Summer Camp 2023

It's that time of year again! Summer Camp is upon us once more, bringing with it forty prompts. Yes, FORTY whole prompts! Of course as ever only thirty two of these are required for diamond with the additional eight as wildcard prompts, but I know some of you madlads are still going to complete them all. I'm looking at you, triple diamond people.
Anyway, I suppose I need a pledge. Hmm. Right then.
Here we go!

I should probably include a link to Ion Tides.
I aim to complete at least copper this year. I am really aiming higher but since I'm in work for most of July I won't get as much time to write as I would like, so copper is a good realistic goal.

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With that done, it's theme preparation time. The first theme this year is...

POWER!!!!!!!!

[Insert Jeremy Clarkson/Palpatine Here]
As the WA blog post goes into great depth about, power dynamics are a vital part of story telling. Factions, nation states, guilds, corporations, and influential individuals all have their own level of power which wax and wane, and the relative power between these generates conflict. And Ion Tides has this in spades.
But that is not all that power is. Power is also a measurement of energy transfer over time, and everything needs a source of power to function, be it plants, animals, people, and machinery. With the ever flexible nature of Summer Camp prompts, I am almost certain that I can tie some of them into pretzels in order to talk about these vital bits of technology.
And then of course there's Power Metal! [Insert Wyld Stallyns Guitar Solo Here] Nothing would make me happier than to talk about metal bands that exist within Ion Tide's setting. Rock on!

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Week two rolls around and with it the second theme.

Frontiers

[Insert Star Trek Opening Here]
Actually, Star Trek is an excellent reference here, as Ion Tides is both set in space and has a lot of frontiers, though some are more final than others. As the second WA blog post goes into great depth about, frontiers are another vital part of storytelling.
Frontiers between political entities in Ion Tides are fuzzy and nebulous, and while an astrogation chart may claim that a certain star system belongs to a certain nation state, the practicalities of travelling between stars in the setting mean that often in border regions the only people who have jurisdiction over an area are those who actually have a fleet present at the time. These soft frontiers are the perfect hiding places for smugglers, pirates, and clandestine meetings between ships who wish to keep their rendezvous hidden from prying eyes. In Ion Tides, one of the only ways to be stealthy is to physically be where nobody is watching.

Summer Camp Camp Chill Badge

by Rin Garnett

A custom badge made in honor of Annie Stein's Camp Chill.

Nnie's Camp Chill Guidelines

Remember the prompts are suggestions, not requirements.

Write what you're passionate about, leave what you aren't.

Relax when you feel tired.

Fight off any pesky brain-squitos trying to make you doubt your work.

Don't abandon your non-summercamp goals! Write that article you're itching to write, even if it doesn't fit any prompts.

(Shared with permission from Annie Stein. Read her thoughts on 'Camp Chill' on her Camp Pledge.)
If you'd like to repost this badge, add [imgblock:4574878] or [img:4574878] to your article.
If you'd like to repost the guidelines, Amy Winters-Voss made a block version you can use by adding [block:1050823] to your article.

Frontier regions are also largely unexplored. Vast regions of space remain uncharted, and previously charted regions have since been lost to the shifting Tides. The Kith are a good example of of a species that had been found in a frontier region, then lost when the Tides changed, an then re-discovered again later, their society completely transformed in the thousands of years that elapsed.
A frontier can be more than a region though. Technological and cultural boundaries are also good examples of frontiers. Frontiers also intersect nicely with Power, as both are major driving factors for storytelling.

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Week three rolls around ,and so it is time for the third theme.

Relics

[Insert Trazyn The Infinite Playing The Indiana Jones Theme Here]
Ion Tides has many, many thousands of years of history behind it. The current civilizations are built upon the bones of those world lost and forgotten when the Tides shifted. As this week's WA blog post points out, there is value in old things, which is why we as a society display things from our past in museums not only for educational purposes but also for entertainment, and is also why antiques command such high prices at auction.
Of course, a relic does not necessarily need to even be all that old. Relics represent snapshots in history and can tell a lot about the state of the world and the culture that created it. In our modern world where we primarily see cars from the last twenty years or so, seeing a car from the 1980's drive past is a rare event that stands out and draws attention. At only forty or so years old, the older generations will fondly remember when such cars were common on the roads and something from the 1950's was the rare exception, while for the younger generations these cars might instill a sense of wonder because the cars are twice their age.
People have a tendency to covet and hoard valuable things, and since old things are valuable inevitably people will seek such things out. While an archeologist might spend weeks digging in somebody's back garden looking for relics dating from the Roman occupation of Britain purely for the educational value of what they may or may not find, others will do so for the fame and prestige gained from finding them, or from the monetary gain from selling them off to private collectors and public museums. And where there is the potential for a substantial profit to be gained, individuals will arise who are willing to... "acquire" such relics in less than honest ways. The 1671 theft of the Crown Jewels is a good example of a historic theft of a historic relic.
In storytelling, relics become important plot devices in addition to their monetary value and the lore attached to them. A story might revolve around the heist of an object, with either the focus on carrying out the heist or stopping the would-be thieves. The story might revolve around two separate groups attempting to acquire the same relic first, and their attempts to foil and sabotage each other in their race to claim it. The story might instead revolve around the journey to the relic. An ancient temple in the middle of an unexplored jungle creates a sense of mystery, exploration, and adventure, with the party trekking out to the middle of nowhere blissfully unaware of all the ancient traps that inexplicably still work, all the candles that someone was nice enough to light for them in the middle of an unopened tomb, and of course Hic Sunt Dracones.

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And finally, the fourth and final of this year's themes is... [Insert Drumroll Here]

Communication

This is actually one that I had already put a lot of thought into. Since Ion Tides draws a lot of inspiration from the late Age of Sail, most communications between star systems happens at the speed of a ship sailing on the Tides. Even through this is still Faster-Than-Light, when a lightyear is measured in days of travel it still takes a good while to send a message, and the variable nature of the Tides can make this time much, much longer. Assuming the message arrives at all, which is never guaranteed.
Building on the late Age of Sail inspiration, just as an analogue of an early naval steam engine is beginning to come into service, so is an early version of an interstellar "telegraph". Much like the real electrical telegraph, it is limited to spikes of signal between two linked base stations, though no physical wire is required in this case. While it is extremely fast for getting short encoded messages to where they need to go in a hurry, the baud rate is so low that any message of significant length that isn't time critical is better off being put on a mail ship anyway. You certainly aren't going to be using it to watch the World Anvil Twitch streams.
Communication and Power are two things that are very closely connected. What happens when you give a private company a local monopoly over interstellar communications for example? What happens when said company develops their own equivalent of Room 40?
And what happens when there are unidentified vessels on the horizon who do not respond to any attempt at communications? Are they simply smugglers running without transponders, or are they something entirely alien?
As ever, the WA Blog post provides plenty of excellent insights into communication, many of which are relevant here.

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All entries are displayed in order of completion.

Copper

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Silver

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

Gold

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

Diamond

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

Bonus

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

40.