It's time to learn to express yourself through your actions and words in ways far beyond what any verb alone can do. This is where you can let your personality shine through with witty barbs and sarcastic remarks. Or perhaps you wish to discuss philosophy at the local observatory, you can do that too. Act out a play in a grandiose theater, sing a bawdy tune to a drunken lot of vikings, chant up visions of goddesses bestowing gifts from on high as you invoke them in a faery ring of mushrooms... it's up to you. And here are the tools you can use to do it.

The Basics of Speech
If you read the section on game commands then you know some basic rules for figuring out how to type a command that will do what you want to do. Now we are going to break all of those rules.

Oh, relax! It isn't going to be all that bad. After all, if there are rules, then you know that there are always exceptions to the rules. Talking is an exception to the rules.

If you have been paying attention, then you probably think that if you type in the command SAY HI EVERYONE that your character would say, "Hi everyone." Well, it might work, but not how you would expect it to from what we learned in the commands section.

To have your character say something in the game, type a quotation mark, followed by exactly what you want your character to say. Speech breaks all the rules, so when you are talking you should use correct capitalization and punctuation, and the computer won't try to interpret any abbreviations.

If you type: 'HI EVERYONE
Your character will say: "HI EVERYONE"

If you type: 'Hi everyone
Your character will say: "Hi everyone"

If you type: 'Hi, everyone.
Your character will say: "Hi, everyone."

Punctuation Does Matter
The punctuation that you use at the end of what you say determines how you say it. Use a period at the end to just say something, use an exclamation mark to exclaim it, and use a question mark to ask a question. For example, if your character's name was Heracles, and you typed the following lines, other players would see the indicated messages.

If you type: "I think Ajax is behind this.
Others see: Heracles says, "I think Ajax is behind this."

If you type: "Ajax must be behind this!
Others see: Heracles exclaims, "Ajax must be behind this!"

If you type: "Is Ajax behind this?
Others see: Heracles asks, "Is Ajax behind this?"

Notice that in all of the examples above, there is no quotation mark at the end of what you type. You don't have to put one there because the system will automatically add one for you.

You may find it easier to use a single quote or apostrophe to start speech. It works the same as using a regular quotation mark, but you use a ' instead of a ".

Typing the command: "Follow me!
Is the same as: 'Follow me!

Whispering
If you don't want everyone in the room to know what you are saying to a certain person, then you have the option to whisper it to them so only they will hear it. This is also your best option for speaking out of character with someone so you do not interrupt the gaming environment for others.

Whispering incorporates what we just learned about verbs in the commands section with what we just learned about speech above. If Gilgamesh wanted to whisper something to Heracles, hoping Ajax wouldn't hear, he'd simply type:

WHISPER HERACLES Ajax has to be behind this!

Gilgamesh would see: You whisper to Heracles, "Ajax has to be behind this!"
Heracles would see: Gilgamesh whispers, "Ajax has to be behind this!"
Everyone else in the room would see... nothing at all.

You may also whisper to several people at one time as long as they are in your group. To form a group you simple JOIN <person> to make them the leader of the group or HOLD <person> to make yourself the leader of the group. Once you are in a group you will be able to whisper to them all by typing WHISPER GROUP Hera has to be behind this! and everyone in the group would get the message.

Acting Out
The ACT verb is the way you express yourself when there isn't a verb that can do what you want to do. Say you want to shoo off a bird. There is no SHOO verb so you can either WAVE at the bird and yell, "Shoo!" or you can use ACT. As with speaking, punctuation does matter, and so does grammar and everything else. What you type is exactly what everyone will see. Let's say our name is Atalanta, just to make the examples easier.

ACT shoos a bluebird.
Would show as: (Atalanta shoos a bluebird.)

The parenthesis are there so players know that you are acting, this avoids any abuse. That way someone can't use act to pretend to give you dinars and fool you. This is a very powerful verb and not to be used lightly. Even with the parenthesis there, this should not be abused. If you cannot do it as a character, you should not be acting it. Centaurs can't fly, so you should not use ACT to fly around, for example. Or cause yourself to disappear, or to say you've killed someone, or to show everyone what you're thinking, or anything else that you cannot really do. If you do use it in such a way, you are liable to be reprimanded.

To make the ACT verb possessive, like if you wanted to say your eyes are twinkling with mischief, you'd simply say:

ACT's eyes twinkle with mischief.
This will message: (Atalanta's eyes twinkle with mischief.)

