[A] Blooming Lotus (Pandaren only)

TL;DR

Blooming Lotus is the biggest Pandaren Alliance role-playing guild on the Defias Broterhood (EU) server. You can join by contacting any of our officers in-game (Paozi, Fenghuang and Linzu) or by registering at bloominglotus.freeforums.org.

Summary

“Pandaren role-playing in Pandaria” is the (un)official slogan of Blooming Lotus, the largest Pandaren role-playing guild on the Defias Brotherhood (EU) server. Though the game mechanics have forced us to make the decision whether we want to create our character on the Horde or the Alliance, most characters of Blooming Lotus maintain their neutrality in the ever-escalating conflict between continent-spanning superpowers. That doesn't mean that true Alliance-blue Tushui are shunned, though, as pandaren from all walks of life, from adventurous wanderers from Shen-sin Zu to the peaceful farmers of the Heartland are welcome to join us in exploring the breadth of potential that the new exciting race that Mists of Pandaria brought has to offer.

As a guild it is our goal to reflect Pandaren society in all of its many colorful forms and aspects. From the mysterious Shado-pan that watch the wall to illusive wandering poets and brewmasters, every kind of pandaren character is welcome in a warm and friendly environment where we constantly work to expand and explore on Pandaren role-play.

Due to the open-endedness of Blooming Lotus the type of role-play we enjoy is in constant flux due to the input of our dedicated members and the continuous clashing of our characters. At the heart of all or our activity are two main guidelines we use to help generate our content. These are:

(1) Ensure that the Blooming Lotus is always inter-connected with as many guilds and groups that role-play on Pandaria as possible on both Horde and the Alliance and (2) ensure that there are regular events. The two principles combined mean that we place ourselves at the heart of role-play in Pandaria: whenever there's something going on in Pandaria, we're sure to take part in it

Many of the events we host and partake in are dungeonmastered, meaning that at their helm is an appointed dungeonmaster who controls NPS and the environment. This allows us to “imagine our own enemies”, as it is sometimes said, and engage in a wealth of activities that would be impossible without the aid of an appointed dungeonmaster. Included amongst these events were for example:

-An expedition to scale the Mount Neverest, in which hungry yeti's and howling winds had to be braved by our hardy mountaineers.
-Defending the Serpent's Spine against the swarming advance of the Mantid.
-Meditative exercises in which the deepest-rooted doubts, despair, fears, rage, violent tendencies and hatred of the practitioner were made manifest to learn how to cope with the negative emotions that spawn the Sha.

Ranks

The ranks in Blooming Lotus only reflect the character's position in society. Actual leadership of the guild is purely Out Of Character and has no influence on the In Character aspect of the guild. As such, some members will have an OOC tag (GM for Guildmaster and Off. for Officers) after their rank to indicate their OOC position in the guild. The IC ranks are as follows:

Wanderer – A Pandaren from the Wandering Isle.

Citizen – A Pandaren born on Pandaria.

Shado-pan – A member of the Shado-pan.

These ranks are by no means definitive and always subject to change. Should the role-play in Blooming Lotus undergo any paradigmatic shifts, the ranks will be sure to reflect it.

Lore&Role-play

Locations
Originally starting out in the Jade Forest in the town of Dawn's Blossom in particular, the members of Blooming Lotus tend to follow wherever the Horde and Alliance go to have their adventures. Currently due to (temporary) Alliance and Horde bases of Westwind and Eastwind camp this is mostly in Kun Lai Summit, in the said titular camps and the grizzly gambling bazaar of the Grummles.

With the Horde and Alliance fleet on the horizon opening new military role-playing hubs for the Horde and the Alliance in the wilds of Krasarang, Blooming Lotus will no doubt form a presence in the Red Crane's mysterious mangroves to keep an eye on the ever-escalating war.

Pandaria is rich with beautiful role-playing locations and we intend to explore them all, even if it takes us an entire expansion to do so!

