The7thLain

I have decided to appoint you as the next human lore deputy. Congratulations! You will receive details shortly in discord.

Hello and thank you for your submission. This is an acceptable submission, we'll get it up on the wiki shortly. Thread locked and moved to deferred acceptance.

Hi everyone. This thread has been paired with an Eridani lore update and announcement, the details of which can be found here: https://discord.com/channels/724651070017765459/724653105983258655/1004605109159866518 This is a discussion thread for us in the Human Lore team to get a read on some ideas that those in the community would like to see added to Eridani I when it gets its own planet page. We make no guarantees that we will use all the ideas and suggestions posted to this thread, however we wanted to give the community a way to clearly and concisely voice their thoughts on what they would like to see in a new Eridani I. We know that community engagement is important and meaningful, especially with something that has invoked as much discussion as Eridani after it's recent rework, so we wanted to take a large step in including the players in the lore-creation process outside of asking for individual canonization applications. Retiring all the planet pages at once was a misstep on our part and we are looking to correct this with community input. We want to involve the community as we know that many of you felt left out or were upset by the recent Eridani changes. You do not need to play an Eridanian character to contribute to this discussion and anyone can voice their thoughts, however we would prefer that if you comment, you are also a semi-consistently active player or community contributor to the server's lore or codebase. First, some ground rules for a discussion: The name is not up for discussion at this time. While we may change the planet's name upon the creation of the new planet page, currently, Eridani I is still Eridani I. The environment of the planet. Eridani I has been terraformed to resemble a temperate, Earth-like planet with temperature extremes at its poles, but no exotic biomes or anything like that. This is not currently up for discussion. Things mentioned in the planet's blurb on the broader Eridani Corporate Federation page such as The Cube, New Kivu, and the Diakite Gardens will remain in the new version of the planet unless the Human Lore team decides to remove them. Eridani I will also still be the commercial centre of the Eridani Corporate Federation and where most megacorps have their Eridani HQ's. Broader things which impact the ECF as a whole like laws/in-game ramifications of citizenship, non-citizenship, reinstatement, and greater Eridanian culture are not up for discussion in this thread. We will not be reverting to or bringing back parts of the old lore for Oran unless it receives a significant change. This thread is for serious discussion and not for memeing, shitposting, or off-topic arguments. Please keep things civil and on-topic. This thread will be moderated by lore staff as well as admins. Aside from those things, we would like to hear whatever the community has to say on what they would like to see for a new Eridani I. This planet is the most important in the Federation by many measures, and given the initial response to the first iteration of our Eridani update, we would like to include the community in the idea-crafting for this new planet so that we can deliver something which is not only popular in the playerbase, but also a well-written and meaningful piece of location lore which meshes with the extant setting well, represents Eridani in a way true to its themes and lore, and gives players unique opportunities in character creation. You do not need to submit a document or largely written out set of ideas or goals like you would in a canonization application. This is a discussion thread where multiple people in the playerbase can contribute their thoughts and discuss their ideas. This thread will be rolling and currently has no set date for it to close, however, after we believe we have enough ideas, we will close it and hopefully finish the writing of a new planet page for Eridani I soon after. Good luck, and we look forwards to seeing what you come up with!

Alright. This thread will be locked and the application denied. Thank you for applying.

Right, since this thread is getting way off topic I will be locking it immediately instead of giving it a grace period.

