kaida

Fic: Letters From After the War

Context: the Seiva War ended officially on June 25th of the year 302, following talks held in secret to prevent sabotage (which disrupted peace talks held in earlier years). Shiomaru and his company were captured during the last few months, and it was not confirmed until early July that they were even still alive; in the meantime, armies on both sides were ravaged by pneumonia, and casualties in the ensuing battles were also heavy. Ryoushi and Shiomaru grew up together, in a manner of speaking; they're from very different socioeconomic backgrounds, but met as children at the dojo in their village.

Title: Letters From After the War
Characters: Koichi Ryoushi, Oomori Shiomaru
Rating: PG
Word count: 1425

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kaida

Whoops!

Announcement: I forgot to renew my website hosting again! This happens every year. Anyway, the website and forum are down, but I've just paid my hosting company like I'm supposed to, so everything should be up and running again soon.
kaida

Drow-related questions

I've been a little uncomfortable with having stereotypical D&D-based Drow running around Toisian for some time, now, especially since the more public we become, the more likely we are to run into legal troubles with such material. I seriously doubt that the drow character that we had way back when is coming back, so I wonder if it's a good time to address this before they start coming up again. Something I've been thinking about for a while is the Scottish trow, a nocturnal, subterranean, troll-like faerie-type creature (phew!). Wikipedia has two relevant but meager articles, one about trow and one about "the people called Drows, who may, in most other respects, be identified with the Caledonian fairies."

I recall having read sources that equate the two names, and I will consult my books over the next few days to see what I can figure out, but several of you here are much better-versed in this area than I am, and I would appreciate anything you have to say on the subject.

At the moment, my thought is that Toisian drow are (as before) a subset of the forest elves who took to worshipping the dark gods and were exiled for it, and they fled the forests for refuges underground. They have become shorter and slightly thicker in build. They have a rich musical culture, perhaps even moreso than forest elves (whose musical traditions are often coupled with dance and theatre), and for them, music is as much a vehicle for magic and worship as it is a way of entertaining and passing on knowledge. Now, black skin/white hair (i.e. your standard D&D dark elf) in a subterranean environment makes no sense from a biological point of view, as far as I know, so I move that our drow be albino-pale or close to it. I will put some research into eye and hair colors that would correspond to this; hair is a particular concern for me because elvish hair is much coarser/heavier and darker than human hair, so I'm not sure what would happen. Would drow hair, then, be very coarse light blond? Red? Gray/white? Would it stay brown/black like the forest elves?

Biology aside, I do not want to do the "evil creatures are black and evil!" thing. It's a habit that fantasy should think about breaking.

What are we using for the plural? Drow or drows?

Edit: Also, please, if you have a moment, I really would appreciate a response to the previous post - I do not want to put a ton of effort into the website and the find that everyone hates it, or rework the code of conduct without input from, you know, the people to whom it pertains.
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kaida

Website rehaul

I am working on a website rehaul, hopefully to be completed within the next few weeks. (I know, I've been promising to do this for years, but I'm serious this time! Having free time sort of helps with that.) Anyway, my dear participants, I am looking for suggestions as to the following:

How can I make the world information more consolidated without turning it into an unintuitive, mishmashy info-dump? What sections can be combined, or what should be separated? What would you like to see clarified (inasmuch as I can manage on a fairly short-term basis)?

The RP Rules will be updated and made into a somewhat more expansive "Code of Conduct" for general participation, covering LJ community interaction as well as the forum. What points would you like to see added, removed, or clarified? How can it be changed to better serve the intent of our community, whatever that means to you?

How does the overall layout appear on your computer screen? Too spaced, too cluttered? Any weird glitches in the text or tables? Is all text legible and consistent in its size/face? (Please include what browser you use, since many of them render certain fancier/more recent HTML codes slightly differently.)

In general, I need to know what works or doesn't work. So, please, if you have opinions, I want to hear them. You will be listened to! It's almost a democracy!

I will post drafts of some things (i.e. the code of conduct) here for approval once I have them hashed out, so do keep an eye out for that. Feedback is cool!

Holy crap, so much of this website junk is so old. I feel like I'm in an archaeological dig.
kaida

Notes on Elvish hunting culture and weaponry

The hunter-warrior class of Elvish society is integral to the survival of the village, as hunting is an important source of food, raw material for crafts, and spell components. Hunting parties, groups of four to eight highly-trained elves, travel days or sometimes weeks from their village to avoid depleting the local food supply; they track and transport large herbivorous prey over long distances, and must do so on a regular basis. Thus, hunting culture has a number of differences from domestic Elvish society.

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