La Villa Strangiato

You seem like a really fun person, and some of the roleplay I've had with you has been really enjoyable. I think you've gained some valuable collaborative writing insight over the past couple of months on Aurora. I don't think I can really recommend you for Command, though, because they're high-stress roles and you don't have a lot of experience calling shots. I've also noticed you tend to act impulsively, particularly in combat scenarios. You do stuff like rush into a bunch of danger and get owned super hard; even if you intend to play just a research director, having a command whitelist generally means you don't do stuff like rushing into scenarios that could be dangerous. I would -1 this app for now. I think you should get mechanically better at the game, do more with your characters, and do things that push your boundaries as a writer more. Most of these come naturally with time and experience! Observe the roleplayers that you really like, and the ones that you don't; what do you think they do well/poorly?

I think geko can play really good characters and I think they would be good with a vaurca whitelist!

I have always been an advocate of the practice of "killing your darlings". Sometimes, what you enjoy and spent a lot of hard work on just has to be cut. Also, this is just my opinion. A human lore person with actual power may decide that they like some of these things, and they can stay! Don't take this too seriously. Politics of the Himean Planetary Guard Syndicate. Himeans are socialists and that's all we need to know. Planetary Guard Significant Divisions/Planetary Navy Significant Divisions. These can all be cut down to like, a sentence under their respective section. You can namedrop them, but do we need to tell it beyond the bare details or can players headcanon it? Workers’ Homes of the Planetary Guard. Is this something that needs to be told, or can players headcanon it? I like the rank structures. They sound pretty cool. I do like the detail that fauna from Adhomai has been transported to Himeo for logistics stuff, but I thiiiiink that Himeo is a bit more inhospitable than Adhomai? Like, the average temperature for Himeo is -58.2C, and Adhomai's record low is -119C. Himeo is cold as shit! Not to mention, Himean winds strip the shit out of everything that's left above-ground, so I don't think Adhomian animals would be having too good of a time on the surface. In general I like the non-humans section, and while I think Planetary Guard Members Off-world could stand to be truncated a bit, this is a decent expansion. It's really long, though.

This is absolutely, unequivocally, too long. I will return shortly with more criticism and comments.

Lore Impact: Medium Species: Humans, Synthetics (small), Unathi (small) Short Description: This heavily expands on Madani (yes, that's the demonym) history, culture, economics, and demographics, including blurbs about human, IPC, and Unathi NCPs. It also rewords a lot of the wiki article to make it more Wikipedia-styled, without changing aspects of the lore that was reworded. Most of the "removed" text is fairly small, but intends to make Elyra less immune to scarcity, and specify exactly what kind of art is most common for natural resources. In particular I have attempted to emphasize the absolutely massive undertaking that creating city-sized magpulse drives would be, particularly by making the floating cities the only population centers on Medina's surface. I've also taken the liberty of re-organising the wiki page in general, giving it a more consistent subsection divide that maybe can be replicated across other Elyra pages. Point left emoji point right emoji pleading face emoji. How will this be reflected on-station?: More backstory, names to drop, and cool little subcultures to be part of (ghoulpunk, baby). This may even cause more than two Elyran characters to be consistently played! Does this addition do anything not achieved by what already exists?: Yes, I think it adds a lot more context, fluff, and interesting material to build a character with on Medina, alongside allowing players to have a more well-rounded knowledge of a planet's history rather than relying heavily on headcanon. With the addition of a counterculture, and a more extensive rework to what an "art culture" is, it also coheres more as a society. NCP lore also adds context to how much of the people in the wider Spur are known by native Elyrans. Finally, I believe that having a concrete history helps add more depth to Elyran society, and having someone actually die to complete a valued colonization project feels like a reminder that even for citizens, the Republic isn't always a utopia. Do you understand that the project may change over time in ways you may not foresee once it is handed over to the Lore Team?: Yes. Long Description: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vj0Gh6DEKoojmjA49Ot2Y0VKNSk2vFtvnirfe1NcMkI/edit?usp=sharing I would also like to extend a special thanks to Lain, Schwann, Rusting, and Syc, who gave it cursory glances to ensure I was not cooking anything too wretched. ShakyJake and GrazalThruka also helped me with hashing out some of the Engineering LoreTM that went into determining the story of the magpulse drives, which is greatly appreciated. I also used some of Faye's ideas to better flesh out the planet's culture, and of course it is her work that I am building off of!

