Prelim discussion 2

Serpieworld... um, last I heard, that was part of someone else's world?

Yggdrasil! Tell? Short? Short? *smeks self*

It was. No longer.

Tell? Oh, maybe. I'm going to have to re-read my mythology first...

Lansueld doesn't work for a variety of reasons. XD Mostly because Lance is a NOBODY :D Ha. We'd be better off calling it Lucifield. Or Godlands. Or Deatharea. Or something else really stoopid like that. XD

Hehe, no prob - I was thinking of it as "Lance's world" and wanted an abbreviation.

I've added data on Fuzz and made my partial multiverse listing more useful.

I'd like to get this discussion started up again.

Vespers, you were interested in playing an expansionist empire, right? I have a few vaguely-sketched ideas - basically we need two or three (or more?) big powers to balance out Shade's composite force.

Let me throw out some ideas for everyone to kick around.

The initial setup of the playing field...
My thoughts: the Great War isn't a big "Good + Good vs. Evil + Evil" match because stuff's rarely that simple.

Likewise, we don't immediately have "Planet A vs Planet B". Everybody on all these feudal fantasy worlds is used to thinking at country level; some of them haven't fully explored their entire planets, probably some of them didn't realise they were living on a big ball of rock - so the populations would be completely un-equipped to think of their planet as a single political entity. While, of course, they all think of every other planet as a single entity. It should be fun to play with that.

What sort of planet/race is allowed?
I'd like to say "anything within reason". It doesn't have to be pure high fantasy or pure sci-fi. Original ideas make me drool, but there's no need to be super concerned with being different - we're primarily looking to have fun here. *g*

The only things I can imagine that I would immediately vote to exclude would be (a) a hugely powerful force capable of winning the war instantly and outright, and (b) something that's riskily close to copyrighted stuff like Pern or Asterix or Pokemon or whatever. You can use an original character from any fandom providing you rewrite the copyrighted or fandom-specific bits for our boards (eg instead of a pet jhereg he has a pet iguana or fruitbat or [insert your own species here] instead).

Regarding point (a), we don't all have to have identical medieval kingdoms. As long as it's vaguely balanced, and balance can include a weaker force allying with a stronger one, we can have industrial countries, neanderthals, jelly people who've invented the jet engine but have nothing to power with it, or whatever.

Shade as a power in the War
Shade is initially a mess of squabbling kingdoms and unclaimed tracts of land. It's not an immediate threat to anybody when the gates first start to open - none of the planets were expecting it, nobody's prepared to tackle anything on this scale. Shade gradually becomes an appreciable force with the rise of Suitov's Dark Army and by making a few good alliances.

Shade has more or less exclusive access to the "fuzzworld" (which only has one gate, which happens to lead to Shade), but its inhabitants are mainly neutral, have no tech or magic and don't accept refugees, which makes them more frustrating than helpful.

Weftworld, which needs a better name before I call it something dorky like "Loom"
I think a delegation from Shade enters into hugely complicated negotiations with Weft's planet but I don't know the outcome yet, because the political players over there are extremely complicated and the government has half a mind to deny to its population that any of the other planets exist.

Basically it's moving gently towards a totalitarian state and its main goal is to remain so; it has no pressing desire to trade or swap knowledge with anyone else.

I suspect Weft's world's strategy will be to watch things from a distance and assassinate some leaders if necessary to maintain the power balance. They probably have the best military and political strategy machine out of everybody, thanks to their monks.

Any other alliances, I have no idea about yet.

Elf Wars! (random idea)
I had an idea, which may suck. It concerns one empire of elflike people, nominally light and declaring themselves to be The Force of Good, declaring Shade's Ferais to be an abomination.

That would probably have religious motivation, because the Fer aren't a political, economic or military power. I imagined this other race happens to look a lot like them. Fer are popularly believed to have mystical powers and magic and stuff, so someone who wanted an edge in the approaching war might well have a secondary motive there - although it would be quickly obvious that they don't have anything superspecial.

Ferais are Shade's equivalent of elves - small, light build, keen on living close to nature, they aren't innovative and are quite isolationist until the War mixes everyone up somewhat.

(I definitely don't want this to be a big metaphor for the Second World War here!)

Like I said, the idea may simply be rubbish. Let's all of us keep throwing out ideas and reasons for the different planetary races to interact.

I think Weftworld should be named The Shuttleboard. *ducks*

I'm not sure about worlds yet, but Jaina is going to be in there. Lady Knight wants to amass a small army, find out what side would pay the best, then offer her mercenaries' services accordingly. Her homeland may get involved if I get it written up (basic fantasy elfy stuff, nothing deeply interesting).

I propose "Shuttlecock" for the amusement of all.

And yeah, I bags one of the big-ass powers that be. I was thinking something steampunkish, with a big, REALLY REALLY insanely well-organized highly militaristic expansionist empire; likely they know all of thier world and own most of it already, with armies already working on the last couple pockets of resistance. So when the gates open it would be thier sign that "woooohoooo, more places to conquer!" Likely tactics would be merchant expansion (government-owned, of course) to steal as much tech as possible before the (to them) inevitable war breaks out. I wouldn't be surprised if they were some of the first to initialise hostilities and last to break off.

