  Greetings Mizaharians!As is tradition the Founder's Circle and Regional Storytellers have selected Twister as March 2014's Featured Contributor. Twister is the friendly and enterprising ST under whose care Sunberth has flourished and become one of the most active domains in Mizahar. Enclosed is her review which tells us a little about how our tumultuous DS deals with her anarchy ridden city. Please join me in congratulating a very well deserved recepient of this medal! |
1. Alright some clever ones may have noticed you already have a featured cont. medal from when we gave one out to chat mods way back when. Can you tell us a little about what encouraged or brought you to become an ST and also a chat moderator?
Hmm! Way back when I first applied to be a Storyteller, I was determined to help out a cerain city who was suffering through some inactivity at the time. The present Storyteller wasn't able to pay attention to the city and had his reasons for that. I started out as a floater because of this, focusing primarily on Sunberth and taking over as the official AS when that last DS retired.
I've loved the city since I started on the site and have always had a soft spot for the nitty gritty side of the Fantasy setting. I'm very much fond of the grim-dark and intrigue and saw a lot of potential in the city that hadn't necessarily been explored yet. While it had a solid enough concept, it was still sandbox-stage enough to be free for development in a wide variety of directions. It appealed to me. ... Then, I also like helping out, which is what drove me to push that application in. The city was suffering from the inactivity and I wanted to help! Love the city like no one ever loved her before!
Ahem.
Becoming a Chat Moderator was an easy choice. I applied for it when I realized how much time I spent in the Chat anyway, and I was already trying to be a moderator when I applied. ... I did realize after a while that being a moderator was way easier with a name that stood out; hence, the green! It was difficult to steer or defuse conversations and situations when no one really saw what I was saying or listening to me. The green's helped out a lot with that and is serving its purpose. 
2. The classic question: Why Sunberth? What drew you to the strangely cohesive collection of pure anarchy and chaos?
I mentioned that briefly before, but... Like I said, I've always been drawn more to the gritty sides of the Fantasy genre and, to be honest, I've never been much for the classical "High Fantasy" with the great cities and abundance of magic. Sunberth embodies many of the ingredients I enjoy the most in a setting, between the day-to-day danger, paranoia, intrigue and civil justice in the absence of a supreme power to watch over you. It's a godless domain with a rugged populace abiding by the jungle's law of survival in a city environment. It's beautiful and rich with opportunity that you just wouldn't find anywhere else. Sunberth lives and she has no mercy, which makes me want to pick her up and squeeze her in a warm, tight hug!
I should probably mention that I love tormenting characters in roleplay and subjecting them to a truly challenging environment. Sunberth isn't quite so deadly as people make her out to be, but you better stay on your toes or she's going to snap at your heels. Beware! There's no better environment for exciting character progression, in my personal (very biased) opinion.
3. In recent times Sunberth has taken great bounds and leaps in activity levels putting it in recent Domain activity polls, putting it in the top 5 most active (via threads and word count) cities in all of Mizahar! Alright that wasn’t a question, but can you tell us a little about how you deal with such crazy activity levels?
I don't, lol. That's the simple answer. I suppose it's no secret that the activity in Sunberth has been more than a little bit overwhelming, looking at the queues and the delays in moderated thread responses. Not to mention I'm a pretty fresh DS and the activity burst happened just as I was promoted. The Graders have been fantastic and extremely helpful, however, and I'm grateful for every single one of them and their assistance.
I'm working on getting myself up to speed with everything going on in the city, but until then the players are managing themselves just fine. People ask me when there's something going on that they're wondering about and I peek into threads when I can to make sure it's not going overboard, and the players in the city have way more patience than I'm deserving right now. They're a wonderful lot who snatch up and take care of the new players just fine and have been fantastic at keeping people involved. The players are doing all the work in keeping Sunberth busy, haha.
4. What has been one or a few of your favorite things to develop and work on around Sunberth?
The city layout, hah. It's one of the things that require the most work, to be honest, and I haven't actually managed to finish much of it but it's... something I have been working very hard on. I'm a sucker for comprehensive maps and references and Sunberth, sadly, hasn't had either. So, I spend a lot of time sketching, erasing, sketching, and erasing on a city map between reading.
Otherwise, I do very much enjoy looking deeper into the social environment of Sunberth which has been, sadly, neglected. People haven't really delved very deeply and stuck with the shallow cutthroat & thug stereotypes and more than a few psychopaths have been spotted in the city streets. I suppose violent environments naturally breed those sorts of characters in communities like these, but I'm doing my best to write up information on the social environment to explain the "Sunberth mentality". The deeper I go, the more my brain tickles. ... I've always fancied psychology and behavioural science. Sunberth's streets are a gold mine for one so inclined!
5. What has been your favorite and least favorite parts of being an ST thus far?
This should probably be pretty predictable.
The paperwork!
Don't get me wrong, some of it is great fun and can be pretty stimulating on a slow day. You folks are fantastic writers and your threads have brightened my day more than once with amazing content and the occasional gem of wit and great humor (I do very much enjoy comedy). It is a bit tedious to get started, however, and it eats a lot of hours and focus. It's something that has to be done, though, so that's all there is to it. I've yet to discover a working routine for dealing with these parts of the job, though, so that's probably why it's tedious and something I can sometimes dread even looking at.
6. If you can answer this without giving us major spoilers and whatnot, what are some things you’re looking forward to implementing in Sunberth in the future?
