Kintsugi’s Human Lore Deputy Application

[Kintsugi]

Ckey/BYOND Username: Kintsugi

Time in the Aurora community: Six years continuously, beginning in November 2019
Position Being Applied For: (Wiki Maintainer, Lore Developer, Deputy Lore developer): Human Lore Deputy
Have you read the Lore Team Rules and  Regulations wiki page? Yes
Past Experiences/Knowledge: I have collaborated extensively with the human lore team and the lore team more generally over the course of these last six years.
Examples of Past Work: Visegrad and a number of other things. I’m working on a rework of Visegrad right now that I feel would be the best representation of my current writing skills, and I can share that upon request.

 

Why are you applying for the position of human lore deputy writer? Why do you think that you would be good in the position?

 

 

I’ve been a member of Aurora’s community for six years now, and during that time human lore (and the server’s lore more generally) has been a defining part of why I’m still here after all this time. I think Aurora truly has something special with regards to our lore, and during my time in the community I’ve always been eager to contribute and participate in its continued development and the greater overall experience that it provides. I think being a human lore deputy is one of the best ways to further take part in that.

I feel that I would be a good pick for the position due to my deep familiarity with the subject matter, my history of collaboration with members of the human lore team and the greater lore team as a whole, my extensive experience contributing to Aurora’s lore and interactions with the community in that regard, my demonstrated writing and worldbuilding skills, and most importantly the intense passion I feel for human lore as a component of the best SS13 experience I’ve yet experienced - Aurora.

 

What is your favourite part of Human Lore and why? If you submitted something for canonisation that was indeed canonised you may not select that as the answer to this question.

 

This is going to be a very broad answer to this question, but I think my favorite part of human lore has to be the worldbuilding - I think that human lore has a particularly consistent vision for the world it presents, and I’ve long been deeply invested in the narrative interwoven into the lore itself. I think one of the things that makes our server so unique is that we essentially have an ongoing space opera as the backdrop of our setting, and I think human lore is a huge part of why that is and why our lore is so special.

 

I have long loved media wherein the world described feels real enough to be tangible, and I think human lore manages to achieve this owing to the consistent vision that it has been written with for several years now and the breadth of meaningful and thoughtful detail put into the material itself.

 

What do you believe are ways that the Human Lore Team could best implement the phoron scarcity to our various factions and locations throughout the setting that would reflect the gravity of the in-character situation without grossly compromising the out-of-character things that make each faction and location unique and compelling?

 

 

I think something that we don’t pay enough attention to as it is are the more tangible material and economic conditions that the scarcity has imposed upon the people of the spur, and how the various factions and locations within it are experiencing and coping with that crisis. I think that further exploring and building upon this aspect of the scarcity is a perfect opportunity for us to both implement the scarcity in a meaningful and effective way and to provide more material for the playerbase to work with in the course of roleplay. 

Beyond that, foreign relations is a key potential area for attention with regards to implementing the phoron scarcity, as the factions of the setting now have a fairly existential crisis on their hands, and not all of them are as equally impacted by that crisis. That asymmetry presents plenty of opportunity for conflict and interaction both in the macro, setting-focused perspective, and on a more player-facing scale as well, and is something I’d really like to further examine and build upon.

 

What do you believe are the current strengths and weaknesses of human lore? Why? What would you do to improve upon the weaknesses? Please do not mention offworlders in your answer to this question. We know that they are a weak spot and that they require action and would prefer to hear perspectives that do not highlight this area of human lore.

 

I hope this won’t be considered double-dipping on answers, but as far as strengths are concerned, I would like to identify the consistent vision and the quality of the worldbuilding as key strengths for human lore, as I outlined above. 

Another strength of human lore is also one of its most significant weaknesses - the sheer breadth of the material that human lore has to work with means that there’s never a shortage of potential avenues for exploration and further development, but that also means there’s a tremendous amount of ground for a team with limited manpower to cover and maintain. The amount of detail and thought put into much of the lore as it is means that you’ll have plenty of very interesting, very useful things to read - but simultaneously, the sheer amount of material can oftentimes be very intimidating for newer players, or those who don’t have much time for reading  on their hands.

While I have always been of the opinion that this breadth of writing is necessary for our setting to be as enjoyable and fleshed-out as it is, I do think that there’s a lot to be done to address these problems - some ideas I have for doing so that I’d like to float would be “article complexity” and “setting importance” ratings for pages, which could be useful ways for players to determine at a glance how advanced and important to the overall setting an article of lore roughly is. More generally, organizational tweaks of this nature would go a long way with increasing the approachability of human lore to those who might find it intimidating. 