Shado-pan
The Shado-pan play an important part in the lore of the Blooming Lotus. As the faceless face and voice of Pandaria's guardians, the Shado-pan keep a close watch on the Alliance and Horde movements in Pandaria. In many ways, the Shado-pan stand for the neutral Pandaren who, in spite of rejecting the war between the Horde and the Alliance and having declared themselves neutral, still do not shy from defending their homes by way of arms form invaders, no matter what color their skin is or what kind of armor they wear.
Whatever kind of character you wish to play, you are bound to eventually run into the Shado-pan, who are always watching and waiting to learn more about the new “guests” that have been landing on Pandaren shores. Will you be taken a-back by these harsh and unyielding men and women on the wall, or will you seek to cooperate with and perhaps even join the ancient protectors of Pandaria?

Alliance
Some members of the Blooming Lotus favor the Alliance and have expressed their support for this faction. Your character will have to position itself in the war and in relationship to these blue Pandaren. Will you criticize them for dragging Pandaria in an unwanted war, or will you be swayed by their call to arms and don a blue tabard yourself?

Expanding upon Pandaren lore
The members of Blooming Lotus are constantly working on expanding upon Pandaren lore in meaningful and significant ways. A few of our members are working on fusing the pandaren-style Geomancy as inspired by the sourcebooks by traditional Chinese Feng Shui. Others are writing Shado-pan doctrines inspired by Buddhism that seek to purge the mind of negative emotions. Most of these writings are found on our website, though others pop up on the realm forums and DefiasRP, the server's own player-run forums.

Contact&Recruitment

There are no lengthy procedures to join Blooming Lotus. The only recruitment is that you intend to role-play a pandaren character. Once you contact one of our officers, either it in-game or trough an application, a short OOC interview will follow in in-game whispers, after which you will invited and be allowed the time to introduce your character to the rest community at your leisure.

Our forums can be found here: bloominglotus.freeforums.org

Besides our own forums, we also encourage to join DefiasRP to get in touch with the role-playing community at a whole.

In-game we use the chat-channel “Pandaria” (/join Pandaria) to communicate with all Alliance players that have an interest in role-play in Pandaria.

Our current active officers are: Paozi, Fenghuang and Linzu.

We look forward to seeing you online!

I would soooo join this guild if I had a Panda! Which I'll perhaps make in the future, who knows.

Love the concept, and the very motivated people behind it. Wish you pandas the best of luck.

Bump!!

My panda will join this next time I log her.

I'd love to meet you guys on my rogue, Timna. Much luck to you!

The blushing rose will climb
Spring ahead or fall behind
Winter dreams the same dream
Every time
You can never hold back Spring

My humble blessings.

Sounds awesome. I look forward to meeting you guys. Once I get to Pandaria, that is. ^^

And now all the character twisting and planning have to start again... >.> Damn the few character slots!

Updated the ranks.

Also, we have reached level 5 and are still steadily growing! Just one more level to go untill we get that juicy +10% experience boost.

Out of interest -

I intend to continue levelling my human monk and find him some teachers. While I've quested I've come across a brilliant amount of places that I can imagine that RP taking place, but obviously for this to make the most sense for me, any teachers would need to be Pandaren.

What are your thoughts on taking students on in such a way? The character wouldn't be looking to enter the guild of course.

P.S - Fantastic recruitment post!

We would be honored to take on any foreign students in our monestaries.

From the clique that we have gathered so far, we seem to have at least two characters that are ready to teach: Jian, a Tiger master, and Paozi, a Serpent adept. Tian would be the most logical place to rp this out.

I advice you to join channel Pandaria, since we have some members of the Lotus that aren't in the actual guild, and some non-pandaren people that roleplay in Pandaria that use the channel to find roleplay.

I am sure we can set something up!

I have been thinking of making Jián's "Traveling teacher seeking revelation" role permanent so I'll take on a Jesus kind of role, traveling with my disciples/students instead of belonging to the specific temple. I really want students if I'm gonna do that....

Ixirar/Kavalis wrote:I have been thinking of making Jián's "Traveling teacher seeking revelation" role permanent so I'll take on a Jesus kind of role, traveling with my disciples/students instead of belonging to the specific temple. I really want students if I'm gonna do that....

