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 )                                                                         (
(                             NewOrigins Events                             )
 )                            December, Year 1                             (
(                                                                           )
 )      A few bards are worried about an encounter between combatants      (
(      happened in the jungles of Stagol where 1 combatant was killed.      )
 )      The attackers slaughtered all defenders. This battle will be       (
(                 known as Battle of the village of Naheim.                 )
 )                                                                         (
(                          .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(       Numerous locals are rumoring about a fight between two armies       )
 )    happened in the plains of Ceckshire where 1 combatant was killed.    (
(      The defenders were furious and put all attackers to the sword.       )
 )       This battle will be known as Battle of the town of Ogacre.        (
(                                                                           )
 )                         .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                         (
(                                                                           )
 )    Multiple bards are worried about the skirmish between combatants     (
(      happened in the forests of Tecau where 1 combatant was killed.       )
 )     The defenders were furious and put all attackers to the sword.      (
(      This battle will be known as Battle of the village of Eminster.      )
 )                                                                         (
(                          .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(      Several travelers are talking about the village of Apylton that      )
 )     lies in the Liou'ecpu mountains, where an opposition decimated      (
(                                  guards.                                  )
 )                                                                         (
(                          .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(     Numerous bards are worried about the town of Rihead that lies in      )
 )        the Liou'ecpu mountains, where a villans expelled guards.        (
(                                                                           )
 )                         .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                         (
(                                                                           )
 )    A few peasants have heard about the town of Vejirthi that lies in    (
(      the Selfle mountains, where a villans put to the sword guards.       )
 )                                                                         (
(                          .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(      In the jungles of Simy'a, near city of Otwirm, Clan of Wild Men      )
 )        (380) who continue to cause horror to local inhabitants.         (
(                                                                           )
 )                         .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                         (
(                                                                           )
 )    In the mountains of Poildeg, near ocean of Atlantis Ocean, Undead    (
(         (1004) who continue to cause terror to local inhabitants.         )
 )                                                                         (
(                          .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(      In the mountains of Jibom, near city of Sefebach, Dragon (562)       )
 )           who continue to cause horror to local inhabitants.            (
(__       _       _       _       _       _       _       _       _       __)
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            '-._.-'                                         '-._.-'

THE LAST LAMP IN THE ARCHIVE

From the Eleventh Commentary of the Annals of the New Sun

The young copyist found the old archivist alone in the western gallery, working beneath the final lamp.

The hour was late. Every other flame in the Archive had been extinguished, and the high windows reflected only darkness. Before the old man lay the remnants of a damaged chronicle: pages blackened at their edges, bindings split by heat, and whole passages reduced to fragments that crumbled when touched.

“You cannot restore it,” the copyist said.

The archivist did not look up.

“No.”

“Then why remain?”

The old man lifted one of the surviving leaves with both hands. Upon it, three lines could still be read. The first recorded the founding of a settlement whose name the copyist did not recognize. The second listed those charged with its defense. The third ended midway through a sentence.

“Because this remains,” he said.

The copyist studied the ruined volume. It contained no account of a famous victory, no proclamation of a sovereign, and no life of a celebrated commander. Its surviving entries concerned grain stores, repaired roads, births, disputes over boundary stones, and the names of laborers assigned to work that had long since disappeared.

“Were they important?” the young man asked.

“They believed their work was.”

“That is not what I meant.”

“I know.”

The archivist dipped his pen and began copying the first surviving line.

In his earliest days, the copyist had imagined the Archive as a monument to greatness. He expected its halls to preserve the acts of rulers, the movements of armies, and those rare decisions upon which the fate of nations turned. Such records were indeed kept there. Their volumes stood prominently upon shelves of dark wood, bearing titles stamped in gold.

But the greater portion of the Archive was filled with quieter things.

There were inventories of tools worn smooth by hands whose owners had never been painted. There were letters sent across distances that later roads rendered unremarkable. There were plans for buildings never completed, petitions never granted, and careful accounts of harvests gathered in places since abandoned. There were errors preserved beside their corrections and promises recorded beside the cost of keeping them.

The Archive remembered triumph, but it did not exist to flatter the triumphant.

It remembered failure, but it did not exist to condemn those who had failed.

Its purpose was more demanding than either.

It preserved what had been learned.

The young copyist sat across from the old man and drew an unused sheet toward himself.

“What should I copy?”

“Everything that can still be known.”

