Emoria: OOC

Most of us will recolonzie. I was going to have Jasidin take up refuge in Fermata by making war camps on their territory. But that is another good option. Don't worry, I'm not ready for my culture to be completely wiped out. I'm just letting the lands go for sake of the story.

Why yes, I will be destroying a large portion of your nations. *tips hat* Simply business, I'm sure you all understand. And just for the record...after I stop those little Jasidin, and put Quende to the sword...I'd still like to actually face some more people or do stuff, not just kinda sit around. >.> I'd love to hear any ideas, and I'll post later with some other things I might try doing when we get to that point.

Quick note about the invasions and what not. The barges/MON Fleet/Pirates aren't going to transport the Tynir. It's a little unecessary seeing as the MON borders both the Jasidin and the Quende. It's a remnant of the original plan for the Tynir to load up on barges and invade good old dogmatic Vatienne. Which got vetoed when I brought up the Tynir can't really eat the various foods of Talonia. >.> Stupid fancy chemicals and different biology stopping me from smashing some priests.

Also, it's Tynir. Not Tyrnir. Just so everyone knows.

Hookay, I think I'm good to show you all the Liches and their infernal minions. Gimme a little bit and I'll scrounge up all of my info and compile it to look nice and undeady for you.

Oh! And Dax, when you lead by example, shouldn't you be tearing dead people from trees, and trying to clothe them when they don't want clothed? And forcing religion upon them? HHHHMMM?

Oh! And Dax, when you lead by example, shouldn't you be tearing dead people from trees, and trying to clothe them when they don't want clothed? And forcing religion upon them? HHHHMMM?

CURSES

Also, I would like to bring up the issue of travelling. Apparently, from the library to the MoN border, its 750 miles, hence about 41 days of travelling. Which is alot. Not only that, but apparently we (Kalon, Buzz and I) are travelling the LEAST distance out of everyone else. This means everyone elses travels will be 41+ days long.

What do we do?

yeah, I've done the math here. mountains are roughly 750 miles away, which, by caravan, gives us a time estimate to the BORDER of the mountains in roughly 41 days.

Likewise, without taking ports or storms or other horrible things into account, and at the maximum possible speed, a schooner will take roughly 75 days to travel the 1500 miles to Kvatch. Fermata's in roughly the same place, and you have to go right through the pirate isles to get there the quickest, which doesn't strike me as particularly wise.

Valinyx is even further than the mountains, and nobody's even going there. That's roughly 1125 miles, 22 days at the top of a horses pace, and 37 at the bottom of it. By caravan, it's roughly two months.

Sretin's roughly 900 miles, and Renrijra Krin clocks in at a terrifying near-2000. And it's got the mountains in the way.

Can we maybe reevaluate these month turns?

Yes, we might just need to do that. Unfortunately, I'm out of ideas on how to divide the chapters at the moment. Any suggestions would be appreciated. And, by the way, Blackrock is going to Valinyx, as well as the army of Spire at some point.

Perhaps we can speed up the rate of travel. Because if we seriously do this by realistic measurements of time we are never going to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time?

In other news. I now have Lady's worldspace marked on a map shown below. We were unable to finish her actual sheet last night but ideally I will be able to help her finish it up this weekend. Just character bio and details of world space left to do i think.

Well the point was for us to make story along the way if we wanted to; and if we didn't want to then we would time skip. So you would just say Day 41: the borders of MoN; and keep it in chapter one. your 31 day count could start from there. So basically instead of an actual game-play month, it can be 31 role-played days, if that makes any sense...

Other ideas are appreciated.

The slow travelling forces us to do more than just jump to major plot lines. However, if everyone agrees that faster travel times are needed, I will change it. I had a feeling it might be an issue.

Edit: Actually, the most realistic thing to do would be to change the scale. Instead of the breadth of Northern Continent being 3000 miles, I could change it to 1500 miles which would essentially cut these estimated travel times that you have in half. What do you guys think?

Edit Edit: Now that we are getting good at sharing all of our plans and such, perhaps we can give up having a timed chapter and do as Bird of Hermes suggested and let the role players decide when it comes to a close. I'll leave that up to you all.

Make sure you guys let me know if you want the size change as well.

