[OOC] The Prophecy

[Dark Jack]

Finally! Ugh, I've been meaning to get a post together since Friday, but every time I tried loading RPGuild it seemed like the forum was down for some reason. But now it's done; yay!
By the way... Ashgan? Eh... post?

Interesting tidbit of information, perhaps: literal lone wolves found in nature are usually ones that have left their pack either because they have been driven out by the pack leader, often due to them having challenged the alpha for leadership and failed, leave because there is not enough food for them in the territory occupied by the pack, or because they simply desire to find a new pack or start their own. In almost all cases, the objective of lone wolves is to acquire a pack rather than to stay on their own out of a preference of being so, although there are wolves that do end up spending most of their lives as lone wolves. Lone wolves have a much harder time hunting than ones with a pack and usually can't bring down larger prey at all, but they have the advantage that everything they kill, they keep. Survival alone like that is tough, so lone wolves usually end up stronger, more aggressive and dangerous than others; naturally acquired traits that increase their chances if they challenge the alpha of a pack, and thus likewise make them likely candidates for leadership.

[Shienvien]

Wolves do not behave (that is, group) in the same way in all places, from what I know and have heard. It all depends on the particular sub-species, climate, abundance and type of available food, et cetera. The wolf packs over here are mostly just family units, for instance, composed at most of pair of adults and the adolescent cubs of the last litter (though in rare cases a previous year's cub or two might stick around for a second year, too). It is also quite common that the adults part their own ways (and may or may not stay together) after the cubs can take care of themselves, and only the siblings stay together for a while longer. And wolves who don't find mates frequently stay lone wolves, at least for the year.

I believe it is you in the borderhouse collab? And now Yoshua in the main IC, and me with Domhnall and lohk both in the other collab. Ashgan said he'll try to post during the weekend a couple days ago, though I imagine the site being clogged may have gotten in his way, too.
(I personally have only gotten the typical "The Guild is temporarily down because either:" page half the times I try to load, others have claimedly getting more erratic (lack of) feedback. Depending on what exactly if going on back-end, I hope Mahz either opens up a donation box and rents a server that is actually capable of handling hundreds of concurrent connections or alternatively permits other programmers with more experience and/or time access to the code... I wouldn't mind tampering with it, should I happen to have time, in all honesty.)

(Should someone simply need to posts for reference, then well ... I have copies of them all. I believe people all know either my Skype or e-mail.)

On a random note: what is actually depicted on either side of rodlin?

[Dark Jack]

Yeah, I know not all wolves actually live and hunt in packs, but that example seemed the most applicable in the context the term was used in the IC, namely for it to be unusual for lone wolves to form a group, which is actually what lone wolves normally want. And even in cases where wolves don't form packs, they still usually don't stay alone by preference. It happens, of course; there are lone wolves that fit the definition of the term when used about people, but they are rare, and for most part the term is used about wolves that are simply in temporarily solitude rather than intentionally and perpetually alone.

Rodlins bear the impression of an eagle with folded wings on one side, sized so that it fits on the coin from the chest up, its head turned outward toward the world outside the coin (there as an homeage to the least known of Roland the Ambitious' companions, namely his tame steppe eagle) and the image of a surprisingly simple and relatively humble coronet with three jewels - one in diamond-shape (an elongated rhombus, that is, not the actual gemstone), one round and one oval - distributed in the only three... uh... okay, I have no clue what the spikey extremities on top of a coronet are called, but those (to symbolize Roland's humble origins and the three peoples that came together to name him king: the penin and deigan of Wegam Fermos, and Golerin).

And I know it's my turn, and I'm sorry; I'll get to it as soon as I can.

[Veridis Quo]

Hey guys. Do you still have a room open? The OP post said there were 7, but that post is pretty old.

If you do, I'd like to join in about 10 days when my exams are over.
If not, no worries, best of luck with your rp.