Together they worked through the night.

Where a name remained, they preserved it. Where only a portion could be read, they marked the absence rather than inventing what had been lost. When two fragments appeared to belong together, they placed them side by side but did not conceal the break between them.

Slowly, the ruined chronicle became legible again—not whole, but honest.

Near dawn, they reached the final surviving page. Most of it had been consumed. At its center remained a short entry concerning the repair of a lamp in the settlement’s meeting hall. The craftsman had replaced its cracked reservoir, straightened the metal frame, and returned it to service before nightfall.

The copyist smiled faintly.

“All this labor,” he said, “to preserve the repair of a lamp.”

The archivist leaned back and regarded the flame between them.

“Had he not repaired it, someone else might have been unable to work after sunset.”

“That person’s work is not recorded.”

“No.”

“Then we do not know whether the lamp mattered.”

The archivist finally smiled.

“We almost never do.”

Outside the high windows, darkness began to soften. The first pale line of morning appeared above the eastern roofs, and the lamp’s flame—so commanding during the night—seemed suddenly small.

The copyist reached to extinguish it.

“Wait,” said the archivist.

He completed the final line, set down his pen, and scattered sand across the wet ink. Only then did he nod.

The young man lowered the snuffer. For a moment the flame bent beneath it, resisting with all the strength available to so little a thing. Then it vanished.

Morning entered the gallery.

Years later, when the young copyist had become the keeper of the Archive, he would remember that night whenever calamity delivered another damaged record into his care. He would remember that preservation was not the denial of loss. A copied fragment did not restore a ruined settlement, return the dead, or complete an abandoned work.

It accomplished something quieter.

It ensured that destruction would not possess the final word.

For so long as one faithful hand preserved what another had learned, no generation was condemned to begin entirely in darkness.

And somewhere beyond memory, an unnamed craftsman’s lamp was still burning.

One nation leaves, another comes. 

We are exploring more and more lands. We are meeting new factions. Will they be friendly or hostile?

The die has been cast. We march into the unknown.
See you on the other side.

A month of sawdust and nothing else. We would take another one just like it.

Is it time for roads?

We are Borg!

Good

New garden Centre opening in O'andhurst this month!

BY THE CHAMBER OF THE HEPHAESTUS SYNDICATE

In the name of the Forge and of the Ledger.

To all whom these presents may concern, greeting.

Be it known that Andries Baselier, Director of the Chamber of the
Hephaestus Syndicate, is dead. He fell in the month of November, in the
first year, at the counting-house of this Syndicate.

Be it known how it came about. The Evil Mages keep a tower, and out of
that tower they came, and they came for one clerk. He was a single head,
a tax collector at his book, the least man on our roll and the last worth
the trouble of a magician. He had given them nothing. They hunted him
across the open ground as men course a hare, and they did not stop at
him. The chase was carried into the field where the counting-house stood,
and the counting-house was the whole of this house: its Director, its
Secretary, its anvils, its month's iron, its store of picks new off the
hammer, and the silver the Director had drawn that same morning out of
the treasury and put into the hands of his people.

Be it known that he did not leave it. He had that morning laid three
hundred and fifty pieces upon the table for wages and for the buying of
men, and the picks stood beside it, made that month and not yet sold. He
was no soldier and had no weapon on him. He put himself in the line with
his orcs and his gnolls, between the strongbox and the door, and there he
stayed. He struck once. The record allows him one blow and no more, and
this Chamber will not enlarge it, he having been a man who checked
figures.

Be it known what came against him. Their magician stood behind his own
line and brought down a stroke of lightning upon the whole field at once,
and the rear rank was no shelter to any man in it. After the lightning
came seven-and-twenty evil warriors upon men who had picks in their
hands, and picks were what they had. It was over in one round. There were
no terms asked and none offered, and the enemy had not one man down when
it ended.

Be it known what was lost besides the men. The great forge of this house
is broken, and its anvils with it. The sword-store was carried off the
field upon the backs of evil warriors, and the mail and the iron went
after it, and the picks, and the silver from the table. This Chamber has
in a single afternoon been made a seller with nothing on the shelf. It
does not pretend otherwise, the pretence being worth less than the stock.

Be it known that many of this house fell with him. Their names are in our
books, and our books are not a notice.

