Raynor sat down on top of a sandstone mountain and took out his pipe.

As the smoke billowed around his head, he thought to himself, “Perhaps I will stay here, alone for a while, on this mountain, where I have a lovely view of things”.

“When I am on the ground the view does not satisfy me as much,” continued Raynor, deep in thought.

Raynor then stood up and walked back and back and forth, on the top of the bluff, smoking, thinking and smoking.  Finally, he sighed and started climbing down.

And as he began climbing down off the mountain to the ground he said to himself,  “There is no sense in my hiding away for long, Queen Adlfhda will require my assistance soon enough.”

When Raynor got the ground he began the long jog back to Virding Hall, without a word or thought.

Tonight I learned a lesson that I could have, and should have, learned months ago.

As it turns out, the great and terrible “Tyrant” of The Crocodile Clans desires real connection and refuses to let the digital “community” stay transient and disorienting for him.

Zod takes what he wants!  He is Zod, kneel before him!

The trouble is that not everyone longs for deeper connection on the Discord… it’s just a game after all…

“So once upon a time Zod felt angry, disoriented, and befuddled in his mind about the circumstances he found himself in. He allowed his mind to play tricks on him; and soon after his mind betrayed and murdered him.”

It happened just the way I predicted it would, and it was all my fault.

Just a week earlier Zod had finally gotten the attention of the Great King of the North, (and friendly neighborhood Admin) Chullain.  It was a crowning achievement and something that all “bad guys” want: attention— Zod’s ego was finally to be satisfied!!!  Huzzah!!

And then the greatest triumph of all: Chullain spared Zod his life, choosing instead to chop off his left hand. Victory!  Zod, refined by the fire of persecution, would become more terrible!, more hideous!, and would summon Yog! :ebil:

That was Zod’s story.  It was a Ruins of the Storm story that I had helped to co-create.

I stole it from Zod until tonight, and I have regrets.

I also stole it from the community that I now call “home”.  For that, I apologize.

Now Theodora has had enough talk about “special privileges”.

And she has had enough of watching a truly “privileged” tiny minority of people get whatever they want and be protected by the Emperor with godlike efficiency.   And she has had enough of the insolence of the city officials who mockingly treat her with contempt.  And she has had enough of the long walks and the tedious cocktail parties in Omar’s tavern.  And she has had enough of the pedantic, preachy Stygians who lay around all day and then point their randy fingers at the one woman in the town who has to work for a living.

“I will move away and start a new adventure, I am strong enough now,” thinks Theodora after pondering these complaints of hers for a while.  And realizing that she is unhappy in Drifter’s Rest, she begins to prepare to move away for good.

“Business is business, and if I can’t grow my business and live as a unique and valued member of the community, then why should I live here? It isn’t fun and I don’t have to”, thought Theodora.

Later that day the “polite” citizens of Drifter’s Rest could observe that the caravans Theodora had previously purchased for use on her trade route where now being used to pack up Theodora’s whole estate.

And after a few days, her belongings will be taken East to the distant shore, where Theodora plans on starting a new life, on her own terms.  (To Be Continued)

Having Discovered the Hall of one of his countrymen, Raynor the Feral said to himself:

“It is a fine hall indeed! …for making merry after the plundering of wealth, women and ale… and of bashing the skulls of southern vermin with my oaken cudgel… how I long to feel the crack of skulls again….”

Raynor remembered with fondness the lining up and laying down of the children of one particular southern village.

How in the course of a raid a southerner had dared to mortally wound one of the kin. Enraged by this, Raynor earned his namesake.

The little ones were laid down, head beside the head of another, and then Raynor laid down his cudgel 30 times as the village burned to the ground.

The women were taken, but were later executed as well.

Theodora gets upset about petty things.  Like the fact that Abydos was built so large and initially towered over her house — at least it towered over her house until she built a few more floors and a jail on top.

 “Hmmph, what about my house? I live here too,” said Theodora out loud as she stared at the sign, frowning and unhappy.

Impulsively Theodora ran back to her tower and got a brush and some black paint; she then ran back to the sign and began to paint.

