in there close, probably robotics.

You were, you got arrested, blablabla, all good. Then I wanted to go check on some atmospheric settings, went to the lift and you dragged the officer out of the lift with a taser in hand. Naturally I nope-dodged the fuck out and informed the Forensic Technician and helped them search, since they were alone on a sucky connection, since I've seen you dragging the officer into maint.

Well, found, one grab and gulp later, I thought it's over now and people can go back to business after your vore-crime gets timeskipped. Then I see the solitary camera getting knocked out first and then just dropping from the network from the alarms. I knew the CD was with you and well, I figured that means that's your next victim. Since I knew Iceaka is infatuated with you OOCly, I didn't mind that.

Then you got caught by the HoS. I've seen the LOOC about offering a scene and no confirmation on the side of the HoS. I didn't bother to look what you did, I gave the Warden the cryptographic sequencer I found instead (Ironically found right when Haskel was arrested). I chat with the Warden a bit about what happened in the shift and they left.

Later I hear about the Warden shouting for Medical - Medical that didn't exist. All medical left long ago and the only real person with medical knowledge was Iceaka (don't worry, you are a CD and you were in a scene, it is no fault for you by the way). So I figured you ate the HoS too - At this point I felt like it was less about the scenes and more dodging the timeout box.

Which is, in retrospect, maybe a little bit unfair. However, this stuff has happened with you before, some time ago and I have seen the similar behaviours and it got me a bit riled up. I still remember Giny plundering SSD people for clotting kits and such - a certain "at all costs" acquirement of things you want. This made me upset, to be honest. It also did not help that it was basically two very public vore murders, considering the resleeved HoS in the end wanted to literally take out your eyes as punishment (I bolted out of the room, so I never knew if he did or not - I didn't bother looking it up in logs) for the crime.

So, I was in a bit of a bind. It was all vore. However, I suspected it was less about the scenes themselves and more getting away with as much shit as possible. Which I found a disservice considering at least two people suffered under it - Peeptweet being rendered blind and Alyssa having to interrupt her scene a couple of times. Both easily handwaved with "Shit happens", but with the same direction of why that was so. Unfortunate circumstances.

However, I presented this to Ace, because well, there might be bias involved. We have a turbulent history, after all. I was being very harsh in describing what happened, basically killing the HoS in unwilling vore in front of the warden. He agreed that there needs to be some form of temporary IC punishment. Other admins and retired staff agreed with it. One retired staff even pinged me about you wanting to apologize to me - I dunno for what, really.

Anyway, I penned it for a month and nobody disagreed, so I handed it out. Then I wanted to lay down and continue curing my cold out because all this made my head pound like some gnome with a jackhammer is beating my head in. I was pretty standoffish and short in the Admin PMs because it was about 3 minutes ( literally) away from round end and I didn't want to delay over this pretty minor manner.

I had some doubts about the severity at first, but you instantly joined the discord and asked for my name. I said "don't" and didn't want to engage, because I wanted to lay the fuck down (later it didn't happen mostly due to it and back-end stuff, so I set up the engine next round and finally got back into bed), which you ignored and harassed me, kind of. Which kind of cemented in my mind that the time was the right.

Well, on reflecting this, I think the punishment is too hard - I had a long talk with fellow Admin VerySoft and the posts here do indicate that it looks like a punishment for vore. It's not. It was never the intention to do so - Scenes and Vore is what the server is for. Unwilling or not.

Rather, it was about behavior patterns I have seen before, which are primarily akin to people I have adminned on other servers on - using every exploit and possibility to gather as much power and equipment and access as possible to do whatever they want. My mindset was focused on rather that.

I think this is a bit of an unfair assessment, since VerySoft rightfully pointed out the last time you truly did that was in February. It's still hard of me to believe that you truly want to change, but that's neither here or there. I misjudged the circumstances and I'm sorry for that.

Which leads to the punishment now. I'm still torn over it. Ace is gone for a while since he is on vacation and I still think there needs to be some sort of IC representation of two very public, on the radio scenes in front of multiple witnessed, since we ostensibly are a HRP server. I am willing to discuss this further how we could do that, if you are willing.

[demintika]

I don't have much to say here, people have already described the situation clearly, and my side of the story isn't much different, not to mention I'm too shy to describe my preyslut moment.
Also, Dragor, welcome to the IC-OOC dilemma that I had twice in the last week.

If you look at it ICly, Haskel murdered two people, securities at that, and the "higher up" would probably want him removed from the station. One month in the brig maybe too short. Maybe. I don't know fictional space law.
However, looking at it OOCly, no one involved had problem with it. What Relquen did was something I hope to see more: Using the mechanic to get into Vore scene. While everyone just stand in place or hole-up in dorm and throwing wall-of-texts, Relquen actually made use of the game's setting and mechanic, not too much, not too little, just the right amount, to make VORE Station stands out from just a simple chat-based RP platform/chatroom.

