User talk:Slartucker

Welcome

Welcome to the encyclopedia, Slartucker! I see you have already been busy adding info and correcting mistakes (as in that glitch about "Exile I: Ruined World"), which is great. The site has been stagnating in recent times and it needs some new contributors. Arancaytar | Send Reply! --- That is not dead which can eternal lie... 11:31, 9 January 2006 (CST)

Taxonomy of magical creatures

I noticed that you are trying to classify the creatures you intend to develop under "non-sentient", "races" and "not quite races" - perhaps Undead and Demonic creatures should have special sub-categories each? They are not necessarily sentient, nor necessarily non-sentient, and neither of them really behave as a normal "race" on the physical plane would.

Since there are quite a few of each type - Liches, Vampires, Zombies, Ghouls and Skeletons for the former, and Rakshasi, Haakai, Imps and Efreeti for the former - a sub-category might make sense.

Arancaytar | Send Reply! --- That is not dead which can eternal lie... 04:48, 12 January 2006 (CST)

Re: Demons

You're right. I read the sentence as "a few", not "few" - that kind of subtle negation gets me every time. Changed back now. Arancaytar | Send Reply! --- That is not dead which can eternal lie... 04:51, 12 January 2006 (CST)

PS: I don't know much about rakshasi, I only recall them being described as "tiger demons" somewhere. TM has a huge, elaborate theory about them, which one could possibly get him to summarize in a few paragraphs. It involves alternate dimensions, if I remember correctly.

And efreeti do look like fire demons - is there evidence in the games that they aren't?Arancaytar | Send Reply! --- That is not dead which can eternal lie... 04:55, 12 January 2006 (CST)

You have a point - I just tried to do in an efreet in BoA with Repel Spirit at level 8, and it didn't work. The haakai didn't stand a chance, but it had no effect whatsoever on the efreet. But what else do we class them as - humanoid creatures? Arancaytar | Send Reply! --- That is not dead which can eternal lie... 12:20, 12 January 2006 (CST)

Re: Links

That's a good idea, just watch out for major non-canon stuff. The illithids didn't appear anywhere but in TM's scenarios, and there only in the remote future, many centuries after the Present Day (even if we do move it up ten years as Drakey wanted). If we consider Echoes canonical, then the illithids would still be nearly unheard of at the time of writing.

Regarding pluralization, the goblin is left over from an early article at the Geocities site where the races weren't pluralized. Since we've pluralized all the others, it's probably a good idea to move Goblin to Goblins and leave a redirect.

Arancaytar | Send Reply! --- That is not dead which can eternal lie... 19:38, 19 January 2006 (CST)

Backup/Upgrade Warning

I'm going to try and install a new version (1.5.6), which according to the makers should not be a hassle. Still, I need a backup, and it'd be best if between the time of the backup and the update, there weren't any changes. It should be all done within about half an hour or so. :)

Arancaytar | Send Reply! --- That is not dead which can eternal lie... 18:56, 20 January 2006 (CST)

Done. It appears that I really should have messaged Drakey instead of you, but since there were no complications, we didn't lose anything after the backup either. Arancaytar | Send Reply! --- That is not dead which can eternal lie... 19:45, 20 January 2006 (CST)

Exile/Avernum Text Dump

Would you be able to put this online somewhere, or at least email it to me so I can look through it too? It would make writing a lot of these entries much easier. Thanks, Drakey 21:09, 25 January 2006 (CST)

http://70.86.181.130/~polaris/board/index.php?showtopic=311&st=15

Go here and find Aran's post with the FTP information, or email me at ryan-thompson@comcast.net --Drakey 21:50, 25 January 2006 (CST)

Re: FTP

I really can't reproduce that problem. Have you tried either FileZilla or the Firefox extension FireFTP?

Two notes:

• Be sure that you are using FTP, not shell access (SSH) or secure FTP (SFTP). It's unlikely, but just in case.
• Make sure the port is set to 21.

Arancaytar | Send Reply! --- That is not dead which can eternal lie... 11:06, 26 January 2006 (CST)

Information from Scenarios

I'm uncomfortable adding information from scenarios to the Encyclopedia, at least until we've finished getting everything from the Exile/Avernum series and JV's BoE/BoA scenarios. I'm talking most specifically about Chimney, Kirlin, and Illithids. I don't think it's appropriate to add now, and maybe not ever.

Re: Canon/Fanon

We really cannot make a distinction between in-game information and fan lore. There is too little by Jeff to make a conceivable canon, and we already have far too much fan-created stuff included - look at the Vahnatai entry, or the entire history of the Empire.

I imagine what Drakey refers to is that we need to be more careful which scenarios we acknowledge as canon. There are many that are either technically atrocious, or made without regard to (and thus in conflict with) other established fan canon, or by people who have not been in the community long enough to be authorities on their subjects (like it or not, Spiderweb appears to work like that). Also, since game canon - where it exists - has precedence, it would make it much easier to add game canon first and scenario canon later. This way, conflicts can be seen immediately.

Arancaytar | Send Reply! --- That is not dead which can eternal lie... 17:00, 28 January 2006 (CST)

Re: Canon

Oh, it's not a democracy as such... :P

Well, okay, so it is.

Arancaytar | Send Reply! --- That is not dead which can eternal lie... 18:47, 28 January 2006 (CST)

Re: Re: Canon?