Zo'ra has relied and piggybacked off of Biesel for a lot of their political power. Biesel, Hive Zo'ra, and NanoTrasen are closely intertwined; if one starts to crumble, so will the others. I've included some ideas-lobbing below for dynamics, character explorations, and shifts in power that could occur within Zo'ra and Biesel. Biesel is expanding beyond its means, gradually; how is that encouraged or stymied by the Queens? Zoleth is a warmonger who tends to lean towards violence as the first option. Is she in favour of more expansionism from the Republic? Are Athvur and Vaur against more expansion? What kind of diplomacy might Vaur undertake towards Elyra and their phoron resources, especially after the Lii'draic Incursion and anti-NT sentiment? What about diplomacy with the Coalition, and which member-states would Zo'rane diplomacy reach out to first? Speaking of NanoTrasen, how do the Queens interact with the Trasens? What do the Queens, in the face of the phoron scarcity and the exploitation of their hive for cheap labour, demand from NT in the face of a struggling economy? Who would win: hydrogen bomb (High Queen Vaur, Grand Executor, First of Mother Zo'ra) or coughing baby (Miranda Trasen, human woman)? Would further defeats to the TCAF injure Zo'ra's standing to the other hives? Would Vetju start banging the drum of "K'LAX INDEPENDENCE NOW" if the TCAF lost Mictlan? There's differing priorities in the Hive, though obviously not to the extent of K'lax. How could we emphasize that, and how would it effect relations with Biesel and NT? I have a few suggestions! 1. They don't have the natural resources and materials that they had on Sedantis to replicate most of their prior, incredibly powerful technology. 2. Much of the information on how to maintain said technology was lost during the Exodus, particularly on the K'laxan end after the fire struck Mother K'lax's chambers. 3. To preserve diplomatic relations, much of their technology has been intentionally stripped down, discarded, or in the case of warforms, culled. I'm going to be completely authentic here and say that I would love to write a full, prosaic account of some Great Hive War legend, like Reusk'otahn (the "hive war myth"). I'd also love to expand more on Vaurca legends, such as the story of Maa'krek. I think these would really add to Vaurcesian society and culture lore, but I'm also happy to write about more present, pressing lorestuff that needs expanding on.

The only arc I know of that has been run for Vaurca is the Court of Queens arc. Other than that, information on "pre-renaissance" Aurora lore arcs is fairly scarce, so I'm left to say I wouldn't retcon Court of Queens! I think it serves its purpose in introducing more dynamics between the Hives that reflect on their Sedantian history and build upon it. I think it's a very authentic thing to have the Hives get in copyright battles over their new bioform; I love including that kind of mundane, court-drama stuff in our fancy sci-fi setting. I would love to. I have my pet projects, of course, but I'd like to branch out to a variety of lore stuff and I'd be happy to contribute to the team in ways that aren't just buge-related. Ultimately my responsibility as a deputy should be to support a lore maintainer. Sure, I'm not able to accept whitelists, but I can definitely ask a whitelist application questions that can help them fill out their character concept more, and potentially gain more of an understanding of what's been written. A fresh set of eyes is essential to creative endeavours, and that's what a species team acts as; a fresh set of eyes and ideas for each other. This can definitely extend to other species, too. Vaurca lore is pretty strongly tied to the loremasters, to Unathi lore, and to Skrell lore. Were I to cross species lines in terms of lore-writing, I'd like to check in with the other teams first and make sure they're comfortable with me doing that, or if it's needed. Other than that, as I said a question ago, I'm happy to branch out and write in general. I've had some conversations with RustingWithYou about this, and we both agree that K'lax kind of acts like an "instant-win" button for Not'zar's ability to stay situated on the throne. While I don't mind this direction, as I think Not'zar has a lot more to his character than "hurr he is a Marty Stu that just stays in power because of magic", I would like to introduce some conflict in Hive K'lax between the Lesser Queens that might shift the balance of power a little bit. We already know Vetju hates the idea of K'lax being under the Hegemony's yoke, and Vedhra wants to dramatically push the threshold for Unathi augmentation. Meanwhile, Z'kaii is perfectly comfortable being a mere Overlord of her own Hive, Tupii might have secret ambitions of her own, and Leto is just vibing digging up artifacts. Would Vetju or Tupii bring their own ambitions to the fore, drastically decreasing the potential stability of the Hegemony and of the Hive for their own personal gain, perhaps? Overall, I think shaking things up a bit could make for an interesting lore arc, if only to remind the playerbase that Not'zar's throne might not be so stable.