Hello and thank you for your submission! The human lore team, after much deliberation, has decided to accept your application, but only in part. I will detail below the sections we will be either accepting or denying and the reasons for why. This is probably the longest response I have ever written for a canonisation applicaiton, so you may need to do a bit of reading. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Colonisation: This will be mostly accepted. The Zeng-Hu additions are nice, and the timeline of EE and Hephaestus causing turmoil is an interesting one. However the planetary descriptions are not compatible with current lore and so these will need to be cut out. Government: The sector/planet names are going to remain as they currently are. The goal of changing them was to remove any and all regional identity between them and make them into nearly identical soulless corporate constructions. The update proposed here, aims to revert that. The proposed revert to the old names is rejected. The “Terms and Conditions” was something that immensely stupid and meme-tier, similar to the even older Eridani lore that made the society operate on the Anarcho-Capitalist idea of NAP. While I agree that an expansion on Eridani’s government may be interesting in the future, a return to the old lore is not the way forward. This suggestion is denied. Population and Planets: We agree to change the names to something besides Eridani I-V, however they will not be reverted back to the old ones. We will give each planet a bit more to work off of for things that do make it distinctive, but the environments are saying the same. However, we do realise that in this update that we have canonically removed the ability for Eridani Offworlders to be played, and will be adding in a feature to the system which will allow them to have some origin lore. While I will not express the fine details here, I will give a brief overview of what this addition will entail: The Eridani System once had a medium-sized gas cloud surrounding its outer reaches much like how the Solar System has the Oort Cloud and the Tau Ceti System has the Romanovich Cloud. Various different gas harvesting stations and platforms were set-up in this zone shortly after Eridani's colonization, but after extensive corporate exploitation the gas was depleted, but the stations are still there. Some of these stations are massive and have within them microchasms of Eridani societies, albeit in a low-gravity and extra-terrestrial environment. We think this keeps the themes of corporate overindulgence and destruction, in that by corporate will all the He3 gas was exhausted, and we will add two to three of these to give some variety of choice in Eridani Offworlder origins. Society: The sugary snacks thing seems a bit inconsequential and will not be added. The proposed deletion of the second paragraph of Eridani’s society section has already been fixed. The medical factoids about high blood pressure and stimulant abuse seem worthwhile and will be added. Eridanian Citizens Suits The coworker relationships bit seems alright enough to add, however the line “An unexpected side-effect of this is that relationships within the workplace are far more common than in other systems, being the only way that couples can acceptably spend private time without being perceived as overly-private or conspiring.” will be omitted because we believe this can very easily be read to imply sexual activity which is not allowed on the wiki. The families ties emphasis for suits seem odd, corporate culture is infamous for ostracising people from their families and destroying those connections, not emphasising it. This seems like a very odd pairing of two ideas that, as they exist in our setting, are directly opposed. This is denied. The whole idea of suits is that they are cold, corporate people, that’s the entire point. There will potentially be additions regarding other things that would incentivise suits to socialise, however. The augment additions for suits can be added, though the familiarity and affinity for one’s roboticist among suits will be cut out. It is the Human Lore Team’s view that interacting with a roboticist is something that an Eridani Suit would see as a business transaction much like any other, with the suits themselves bouncing back and forth between roboticists in order to get the best deal possible unless exclusive services are involved. Dregs The dreg additions seem interesting, and not entirely out of place with the current themes of community that are currently emphasised in dreg lore in contrast to their Suit counterparts. This seems fine, and will be admitted, with some additions describing how while dregs are very familiar with one another inside of their communities, Dreg communities are mutually distrustful of other Dreg communities due to fighting over the very limited resources at the bottom of Eridanian society. The paragraph about Dregs’ loud speaking along with their crass and blunt social behaviours will not be added as we believe this plays into stereotypes, as was mentioned already by SleepyWolf’s comment. Dreg Citizenship Disclaimer These changes are rejected outright. Something that I would like to clarify, is that Non-Citizen Dregs were never supposed to be on the ship/station in the first place. The bold text included in the update which states plainly that non-citizen dregs aren't allowed on station is not a retcon to old lore, but rather an elucidation of already extant canon that is enforced by in-game mechanics. In character creation, every human character is made to choose a citizenship, there is no "none," option for human characters. Non-Citizen Dregs have never been allowed on-ship, or in the case of the Aurora, on-station. Characters that claim to be Non-Citizen Dregs on-ship are breaking canon and ignoring mechanics. As such, they need to have their backstories changed to follow the lore that has existed for years at this point and to reflect the mechanical designations put on them in origin selection. Remember, Eridanian citizenship is granted to anyone Eridani resident who has a job with a megacorp and who can pay for it; you do not need to be a suit to be an Eridani citizen. Humans, Dreg or otherwise, without citizenship to any country would not be employed on the Horizon by the SCC and aren't allowed to be played as canon player-characters. Despite the claims made in this thread by some of its respondents on the rights stateless people have or do not have, this is not a debate over whether or not stateless humans have rights, and instead if they would be employed by the SCC on the Horizon, which they are not, especially if they are universally characterised by the most Megacorporate people in the spur (Eridani Suits) as anti-corporate dangerous deviants. Reinstateds The sentence about failed Reinstateds being welcomed back into dreg communities will not be admitted. Reinstateds, if anything, are people who have betrayed their communities and families, things idealised in Dreg society, and would be shunned or worse within Dreg communities, rather than welcomed back. Put simply, they are traitors to Dreg society and would not be welcomed back if they returned. The second paragraph will be admitted, but with significant changes. For a reinstated to fully rejoin society, it would be expected that they cut any and all ties with their past lives and embrace what would be considered “correct.” Associating with or especially sending money to Non-Citizen Dregs in Eridani would be a very quick way for a Reinstated to have their reinstatement process halted or otherwise cancelled. If a Reinstated wishes to reinstate, they must become a Suit which means a rejection of the deep familial ties associated with Dregs and a focus on business and professional relationships instead, like a Suit would. The paragraph about reinstated behaviour is more or less fine, however we will probably amend this to also include that some suits will never associate with Reinstateds regardless of their stereotypical reputations because, as mentioned earlier in this section, they do not see them as “real” suits, clip-ons or inked under their suits, if you would, colleague. Synthetics While as Human Lore maintainer neither I nor my team can accept or deny the proposed additions, I have spoken to the Synth team and after they conferred with themselves and they have permitted me to speak on their behalf and relay their decision. They reject these additions and none will be added. Augmentation The Suit augmentation additions are fine and can be added as they are. The last sentence of the Dreg Augment section will be removed and possibly be replaced. What is “unique charm” to a Dreg would be an undue risk to someone not used to craft-produced augments both in and out of Eridani. Keep in mind that Dregs have a stigma and are discriminated against not only within Eridani but also outside of it, as is anything associated with them. Eridani Federation Life Food While I appreciate the intent behind this section, I find it exceptionally difficult that Eridanian dregs would be able to produce and farm produce in a polluted and toxic undercity even with the aid of hydroponics, especially rice and tomatoes which are notoriously water-hungry. I will admit this section but with change parts of it to describe the scarcity of fresh ingredients and produce making their diets much more soy-based than that of a suit, due to the ruggedness of the soybean as a plant being better suited to grow in the Eridanian underbelly. The fast food paragraph seems fine and can be added as-is. Music Having Suits be into Ska because they wear suits is a little too much of a meme for me. Current canon (found here https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php?title=Human_Entertainment_Media ) states that Eridanian Suits are far fonder of listening to podcasts while working rather than music, with music while working even being discouraged by most employers due to the alleged unproductivity of the practise. That being said, it’s not like Suits have no music at all. We’ll detail a type of music to be determined that Eridanian Suits listen to while not at work, but at the moment that is yet to be determined. The Dreg music section is fine and can be added as-is. Movies It is against the character of Eridani to have a codified code of production, in my view. Much of Eridanian society does not necessarily have laws, per se, but rather norms that are practised by the majority population, the Suits, and anything that falls outside of them is shunned or otherwise unprofitable. Instead of referring to this as an analogy to the Hays Code, we will change the phrasing of this to refer to the bulleted points mentioned as something that are almost universally commonplace in most Eridani films. The points themselves are fine though. Video Games This section is fine and can be added as-is. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The above rulings are final. This submission will take a little while to implement and may see other additions between now and implementation that will be disclosed to community when they are posted to the wiki. Thanks again for the submission, and we hope to get it one the wiki soon! This thread will be moved to deferred acceptance, locked in 48 hours, and then moved to the canonization archive upon implementation.