Here are a few examples of bad use of the ACT verb. These bad examples also go for the SMILE and FROWN and any other verb where you supply the action afterwards.

(Atalanta floats into the air and disappears from sight!)
(Boudicca wonders how anyone could do that.)
(Heracles pulls out his demon-slaying sword of doom.)
(Siegfried slaps Odin upside the head, making him fall to the ground and cry.)
(Loki gives you 45869 dinars which you quickly pocket.)
(Brunhilde takes your diamond and throws it down the well.)

Singing, Reciting, and Chanting
Again, with these verbs what you type is what you get. These are also verbs we do not want to see abused. Using these to gain attention is considered disruptive and likely will earn you a warning of some sort. And example of using these verbs wrong would be to sing that you are selling a sword. You should only sing songs, only recite poetry, and only chant rites.

We'll be Murasaki (the author of the classic Japanese story The Tale of Genji) in this example.

Typing: SING There was ease in Hippolyta's manner as she stepped into her place.

Would message:
Murasaki sings:
"There was ease in Hippolyta's manner as she stepped into her place."

When using these verbs you can also put in line breaks so that what you recite comes out in different paragraphs or stanzas. To do this, you mark where you want that line break with a semi-colon ; like that. Here's an example:

RECITE There was ease in Hippolyta's manner as she stepped into her place,;There was pride in Hippolyta's bearing and a smile lit Hippolyta's face.;And when, responding to the cheers, she lightly pulled the chair,;No stranger in the crowd could doubt 'twas Hippolyta for the dare.

Would message:
Murasaki sings:
"There was ease in Hippolyta's manner as she stepped into her place
There was pride in Hippolyta's bearing and a smile lit Hippolyta's face.
And when, responding to the cheers, she lightly pulled the chair,
No stranger in the crowd could doubt 'twas Hippolyta for the dare."

Now, say you wanted a space between two lines of text, you'd just do this.

RECITE Line one.; ;Line two.

Murasaki recites:

"Line one.

Line two."

The space between the two semi-colons has to be there for this to work. You may recite or sing or chant up to nine lines of text before running out of breath, so keep that in mind when using these verbs with the line breaks.

This same technique explained above works for all three verbs.

Subtext
(This verb has been restricted for use in performance areas only.)
Subtext is a term denoting what a character means by what he/she says or does when there is a disparity between diction or action and intended meaning. In irony a character may say one thing and mean something entirely different. The real meaning of the speech is the subtext.

In other words, the person could be saying one thing and mean something entirely different. They could do this without even knowing it or they could be doing it on purpose, even to the point that they are totally going against what they have actually said. Subtext is the thought or emotion that is beneath the text, the unspoken dialogue in a script. Sarcasm is a form of subtext.

This command should not be used to attract attention, and using it solely for that purpose is considered disruptive to the role-playing environment of the game. Game disruption may result in an official warning. The same applies for Out of Character actions. The SUBTEXT verb is not here for people to use to go out of character. An example of abuse is to use SUBTEXT to say you are going "afk".

Here is an example of a good use of subtext:

Helen just arrived, tapping her staff on the ground to punctuate her steps.

Achilles smiles.
{subtext note by Achilles: Oh gods, I hope there's nothing in my teeth.}

Achilles exclaims, "Hi!"
{subtext note by Achilles: You idiot, nobody cool says "hi!", sheesh!}

Helen says, "Um, hello Achilles. Nice to see you, as always."
{subtext note by Helen: Why me?!}

This is just an example of one of the ways to use subtext. Sometimes in the shows the characters will actually "think" the SUBTEXT out loud so the audience will know what they're thinking. This is how our in-game SUBTEXT verb may be used correctly as a way to project our thoughts. In this vain though, characters should not react to the subtext, this is just something for the player behind the screen to see and get a good chuckle from.

Smiling and Frowning Actions
Smile and frown may both be used similar to the ACT verb, but that is not the intended use. The reason we allowed the text past a smile and frown to be inserted into the action of the verb is because there are so many ways you can smile or frown and we didn't want to limit you. These verbs should not be used in place of the ACT verb. If you want to say you are building a house of cards then ACT is building a house of cards. Do not smile it just to avoid the parenthesis that ACT places around actions, they are there for a reason.

Here is an example of how the smile and frown verbs work in this manner.

SMILE a wide cheshire cat smile.
Would message: Helen smiles a wide cheshire cat smile.

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