The most important, number one rule probably comes down to just be respectful and kind. So long as you put your best foot forward and treat others with dignity and respect, any issues that come up can and will be solved.
Secondarily, staff has the final decision on all rules. If you suspect staff is showing favoritism or anti-favoritism, you may bring it up with a different staff member; but otherwise, what staff says, goes.
You know what the rules mean. Obeying them to the letter while ignoring the spirit is no excuse. If you're confused, you can ask for clarification. If you don't ask for clarification, you know what the rules mean and have no excuse.
Consequences
Consequences almost always start at the level of gentle reminder. Many consequences will never go past this, especially if it happens only once or twice.
The next consequence up is a warning. This is an event that is marked on your account. Some warnings are temporary; others will remain on your account until the account is deleted.
Finally, if rules are continually broken, or you choose to be cruel repeatedly, bans are handed out. Starting with temporary bans, eventually a permenant ban will be enacted, where your IP address and email address are banned and your presence is as scrubbed from the site as possible.
Age Limits
Hiraeth is adult only. While the registeration accounts for COPPA (under 13), in general you should be an adult to join. There is content on this website and forum that is not appropriate for children and teenagers.
Maturity level also plays a factor. If you are unable to curate your own experience, and calm yourself after experiencing emotional distress, then you should not be on Hiraeth.
Language
Hate speech and bigotry will absolutely not be tolerated under any circumstances. Depending on the language and individual involved, it might result in an immediate ban, no chance for correction or take-backs. At best, you will receive a single warning, with the second instance resulting in a ban. There are, however, two exceptions:
Jokes In Poor Taste. Everyone's heard them, most people have made them. From "women belong in the kitchen, go make me a sandwich" to "the Straights™ are all terrible people", these kinds of jokes are very common and it can be hard to resist. Some jokes will result in nothing more than a mild "hey, that's rude"; others will result in a warning. Without repeated, prolonged jokes that target minority groups maliciously, this is unlikely to result in a ban, although you may temporarily be blocked from participating in OOC conversations if you can't resist them.
Character Language. Part of the fun of roleplay is to create characters that chafe against others. Creating a dislikable character can be cathartic, and all characters have flaws. In-character hate speech will be ignored, unless staff sees it becoming an issue out-of-character. All instances of hate speech must get a content warning at the top of a post. A simple Content Warning: Hate Speech will do, though you can be more specific if so desired.
Slurs, on the other hand, are not nearly so tolerated. With the same rules that characters can use it, most slurs fall under hate speech, with the exception of reclaimed slurs. If you are a part of the group that can use them, and use them when referring to yourself (or including yourself in an in-group), then there are no issues. Whether or not you can reclaim a slur is mostly a matter of the honor system, so please don't abuse it.
Use people's pronouns. Use character's pronouns. While your character, speaking, may use the incorrect pronouns - either because they don't know better or because they're a jerk - it's important to use the correct pronouns in posts. And OOC, any instance of incorrect pronoun usage is hate speech. While understanding will be granted towards mispelling or confusing pronouns (such as confusing e/ey or ze/hir and ze/zir), refusal to learn and correctly gender individuals will result in a very quick ban.
Foul language - such as cussing - is allowed with little to no limitations. If every other word is an f-word, staff may remind you to cool it, but otherwise this should be a non-issue. Don't do something to make it an issue.
Please make sure you're understandable, both OOC and IC. OOC, there are little limits on how you might want to communicate beyond that. In IC, make your best attempt to use proper spelling and grammar. Foreign language in posts should be translated. English as a second language, dyslexia, and other issues are understandable and are fine. Please be cognizant of differences between different dialects, and don't correct anyone's English without being asked to.
Posts should be written in third person. Past tense is preferred, but present tense is acceptable.
Adult Content
Adult content includes, but is not limited to: graphic depictions of violence, sexual intercourse, detailed descriptions of drug and alcohol use (example: graphically, in-depth describing a drug trip), and anything that you would feel uncomfortable with a 13-year-old observing. Adult content is allowed, but it has some caveats.