Putting a canonization application "on-hold" isn't a practice that is really allowed. Please update your application with the expansion in one week, otherwise it will be denied as is.

Could you please explain what you mean by this? You are arguing for Vysoka as an example of lore that isn't militarised. However, in the update the planet's military was expanded upon and the concept of hosts, literally described as "semi-nomadic militaristic communities," were introduced. Their lore states that they are armed killers and bandits who among other things, coerce and raid villages, make war with one another, target foreigners with violence, and distribute weapons and narcotics. I am unsure what you are trying to say with advocating for things to be more like Vysoka while asking for a less militarised/war-including tone.

Hi, thank you for your submission. After some talk and discussion within the human lore team, we think that these ideas have merit as canon lore and will be canonizing them. The images may not be implemented in their entirety as they are here, but they're an interesting addition that gives the planet some nice life. The rest is solid and will be edited and implemented when possible. This thread will be moved to deferred acceptance and then archived after the content proposed is implemented. Congratulations, and thank you for your submission.

Hello, and thank you for your application. After some long discussions both before and after the recent Mars arc, the human lore team has decided to deny this canonization application. We don't see the need for the city-based factions you have proposed for the planet and see them as potentially hard to implement while still abiding by the current canon lore. The culture section, while it has some different ideas, appears to be more like vague suggestions from which expansive lore could maybe be formed, rather than solid ideas ready for canonization. Because of this, it feels incomplete. Thank you again for your submission.

