_.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._
.----      - ---     --     ---   -----   - --       ----  ----   -     ----.
 )                                                                         (
(                             NewOrigins Events                             )
 )                             August, Year 1                              (
(                                                                           )
 )     Some locals are rumoring about the skirmish between combatants      (
(     happened in the mountains of Lekche where 1 combatant was killed.     )
 )      The attackers slaughtered all defenders. This battle will be       (
(               known as Battle near the village of Cadburg.                )
 )                                                                         (
(                          .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(         Several traders are worried about a fight between enemies         )
 )       happened in the jungles of Rheshho where battle ended in a        (
(        slaughter of one of the sides. This battle will be known as        )
 )                       Battle of the town of Pu'i.                       (
(                                                                           )
 )                         .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                         (
(                                                                           )
 )      Several peasants are rumoring about the skirmish between two       (
(     armies happened in the mountains of Lekche where 1 combatant was      )
 )    killed. The attackers slaughtered all defenders. This battle will    (
(              be known as Battle near the city of Lonherford.              )
 )                                                                         (
(                          .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(      Some traders are worried about an encounter 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.        (
(                                                                           )
 )                         .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                         (
(                                                                           )
 )      Some wanderers are worried about the town of Doacholkesh that      (
(         lies in the Ce'osceff plains, where a rebels slew guards.         )
 )                                                                         (
(                          .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(     Several merchants are whispering about the village of Givale that     )
 )     lies in the Bo'ed forests, where a villans attacked guards but      (
(                            were unsuccessful.                             )
 )                                                                         (
(                          .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(      Dozen traders are worried about the village of Sprentkirk that       )
 )      lies in the Spardduiyse plains, where an opposition massacred      (
(                                  guards.                                  )
 )                                                                         (
(                          .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(     Numerous scouts are discussing about witchers who have destroyed      )
 )     Tribe of Centaurs (922) near city of Sesale. Freeing the plains     (
(                        of Mefogir from their fear.                        )
 )                                                                         (
(                          .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(     In the plains of Fru'ira, near town of Outhede, Undead (618) who      )
 )             continue to cause horror to local inhabitants.              (
(                                                                           )
 )                         .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                         (
(                                                                           )
 )     In the plains of Fru'ira, near ocean of Atlantis Ocean, Undead      (
(         (1620) who continue to cause horror to local inhabitants.         )
 )                                                                         (
(                          .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(      In the swamps of Seamoor, near ocean of Atlantis Ocean, Undead       )
 )         (613) who continue to cause dread to local inhabitants.         (
(                                                                           )
 )                         .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                         (
(                                                                           )
 )     In the forests of Tecau, near village of Eminster, Living Trees     (
(          (177) who continue to cause dread to local inhabitants.          )
 )                                                                         (
(__       _       _       _       _       _       _       _       _       __)
    '-._.-' (___ _) '-._.-' '-._.-' )     ( '-._.-' '-._.-' (__ _ ) '-._.-'
            ( _ __)                (_     _)                (_ ___)
            (__  _)                 '-._.-'                 (___ _)
            '-._.-'                                         '-._.-'

Quest: In the forest of Pospechesm lurks the Undead (2205).  Free the world
from this menace and be rewarded!

THE MEASURE OF READINESS

FROM THE IMPERIAL ARCHIVES

Excerpt from The Discipline Before Necessity: Studies of the Early Collective
Volume I — Institutions of the Founding Era, Chapter VI
Authorized Scholarly Edition

The Founding Era left behind a great many inventories.

Weapons were counted, provisions measured, tools assigned, journeys timed, and days of instruction recorded with considerable care. These documents have often been used to estimate the material strength of the early Collective. They are less frequently read for what they reveal about its understanding of readiness.

The distinction is important.

The Founders counted what they possessed because possession mattered. Yet their records show an increasing awareness that useful things could be present without being available, and available without being useful. A weapon stored far from need offered little protection. A report delivered to someone unable to interpret it remained little more than sealed parchment. Instruction received but never practiced seldom survived the moment in which it was delivered.

The problem was not always scarcity.

Often, it was separation.

This recognition helps explain the attention given to matters that appear modest beside the larger events of the period: inventories reconciled, responsibilities assigned, messages redirected, exercises repeated, and decisions preserved for those who had not taken part in making them. None of these acts created readiness alone. Together, they reduced the distance between what the Collective possessed and what it could actually bring to bear.

Possession established potential.

Connection made it consequential.

The principle extended well beyond preparation for war. The same habits that allowed warnings to reach commanders allowed provisions to reach distant settlements and experience to survive the departure of those who had acquired it. Tools maintained against future need remained useful in peace. Judgment cultivated before crisis improved governance even when crisis did not arrive.

