Archivist for a Day

[Aelis]

 

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From the Archives on Magic and secret stuff forum section:

Texts, concepts from the game, official information on magic. The archivists do not experiment with new magic, but they do document all that they can find out about it.

Hello, everyone,

16 years, wow! That's a lot! Throughout these years, we've seen a lot: the rise and fall of many alliances, RPCs, Queens and Kings, not to mention countless events and quests. We have also witnessed the appearance of new lands, creatures and even concepts (Wiiya and Fenths come to mind, for example). I could go on and on, but I'll try to keep this short (and ultimately fail), so bear with me!

Mur once said:

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Coincidences are just event collisions, in a closed system they become predictable and unavoidable...

I, for one, find this quote fascinating, especially when we acknowledge the many "coincidences" that take place in our beloved realm. As a (tentative) researcher, I often have to dig through old records to look for said events when trying to identify and/or predict their associated collisions. When doing so, I frequently find myself picturing an ideal world where a certain concept or topic would be well-documented and whichever public information regarding it could be easily retrieved by any interested party. While at first this is a rather selfish thought, I really think such scenario would greatly benefit our community and, as such, I'd like to propose this quest to thee:

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TLDR: QUEST DESCRIPTION HERE!

Pick a topic of your choice (anything, really: a particular event, a principle, a resource, an alliance, a faction, a land... hell, even the history behind a certain medal, why not? :P) and document everything you can about it as if you were an Archivist writing a book on that subject for current and future generations. References to relevant announcements, adventure log entries and forum posts are encouraged, as are screenshots, artworks and chat logs — feel free to add anything you'd find appropriate. Bear in mind, though, that we're interested in PUBLIC information here. For the love of our Demon, keep it spoiler-free! Oh, one last thing: due to the nature of our goal, multiple submissions per player are more than welcome, so, the more the merrier — only one pack of rewards per player, though!

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With your entries, I plan to start organizing (and contributing to) a "new generation" of documents for the MD Archives. I hope that in the future everyone will enjoy heading to the Archives to browse the bookshelves for clues!

Oh, and since there isn't a predefined "editorial style" for these, I'll draw inspiration from our submissions in order to determine that as well.

Finally, I invite anyone inspired by this quest (even if you don't submit an entry) to join me in this endeavor! If you're interested/curious, feel free to send me a PM (forum or in-game would be better... though I might also be available on Discord during the birthday) so we can discuss stuff.
 

Enough with the wordy bit! Here comes some important info:

• Submissions

Entries are to be sent via FORUM PM. Please don’t make them public before the quest ends as I’d like to see a lot of variety in your entries. After that period, I’ll contact you to find a way to make all of them available (we’ll see how that goes, depending on the formats and whatnot).

• Judging

We have managed to get a very special Archivist to judge your entries: Kyphis the Bard! Hooray! Oh, also some random guy that goes by the name of Aelis will be acting as judge (don’t trust that one).

Entries will then be judged on:

1. Presentation (10 points)
   • As I said, there’s no predefined editorial style, so feel free to innovate. Make it interactive, draw stuff, use pictures where one would expect text and vice versa, etc. Go wild on the format and surprise us!
2. Historical accuracy (10 points)
   • We expect you to present good references for the stuff that you write. Try your best to provide “proof” for your sources.
3. Writing (5 points)
   • We won’t look at your grammar or vocabulary here. Just aim for some degree of cogency in your texts, that’s all!

 

• Rewards (the good part, finally)
  • 1st place: Anniversary creature + Wishpoint (if we have at least 3 entries, if not we’ll see)
  • 2nd place: Anniversary creature + 1 gold
  • 3rd place: Anniversary creature + 5 silver

    Additionally, all entries, regardless of score, will receive some amount of silver or spellstones (the exact quantity will be defined Soon™).

    PS: I have been given the power to award Anniversary creatures to good quality/score entries that don’t make it to the Top 3, so try your best! And now the coolest part: if your entry doesn't make the cut, you’ll have some time to improve it and try again if you’d like.

• Deadline

April 29th (end of birthday). After we post the results, you get an additional week if you want to improve your entry to go for an Anniversary creature.
       

 

Okay, that was a bit lengthy... thank you for your patience thus far!

Please post here if you have any questions. I'll try to answer as fast as I can.

[Kyphis the Bard]

On top of the above rewards, if we receive 6 or more quality entries my personal favourite will receive something very rare for me to release - A year 6 anniversary Aramor.

The possibility of more bonus rewards also exists - the Archives are, after all, very important to me.

[Else]

Work sent.

[Aelis]

Hello, everyone. Submissions are closed now. I'll send the two received entries to Kyphis and Chewett (additional surprise judge!) and the winner shall be announced within a couple days!

PS: I know of one additional person who started working on a submission, but still didn't finish it. If there are others, please contact me so we can work out some reward for when you submit after the deadline, as I plan to make this a permanent thing

 

[Aelis]

We have our final scores!

To make things short, I'll report a the total score per judge here and send a detailed report with the judges scores and comments on each marking rubric to each player. If anyone else is interested in the detailed scoring, feel free to contact me and I'll gladly send them your way.

Before making the entries public, I'll contact the authors to see if they would like to refine their entries. As soon as that is worked out and I get an okay from them, I'll post the final versions.

 

So, without further ado:

Entry #1 - Else on "Important Events in Necrovion"

Scores
Judge 1: 18/25
Judge 2: 20/25
Judge 3: 12/25

Total: 50/75

Entry #2 - Granos on "The Brotherhood (of Void Destinies)"

Scores
Judge 1: 16/25
Judge 2: 16/25
Judge 3: 14/25

Total: 46/75

Since Else also won in terms of "binary" judge victories (2 out of 3), I won't make any adjustments in terms of scoring bias.

Therefore, that makes @Else our big winner, with @Granos as a close second! Congratulations to both and thank you again for participating! Unfortunately, we didn't have enough submissions to fulfill the WP requirement, but I hope you enjoy the other fine rewards. In the following days, I shall contact the winners with the codes.

[Lazarus]

Will the entries be publicized? 

[Aelis]

3 minutes ago, Lazarus said:

Will the entries be publicized? 

Yes. I'll just try to work on a final version before making entries public. However, if the authors are okay with it, I could forward them to you in advance.