Author: cyclops

Character Development Prompt

So rather than the usual image to do whatever with, I’d like to provide this image here and suggest that people write a short paragraph or two about who this person is from what they see. There is no setting or other parameters just, this face, and what do you think the person that has that face is like, who are they, what are they doing, what kind of personality do they have?

The Ball is in Motion

This information is broadcast via a Deep Echo Array one of a number of secret facilities. It is received using a subspace receiver tuned to the correct frequency at the correct time. The signal instructs an asset on how to retrieve this information using various codes in a code-book of some kind. An Onyx XIA would also have the ability to receive and decode such a message to look up the information in real time.

Duchess Malumnus has made contact with spliced in forces of the Galactic Empire within the Milky Way, specifically the INV Serpent and its leader, Admiral Enus Vallan, who appears to be in command of the Imperial forces in the area. The Admiral has agreed to a partner ship and is in route to our facility at Assyria Base for refit to fight Solas Tempus forces. Admiral Vallan has also dispatched a number of probe droids to contact his forces within the Schatten Star System, one of which has been discovered but self-destructed. Given the destruction of one of the probes, clandestine forces should be aware of the need for increased secrecy. It is known that contact was made with Milana Tarkiel outside of Nimbus Station and at this time there is no evidence that droids are being specifically tracked.

Onyx has provided Admiral Vallen with a coded subspace channel for secure communications.

This arc is going to need spies and people to help increase the unrest. As with a previous post there are racial tensions already present. Since the Empire is very much pro-human and anti-alien, this should go well. From a plot-standpoint, the is also the general direction, and anyone wishing to expand on that should feel free to do so. The way this is plotted to shake out is that the humans start to respond in-kind to alien anti-human sentiment.

Hints About Stories and Participation

The subject of participation has been troubling me for a while. Specifically how to increase participation within the site. It was clear from the survey that a lot of people don’t participate not because they don’t want to, but because they don’t know what to do or don’t feel they have anything to contribute. That is why I’m going to attempt to put, at the end of every news post going forward, a little blurb about what the storyline needs or suggestions about how to participate. My hope is that people can read that and get a feeling for what they might be able to contribute.

Further, another comment on the survey was regarding people not knowing where to go with a storyline and thus people having to wait for me. Since my time is very limited this gets into a bad situation where storylines die when I cannot be on. I end up owing a lot of role plays and I, likewise, end up without time or energy to do them all.

I feel that we have a lot of very creative minds here and people with an extremely varied set of perceptions. No one on the server should feel they cannot or should not contribute to a story that is ongoing. I’ve been giving a lot of thought as to why people feel the way they do and I think a lot of it is because people have made a lot of seriously combat-based characters who are pigeon-holed into those roles and this gives us the current situation where you really can’t throw a rock without hitting someone who is a skilled fighter. I will be addressing this in a further posting and possibly with the staff about how to fix this problem.

In the meantime, these measures of putting information at the end of a post as to direction of a plot arc and the potential for participation in that arc should help with the indecision. No one should feel that their indecision about how to play a character or where to fit that character in is abnormal. On the contrary, it is extremely normal. I’ve talked about this before — the fact that a person is here doing role play means that there’s probably some social anxiety going on or some other kinds of anxiety and other issues connecting with people. That’s pretty normal too! Some of that boils down to not being able to figure out where we, as people, fit into the grander scheme. It is only natural to presume that this kind of feeling is going to cause issues deciding where our characters fit in.

I will being doing further posts on the Burning Sweetly section of the forum on this very issue in hopes of helping people overcome problems associated with how to develop a character. I’m by no means an expert so, commentary will be welcome.

Fresh News Area for Antagonists

Since we are finally going to start getting into a place where we’re having active play as antagonists for the story within Blazing Umbra, we need an area to keep those players informed. After our recent survey of players, it is clear that many players aren’t sure what’s going on or how they can contribute. This is going to be the first phase of an ongoing effort to keep players of both sites informed about the changes to the setting. Since these news posts are designed to be in-character and the characters not engaging in activity with the antagonist organizations such as Onyx and the Galactic Empire forces within the setting will not have access to information about what those sides are up to until things are already in motion; I have decided that there needs to be a separate place to post such information. This is analagous to the Solas Tempus COMs category only for the opposite sides.

In practice this area is going to take a while to solidify as to what is actually in it and will take some effort to get used to. As the story goes, things posted here and intended two fold, as previously stated we want to keep players informed when they can’t be on more than once or twice a month (or even longer). In addition to that, we’d like to foster creativity between players, posts here should also be seen as invites to consider how things can go and how people might contribute. Suggestions can often be replied to in one of these posts via the forum (a link to the appropriate forum topic is at the end of every post). In addition, a new topic can be started in the Phoenix Nebula section of the forum.

Destruction of a Probe of Unknown Origin

Viper Probe Droid An unknown droid was found entering the Schatten Star System and was brought into the main shuttle bay of the USS Pegasus before it reached it’s destination. The droid refused to communicate its intentions waiting for a verbal identification code. Mr. Damien Smith and Ms. Heather Quinn were brought in to assist with the situation. The pair attempted to seize the droid and force a physical connection. At that point, the droid self-desturcted injuring both parties. Mr. Smith is currently in the ICU Burn Unit on Nimbus Station while Heather is in the workshops being repaired by the engineering staff. Heather is expected to be repaired without issue, however Damien’s status is still critical from plasma extensive plasma burns.