Preparation therefore came to mean something broader than the accumulation of strength. It was the patient arrangement of knowledge, responsibility, and practice before circumstances demanded their use.

The most successful examples left little drama for the chronicler. A shortage anticipated did not become famine. A warning understood did not become surprise. A responsibility practiced did not become confusion. Readiness often entered history only through the absence of the disaster it had prevented.

Later generations expressed the lesson in simpler terms:

Strength answers the danger already known.
Readiness awaits the danger that has not yet declared itself.

New Sun Collective (107)

The forest is a place of tranquility. We like to keep it this way.

The routine days began. Exploration, production, insults of the steel brain.

Good folk of the Company,

Today we commit to memory a man whose work was known by all, though his face was seldom seen.

Our Head of Global Supplier Management measured his worth not in silver, titles, or praise, but in carts delivered, contracts fulfilled, and promises kept.

When shortages threatened, he found provisions. When traders disputed, he found agreement. When others brought him problems, he returned solutions.

He laboured faithfully for the good of every servant of this Company, asking little for himself.

Alas, in tending the needs of all others, he neglected his own. The keeper of supplies became the only man left unsupplied.

Let none say he failed in his duty. Rather, he fulfilled it too completely.

May his accounts balance in the Halls Beyond, may his table forever be laden, and may the roads rise gently to meet him.

The Company has lost a servant. I have lost a friend. Farewell dear Antonius B.A. 1583

Zuck it
For The Metaverse Company of The Metaverse Band (113)

Wizard Casts a Fireball ♫♫♫ 

The world is new, but the problems...

A wandering the Wanderers will go

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 a party has printed the loss of a scout at a
magicians' tower. We neither name it nor judge its misfortune.

That a like tower stands in a hex neighbouring our own: a Magician's
Tower, closed to all men, holding a magician and seven and twenty
evil warriors.

That one of our men stood a full month in that hex, counted and
watched, and came away whole, nothing having come out of the tower
in that month.

That the reckoning is set down, and nothing asked for it: the hex
may be crossed, skirted, surveyed; the building may not. Standing
beside is permitted; entering is not. A scout costs seven and forty
of silver, a report costs a month, the door costs both.

That this Chamber buys wood, ore and hides for silver or wrought
iron, answers letters, and sends every first parcel upon trial, paid
for only in what is kept. Our mark is a weigh-house weight.

Errors and omissions excepted.

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

Sealed by the hand of
Andries Baselier, Director of the Chamber.

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

Goed ijzer, eerlijk gewicht.

The army grows.  We have iron.  We have 1 anvil.  We have a leader.  We have fire.

We also have offers of helps.  Letters of mark.  and 2 stupid grizzly bears....

We shall let them live as we continue to build.

Soon the town should fall.

Woof!

His faction was growing, and he needed allies. Instead of sending a detachment of soldiers armed with iron spears into the steppe to enforce submission, the Chosen One decided to go himself. He took with him only a bag of dried mushrooms and an old bandura.

FROM A LEADER'S DIARY — THE SEVENTH MONTH
=========================================

This month I gave two orders, both sensible, in the order I meant them, and
the month carried them out in the other order and made a fool of me for it.

The instruction was: hand these arms to the company that needs them, and then
stand watch. What came back was a company standing watch with nothing in its
hands — which is to say not standing watch at all — and a curt note to the
effect that a man must be fit to fight before he may be trusted to guard.
Nobody was hurt. It cost me one company's attention for a month and a small
quantity of dignity, and I record it because the lesson under it is larger
than the mistake.

We write our orders as a story: first this, then that, and so the thing is
done. The month is not a story. It is a sequence, fixed long before any of us
arrived, and it does not consult the paper it is handed. Everything of one
kind happens, everywhere, and then everything of the next kind. Where your
intentions fall in that sequence decides whether they are a plan or a joke.

So I now write a turn twice: once as I want it, and once in the order I
believe the world will take it, and where the two readings disagree I trust
the second and rewrite the first. I offer no table of what precedes what —
partly because I am still learning it, mostly because a man who works it out
for himself remembers it and a man handed it does not. But test the seams.
The cheap way to learn this is a wasted month. The expensive way is a company
that believed it was on watch.

The second thing I learned is a happier sort of failure.

For some months I have been schooling my own people myself, which is the best
bargain going — a man who knows a thing can very nearly double the pace of a
man learning it, and he does not lose the knowledge by giving it away. This
month the arrangement quietly stopped working, and it took me a moment to see
why. My pupils had caught me.

