• Revision to cub dice: Cubs aged 1-4 months old will now have their dice amounts set to 0 hits and 0 dodges. When a cub reaches 5 months old, they can request their size and age-appropriate dice. If you currently have a cub within the 1-4 month age range and their dice need to be updated, please post in Trade & Dice updates. Staff will also be switching these as they see them, but please make an effort to request this!
• Regardless of their rank or PvP, cubs can no longer actively participate in theft or claim challenges, as neither the offending or defending party.
• They must reach 1 year of age within their prides in order to partake in these sorts of fights.
• Any cub fights currently ongoing at the time of this update may proceed as normal.
• When your character reaches Master in their trade and then subsequently switches to a new Master trade, they can keep their original IC award. This means you can earn and keep your IC award every time you Master a trade, versus it being wiped.
• If you have made this swap previously and had the award wiped, you may reclaim it so long as you can prove that they were once a Master in the previous trade.
• Adjustment to how medics roll to heal wounded rolls: Given a newly realized feature of our on-site dice roller, healing rolls will be rolled slightly differently now. The appropriate coding can be found in the Guidebook, so please use this when trying to heal wounded rolls.
• When your character’s wounded status is expired (i.e. the healing date has been reached), you can resume using their regular dice automatically. This means that you do not need to wait for a Staff member to process and remove their wounded status, but please remember to request its removal regardless. This is very important for Staff tracking and consistency, and if we see an uptick in related issues, we reserve the right to revert back to the previous method.
• When posting Round 0 of a fight, it will no longer be considered an official fight post and can be edited, etc., without disqualification. Round 0 still has a timer of 72 hours for others to contest the fight.
• Please note that members should NOT be changing their post to edit in fight stats later on/after the post has been made and others have responded to the thread. If a member is found to be doing this, Staff will default the fight.
• Going forward, exits in all IC threads will only be valid after 72 hours have passed with it going uncontested, regardless of the thread type. This is site-wide and no longer exclusive to wars and raids.
*Addition to the 72 hour exit rule*

• Trades/petals can be claimed based on the first exit.
• Only one exit blocking is allowed per thread. The character can exit again on their next post if they desire to. Exits can be blocked physically, verbally, or with a fight as long as it is CLEAR.
• The following OOC awards will no longer be added to IC accounts, and will only be found on members' OOC accounts: Contribute, Helper, Recruiter, Loyal Member, Donate. Staff will gradually be removing these from active IC profiles (when doing other maintenance items in the backend, accepting reauditions, etc.) and any new IC accounts will not have these added.
• These OOC awards are player-centric and are tedious for Staff to keep updated across all IC accounts, which is why they're being removed from IC accounts.
• All other OOC awards that are character-centric will remain.
• You can now claim 50 petals (on your OOC account) for your character being nominated for Character of the Month. Sr. Staff does not keep a nominations log, so make sure to claim these petals while the game is ongoing.

• Please remember that all art needs to have credits. Tables should have credits for both the artist and whoever made the code, and this should be in place even if you are the one who made the items!
• We have a glitter system! Be sure to use it and send some glitter to those who you think need it! Not sure how to? Here is a guide for how to use it!
• In order to post in pride hunts, your character needs to be an officially marked member of the pride. This has been added to the Guidebook for clarification.
• Please remember to request to have your fights added to the fight log at the start of the fight. This is extremely helpful for Staff and keeping track of things.
• When requesting items in our maintenance boards, please make sure that you are using the proper links and that you are following the formatting that is provided.
• Similarly, it is very helpful for Staff if you add a line break <*br>(without the *) after each line in a maintenance request. If you're able to, please add these to your requests.
• Always remember that we have a vast array of people on-site and that they all have different levels of activity and muse. Keep IC and OOC separate.
• Translations need to be explicitly and clearly written out somewhere in your posts, and not in hover text, when your character is speaking another language.

Since our last update, there have been some big shuffles made to our Staff teams, which is why we wanted to take a moment to recognize all of our lovely Staff members and provide a snapshot of where things currently stand.

Welcome to all of our new Staff, congrats to those who have moved up, and thank you to those who have remained constant helpers and supporters of the community!

Currently, our Staff consists of:

• Admins: @Squid ★ and @Ice ★
Co-Admins: @AbjectTerrier ★ and @irish ★

• Sr. Staff: @Shark ★ and @Roamer ★
  

• Staff: @Sylvey ★, @Nova ★, @cala ★, @Zena ★, @aquua ★, @Mouser ★
  

• Assistant Staff: @Max ★, @Gunner ★, @LilacxSorcery ★, @Zodiac ★

In order to facilitate better tracking for things and expand on what Staff do/don't log in character profiles, we have modified the design and coding of the IC profiles. This will allow us to add more space to the profiles and potentially expand on a few mechanics, as we've seen suggested by members.

