"The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark." - Michelangelo
Greetings Sykans!
This season's theme is going to be "This Extraordinary Life". Life is full of small and large miracles, a misfortune that becomes a fortune, and a whole lot of beauty if one can just look around and realize it. These sorts of discoveries can be internal or external. They can be the world around you or the simple space inside of you. This season will be about living an extraordinary life.
Take this season to try and understand yourself. What drives you? What gives you thrills and chills and makes you feel alive? What are you passionate about? If you aren’t sure, this is your opportunity as a character to spend some time getting to your core. This means not just working on getting two job threads out, but getting to the core of what fulfills you. Focus on the dramatic and do that.
Learning can be extraordinary. Focus on improving yourself, not as a set of stats, but as a well-rounded character with a story to tell. Don’t just coast through the season, doing nothing but the bare minimum. Grow. Challenge yourself. Live extraordinarily! At the end of the season, you should be able to report to the world what you learned about yourself.
To live extraordinarily, you’ll need to dream big and have high expectations for yourself and your life. You can’t think negatively, be cynical or think things like you can’t, you won’t, or nothing cool happens to you. Make something cool happen to you. The storyseeds will help. Be inspired by them and move forward in a growth mode that will help you fulfill your big dreams.
When you dream big, you don’t always meet with one hundred percent success. You will have some stumbling blocks and failures. This is more than okay. It enriches your life to fall flat on your face more than once. Part of the dream is getting to your knees and finding the strength to stand back up. It’s okay to have something seemingly be perfect and find out it's less than perfect. Life is full of course corrections… living an extraordinary life is no different. You’ll have false starts and abrupt right turns. Be thrilled at them. Embrace them. It’s part of the road, and that road will be long and winding.
This season will be indicative of your overall Mizahar experience, I suspect. The primary difference between Mizahar being a lovely hobby and a mind-numbing chore is the effort you put into it. One can go through life just doing the bare minimum, but there’s really no reward in that action and no satisfaction. People who are truly successful, who truly win at life, are those that do what it takes and a whole lot more. They rise, carry others with them, and succeed in finding joy in the detail and pleasure in a hell of a good job completed. If a moderate level of effort will get you ahead, then that level of effort redoubled will pave the way to an extraordinary life.
This sort of life isn’t easy. It takes incredibly hard work, cleverness, and the ability to carry others. In order to even start down this path, you need goals. Set goals. Achieve them. And don’t just check them off your list, blow them out of the sky.
Now, with that being said, there is work to do.
Syka has some new mostly unseen enemies, but those enemies also have other enemies and are fighting on multiple fronts. And as the marauders move in, Syka will rise to the occasion and fight back or she will fall. There are opportunities here to rise, to investigate, to succeed. There are other aspects that will work into these plots as well. Individuals running independent plotlines can be woven through this scenario or ran independently within this backdrop.
This season's theme can go a million ways. The Settlement can provide, or your individual plots can rise up and shine. The choice is on an individual level.
Good Luck! It is my hope you enjoy this season.
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” - Gandhi
Please keep these requirements in mind. If you go inactive in Syka or take a break for a season or two, you lose your free claims (that have been awarded in the past) because you haven't contributed to the community. If you have purchased your property and it's paid in full, you can feel free to go inactive with no penalty. If you are still paying on it, inactivity isn't an option without the loss of your property for missed payments. Please be aware job threads and placeholders can be no older than a season behind. Nothing will count or be paid for that is older. The list below is things you need to include in your Fall threading.
- ❖ Start a post in this thread keeping track of how many requirements you have completed.
❖ Set some major character goals and tell another person in thread about them.
❖ Explore what drives your character in a very self-reflective thread.
❖ Pay Seasonal Expenses of Common or higher.
❖ Be active.
❖ Work on one or more recommended Syka Skill (Wilderness Survival, Tradeskill, etc) and increase it by 5 points.
❖ Include one of the NPCs listed in the NPC Masterlist in one of your threads.
❖ Utilize at least 2 storyseeds in a creative way. The storyseeds can be used in whole or part or could even be used as an inspiration for a whole different story arc. Folks will just have to be able to see the connections.
If you complete all these tasks successfully and fulfill the requirements, then you will get an award in the form of Quest Coupons of your choice. Incomplete threads do not count. These items must be completed by the end of the season.
"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." - Thomas Edison
Please remember, storyseeds are just ideas, hints, and nudges for you to craft a greater plot from. They are a starting place. Feel free to mix, match, and combine storyseeds and knock out more than one in one thread. For example, a survival situation could easily be combined with a deep-seated unbearable pain while hunting whales. Got it? Great!
- ❖ Set a major goal or a series of goals for your PC.
❖ Learn a magic.
❖ Hike up the Stair Step Falls looking for Artifacts.
❖ Intensively forage for certain things.
❖ Do something for yourself on a special day/anniversary/holiday/birthday.
❖ Become deeply obsessed with learning something.
❖ Somehow involve Syka's new enemy in your threads.
❖ Get into a fight with someone.
❖ Have a major failure with something you are involved in.
❖ Ask someone for help.
❖ Teach someone enthusiastically about something you love.
❖ Make a lasting difference in someone's life.
❖ Face a big regret in your life and deal with it once and for all.
❖ Invent something... a new drink, a new dish, a new way of walking etc.
❖ Give someone or yourself a new nickname.
❖ Develop something about your character that is utterly unplanned.
"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." - Charles Darwin
Syka is experiencing winter weather at its finest. What that means for Syka is that storms roll through often, and give very little warning. The Syka River floods and turns nasty multiple times this season. The smaller streams and creeks can also swell to almost river levels and cause multiple issues.
The winds kick it up a notch and bring higher tides and rougher seas. The temperature still fluctuates between 70 and 90 on a daily basis, but the night when the wind and rain are happening can get downright chilly. Mud becomes a bit of a problem, though it dries out daily under the influence of the tropical sun. There are still bright and sunny days, bouts of good weather, and peaceful seas... it's just that in the winter, Syka is more unpredictable and the jungle more dangerous due to that unpredictability.
I'm always willing to run a personal storyline for anyone who joins Syka for the season. People get such few opportunities to interact with their actual storylines in generic calendar situations within various domains, so in Syka I'd like to change that. I will be willing to run the following:
- Personal Quests
- Gnosis Threads
- Flashbacks & Future Foretellings
- Training Threads
Just let me know what I can help you out with. Syka might be small but we have had some really incredible storylines here in the past.
Happy Threading!
Goss