[Shienvien]

@Veridis Quo: Yes, there still are spaces open; the OP was updated when people last joined. We should have the Compendium (that is info about the world and setting) available to you within ten days, too, so the slight delay works out nicely. (Also, I could PM you my Skype and/or e-mail and perhaps take yours if you'd like, just so I could reach you in case the site decides to be a bit wonky for a longer time?)

---

@Jack: Wolves are more likely to voluntarily stay lone wolves (on all occasions where they don't want to specifically found families) in regions where the primary game available for them to hunt doesn't simply require packs to take down (and it may, in fact, be somewhat harder for an entire group to find sufficient food, as opposed to individuals scattered over a wider area). In this light you could call it foreshadowing - the challenges to be faced now are not such what a single individual can get through alone well...

Eh, and no worries; as long as there aren't any month-long altogether gaps of communication where I simply don't know what is or isn't going on, I am good. Mostly just doing my usual keeping track. (I'd be slightly hypocritical if I blamed people for backlogs ... and Aemoten tends to write somewhat demotivating posts when he's feeling as powerless as he has during most of what has ensued this day IC, so that might contribute to replies not coming as easy as they could otherwise).

If anything, the Compendium stuff may need a reply more urgently (as I still have posts of my own to make), since I am not entirely certain where to proceed there, or in what order. - Not sure which part of it needs a particularly detailed response? Alternatively I can just do what I happen to feel like and roll back if something else was preferable (long live version control). The worst that can happen is that I get even more brilliant ideas. (I tell you, programmers can be worse than bored niins...)

[Dark Jack]

Oh, my post did get through last night? I got the page about RPGuild being down when I hit post then and was sure it couldn't have been posted, so i sat there waiting for over three hours waiting for the forum to come back up only to have to go to bed and have to postpone it to today... But oh well, if it got through, that's great. Although I must say that I am not pleased with how RPGuild has been functioning this weekend.

And yes, Veridis Quo, as Shien correctly stated there is indeed room, and though the OP hasn't been updated for a while it is indeed still accurate in that regard. You're welcome to submit a character any time you want.

Hmm yes, the Compendium... I suppose I could give a quick reply in regards to that and go over the questions you asked me since I'm already writing. The search function seems to work just about as well as I would like it to by now, and I don't think it particularly needs any more filtering as long as it can prioritize the entries it finds properly, which it appears to do. The groupings you've come up with work well enough for the moment - at least I have no better ideas - and you do have permission to correct obvious typos you find (although I would like to point out, since it made its way into the Compendium already, that it is spelled "dying", not "dieing"... so don't change that). I should be able to get used to writing HTML, too, especially if you end up really putting a reference to view while writing it, so no worries about that.
Letting me set up an account and allowing me to edit the Compendium (or at least the entries therein) would be great; I've been itching to tinker with it a little myself, though for most part I suspect i will still have to rely on you. I've gotten a lot better at coding these past several weeks, but I'm still far from proficient at it ("runaway arguments" are a bitch to find).
Putting the guardhouse-collab in the Compendium-archive is a good idea... or at least it beats suddenly inserting over a hundred posts into the IC. Likewise it may indeed be a good idea to store all posts in that archive, though I think we should probably find some kind of system to organize the entries stored there for easy browsing. They could just be divided into different hiders, unless you have a more elegant suggestion. Also, though it is probably going to be a pain in the ass, I suppose we will probably have to sift through all the old posts before we put them in the archive, replacing certain names with (Unmentionable paladin) and (Unmentionable demon), since I am not entirely sure it would be justifiable to reuse them as they are.
Looking for suggestions from others is an obviously beneficial thing, yeah... though I think we should finish whatever preparations the two of us can before we distribute the link. Once it's ready for basic use, everyone will be free to make their own suggestions, after all.

[Shienvien]

I suppose we will probably have to sift through all the old posts before we put them in the archive, replacing certain names with (Unmentionable paladin) and (Unmentionable demon), since I am not entirely sure it would be justifiable to reuse them as they are.