Stay humble, Jián

But to more contribute. On the aspect of teaching, how known were the martial aspects of the Monks before the mists parted? My thoughts go to "Lefty" the rogue, as some of you may remember from BRD in the Ring of Law during the t0.5 dungeon set quest. More specifically, he's a gnome with a quite interesting ability... The "Five Fat Finger Exploding Heart Technique".

Exigua wrote:But to more contribute. On the aspect of teaching, how known were the martial aspects of the Monks before the mists parted? My thoughts go to "Lefty" the rogue, as some of you may remember from BRD in the Ring of Law during the t0.5 dungeon set quest. More specifically, he's a gnome with a quite interesting ability... The "Five Fat Finger Exploding Heart Technique".

Pandaren Kung Fu is the kind of Kung Fu the monk class uses, that is to say, the kind that fully realizes the body's ultimate potential in the form of channeling chi. By making every monk trainer pandaren, Blizzard seems to very explicitly want to emphasize that Kung Fu and Monk-ness is a pandaren thing. A singular counter-example taken from vanilla is hardly enough to disprove of the more plausible thesis that pandaren introduced Kung Fu to Azeroth. People will probably provide you two more counter-examples in the form of Scarlet Monks and Auchenai. The former can probably be explained trough pandaren influences, and the latter, I admit, is an exceptio -- but again, it is not strong enough to disprove the stronger claim that most if not all martial arts comes from the pandaren.

Auchenai monks, they don't use the same doctrines as the Pandaren monks do, do they? I always figured there was a difference.

Ixirar/Kavalis wrote:Auchenai monks, they don't use the same doctrines as the Pandaren monks do, do they? I always figured there was a difference.

And seemed focused on stave-combat.

Scarlet monks actually used fists. (If I'm not wrong?)

Perhaps I should have phrased myself differently. More to the point, are there more martial schools then those introduced when the mists parted? Maybe we should refrain from calling them monks though, even if they are similar. Most would probably not come close to the dedication and lifestyle of the Pandaren to make their abilities as refined.

But maybe I shouldn't derail this thread...

The forums are are now up:

http://bloominglotus.freeforums.org/

Exigua wrote:Perhaps I should have phrased myself differently. More to the point, are there more martial schools then those introduced when the mists parted? Maybe we should refrain from calling them monks though, even if they are similar. Most would probably not come close to the dedication and lifestyle of the Pandaren to make their abilities as refined.

But maybe I shouldn't derail this thread...

Any monk on Azeroth of atleast human origin has learned it from a wandering isle pandaren, martial combat that is.. Tho they skipped most of the philosophies obviously, and perhaps dulled the martial schools severely, but that's bound to happen.

Perfection is still with the pandaren race. Both in mind and physics

Sunday night is Adventure Night for the Blooming Lotus!

Starting this week, we'll be hosting a wee adventure every night.

Not just our members, but everyone is welcome to join!

This week: Pao's Resource Run: The Snow Lily Slum!

Paozi, a not-so-well known hobby painter, has run out of blue paint. Pao is very pick in his choice of paint, believing it to be the key to unlocking his hidden potential as an artist, and has promised to reward those who bring him some snow lilies to restock his supply quite handsomely.

Of course, good old Jolly Pao forgot to mention that said lilies only grow in the haggard, frozen peaks of the north...

((Sha-touched Herbs too haha, sounds like a fun event though! Too shame my pandaren ain't level for adventure yet. Good luck! ))

The good pandaren of the Lotus and their Alliance friends were once again reminded of the truth of the saying It is the journey, not the destination, that matters most; and that's a good thing, too, because if it was the other way around, it would have been a lousy journey, since nobody reached their destination! Or, perhaps they did...But definately not the destination they set out to reach when they left!

Determined to brave the snowy slopes of Kun Lai to retrieve a rare blue lily to use for pigment in Pao's latest materpiece, the group set out north, yet, was interrupted by many adventures and finally a downright nasty downpour of rain, from which they hid all cozy-like underneath a snug pagoda overlooking the Yangtze river.

Because I am such a dolt I failed miserably in taking adequate screenshots, but here's a poor one to make up for it: notice how the gnome and the high elf that were with us are neatly hidden behind a fat pandaren tushui.



The journey is sure to continue, but when, and to where? The Crane only knows.