The terms 'retirement' and 'exit' refer to both:
A character retiring temporarily by way of fading into the background, leaving the pack, or vanishing under mysterious circumstances, and;
A character retiring permanently by way of death
To formally retiring an existing character, an exit piece is required. This can be done either through art or literature by fulfilling the following requirements:
Art retirement
The character being retired must be clearly recognizable as a bust at minimum, and must have a natural background, shading and full color.
In the artist’s description, write at least 100 words IC describing the method in which your character is leaving the group, to provide closure for their in-character connections with other players and characters.
Properly retired characters who submit an exit piece which provides a canon/in-character reason for their exit are allowed to return to the group in future if the player desires.
Literature retirement
If you retire a character with literature, there is no minimum word count required for the body of the submission. You may write as little or as much as you’d like. Please try to at least write out a clear and in-character literature piece which shows how your character is exiting the group, both so that we on staff can keep record efficiently and so that closure can be found for other players and characters that your wolf’s retirement has an effect on.
As with art retirement pieces, include at least 100 words IC in the artist description describing the method in which your character is leaving the group.
Properly retired characters who submit an exit piece which provides a canon/in-character reason for their exit, are allowed to return to the group in future if the player desires.
In both cases, there should be clear and identifiable closure, so that other members know what has happened to your character and can make reference to it if they need to.
To have your retirement logged, note the group with a link to your completed exit piece so that staff can officialise the retirement.
Once your character is retired, they will be moved to the retired folder and you will be required to purchase them as you would a new character if you decide to bring them back into the game.
Retired characters lose their souls and ranks, but keep familiars, abilities, and pureblood status.
Unique abilities owned by retiring characters will be added back into the ability pool for events, and may not be one of a kind anymore when the character returns.
Once a character is retired they must remain in retirement for at least six months before they can be brought back into the game.
If you retire a character and DO NOT draw or write an exit piece, or do not include a 100 word description to explain the reason for their retirement, then your character’s retirement will not be accepted and they will instead be considered deceased, meaning you can never bring this character back in the future. They will be moved to the deceased folder, and canonically dead.
Characters which fall inactive and fail to submit an activity check will be marked canonically deceased at the end of the activity season. Players have no control over the circumstances of death of an inactive character; their fate is decided by game staff as required for the progression of the main group plotline. In joining Svajone, players consent to the fate of any inactive character being relinquished to the control of game staff.
It is possible to avoid retirement by transferring an active character to another player.
The original owner must note the group to formally confirm the transfer of ownership, and accept that they no longer claim any influence or control over that character.
The new owner may then create and bring in the character as normal, following all normal character creation procedure and paying normal character creation fees.
The new owner must bring the character into the group within 1 month of the original owner releasing ownership. If the new owner has not created the character within 1 month, the character will be considered deceased.
In the case of transferring an existing character from one player to another, no exit piece is needed from the original player.
In all cases, we ask that you please do not remove characters from the group gallery after death, retirement or transfer. The folders act as a log of past characters. Characters who are removed from the gallery folder will waive their rights to the claim over their character name should they wish to return.