Common triggers should all receive content warnings at the top of the post. A basic (for example) Content Warning: Violence or Content Warning: Drug Abuse suffices. Not all triggers can be accounted for without people sharing said triggers, so not all triggers need to be warned for; just use your best judgment. Staff may edit your post to add a content warning if they feel it is necessary, but unless it becomes a habit it won't result in any repercussions besides the editing.
You may ask anyone to add a content warning. It's generally poor taste and rude to refuse. If you feel there is an issue, contact staff to intervene.
Sexual content is allowed. Heavy make-out sessions, descriptions of reactions to arousal, and the like are all fine to be added in the middle of a thread without warning. Anything more in-depth - such as dry-humping or interactions involving the removal of clothes - should be taken to PMs or a separate thread unless this thread was previously established as containing sexual content in the title (a [NSFW] at the beginning of the thread's title suffices).
Violence is allowed and, potentially, inevitable. Describing injuries and illnesses, including in detail, is fine. Use content warnings when detail is a lot (such as using details when describing someone vomiting, or the appearance of a nasty wound), but otherwise there are little to no limits on this.
Time
Hiraeth uses liquid time. In general, time passing is implied rather than a hard and fast rule. This especially suits the gray world, since it doesn't have traditional seasons and day/night cycles. This also means each character can be in as many threads as their player can handle, with each thread chosen
Sometimes, seasonal events will show up. These events may be in-character or out-of-character, but they will only last for a limited amount of time. It is important to prioritize in-character event threads, and those will often have a pre-defined relative location in character histories.
Activity isn't too stringently monitored. Adulthood is busy, and unexpected events often crop up. However, it's important to consider other people. Absences that occur in the middle of threads with others may result in consequences (such as your character being automatically moved to the Cave of the Lost), although only repeated instances of disappearing mid-thread will end up with warnings.
Etiquette
In general, posts follow a posting order. Person A posts. Person B posts. Person C posts. Person A posts. Person B posts. And so on. With a lot of people in a single thread, it can be hard to keep track of this. Sometimes, characters may drop in and out of a thread. Try to follow the post order, but if you lose track and skip someone, it happens to everyone.
Try not to skip people, though. If it becomes a habit where you're ignoring the posting order, staff may intervene and hand out a warning.
If you find your character is entering into a side-conversation separate from the main group with someone else, create a new thread for the discussion. The same goes for if your character leaves, even if they plan to come back. They can leave for a bit, interact with someone else elsewhere, and return later.
When writing your posts, try to give someone a chance to respond. Instead of Alice took Bob by the shoulders and shook him, yelling in his face, use Alice attempted to take Bob by the shoulders and shake him, yelling at him. You cannot control other people's characters, and Bob's player may want Bob to dodge Alice's grabby hands. Certain circumstances can make this harder to write around than others, and many people have struggled with this, so don't worry if you have some trouble too!
Contests of skill - combat, racing, anything where two or more characters are trying to succeed at something to the detriment of the other(s) - should have the outcome discussed in advance. That way, all players involved can aim for the same goal, and everyone knows what to expect. If you can't decide on who succeeds or if you want to leave some options to chance, you can ask staff to come decide the victor, or roll dice for it. If it becomes an issue, staff will intervene and nobody will succeed.
Powerplay is where your character succeeds at all goals and tasks. This is unrealistic. Your character will fail sometimes. If it becomes a problem, staff will intervene, and you will not likely enjoy the result of this intervention.
Metagaming is where you use OOC knowledge IC. You may read threads that give you details your characters do not know; you may get excited plotting with a friend. Whatever knowledge that your character does not reasonably know must not be involved. Staff will ask you to change posts if you metagame. If it becomes a problem, you may receive in-character consequences for the misbehavior.
Adding a 'tag' to threads is done by simply adding one or more words in a set of brackets. Common tags are: [Closed] to indicate that nobody new should join a thread; [Open] to indicate anyone can join; [NSFW] to indicate explicitly sexual content inside; and [Private] to indicate the thread is meant for a limited audience. More than one tag can be used, and of course ones that haven't been previously mentioned can be used.
