As most of you know I am currently active in a number of lore related activities on the site as part of my position as assistant lore moderator. However, some of these activities, which I have been engaged in might not interest the greater bulk of writers on the Althanas site.
It should be noted that writers are fully within their right to ignore anything that I have or will create, and I will not be offended by their doing so. Still I think it prudent that I inform you of these activities and obtain a general perspective by you, the people that also are a part of this website, to ascertain which activities I’d be better off not doing, and which ones I should make my priority. Also interested parties can also begin communicating with me in partnership to engage in similar activities.
I wanted to make this a series of polls, but the code was proving difficult, so I decided not to. If you could either place your responses below, or PM me with them as Bard, I’d appreciate it, as always I thank you for your time.
1. Compiling
This is literally as the name sounds, I am and have been working on compiling summaries of past threads for some time now. Think the Archon’s Vault, but only each summery is done as a rumor. While the information that summarizes the thread is present, certain things have been added, as well, perhaps the name of the town where events occurred for instance if none was provided. A link to the actual thread will be present so people can go and read the thread too, or listen for screen-reader users. The archives for each forum are vast and if one is trying to search for something it can be hard if they don’t know where to look. This activity is to provide summaries of past events, as well as an in-game, rumor mill.
2. Locale Description
I honestly wanted to be further along with this than I currently am, but life happened. At present many of the major cities of Althanas have been mentioned and described somewhat, but many of the towns have not. The purpose of this is to describe several locales in Althanas in varying levels of detail, to provide various writers varying levels of pre-generated places to write in or with. The attempt here is to by no means fully flush out the whole of the lands of Althanas, as that would be a disservice to other writers, but some writers are intimidated at the prospect of world building when presented as such. Locales in this sense would serve as writing prompts for interested writers. The goal is, for me, to provide several in first Salvar, then Dheathain, and then go from there, until I’ve described several in every major geographical forum.
3. Calendar’s
At present two calendars have been mentioned in the wiki, the merchant calendar of Corone, and the Raiaeran, but neither has been flushed out. I have already started on the merchant calendar and have some progress towards it, but have not really gotten beyond the early planning states of the Raiaeran calendar.
4. Plant and animal expansion
One should note, that this site’s wiki has a Bestiary, and that some creatures have already been mentioned there. One should also note that one could easily find other sources of information in the ascertaining of flora and fauna for their stories. Just as I have started with respect to locales, I’ve started describing some flora and fauna unique to Dheathain, and Salvar with more on the way, so too, like with locales, I want to give a smattering of both for every major region.
5. Historical Descriptions of paste Events
The only project related to this currently under way is the War of the Tap, which is an event of considerable significance to Althanas and the surrounding lands. Unfortunately given the nature of the event, reliable information is somewhat lacking. For this I will be presenting a series of historical perspectives on that event, with the truth of those events being something that individual writers can decide on for themselves. One historian might have all the facts laid out, or they could all be right, with certain parts, or all wrong. This is not so much as a hard canon, but a soft canon, providing common frames of reference for characters, but adding a level of mystery at the same time. Other projects will be taken once this one is finished.
6. NPC groups
The purpose behind this is twofold: first the creation of NPC groups allows for both questing and competitive interactions among writers on Althanas, serves as a means for enriching the lore of the site, enables for a simple straight forward means for allowing people to influence the world, and can serve to encourage cooperative writing. At present the following groups have been thought of and are in various stages of being written up for review and possible implementation:
- The Alerian Association of Science
- The Five Points Trading Costar.
- The Free Merchant’s Company of Corone
- The Bank of Brae
- The Salvarian Coin Counters Guild
- The Scale’s Council of Dealers
Each of these organizations will serve as the basis for planning missions that will be both run by me, in a few cases, and as writing concepts for players to utilize. One of these groups serves for the basis of “the Shadow Falls across the land” which shall commence tomorrow.
7. Wiki update
As possibly the most ambitious project, or the most fool hardy depending on who you ask, I am attempting to provide wiki updates on regions. This project naturally flows out of my summarization work, and thus is something that was born out of my interest in the lore of Althanas. While Salvar was the original goal of these labors, I have begun to turn my attentions to Raiaera for various reasons. Much has happened in the “Land of Song” and I feel that some of it should be cataloged in a form for others to have access to.
These are my projects, my activities as Bard, outside of workshops and the periodic review of a thread, and writing code for screen-reader users. The question is, which do you think are important? Which do you think he simply shouldn’t be doing? You might have noticed that each item has a number by it, if you would prioritize those numbers if you would, state which you feel is important, and which you think is unimportant. After that simply express your opinion, if you would be so kind, and I’ll review and come to some decision on what I should be doing and how I should continue here.
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