A high score in Sanity does not mean that you're sane. It means you have a grasp of yourself and your existence. Consider it to be how well you believe in yourself and believe in the things around you and how they affect you.

There are no rules that you have to be a sociopath once you're down to five sanity or a psychopath at three. There's nothing anywhere that says you can't be an utter raving loony and have a 19 sanity. The scale represents how much of a grasp you have of reality. How 'lucid' you are. In a world of mist, determining what is physical and solid, as opposed to what is merely the illusion of real and solid, is a hell of a lot harder than it would be in the 'real' world.

Here, everything is an illusion until people's faith, or imagination, or whatever makes it real. And even then it could still dissolve if people forget about it. In this sort of world, how do you know that you are real and solid? You don't. You have to have faith, a firm belief, and a hold on what we tritely like to call 'reality' to keep yourself whole. The only thing keeping the players from dissolving into the mist is their unshakable belief that at the very least, they are real.

Characters with a high mist score can do great feats of mist handling, but they are also susceptible to its effects a great deal more than the average person. Having a high sanity means that feats of mist are harder for you, but it is harder for people to use mist against you as well. You can lose sanity in a number of ways, thus losing your grasp on reality. When you lose it all, you lose your belief in yourself and will probably fade into the mists.

The more you play with reality and mist, the less you'll be able to hold onto your own reality, hence the very real danger of you losing 'sanity.' Not mental stability, but physical stability. Your own inborn belief that you're not going anywhere. Because if you lose the ability to imagine, at the very least, your own self as real, very little is going to stop you from dissolving.

Currently, losing sanity is mostly a role-playing decision. If you or the GM in a tiny-plot you are participating in decides that something you have done, had done to you, witnessed, or participated in, should require you to lose sanity, you or the GM can page #mail Turael, our Wizard of Sanity Loss, and put in the request to have it lowered and your mist raised.

The page #mail should include a brief reason why you think the loss is warranted. Turael will contact both parties, if someone other than you requests your loss of sanity, and will make a decision if the loss is contested.

You also have a chance of losing sanity on any expend over level 5. If your expend backlashes, the program will roll the chance for you and deduct the sanity automatically. If you lose all of your sanity, the program will let you know that and will also inform the wizards.

If you lose all of your sanity, what then? Well, then your character becomes an NPC, and can no longer be played except in cases of special tiny plots, with the permission of Turael. The wizards will also look over your history of roleplaying and may decide to offer you the chance to turn the character into a Mist-Born. This is rare, but can happen.

Please note that if your special states that you have a restriction on sanity (such as for Realists), you cannot lose sanity beyond the level you are allowed by your special.

Yes, it is possible to regain sanity. To do so requires some sort of effort on your part, however. It all depends on how you lost the sanity in the first place. If you were subjected to torture, killing your tormentors might count. If your sanity loss involved witnessing something horrible, perhaps putting it to rights will help. In order to regain sanity in this way, there must be some sort of public plot involved, that is actually played out. Consult with Turael as to what you think would be appropriate, and he can help you set it up. You will need to have someone to act as a GM that is not you. Please see the 'plots' global board for a list of players willing to volunteer to act as GMs in a sanity plot, if you do not already have someone.

Gods all have the power to give sanity back to players, and in rare cases, may do so if they are involved in a plot that you are participating in and it suits their fancy to do so. Don't count on this.

Please note that if your special states that you have a restriction on sanity (As Mist Walkers do), you cannot regain sanity above the level you are allowed by your special.