derula

Fantastic job everyone! @Faceless Mike and @Big Haddy you were amazing, I'm absolutely speechless. @shinybri that role was LITERALLY made for you, though I would have never expected you to be actually playing it. @Golden Xan you are a legend, and the amount of effort you invested into getting this character right is truly inspiring. It's hard to express how much this means to me. I've always had a desire to create, but I'm always hindered by my lack of intuition. I'm good at structure, logic, patterns, etc. I can't create visual or acoustic art from scratch very well, I mean I technically can but it takes forever and is very frustrating for me. That's why I became a software developer, because there, you can create using nothing but logic and order. Writing is a passion I'm chasing sometimes, and is much easier for me to do. My writing tends to follow concrete structures and carefully planned progressions, because those things are much easier for my brain to process. I enjoy creating, and of course there's always the odd online friend who tells me they really like something I wrote. Seeing my creations being brought to life in this way, though, is an entirely different level of recognition. I'm currently trying to get back the stories I published on my blog back in Denis's previous company's community. I was reminded of the fact that there was a full arc of three different story lines that all merged in the end. Since it was supposed to be an ongoing story, there isn't really an ending, but I thought maybe they could make an interesting whole anyway. If anyone is interested, I could publish this somewhere here, even though not really DHS related.

Ooooh, I love this! The interleaved "voices" with different (but consistent) rhyming schemes are very cool.

Of course that does make sense. It just felt to me like an entire day of travel is a lot of distance. But thinking about it more and considering that travel speed for an entire group with horse drawn wagons will be a snail's pace when compared to individual riders, it probably checks out. It isn't, don't worry I just hope to create something that could easily have taken place in the world without contradicting anything we learn later. But I suppose maybe I should lower my expectations for myself and just have fun. Which mostly I'm doing anyway.

This seems a bit contradictory to me... if the robbers were known for plaguing people coming in and out of town, what were they doing a day's travels away from town? Not a big deal, but something that tripped me up while reading, maybe another half-sentence of detail could clear it up. I very much like that. The "astounding" part didn't trip me up, I'm assuming you changed it after the others commented on it...? Anyway, I think it's fine the way it is now. That's fine. Where I have difficulty with writing, and maybe @Meta has had a similar experience, is that I don't want it to contradict Apocalypse's ideas about the world. Take the geographical aspect as an example. We have rough map of the world, but much of it is unlabeled. Should we assume that only the drawn buildings indicate where any settlements could be, and everything else is wilderness? If that's the case, why is there a ship north of Isoth, wouldn't that imply that people are traveling to the other continents? Wouldn't they then at least need temporary housing there? And why are there man-made bridges in north-east Isoth, if there's nothing of interest for people to go nearby? Do the buildings that exist in the map already have a fixed story that if we contradicted it would lead to confusion? Or are they placeholders that we could give purpose to? Etc... I agree. I don't necessarily want to compromise terribly to create a story that's 100% lore-friendly and 0% my own, but I would love to have more guidance on how to create something that has a chance of making Denis going "that... actually makes sense" rather than "oh wow, that's cool, but doesn't fit anywhere in the world at all." On the other hand, I also don't want to create a situation where our creations are what people's perception of the world is based on, but then that has little to do with Apocalypse's vision, and they have to either release something that clashes with people's expectations, or have to adjust their own lore to fit with ours, neither of which can be what they intended... Maybe I'm overthinking this

Thanks for the detailed feedback @Golden Xan, that does help! I will keep it in mind for the next part. And sorry @Meta for derailing your thread a bit, I will not respond there again until I actually read your OP. Sometimes I just ramble when it's past what should be my bedtime, lol. I hope I didn't cause any grief.