One of the differences with something like Novah is that it has its basis in the games and was specifically designed to fit into the canon. Most scenarios are not designed with that in mind, and fall either into places inconsistent with the games (Chimney, Kirlin) or bring outside creatures in (Illithids). My vision of the Encyclopedia is as a guide based on the seven games and four scenarios that can be considered canon, not encompassing all Blades scenarios made, but as a helper for future scenarios made based on the games. Just my 2¢. --Drakey

It could paint a far more complete picture if we include such scenarios as Kel's Bahssikava, however, that are specifically tailored to fit in the existing canon. We don't need to include all scenarios (or even many of them), but where the scenario designer actually takes care to fit the scenario into the game world, there is little harm in considering it canon... Arancaytar | Send Reply! --- That is not dead which can eternal lie... 02:57, 29 January 2006 (CST)

I agree, and the question is how far we want to go with this - Kirlin is part of Valorim that isn't really supposed to exist, but it could without much of a stretch. The same goes for Chimney. That's one of the problems with earlier scenarios - they didn't care really about where they were and how that fit with the games. That's not a problem unless we try to add them to the canon and now all of a sudden we have extra chunks of land that don't fit seamlessly. That's why I'd like to focus on finishing what's in the games and directly based on it, so then we can see which scenarios fit and then add those. Ideally, though, I'd like to keep it as something more derivative from the games than try to chronicle scenarios. This is for people who want to design scenarios based on Ermarian, not on other scenarios. I don't know if I'm making much sense, but that's how I see it, at least for now. And I don't see how the Novah entry is similar to the Kirlin or Chimney entry? --Drakey

I see your point about Chimney, especially after re-reading the entry again. But I guess part of it is also that Tormod Strangeland was making this 'his addition' to the Exile story and not creating it 'for the community'. He didn't create it as a setting for future scenarios, only for his and it's kind of uncomfortable for me to think about other people setting scenarios in Chimney in the future. The difference with Novah is that it is 'for the community' and I want people to use it and build on it. That's my main distinction. It's not that Chimney conflicts, it's that it's not really 'available' to be added to. --Drakey 12:42, 29 January 2006 (CST)

Exactly, but still I'd prefer getting the stuff from the games in first - we still have quite a lot to do and we're still falling behind with Avernum 4 out and Avernum 5 stirring in Jeff's head. Drakey

Re: Ilyaren

What is an Ilyaren? I picked "Ilyaran" as a second name to my moniker back in 2003, but it wasn't supposed to mean anymore than Arancaytar does - ie, nothing.

Arancaytar | Send Reply! --- That is not dead which can eternal lie... 10:48, 3 February 2006 (CST)

Necklace of Persuasion?

So we can come up with years and some other things, but once we try to give a name (Necklace of Persuasion) to something that was called something else (Gold Necklace that enhanced persuasion) we get called out for going out of canon? If you really look through here and see all the things that don't really fit, you'd be surprised. Length of wars, time before the First Expedition and people being exiled, length between wars, etc. All these things go unnoticed while my giving a name to an artifact gets called out within minutes after writing? All I have to say is why. It's not that horrible of a change. It's a necklace that makes people more persuasive, why not call it the Necklace of Persuasion. Jerry bush

Re: Structure

Good idea. I'd considered organizations being top-level at one point, but this was back when I didn't want to have too many top level categories and I stuffed it into Persons. Changed now. Arancaytar | Send Reply! --- That is not dead which can eternal lie... 18:29, 6 February 2006 (CST)

Farming

Do we really need an entry for Farming? It seems totally unnecessary to link to it, since there's no real Ermarian-specific farming methods. Unless you can think of something it would have? --Drakey

Re: Religion

The reason I removed religion as a top-level was that I received an email notification for Drakey's edit for religion, but not for the others. :p I don't check the encyclopedia as extensively as usual these days because not much seemed to be happening until now. Arancaytar | Send Reply! --- That is not dead which can eternal lie... 09:28, 25 March 2006 (CST)

RE:From Slarty

Sorry about that whole hasted link incident so I put the link back in. It is 8:15 AM so I am going to school soon. Joshie 17:16, 4 May 2006 (CDT)

Empire Category

I saw it as territories of the Empire and people that worked for the Empire. I would definitely remove Troglodytes, Aydin and Ernest. A lot of mages are cat'ed as Avernum because they work for Avernum and fought for it. I'd take out Ahonar, Anama, and Nekaros too. --Drakey 05:23, 5 May 2006 (CDT)

Welcome Back!

Now get to work on Empire Invasion. --Drakey

Busy Night!

Looks like you were a little busy last night with the apocryphal stuff. Arch-Mage Solberg 07:41, 29 December 2006 (PST)

Re: spam

They and all traces of them have vanished. They'll also have a hard time visiting this site now.

-- Arancaytar | Send Reply! --- That is not dead which can eternal lie... 01:04, 11 June 2007 (PDT)

I'll think of something soon. Unfortunately, for being a fine open source project MediaWiki is about as modular as MS Word, so hacking in a captcha is anything but easy. I'm on vacation next week and have a look around to see how this can be solved permanently. For now, spam cleared. -- Arancaytar | Send Reply! --- That is not dead which can eternal lie... 02:35, 16 July 2007 (PDT)

TOC and Structure Policy

Structure policy and TOC currently don't quite match. History is named as a large category but in the right panel, Items are named a small one but in the left panel. Otherwise the left panel consists of large categories and the right one of smaller ones. They either need to swap places in the TOC or in the policy.

I don't know your exact rationale for the TOC, so I'm not sure which of the two conventions is outdated... -- Arancaytar | Send Reply! --- That is not dead which can eternal lie... 23:55, 16 July 2007 (PDT)