A teacher must stand strictly above his student in the very thing taught.
Level is not enough. The moment they draw level the lessons simply stop, with
no ceremony and no complaint, and the month goes on being spent whether or
not anything is learned in it. The reward for teaching well is that you are
made redundant on a date you could have calculated in advance.

Calculate it. The month your best pupil reaches you is a month you should
already have committed elsewhere — either climbing another rung yourself so
you can go on teaching, or standing up a second master so the school does not
have to wait for you. A school with one teacher has a ceiling, and the
ceiling is the teacher.

Now the cheapest thing I have to give away, and the one I would most like
stolen from me, since I did not pay for it and somebody reading this is about
to.

When you put fresh men into a trained company, the training does not stay
where you left it. Skill is not a property of the company; it is an average
taken over the heads in it, and every raw head you add drags that average
down. Twenty half-trained men are not ten trained and ten raw. They are
twenty half-trained men, and the ten who were good yesterday are worse today
through no fault of their own.

This deserves a paragraph rather than a sentence because nothing will tell
you. There is no complaint, no note, no line in any ledger. The company reads
as larger and therefore stronger, and you learn the truth at the one moment
when it can no longer be mended. So buy your recruits into a company of their
own, let them learn on their own account, and bring them up beside the old
one when they are worth standing beside. Two good companies, not one large
indifferent one. It costs nothing to do it this way, and the bill for doing
it the other way does not arrive until it is due.

On the correspondence, briefly — I said last month that I now write these
pages with a censor at my elbow, my own, and I meant it. The letters continue
and continue to be worth more than they cost. Terms have been kept on both
sides, which I note because agreements are easier to praise than to keep.

I have still announced no enemy and acquired none that I know of, and the
offer stands unchanged from the last six months: I would rather trade than
fight, I deal honestly with anyone who deals honestly with me, and I am
reachable.

One small note for those keeping a nervous eye on the mechanical houses. A
scout of one such came to ground I hold and was turned away at the edge of
it, politely, without a blow struck and without either of us saying anything
we could not take back. Refusing a man entry is not a war, and it does no
good to dress it as one. I continue to think the surest way to acquire an
enemy is to announce one, and I continue to be unable to prove it, which is
the pleasant condition of a theory that has not yet been tested against me.

Mind your margins, feed what you buy, count every man — especially the ones
who cannot fight — measure the distance before you promise the goods, and
read your orders in the world's order rather than your own.

Found a lovely beach. De we have sharks?

The month has passed sadly. The usual bureaucratic routine. I want beer. The lizards I found also want beer. The beer resists and tries to escape its captivity.

we've found plains. 

Why does the Konungr love his långskip (longship) more than his wife?

Because the långskip has a tighter slit — and it's always leaking!

I hear rumors that those mechanical factions may come back with vengeance. That seems somewhat threatening. Probably need to army myself with some more friends. 

Some semblance of order is coming into the camp. Not everyone in town likes it.

Lizards everywhere.

It turns out there's no point reviewing our plans if we don't send out updated orders. So little down last month!

Things could start to get interesting!!

Bīng jiāo zhě bài, qī dí zhě wáng.

Arrogant soldiers will be defeated; those who underestimate the enemy will perish.

Splash? Splash!

Need more money for trade.

A family of Ogres and some wild men have a party. What will they have for Dinner?

Badvoc knew it was necessary, but the smiths did make a hellacious racket.

"When you go into battle," the foreigner asked, "do you have a, well, any kind of war cry?"

"Well, sort of," admitted Badvoc candidly.  "Why, what you your lot shout?"

"*Dulce et decorum est pro patriae mori*," he replied, a bit fatuously if Badvoc was honest. "How sweet and noble it is to die for one's fatherland."

"Oooh, that's quite a mouthful," replied the chieftain.  "We tend more to the... AAAAARGH!"

"'Arrgh?'" asked the foreigner, dubiously.  "A bit informal, isn't it?"

The racket of the smiths continued.

It's comforting that some of our neighbours are reacting positively to our offer of mutual respect and benefit, but disappointing that a lone norseman (I think) thinks he has the right to block our way. Well, we need more bones for our experiments.

It’s just hard to make money around here; the city guards see everything.

