Here are a few of the smaller things to note that have been changed over the last month, or that are changing as of this update:

• A section for character accessories has been added to the Character Details page of the Guidebook.
• We now have a tab for information on the Fight Club and how to access and utilize them, available here.
• The cost of the native character pass has been reduced to 200 petals. The perk of the pass is that the character can assume full knowledge of the site’s lore without having to be told ICly. The Staff team is continuing to assess other ways to level out other hiccups with the native character system.
• A new mutation has been added to the Guidebook and Shop - curled ears! This will cost 50 petals.
• We have added a prompt to tag your opponent in fights in the fight post template. Mistakes happen every now and again (and they happen to all of us), anyone found be purposefully avoiding tagging their fight partners will receive a warning from the Sr. Staff team.
• Curly Fur Mutation and Manes: Moving forward, we would like to solidify that the curly fur mutation is NOT needed if it is solely being used for a character's mane. Mane styles (curly, wavy, normal, dreadlocks, etc.) can all be incorporated into your character’s design for free; the curly fur mutation only applies if the character’s actual pelt has a curl to it. If you previously paid for the curly fur mutation for the sole purposes of the mane, you can request a refund in General Maintenance, as we realize there has been a discrepancy with this overtime. You can also choose to keep the mutation for genetic purposes if you’d like, but that choice is up to you.
• We are introducing a new BWP Team (similar to Designer Team, Fight Club, and Welcoming Committee) to help Staff plan and facilitate BWPs on Amaryllis. If this is something that interests you and you would like to learn more, please take a look at the official application thread, here!

Cheers to not only making it to 2022, but also to one full year of Amaryllis! Whether you are a new member, an old member, a returning member, or a former member, the Admin team would like to thank you for being a part of our community and helping make the site what it is. Nothing that we do here would be possible without you, and you are the reason that this site continues to thrive, evolve, and improve!

The past year has been insane (in more ways than one!) but we are so grateful to share this site with you all, and hope that this is just one of many anniversaries to come. Again, thank you everyone!

As you may have seen, it was decided a few weeks ago that there would be some changes to the structure of Amaryllis' staff team. The main component of these changes is the introduction a new level of staff, which will be known as Assistant Staff!

You can check out the full news post and update on this topic here, which includes all the information on these adjustments and our new structure.

As a result, we would like to formally announce the newest additions to Amaryllis' team! Please join us in welcoming @Spu and @Shan to the Staff team, and @Daanyen, @wallflower ★, @novi, @koi, @Janie505, and @Shark to the Assistant Staff team!

Please note that some maintenance requests might be purposefully delayed or held onto for practice reasons during training. We ask that you show patience towards our new Staff members during this time - we promise that it will be well worth it!

The time has come again for our bi-annual posting raffle!

Whether or not you were around for our previous posting raffles, this event is a good way to expand your writing circle, develop some fun and exciting plots, and get the muse flowing as we move into the new year! There are also several tiers of prizes that you could win from if you choose to participate, so be sure to check it out.

The posting raffle will count all of your posts, from across all of your characters, between January 1st (12am EST) to January 31st (11:59pm EST).

If you are interested in participating, please see the full event details here and make sure to sign-up!

We will be making some changes on how IC awards are displayed in IC profiles. The OOC awards (both on IC profiles and OOC profiles) will not be changing and their display will remain as-is.

Since its conception, the intent behind the IC award system has always been that it would be a storyboard of your character's life, achievements, and memorable moments. This also meant that not every character was intended to collect them all, and that everyone's would likely look slightly different.

In order to better reflect this intention, IC awards will now only be added to your character's sidebar once they have been earned, which will allow each profile to be unique and tell the story of that character's life. This means that the faded/unearned IC awards box will be removed. Thankfully, these changes will give Staff the ability to add new awards more easily and consistently as the site evolves, and so we hope that this will benefit the site long-term and provide us with some more flexibility. We understand that this change may take some time to get used to, but we hope that it will add to the gameplay in a positive way!

Over the next few weeks, Staff will be going through all active IC accounts and removing any unearned (greyed-out) IC awards. Inactive IC accountswill have the unearned awards removed when/if the account is auditioned. During this time of adjustment, starting as of this announcement, the requesting of any new awards will be paused and the Awards maintenance thread will be temporarily closed.

Once Staff has finished this initial adjustment phase, an announcement will be made and members will be able to request the order of their earned awards, based on the order that they originally happened IC, if desired. This step is not mandatory (meaning that members can also choose to leave them in the order that they are already in), and there will be a request form posted here once this option is available. Regular award requesting will also open back up at that time.

In celebration of the new year, we thought it would be fun to bring in some new breed-only pelts to spice things up! We love our lilac and strawberry swatches dearly, but are very excited to show you guys the new swatches that we have come up with!

And so, without further adieu, here are our new breed-only pelt colors, plum and abyss!

As of this announcement, the lilac and strawberry pelts will be rotated out of RDG and cub rolls to help keep them more exclusive, and also so that we give room for the new pelts to take flight! They will be rotated back into the RDG and cub rolls sometime in the future, and certainly will not be gone forever! If you have been gifted a "breed-only pelt" prize/gift, you can select any of the four pelts that you desire.

A disparity has been noted between the dice stats and the accessibility of our extra-small and colossal sizes. Though their dice are evenly impacted by their size, the fact that one size is purchasable and the other is breed-only has caused some confusion, as well as uncertainty as to why they are not treated equally.

As a result and in an effort to help mitigate this imbalance, we will be removing the ability to purchase the extra-small character size, and will instead be making extra-small a breed-only size in the same way that colossal is.

As of this announcement, extra-small is no longer purchasable in the Shop. If you have purchased extra-small but have not yet auditioned the character that it was intended for, it will be honored/grandfathered in and you will be allowed to keep it.

Also as of this announcement, breeding two small characters will result in a chance of rolling an extra-small cub. This works in the exact same way that the colossal sizing does, just reversed for the small-end of our build spectrum.

Extra-small will also continue to be attainable in the monthly RDGs, as will colossal.

In order to provide some more freedom when it comes to making creature characters and their designs, we would like to share some adjustments to these systems.

• The cost for adding additional markings (beyond what is naturally found for their species) has been removed. Any regular markings can be added to your creature character for free.
• Global markings will remain in-line with our creation guidelines, and will continue to cost 200 petals for creatures. However, the restrictions on what global markings creature character can have has been removed. Any global markings can be added to your creature character for 200 petals.
• The posting requirements needed to produce a hybrid litter have been reduced to 200 posts, for both parents. We hope that this will help make creating hybrids more attainable!

We would also like to take this opportunity to address a misconception that we have seen as of late regarding creature characters and the fight system:

• Please note that creatures cannot be killed by lions or other characters without your permission, even if they cannot partake in the official, dice-rolled fight system. The dice system cannot be used as a means to auto-win against a creature character -- rather, all fights involving creature characters need to be determined OOC or by your own off-site method.
• Any dice fights that are initiated against a creature character will be voided and not be used as a default or auto-win for the lion character.

We hope that this clears up any confusion, and please let a Staff member know if you have any outstanding questions.

Thread of the Month has been added to our list of monthly site-wide games! It will work in the same fashion as the other OTM games, including a round for nominations and a round for voting — check out the official TOTM game thread for the full set of rules and information, available here!

— The Staff Team