Hello and thank you for your submission. After some time discussing your submission the Human Lore Team has decided that we do not think that this submission lines up with the intended direction of the Coalition of Colonies' law enforcement agencies. This application is denied, but thank you for applying.

Hello. I am sorry, but the Techno-Conglomerate as a faction has been retconned from our lore since this morning, meaning that this submission is for a faction that no longer exists. I will be declining this submission on that reasoning.

Hello friends. After consideration and deliberation in the loreteam, we have decided to accept this submission! We'll be reaching out to you soon with how to best implement this on the wiki. Myself and my deputies are happy to have this kind of content in our lore. Thank you for the submission, and congratulations.

Thought Vox were retconned tho? 🤔

Hello and thank you for your submission. After review, we have decided to accept your application and put an edited version of this content into Pluto's society and population section.

Hello, and thank you for your submission. After much debate within the human lore team we have to decided to accept your addition, however in a very trimmed down fashion. It will be implemented on the main Dominian wiki page and will have some significant reductions in content. The idea of Dominian fencing being canon and some of the lore you have written around it is being accepted.

Roleplay wise, I think Cone, the applicant, is fine. My interactions with their HoS have been satisfactory and they roleplay the character well. I will however say that they have a tendency to frontline as HoS which I have seen get them killed a few times, such going in first with only a carbine to take on an antag threatening a bomb while wielding a PEAC, which then resulted in their HoS dying due to being exposed to the vacuum from the resultant explosions. It could be argued that more could have been done to save the HoS but a rational command member should not put themselves into that kind of risky situation to begin with unless it is a desperate last resort. I understand this can be just part of the transition between playing other sec roles and playing HoS, which is why I'm not going to -1 this application, but I will point out that this kind of gameplay needs to be fixed if the applicant is to be a consistently competent command member. This is my only criticism of Cone's roleplay and gameplay atm and aside from it, I think they'd be an acceptable command player.

Hello. After intense thought and discussion over the past few months, we have decided to accept this application in part. Some things about it will be distinctively changed and edited, however the general idea is one that we believe to be workable and applicable to our standards. The plans for implementation are as follows: 1. The FPB will be implemented in full with minimal edits for content, punctuation, grammar, and syntax. 2. The politics section will be used by us to a minimal degree, we may use some ideas from this area going forwards for the landscape of CoC politics, however they will heavily edited if not incorporated into pieces of lore unmentioned in the contents of the proposed lore in this application. Congratulations on your accepted submission. If you have any questions as to the details of the plans listed above, please feel free to contact me and/or my deputies via discord.

Kyres has to me, shown himself to be capable of the task of being a deputy loremaster in the past, during a time when his boss, the loremaster, was often unavailable. At this time, many of the responsibilities of not just the deputy loremaster, but the senior loremaster fell onto him often, yet he conducted himself well and kept cohesion and direction in the teams despite the turbulence of the day and small crises which seemed to crop up every other week. I will not say that he was perfect then or is now, he frustrated me at times with his decisions, but everyone has flaws and things they need to work on, some of which have been pointed out in this thread already. Even with these though, I believe in his character and proven ability to effectively moderate and coordinate the team as he did during the King of the World arc, the largest and most involved arc in the history of our server. Furthermore, I think that he will better perform in the position than his last tenure, as he will have more support from the lore team and the loremaster proper, since everyone across all teams generally has a stronger involvement and presence than they did when Kyres last resigned the position. I can in good faith say that Kyres is my preferred choice for the position of Deputy Lore Master. +1 haha nice guy

Hello, thank you for your submission. We are rejecting this as we do not really see this as consistent with the direction and vision intended for Assunzione at this time as we believe the submission conflicts with the intended niche role of the planet. I do believe that the nightlife idea has some potential and would like to apply it elsewhere, but not on Assunzione. I will be reaching out to you with details for this proposal soon.

