 Salutations Mizahar! I feel like this months Featured Character, selected by the Founder Circle and RSes, will come as a surprise to no one. Caelum and his writer are an engaging duo that have been on this site a long time and contributed so much to us whether it is compelling stories, development, or simply being a positive and uplifting presence for all of us on the site. I hope you'll join me in congratulating Caelum in this very well deserved accomplishment, this was a long time in coming  . |
1. So generally our first question is what brought you to Mizahar, but I'll swap it a little and ask, what has kept you coming back to the site over your time here? Community and Caelum. It was community that brought me here. I was sort of dragged in by a group of gaming friends way back when Mizahar was just a couple months old and was delighted at what I found. I tripped over a couple hundred rules, made a ton of mistakes, thought I was the dumbest player ever, and eventually found my feet with the help of basically everyone. I’ve taken two extensive hiatuses so far and returned successfully from both. I love the community here. Sure, we’ve had our share of bad seeds, but that’s to be expected. The majority of players and staff are basically good people, welcoming and incredibly creative, who really just want to talk to you about this killer plot idea or geek out over mutual character infatuation or how they plan to do new things with an old magic. People are here because they want to collaborate, to interact, and be involved in a like-minded community. Myself included. Caelum is the other half of why I keep coming back. He was the first PC I made for Mizahar and the only PC I have played here consistently. He didn’t start off as much, but at this point he has squirmed his way right into my heart. I love writing for him and any versions of him I might create for a different world and setting simply wouldn’t compare. 2. There are very few active PC's over or even around 1000 posts. Can you tell us about what you do with Caelum that keeps you posting, ideas flowing, that sort of thing? Goals. The answer is always goals. Not my OOC goals for Caelum, but his IC goals for himself. There is never a shortage of things to do with Caelum because I gave him one impossible goal and the determination to obtain it. If that sounds really simple, that’s because it is. Story follows character, and characters follow goals. There is no story to tell if you have a PC who wants nothing badly enough to go after it. The two fastest ways to achieve this are to 1) give a character a basic, small goal and build a world around them that constantly thwarts their achievement of it, or 2) give a character a ridiculous and impossible goal and the motivation to go after it anyway. I opted for No. 2 with Caelum and from his incredible ambition to go home has sprung a vast collection of other, related goals like a trail of breadcrumbs leading the way through the dark woods. Virtually everything he does revolves around that one star in the middle of his universe, and his way back to her. Whenever I am stumped on where to go next or how to move forward, which has definitely happened, I think about that. 3. You are working on a very cool, very in depth re-structuring of the Ethaefal race. Can you tell us a bit about that process, maybe some of your favorite aspects of it so far? It is definitely a process. When I was asked, I had simultaneous reactions of delight and dread. I agreed very quickly, half afraid the offer would be withdrawn. After determining that it would be best to cycle the revision through the Peer Review process, I sat down with a pen, a legal pad, and a bottle of pinot noir to write down every question great and small I have had about the race or I have been asked about the race by others. This encompassed everything from vast swaths of philosophy such as what constitutes a divine claim to heaps of minutiae like what do they eat, when do they sleep, if they can breed. Next I turned toward creating an outline for the article. This was an obvious step for me because I am largely an architect writer, meaning that for any significant piece of work, in game or otherwise, I require blueprints to work off of. That is what an outline is – a blueprint. In this case it not a blueprint of a building or a plot but of a people and as such it required malleable grid lines. (Don’t even get me started about the dimensions.) I used the existing Ethaefal race article for the bones, stealing all of its major headings, and I proceeded to flesh it with additions. The result can be found in the Lore Workshop forum. Then the inevitable step was starting a thread in the Lore Discussion forum. This was utterly vital. This article is being revised for Mizahar, not for me, and as such it requires complete transparency as to process and concept. This will affect existing characters, and not just Ethaefal PCs. The article addresses questions whose answers affect the ultimate construct of souls in the Mizahar world. To restructure a