I actually *did* ask him whether or not he had any instructions in regards to the IC references more specifically back in the day, and he essentially said that it would left under free ruling (just that his character cannot be used by us further down the road). I personally am on the standpoint of that if there has not been an explicit permission to make edits, others' creative content must not be edited at all. (And editing fictive names out is, well, a rather obvious violation of that principle.)

That "dieing" there was just I myself making a typo ... will correct that title right away. (No dice, no dice...) [Edit: there, fixed.]

I think I will just make different threads/categories for the archive, for the matter (especially since we do not know how many posts were cut off the end there).

Good news: HTML doesn't have runaway arguments.
Bad news: If you forgot to end something, it will just happily apply whatever you forgot to end of the rest of the page...
As I have it set up now, you wouldn't be using SQL or PHP at all, and will only be using very marginal amounts of Javascript (mainly in hiders - and I am doing something with them to to make applying them a bit less cumbersome). ...So no, you wouldn't have to learn actual programming. HTML tags are also far more similar to BBCode tags than to TeX tags, as I think I noted, so it would be closer to look here. (CSS is on me, too.)

- Does contrast look okay ion your screen? Not too bright/dark? (I am continually aware the site is very plain otherwise at the moment, but eh, not first priority. I have ideas how to improve the looks a bit, though, if I feel like tampering with it.)

[Dark Jack]

Ah, I see; I have just noticed the recurring appearance of the misspelling in your posts and had reached the assumption that you actually thought it was spelled like that. Good to know that it was just a recurring typo.
And the contrast looks good, I think; much better than before, when the hiders were blindingly white. I have no complaints.

[Shienvien]

- I occasionally tend to simply suffix things when I am particularly tired and/or slightly absentminded ... "theyr" would be immediately caught by the spellcheck, "dieing" would not, since it is actually a word, just one with a different meaning. I also want to write "an university" instead of "a university" and so forth despite knowing that it is one of those pesky y-sound words... I catch these things when I actually proofread (especially because I know I do that, and hence specifically look for such things in my posts), but as it often occurs, I do not get to go over what I myself write right away.

(Oh, and please don't remind me of my absentmindedness... I swear, those did look nice and dark on my screen. Honest. Didn't try to blind you or anything. Absolutely not.)

Sent you the password-setting link. (This is not supposed to say anything; the first double match that is not empty will go through, and from then on it does nothing unless reset. Passwords are hashed (meaning they are not human-readable words in the database), but I didn't set up any manner of high-level encryption for the time being) Will see whether I can port the editing in from my testing environment tonight.
(...Or alternatively I will be too tired. That is also an option.)

[Ashgan]

Okay, so, first of all, hi. I'm not dead. Not yet. And I posted, that's also good.

Ok, to start, you deserve an apology; in retrospect, it's been about two months since my last post, even though it kinda feels like yesterday (to an extent). Simply, time passed really quickly for me, for I had a lot of things on my plate, as well as a period of inspirational drought where I, admittedly, simply did not feel like writing much of anything. I could, and should, have probably made an appearance or two in the OOC meanwhile, but I guess you can sort of take my presence for granted these days, even when I'm quiet. Summarized, the things I have been doing included a bunch of things for university (tying up some loose ends before actually finishing and getting my degree somewhere early next year, probably January or February), as well as moving all my stuff from one place to another, as I've left Germany now and went back home to Luxembourg. Between all of that, I was actually quite happy to have a few days to wind down, and like I said, I just didn't feel the whole roleplaying thing then either. Also, RPG was down a couple of times, but that was hardly the issue, all things considered.

And that's that. I don't know how satisfying a justification it is, and I know I've been taking my sweet ass time before (and probably will again sometime in the future - let's be real here) but it's what I've got, and I'm sorry. I'll not let you hang this long for the next one, at least.