Hello, I'm the current Human Lore Developer/Maintainer. I'd both like to reply to this statement and additionally list my thoughts on this applicant. I will be using my own experiences and outlook on lore and the requirements for a candidate. I aim to make a very comprehensive response which articulately expresses my thoughts in great detail. It will be split into two parts. The first will be in response to various points made in the application proper, and the second will be on my thoughts on the spirit of the application in general. This is correct. All lore, especially more species-specific lore, is canon until otherwise retconned or determined by the species lore team. Anything and everything can be retconned or changed after the fact if there is enough support to do so from the lore team, therefore, everything is canon "for now," until it isn't, whether that is done OOCly or ICly. Sol, which at the moment is a place of immense turmoil and change at the moment with warlord factions and in-fighting and with elections even being a future possibility, a lot of things are subject to change for the future of Sol and the foundation that future is built upon. While I will admit that the status of ATLAS was nebulous at best, it was something that was overlooked in the course of the King of the World Arc. Admiral Frost was killed, and provisions were not made to adequately determine the fate of his party during this discussion. Solarian politics as a whole are something we intend on fleshing out and developing greatly beginning next year. Currently, the human lore team has no plans to add new planets or factions barring a few additions with the soon-to-be-released Elyra overhaul. After this, we plan on developing some of our existing locations in the CoC and Sol Alliance. The progression of human lore is already taking this direction which you are encouraging and the player base will see its impact most beginning next year. This is something I am quite opposed to. Players are not privy to information about potential changes that may impact the factions or locations they may wish to write about. Oversight, may indeed fix this problem, but we either would run the risk of disappointing players and making them feel betrayed because their additions to a player-made newspaper may contradict the vision/in-development work of the lore team proper and will therefore be denied. It is inevitable that the player base will not see completely eye-to-eye with the lore team in how they perceive the setting of the lore, simply ask around about the various head-canons that players hold that are not accepted by the lore team, yet in some cases are pushed by members of the community as canon lore with how they play their characters. This is discouraged. There is a problem I feel, with making promises to have a newspaper that players are guaranteed to make contributions to, only to then have their submissions denied for reasons they will not know until the aforementioned vision/in-development content is released. I think we would be doing the player base a disservice, however it would be something we would need to do regardless, as we do for the same reasons with submissions in canonization apps or those presented to us on discord already. If a player wants something added that the lore team is not currently working on, it is on them to add it. As a lore team, we are not obligated to integrate or approve of ideas submitted to us by anyone, we approve based on our judgement and consensus as a team. If a lore submission either given to us in DM's or on the forum's canonization requests is not liked by those on the team or conflicts with currently established lore, it will not be implemented regardless of player interest or passion. Additionally, some ideas may take a while to be approved, either because lore staff positions change between members or because an idea is liked, but cannot be slotted into the lore with how it exists currently and requires revision or change. Take Visegrad, a community created planet added by the Human lore team this year by accepting its longstanding canonization application, as an example. There's nothing stopping a player from DM'ing me or anyone else on the lore team with an idea or to check their thoughts on the lore. Nor is there anything stopping them from contributing to discussion on the forums or on the discord. The opportunities for them to voice their thoughts themselves are there, we have newer players to the server who are in quite interested in lore. If a player is "unvoiced," it is by negligence or choice. We have multiple discord servers with various channels devoted to lore discussion where those in the community can openly voice their thoughts on their lore whether they've been on the server for five years or five minutes. Anyone can voice their thoughts. Again, the lore team is not obliged to implement a person's ideas to the lore simply because they play on the server and they want to add them. Additionally, all members of the lore team can be contacted directly and often are. I have received DM's from no less than four players asking about concerns with the lore, checking their characters with it, or asking about new ideas for it this past week alone. This is not something that is lost on us as a team or myself personally. One of the reasons that Dominia receives such constant updates relative to other areas of Human lore is along with it being a favourite or at least an interest among many who play human characters is that it is a faction that many new players gravitate towards and find intriguing due to its unique government, society, and religion. New additions are made here not only because there is a desire within the human lore team to see it added onto, but also because it is a faction that many new players take an interest in. I feel like you contradict this idea of uplifting popular lore wanted for by the community with some of your actions in the past. The decision to enforce a variety of cultures onto the setting in regards to humanity, is one that I agree with and have done myself on various planets in the human setting, namely Gadpathur and Pluto. However, going by this logic of specialising lore to player trends and wants, if the majority of the player base wants to play a character from a western setting, why would we not write lore catering to that interest of playing characters who are descended from Western societies or otherwise played as if from one? It is popular among new and veteran players alike to play characters like this, so why would we not make lore that better suits the interests of the majority of our human player base, something they express by the characters they play? Where would this additude of appealing to the new, or to the majority of our players stop? I am aware that some of the lore that has most intrigued the community has been lore that nobody was asking for or even knew was coming, but how would this balance be struck? While I agree with your sentiments on slowing the spread of new human additions in the form of factions and locations which I have detailed already, I do not think this comparison between humanity and Unathi/Tajara is a good one to make, as the species themselves are vastly different. Humanity is the species in our galaxy with the largest population, territory, and even without the addition of warlord factions, faction numbers. It is inevitable that there will be more locations than those of Tajara or Unathi who were written from the beginning as being confined to a very small number of areas. Given this confinement, writing for these species can only focus on either those locations or their species' interactions with other factions, meanwhile Humanity has an exceptionally large geographic scale in which it inhabits. It is unreasonable to expect the same detail on the miniscule level that the Unathi and Tajara devs have painstakingly created over the span of multiple years for mostly 4 planets for Humanity, a species which has various factions that in themselves include