Devokan: story discussions (IC/OOC)

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Devokan: story discussions (IC/OOC)

Post by Dot »

This thread is for discussions around the Devokan storyline. The thread is likely to be a mix of IC and OOC, so please keep this in mind and try to tag which is which. And if anything confuses you, please ask!

In this first post, I will outline some of the characters and areas so that (hopefully) the rest of the thread will make sense to new readers.

Who is who
Dot Macchi (IC): present-day member of the Guild of Maintainers. When the Cavern closed she was involved (as part of GoMa mission 'To protect and serve the Community...') in supporting explorers' attempts to 'find a way, make a home' in other worlds. This included two areas in There (Camp Bravo etc in Tyr, Eder Devokan in a mountainous area on NW Aurora). About a year ago, she set up another outpost for GoMa in SL -- this was originally on Devokan Island.

Quinquifid Oddenfen (IC): steampunk-era scientist/engineer/explorer; a bit of a loner; turned up at Devokan Island at roughly the same time as Dot to claim Oddenfen Cottage/House, left to him by his late Aunt Elspeth. Elspeth's will mentions certain responsibilities yet to be carried out (e.g. setting up a foundation for researching and restoring 'lost pages').

Elspeth Quintessence (deceased) (IC): a lady explorer of the early steampunk era; lived for years among the cultures and civilisations she discovered/explored/?linked to. Quin has just taken delivery of her journals, and occasionally dripfeeds ideas/facts from them.

Paislee Myrtle (IC): an original inhabitant of the village on Devokan Island, from same era as Quinquifid. Looked after Quin's Aunt Elspeth in her latter years, and remembers some of the stories she told of her past life. (OOC: the main architect behind the Devokan areas)

Nalates Urriah (IC): future-era warrior who enjoyed the peace and serenity of Devokan Island in between battles (better if Nalates herself describes her background); her advanced technology was instrumental in tracing back to the source world (OSgrid) of the mysterious glowing spheres (q.v.)

Mat will be heavily involved in the OSgrid storyline (details of character and name yet to be worked out).

Other present-day Uru explorers involved at various times are: Ametist, Lightkeeper, Fax Paladin, Holli, Artair, DMom, Jim, ... Some are keeping journals in Devokan Keepsafe.

Places
Devokan Island(s) (SL): Where it all started, but now no more -- an island chain; medieval/victorian/steampunk rural village on the main island; tree village to the north (Channelwood-inspired). The mysterious glowing spheres transferred the essence of the tree village to another world before the island chain's home planet was knocked out of orbit by some of Nalates' colleagues so that it fell into its sun. (It's a long and complicated story -- see the blog entries for December 2009 to February 2010 for details.)

Devokan Eve and Devokan Keepsafe, Winterfell Reverie (SL): Where Paislee, Dot, Jim and Quinquifid have made new homes after Devokan's planet burned up. DMom is setting up an office for the D'ni Voice in the Keepsafe; this will facilitate and encourage cross-world explorations.

Devokan hood, Uru: the base in MOULa

Devokan Waysmeet (OSgrid): where the essence of tree village was transferred to and made manifest by the mysterious glowing spheres (exactly how, we don't know); GoMa place will be in this region, but should be regarded as a separate 'age'

Devokan Deepwater (OSgrid): the source of the mysterious glowing spheres, adjacent to Waysmeet; a serene island of ancient ritual; has small underground cave area (to be developed)

Devokan Skysong (OSgrid): mountainous island above which Quin has his skylab -- currently under development

Devokan Touchstone (OSgrid): island adjacent to Skysong, which mirrors the terrain of the original Devokan Island -- currently under development

Some other areas are at an early stage of planning -- details to follow.

Yes, it is a mishmash of ideas and themes -- but, hey, we're having fun here!
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Re: Devokan: story discussions (IC/OOC)

Post by Nalates »

Dot, thanks for the post... (I'm mixing IC/OOC in this post - take it as mostly OOC)

Dot has it close, but I'll describe my character a little differently. First the Nalates avatar is a current day av for play in Uru and Uru related stories. She found the Cavern when young. You will see her there as Nalates. Since the Cavern closed she began exploring other areas. The 'technology' we, or at least I, often refer to is simply our computers, Blender, Photoshop, and other software. Using that tech we travel to numerous worlds, i.e., WoW, GW, EVE, THERE, SL, OSGrid, Farmville, and others. In SL those can be steampunk alternate current day worlds, future, historic, and way more. So, in some way we can travel to the future and other alternate worlds, which I often call dimensions to handle the problems like talking dragons, vampires, lycans, fairies, furries, and all manner of strange game characters. Nalates Urriah is the avatar I use to experiment with blending all of those travels together into a character experimenting with all of those games. I believe with a flexible mind and a good imagination one can make almost anything work.