You will now see two tabs on IC profiles - "About" and "Stats".. The About tab includes most of what we have now, including appearance, personality, history, etc. The Stats tab is where your petal and trade exp tracking is now located, and also includes the following new profile fields:

• Maim Log: This is an area where members will be able to input and track maims that your character has earned through IC fights. This is editable by members and not Staff given the nature of maims and the fact that the final maim is not always known until after the fight has been tallied. This is considered optional, but we encourage you to keep it updated for everyone's benefit and proper tracking.
Earned Trade Perks: This is where Staff will begin tracking and updating a character's earned trade perks. This will be both for easy reference for members and Staff, and to provide us more flexibility should we look to make significant changes to the trade system itself.
• Dice Modifiers: This is where Staff will begin tracking and updating a character's dice modifiers. It will not account for wounded rolls

Staff will gradually be working to update the trade perks and dice modifier fields for active IC profiles over the coming weeks. Please do not request either field to be updated. They will be done gradually while other maintenance items are processed, when Staff has free time, and when auditions are accepted. Thank you in advance for your patience!

After some extended discussions amongst the Staff team, we are excited to release an update that will allow our Prisoner Rank to shine a little bit more - just to add a little bit more excitement to those nail-biting threads. Please take note that we're always working on improving our systems, and these mechanic changes may or may not be altered again once we see how it works in practice.

* This will be effective on threads started after the date of this update.*

Raids and Wars: Once a thread is officially declared a war or a raid, characters will now have the ability to initiate a Prisoner Challenge against the opposing party. This will work similarly to a normal Claim/Theft challenge, except that the target will not be limited to just lionesses or cubs - all lions, regardless of sex or age, will run the risk of being taken prisoner. Pride leaders dictate who in their pride can take prisoners during raids and wars, and it must be listed in their pride laws.

Pride Challenges: A pride challenge is a risky event, both for the challenger and for the characters who face the possibility of losing their home. As a reflection of that risk, the winner of a pride challenge will now be given the opportunity to take the losing party (the other challenger) prisoner if they so choose, regardless of sex. On the flip side, a challenger who successfully takes over an existing pride will also have an opportunity to set all existing members to prisoners.

Prisoner Guidelines: A pride leader can shift any member of their pride into the Prisoner rank at any time, so long as it is done ICly.. Exits are not needed so long as the leader states clearly their intention to make said character a prisoner. Pride leaders are still free to set their own rules about how Prisoners will be handled or treated, and while Prisoners can create threads outside of their pride lands, the pride leader will have the authority to interrupt it, even if the thread is marked 'private'.

Please note that the individual pride laws set around prisoners are not something that the Sr.Staff team will enforce - we will only be enforcing the above guidelines. We ask that all members who engage in these sorts of plots will maintain a certain level of respect towards each other, and a willingness to work with any personal boundaries that may be set in place.
 

It's very important that Amaryllis is maintained as a safe space for our members, all of whom come from a large variety of backgrounds and are defined by a diverse range of experiences. To that end, all members are expected to make proper use of trigger warnings to ensure that others have the option to back out of reading something that may contain uncomfortable and/or traumatic themes.

However, due to a recent uptick of sensitive topics coming up in general conversation, we want to remind everyone to please take care to keep these potential triggers in mind when you are chatting OOCly in Discord. Please also remember to use proper trigger warnings in threads. If you come across a thread that you feel needs a TW, please bring that to Sr. Staff's attention.

Please note that it goes against proper etiquette to joke or speak flippantly about topics including but not limited to:

• Mental health disorders
• Chronic illness
• Sexual assault or assault of any kind
• Infertility/fertility issues
• Sexual coercion/coerced pregnancy
• Intoxication/Inebriated sexual relations
• Any ongoing conflicts or wars happening in the world

Being able to respect each other's boundaries and sensitivities is an integral part of any community, and we expect to see this respect shown in all aspects of our community, both on and off-site.

The technological advancement of AI art is something we're all aware of, and it is something that we've likely all dabbled with a little bit by now. As beautiful as the final results may be, however, there are some issues with AI art that need to be addressed and mitigated within our community of artists.

The lack of regulation over most AI art generators means that the AI commonly pulls elements together from the artworks of artists who have not consented to have their intellectual property used in this way. The frequent use of copyrighted work poses a very serious legal grey area, and for the time being, we are not comfortable with encouraging the use of AI art on Amaryllis.

