Warpath
11-04-14, 08:02 PM
Let me preface this by saying I've been gone for awhile and I have no idea what's going on behind the scenes. If somebody's about to announce something cool, sorry for stepping on your toes.
That said: I'd like to invite everybody to tell some stories about dragons.
The last time I was active, talk had been going on about doing a player-run event involving dragons attacking the various nations of Althanas. I don't see anything like that going on, but I'm going to kick something off for my own characters and I figured I'd invite everybody else to join in if they're interested.
For each of my characters, I'm going to do a short thread or vignette describing where they are and what happens on the Day of the Dragon - the day dragons of countless varieties suddenly emerge and attack many of the major cities of Althanas. If you're bored and/or looking for something new to do, I invite you to do something similar.
This isn't a competition or a tournament or a featured quest. I have nothing to offer you if you write the best and most compelling posts. There are no special badges or rewards for you if you participate. I figure this is just an extension of what we already do at its most basic, and a chance to write (even if just incidentally) with people you wouldn't normally write with. At best we'll agree on a new canon, at worst I'll just have a bunch of cool solos that share a theme :)
It's simple to join in, if you're interested. First, I'm going to start a thread of vignettes, wherein anyone can write very short stories describing what happened to their characters or NPCs on the Day of the Dragon. The stories in that thread won't necessarily have anything to do with one another: the only unifying theme is that the stories happened on the day the dragons chose to attack the mortal races of Althanas. Feel free to post there if you just want to write a short 1-3 post vignette about dragons, it's open to everybody.
Second, I'm going to start a series of threads and tag them with "[DotD]," indicating that they take place on the Day of the Dragon. I have a couple of short solos in mind that I know I'm going to do, but I'm also open to doing cameos or short threads with other people if you're interested - PM me! Or, if you'd like, I invite you to start your own threads and tell your own stories, completely independent of what I'm doing. All you have to do is include the [DotD] tag, so the rest of us can keep track of which threads are included in the event.
In the interest of creating a cohesive story I just ask that if you participate you follow a few rules.
1) Keep it to one day.
Liquid time does not apply: your character was only in one place at a time. That isn't to say you can't tell multiple stories that take place involving the same character on the Day, but it has to make sense. If you're fighting a dragon in Radasanth in the morning, you probably aren't fighting a different dragon in Knife's Edge by noon - and if you ARE, you need to explain it. However, you absolutely are not fighting two different dragons in two different cities at nine in the morning...I guess unless you can somehow split into two people? I don't know, for most of us that isn't going to apply though.
2) Follow current events.
I'll try to keep track of all the tagged DotD threads and where they're taking place. I might even keep a running description of what's happening where, to make it easy to keep up to date. Basically, we all need to agree what the situation is everywhere. If you say there's one dragon lording over Eluriand fighting with hardened elven survivors, I shouldn't say six dragons have melted what remains of the ruins to slag. If you have questions, ask them in this thread, and we'll come to a consensus because we're goddamn adults.
3) Keep it short, keep it simple, and finish it.
If I'm not doing this alone and we do this right, this is essentially intended to be a sort of all-inclusive, sprawling mega-thread. If you start a story that takes place in Radasanth, you'll be impacting canon in Radasanth, which effects anyone else that wants to write in Radasanth as part of the event. Don't leave us hanging! There are no time limits but if you join up, I ask that you do it fully intending to finish anything you start (or quickly and publicly back out if you find that you can't finish in a timely manner, especially if you're writing with others). Personally, I think the best way to ensure this is to focus on telling a short, concise story - shoot for ten posts, get 'er done!
4) Lose.
This isn't intended to be the whole story, even if it might end up that way - I'd like this to be all of Althanas introducing a powerful new villain to itself. What good is a villain if he fails the second he arrives? I'll accept if a VERY small number of young whelps or drakes dies in the course of the day, but no dragon will fall. This is meant to be a devastatingly effective surprise attack, a masterfully planned blitzkrieg that nobody saw coming. The dragons are aware of you, yes YOU, and they factored you into their flawless plans.
You don't win. You fall short. You fail. You walk away from this with a black eye (or much, much worse, if you walk away at all). As far as I'm concerned, the best DotD threads will be those in which a character loses or sacrifices something significant to her. We all spend so much time building up our characters to be able to handle every other major figure in Althanas...now I'm asking you to imagine what a creature would have to be to utterly dominate your character. That's how we're going to end up with a villain worth fearing and respecting and coming together against - worry about how we could possibly win later :)
5) Collaborate.
Talk! Communicate! Agree on things! Let's build a sandbox together, and agree on how we're going to play in it.
On that note, here's the fun part: pick a city. Imagine a dragon. Decide on its plan. Tell us about it! I'm going to keep track of what everybody comes up with in this post, as part of rule two. It'll be first come, first serve, but I encourage everybody to work together on this - combine your ideas! Remember, these are supposed to be unstoppable, ancient, unfathomably wise killing machines, and they hate us, so go nuts! Once the dragon, city, and the circumstances of its attack are decided upon, anybody writing a DotD thread in that city will be experiencing that very same dragon and its terrible plan, from his or her own point of view.