Yeah, I was wondering about the distance, thinking how to spice that one month (or so) of travel. While the other writers were advancing the plot, I would add in a few details regarding Perun's travels. Those were my thoughts. Thing is, being a selfish bastard, I totally ignored the fact that other people will be faced with similar if not longer trips. Now that I see the bigger picture, I think we have a few options ahead of us.

On one hand, we can either shorten the travel time, increase the chapter length or maybe even a mix of both. On the other, we could just go with the flow. Just because a journey is supposed to take thirty days, it doesn't mean that it should be covered in thirty posts. You can get by with one (although that would make the chapter extremely short...). However, I'd like to remind the writers here something. Remember what the original purpose of this RP was? World-building. As it stands now, we're only "building" the plot. The world is, for my tastes, dry and there is so much untapped potential in what we have created. For the most part, our nations are only alive in the character sheets, or maybe the introduction post. So what if we have to cover a month of travelling? I'm sure there's plenty of material to work with, describing the countryside, the people, the villages, the bigger cities one would pass through. Let's not forget character interactions.

The journey part of any story is always a double-edged knife, I've noticed. If described in detail, it can become overly tedious. On the other hand, if it's rushed, there's always that feeling of "well...that was quick". I think it's down to each person to find what works best for them, find an optimal mix and go with that. Personally, I'm planning about 3 to 6 posts, albeit longer ones.

Edit: Ryona hadn't yet posted when I started typing this (that's what you get for going afk mid-post...), so it may sound a bit off. Still, my opinion stands.

Thanks for it, it supports my own personal opinion on the matter. However I am still willing to change the emoria land distances (I really don't want to change travel time, so don't ask), and while I still prefer the 31 day system and check ins, if no one else is into it I will put my trust in your hands and let us choose our own chapter ends. I would like if we didn't rush to the plot though, cause you never know what you might discover along the way....

I agree completely. I had never intended to time skip very much with Ryona and Hello Danger, and we are going to be on a boat. There is just so much you can do to fill in the time between events. I won't say no time skipping, of course, but my original thoughts were than everyone would fill in the travel time with interesting stories. I hadn't realized travel time woudl be so long, so I'm willing to make exceptions and listen to suggestions. But, as Blackrock said, this won't be a very interesting world if we only stick to events and their relevant locations.

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Raptorman, thanks for updating the map with Lady's world-space

Quakernuts and Chainlinc3 can now select their world-spaces and start on their character sheets if you wish. Could you let me know your progress here, just so I know whether or not you still want to do this?

Alright, I'm sorry I'm taking so long to get my character and race details up, but I've managed to his a slight writers block. I will try to sludge through it, but I warn that I don't have many days off in the next coming weeks, and that will severely hamper my ability to get it to you.

I will get it up, that I promise, but it may take me a bit.

I'd prefer if we didn't scale Emoria down. This is mostly because we have so many nations and species, and if we scale it down any further it doesn't really make sense for them to all be there. There just wouldn't be enough room to have a viable gene pool and breeding populations.

Far as travel goes, isn't there a saying that its the journey that matters, not the destination? Honestly, the journey will be what shapes our characters, makes them grow and such--more-so than the key events. I don't want to see us all rushing through this rp and missing on all that wonderful interaction time. Yes, the distances are great, and the journey will take a while, but think of all the little side-plots and adventures that time can be filled with. If people really feel that they need to jump ahead, they can timeskip. And if it gets to the point where we have several different timelines going on, so be it. When we feel we need to get everyone back to the correct time, then a big note could be posted in here letting people know. Giving them say...two weeks notice to wrap up everything and get to that time point. Its not a perfect solution by any means; its just my two cents.

You know what, I think that that's a good system. If we start posting in the travel and create sub-plots, etc. awesome. However, we shouldn't be tied down by the constraints of this long travel time.

So, I guess, when everyone thinks that it is time that they skip to the arrival, they should so. Until then, they could do the extra writing and scenarios as before mentioned. It would be the best of both worlds.

You could also time skip every couple of days or weeks. Just plan a few interesting side plots here and there, and then skip to the next, until finally you arrive at your destination. The reason Emoria feels so empty is because at the moment, every nation seems to have a single city: its capitol. You never hear of towns or villages or whatnot. It would be interesting to fill it in with those.

I agree, I don't think we should shorten travel time at all. Instead, how about if we keep that timestamp- sort of an indicator of where all the characters are in time- and just figure out where in time everyone is based on that?