I'll start working on more details now (like i got anything better to do for the two weeks before school starts)

Let me add that they wouldn't have the sheer power neccesary to end it quickly... for one thing, I'm thinking rather a low-magic steampunk (initially... that may change as i develop this) and the army would be quite slow-moving.. not in action, but in a move-consolidate-move sense. also, a major weakness would be an army that was cut off from home; although i think it likely that they would be quick to work out at the very least a method of transmitting messages back and forth quick/instantly, if not anything else without gates. That's still a weakness for such a burocratic organisation as I'm thinking.

Oh. and I doubt that my people will be humanoid, or in fact bipedal. I'm thinking something I made up a while ago for a sci-fi-ish setting... think a fox-like creature, except with about 5 times as many legs, a bit stubbier and.. more spherical... and with many furry tentacles all over it's body, with a sort of.. well, they work as hands, pretty much... but also feet if needed. oh, and the thing is about... well, it's body is maybe a metre tall... with tentacles extended straight up maybe as much as two.

Dude. *grin*

Hmmm. Question; how many more people do we need to commit to this before we can get started with warring about? I get the impression that this entire board was created for this purpose... can we get it together and throw us a big mayhem party?

I'd absolutely love to.

We have a couple of people who prefer to play individual charries instead of worldbuilding, and obviously I want to accommodate them too.

There's you and me and maybe Ree on the building side - can't think if there's anyone else I've missed, so I'm sorry if I've forgotten anyone! Ideally we'd want a few more major planets involved (I've got several minor ones that don't do much warring but are just there for fun and possible conqueror fodder). Obviously as more people get involved it gets harder to coordinate and work around schedule/work/school trouble.

So we make a rough plan of the overall story in advance and make sure we work in all the plot points and intrigue and fun and blood we want to... I'm itching to get all my ideas straightened out, since some of my own stuff is riding on what happens in the cooperative war plots. See, there are these demons and... well, long story. *g*

Well, a lot of the *war*'s plot twists as such will hopefully be worked out in RP; that is if anyone besides me doesn't find battle strategy boring. Uhm. do you have any of the overarching plot worked out yet, any outlines or whatnot? email me or post it here and I'll add my thoughts.

Really rough stuff here.

I don't know squat about battle strategy, or politics really, but am keen to get into it.

Heh. Seems I have one up on you there.. I'm a classics/history geek with a love for warfare. *grin* Politics not so much, but you can't spend 4 or so years so far studying history in your spare time without picking up SOME politics.

Soooo. Lesse. In order to work out a better outline of plot, we need to know A) Exactly who the major parties are (minor parties don't matter so much), B) How they would react to such war, C) The TIMEFRAME (possibly most important), and D) the battlefield, including all the major worlds that will be fought for and thier worldgate schedule. (Once again, minor worlds = not really a problem yet)

so far we have:
A) Shade, and my as-yet-unnamed furry people, and... some others?

B)... well, this deserves posts of it's own, 'specially as I don't know how Shade reacts, besides Suitov drawing up his army of DOOM

C) I believe (i'm probably wrong, i'm sooo sleep-deprived) I saw a number 15 somewhere... i personally don't think that's long enough, but if you want Suitov to be a driving force for your side for the entire war i dunno if we could push it much farther...

D) wea have Shade, my foxy-world, .... gimme a list of others of yours, I'll start working on a list of conquerables myself as well.

Schedule/timeframe is the one thing I'd like to get nailed first, and also the biggest fuzzy area for me, 'cause I just basically haven't a clue. Yes, Swiffy needs to be involved from start to finish. I can look up my notes on his early years if they've survived the disk crash - he starts off fairly young, but it could be a stretch to wrap everything up while he's still vigorous and stuff, heh. I do know he isn't around for all the truces and politicking and federation-building and other aftermath: he (but not his faction) disappears after the war proper is over.

Classics and historical warfare, hell yeah - all stuff I've been interested in but never got round to getting into. *g* Creatures are more my thing.

I'll give some thought to A-D and also try to recover my notes. Worlds, to start with: I think Worldsong might have wanted to participate with one of his, though I don't know if that's still the case.

Major powers:
Shade
Foxyfurs
Possible golden elven empire of shininess to make trouble with Shade's elves
Weft's homeworld, mainly observer/scheming from afar
& I think we need a couple of other, weaker ones that are out to make strategic trouble

Minor powers/conquerables:
Fuzz, quite isolated and unwilling to get involved
got distracted by brother wearing cat at this point, so more to follow

Re: point B: on Shade there's always been a lot of scuffling between all the little kingdoms, a state of affairs that's usually stable overall but breaks down when faced with a larger outside threat. Their first thought isn't to pull together, it's "how can I befriend the new guy and crush the neighbours?".

Swiff's faction is the most credible power from Shade because

(a) they recruit from four of the five native humanoid species - they can get lots of cannon fodder fast
(b) they have outstanding research (inc spies)
(c) battle mages
(d) their leader's clever and unpredictable

"He's also swoonworthy." *pushes Jaina out of the OOC sections*

Yes, I forgot to mention their propaganda's fairly good. *eg*