[Shienvien]

There, I've posted in both collabs now.

Should be Nessa's turn in the Borderhouse collab, Legion/ASTA in the other collab (in no specific order), Yoshua in Zerul, and Jack on Jillian's side.

[yoshua171]

I shall get to it. I have quite the busy weeks due to working at a Toy store during christmas.

[The New Yorker]

Hey, I was in this RP briefly on the old site. You may remember a certain axe wielding pyromancer? Well, I was looking around for an RP and I remembered that I actually had some ties to this one already. I would love to bring that character back and properly join the RP. I've certainly matured and developed my skills since then, though I don't think I did a bad job the last time I was here.

[Ashgan]

Hi there! Where about did that character appear? Your oldguild name rings a bell, but I can't quite remember your character. That said, there was a reasonably long interim where I was absent from the RP, and I suspect that is why I don't remember. Either way, we don't often get new people, so it's cool to see you around again.

[The New Yorker]

My character helped out with the vampire fight in the chapel. Left shortly after.

[Dark Jack]

Ah, I was finally able to get on the RPGuild again. First the stress of finishing a semester, topped with a nice bit of stomach-infection so violent that I actually burst some blood-vessels in my eyes (can still see, it's just really itchy and quite frankly scary-looking) and then the RPGuild decides to be unavailable when I'm finally back at the minimal capacity required to function... This has not been a very fun week and a half for me.

I'll get to posting IC in response to Ashgan's post when I can; in the meanwhile I can say that I do remember you, Serge, and although the name of your character escapes me at the moment, I remember it as well. I even remember the discussion we had about the credibility and practicality of him having a pair of axes made from Sartal before you settled on iron.
But yeah, you're welcome to reapply your character and try to rejoin the story... whichever branch of it that ends up being.

[The New Yorker]

To be honest, I feel like a need a little rundown of the world. I get it's a high fantasy setting, but I'd like a better idea of what's been happening in the world so I can create a believable "meanwhile" story. And, yeah, I've read everything in the OP.

I understand there's a war going on? I would like the names of the armies involved and possibly some information about their equipment. I'm thinking that Gregory got tangled in the middle of a conflict while traveling with his current employer. This would lead to his employer getting killed and Gregory barely getting out alive. He would travel in the same direction as the heroes and collide into whichever group makes the most sense, perhaps the one he was already with.

[Dark Jack]

A war? I think that I need to confer with the summary in the OP.
...
Okay, I've confirmed that the summary has absolutely no mention of a war - not even the Rodorian civil war, which I would have assumed was where the idea came from - so I can talk pretty easily without contradicting it. There is no outright war going on, though, except the civil war, but aside from Pelgaid recently hiring some mercenaries to for additional guards during the wedding, none of the dukes have the desire or funds to take on hired blades like that (particularly not freelancers who are not even part of a larger band) (I realize this was not what suggested, I merely eliminated the chance preemptively). As for clashes, actual skirmishes between the ducal armies are pretty rare, with the most recent one being the Seclyrian attack on Nemhim City (which was both well out of the way of where any of the characters are at the moment, and happened before your character left in the first place.
The only other major conflict going on would be the Crusader's Guild destroying the Anaxim Forest, which resulted in the near-annihilation of both the attackers and the defenders, where surviving defenders would likely have been burned along with the forest and surviving crusaders would have gone with their leader to escort him back to their base.

As for a better idea of the world; Shien, shall we make the link to the Compendium public? (Even though I still have no idea how to edit anything on there and thus haven't had the chance to do so.)

[Dark Jack]

I got in! A Christmas miracle? Nah, that would be that the RPGuild would allow me to reach it at a time when I actually have time to write an IC post.

Still, I'm glad that I at least got the chance to wish you all a merry Christmas.

[Ashgan]

RPG is really finicky these days, right? Never been this bad before.

Either way, yes, happy holidays to y'all.