multiple hugely different locations, most being entire planets or moons. This would have been the case even before the addition of warlord factions and locations that have been added as recently as nearly a year and a half ago. This is not an excuse for the underdevelopment of human-related lore in some areas of our setting, as I have said earlier, just something that I would like to straighten out. I support this wholeheartedly. As a staff member and lore developer, I aim to make all people I interact with feel respected and equal and I expect this of my fellow writers as well. While nobody is perfect, people should aspire to be civil, polite, and well-mannered towards others. Overall, a sense of dignity should permeate all interactions in our community. There should not be belittling in the community from lore writers or players over people not knowing certain elements of lore, as this can discourage people from actually learning about it. Onto my thoughts on the general ideas and goals stated in the application here. This idea of a bottom-up cultural shift is something I am fundamentally opposed to in a variety of different ways. To be clear, I am not saying that I do not want the community to be interested in our lore and contributing to it, there is no but to that statement. I question the necessity for this proposed change though, as I've mentioned before, we already have multiple ways that a player can contribute to the lore of our setting should they choose to do so. My concerns with the player-operated newspaper only echo here however, because if we are giving the community the impression that their ideas will be accepted and that everyone should volunteer for lore creation, this will not only lead to disputes between staff and players, but disputes between staff and the players themselves. You were on the lore team before, so I am sure that you are aware of how many ideas can die in discussion or how disputes over them can become very impassioned. Bringing the community more broadly into the development of the lore wholesale would only expand these sorts of problems, if say two or more community members had different written ideas on the same subject. Of course it is possible that there may be cooperation between players in the creation of lore through this shift and may be able to compromise on their ideas, but also also, they may not be. Moreover, there is nothing stopping them from cooperating on ideas as things are now. Arguments already break out between people in our player base not just over what lore is canon, as you mentioned in your original post, but over who's assumptions about a faction or location are more "valid," say if someone has a different idea on how stationbounds or AI should work and are then applying this to the setting as a whole, or if someone has an idea that even though a Dreg is no longer living in the Eridani undercity, are employed by a megacorp, and live in Biesel, that they should still be grossly impoverished as if they were in Eridani and then propagates this view to apply to all dreg characters. There are an exceptionally few areas of lore that the community as a whole wants and even then, there is disagreement on the details. Moreover there are topics which are very hotly contested by some in the community such as LGBT rights of Tajara, particuarly those on Adhomai, and the large, spur-wide oppression and enslavement or even outright hatred of IPCs by organic races, though primarily humans to name two, either of which when brought up usually spark an argument and ruin any discussion that was previously occurring. By and large, due to conflicting viewpoints, creative visions, and OOCly ideals held by our players, the community does not know what lore it wants to see. It is not as if the lore team creates things that nobody in our player base wants to see, as nearly *every* release that I have seen since I became the Human Lore Developer last year, either from my own team or the other species teams, has been received positively more so than not. I believe the current system is adequate and no changes need to be made, the players have all the tools at their disposal to create and submit ideas to the lore team already. A communalistic approach to lore writing will grind progress and additions to a halt and will bankrupt the drive of staff members in the lore team to continue creating and maintaining lore. If the lore teams have to spend the majority of their time as writers working with anyone who decides to write something down whether they've been working on the idea for five minutes or five months as equal to one another because we are discouraged from telling a player to "do it themselves," and are expected to hold everyone's hand through the writing process rather than tell them to create something on their own until its developed enough for us to take it seriously as a potential addition, there will be a huge slowdown to output from the writers and lore team, the people who are in the positions they hold first and foremost to write and maintain the lore. There is a limited amount of time that the lore team has for this hobby, which is what it is, a hobby, and feelings of burnout and dips in activity are inevitable among people in these positions; I speak from experience having seen many of my fellow lore-writers leave simply because they cannot bring themselves to give the energy to the maintenance and creation of the lore any longer. We are not paid to do this and take time to do it and be figures in the community out of our free time because we enjoy working with the community and are passionate about the things we create. A solid portion of the people on the lore team are also moderators, admins, developers, CCIA, or spriters doing other things in the community along with writing and lore maintenance and of course with still maintaining their real lives, jobs, educations, relationships, etc. If all of our time in the community is going to be spent mediating and critiquing everyone who thinks their idea is the best idea for our setting simply by the virtue that they have it, there is little point to having the title of "writer," because the people on the lore team will be little more than editors for content from the community, content which by the very strict standards that the lore teams adhere to currently for what they allow into the setting, will most likely be rejected or vastly altered anyway. This is not to say that the lore team does not do its best to work with community members to see their ideas added. Examples from my own experience are an entire planet, Visegrad, something that took nearly four months of back and forth development and tweaks between lore masters, the lore team as a whole, the human lore team, and its creator, @DanseMacabre. Other additions include new beverage descriptions and origins, new in-game text sprites for corporate logos, additions to the Solarian warlord states, a bevy of in-game cosmetics, along with many others. This is just what I personally have overseen in my interactions with the community, with the human lore team and other teams also adding in community submissions often. We already work with the community a lot, and we are also keen to listen to feedback on our lore from the player base. While the process of submission, having it either be initially accepted for consideration or denied outright, then waiting while the lore team deliberates to how/if the idea needs to be changed or should be rejected, and then receiving a verdict and having your idea morphed and altered by the writers can indeed be slow and somewhat disappointing one at times and of course could be more efficient, its framework and dynamic it places between the lore team and the community is the best way to parse and assign value to the different ideas posed to the lore team by the community. A person seeking to change this I do not think is suitable to hold the deputy loremaster position, and as much of your application centres around this ideal, I cannot support you as an applicant. -1