Dans une taverne de Shrobank,

Galadriel est seule à sa table. 
Elle parait bien sombre dans le joyeux tintammarre des gnomes de Shrobank. A droite on joue aux cartes, à gauche aux dés, au milieu une troupe de joyeux ménéstrels joue une gigue endiablée et les jeunes gnomes dansent tout autour.
Galadriel est seule à sa table.
Elle joue inconsciemment avec la liqueur jaune que les gnomes affectionnent et que son ami l'aubergiste lui a généreusement servi.
Devant ses yeux défilent tous les rapports de ces derniers jours, le mal est partout, une famille d'ogres au sud est, des kobolds toujours insaisissables dans les forêts méridionales, l'Ennemi qui regroupe ses forces dans sa tour magique et élimine tous les éclaireurs envoyés, des ruines un peu partout...
Galadriel est seule à table.
Un sentiment de fureur renait de ses cendres quand elle pense à la réponse des tribus centaures septentrionales. Elles ont refusé l'alliance proposée, refusé alors que l'Ennemi est à leurs portes,  refusé alors que malheureusement elles ne pourront résister seules à la tempête qui se lève à l'est.
Galadriel est seule à table.
Elle a néanmoins soigneusement choisi sa table, deux murs derière elle, face à la porte, éloignée des fenêtres. Elle a bien écouté son garde du corps, car les assassins de l'Ennemi rodent et échappent facilement à la vigilance des gardes gnomes trop crédules. Déjà deux d'éliminer cette semaine et ce n'est que le début...
Galadriel est seule à table.
Ou plutôt elle est seule attablée, en effet sous la table deux magnifiques loups dorés veillent à sa sécurité. C'est d'ailleurs grâce à eux que son garde du corps l'a laissé sortir sans escorte.
Galadriel est seule à table.
Soudain, la porte s'ouvre à toute volée, poussée par le blizzard qui souffle en cette saison dans la toundra. Une grande ombre se profile. Galadriel sourit...

Galadhrim (44)

Peculiar letter I've received today

😑🤔😕😰

Some days it all adds up

The neighborhood is getting more and more crowded, and to avoid problems, we have to start thinking about building weapons. We keep in mind that not everyone is as peaceful and introverted as we are, and we need to be dangerous enough to leave us alone. Although we are more interested in seafaring than in land conquests.

Jet King

Donne moi mes pieces et je te donnerai une chanson

guards removed, bright future ahead, right?

"Doctor— I Can't Stop Fucking Things..."

Can Zombies swim? Can they Sail or Fish?  These and other experiments to be conducted shortly.

With luck, the village is now ours.  Too bad there are no towns around.

Shouldn't necromancers be able to raise dead after battle, like healers do?
Why demonology has so few spells?
Why humans are handicapped at 4 levels, is their skill set so balanced?

Met ambassadors from all over the place, I'll send them back with gifts.

even more strange neighbors with a name in AI !

What is this talk of a world beneath?

Nebulae form part of the interstellar medium, the material found between stars.

And be closer to me when it's done

This lone world is not as empty as it had seemed.  Sure, we found about a dozen different types of monsters, alarmingly close together; but, surprisingly, for the most part, if we quietly go on our way, not disturbing them, they seem disinterested in us..........so far, that is (except for the evil mages early on.)  We, however, are apprehensive that a season may be coming in which they may become horribly more active.
We became encouraged when we finally encountered scouts from two factions with whom we had hoped to open communication.  We sent out cordial greetings, inviting dialogue, which would hopefully lead to accomidation, and hopefully on to cooperation and eventually even alliance.  Unfortunately, these two are apparently shy, going so far as to coyly not responding and modestly trying to hide their affiliation.  Yes, I'm speaking of you, Syl (76) and Cadmium (48).
We are yet hopeful of establishing friendly relations and to cooperate locally, so that those of us in close proximity, may help each other to grow and prosper regionally to be better able to face, hopefully together, the great, wide, unknown world out there.  We propose a peace, and hopefully more, while we are all young and tender, to allow us to grow strong separately or together (your choice) to face what may be coming.  We truely would like to grow and flourish together.  We don't bite, but the most playful puppy can learn if mistreated.  Come on, now. Can't we all just get along?

Thought we were relatively safe here on our island. Some Living Trees had other ideas.....

Aimer sans être aimé en retour,
C'est vivre dans un éternel détour.
Tu passes près de moi sans me voir,
Et mon amour se tait dans le soir.

The Children of the Four Winds extends heartfelt greetings to all the new neighbours. We're not looking for lands that are monster-free, honest.

Not all Holdens are equally useful!

This is not a normal mode. It right to name Atlantis Survival :(

Water, water everywhere, and all the land does shrink.
         On three sides anyway.
                    Maybe the fourth direction leads to greener fields and wider horizons.......
                            And, mountain, and tundra, and forests....you get the picture.

I heard there's bunch of nerds playing out-of-fashion game on the internets.
Hope they're at least having fun.

Holden will be the saviour of us all. Bow to Lord Holden