Shattered Kingdoms

I'm just curious - how long should it take to get invested in a religion?

I'm RPing an aspiring priestess, have met and RPed with a number of my intended Church's followers, have gotten their greenlight but - alas - no high follower shows up to get invested.

It has been approximately two weeks.

And it is frustrating.

I am no longer actively seeking membership in this one particular religion - I had even sent up an IC prayer with the God visible in hopes of sparking roleplay, to no avail.

The way I see it, rightly or wrongly, is why should I commit my time and energy in RPing a religion that is not very friendly to newbies?

Not that I'm a newbie, as I had some success in RPing here years ago and am looking to pick back up, but as far as anyone knew I certainly was.

My questions, at the end of my rant - how long should it take to get invested? And do you consider it bad RP to stop pursuing a religion because of OOC reasons, and do you see that as an impediment to continuing with a character?

Do immortals like to defer to the mortal HFs on investments to this extent? That's the only reason I can think of for why they would make this character wait.

Its very easy to quickly lose interest in a character because they have not been able to join a religion due to lack of an HF(its happened to me on a few characters), when involving priests/paladins/hellions I am all for Imm interaction with setting the religion flag.

I know that if an IMM came to my initiate level paladin and spoke to him directly I would be all about that character until he aged died.

I'd suggest trying a few more prayers before deciding to change religions, as that would be a pretty big change in your character concept. I say this because the necessary IMM might not have been online when you prayed earlier, and/or he wasn't contacted by whomever may have been online.

It does stink to miss an HF for 2 whole weeks though. If you're the person I remember, stick with it! It's always fun to have roleplayers like you around.

My current character (a priestess) waited for two or three months for an investment. The wait actually added a lot to her character, but it was frustrating. Eventually, I spam prayed every hour (might have been half hour) and some immortal took pity upon me (or got fed up with me, more likely).

If you like the character enough, it's worth keeping. Sending PMs (and e-mails) to the immortals is helpful in figuring out why you're waiting. In my case, the IMM in charge of my religion was MIA and no one wanted to step into his/her place too soon. It's a little less frustrating when you know people are aware of you, and why they seem to be ignoring your existence.

If you are the person I am thinking about the HF is around but is european so plays different hours than you probably.

I want to thank everyone who has replied so far. It really has been enlightening, and given me plenty to think about.

To put it out there, I'm not interested in waiting two months to get invested. I don't view extended waits before investment to be the answer, and the helpfile seems to support haste in investment.

Long ago I did the investment bit in a dead religion/building it up. Rewarding? Yes, and fun. But unrealistic to expect that sort of time committment just to get your foot in the door.

The other bit about the HF being of a different time zone is more interesting. In all likelihood, our two paths will not cross.

There's no one to blame, but it can't be uncommon to have a HF schedule that doesn't coincide with aspirants.

The question is how to rectify the situation. If there's no procedure in place other than begging or waiting in limbo, I'll find an IC reason to follow a Church whose HF would be more responsive to my needs.

Am I being unreasonable? How do situations like this generally get resolved?

If you havn't seen a HF in a long time just pray to the Gods they've been known to help a brotha out

Yes, keep praying and do it often.

If you send me a PM with your data, I'd really like to help you. Sometimes things like this are what is needed to address issues that can't be sorted out without someone getting slightly shafted. Solutions are forthcoming!