A map.
And a culture, really.
I'm not sure how much I can say right now without raising any expectations before I arrive at a final draft, but that's something that I've been lacking in Sunberth for some time. We know that it's an anarchy and the environment is dangerous even for the so-called "natives" (a group of people I'm looking to define better in the future!) but there's little more than that, even for a city that's so old. The city has been around since the Valterrian and even before, with parts of it still standing since that time while most of it was wiped out.
There are a lot of ruins hinted at in the city descriptions with catacombs and dungeons hidden underneath the city and the old Leywellin Manor at Lodestar Isle, so the city has a heritage that is rich in mystery and also history. A lot of history that hasn't been explored in any great detail, and a culture that would've grown from this history that needs to be defined as something more than just "anarchy" and "we really don't like magic". That's not a culture. So...
In the future, I'm looking into establishing a culture to make Sunberth less shallow and more... interesting to interact with, as far as other cities in the region are concerned. I have plenty of ideas to make this happen, so... Look forward to it, I suppose? If you're interested. I hope you are. Why wouldn't you be?
*Jedi Hand-Wave*
7. Out of the three major syndicates in Sunberth, which is your favorite and why?
This is a hard one, because I like all three. The Night Eyes are the most elusive to my nerfing attempts, so I suppose I'll have to go with them. The other two syndicates have been appropriately weakened by yours truly since I took over in the city so I could start to make room for other groups and stop the syndicates from having a choke-hold on the city's development.
The Night Eyes, the more I read about and use them for the city plots, are proving to be very difficult to really put a finger on but at the same time... They are proving to be the best developed syndicate despite all the vagueness surrounding them. To be honest, they're pretty similar to the Rogue Knight over in Syliras; something you know is there and that definitely affects your players and daily city life in some way but you can never really catch up to them. For being lead by two derps, it's a very successful organization that's been built up in such a way to make them almost untouchable. I like it.
... Because that makes them a very convenient plot device for me. 
8. If you could go on vacation in Mizahar, where would you go and what would you do?
... This one's tricky, because I could honestly not see myself faring very well in any of the cities. I'm a chicken nancy who'd be staying indoors and never setting foot in the streets in most of the cities in the setting. Riverfall or Endrykas appeal the most to me just because they aren't insanely crowded or passively dangerous to the populace because of internal threats, but I could probably survive fairly well up in Avanthal as well. I'm a Northerner (Scandinavia rules!) so I don't mind the snow or the cold, and I'm used to seeing polar bears in the streets. (Geddit? ... No?)
Avanthal seems like a friendly enough place full of deviants who are surprisingly warm despite the cold environment, so I would feel right at home there. Knowing myself, I would most likely seek out good food and listen to locally composed music and prose and indulge myself for the duration of my stay while watching the Aurora all night long from some rooftop somewhere or a wall. And hug one of the bears.
9. What is your favorite food? Conversely what would your favorite food be at the taverns in Sunberth?
I like Italian food. Pasta with white wine & cream-sauce mixed with mustard, black & white pepper, roasted and diced pork...
... Ahe-hem.
The Sunberth taverns don't really serve any good food. They serve cheap and bad food, most of the time. I do like the more rustic tastes of Sunberth, though, since they can't really afford themselves the standard luxuries you might see elsewhere. The only bakery is fronted by a Myrian, so that should tell you something about the food culture. Pastries? Get out. The food culture in Sunberth is easy for me to relate to since a lot of it is similar to traditional cuisine over here where I live, which was established during a time of poverty where you had the make the most of everything to be able to survive the environment and the harsh work that went into running your farms and factories.
... Blood pudding. I petching love blood pudding. I can eat that stuff without cooking it first. There are various dishes with blood as a main component that I quite enjoy, in fact. I suppose I ended up in the right city, lol.
You Symenestra got nothing on our blood-cuisine.
10. I know it always helps me get jazzed as an ST if there are some cool story seeds PC’s are working on in my domains. Are there any plots or PC goings on at present that encourage and excite you?
There are several players in the city that are very excited about their own story ideas and move autonomously in working towards achieving them, which is making me very excited to see what people come up with.
There's the Broken Shackles group that I've been keeping my eye on that sprung up before the Scars (who you've probably heard of) made it to the city and started up their mischief without my assistance and it's amazed and inspired me what the fellows have managed to accomplish just between themselves and how quickly they managed to organize and get very interesting threads out there. It's lovely to see!
11. Alright podium time, here’s your mic and a slightly brighter spotlight. What would you like to say to the Miz community as a whole?
*Hisses and shies away from spotlight!*
You are all amazing writers and I haven't run into this much creativity since I can remember. Share it! Put your own touch on your favourite city or part of the game and give back to the world that hosts you! It's a place that will continue to grow together with us even as we come and go and the best gift you can give to yourself and the site, consequently, is to feed it plenty of love and ideas!
Most of you are way more talented and creative than I will ever be and most are probably even more deserving of this award than I am, will be or was. I've been withholding this little humble-streak since the start of this, so I finally snuck it in. Thank you all for being so patient with me since I started here as I know I haven't been the star of the team and shaky at best and thank you for being brilliant and awesome. It's an honor to be working with every single one of you and providing what I can to help you produce and bless Mizahar and Sunberth with your pure awesomeness.
*Tosses microphone and flees!*
Love you all! <3 |
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by Orion Michaels on March 1st, 2014, 4:46 pm 