Personally, I expected the "ban" to happen, but not in the sense of "the player did something bad/wrong".

[PontifexMinimus]

An actual OOC punishment is out of question.
They did nothing that would require such.

[Slingblade]

I agree that the ban was too long and should be reduced to a week or so, something that would be less of a 'punishment' as much as it is a slap on the wrist. I, being someone who also likes to do sprees and the like, will never ever condone any kind of punishment for people doing what this server exists for in the first place. What I will condone is a character receiving a form of punishment when they take things too far in an IC standpoint.

I genuinely think that the reason the hammer was dropped this hard is due to your past. Everytime its the same thing; Play a new character because either interest has dropped off or other characters have started to dislike them due to their behavior in the past (Re hon -> Ruet -> Saul -> Giny -> Haskel), play them rather straight and have scenes that are on the average for everyone else, start to have a few cracks and drop the character specific personality traits, start acting like some grey-tider by carrying around a toolbox and hacking into places all the time (Which I can only assume is to get materials for a scene, so while technically not a problem in an OOC standpoint, I think it starts to violate the believable character side of things), start trying to grab as many people as humanly possible for the flex of it or just outright dropping all pretense of a believable character and go "Hey suck my dick. Hey Im gonna shove you in my nuts now." or literally powergaming by breaking into places to steal stuff just to have it. This happens every time. You get a slap for it, complain, bugger off to complain about the server and server staff on Discord and F-list, then come back and do it all over again. I find it incredibly ironic when you complain about the server being LRP, only to do things like this. Just because you CAN break into the CD's office, doesnt mean you should or that its even appropriate. I've observed Haskel these past few weeks just by the fact of ghosting around and keeping an eye on the station, and I genuinely thought "Oh, this is different, and a bit more reserved. Still gets some good scenes, plays with multiple people, and has an interesting personality. Perhaps this is a bit different." Honestly I find that this is all a violation of a believable character. I dont really know how Haskel would have started spilling into this sort of behavior, when the first few weeks of being played he showed absolutely no sign for the propensity of violence. I get an evolving character, but a chaplain breaking into science to and grabbing hyper-cells for stunprods? I dont really get it. I'm not asking for an incredibly well crafted, consistent character, since I play a walking mouth with no personality, but at least some effort to doing things that arent fun at the expense of others.

These are the major criticisms that I've observed. So if you were still wondering what at least I think of it, here it is, plain and simple.

From what I observed of the round, it was just the same thing was it was with Ruet, with Saul, and with Giny; Breaking and entering, eating whoever was close enough to get access/avoid consequence, and moving on to brag about it. I'll never advocate punishment for scenes, people like playing with you and thats great, but when its the same thing, over and over, doing things that we have banned others in the past for except this time they're protected by the fact that they're for vore, I struggle to find happy medium where there is equal parts of fairness and punishment.

Its up to Dragor to decide what the punishment should be, and I personally stand in support of a week or less, but this behavior is just another part of a pattern that I think is toxic and have for a long time.

TL;DR: You're falling into the same trap that you do every time, and this slap on the wrist, albeit too harsh, is to ensure that we avoid future complications.

[VerySoft]

To make a lot of what I spoke about earlier short:

I don't think that a character ban for what essentially amounts to 'excessive loud voring' is appropriate. And, while Relquen does have a history, they've been totally off our radar since feb, and have been showing signs of improvement since before then. It seems pretty clear to me that Relquen has been making honest efforts to better himself, and I think that's an important factor to consider in this case.

There's certainly critique to be given. I certainly would have sent an admin PM over this happening myself. If only to advise that such open and loud noncon not become a habit. And indeed, I'd prefer less of a powergamey approach to aquiring the materials for your scene. But at the same time, a bit of powergaming in service of getting into a scene is typically overlooked, because it's typically not in service of one's own betterment alone, but to do things with others, typically and hopefully things that those involved would enjoy.

And, a cursory glance over the logs for the shift certainly don't turn up much in the way of complaints over his doings. Certainly none from those whom he'd eaten. And while this spree did create some unfortunate scenarios for other people, I don't think that the blame for that should fall solely on Relquen for that. It seems very likely that he would have been unaware of at least some of that. A scene may be non-con ICly, but let's not pretend those affected couldn't have yipped that they'd rather not, or have asked for a pause to go and take care of something to do with their job. Inconveniences related to people in jobs getting eaten is something we see commonly, and not something we generally punish for unless it's plainly deliberate or becomes a problematic habit.

To go further from me would be just waffle I think. All I'm saying is, yes he has a history, but let's not close our eyes to the good either.

[PontifexMinimus]

The charban will be reduced to a week - which doesn't mean a week from now but a week from the original ban. Which would mean six more days of no Haskel.