Be it known what he was. He was born at a weigh-house at a town gate,
where his father weighed other men's carts for a copper, and he learned
at the beam, before he learned his letters, that a weigh-man who lies
once is a weigh-man no longer. He was bound prentice at fifteen to an
armourer, and stood eight years at the anvil. In the seventh year his
master drank away a commission of forty blades that was paid for in
advance; the prentice forged the forty himself, in three months, and
delivered them to the day, and told no man of it, the buyer included.
That silence is the beginning of this house's rule, and the first client
whose affairs this Chamber kept was its own master.

Be it known that when the forge came to him he set up no new hammer, but
a stamp: a weigh-house weight, struck upon everything that left his yard.
The stamp was not ornament. It was an undertaking. Goods bearing it came
back if weight or assay did not answer what was promised, and eleven came
back, and he replaced ten without argument and refused the eleventh and
set down in writing why, and that letter went further about the market
than the blade did. The price of his iron stood above the market from
that day, and stood there on the paper behind it and not on the steel.

Be it known that he made this house a company and not a war-band: a
chamber, resolutions, and books kept in double entry. He would not be
called master after the first year and corrected those who tried. He
would not have a rounded number in a report without the word rounded set
beside it, nor the word approximately at all. When there was no figure he
said, we do not know, and in his mouth that was a decision and not a
confession. In six months he set his hand to six agreements and to no
alliance and to no war, and broke none of them. He held that a house
stands upon two things and not upon one: good iron, and an honest weight.

Be it known that he took up magic late and by arithmetic, his house
having no magician and being blind for want of one. He learned no battle
spell and meant to learn none. He said of it that a house buys of a
magician what it buys of a carter, which is speed, and that lightning is
for those with nothing to sell. He was killed by lightning in the eleventh
month, and would not have withdrawn the remark. He died standing over the
silver and the tools of his own trade, which is where a man of his sort
would choose to be found, though he would have preferred a month's notice
and a better price.

Be it known that the Syndicate stands. Until a Director is named, it is
governed by the Crisis Council of the Chamber. Every agreement this house
has made stands to its term, unaltered, and shall be kept by the Council
as it was kept by him.

Be it known that this notice is set by the Secretary of that Chamber, who
stood on the same ground, is of copper, and has been in part repaired.
The books came off that ground with him, and they are whole. The account
above is taken from them and not from the mouths of men.

The Chamber asks nothing by this notice and offers nothing. It is entered
for the record, that the year should not close without it.

Errors and omissions excepted.

By order of the Crisis Council of the Chamber,
Coenraet de Koperen, Secretary to the Crisis Council,
for and on behalf of the Hephaestus Syndicate.

Given in the month of December, in the first year.

Goed ijzer, eerlijk gewicht.

Into the void we step. our journey will never end. the gates and portals of this world will be known.

Stone.  What shall we do with stone.  Aside from that lovely tower we built.  Tall enough for the dwarves to see over the hills.

Perhaps roads.  That might be nice.

Woof!

The elder warrior extended a hand to the Chosen One, clad in a heavy combat bracelet. As their palms met, the earth beneath them trembled.The human magic of Nature and the ancient, wild power of the centaurs' steppe spirits merged into one. A wild warmth surged through the Chosen One's veins, while the warrior’s eyes flared with an emerald fire. The province seemed to hear their call: the surrounding grass began to grow rapidly, turning into thick, tangled vines, while giant roots and sharp stone crags rose from beneath the ground.Within minutes, a living, impassable shield as tall as a fortress wall rose before the advancing Ironclad army. The enemy’s iron onslaught was halted by the very earth that refused to let them pass.

One step down, two steps down, three - the dungeon keeps count, and it's counting on thee. Four steps, five, six into the black - the door slams shut and there's no turning back.

Kongen er død. Lenge leve Kongen Håkon VIII!

The magic has been gathered in sufficient amounts. Now we can start sharing it.

Recruitment from the guard is ongoing, they clearly prefer our outfit

more swamps and shrimps

The brothers of the Elder Council are please with progress so far. Little has gone wrong. But the horizon is not clear. With a soulless faction at the borders, even a peaceful faction such as ourselves, needs protection

Shī fu lǐng jìn mén, xiū xíng zài gè rén.

The Teacher leads you to the door, but your own practice.

I have nothing to say...

Where are you, AI?

There are old friends in a new world

Badvoc looked on at the shouting tribesmen.  The weapons had been distributed and the silver was beginning to flow, but still it all looked quite frail compared to those yeti.