The Nalates av is more the original Uru character in Cavern and the one I typically use in Cavern and the GoC Bevin. The Nal av in Cavern is more the Nalates Urriah character and part of the Devokan Bevin. Since the variety of characters I play could get confusing for those playing along with me, I'll keep it simple. I don't expect anyone to know my back story in Cavern any more than they would know anyone's history they were just meeting. Those that know me can of course draw on that information to add to the RP.

Others choose to keep their game play in various places separate. I think that somewhat defeats the point of U-R-U role play, but that is just my thinking. So, much of the experiment is how all of this works together with people participating in various ways. When people respect each others RP each can have their own story and enjoy it.

My hope is that the Cavern can be a synthesized environment where we can talk about the Cavern, its stories, its role play, and our other game interests, which we do anyway.

The Devokan Nalates Urriah in SL and the OSGrid worlds is a current day explorer drawn to the cavern when young. Having acquired a taste for exploring, After the closing of the Cavern she began exploring other worlds. Over the years she has found several places of interest to her for various reasons, i.e., Blue Mars, OSGrid, Entropia, Ryzom, and others. One of those I often play in is a future dark post apocalyptic place (in SL) where, in general, I helped defend areas from evil forces (where I have an adult back-story for that character which doesn't work well for Uru/Devokan - PM if curious). I found Devokan during travels made while on R&R from the battles. I used it as a resting place and began making friends. Now that the Cavern is open I'm making trips back to the Cavern.
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Re: Devokan: story discussions (IC/OOC)

Post by Dot »

Thanks, Nalates -- I knew I hadn't picked up all the nuances of your character.

OOC: There is closing on Tuesday 9 March 2010. A lot of our friends (many in The Meeting Place hood) have invested a great deal in There over the years, as designers of clothes and objects, scripters, builders, event hosts, teachers, greeters, organisers of hoods -- and so the list goes on. For some, being able to create is a key element of their enjoyment of the environment.

As a result, Mat last night was setting up a home-based server to host several (more) sims on the OSgrid, as well as consolidating Paislee's, my and his own individual sims that he had previously set up for us to use for experimentation outside the Devokan storyline. This is incredibly generous of him, and both Paislee and I are very grateful.

At the core of this new set up is the island of Devokan, which is being developed as a village, much as the old SL sim was. It is still a place for relaxation (we hope), for meeting with friends, for use as a base for exploration and the like. The building style is different to the old SL sim, reflecting Mat's originality and flair for structure.

To the north is Curiosity (it was Paislee's playground) -- a mountainous, forested island with some fantastical builds and glades.

To the south is Touchstone (my playground) -- open sea at the moment (spot the non-builder ;-) ).

Surrounding these three sims to the east and west are six open sea sims, ideal for use as sandboxes either underwater or in skyboxes. These will be open for friends to use if they wish, as they get acclimatised to a new online world.

It will be interesting to see how the server holds up!
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Re: Devokan: story discussions (IC/OOC)

Post by Nalates »

I'm curious how Mat's and your OSGrid SIM's will be used in the future.

As in another post, I am working in Blender to make columns and doors I like. The book I gave you is a step toward getting nice things into our builds. I have yet to experiment with the scripts for the journals in OSGrid. For now I am working to get the simpler things that I can make with good LoD stability.

I need to visit Devokan and catch up.

I suspect some number of Thereians will join us in OSGrid and SL. I am wondering if LL will make the 'Thereian' last name available again...
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Re: Devokan: story discussions (IC/OOC)

Post by Dot »

OOC: Things (and sims) move fast around here...

After discussing things over with Paislee and Mat over the weekend, I asked SimHost to relocate the four hosted regions to the west, alongside the main regions on the home-hosted computer. Mat has added a few sea buffer regions to the south. The result is an impressive 15-region mini-grid: 3 across, 5 up.

North-south movement is reasonably smooth; east-west less so -- a bit like the UK in RL.

IC: How will we use the sims? At the moment, there are two 'Devokans': one is assumed to be the 'original' (i.e. within the spheres' world), the other the land the spheres transferred across from SL. The thinking is there was a sort of 'slingback' effect (think of a sphere at the end of a piece of elastic), so they ended up in roughly the same space-time but not quite -- this may have been the source of Quin's uneasiness. It may be that in the future the two islands will once again be one; Quin is thinking of looking into this possibility.

Something similar may have happened to Mat, when he ended up at Selenitica (for example), just in time to witness its demise (Quin at that time was in the spheres' world).