race of advanced souls is to instigate change to the way all souls within the world are viewed, be it in altering or merely deepening of concept. Further, I want it to be good and I want people to like it. I think the best way to achieve that in this setting is to allow all eyes on it and make space for questions reminders, and insightful ideas. In Peer Review I will be asking additionally for critiques, for help in making this the best that it can be. This restructure is supposed to inspire. If I do nothing else, I aim to revitalize an already beloved race so that new stories about it can be told. Today my favorite aspect of the revision is looking forward to not having to field any more questions regarding whether or not the Ethaefal can reproduce. Seriously, guys, the questions about the reproductive system have been legion. Tomorrow I will undoubtedly have a new favorite. It keeps changing! Like them. 4. As a follow up, do you think this article re-vamp will change anything about how you play Caelum or your plans with him? Yes and no. lol. I know that’s a terrible answer, but it’s true. There are a number of fairly significant changes, but the joke I’ve made is that it feels like I’ve been prepping for this “test” for the past five years. What I mean by that is because the Ethaefal have been so mysterious from the beginning, playing one has resulted in a great deal of supposition and theories as to the “truths” of the race. This is made even more pertinent due to the fact that my Ethaefal is a seeker and questioner by nature. His primary character goal has to do directly with the greatest mystery of the race which has forced me to wonder ad nauseam over the “fissure” and the “fall” and why, why, why. Additionally, it has been impossible to play a character for five years without obtaining answers to some of the more average questions such as those pertaining to Ethaefal sustenance and transformations et cetera. I received many such answers directly from Colombina when she was still active on the site and after she left any further ones that could not be fielded I simply reasoned out for myself. What makes the most sense? Is a question I’ve asked myself regarding the Ethaefal race a gazillion (real number) times. Naturally, I have proceeded to play Caelum in that vein. However, now I know all the answers. Knowing a thing and supposing a thing are two different things entirely. There are very few existing Ethaefal lore facts I am actually altering. A good chunk of it is simply collection and clarification. But! There are a whole lot of things I’m adding. Brand new things. These things are absolutely going to change the way I play Caelum, opening doors to new versions of his emo-eth self. It is my hope that it changes the way everyone plays Ethaefal, and in a positive, more proactive way. They need to be so much more than pretty, sad faces staring at the sky. With any luck, this revision will inspire that change for the good. 5. As an individual who has been contributing to the site for some time without assuming the role of an ST, is there any advice or wisdom you can impart on others looking to contribute? Yes, absolutely. First and foremost, there is almost nothing a player can’t do on Mizahar that an ST can. I think most people fail to realize this. In fact, I bet I can list them all. I’m going to try. A player can’t:
That’s just about it. A player can do anything else they want. We can edit lore. We can create locations and NPCs. We can write brand new creatures and worlds and skills and oh-hey-look even restructure whole races. We can play high powered NPCs for ourselves and for others. We can grade. We can come up with major, far reaching plots. We can do just about anything we want and we don’t have to have a brightly colored name to do it. We just follow the process, ask for approval from the right person, and voila. If we don’t get approved for the exact thing that we want, there’s a good reason nine times out of ten and there are, unsurprisingly, about a hundred other things we could do instead. Once you realize that you are the only thing holding you back from contributing to the game, you end up (that’s right) contributing. I highly recommend that everyone who does not have the time to be a moderator of one flavor or another make a point of actively contributing case by case. It’s a series of minor commitments that you can essentially drop at any time when life gets hectic and literally no one cares. So go grade some threads. Go guest mod. Go peer review an article. (Hey, this one here. We really need some good peer reviews right now.) Ask your favorite ST if there’s anything you can take off their plate tonight like helping them come up with a city plot structure or editing this article or tackling a couple threads in the grading pool. You contribute by caring, guys. It’s that simple. 