Summer of Cathedris -- SC2023
This July, I pledge to achieve Diamond! Or, as many prompts as I can to the best of my ability, without overdoing things. I've been in recovery mode since the end of my last semester in April, and I want summer camp to be a training-montage-style month of recovering my productivity and maintaining through August. Additionally, I want to try and fit as much prose into my SC articles as possible -- I have a dream of writing a book or two in Cathedris, and this SC is going to lay the foundation for that.Hello all you lovely people! It's almost time for Summer Caaaaaaaaaaaaamp!! Probably my favourite event of the year, I think. There's something so deviously fun about twisting and warping prompts to fit your world, or being surprised by new ideas that spring forth from the challenge of unexpected difficulty. Something about how a blank page is difficult to begin work on, but if you give yourself some constraints, suddenly the creativity comes out in full force to design within those bounds. I love it. It's been, uh, quite a while since I've written anything. WorldEmber was the last actual writing, I believe, not counting Marchitecture! So I'm gonna need to warm up a bit, probably. Hoping to get a smol article or two out before July!
Themes
Power
We've been shown the future, and it is as terrifying as it is beautiful.Physical power. Political power. The power to destroy the world. Look no further than the Legion, an all encompassing neutral military force tasked to protect all of Cathedris from the Rendlings, as they've grown to be the most powerful force on the planet. For too long they've been too heavily relied upon, and worked their way into too many corners of the world -- with this, the Legion has begun to unearth terrible secrets that would have been better off left alone. A secret inner organization is growing within the Legion, named the Altruistic Concilium of Sacred Architecture, and it's their goal to reshape Cathedris into what they deem as a "better future".
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I am so excited for the theme of Power. I desperately want to write a character article for Dr. Anabelle Evingston (or any members of the ACSA, to be honest). As well, the 15th (the artificial god they are creating) could see an article being made, perhaps. There's also the Resistance, fighting to bring the ACSA's dreadful actions to light, and stop them before anything goes horrifically wrong. There's a lot of fun push and pull with this section of Cathedris, and it'll serve as the main story hooks for any writing I do.
Possible Articles
by Adam Bixby
Frontier
This thing looks like nothing I've ever seen before. Like nothing any of us have ever seen before. It's special... it calls out to me. It whispers things to me.To most Cathedrans, the world begins and ends at the God-husks. The globe is shaped by their actions, both present and past -- whether it's the scattering of strange crystals left in the wake of Qetzel floating over a lush valley, or from the dreadful apocalyptic fighting during The Seven Day War. But history has existed for longer than the gods themselves, and there are parts of Cathedris that have never seen the light of day -- not until now, that is. Boundaries are being pushed in so many places -- tech, catalurgy, ethics -- and it's opened certain people's eyes to the unknown that yet waits to be discovered. Strange cavernous expanses below untouched islands, horrific powers gained through newly twisted experiments; a certain group within the Legion is determined to push into these new and terrifying frontiers being discovered all across Cathedris.
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This is where the prompts can get weird and twisted >:) There's honestly a lot of overlap between the themes of Power and Frontier for me (and Relic too, to be honest). I'm going to have to keep my mind as open as possible for these prompts, and let their surprises direct me in fun and interesting ways. Of course, the big things I can write about here are Catalurgy, and the Gifts from the Sky, as those are the main 2 ways that the ACSA are going to be pushing boundaries. Expect exploration reports, experiment logs, methodologies, geographic points of interest, and maybe even some ancient history here.
Possible Articles
by Adam Bixby
Relic
I'm tellin' ya, most of those things would've been better left on the sea floor.The largest question left unanswered in Cathedris, a question that has confounded historians for as long as they've existed, is how did the gods ever come to be in the first place? Long before they became the Husks that they are now, what elevated these beings to such colossal titans full of limitless power? Exceptionally ancient, and extremely rare texts seem to mention something about the Days of Creation, a time of upheaval and change in humanity's ancient past. It's lead some to speculate that perhaps the gods were formed by pure chance, from existing mortal beings -- but how, they have no idea. But of course, this is where the ACSA comes in, because their hyper-specific research team thinks that they might have the answer, in the form of incredibly old relics found in the furthest reaches of the world... each relic exhibits strange and disturbing powers, twisting minds and pushing people to the brink.
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Relics! Items of power. There is, of course, the obvious items to cover here -- the Gifts from the Sky. These are 7 items with terrible power, thought to have rained down to the surface of Cathedris long, long ago. This theme then is of course perfectly situated to cover these Relics -- I can do an overview article, or even specific articles on specific relics I have yet to cover (I've written the Dreamshare Shard, the Errant Thoughtseed, and the Waxweep Rock -- that means there's 4 more to write about! On the other hand, this theme also frees me up to write about the history of the gods a bunch as well. What sort of ritualistic items might have been associated with the gods long ago? What meaning do people derive from these? If I need a break from the main drama of Cathedris, I can have fun delving into these flavourful side-bits of info!
Possible Articles
Communication
Can you hear me? Is this thing transmitting? ... Damnit. Another explosion.Cathedris, for most of its history, has been at the mercy of slow communications that were often lost due to the dangerous environments they needed to cross. But with electricity becoming newly utilized, and the Legion invention of Simulrendology and the Rendulgraph, the world is becoming interconnected at a frightening pace. Old tech like newsprint and letters still exist, but they're often fed intel through instantaneous data transfer coming through Legion Rendulgraphs. Sometimes, often, this leads to stories spreading before they're even completed. Additionally, misinformation is rampant as these old communication hubs struggle to be the first to print the latest and most tantalizing stories.
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Communication is exciting to delve into here, with a world that is electrifying itself in the midst of an industrial revolution. Technology and society is rapidly changing, propaganda is more common than it's ever been, and misinformation is at an all time high. All of these make for such an interesting landscape to explore, when dropping the Legion, the Resistance, and regular unaware citizens right into the middle of it. Secret codes and espionage, strange ciphers and unknown messages, advances in technology and cataclysmic failure all have equal chances of showing up in the Communication theme this summer.
Possible Articles
The Articles
Prompt 2
Seat of Power
Prompt 5
Suffering Culture
Prompt 7
Supernatural Event
Prompt 8
Mischievous Species
Prompt 10
Faraway Profession
Prompt 11
Remote Animal
Prompt 13
Dangerous Material
Prompt 14
Iconic Landmark
Prompt 16
Religious Item
Prompt 20
Children's Tale
Prompt 22
Historic Culture
Prompt 25
Silent Communication
Prompt 26
Proselytizing Organization
Prompt 27
Communicating Species
Prompt 28
Manipulting Character
Prompt 29
Message to Many
Prompt 31
Shadowy Character
Beautiful article, as always! *Scribbling notes furiously in my imaginary notebook about layouts.* I'm SO excited to see what you come up with this year!! I think the relics theme has excited me the most so far, so I'm curious which one has the biggest grip on you! Part of me thinks we may be in the same boat, but I could be wrong!
Seek a new dawn, in Malkora!
The Feral Sovereign sleeps peacefully, but will return...
Yay, I'm glad you like the layout! I've been sprinkling it into articles lately and have really fallen in love with it :D I think I definitely agree on Relic being the one I'm most excited for too! I desperately want to write more of the Gifts from the Sky (as I'm sure you can tell with them being possible articles for every theme xD), and it's also fun to have the ability to write other non-story related relics too :D