Beyond that, I would really like to explore avenues for increasing player involvement with regards to contributions - I think human lore can be somewhat opaque in what its goals and priorities may be at any given moment, and players who might otherwise be interested in submitting lore canonization applications may end up not doing so out of a desire to not invest time and effort into something that may not be wanted by the team - regardless of how realistic that concern may or may not be, it is one I think we should try to eliminate. I’m not sure how realistic a concept this is, but something like a public “bounty board” where the team posts pages that are in need of work but aren’t high enough of a priority to devote the attention of the team to alongside a general vision for what is desired from those pages might be a good way to drum up contributions and encourage people to lend a helping hand.

 

What are three projects (medium-to-large size additions, arcs, or reworks) that you would like to complete during your tenure as a Human Lore Deputy writer? Please do not mention new locations or factions in this answer.

 

The first project I’d like to mention here is an Elyra rework - it is widely understood to be a faction in dire need of some attention, and has long been in a position of largely ignoring the greater setting at large, along with being perhaps one-note in its writing. With the phoron scarcity and the recent hints of underlying instability in mind, I’d really like to take a crack at increasing the dynamism of Elyra and making it a more attractive option for the playerbase to interact with.

Second, a refactor of the Coalition’s internal politics is something I feel the faction would benefit greatly from. Since KOTW, the Coalition has been experiencing a lot of internal and external strain, but this hasn’t always been adequately reflected in the writing, or at least insufficient attention has been paid to it. Like in Elyra’s case, there’s also a lack of integration with the phoron scarcity that I’d be very keen to address as well.

Lastly, the interstellar relations page is in need of a total rework, with a mind to bringing it up to date with recent developments in-world and, again, especially the phoron scarcity. Collaboration with other species lore teams is a key part of what I have in mind, and I’d really like to further set the stage for how the human factions interact with the alien factions over the matters of phoron and the shifting balance of power in the spur.

 

What is an idea for a future arc that you would like to have a part in writing and organising in the future? If you provided an arc(s) as part of your answer for question 3, you may expand on the ideas for that arc(s) here, or you may provide another idea.

 

As I mentioned in my answer to the last question, Elyra is in a spot of needing urgent attention in order to bring it up to par with the rest of human lore. I think that plunging it into crisis would be the best way to do so - and the foundations for such a crisis are already fairly easy to see: Elyra’s entire society is reliant on a resource that the spur is rapidly running out of, and it relies on the brutal exploitation of its immigrant population in order to maintain access to that resource.

A simultaneous economic and security crisis would be all but disastrous for Elyra, which is increasingly finding itself isolated diplomatically and unstable internally. It could be that the NCP worker population dries up due to declining immigration, the security crackdown, or strikes and labor movements among the workers - it could also be that interdiction of Elyran traffic by pirates and privateers makes it too dangerous for new arrivals to attempt the journey, or a conflict with Dominia or the Hegemony shuts down travel routes and prevents some regions from accessing Elyran space altogether. It could even be that Elyra starts running out of phoron prospects, or the quality of Elyran phoron increasingly declines as the highest quality deposits are exhausted.

The Elyran state is so fragile that the factors that could lead to state failure are rapidly piling up as the spur becomes more dangerous and desperate, and it could plausibly only take a few problems striking to cause such a crisis - and when it does, there are catastrophic potential ramifications for the entire nation.

 

Have you ever been subject to any warnings, strikes, or bans from the Aurora moderation team? If so, how long ago were you and for what actions did you receive moderation action for? Answers for this question should include actions taken on the game server, discord servers, and forums.

 

I’ve been on Aurora for six years now, and few people can be in a community as long as that without getting dinged for a few infractions. I think I have one warning from several years back, and maybe a few strikes over all six of those years. I have never been in any real trouble.

 

OPTIONAL: Do you have any miscellaneous comments or remarks for the Human Lore Team or the community?

 

Sorry about the relative brevity and for taking so long to post this application. I’ve been busy with work and my living situation is a bit dodgy atm (no computer rn for example, so I did this application on my phone) I also took a very long time deciding between applying for this or deputy loremaster, but ultimately decided this was the better choice right now.

Edited Sunday at 19:50 by Kintsugi