Anomaly File

BRIEF
The Anomaly File (name subject to change) would be a fun little roleplay object for Cabalists. The idea in short is:
-Find 'anomaly' object
-Record anomaly
-Return book to an NPC to get lore snippet.

REASONING
Basically, Cabalists freaking love to collect things, and we also love to get records of everything. First thing we all do in an event is get a copy of all the descriptions, so this is an extension on that. This concept would also be a way to deliver extra lore, or potentially even plot-carrying lore if necessary for an event.

DETAILED PROCESS
Cabalists would get a guild-specific object for this- a grimoire or file. Direct from Eocik, it would be a 'congratulations you're a real Cabalist now' sort of thing.

I imagine there are two ways it could function in practice. My initial thought was adding an 'Anomaly' flag to objects that could be flicked on and off as necessary. The other way to manage it would be to make an invisible 'anomaly' object to be placed at the intended site for an anomaly for the book/cabalist to interact with.

The process would go like this: A Cabalist comes across something weird. This could be a strange creature, a strange object, a scene (evidence of an event, room graffiti, whatever someone upstairs could deem 'weird'.

Cabalist uses RECORD ANOMALY or whatever syntax is free for that. Some kind of note of it could appear in the book, perhaps, but I imagine it would work at the back-end like the quest system, and the book/cabalist would pick up some kind of flag for whatever the anomaly was (IOSYNE_LOST_EARRING or something?).

Cabalist can take the book to Eocik and hand it over, and Eocik looks at the book and returns a snippet of lore ("Oh yes, this is Iosyne's earring. I can tell by the insects and from seeing a lot of earrings in my time.") or, if nothing has been entered into the anomaly's lore field, return a "Well, this is something, I guess. Get back to work." empty response instead.

EXAMPLES OF ANOMALIES
I have been planning to orgreq some small happenings where novices of the cabal have public numerology errors and die in spectacular ways. As an example, a novice suddenly explodes nastily in the street.

The room would have some graffiti saying there is a perfectly circular arrangement of entrails on the ground. Cabalist comes along and thinks, oh my, this is strange. RECORD ANOMALY.

They take the book to Eocik, and he looks and responds, "Ah yes, this was an Auxiliar. Yuef-based deconstruction, see how it is arranged in a circle. That's typical."

BACKEND REQUIREMENTS
The book would show a list, I imagine, of recorded anomalies, and the Cabalist could VIEW ANOMALY X to see what they have so far.

An anomaly would need three snippets of text.
-A description of what the anomaly is, to appear in the book
("A drawing of a circular arrangement of entrails on the cobblestones")
-A response from Eocik (also to possibly appear in the book)
("Ah yes, yuef based deconstruction etc")
-A "completed" description to appear in the book
("A drawing of a Yuef-based Numerological deconstruction, showing a mess of entrails arranged in a perfect circle")

Not all of these would be needed for every anomaly, however. The first snippet is necessary, but the second could be left blank and trigger Eocik saying 'wtf is this'. A wtf response would also allow there to be no entry for the third field, because it would not appear 'completed'. The second and third fields could also be added at a later date.

I do understand that writing a tonne of anomalies is not terribly feasible for the workload for the volunteers, however it would be something that people could throw in casually if they feel like mucking around. It could also be added easily to events to add a little extra lore, and I am willing to personally write a base of anomalies for things all over the existing landscape (there are already so many odd things for Cabalists to investigate! Named mobs in bashing areas, old things like deactivated landmarks, sites of important events, etc etc etc. Where I am not privy to the lore involved, I could deliver a partial anomaly writeup for a bored celani to finish.)

POSSIBLE EXTENSIONS
-Eocik could possibly, instead of giving the lore himself, say something along the lines of "I don't know exactly what this is, but see how it's written in kalsu? I imagine that suchandsuch at suchaplace would have an idea." This would initiate perhaps a short quest where the Cabalist hunts down suchandsuch to show them the book and complete the anomaly file. Or a longer quest- as long as you like, really. Suchandsuch could say "Oh look I would translate this for you but I'm so backed up, I need to visit soandso and get thingy. Unless you could do it for me?" Fetchquest forever.

-Aarbrok had the idea that anomalies could be collected to give the reward of 'completed research'. When the cabalist completes a 'set' of anomalies, it would trigger an extra piece from Eocik. As an example, after returning five different exploding-novice anomalies, Eocik might say something like: "There have been a lot of these lately. I've been examining the circumstances, and I think this procedure might be able to replicate these deconstructions reliably. I wouldn't try it if I were you." The Cabalist would then have an entry under COMPLETED RESEARCH which would note there is 'yuef-based deconstruction'. These completed research bits would act like special quest-skills (along the lines of panda stance, but 100% flavour, nothing gamechanging at all) giving special syntax a cabalist could use. Doing the yuef-based deconstruction example would, of course, kill the cabalist with a silly deathsight. Hilarious!

-As I mentioned, this could be a method of lore delivery. If someone running an event wanted stuff to be discovered about it, a Cabalist recording an anomaly would allow the eocik text or extra quest chain text to reveal something. If the person running it felt like it, this could also trigger other events- for example, a cabalist takes an anomaly to a kalsu expert who is alarmed by what they find and start some other part of the event by warning (or suggesting the cabalist warn) for example some kind of mob in duiran that it's relevant to.


Obviously if parts of this need to be changed to make it feasible, I'm up for that. But I think it could be a lot of fun and add a lot of lively content to the game!