I'll take Radasanth as an example, and because I came up with it so I get to go first. Yup, I played that card.
Questions, comments, concerns, suggestions? That's what this thread is for.
Thanks for reading guys, hopefully I'll see some DotD tags out there!
The Day of the Dragon
Current Events
Radasanth
A New Home Afire (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?28217-A-New-Home-Afire-DotD&p=237930#post237930) by Warpath, starring Flint
Misc
Tales From The Day of the Dragon (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?28218-Tales-From-The-Day-of-the-Dragon&p=237931#post237931) - Vignettes, open to all
Locations and Dragons
Radasanth
Under attack by Cedarrathrax and two drakes. Cedarrathrax is a massive female wyrm, roughly 275 feet (84 meters) long and sixty feet (18 meters) tall. She has a wingspan of over three hundred feet. The drakes are males, each the size of a city bus. Cedarrathrax is powerful, brutal, and arrogant, and her plan is simple: she strafes the city streets vomiting fiery napalm onto the screaming populace. Her drakes follow in her wake spreading terror at random, plucking people from their homes to carry them into the sky before dropping them on their loved ones from on high. When the city's defenders grow organized enough to challenge the drakes, Cedarrathrax turns her full wrath upon them while the drakes seek out more helpless prey.
Cedarrathrax begins her attack in mid to late morning, between 9:30 and 10:00, and does not leave until almost noon. She begins by crushing a section of the city's southern wall, appearing from nowhere, and proceeds to strafe along the top of the wall before incinerating the largest continuous city streets. Despite her immense size and destructive potential, she lets her drakes do most of the damage. She disdains the mortal races so completely that she sees even the act of exterminating them as beneath her.
She is a living volcano: she bleeds magma and sighs flesh-melting steam, her flesh is stone and iron, and simply to approach her is fiery suicide. She has a legendary skill with magic, capable of countering any spell known to the mortal mind, but she will scarcely deign to use her magic offensively - again, she does not see the common mortal being as being worth the effort.
Cedarrathrax and her drakes leave as suddenly as they arrived and without fanfare, as if they all grow bored at the same time and decide to move on. They follow the Niema out toward the sea, burning farms and boats at random before they vanish miles out over the open water. The city survives largely intact but badly burnt, and the populace spends the following two days battling fires and restoring order. Tens of thousands die and countless more are injured or missing.
That said: I'd like to invite everybody to tell some stories about dragons.
The last time I was active, talk had been going on about doing a player-run event involving dragons attacking the various nations of Althanas. I don't see anything like that going on, but I'm going to kick something off for my own characters and I figured I'd invite everybody else to join in if they're interested.
For each of my characters, I'm going to do a short thread or vignette describing where they are and what happens on the Day of the Dragon - the day dragons of countless varieties suddenly emerge and attack many of the major cities of Althanas. If you're bored and/or looking for something new to do, I invite you to do something similar.
This isn't a competition or a tournament or a featured quest. I have nothing to offer you if you write the best and most compelling posts. There are no special badges or rewards for you if you participate. I figure this is just an extension of what we already do at its most basic, and a chance to write (even if just incidentally) with people you wouldn't normally write with. At best we'll agree on a new canon, at worst I'll just have a bunch of cool solos that share a theme :)
It's simple to join in, if you're interested. First, I'm going to start a thread of vignettes, wherein anyone can write very short stories describing what happened to their characters or NPCs on the Day of the Dragon. The stories in that thread won't necessarily have anything to do with one another: the only unifying theme is that the stories happened on the day the dragons chose to attack the mortal races of Althanas. Feel free to post there if you just want to write a short 1-3 post vignette about dragons, it's open to everybody.
Second, I'm going to start a series of threads and tag them with "[DotD]," indicating that they take place on the Day of the Dragon. I have a couple of short solos in mind that I know I'm going to do, but I'm also open to doing cameos or short threads with other people if you're interested - PM me! Or, if you'd like, I invite you to start your own threads and tell your own stories, completely independent of what I'm doing. All you have to do is include the [DotD] tag, so the rest of us can keep track of which threads are included in the event.
In the interest of creating a cohesive story I just ask that if you participate you follow a few rules.
1) Keep it to one day.
Liquid time does not apply: your character was only in one place at a time. That isn't to say you can't tell multiple stories that take place involving the same character on the Day, but it has to make sense. If you're fighting a dragon in Radasanth in the morning, you probably aren't fighting a different dragon in Knife's Edge by noon - and if you ARE, you need to explain it. However, you absolutely are not fighting two different dragons in two different cities at nine in the morning...I guess unless you can somehow split into two people? I don't know, for most of us that isn't going to apply though.
2) Follow current events.
