Understanding the Law on Lore

This is a topic that seems to crop up every few months, and that at some point or another every new player hears: "Ancient Lore is Forbidden!"

And it's true - Ancient Lore is forbidden. But the way people react, and the speed that people will jump to saying that phrase doesn't help - in fact, it is damaging in exactly the same way as Ancient Lore became, as well as sadly a few new ways. There are a few things that need to be understood better - namely, what Ancient Lore is, what is not Ancient Lore, and why it is forbidden in the first place.

Thankfully, since this topic does come up so often, this information is pretty freely available. In fact, answers to the first and third questions have already been posted by Mur on this very website (specifically this article for what Ancient Lore is, and this article for why it is forbidden).

We have all learned that we should not get too involved in Ancient Lore, but sadly it looks like we might have learned it a little too well. Now it's common to see people talking about how it is forbidden, even though what is being discussed isn't, in fact, Ancient Lore at all. And there are a lot of things that come very close to being Ancient Lore without actually being the same thing. The most important tool to understanding what is and is not forbidden is understanding why it is forbidden in the first place. Sadly, when we are told that "Ancient Lore is Forbidden" most of us just accept it, and forget to ask why that might be...

What is Ancient Lore?

To put it simply, Ancient Lore is stories about people that never existed, doing things that never happened, to explain the way we see and experience things in MD today.

There are a lot of different stories that fall under the category of Ancient Lore, like the tale of Marind that until Announcement 3575, every single player in MD was personally familiar with. A lot of Ancient Lore is, or has been, integrated with MD. There are also less integrated stories that fewer people know, like the tales of the friendship and rivalry between Marind Bell and Loreroot. Personal favourites of my own are the stories of how Golemus Golemicarum and Necrovion were created.

Now, you may be wondering why something that is forbidden was left integrated into MD for years after it became forbidden. That is because it served a purpose. These stories were written to guide us towards specific lessons and insights. To help us ask questions, and want to look deeper. Not all of the stories that fall under the category of Ancient Lore were asked to be written, but enough of them were that they do have value, and they should not be simply ignored, or forgotten.

Most people who are familiar with Ancient Lore recognize stories about characters such as Jack Willow or Gabriel Wind, and these are the more damaging stories that fall under the heading. Unlike other stories that were asked to be written, almost all of these stories arose separate to the images and symbols built into MD. Rather than be a way to express and illustrate the mysteries within the realm, these stories sought to explain them away - to create connections for the purpose of narrative, and to provide easy answers that excused some of the more confusing mysteries.

It is these later stories that ultimately contributed the most to getting Ancient Lore banned, and it is this final impact they have had which is why most people recognize this sort of Ancient Lore, and not other types.

What is not Ancient Lore?

Again, to put it simply any story that is about real events is not Ancient Lore.

Now, the above is an over simplification. Just because a story is about something that never happened does not automatically make it Ancient Lore. There are extremely few quest stories that focus on actual events in MD - the quest itself in fact is what makes these events real, for as long as the quest lasts. The important difference is that we usually know that the events described never actually happened.

This was always the core of the old, currently disbanded, Legend Speakers alliance. We would create stories, often from nothing, to teach a lesson. Most of the time, we would not write these stories down, or perform them more than once. And we would always make it clear, that the story was made for this place, and this time - that it was the past that created this story, and not the story that shared the past.

Just because a story is old, or about people who have been gone for years, or even about something that never actually happened, does not automatically mean it is Ancient Lore. If a story begins at it's own beginning, and ends at it's own ending, then it's not likely to be a part of Ancient Lore.

A lot of research projects that people want to look into get treated as though they are Ancient Lore, and this is wrong. It stops people from trying to learn the lessons MD was designed to reveal, and more than that it stops MD from continuing to grow. A lot of what MD has to offer was not put there by design, but happened by unconscious accident. The conclusions we draw from research might be able to become just as dangerous as Ancient Lore has become, but the act of researching in the first place should never be treated the same.

Why is Ancient Lore Banned?

