Deodorant, anyone?

[Forty Winks]

Reading up on a few things for an assignment, I came across an idea that I thought might add some flavor to the culture and appearance of Zalanthans, affecting more of the upper class than commoners.

To my knowledge, I know of a few items at least that are designed as perfumes IG, and felt that making more use of such items might lend an addition to the display of personal power and wealth. These items could give off a room echo (a hidden echo, giving the 'You notice:' echo instead of normal echoes) when a person wearing it enters a room, and those knowledgable in perfumes (the nobility and merchants) can tell if the person is wearing the super expensive stuff, or the cheap perfume that any commoner could use.

This could be applied to people who are wearing sweaty articles of clothing by having them give off a musky, unpleasant odor when they enter a room.

Thoughts anyone?

[joyofdiscord]

Well, I guess realistically, there would be some small odor about them, but most city locations on Zalanthas already seem pretty crowded with smells: midden heaps, kank dung, plus a whole lot of other sweaty commoners and slaves.

Plus, and this really is the worst part for me: the wannabe hoity-toity types will decide that it's important for them to "react IC" to this, which means complaining about the smell offending their delicate RL-trained sensibilities.  I'm not talking about nobles, whose players probably realize that Zalanthas doesn't smell that great in general, but your everyday Bard's Barrel busybody will probably find time to be offended by the grittiness of the common man or woman, no matter how ICly unrealistic and immersion-destroying that may be.

I think it's a nice enough idea, but everyone smells like sand and sweat already.

[Angela Christine]

To my knowledge, I know of a few items at least that are designed as perfumes IG, and felt that making more use of such items might lend an addition to the display of personal power and wealth. These items could give off a room echo (a hidden echo, giving the 'You notice:' echo instead of normal echoes) when a person wearing it enters a room, and those knowledgeable in perfumes (the nobility and merchants) can tell if the person is wearing the super expensive stuff, or the cheap perfume that any commoner could use.

Wait, are you saying that there are perfumes that aren't super expensive?   Those vials of perfume don't look that expensive, but the only ones I've tried (a few years ago) had just one dose per vial which made them horribly expensive to use consistently.  It's cheaper to find a nice smelling spice and use that as your scent . . . at least if you are in a place where spice is legal.



Anyway, I kind of like the idea of unusual scents sending out subtle echos.  I think this would have to be restricted to perfumes though, because it could be difficult to determine what other scents would be unusual in a given room.  In most areas sweat would not be an unusual scent, not even in most areas of the Noble's Quarter (which is chock full of slaves and whatnot).  The sense of smell adapts, and even quite strong odours can become undetectable if you smell them all the time (a person visiting a home inhabited by smokers, dogs, or cat boxes may immediately notice an odour associated with any of those things even when they are not actively producing a fresh scent, while the residents do not realize that there is any noticeable smell at all).  Even stinky boots and gith gear probably aren't sufficiently unusual smells in a filthy, over-crowded city.  In most areas a perfume would be a sufficiently unusual scent that people could notice it, possibly spice as well.  


Rooms that have particularly strong scents should suppress perfume echos.  In a spice den, latrine, slaughterhouse or tannery you will be unlikely to notice even strong perfume unless the person is quite close to you.  You can still sniff them to find out if they stink, but you won't notice without a conscious effort.

[Cuusardo]

The problem I have is that you can't tell that someone is wearing something smelly, aka something with a heavy stench clinging to it, you can't tell unless you LOOK at them.  I think it would be awesome if you could get it through sniffing, or if some sort of echo would happen when they walked into a room in which such a thing would be noticeable.  Or when you're wearing something smelly (like after mucking out Byn latrines), YOU get the echo every so often telling you that you reek.  Otherwise, it's very easy to forget about it and not clean up, and walk around with shit caked all over your boots constantly.  Byn or not, I think most people wouldn't want to walk around with feces coating their legs and feet.

[spawnloser]

It would be nice for there to be something that clues people in to the fact that others are wearing smelly items without having to look at the person...and it would be nice to be able to notice those smelly items even when they are covered by something (for example when a cloak is covering your smelly belt).

However, for self: keyword smelly

[Rhyden]

Nah.

Thousands of years ago, there was no such thing as deodorant, at least, for most lower classes of the world. Nobody noticed. Why? Cause everyone smelled the same. Nobody really cared that everyone smelled like b.o. or in our case, sweat and dust.

I can see why this may be useful for the higher classes of Zalanthas, but I think there already is enough nice smelly stuff for them.