The purpose and origin of the probe remain entirely unknown, the New Hope and the Cabur have been asked to consult while the Captain of the Pegasus retains the probes debris, the sensor logs have been transmitted to both ships for further analysis since those two ships have more experience with such technology.

Server Reorganization

Coming from a background on IRC where one had a single chat room for RP and a single chat room for OOC talk to a medium where one can have nearly any amount of channels they’d like on a server it was easy to just make a channel for everything! However, as per the results of the user survey, I recognize that it can be quite overwhelming to do that. I know that I’ve got a number of issues there, specifically with the number of channels for a lot of the categories, many of which go unused most of the time. Now, an unused channel here isn’t a big deal, it can just sit there unused without a major issue.

That being said, it is a bit of an issue in that it becomes overwhelming for new players and even hard for older players to know where to play. Originally, 90% of the play was supposed to take place in the tavern on (at the time) Blazing Umbra station. Even when the tavern moved to Nimbus, that is where I envisioned most of the play taking place. However, that is still a hold-over from IRC days where one had a single RP channel – maybe you had auxiliary channels but usually not so much because people didn’t join all of your channels so a lot of times no one knew what was going on in the auxiliary channels.

Now we’ve gotten to the point where the RP is shifting around to different areas, the paradigm that everyone goes to the bar and that’s where everyone interacts is dated and doesn’t really work all that well. At the same time, having a channel for everything possible also doesn’t work very well. Thus, I’m trying to think of different paradigms to structure the server with.

Starting out, I’ve removed a number of channels, notably the starship-specific channels in favor of a more generalized #starship-1 and #starship-2, other than the #stellar-horizon channel which gets its own area as it is tied to the postings on the forum. I’ve also removed a number of channels that were not being used or somehow redundant. I’m still looking for ways that channels can be done and organized in such a way that it is easy to navigate for both new and old players.

I’m also considering creating just like 2-3 channels for each setting that get used as needed (so like #blazing-umbra-1 through #blazing-umbra-4 or some such, I’m not sure yet. When one looks at the server, we usually don’t have more than 4-5 RP’s going on at the same time and less than that in a particular setting. however, I am concerned that this would get generally confusing. As with everything, it is a balance.

Commentary is welcome.

Appeal for Patronage

I’m not one to ask for money really. I try hard to cover the server costs (web servers not the Discord server of course) myself as I dislike asking for money. However, as the use of the web services has increased my cost in providing those services has as well. I would also like to find a way to fund doing a contest with awards like gift cards and such to boost participation. As such, I’m, again, seeking those to become patrons of the server and what we do here.

I enjoy doing the work I do trying to create new content and help fit everything together but it does take a lot of time and energy to do so. Thus, I ask anyone who is willing and able to help to please do so. Here is the Patreon URL.

Thank you, everyone, for all of your support (of all the forms it takes). I appreciate it greatly!

Writing Prompt Image

So, since the lyrical writing prompt didn’t really work I’ve switched back to an image as the writing prompt. Now there are a lot of obvious things that can go with this one, so I’d like to encourage everyone to respond but try to think outside the box and play around with the loads of information the image doesn’t specify.

As always, have some fun with it.

Racial Tensions on the Rise

Following the recent attack on the hangar claiming that humans should rule and aliens should be purged, the racial tensions have increased significantly on the station. It appears that an undercurrent of intolerance may spread throughout the station if left unchecked. Complaints about racial slurs being used in civilian settings have increased significantly, though not from humans but instead against them. So far the term xeno has shown to be used most often, though other terms have been used by the Sangheili. Statements from Governor Maddox have attempted to reassure humans that this is a natural extension of where they came from, the investigation into the Spartan’s revealed a world in which the Sangheili were in a brutal war with human-kind. The governor has encouraged citizens to remain peaceful and attempt to be understanding though his statement also asks for non-human races to attempt to do the same, noting that the ship which attacked the station was not from this universe. As a side-effect of this there is a small, yet growing, momentum toward an isolationist philosophy though a movement has yet to form around it there are reports of isolated pockets of such philosophy among civilians who feel threatened.

The unity initially brought by the attack appears to have been short-lived and the prevalence of humans in the highest ranking positions of Solas Tempus has again raised questions about it’s leadership. Sentiment, especially among civilians, is starting to shift toward questioning whether or not it should matter that the leadership of Solas Tempus has a lot more humans in it than not. Humans on the station, especially within Solas Tempus security forces, have reported feeling as if they are under a microscope and that they thought the universe had grown out of such things. As it happens, several other prominent races feel as if they too feel this is society going backwards. In particular the Vulcans and Andorians, once bitter enemies, cite their own coming together to help form the United Federation of Planets as proof of the idea that so many different races can coexist.

As tensions increase on the station officials from Solas Tempus have urged for people to remember that regardless of race or origin, we all have challenges to face and the planet one is from or color of ones skin matters only as much as society says it does.