I think the best idea is to use Raptorman's plan as a time gauge. Decide when certain events are going to happen based off of that, so that we don't need to worry about people forcing events before hand, or ignoring events as they happen simply because they have no idea.

With the plan as a solid timeline, we can let people go wherever, whenever, and no one will fall behind or have plans ruined (theoretically). How does that sound? With this method, we can all role-play however we please.

In that case would you like me to put together a timeline of sorts for when each stage of the actual war plan will be beginning relative to the current time?

If everyone is alright with it, that would be best. But I would hate for you to do that work and have someone disagree, so lets make sure everyone likes the plan.

I'm just gonna say that the time frame should be agreed upon. Because everyone's got plans, and it'd suck if no one got to do them because we got tangled up in a giant war in no time flat.

Lich info should be up tonight.

That was something I was worried about. It still leaves some people pushing for time and others dallying about waiting for day X to come up. I think we should just stick with day 31 check ins, myself, but a tentative timeline might be good for some people as long as we are clear how slow travel time is.

The slow travel makes this difficult because of the times I had originally had planned which don't work so well now.

I don't have much to do till war breaks out because morgarath only has so much possible interaction. You know?

I am fine with the timeline. How far will it be reaaching, though?

I'm not so sure... I don't really like the idea of concrete timeline like that. It seems to me that something a little more fluid might serve us well.

Well, big, pillar events should be included, no? Small things can happen in between. It is just so that ploy lines dont get plowed through.

It seems that others are having the same concerns about the timeline as I do. While it is perfectly acceptable to have a set of events line up, perhaps its best if we timestamp and just play it by ear. Keep eachother updated, perhaps not at 31 days but just whenever you feel you have something to be announced to everyone.

Either way we go, there will be problems and issues that need to be addressed. So perhaps we just go with the option that offers the most freedom, and cross these bridges as we come to them?

Just keep track of your days, even if you don't actually post a timestamp. We'll do 31 day check-ins in the OOC, and maybe do a synopsis on each interval.

I agree with Shadow Moonseye that it would be a bad idea to cut the size of Talonia down, and I also agree that it is a bad idea to simply speed up travel time. Unfortunately, people in real life never had either of those options either. So, time skip if you prefer, or role-play through some or all of the days, and we'll see how it goes. Remember, the army of darkness will have the same travel time delays as the rest of us, so it isn't like things are going to progress faster than our heroes can deal with.

Ok, so here is a string of PMs between me and Silvone about this idea he had and that I built a bit upon. Now, it is a bit dramatic, but we both believe we would just throw this out there for all those concerned to gauge. Basically, it includes everyone on the northern continent.

Silvone: Orange // Dax: Brown
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I was imagining the near end of Emoria being very disastrous for most of the nations in Talonia, and its surrounding islands. But guiding those ravaged nations and the refugees would be Jean Poitiers, the great Papus of Vatienne (Papus is the right term, right?). Anyway, over the course of the war you learn discipline and how to keep your cool, and your people begin to look up to you as a true leader. But beyond just leading your people, you have to lead the remnants of your army. And then you have to lead the refugees from the surrounding lands that look up to you to save them. You also have your new powers you mention, and, if you take this route, you should learn at least the basics of commanding battles, if not fighting yourself.

So, basically what I'm imagining is at the end of the role-play we have Jean Poitiers the Saint, a far cry from the loud-mouthed politician we met in the council room. The destroyed nations of Emoria are once again united under your leadership, perhaps in the shattered remains of Taure Arda if Vatienne itself falls at some point.

So the eventual purpose of Jean would be as the centerpoint of civilization. Cities and nations wouldn't matter; they could all be destroyed and yet the spirit of humanity would essentially be intact because of the presence of Saint Poitiers, the great Papus of (now-gone?) Vatienne.

And of course you would have other mighty leaders and generals under you command to help you repel the dark armies, such as Boyd Waters who would be the leader of the new pirate clan, Dasciis Arkandis who may take control of the surviving remnants of the army of Spire, as well as others. Basically, I imagine each of the players as becoming a leader of their own ravaged lands, united under the Papus and Saint's leadership.