How do you propose this in relation to command staff and the balance of sec roles? Command roles are by nature only supposed to have one selection. I feel as if much of the concern over the hubub around restrictions is in relation to these roles along with the two other very popular ones of Security Officer and Investigator, given security's huge popularity when compared to other departments. This also means that it is a balancing consideration rather than just a player consideration. Adding more security officers, wardens, or investigators may let more people play yes, but antags as they exist now are not optimised to fight against a team of anything more than 4 sec officers, 1 warden, 2 investigators, a HoS, and 2 cadets. Its for this reason that cadet slots weren't expanded when the learner roles saw their expansion earlier this year with a slot addition to Lab Assistants, Engineering Apprentices, and Medical Interns. We almost never see fully staffed engineering, science, service, supply, or medical departments, even in high pop, which leads me to think that the proposed changes (the PR in discussion) in the conceit of this thread will mostly effect security and command roles exclusively, unless in relation to rounds preceding event rounds where we have half or more of the community playing all at once. These changes while indeed applying to the whole station, will most be seen to effect those who play command and sec, and should be looked at and discussed through this lens as other departments rarely, if ever, see enough competition over slots to have this change meaningfully effect them outside of the most fringe of cases. While the changes indeed may perhaps negatively effect players who only play one character on the server, especially a character that happens to be in those high-demand roles, the decision/choice to only play one character round after round should not preclude accessibility of a high-demand role to another player. I am in support of the proposed changes as in my view it establishes a fairer system through which playtime for roles, especially command and security, can be distributed among players looking to play certain roles that are in high demand.