6. So most of us swoon over Caelum's character model and the videos and images you post of him in your scrap. If you met Cae's model in real life, what would you do? Okay. So. I’m visualizing him passing him in the grocery store aisle. Maybe we’re both reaching for the last bottle of wine on sale on the top shelf but, you know, because he’s way taller than my five foot nothin’ he gets there first. As he turns around, he notices me standing there and stops to give me a slow, bemused smile. He says, “Hey, I’m sorry. Were you wanting this? How about you let me buy it and then we can drink it together out of those Dixie cups in your cart there.” “Sure, “ I say, completely cool. “While sitting on the sidewalk outside?” “Why not? I like to watch the world go by.” His smile deepens into a grin. “I’m Goncalo, by the way.” “Do you mind if I call you Caelum? It’s a thing. Just go with it.” “I’m down. Meet you outside in five minute.” “See you there.” Five minutes later, I would walk out of the grocery store to find him waiting for me on the curb with the bottle of cheap wine. I impress him by opening it with my shoe and join him for a drink. By the time the sun sets, we’ve realized we’re destined bffs and we call each other’s cell phones to make sure we put in the numbers right and he lets me take a double-selfie with him so I can prove to all of you that it actually happened. “I think you might be my Syna, Katie,” he tells me as we’re hugging goodbye. I’ve told him all about Caelum and Mizahar by now. Obviously. “I’m not really sure how I feel about that,” I admit. “But I think you’re fucking fantastic.” “I love you too, Katie.” Later as I stumble home I wonder if he’ll ever call. He does, three days later. And for the rest of our lives. Yeah. That’s totally how I see this happening. 7. Caelum has built quite the life for himself in Riverfall, can you tell us about any character plans you have for him, with his life, business, etc? Where and what do see him doing a year from now? This comfortable, lovely little life of Caelum’s is relatively new in the history of him. Prior to his return to Riverfall at the end of summer 513 (coinciding with my return to Mizahar), he was a penniless vagabond. He started out that way because he was recently escaped from imprisonment and searching for his (now dead) wife. While trying to find Lillis and reunite with friends from his former life who might have been able to aide him, he kept getting summoned by gods to go somewhere and do a thing. He found it incredibly annoying, especially considering that he was forsaken, but I thought it was hilarious. Now he’s got a place and all this stuff. He’s got a small daughter to look after as well as a former slave who’s basically family and not to mention a couple of PCs and their families who have fairly significant impact on his decisions. Responsibilities. Things. People. This all new and kind of weird to the grouchy widower whose only friend used to be a horse. What I’m getting at is that neither he or I have any major business or location changes planned for him this year. He’s going to stay in RF and keeping building up his business and his monies and his influence and try to make himself and his friend better, stronger, more able. He has a lot of enemies, and he is aware of it now whereas he wasn’t really before. He figures they’re going to come for him eventually, and so he’d better be ready for them when they do. So a year from now I see him here, but in a more powerful position. I do hope to have worked on his personal side more by then, this last year or so’s focus having been primarily on business goals and goals relating to Cytali and his broader, impossible dreams. Those are great fun and I will absolutely keep on with them, but if Caelum doesn’t break down and bond to someone soon then I might have to pull out some of my more drastic plot ideas. Lol. He shouldn’t be able to last this way much longer, despite all of the help. One way or another, I will end up doing something about his ranuri. It’ll be interesting whether it turns out good for him or ill. Maybe a little bit of both. Sometimes you’ve got to wound to heal. 8. Can you tell us about Caelum's religious beliefs and his relationship with both the deities who have marked him as well as any others he holds in high esteem? Caelum’s a zealot. He’s also not afraid to challenge gods. He holds them to incredibly high standards and tends to become upset and irritated when they fail to live up to his expectations. He loves a few of them very, very much and they in turn have shaped who he is. He hates some of them too. He tends to have dauntingly strong opinions on every god in the pantheon for one reason or another. Below are those he adores, in no particular order. Syna, of course. His Bright Lady. His beloved. He’s still sometimes a little bitter about her and having been “cast from her table”. To be honest, though, he doesn’t see it that way anymore. Strong words in dark times. But he used to. When he was forsaken, he was a rather horrible and jealous thing, cursing her freely. Still, only a fool would say he hated her. He wrote her letters, actually composed them pen to page when he had nobody else to care for him in the world. Sometimes