Bifurcation

Bifurcation is the state of being in two branches or leaves, and is the term we have chosen to describe a character who has more than one of a single type of character component object.

The four major components are:

• The Spirit
• The Body
• The Mind
• The Soul

Multiple Spirits

Any character will be capable of addressing and accepting input from multiple Spirits simultaneously. This greatly simplifies the situations where an NPC object is required to control a player, and vice versa. It allows things like multiple personality disorder, charms, and possession to be modelled easily and without too much additional code. It also allows immortals to "ride along" with a character to diagnose problems, offer assistance, or whatever.

Multiple Bodies (Polymorphism)

When a character has multiple body, she is considered a polymorph. The character object will be capable of addressing either of them, but it will consider one as the 'primary' object, and will use that one for resolving body-related method calls such as description, damage, physical attributes, etc. The character object can also switch a secondary body into the primary's place, effectively changing the characer's appearance, physical attributes, and all the other things that inhere in the body. This allows the modelling of a number of different interesting roleplaying scenarios (lycanthopy, doppelg&aumlaut;ngers, shape-changers...) with a very simple mechanism.

Some creatures are shape-changers by nature (eg., some Faeries, dragons), and are able to change shape by will alone. Others are controlled by phases of the moon, the proximity to water, or other outside stimulus. These can all be modelled by abstracting the determining behaviour in a command for those that can change their shape at will, or a property object for those whose change depends on their surroundings.

Multiple Minds (Insanity)

Some kinds of insanity can be modelled by adding a second (or third, fourth) mind to a character.

Multiple Souls (Evil)

Evil is inherently complex in FærieMUD, and so is dicussed in its own topic. It requires that you understand the developmental structure called The Pattern. For additional information, see the Character Alignment topic as well.

— Ged The Greys Hain - 23 May 2000