“There’s room on the sign, I will just let people know where to find me, so they can ask their questions of Ganesha,” thought Theodora.

The paint and the brush did their job: “Theodora’s House – >”.

Theodora remembers that day when she realized that her carefree and pampered life had ended and that she must learn to thrive, alone, in a hostile barren land.

“These spiders aren’t so tough and I don’t have to outrun them anymore”, thought Theodora as she easily killed one with her handaxe.

Her muscles had begun to bulge and her confidence had swelled to great proportions by the time she had killed her 100th spider.  She now killed them on the side of the mountain, as opposed to hiding from them, when she harvested gossamer.

The giant spider though, that is another matter.  Theodora’s equipment is not right for such a great task as killing a giant spider, and besides, “why kill it when it is useful in clearing the Darfari camps…?”

And also by the time Theodora had killed the 100th spider she had become wealthy by providing a steady supply of silk to the Drifter’s Rest community.

Wealth, physical strength, these were new to Theodora and they began to transform her natural lazy idleness into a greedy hunger for “more”.  She knew must stay physically strong because, as she has said so many times, “how else could one live in these exiled lands without it???” Killing spiders is good exercise.

Material wealth though, that is another matter… for maintenance of her wealth is not fully in her control and the markets of the Exiled Lands are not free.

(to be continued)

As a Sociologist, I see a social group on Discord; I see one big social group that is the entirety of Discord, but the extent of my involvement is around 1200 members.

I happily came to this understanding of how big my particular group is, in its full extension, by way of meeting a young lady who is the head of the Engagement Team of the Vornair gaming community–  so for the price of some data entry tasks, I was enlighted, thank you @hinata1711!

To put it into perspective, our Discord server (social group) is relatively small and it is somewhat racially and economically homogeneous (although there is some racial diversity that is worth noting and I will spend a significant of time on the subject of race in the future).

Although I had theorized that this group was homogeneous in this way, I am happy to have had the assistance of the server owners at Ruins of the Storm and Song of Sword and Sorcery to post and advertise a 10 question demographic survey that I put together in order to verify my hypothesis.  At this point, February 24, 2019, I have 18  responses from the survey and the result represent and verify my initial thoughts.

Fortunately, I’ll be able to get some more data soon because the server owner of the new Ruins Unchained server, which is a reboot of the Ruins of the Storm server, has agreed to post the link to my survey in his Discord channel.  If all goes well, I should have between 36 and 40 survey entries by the end of March.   40 entries will give me a better picture of what the community of 1200 looks like, although I will continue to add survey data as it comes in.

And I continue to look at the demographics of the entire group because I think it says something about who we are in our leisure time and what we’re doing on the frontier of an immersive digital, digitized community that is in the adolescent stage of life.

Adolescence is a tricky time of life, but I think that the analogy fits.

One of the many people that I’ve had discourse with pointed out that it is this adolescent age that contributes to a lot of the interpersonal problems that we face as we go about doing community inside the net of digitized imagination play, on Discord and in the games we play.

In other words, digital community is sometimes intolerable.

But not always, and not even often, and that’s why we can return to the gaming over and over again, even as we are dealing with the natural confusion and anxiety associated with experiencing a new way of being in community.

And then there’s what’s happening in the games vs. what’s happening in the Discord.  Those things are intertwined and inextricable no matter how many rules we write to keep them separated from each other.

The content of the role-playing in the game and the content that is appearing in Discord are bound to each other.  In fact the whole operation is structured in such a way that is almost impossible to separate oneself from the taboo, and forbidden “ooc drama”.   “OOC Drama” naturally spills over from the game into rl interactions that are far from real. I point this out not as a critic, but as a biased observer of what is happening in our community.

Emoji are not real expressions of emotions and text is not enough to convey word meaning. So we compensate when we really need to communicate, and we get on voice chat.