lets fucking GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Sure, let me try elaborating. I would want to create ranks in the Ve'katak Phalanx, perhaps based on "historical" ranks in Vaurcesian military. In terms of structure, I'd like to elaborate more on how Warriors organise themselves; do they have sergeants that help temper the aggressive attitudes of younger Warriors? Where do Workers come into play in the Phalanx? Are they combat engineers, physicians, or armchair officers? Could ranks potentially be organised by Worker and Warrior, Bound and Unbound, and humans might struggle to fit into the very stratified system of Vaurcae caste? How does prolonged stays in VR affect a human? What kind of augments are humans going to receive when entering the Phalanx, and what psychological effects could this have? This could be explored in an article or an arc (cyberpsycho Ve'katak humans, woohoo). Also, Zoleth's warriors are mentioned as having a fighting style called The Method, in which they basically employ every method available to savagely tear apart an opponent. How would a human (or hell, an Unathi) react to be trained in this way? I think Leto and Vetju's brood would lend themselves particularly well to domestically assisting peasant Unathi on Moghes, particularly on matters of health and infrastructure. Maybe some of Vetju's brood could have an involvement in developing low-cost, modular architecture in Izweski population centers to shield against dust storms and extreme heat. Maybe Leto's brood could branch into the medical field and start developing medicines for genetic disorders or diseases caused by radiation. On the more ambiguous side, does a Wastelander see K'lax as tools of the Hegemony that abandoned them, or do they have a more positive view of them because of the Mi'kuetz? Do Traditionalist naysayers take a NIMBY position on K'lax presence on Ouerea and Moghes? A little side thing I'd like to clarify is how Unathi fit Vaurcae into their idea of gender roles. While obviously Vaurca don't have genders, I think it would be interesting if Unathi gendered Vaurcae based on their profession or caste (with Warriors being "masculine", certain workers being "feminine", and others being "fishermen") and Vaurca just went "sure, why not". Desven and I have actually discussed expanding and contributing to the Vaurca biology and culture page a bit, which is basically going to go into more detail about psychology of the broods, mannerisms, and what "types" of bioforms there are. Pipe dream plan: adding group of Athvur Vaurcae who perform stage plays and do a production of a Great Hive War narrative.

