Hey guys,

Today marks the end of Venom as a class skillset, and Toxicology making a return as a mercantile (HELP MERCANTILE) skillset! Those of you with the Syssin class will have found that your lessons within both Subterfuge and Venom have been refunded to you, and in replacement of Venom is a new skillset named Assasssination.

While you'll notice plenty of abilities within Assassination are similar to number of those that once were in Subterfuge, a number of tweaks have been made to lesser used abilities to give them a fresh coat of paint, and we've added in a few new skills to boot. Additionally, anyone learning Subterfuge or Assassination for the next two weeks will find they can do so instantly.

For those of you interested in Toxicology, a number of changes have been made to how venoms are handled. To try and reduce the dependency on the wood commodity, we've changed it so you no longer need to have a vial in order to carry your venoms around with you. Within the Toxicology skillset is a new ability to craft yourself a venom rag (not the artifact version!) that'll work near identical to the vial counterpart, but instead of requiring wood it requires two cloth. It'll also take longer to decay and can hold up to 100 applications of venom, which is a nice bonus! Those of you with vials of venom already can consume it into your fluidcache, then redistribute it into an empty rag.

With this complete, the next thing I will be looking at is improving Sentinels slightly, and then fabled Cabalist revamp will take precedence at long last.

Lots of things to look forward to in the coming future!

Here's a quick changelog of things below, however I highly recommend reviewing AB files for more details:

Assassination
========================
- New Skill: Fangs.
- New Skill: Finesse.
- New Skill: Marking.
- New Skill: Keeneye.
- Yank will now ignore the density defence if the target is bound.
- Swinging can now climb up onto the rooftops of Urban environments.
- Seize, Shove, Scan, and Noose can now all be performed from the rooftops.
- Aiming will let your shot always hit providing that your target stays
within the trajectory of the arrow.
- Garrote will now always deal asphyxiation damage, with some bonus damage
when the target is prone.
- Scaling no longer works indoors and is now instant.
- Noose no longer requires you to stand still once you are successful in
noosing your target.
- Noose can no longer be performed if there are other people around.
- Added an in room message if you see someone caught in a Noose.
- Snipe now grants the benefits of Aiming.
- Snipe now adds a small amount of bonus damage to your shot.
- Snipe fixed to properly show the killer as anonymous should your target die.

Avoidance
=========================
- Catching renamed to Twisting and will no longer catches projectiles.
- Twisting now works on meteors and mysterious future projectiles yet to
be seen.

Forging
=========================
- Added fangs as a forgable item under Tools.

Subterfuge
=========================
- New Skill: Concealment.
- New Skill: Palming.
- New Skill: Subtext.
- Bite can now target yourself and will allow you to bypass the
fangbarrier defence.
- Removed recent aggression check when trying to use Illusion.
- Added a new system to some Subterfuge abilities that allows you to be
detected when trying something stealthy. This is based on your Subterfuge
level versuses your opponents Vision level. If you are both transcendent
then the detection rate is a default of 0%. Some abilities, like Vigilance
and Hypersight, will increase the chance of detection, although someone
who is phased will never be detected.
* This replaces the old method which relied on the Hide ability and if
the person in question could see through it, which was a little pointless
with the Heatsight racial.
- Shadow now possesses a detection check with an additional difficulty
modifer of 10%.
- Secret, Waiting, and Appraise now possess a detection check.
- Appraise updated to give a more modern view of someone's inventory.
- Vortex will now ignore the density defence if the target is bound.

Tattoos
=========================
- Added Listen, Mindread, and spying loyals to the detection of bell
tattoo.
- Tentacle tattoo has been updated to make use of new movement code.

Toxicology
=========================
- New Affliction: Squelched.
* This affliction is delivered by the selarnia venom.
* It will prevent the afflictee from using magical movement.
* Cured by smoking valerian or injecting antispasmadic.
- New Skill: Rapidity.
- Lowered Milking balance recovery time to 10 seconds, down from 20.
- Oculus now gives the blurry_vision affliction when not blind.
- Colocasia now causes deafness as a counterpart to Oleander.
- Lots of general fixes to the Loki venom and not hiding certain effects.

Miscellaneous
=========================
- A large number of communication spying abilities have been updated to
give a more clean look.
- Any ability that could spy on a SAY will now have speech within an
EMOTE relayed to them as well.
- Private rooms now block all forms of communication spying, unless you
could hear it normally.
* This includes any TELL that has either player within a private room.
* This doesn't prevent Gods for obvious reasons.
- Ouabian has been renamed to Ouabain to fix an old typo.
- Meteor arrows have been converted into the projectile system.
- Updated SAY to show facial expressions to someone listening in the room
who is deaf.
- Added slickness discovery when APPLYing a sileris berry or bone marrow.
- Added shyness discovery when you attempt to FOLLOW someone.
- Removed the limitation on how many times you can milk a venom with the
'milking' artifact.
- You can now LAND ROOFTOPS if you can fly.
- Fixed venom layers being cleared on weapons after 40 applications.
- You can SQUEEZE a rag with venom to remove the venom from it.

Penned by my hand on Tisday, the 11th of Niuran, in the year 456 MA.