But when I voice chat I have a sort of transient, disconnected feeling that I can’t imagine as being unique to only me since we are all trained, from birth, to communicate face-to-face– or least those of us who are 50 and older were. 😉

So another sociological observation is perhaps generational. I can feel the difference between a digital native and a digital immigrant when interacting on Discord.  But until now I haven’t paid a lot of attention to the literature around digital natives versus digital immigrants.  I will be diving into that literature very soon…

Another sociological observation that I make over and over again is how the power structures drive the narrative in our fiction. I was introduced to this concept in a sociological work entitled Shared Fantasy, Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds.  In this volume, Cary Allan Fine describes a consistent phenomenon: player-characters who sit close to the DM enjoy the game more than those who sit further away,  and that is to be expected. Unless of course the Dungeon Master is sophisticated and goes out of their way to look at their own unconscious biases.

And my final observation from for this post is more situated in the media than some my more general observations.  What I observed, over and over again, is that inasmuch as the Discord group has some solidarity and functions as a social group in a supportive way, it does so through the repetition of derivative media imagery.

In other words, support in our community most often comes in the form of conversations about superheroes, movies, videogame and the characters we create– characters who are all kinds of wondrous beautiful people who have wondrous, beautiful powers.  This content sharing ritual is cerebral, optimistic, fun… and we support each other through the use of it.

Thank you for reading this far.  And if you dare, I am available for RP on Song of Sword and Sorcery Conan Exiles, Ruins of the Storm Unchained Conan Exiles and Ruins of the Storm Atlas. 

Best regards,

-Zod

 

 

Things should always go my way
On each and every day,
At work and even play,
Things must always go my way!

Now when things won’t go my may
I’ll have a lot to say,
And put you all at bay,
For I must have my way!

So what more can I say?
I have to have my way!
For each and every day
Must go just like I say!

-by Theodora of Drifter’s Rest

When drugged, impulsive, and happy, Theodora can hear the seductive voice of prophecy.  Sometimes the voice allows her to see into the future.  Her vision is a shadowy glimpse to be sure, and it only happens when she is inside those moments of true presence, within the equally transient here and now.

But Theodora’s earthy, superstitious hedonism always sparks to life when she goes to the alchemy shop.  It is not that she needs supplies, although she will buy some incense to clear a spirit of holding on—

–she spots just the right resin and remembers that she can use a lump of coal to burn the resin and drive out any unwanted spirits from her little tower.

Theodora sees the shop owner and greets her, “hey”

“Hey Theodora, what are you looking for?” says the shop owner in a tone that begs for a socially misplaced, philosophical reply from Theodora.

“Change, I’m looking for a change” replies Theodora, predictably.

“Then you’ve come the right place Theo, look here”, the shop owner shows Theodora some dark green herbs, “smell this.”

Theodora takes a big whiff and fills her nostrils with the familiar sent of Ganja, “this smells delicious”.

“It is”, replies a grinning clerk.  Theodora doesn’t know her name but it’s Gracey.

Gracey knows Theodora’s name and enjoys seeing her come into the shop.  Gracey knows that it will be easy going with Theodora and that Theodora loves to spend money, and on the silliest things.  Whatever makes Theodora happy, it seems.

“Of course, ‘it is’, I want some Grracey!” And I do know your name!”  Theodora laughs.

“You always forget it when you leave”, replied Gracey.

“You’re right, but no more, I am going to change”, replied Theodora, giggling.

Gracey packs the resin and the ganja into Theodora’s basket, “We’ll see”.

“We’ll see,” says Theodora as she walks out of the shop.

Sweating from the heat, Theodora pulled herself up onto a rock in order to avoid the clattering-clack and bite of the spiders who wanted to make a meal of her. And when she was safe, she caught her breath and thought, “climbing onto the top is not too difficult, the spiders are slower than I am”.

She then looked down at her bare feet on the sandstone boulder and began to cry, saying out loud: “I am so far from home” … “what will become of Kumar now that I am not there to take care of him?”, “his wet nose.”

Wiping the tears from her eyes she continued: “I am strong. I am the daughter of Sadar Rajni Rajna, I have his strength in me, somewhere, if I can find it”. She then looked at the sword in her hand and said: “my lessons have finally come in handy Father”.

Afterwards, Theodora silently climbed down from the big rock and continued toward giant spider’s nest.