I wouldn't mind taking critique about how the Hive-government relationships are and making small changes here and there. But as it is right now, I like the current power dynamic between the Hives and their "hosts". It's easy to say that Zo'ra has it particularly good just because of their political hold in Tau Ceti, but Zo'ra largely lives on Biesel and Caprice. From there, the Hive is even more centralized in Mendell. It's why that even if I kind of want to retcon parts of the Lii'dra invasion of Tau Ceti (more on this shortly), it would just cohere so nicely for New Gibsoners to have a general dislike of Vaurcae. Mictlan and Port Antillia might have the same problem, especially with the strong Zo'rane presence in the TCAF. It would really emphasize, from a non-Vaurca lore perspective, how much of Biesel's power is focused on Biesel itself, and how it's overextending its influence on its other colonies. The other relations I feel are very thematically appropriate. Hive C'thur, once the loan sharks of Sedantis, must ironically suffer the same treatment from the Federation if they want to keep C'thur alive and relatively healthy. K'lax has always been vassals to the Zo'ra, and now they've switched their allegiance to the Hegemon; but murmurings of discontent rise among some of the Lesser Queens. Like I said, I'm comfortable with changing small elements, and expanding a lot more, but overall I really like where the lore sits on the Hives and their relationships with the Federation/Republic/Hegemony. I would like to maintain their role as a genuine threat, but Wigglesworth and Whitewolftamer have positions on the matter I totally agree with, like; why would the Lii'dra launch a full-scale invasion without having the means to do so? Why did we have a Skrell Moment (skroment) where the Tup'kala killed a Lesser Queen of the Lii'dra and extracted her body with only twelve casualties? There's also the fact that in original article lore, the Lii'dra were supposed to have invaded Mendell. Coalf has even done some art for this! This is mentioned literally nowhere on any wiki page, and I think we can all suss out exactly why. It changes the Lii'dra's scale and presence in the lore to something immensely threatening if they're able to launch a full-scale invasion of Mendell City, the current heart of the Orion Spur and our lore. A skirmish on New Gibson raises concern, but how is the Lii'dra Hiveship and all its warforms able to attack Mendell City without seriously changing up the tone of the planet as a whole? To answer your question about what I want to see of them, I would much prefer to flesh out what we've already seen of the Lii'dra and tweak the lore I mentioned above before we decide on any more canon incursions. Balancing a threat like them is hard to do well, and it's something I would want to discuss with a group of people. Honestly, expanding on the Lesser Queens to me can start with a little personality blurb. The Lesser Queens already have an obvious personality that's present in their brood, but I'd like to characterise them further by what kind of interactions they're having with their respective governments and their entwined species. Some of this is already present (Athvur loves human culture, Vetju is a K'laxan supremacist, Xetl is off her rocker), but I'd also like to include more of their history in the Hive and how they're adapting to their new situation in this as well. A "Notable Vaurca" page would be a great place to put all the non-Xakat’kl’atan Vaurca, though I don't think it's necessary to put the Queens on there as they have their own pages. Inter-Hive dynamics could probably be covered on the main Vaurca page or, provided they get huge enough, another page in the lore section. I don't think it's a problem, per se. While I do love mechanics supporting roleplay, I also think it's on a roleplayer to flavour their augments when they don't have support for them! Aside from that, while I'd definitely love to add more Vaurca augments (and add Vaurca mechanical limbs in the machinist printer), it's a thing that needs to be developed and sprited. This takes time and planning, but I definitely want to look into adding more stuff along those lines and polling the playerbase for the kind of augments they'd like to see. In terms of writing for it, both my favourite and least favourite part is how I have got to get weirder. I know practically, the weirder you get the more players find it hard to actually roleplay aspects of that lore, but I also want to write some strange esoteric bullshit that exactly two people understand is a covert reference to Kirkbridian Elder Scrolls lore.

Just rip it from secret until it can be reworked (whenever that happens).