he still does. When he heard her voice again, witnessing someone else by marked by her, he wept. And when she called him, summoning him to Denval, he dropped everything and ran. He’d do anything for her. There will come a day when they’ll meet again, and everything will change. Until then, though he may have ascended out of his forsaken state and reset his goals on healing the world, he is not and cannot be truly redeemed. Rak’keli was all Caelum had of mercy and grace for the longest time. His hands remembered the art of healing early in his life returned to Mizahar and it gave the rest of him something good to hold on to. He’s used her domain as a focus and a guide for obtaining all of his goals. Heal bodies, but hearts, minds, civilization, and a whole world. He’s pretty convinced he can do it too. I mean, he’s insane. But he believes it. Rak’keli was the first god to have marked him in this life. Recently in thread though a year ago in IC time, she gave him a second mark. She also slapped the shit out of him and completely inflated his ego by essentially proving to him that he really could do the impossible. It was pretty great. He’s going to kiss her, too, in my next post to that thread. Because duh. Nikali came in to his life and knocked it right back on course. Her gnosis mark was the shotgun blast to save his soul and she did it with wriggling hips and, yes, a whole lot of kisses. He adores her and despises her. She’s always “inside” him and he has been forced to learn how to structure his entire life around the consequence of her power. He’d crawl for her, and has. He’d kill for her, and has. He’d die for her, and probably will. He loves every minute of it while it happens, and flips out when it’s over. Nikali isn’t love. Nikali is addiction and Caelum’s an addict. He uses her power, too, for his own ends. Often. Ably enough. That’s not going to last forever, or be possible all the time. One day, he’ll lose himself to her. Fortunately, as an ethaefal he’s had experience with that too. We’ll all have to find out what happens. Nysel is the god who summoned Caelum to Riverfall following the demise of Denval and the recovery of Syna’s stone. He is also the guy Caelum wants to go on adventures with. It’s a complete bromance. He is fascinated by the Dreamer and spends a great deal of time in his realm. There is a unique sense of connection to Nysel caused largely by the fact of Caelum’s many lifetimes as a dreamwalker of the Cytali. Bearing his gnosis mark means Caelum has the ability to access his memories which would be cool for anyone but is especially meaningful to an Ethaefal whose memories are a thing stripped from him when he fell. Caelum takes the power of being a dreamwalker very seriously and it has advanced the revelatory return of his farseeing Ethaefalian perspective. 9. Caelum has formed many lasting relationships with both NPCs and PCs in his travels, are there certain ones that stand out to you as a writer, or ones that have had a particularly lasting effect on the Eth? It would be another long winded answer if I went into the NPCs, so I will largely avoid listing them and their influence. Besides, we all know it’s the PCs who deserve the recognition. There really are too many to name when we’re talking matters of influence, so I am attempting to narrow it down to biggest to date and most consistent. Sort of in order of appearance in his story – Lillis D’Nerys started off as a seer PC. Her player and I go back years and years and are still friends today. We created the characters with their history together and purposefully started them in different cities so we could have fun learning the game and finding each other while writing flashbacks as we liked. We didn’t get terribly far in regular time and Caelum and Lillis were never reunited. When her player left, she gave me permission to do what I liked with Lillis and her ultimate demise. I didn’t feel right writing Lillis alive outside of flashbacks, so I killed her with an appropriately complex love story and left behind a little girl to be rescued by the step-father she’d never met. Caelum’s life with Lillis, brief as it was, ultimately framed up a great deal of his character today. The PC Sama’el Sunsinger is Caelum’s direct descendent from his life as the Drykas ankal Kasb’el Sunsinger before the Valterrian. He too is no longer active but the discovery of an actual blood relation from his previous life turned Caelum onto the path of accepting his mortal form as an actual version of himself rather than merely the mask he was forced to wear by night. Sama’el was also the person Caelum witnessed being marked by Syna. Sondra the Sinspeaker is a PC whose fate crossed his, starting in dreams and later in the tortured demise of Denval. She saw his worst sin and showed it to him, an act that had far reaching consequences still echoing in Caelum’s actions today. It is also part of what propelled him out of his forsaken state. Aoren Skycrown was actually the third in a long line of Avalis-blessed seers who have come into