I spent last month in a state of bliss completely oblivious to the world around me. Unfortunately it seems my minions lack initiative.

Land ho!

ASSEMBLEE DE L'ALLIANCE DES GALADHRIMS DANS LES PLAINES DE PI'A

Les clans des gnolls s'installent en silence à l'est, les traits tirés, les stigmates des derniers combats encore visibles.
Les elfes se rassemblent au centre, teleri et noldors mélangés, les mains posés sur leurs arcs elfiques.
Les hommes, gnomes et autres orques se positionnent à l'ouest, un espace est laissé pour le clan nain disparu.
Un centaure apparait, menotté, solidement encadré par deux immenses gnolls, survivant des troupes d'élite du clan de la Lune.
Galadriel se lève, le regard froid, les traits tirés. 
- Parle, traitre, raconte à l'assemblée réunie ici ce que tu nous as avoué hier.
- Pauvre folle, mes maitres viendront tous vous détruire, vous êtes trop faibles et trop peu nombreux... 
Le centaure stoppe sa diatribe, son refard se fige, la peur brouille ses traits. Quatre énormes loups dorés de Tumladen, viennent d'apparaitre à côté de la reine elfe, ils fixent durement le centaure.
- Retenez les, ils vont me...
- Tais toi, traitre, et obéis, sinon...
- Oui reine Galadriel, mais je vous en supplie, retenez ces monstres...
Le centaure tremblant, s'agenouille et commence son récit. Il avoue tout, la perfidie des chefs centaures, leur alliance avec les ogres et les kobolds, les renseignements fournis à l'ennemi, la découverte de leur duplicité par le clan nain, l'allégeance donné au Roi Sorcier, l'assaut préventif sur la forteresse naine en construction, le massacre de la majorité du clan et l'asservissement des femmes et enfants nains survivants, leur déportation dans des conditions ignobles au plus froid de l'hiver dans la toundra, le lieu de leur internement où des membres du clan de la Lune les ont rejoint après l'attaque qu'ils ont subi peu apres.
- Arrête, traitre, nous en avons assez entendu! Ramener le croupir dans son oubliette!
Mes amis, vous en savez maintenant aussi long que moi! Il nous faut réagir et aller aux secours des notres!
Le chef du Clan de la Lune se lève. Il lève haut au-dessus de sa tête son immense hache de combat.
- Le clan de la Lune suivra Galadriel, nous allons mobiliser tous nos guerriers pour aller débusquer ces sales traitres à quatre patte.
Le clan des Hautes herbes, le clan des glaces, le clan des marais, le clan de la mer  et le clan de la tourbe se joignent à l'immense guerrier. Une acclamation monte de l'est de l'assemblée:
- Les Gnolls avec Galadriel!
Les elfes, les hommes, les gnomes et les orques se joignent à l'acclamation. Tous se mettent à scander le même mot
- GALDHRIM! GALADHRIM!

Broken nails or broken ribs?

😑🤔😕😰😢😵‍💫🤕🤒

Some days you hear a voice

Strange people have appeared around my manufacturing village, guarding regions without using them. I assume they are fake agents whose job is to disrupt others, not develop themselves.

Look at all them bones! I ain't going through there. Why can't we just find a nice quiet inn and have a drink?

Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time

"Glorious Five Year Plan, Part One"

Praise be, trees....

Tundra isn't good for much, but ice dwarves seem useful.

It is difficult to identify as a faction of dozens of people.
Gnomes, lizardmen, orcs and humans, so little in common...

Underground proves to be dangerous... Deadly even...

.

Nebulae only look substantial because they can stretch across several light-years.

Something that'll make sense to me

At last, a sign of civilization other than just scouts.

The time is approaching when we can journey to the horizon we can now only gaze upon.

Je hais ce monde, je n'y suis qu'un passant,
Mais je reste pour toi, malgré le vent.
Si tu restes figé dans ton indifférence,
Je disparaîtrai sans la moindre espérance.

Alas, it seems that factions 5, 24 and 29 are no longer with us! Let us erect a monument to their lack of glory.

Where has all the silver gone?!?

Atlantis Trident welcomes everyone!
Defeat the pirate armada and become king of the seas. 

Server launch coming soon.

Eaten Holden is the cause of constipation!

I heard that all of the factions are AI.
How can you tell?

Holden was eaten! Now he has two choice for exits from this situation!