Heya. This is a descriptive breakdown as to my feelings on SleepyWolf as a roleplayer and their character Captain Kobi Goldman. I do not think it can be understated how good of a roleplayer that Seepy can be, they have a brilliant skill in working one-on-one interactions and bringing characters with otherwise strange or quirky personalities to a level where anyone can interact with them and they feel genuine, rather than a character that exists simply for the sake of being weird. Aez Goldhorn, Chief Engineer, is a lovely example of this, he is a command character that is both compelling as a character with a very fun personality and he fills the role of being a command member well, due to his propensity to connect and involve his department in many ways with his command actions in a positive way that is conducive to good RP. I believe that SleepyWolf is perfectly capable of playing a good and compelling command character, but this is not always the reality when they play their Captain, Kobi Goldman. I like Kobi as a personality in individual interactions, it exudes that very insincere, luxurious, and selfish character that hides behind corporate mindset, though I am unsure if the extent to which this is played up is within the realm of plausibility for a Captain. What I am concerned about both as a fellow command player, I played the Head of Personnel in the vampire round (Round ID: ceX-ajxF), that many seem to be bringing up in this thread, and as a player of roles outside of exclusively command though, is how this character translates to not just a character in a round, but the role of Captain presiding over the crew. I understand the intent to make things perhaps a bit difficult for one's crewmates so as to produce RP, but there I think is a very difficult line between creating tension and borderline self-antagging as a captain by creating exceptionally rigid and inflexible framework through which command and crew are expected by all convention and sense of the rules due to the Captain's near-absolute authority on station, to abide by. I was present for this exchange, again, as the HoP for that round, and I will use it and the events immediately following it to illustrate my concern and dissatisfaction with Kobi's command. After Read's character declined this mandate to be scanned, my HoP tried to explain the process to them and why medical release forms were being handed to them to sign, something that I did upon the request of the Captain to do interpreted from the captain telling my character to ensure that all the paperwork was in order for the goings-on. The tension around this in specific, I think was good and organized in a way that created some tension among the crew but also among the crew and command, and even within the Security department itself. This was good rp and a build-up of interesting tension. Where I think this fell apart however, is the reaction from Captain Goldman to dispatch the warden to track down Read's officer and bringing her back kicking and screaming into the medbay under threat of physical harm or arrest as the first response, though this also could have been the fault of the Warden's player for resorting to violence and force as a first measure, and I admit that the blame for this may not entirely lie on Goldman. In my opinion this was a gross over-escalation of the conflict, one that I disagreed with both ICly and OOCly, and one that also detracted from the roleplay experience of those in the medbay as the main plot progression of the round, the "vampire disease," began to really take hold and start to effect some of the crew present in that department of the station. What followed afterwards however was in my view the most frustrating part of the round in relation to Goldman's command, in that there really wasn't any. Kobi took Read's officer back to chat in the CMO's office to discuss the situation and from that time onwards until about ten-fifteen minutes later he was effectively off comms as a crisis unfolded in the very department he was in, with both the CMO and my HoP trying to contact him for updates or orders, or and ordering of a response to the growing crisis in medbay, with the CMO audibly expressing her decaying state of mental and physical health over the command, common, and medical channels. This inability to communicate with command staff is something that is admittedly common among many captains, perhaps a majority, but that does not mean that it is not a flaw that should be overlooked. The captain is the top of the command structure and should use his heads of staff as means to push his agenda or goal on the station, but should also be a resource for those heads of staff in times of crisis instead of sequestering himself and not using radio communication. This kind of behaviour would have been understandable after things truly started to fall apart, such as when he locked himself in the bridge, I think this move was fine and I don't object to it OOCly; I think it showed both the desperate nature of the situation and the cowardly underside of Goldman's personality and character very well. However, in reference to before he locked himself away, a captain should be involved and communicating with his command staff whenever possible, and especially so during a station-wide crisis so that he and his crew can try to stop it. This is not to say that he should not have spoken to Read's officer at all, I think this was also a good play on Sleepy's part and one that did involve him with his crew, but I am saying that activity on comms and communicating with command during his exchange with Read's officer would have been more emblematic of what kind of command play I would expect from a Captain. In conclusion, Sleepy is a very good and skilled roleplayer with years of experience and a person who I get genuine enjoyment from roleplaying with a lot of the time. They have also shown themselves to be capable of playing a command role on their CE, Aez Goldhorn, but, I believe that Captain Kobi Goldman needs some adjustment and revision to the style by which he is involved in rounds to better suit the position of a Captain and the duties expected thereof. For these reasons I cannot give a +1 or -1, and instead will simply let my opinion be used as feedback both for and against the granting of Sleepy's whitelist. I think they are very capable of playing command, but that this needs to be demonstrated more consistently, especially on the character of Kobi Goldman.

Right. After thinking on this some more this week, I have come to this decision. ATLAS as an organization is not retconned as of now, however it is defunct. After the assassination of formerly Admiral, then Prime Minister Frost, the party fell to prey to internal struggles. Additionally, the party lost most if not all power it held over the Sol Alliance after the military dissolved the Solarian Parliament in order to form the current system of government that Sol is governed under, a naval junta. Most high-ranking members of the party have either disappeared in the chaos of the Collapse of the Solarian Outer Colonies, been arrested by the current government, or have found themselves integrated into other parties. Lore mentioning ATLAS in the present tense is outdated and will be fixed. This is all subject to change if we in the Human Lore team decide it is pertinent to do so, however this is the current canon regarding ATLAS. It did exist at one time but does no longer in any way, shape, or form.

Hi all. We in human lore are working on a solution to this question, as it has been something that we have also been mulling over for some time and are working towards a consensus on. Please expect a definitive answer in the next few days.