But, I personally think this would be better if Vatienne were destroyed, because the power would be solidified under Poitiers, rather than under the name of Vatienne. It also gives you the chance to move the capital to Taure Arda, the heart and center of Talonia. I imagine the cities and inhabitants of that place would already be destroyed as well, so it would give you the chance to rebuild anew.

Anyway, if you like the sound of it, I can pitch the idea in the OOC. I didn't successfully explain it the way I really see it I think, but I think I got the basics out... Let me know.

Whoa, that was intense.

Well, honestly, how can I not like this? I mean it has good win in the end, Poitiers live and the expansion of my fictional religion!But, before you expose it in the OOC, I really would like to help you build on top of it. It has potential, but it isn't ripe, if you know what I mean. However, in order for me to do that, I need you to explain it to me 'how you really wanted to explain it'. I agree with many of your ideas, but I have two things I would like to add/change. These are the ideas that come directly to mind.

1. If Vatienne falls and everything goes under Jean Poitiers the Saint, I am guessing it would become a centralized power? Like, the Empire of Talonia with Jean Poitiers as its Papus? There would be an Imperial Council that Boyd Waters, Dasciis Arkand and other of the current players that are part of different countries would rule there and with Poitiers at its head. All of the former constituent countries that once made up Talonia would instead become a province. It would be a sort of confederate empire, so that each province would be semi-independent, yet still under Imperial federal rule. Now here is where things divide even more : [/i]
1.1 Vatienne is not destroyed, but it simply becomes just another province with either the old emperor at its head or another general who distincted himself in the war, it is just another part of the Empire of Talonia
1.2 Vatienne survives the war once again, but is under the direct rule of Jean. That province would be always controlled by the regent Emperor, or would be put under control of a Vatienne general/elected minister after Jean's death, possibly its favoritism only lasting Jean's lifetime.

Everytime I say this, I mean that Vatienne becomes simply becomes just another province in the Empire. The difference in 1.2 is that Vatienne would get temporary direct rule under the current Emperor who would be Jean.

2. Talonia is united under Vatienne. However, Vatienne changes greatly from its new found role as the uniter of the continent. Everything would function the same as the Empire of Talonia would, but it would be called simply the Empire. Vatienne would be sort of the center of Talonia and the Empire.

Ok, I admit that 2 is not as thought out as 1.2 and 1.1 and slightly sucks, but oh well. What do you think of these options?

I prefer either 1 or 1.1, and here is why. As much as most of the players likely won't like the idea of being united under Vatienne, someone else's creation, I believe the actual people of Talonia wouldn't much like it either. Particularly those that found it offensive before the war. While they will flock to whomever will keep them alive, it will be a problem later. For the most beneficial transition, I think Vatienne either needs to be destroyed, or largely kept apart from the new empire. So Vatienne, either in spirit or in physical presence, must be destroyed, so that something new can grow out of it, something all of the survivors can feel a part of.

It also presents opportunities for a sequel, as the other continent may feel threatened by this new empire, and there may still be the issue of the southern "barbarians".

And like I said, the others may not go for this. But you have my support, for what its worth

And by that, you mean becoming a province like the others, right?

Yup, I do believe you're right, but I think that the province itself would stay largely as it is now. Thing is, would people mind if one province admist soo many others is rather mean, but had saved them all? I don't really think so.

Then again, I think Vatienne should be occupied (with the exceptions of the islands and its capital, although the capital can't be destroyed for other reasons) and destroyed, then be rebuilt (just like every other province) under the new Empire of Talonia. Vatienne would still have its importance in the Empire, being the center of the Empire's religion (just like how Spires capital would become the center harbor and the heart of the Empire's trade, the pirates the navy, etc. It would basically be a big mosaic, you know?). The new Vatienne would become more enlightened and less dogmatic like it used to be.

S, if you agree with everything here, then I will post, all that we have discussed in the OOC and gauge the reaction of everyone else. By the way, your opinion counts, you are one of the GMs, lol. That, and it is your idea, so... xD

And the last PM was Silvone saying "Go with peace, my child."

So, what are your opinions/violent backlashes?

Well, that leads to something rather delcious. I can't imagine this newly founded Empire of Talonia would get along very well with it's newborn southern neighbor, now would it?

What if we do seasons, instead of months, for the chapters?

I also like what everyone else has said so far. Sorry this post is so brief; I'll have my plot info in soon.