Absolutely agree. Part of the reason why I made a thread here is to get some input on the direction of my writing. As an absolute amateur, it is not always easy for me to tell if I'm going the right way. My focus in my first story was on imitating Lovecraft's writing style, but of course, the early 1900s are not the Middle Ages. That said, without some more particular feedback it will be hard for me to know which parts of my story may have violated the setting. Which also lowers my motivation to write more, because to me it seems like a big gamble. I like my story for what it is, I am very proud of it, but for all I know, it might be impossible to even duct-tape it into the lore. Furthermore... Absolutely this. Obviously, we are given limited information because that's necessitated by DHS being, in the end, a proprietary product by a company that requires some degree of obscurity in order to ultimately make a profit. As a consumer of media, it is always fun to only get spoon-fed some information, and imagining the rest of the world on your own - your own understanding of the world, its people and events doesn't need to match with the artistic vision, that's kind of the point of art. However, this kind of flips when you are supposed to contribute to the art itself. Without the detailed background information, without unredacted documentation of the whole history, the full geographical and social development of the world. any contribution will be the quality of good fan fiction at best. There is some fantastic fan fiction out there, as Denis likes to point out with Game of Thrones, but in the end, if everyone has their own view of the world, and we are given no clear direction, submissions by individuals will be inconsistent with the deep lore as well as any other contributors' submissions. A director doesn't tell the actors to just play out the scenes as they understand them. A narrative designer doesn't give the dialog writers naught but a few fluff pieces, amazing though they may be, and then expects them to go from there to write dialog that fits the intended design without any further review. A veteran game designer doesn't tell an outsourced company to just make an Italian plumber who jumps on turtles to solve problems, then let them do their thing, and finally publish the result without cross-checking it. It all boils down to this: if the intention is that we write things that absolutely fit the game's lore, the historic events, the geographical and political developments, we need to know what those are. Either that, or submissions have to be significantly rewritten to make them fit. In some cases, little save the basic idea may survive the rewrite. I often found myself looking for little tidbits of information to work off of, but there just isn't much there. How can I make up any story if I have no idea how it could possibly fit the intended world without really knowing that world? Game of Thrones had a lot of lore already released. It had many fans around the globe who were all binging on content. And as the number of fans increased, so did the portion of fans who were professional writers themselves. Deadhaus doesn't have either of those benefits yet. The other comparison brought up often is SCP. But that project has writing guidelines, a strict review process, and tons of reference material on top. Furthermore, it is set in a modern time period, something more people will be able to relate to. Still, the results are usually very heterogeneous and diverse in nature, definitely lacking a coherent art direction. Right now, we do not have much more direction than an average fanbase for an average videogame - most likely much less, because we don't even know what happens in the game itself. I understand the reasoning for this and I'm not in a position to ask for this to be handled differently, all I'm saying is that the best we as a community can possibly do at this stage is to create high-quality fan fiction. If Apocalypse is hoping for more, they need to understand that we can't read Denis' mind.

The small town of Tristburg was of little historical significance. As such, it isn't talked about as much today; modern maps omit its name completely. Not even the foul creatures of Deadhaus show any interest in the ghost town today, for it holds no treasures, no ancient secrets, no economical advantages. Nor is it positioned in a strategically important position. So it is no wonder that people have stopped talking about it. However, as a connoisseur of weird tales myself, I have been collecting stories, be they fictional or factual, of, about, or referencing this forgotten town. The Tristburg Anthology shall be the legacy of my strange fad. It is by no means finished; new stories will be added as I discover them. If you please, you may use this space to indulge in conversation about any of my findings. I may also use it to publish partial stories I have not yet managed to secure in their complete form, to gauge interest and adjust my priorities in finding the remaining pages. It is my aspiration to find some like-minded individuals who will share my enthusiasm about these tales. Or maybe some of you know of works I have not yet come across, and can point me in the right direction. Finally, if you find a story worthy of inclusion into this collection, this will be the place to share it and ask me for a review. For now, please refer to this index for a list of what I managed to compile thus far, and which stories I am still seeking to unearth: The Account of Dr. Leopold Narret Diary of a Nobleman (preliminary title, gathering interest) I am looking forward to sharing my newfound passion with you.

Hello~~ Finally finished my article The Account of Dr. Leopold Narret in the Prose category (I hope that's the correct category, please move if it's wrong).

derula - https://www.worldanvil.com/author/derula

I love this!! I see what you did there. Or goth kiddos who read something on the internet and thought it was cool to try themselves, because the world is crazy like that.

Seems like with asymmetric gameplay, it should be possible to have both, but maybe I'm missing something.

I have so many questions.

@punkintheband got in yaay

That's why I'm still here despite not being sure whether DHS will be a game I would personally enjoy playing.

I mean, us Eternal Champions were promised that Shadow of the Eternals isn't completely off the table yet, so there's that