From this moment onward, we ask that all members avoid creating AI-generated art for new profiles, manips, tables, etc. Any previously-made work can continue to be used on-site.

Having said that, we are aware that some programs (like Adobe's new AI program in Photoshop) have more ethical standards about where they source their images from -- so, the Sr.Staff team is open to being flexible so long as you can verify and prove that the AI program you're using has explicit sourcing guidelines and works to protect the copyright of other artists.

• As an artist, it is your responsibility to come to Sr.Staff and verify the guidelines of the AI program that you're using. Failure to do so could result in your art being removed from Amaryllis, should it use AI that has not been vetted by the team.
• Sr.Staff will work to create a running list of acceptable programs in our Art Rules, which will be considered the exceptions to our AI Art Guidelines.

Further guidelines on the use of AI art are listed below and will be added to the Guidebook. These do not apply to any listed exempted programs.

• AI Art is defined here as any image in which the AI-generation is clearly a part of the final product, i.e. Straight AI images, AI images that've been slightly modified/colored by an artist, AI images used as the background of an otherwise original piece.
• Heavily altered images may be acceptable if the AI-generated elements have been entirely transformed into something original by the artist.
• Artists are still free to use AI art as inspiration or reference.
• No new AI art will be accepted on Amaryllis after this update.
• All AI art currently in use will be 'grandfathered' in. You may continue using it, and it will not be removed.

Death Matches are one of the rarer events here on Amaryllis, largely due to the inherent risk that comes with these high stakes battles. The death of a character is not something to be taken lightly, and we have always sought to ensure that Death Matches are structured as fairly as possible for both participants.

In order to further facilitate this, extra dice tied to pride perks (Lead Scout, Pride Tier 4, etc.) cannot be applied to Death Matches taking place on pride territories. This means that a character is only fighting based off of their own dice.

Additionally, because Death Matches are intended to maintain a high level of risk, characters will only be allowed one (1) escape attempt from a Death Match.

We expect that all members who choose to engage in a Death Match will do so with full knowledge and acceptance of the potential consequences.

We know that our breeding mechanics are a very fun and exciting part of the the game for many members, but it should be said that breeding was never intended to be one of Amaryllis's main features. As such, we will be implementing a couple of changes to the system as we strive to strike a better balance between 'cub booms' and the activity of our player base.

Firstly, the breeding cooldown for lionesses will now be extended to 1 IC Year from the birth of their previous litter.

Any who are currently on a breeding cooldown will need to add the 6 months to their cooldown.

Secondly, we will be introducing seasonal breeding mechanics to Amaryllis, meaning that litters conceived during the harsh season of IC Winter will face more difficult odds of getting larger litters

• However, this change will not start until next IC winter.

We hope that these changes will implement an engaging strategy element to how litters are handled and give members some extra time to focus on the development of their younger characters.

We will be moving to having members re-roll their perks in a maintenance thread via the use of a form. In other words, Sr. Staff will no longer conduct fight re-rolls for you, effective immediately. Members will also need to make sure that they tag their fight partner so that they are aware of the re-roll being done. We are hoping that this will help cut back on the waiting that happens with the re-rolls.

• If both/multiple fighters have the ability to have a re-roll, talk with your partner before requesting the fight to be judged.
• The re-roll takes the place of the old roll. Anyone found to be trying to delete or change the outcome will be unable to request rolls themselves moving forward.
• Once the fight has been judged, the re-roll will be moved to a spot in the SrStaff board for tracking.
• The link to the re-roll post must be put in the fight results request, along with the link to the original roll.

We are working on an automated way of handling awards and achievements. We will be rolling this out slowly as we adjust the backend coding and the way that the awards are set up.

It will not be considered fully live until Staff have all been trained on how to use it. If you happen to see it in your profile or elsewhere, please DO NOT mess around with it, try and request things, etc. The Admin team will let everyone know when the features are live, can be used, and how to use them using a "how-to" guide. Failure to do so with cause more work and have the rollout take longer -- so please be patient with us.

We are hopeful that this shift towards a more automated system will help cut down on some waiting time and alleviate some work on staff's side.

We understand there is a lot of appetite to see things about the trade system tweaked and expanded upon. We have taken in all the suggestions thus far and will be opening up some community discussions to help flush things out more. Instead of doing it in pieces, we would like to release a re-balance in a complete way, so we’ll be working on starting this work following the end of the October events.

— The Staff Team