Ckey/BYOND Username: Lavillastrangiato Position Being Applied For: Vaurca lore deputy Have you read the Lore Team Rules and Regulations wiki page?: Yep. Past Experiences/Knowledge: I have been writing fiction and fan-fiction for eight years now, and I've been roleplaying for (checks) twelve years. Over the years I've been honing my craft to the point where I'm very proud of my ability as not just a writer of fiction, but also as a writer of convincing essays and analysis. I've been a game master in TTRPGs and played more TTRPGs than I can count, and I'm currently working on developing a few stories and constructed worlds of my own (which, yes, are forever in development hell). Examples of Past Work: I previously had an application for Mictlan fluff accepted (the existence of the maton, and cultural foods for Mictlan), but I cannot find it in the archives. A CEO expansion Mukun-Yaba, home of the Kohlanari: A few scraps of lore that I wrote for an alien species I played in a Stars Without Number game. Much of it is unfinished; all text in Courier New is my work, while the text in Arial is the work of a friend who also played the species. Primitivism, Modernism, and Abstraction / Who Tells the Story?: Nonfiction example; two essays I wrote for my art history class in which we were asked to answer specific questions. Both of these essays centre primarily on Canadian Indigenous artwork, both contemporary and historical. Please include your current perspective on Vaurca lore and a plan to expand on it: Is this sus as hell for me to post just after DLM applications closed? Yes, absolutely. In my defense, however, I've wanted to work on lore for a long time, and Vaurca are my favourite species on the server. In fact, before DLM applications opened up, I was hoping that Vaurca deputy applications would open! I think Vaurca lore is very strong in creating an alien species that feels authentically alien, with a culture that still feels relatable enough to create interesting characters from. Everything from their unique religion to their eusocial structure to the characters of the Queens creates a really interesting portrait of them. I have a variety of things I'd like to expand about Vaurca lore; one of them is the Lii'dra. While they're a very interesting "villain" faction with a lot of potential for horror, a lot of their lore is pretty barebones, and they haven't been given a lot of opportunity to do much during the time we've had them in lore. Obviously they're a faction that needs to be used very sparingly, since their presence tends to crank the threat level from "concerning" to "apocalyptic". I think my first move would be to focus more on the invasion of Elyra and Tau Ceti, and clean up some elements there; why would the Lii'dra be there? What kind of effects would the Lii'dra invading Tau Ceti, the center of our setting, have? I'd really like to expand more on the Lesser Queens and their personalities, as well, particularly the non-Zo'rane queens' involvement in the Federation and Hegemony government. I'd be particularly interested in developing more on inner Hive struggles for power and conflict, as I think the conflict of personalities among K'lax is especially interesting and makes for fun character interactions. While these are the two major things I'd like to focus on, there are some other topics I'd really like to sink my teeth into: Ve'katak Phalanx. Sprites, organization and ranks, how they train, how they train humans! K'lax and the Hegemony, especially how K'lax comes across to the average Hegemony peasant. What kind of things other than military and labour do they do? Do they run clinics, help Unathi with their technology aspects? Reworking some of the biology and culture pages to be more precise and detailed. Giving Vaurca more "everyday life" culture! Athvur's brood staged a production of Hamlet; did they do other plays? What kind of human/Unathi/Skrell media do Vaurca enjoy?

I am obviously not a coder, so I don't know what your skill level actually is. However, to me it seems like you have many ambitious ideas that you either forget to execute or cannot finish in some way. During my casual passovers of the code channels I mostly see you proposing and arguing about ideas, but I don't actually recall the last time I saw your username in the GitHub feed. Obviously you contributed pretty recently, so that's not entirely a fair assessment. Part of my view of you being an "ideas guy" also comes from when you suggested that I draw some title screens for Aurora, and then seemed a little surprised when I asked if you intended to pay for them. Overall I think your heart is in the right place, and an actual developer could assess your skills better, but I don't think you're very good at making your ideas a reality.

I think these article arcs are good (even if you already know my opinion on Amor Patriae) and add some nice background noise to the setting, because as much as the Horizon was developed to walk right into lore developments we can't have a setting where it's the centre of the universe. I think it's good if characters have background stuff to talk about, and I think it can develop characters in surprising ways; I have a character who is very directly affected by Libération, Révolution et Évolution, for example. One thing I think that should be changed up a bit about article arcs, however, is their pacing. While it's obviously pure practicality that we get an update on certain arcs every week and a matter of keeping player engagement, I do think with the way we announce articles (posting them in lore channels and whatnot) allows us a fair amount of freedom in how we pace things. Depending on the arc, we could do them every month, every week, etc. That depends entirely on the arc. If I feel like an arc is starting to lose direction in favour of a lot of wordy updates, or it becomes too convoluted, I'd prefer to step in and tell the writers that they need to trim it down a bit. I am a strong proponent of the KISS rule; keep it simple, stupid. I like it! But I would prefer to focus on the "paragraph planets" we already have in the lore, like Sankt Frederick and Novo Igman, before we add anything completely new. I also have Plans That I Cannot Share Or Else The Haters Will Sabotage Me for a certain paragraph planet, which is in a pretty lore-important location. That's a really hard question. I like arcs where species lore converges, where you can read about a myriad of different aliens trying to build a community in Biesel, I like arcs that talk about the hardship of the average working person in a war-torn landscape, I like arcs where the looming hand of capitalism exerts its grip over yet another nation-state. I guess you could say I prefer lore that talks about average people and their average lives in the Orion Spur, and that includes an average (but obviously, still player-character-standout) person working on the Horizon. I think these add a lot of personalizing flavour to our setting, and while if I were to get the position I would obviously want to let people have their own style of arcs where exciting things and big personalities clash (because those are cathartic, and fun), I prefer smaller-scale stuff like that.