Looking at the main regions, there is an apparent transition in age of civilisation as you travel from south to north, and from west to east. But I'm still pondering the implications of this.

OOC: The book you gave is lovely, but would it be OK for the cover to have a not-so-obvious-from-D'ni look, please? I realise that might be a bit more work -- sorry. One thing Paislee and I were looking at was possibly using Ogham script for future puzzles. We'll skip the neo-paganism bit though. ;)

I've tried adding a script to a book to give out notecards as in the SL journals, and it works well.

Edit: We need to get IC Paislee over to the OSgrid islands somehow. She prefers to focus on building there rather than in SL. Any ideas?
Last edited by Dot on Mon Mar 08, 2010 5:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Added afterthought
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Re: Devokan: story discussions (IC/OOC)

Post by Nalates »

OOC: I thought I included the texture. With that you can make whatever cover you like. I plan to make some more covers. I had that D'ni cover available and used it to save time.

I'm not happy with how the textures work with sculpties. It is hard to avoid wasting pixels. I made the book to try and fix the problems with the other book having its poles in the center of the covers.

Thanks for testing the script. I was curious.
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Re: Devokan: story discussions (IC/OOC)

Post by Dot »

OOC: Now the dust is settling after Devokan's third major loss of virtual land in as many months it's time to take stock. I was in There to watch as Eder Devokan faded from cartoony though pleasant landscape to black screen in less than a second.

We put so much into these different areas and events and stories -- and all that creativity and investment is wiped in seconds.

So, where do we go from here?

OOC: Paislee is going to focus on building in OSgrid.

IC: In Quin's latest post on MOUL and the Devokan blog, Paislee persuades him to let her re-visit the spheres' source world -- so she is now over there, likes the space and beauty, and decides to stay, making her home on Curiosity. That will do for now.

IC: Quin is intrigued by the double island phenomenon and decides to stay to study it. He will be based on Skysong (where his lab is).

OOC: I'm not a builder; my role on the team is more to try to weave what others build into a (hopefully reasonably coherent) story. I enjoy being able to shape a virtual environment as part of story. I like space and beauty, and dislike crowds -- which can mean that SL is either uncomfortable or impossibly expensive. I feel strongly that including a variety of virtual worlds is essential: to make sure there is some bolt-hole left when game companies or others are forced to pull the plug; to provide a variety of venues for exploration so that no one place becomes stale; to make space for characters honed in other games to be able to meld their stories, should they wish to, with what's going on in Devokan for a while.

GoMa forum is seeing a great deal of activity, especially now Jishin is back (she is great at organising events and enthusing others :) ). So fan-age inspections are starting up again, and party and guild-based events are happening within the MOULa.

Andy Legate is firing up Blender again after a break of several months. There is a possibility of adapting the office age he wrote for me to check journals in game to be released more generally using Uru:CC/UAM, so enabling the delivery of Devokan story elements and images in-game via journals and paintings -- this would be part of the GoMa age series, joining Camp Bravo and Zephyr Cove (but nowhere near as nice looking).

IC: I shall remain in Winterfell Reverie, tidying up after Quin and Paislee move on, making a base in a new, smaller plot in the southwest corner of the island. I'll probably join in with GoMa activities. That again will do for now.
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Re: Devokan: story discussions (IC/OOC)

Post by Nalates »

OOC/IC Mix...

Dot came over the other day to ask about some mapping. I thought about it. It was a little harder than I thought. Here is a quick map of my island. A few aerial photos and a photomerge with some manual touch up...

Image
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Re: Devokan: story discussions (IC/OOC)

Post by Nalates »

I thought about posting this on the Devokan blog then decided it was to OOC... So I'll post the whole thing here and repost the IC part there.

Devokan West
((OOC: I am playing with a region or regions just west of Devokan. The story is still forming in my mind. The region is mostly up. I take it down whenever I need the workstation. I have a machine I may get around to moving over to Linux and moving the sims to it. Then they can be more consistant. We’ll see.

I am experimenting with building a region. I’ve never built anything bigger than a house in SL. The image is the house transferred to my first OpenSim stand alone sim.
Image

Now I am working on a whole sim and thinking of adding a second. The building in the image started out to be a guild hall I sketched up. I ran into problems with shapes and this has turned into more of an experiment with shapes and fitting parts together.
Image

The 'spheres' in the Devokan story. They are a neat story concept. Whether they will spread to the main Myst-Uru stories I can’t predict. I like playing with particles and have wanted to experiment with them for some time. I made a Path of the Shell floating particle for some rave poles and a stationary emitter some time ago. I didn’t have any place in SL to make other particle things without disturbing people. Now I do and can play. So, I made a more complex 'sphere'. Still not what I want but the animations are getting there.
Image
---END OOC))


I’ve been traveling and working since we had to abandon Devokan. Winterfell is a nice check in point. Now that Quin has moved on and the Keep was abandoned for something easier for Dot to maintain… it seems a little lonely. My sisters-in-arms are spread throughout several worlds. There is still a battle front where I help out when things get rough. But, mostly they squabble over who is to lead the resistance and reform a new order. Lots of politics and drama over turf… not what I signed up for. Sealing the portals by destroying the planets in the dimensional wells seems to have removed the threat of the invaders.