Many of the stories now referred to as Ancient Lore, although certainly not all, were written on request to serve a specific goal. So why are they banned? Well, there are a number of different reasons, but most often they either stopped meeting that goal; the players grew the stories beyond their intended scope; or the MD world as a whole reached a point where the story could no longer serve its original goal.

Looking at the story of Marind, because it was the first story people encountered most people put a lot of interest into the story. Not having any logical conclusion from a narrative sense led a lot of people to make up their own endings, and then their own begins and middles as well. The story kept growing and growing, with the community making collective decisions about how they felt things should be. But, the story of Marind was not a simple narrative - rather, it was a complex and carefully weighted symbolic lesson, designed to put the answers immediately in front of us, and yet still leave us to ask the questions we needed to think of to properly understand.

By adding extra elements to the story, we not only take away our ability to see the questions the story is there to make us ask, but we cut ourselves off from the possible answers those questions can lead to. And yet still, this is only the surface of the problem.

The more people focused on Ancient Lore, the more of it was made, and the more it was associated with things that it had no connection to. In every part of MD, there are powerful symbols. Many of them stare us in the face, and yet our own perceptions prevent us from seeing them. We don't ask why there are as many bricks in Necrovion's walls as there are, because we know the wall is there to separate Necrovion from the rest of MD. We don't ask why the Lorerootian guards look the way they do, because they are guarding the forest and we expect fantasy forest guardians to look like trees. How many of you have asked why some of the most challenging NPC's in the game are modeled off one of the only creatures that normally do no damage?

When we don't question our expectations and understandings, when we accept the answers we have reached, we stop looking. The Ancient Lore that has been banned gave us a false context to many of the symbols within MD, preventing a lot of people from looking beyond the surface - or even in some cases, from recognizing the surface at all.

The Ongoing Problem

Briefly I have touched on the idea that this attitude of "Ancient Lore is Forbidden!" is just as damaging to MD, and I have also mentioned the topic of researching MD's mysteries.

The attitude that we have about Ancient Lore, and most people's tendency to go straight for that quote, doesn't actual help the situation. Yes, Ancient Lore grew out of control and stopped serving its role - but it was still originally created for a role, and without anything else to perform that job the lessons are simply... lost.

When learning any skill, any new way of thinking about a problem, we are often told to "build on the basics". There is a reason stories like Marind, or the Carnival, are the first stories most of us were exposed to in MD. These are our basics. When used properly, and not allowed to run out of control as they had in the past, they give us the tools we need to scratch at MD's surface.

But Ancient Lore is not the only tool that we have to uncover MD's mysteries. From it's earliest days, research has always played a major role in MD, and MD's growth. Unfortunately, at times research can become just as damaging as Ancient Lore.

I am often asked why I don't share information freely, or why I don't answer questions plainly. I am asked why the Archivists rarely work together on a single research project, or even discuss our research with each other. The reason is very simple - I have answered my questions, but I cannot answer yours. Your questions, or the questions of one Archivist to another, are never the same as my questions. If I answered a question for you, my answer might make sense. It might even be the same answer you yourself have reached. But that does not make it the only answer, nor does it necessarily make it right.

It is our questions that drive us to new understanding, not our answers. When we stop questioning the answers we already have, we cease to grow. And it is here that the potential danger in research lies.

Researching things in and of itself is something to be encouraged. Sharing the results of your research as well, is healthy - new information leads to new questions, new understandings and new discoveries. But when we decide our answer is correct, we often find it hard to accept that someone else can be correct, especially if their answer contradicts our own. When we try to force people to accept our answers, we stop them from asking questions of their own. We stop MD from continuing to grow, both as a community and as individuals.

Ancient Lore is banned because it stops us from seeing the mysteries it was designed to show us. It was banned because it gives us false answers that stop us from ever asking the questions. And yet still, so often, we tell each other that things are a certain way and only one way. We force our own context onto someone else, and try to make them "see things from our perspective".

Value the question. Let other people find their own answers - right or wrong, their answers are their own. And always, when having a discussion with a new and curious player, remember that even though it was eventually banned, much of the Ancient Lore was created with good reason.