Character Creation
Each member will need to create a new account per character. They will then request to join the Pre-Denizen group. Once accepted, they will gain access to character building profile fields, and can then modify those fields. Once the character information is filled out, a new thread will need to be created in Occupants. The character will either be accepted or staff will request modification.
Characters have several banned powers that they may not have at all, nor will they gain at any point:
Precognition is unavailable. Your characters will have no ability to see the future, limited or otherwise.
Teleportation is unavailable. The fog may be used to 'fast travel' through the gray world, but your character cannot instantly go from one place to another, even if those places are close by and known to them.
Omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence are disallowed for, hopefully, obvious reasons. Powers usually associated with gods - being all-knowing, all-seeing, all-being, and all-powerful - create a very unfair dynamic and also absolutely ruin some of the mysteries of the gray world. These powers are also associated with metagaming and powerplaying.
Summoning to location, of both people and objects, is also disallowed for similar reasons to teleportation. Summoning a temporary ally, like a sort of short-term AI, may be handed out upon request if the character previously possessed this ability.
Character creation also has several powers that are unavailable, but may be gained later on:
Flight both with and without wings. A character may have wings, but these wings will not do more than allow a character to glide. Two exceptions are made: floating (hovering over the ground) and if you're very small/otherwise can't move (ie a pixie, a small songbird, etc). In either case, you are unable to go above approximately 2 meters (a little over 6 feet) in the air. You can try, you just simply... won't fly any higher, like pushing against a wall.
Elemental control. The manipulation of elements can be quite powerful, and this is something the gray world would strip away from its stolen people. However, that doesn't mean you can't gain it later on... even if you never had it before.
Telekinesis, or otherwise moving objects without touching them. It's possible to gain such an ability, but it won't be had right away.
Empathy, telepathy, and any kind of mind- or intention-reading. Previous iterations of these abilities will have been lost to your character upon entry. It is possible to gain or regain such things, but it will be an uphill battle. At the start, you must come into this dangerous and manipulative world without any ability to read people's intentions.
The ability to change the color of anything within the gray world. A character can still change the color of items they or others possess that were previously colored, but they cannot make anything in the gray world not gray. A lighter or darker gray, sure. But it must remain monochrome, and even white and black are prevented (although a gray that looks white or black is a good loophole). Characters may still transform objects to other objects if that is an ability they possess, but any transformed gray world objects remain gray.
Nobody is perfect. This applies to your characters as much as anyone else.
While not a hard and fast rule, three powers is a good limit to keep in mind. Having more powers, all related to each other, is acceptable. Having just two unrelated powers may be a little dicey and will require explanation.
The gray world removes memories. It's entirely possible to come in with most of your memories in tact, but there may be benefits to lacking memories... something the gray world gives to make up for such a sacrifice. AKA a friendly bonus from staff for playing nice with Hiraeth's mechanics.
There is no character limit, so long as every character is actively used. If you have ten characters all active in different threads, go ahead and make another character. If you have two characters but you've only ever used one of them in a single thread that finished several real-life months ago, you will not be allowed to create a new character.
If you ever lose interest in a character, talk to a member of staff. We'll work out a way to remove your character from the gray world (death, singular escape, going too deep in Cave of the Lost, etc) and initiate that before adding your character to the 'Discarded' group.
As a general rule, characters will grow more powerful over their time in the gray world, not less. Magical skills that had been lost will be regained; those without magic will find magical talent; strength and talents overall will improve.
Mechanics
Using the fog is truly the only way to travel to different locations. Most times, it will lead characters to where they're trying to go. However, when exploring generally or if you want to roll the dice, creating a thread in or asking one to be moved to the fog will prompt staff to create a random event for your character. Exploring the fog comes with risks, and exploring the train tracks is riskier. Use caution.
A staff member can always be summoned simply by adding @Herald into a post.