Once I was sure most of the animal life from Devokan was safe and settled I returned to Earth. I had heard there were alarms going off alerting old DRC members that people were down in the Cavern. If that was true, I wanted to visit to see how things were holding up. By the time I got back there were dozens of people in the Cavern. It was good to see old friends.

The rumor is there are new books to new worlds. I suppose these are likely more of the old D’ni worlds created when they ruled. For now… there are no new books in the Cavern. I cleaned up my old Relto and dusted books, returned to most of the ages, and with small repairs all of the machinery once again running. I got the ovens back online in En’cana. Now I just have to find my recipe. Lots of good memories. But, not much more to do… greet hose new to the cavern. Help out a little. Seems pretty tame after the battles I’ve fought. I was soon bored and went looking for more exciting things.

Still being worried about the invaders I did some searching using the technology I took from my destroyed home and what I learned studying the spheres and talking with Quin. I did not find the invaders. I did find new worlds. One had an island I liked. I decided to …appropriate it. Using the tech I have I moved it to the world we moved most of Devokan to. Unsure if I could pull this off I moved it out to the west of Devokan. It seems to have worked. It’s still not completely stable. It phases in and out of existence.

I also found an old Dni world in my search. It is mostly in ruins, totally uninhabited. My search gear would let me find single shrew on a planet. No one there. I found an interesting building. There are traces of D’ni technology, records, various guild symbols… obviously some central meeting place for the old D’ni guilds. Considering the guild hall and place in Ae’gura this must be some kind of outpost.

I need a base of operations and place to build tools to control the spheres and a power station. I’m not sure how the spheres we have encounter are energized. As long as they are not completely in my control I have doubts about using the technology.

I’ve started building on the island… mine now I guess. I shipped and received the barrels from the old Dni guild hall from Earth to here. I’ve started building storage for them in the new basement. I’ve got computer equipment set up to study the spheres and see if I can stabilize the island. Once I have my stuff working I’ll try to pull the ancient building in. With any luck I can reach back and pull the building from a much earlier time when the building was in better shape. I suspect I’ll have to be careful. If I break it in an earlier time I might destroy the building in following times too. Then I might not be able to retrieve it.

This could take some time.
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Re: Devokan: story discussions (IC/OOC)

Post by Dot »

OOC: Nice :)

One of the things we're hoping to do (but we will need to get an FCAL for this) is to have a couple of small Uru:CC ages.

One will be my office (which already exists as a private GoMa age -- Andy wrote it so that I could code and check out journals for other Writers as a service). This will be the respository for various explorer journals and histories.

The other will be based on Devokan Deepwater, which will disappear from OSgrid in the next month or so as we move to solely home-based servers. Ultimately this Uru:CC age (if we are granted a licence) will be the spheres' source.

[Edit: After re-reading Nal's entry on the Devokan blog, Deepwater might need to remain in OSgrid a little longer -- so we'll need to discuss timing. The idea is that Deepwater is the source, so needs to be somewhere!]

News from SL Winterfell: I attended the Winterfell Town Hall meeting yesterday. The theme of the group of Winterfell sims is shifting from a meld of medieval/Victorian to medieval/Baroque -- so the latest dates shift from approx. late 1800s to 1750. A role play is being planned for the central town of Winterfell (RP will NOT be mandatory, it was emphasised). The RP will be for story telling, NOT for combat. The Winterfell ning (http://winterfell.ning.com/) will probably have more details, though Miss Serra mentioned the struggle she was having with the coding behind the ning!

I'm still playing with ideas for Devokan Vespers, which is at the SW corner of Winterfell Reverie. At ground level is Jim's cottage, which he has moved in to. I've set up a hollow asteroid and am in the process of building a GoMa observatory there -- this will be modern, high-tech (it's hidden from view so should be OK), and may well house a sphere+cage. On a sky island will be a Spades card game table for some There refugees, but this will probably not be part of the story. Also, it should be possible to build a small cave complex beneath the ocean. See what transpires.
Last edited by Dot on Sun Apr 04, 2010 11:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Added sentence on timing of Deepwater move.
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