I supported this! I think it is a strong addition to the wiki and expands more on what the hell is actually happening on the surface. It is a pretty simple yet effective addition to the wiki as well.

The only way I could sweat harder is if Sadonov applied. Wigglesworth has only played Satkut in my vicinity but they show a really strong grasp on characterization, lore, and writing craft in general. Here's a few questions! 1. What kind of expansions would you want to make to the Lii'dra? What would you change, if anything, about the invasion of Bursa and New Gibson? (and Mendell City because that's kind of canon. I guess) 2. Do you think the Vaurca Queens need more direct of a presence in lore in the Hegemony and Federation? 3. What kind of stuff would you like to add to Vaurca religion lore? 4. Who is your favourite Queen and brood, and why? Queenless factions are also an option.

Yeah, absolutely. On whitewolftamer's Vaurca deputy app I asked them if he was ready to "kill [his] darlings"-- it's a writing term that means no matter how much you might like something you wrote or developed, no matter how much effort you put in, sometimes it needs to be edited out to better serve the flow of your story. Species lore is no different; I've already talked about Lii'dra invasion reworks and retcons, along with making Skrell less of teh epic deus ex machina. That being said, there is one, extremely petty thing that I would want to change a bit; Tajaran name lore. As I understand it a lot of the very long Tajaran names originated in the SS13 engine's random name generator which is literally ancient, and in-story Tajarans take names in human space which are Slavic or Arabic-inspired in order to be more pronounceable to other species. I've always found this a little immersion-breaking, especially when Tajara as a whole take obvious inspiration from real-life human history, so if I were able to change it I would cut out the long-name lore as much as is practical and keep existing names which are Slavic/Arabic-inspired but still "alien". The obvious caveat here is has the lore writer in question approved the project beforehand? In a perfect world, a lore writer would float their idea for a project to the rest of the team + the loremasters so it could be decided whether or not said project is even worth the time of working on. If a writer floats me a project that they really want canonized, and that I completely disagree with, there are other issues at play regarding communication on the team. If this did happen, I think I generally would be able to stand my ground, depending on the strength of my feelings on the matter. It takes me a bit of time to come to decisions that are absolute, so if I decided I didn't want a single remnant of a writer's project in the lore, I would be pretty straightforward and unmoving on the matter. I would want them to approach their team and the loremasters with not only how this would affect the species lore as a whole, but the scale of the project, a plan for how to execute the project, and if they've anticipated player reaction and how difficult this will be to unshake from the public consciousness. Whether or not it's retconned, some shit just sticks in people's memory, and it can be difficult to uncouple that from how they portray their character. Who among us doesn't remember gay concentration camps in Tajara lore? Essentially, if a writer comes to me with plans to do big retcons, I want them to be sure they know what they're doing. We are absolutely nowhere near that point for pretty much any species that isn't humans (and even then we're really fucking far from it with humanlore), given the developments that are still happening in our setting and how geopolitics affect the landscape of where people live in general. I opine that it is very difficult to truly be finished with developing a setting, though to me, a day when we are able to focus on event arcs to best develop our little constructed world will be a good day. It means that the little project that a lot of people have sunk a lot of hours into has settled into a comfortable, stable state that we can definitively show off as being a culmination of the best of our abilities. Worst comes to absolute worst, if we find that our setting has become too stable, it's within our power to simply wipe the slate and reboot our lore, though I don't hold any illusions that will happen in my time as a player. I don't think the lore that a player needs to know in order to create a well-rounded character is particularly complex, and a lot of any questions that someone has can be answered by asking in OOC, reading about it on the wiki page, or asking in the lore Discord. I do think that our lore primer could stand to be reworked to be more succinct and explanatory. Beyond that, however, the first couple months of their playtime a player is just going to be a human going around doing human things, learning about other human factions on their own. If they want a whitelist, they have to actively pursue the species lore page. Given the population that we have, I would say that our lore is generally pretty accessible to learn about and dive deep into. It needs a few tweaks here and there as to how it's presented (a lot of wiki pages could use a bit of clean-up), but overall I think we're on the right track. I don't have any strong feelings on anything that needs to stop, no. Funny to reflect on, unnecessary to bring back. Obviously groups that are antagonistic to the ship's goals exist, and those are fine to expand on, but SS13 remnants like canon changelings or vampires doesn't need any more lingering on it. Here's a secret; I've never played a Dominian and I probably never will but I love the aesthetic. Some Victorian Downtown Abbey The Favourite-type nation state that's the only significant human faction doing an honest-to-god divine right monarchy. The Tribunal as a religion and its matriarchal leanings are a very fascinating take on a faith, particularly their doctrines, prayers, and clothing. And the capes are cool. I like Unathi as a whole, but I like the Hegemony for the similar feudal, apocalypse-punk mouthfeel, especially when combined with K'lax and their bizarre alien worldview. I think you could write entire stories out of Moghes on its own, just for the value that Unathi themes (tradition versus rapid progress, a sense of "what happened to the post-war dream", the fears of nuclear annihilation) have and how they've been incorporating themselves into the Spur, plus the kind of conflict that starts.

