Age of Defiance WorldEmber Homework 2023

Worldember 2023 Pledge by Mardrena

When I first started digging into World Anvil I made what I call "Pillar articles" centering around the major superpowers of my ficverse. I plan to revisit those and update with new artwork, links, and revisions someday, but in the meantime I've been adding more columns to this structure, expanding on this eclectic world. Age of Defiance is more than a "what-if" or "a day in the life of". It's a universe inhabited by characters who live and breathe inside my noggin.
I have yet to make any articles for what I term the "Core Cast". These are characters specific to the Ronin Warriors Original Animated Series, OVAs, drama CDs, or novels. Because I do the vast bulk of artwork that isn't kitbashes (RPG Stories, Dungeon Alchemist, Flowscape etc.) on my own, I don't plan on covering the guys individually until I have enough new hand-drawn artwork for each one. But in the meantime there's plenty of other characters I'd like to expand upon. I've covered locations, environments, and tidbits of background lore thus far. I'm fairly specied-out after Summercamp 2023, but there's so much that hasn't been covered yet like events, gear, and abilities and that brings me to my first goal.

Week 1 Area of Focus: Characters!

Characters in AOD fall in to four categories: the above mentioned Core cast, Major characters like Roth, Minor characters like Miz, and Supporting cast like King Torke. I would love to add more characters but it seems there can be 4-6 categories for species, 4-6 categories for locations, and 1-2 categories for characters in any given event. I got to experiment with a new format combining images with embedded text to spice up story excerpts rather than just using quotes in the article for White Wind. Eventually I would like to incorporate illustrated scenes into existing articles and chapters and that is a monumental undertaking on its own. Given problems I'm facing with the site I'd been using for literally decades, I'm having to take adding chapters to World Anvil off the back burner.
A WIP drawing...

WIPLines.jpg

Vector Drawing WIP by Mardrena

Made in Inkscape

Week 2: Mini-meta!

There's actually a fifth category of characters that can probably be filed under Major characters. I call these "Vanguards" and they're Major characters original to AoD that were some of the oldest and earliest created and act as sort of the "face" of AoD as a ficverse. Examples can be Tanya Sanada or Raurgoth. Technically Trakar is a Vanguard since he is a representative of the Three Allies, but he only appeared fairly recently in Season 5 of AoD, Spacequake. Beastlord could also be viewed as a Vanguard since he is the major antagonist of Season 4, Cataclysm War, but I'm not terribly happy with his page I felt like I rushed it and I'll have to redo it at some point.
I had a page partially started for Danae because as I had Pillars for Thangien and Thunthen and their respective homeworlds, I wanted to make a page each for Danae and Bak Thraplek, the other two Allies. Then SC22 came along and I got wrapped up in that. It's too short to call complete but too long to be a stub so I might have to scrap it and start over entirely. Vanguards tend to have the most early artwork but I would like to have newer, full-color artwork before I add a new Vanguard.
Vanguards

Vanguards Assemble! by Mardrena

Week 3: Homepage remodel!

It needs work without a doubt. It's fairly barebones. I kind of view my AoD page like my apartment. When I moved in I had just the essentials. bed, desk, and chair. Over the years I've incrementally added things like bookcases, an ottoman, some display cabinets, and hefty amounts of posters on the wall. And now its comfortably cozy, but that took a long time.
I actually have some artwork ready I would like to put on the front page, but currently I'm in the polishing stage of finalizing Season 1 of my ficverse. I was going to post it as is but I did a read-through and I swear there's some word gremlins stealing letters. I had to scrutinize every sentence and found some typos for example instead of "off" it said "of" and I've spent the past week or so playing grammar whack-a-mole. Hopefully I can have it ready to post ideally before end of month, minimally before end of year. My ultimate goal is to have all "seasons" imported over to WA with brand-new cover art. Aftermath is probably the one I've rewritten the most because that's where it all began, and the last time I revisited it was way back in....2007...
A taste of things to come...

Aftermath Cover by Mardrena

Week 4: Last-minute prep

Writing itself comes fairly easy to me since I'll write something to death in my head before I ever actually type it out. I can write in my sleep, while playing a game, or even at work. Back in the day when I used to use voice chat during games I'd annoy people with how fast I'd type. I'm still not entirely sure what I'll do specifically for World Ember 2023 but I'll let that come to me at some point. The biggest bugaboo for me is drawing. Thankfully I've got so much tools and supplies available now that I just didn't have back in the day. I usually try to cram in as many sketchbooks as possible into my backpack when on vacation or out of the house and even if I can't get much drawing done on the go I can always clean up sketches or experiment on the tablet.
As far as my personal goal for AoD Season 1, I'm coming down to the wire with the final proofing pass, when I'm not beating sleep off with a stick that is. Most of the articles I've posted on World Anvil thus far deal with concepts, items, locations, and a few characters featured therein, so at least I can incorporate some of those existing articles and artwork with the chapters. Eventually I hope to have full illustrations for each scene, or mini-chapter, but for now I'll make do with what I got.
The Jurassic Juggernaut himself...

Raurgoth Radiant by Mardrena