Caelum’s life. There seems to be a pattern, but maybe only Avalis can yet see it. A plotline for later, maybe? Anyway, Aoren revealed to Caelum his Drykas name and told the ethaefal the story of himself. Years later the lost Drykas found his way into Riverfall, Alements, and back into Caelum’s life. He quickly became a vital part of Caelum’s world and the though the two of them are still dancing there are signs of a lasting relationship in the works. Last and the most consistent and active in impact is the PC Kavala Denusk. The bond between Caelum and Kavala runs especially deep I feel because their relationship was done entirely in real game time from beginning to present day. They have known each other for four or five years and have become family to each other in the most natural and organic way. She is hands down Caelum’s best friend and he would follow her into the dark without hesitation, and he has already. It’s impossible to list the amount of influence she’s had on Caelum as it is numerous and far reaching, but it’s safe to say that Caelum would not be where he is or even who he is today without her in his life. 10. What kind of date or night out would be Caelum's ideal? What is yours? Caelum is confused by dates. I feel certain that he must have gone on them before as he was successfully married for three years. A very recent and on-going thread aside, he hasn’t actually been on a date since 507 AV. That’s right, y’all. 507. Don’t get me wrong, he has had plenty of, ah, “romantic encounters” if you will. He is a ranuri bearer after all. It comes with the territory. His flings in Denval, Zeltiva, and RF are legion and, at one time, almost nightly. To say he sleeps around would be mild and, expert intelligencer that he is, he tries to keep it somewhat on the down low; but it’s pointless. He has a reputation, and it is a very good one in, um, certain respects. It isn’t something I’ve threaded about really, not directly, though I let it trickle into the edges of threads and hint around at it. That’s because he doesn’t talk about it to anyone and, sometimes, the encounters aren’t altogether joyous things. Remember, ranuri can control a person, and even someone as strong willed as Caelum can’t continually thwart it. If you are ever in a thread with him in a public place, you might have noticed how sometimes I make mention of how he will go out of his way to avoid certain people on the street or patronizing his business. There’s a reason for that. Basically, if you asked Caelum what his perfect date was he’d give you a look and scoff or maybe just tell you what he’s ascertained might be your ideal date. He’s good at figuring these things out too. As his player, I think I have a pretty good idea of what he would enjoy. It would be something away from other people and the influence of a crowd’s wants and desires, for starters. He doesn’t really care about food unless it’s pie, and in that case he will eat an entire pie by himself if you give him the chance. Something strong to drink, liquor or wine or ale, if appropriate. And either a) an adventure of b) something wholly relaxed. Outside, in both cases. He’s most comfortable when underneath the sky. Go riding or exploring or roll around in a field with puppies. He loves dogs. (They’re simple and want only simple, “clean” things.) Don’t go swimming. He hates swimming. And for gods sake give him something to do while you try to pry stories and answers and real conversation out of him. He thinks better on his feet and will forget he's running off at the mouth if he's got something to occupy the rest of him. He'll keep the topic on you the entire time if you let him or alternatively he'll just switch to trying to teach you something. He's kind of impossible that way. As for me, I'm easy. A bottle of wine, a steak on the grill, and curling up together to watch a movie will get you four gold stars. I'm a sucker for flowers, love cake, and if you take me out somewhere I want good service (hospitality industry worker for a long time, so it's a thing) and often movement and light but a quiet corner to talk with you and watch it from. If it's summer, just tell me we're going on the water and I'll handle the rest. 11. And as always, this spots just for you and whatever you would like to say! Haven't I said enough? lol. I have seriously rambled. Sorry, guys. For those of you who didn't fall asleep half way through, thank you for being a part of this community with me. I don't know all of you nor enough of you as well I'd like, but I read a lot of your threads. I mean a lot. Mizahar is one of my favorite reading sources. You constantly surprise me with how vastly different and interesting your characters and plots can be. Thank you, Founders and RS's, for selecting Caelum for the Featured PC. It means a lot knowing that you enjoy reading and writing with Caelum. I have been fortunate to form friendships with most of you and the appreciation of my friends is the very best compliment I can receive. You have truly brightened my world. Thanks again! |