I'll try to keep track of all the tagged DotD threads and where they're taking place. I might even keep a running description of what's happening where, to make it easy to keep up to date. Basically, we all need to agree what the situation is everywhere. If you say there's one dragon lording over Eluriand fighting with hardened elven survivors, I shouldn't say six dragons have melted what remains of the ruins to slag. If you have questions, ask them in this thread, and we'll come to a consensus because we're goddamn adults.
3) Keep it short, keep it simple, and finish it.
If I'm not doing this alone and we do this right, this is essentially intended to be a sort of all-inclusive, sprawling mega-thread. If you start a story that takes place in Radasanth, you'll be impacting canon in Radasanth, which effects anyone else that wants to write in Radasanth as part of the event. Don't leave us hanging! There are no time limits but if you join up, I ask that you do it fully intending to finish anything you start (or quickly and publicly back out if you find that you can't finish in a timely manner, especially if you're writing with others). Personally, I think the best way to ensure this is to focus on telling a short, concise story - shoot for ten posts, get 'er done!
4) Lose.
This isn't intended to be the whole story, even if it might end up that way - I'd like this to be all of Althanas introducing a powerful new villain to itself. What good is a villain if he fails the second he arrives? I'll accept if a VERY small number of young whelps or drakes dies in the course of the day, but no dragon will fall. This is meant to be a devastatingly effective surprise attack, a masterfully planned blitzkrieg that nobody saw coming. The dragons are aware of you, yes YOU, and they factored you into their flawless plans.
You don't win. You fall short. You fail. You walk away from this with a black eye (or much, much worse, if you walk away at all). As far as I'm concerned, the best DotD threads will be those in which a character loses or sacrifices something significant to her. We all spend so much time building up our characters to be able to handle every other major figure in Althanas...now I'm asking you to imagine what a creature would have to be to utterly dominate your character. That's how we're going to end up with a villain worth fearing and respecting and coming together against - worry about how we could possibly win later :)
5) Collaborate.
Talk! Communicate! Agree on things! Let's build a sandbox together, and agree on how we're going to play in it.
On that note, here's the fun part: pick a city. Imagine a dragon. Decide on its plan. Tell us about it! I'm going to keep track of what everybody comes up with in this post, as part of rule two. It'll be first come, first serve, but I encourage everybody to work together on this - combine your ideas! Remember, these are supposed to be unstoppable, ancient, unfathomably wise killing machines, and they hate us, so go nuts! Once the dragon, city, and the circumstances of its attack are decided upon, anybody writing a DotD thread in that city will be experiencing that very same dragon and its terrible plan, from his or her own point of view.
I'll take Radasanth as an example, and because I came up with it so I get to go first. Yup, I played that card.
Questions, comments, concerns, suggestions? That's what this thread is for.
Thanks for reading guys, hopefully I'll see some DotD tags out there!
The Day of the Dragon
Current Events
Radasanth
A New Home Afire (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?28217-A-New-Home-Afire-DotD&p=237930#post237930) by Warpath, starring Flint
Misc
Tales From The Day of the Dragon (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?28218-Tales-From-The-Day-of-the-Dragon&p=237931#post237931) - Vignettes, open to all
Locations and Dragons
Radasanth
Under attack by Cedarrathrax and two drakes. Cedarrathrax is a massive female wyrm, roughly 275 feet (84 meters) long and sixty feet (18 meters) tall. She has a wingspan of over three hundred feet. The drakes are males, each the size of a city bus. Cedarrathrax is powerful, brutal, and arrogant, and her plan is simple: she strafes the city streets vomiting fiery napalm onto the screaming populace. Her drakes follow in her wake spreading terror at random, plucking people from their homes to carry them into the sky before dropping them on their loved ones from on high. When the city's defenders grow organized enough to challenge the drakes, Cedarrathrax turns her full wrath upon them while the drakes seek out more helpless prey.
Cedarrathrax begins her attack in mid to late morning, between 9:30 and 10:00, and does not leave until almost noon. She begins by crushing a section of the city's southern wall, appearing from nowhere, and proceeds to strafe along the top of the wall before incinerating the largest continuous city streets. Despite her immense size and destructive potential, she lets her drakes do most of the damage. She disdains the mortal races so completely that she sees even the act of exterminating them as beneath her.
She is a living volcano: she bleeds magma and sighs flesh-melting steam, her flesh is stone and iron, and simply to approach her is fiery suicide. She has a legendary skill with magic, capable of countering any spell known to the mortal mind, but she will scarcely deign to use her magic offensively - again, she does not see the common mortal being as being worth the effort.
Cedarrathrax and her drakes leave as suddenly as they arrived and without fanfare, as if they all grow bored at the same time and decide to move on. They follow the Niema out toward the sea, burning farms and boats at random before they vanish miles out over the open water. The city survives largely intact but badly burnt, and the populace spends the following two days battling fires and restoring order. Tens of thousands die and countless more are injured or missing.