Point taken! But you got me on a tangent... All factions are pretty evil. Biesel is a corporate oligarchy practising neo-colonialism in the CRZ, Sol is a dying, authoritarian empire desperately trying to reach for its glory days, I don't know in what world the Big Five corps are good, Nralakk is Literally 1894, the Hegemony is a feudal government rapidly becoming a corporate playground, the DPRA is the least awful Tajaran government and they're a xenophobic military junta, and the Coalition of Colonies has Gadpathur in it. Let's not even get started on Dominia. My opinion about the setting as a whole is that we are, in fact, the baddies. With that in mind, I don't think we really need that many factions that are along the lines of a space nazi empire, or a hive mind of alien monstrosities. It is much more interesting, in my opinion, to have conflict between varying shades of Not Good, and sometimes, conflict between good and an evil that has good publicity.

I am not interested in expanding on the SRF or ATLAS. ATLAS is defunct, and the SRF are rapidly going the same route after their L in San Colette. They have played their part in the story. As for the Lii'dra, I would like to work with the Vaurca team to retouch a lot of their invasion arc. The Lii'dra, being a very Borg-like threat, rapidly makes the setting get very serious, and I would have to think long and hard about whether or not I wanted them to come to the forefront again. Naturally, this involves more work with the Vaurca team, and I am not sure if they are interested in involving the Lii'dra in an arc again as of yet.

I don't think it's an issue. The "Skrell not getting Sol Common" debacle was blocked by a specific person, I believe, though I'm not sure of the finer details as to why they do not want Skrell to be able to access it. I know at the very least that Matt is comfortable with Skrell getting Sol Common, so it's definitely not a monolith of "devs versus loreists". I don't really think that it's that difficult to bridge any perceived gap between coders and lore people, either. Several of our contributors and developers are in lore positions currently or formerly, and a few of our non-loreist developers have applied before for positions on the team. Considering the way our staff is structured, it's pretty simple to DM somebody on Discord and ask "hey, I'm thinking of a lore thing, can you develop something for it?". The manpower, obviously, and the scale of the project is an issue, but such is the nature of being a volunteer.

You know I like roleplaying with you a great deal, and I've copied some of your -isms to incorporate into my own characters (Gimb's thumbs-up thing, for example). I think you have what it takes to grow into this position. However, I have a few questions! What do you think are your strengths and weaknesses as a writer? As a deputy, you'll be expected to communicate and work alongside not just the rest of the Vaurca team, but the other lore maintainers (Skrell for C'thur, Unathi for K'lax). Do you find yourself comfortable dealing with people? Have you ever "killed your darlings"? You are going to be subject to the cutting room floor a lot, not just from your own perspective but from the advice of others. Do you think you're capable of cutting out elements that you love and worked really hard on?

Meep is definitely a really strong roleplayer and a good engineer. I have never really seen them in a command position, but I think it would be great for them to get a shot! +1

I think Leslie seems like a well-rounded character. Nauticall seems to stay on top of a lot of things in medical (sensors, GTR care), and I think they would benefit from a trial. +1