Introduction
Welcome back friends. Has it really been a year since WE23? I can’t believe how impossibly fast the last twelve months have flown. I continue to stand in awe of the amazing and creative community that has assembled around World Anvil. Each of you inspires me with your incredible imaginations and I am thankful for your encouragement and support. Gokrenxia is now about nineteen months old and just shy of 157k words, with almost 90k words added thus far in 2024.
Homework: Week 1
Goal
Going into WE23, I was uncertain how likely it was I would be able to write 10k words. While I now know it is plausible for me to hit the 10k word goal, this year I’m more concerned about time availability. I’m setting my goal for 10k words, but with a significant dose of hesitation around whether I’ll be able to carve time out of real life.
Area(s) of Focus
Working through the homework in WE23 it became apparent there was a single thread I could pull to weave what would become the twelve Great Houses of the dwarven kingdom of Kungaroun. Reviewing my many stubs this year, I find myself wanting to fill in some fairly major gap areas and revisions.
The People
First is the
people. Over the last year, my mental model of the elves have expanded to become multidimensional and the original 2023 write-up needs to be completely revised. There are now two different lineages of elves with very different physical characteristics: the light-skinned Sharizaad and the caramel-skinned Bahtzaad elves. The prolific culture of secret elven secret societies began to take shape and character with the fleshing out of the
Hadymaar Brotherhood, the
Order of Salijarna, and the
Khudrohara.
I’d like to finally put some thought into the Ja’nakh horse tribes and add depth to the nomads of the Zuul’Hy Freelands. I would enjoy adding some personality, culture, and character to the Shar’elum, Arjeev, and Vyrian peoples beyond what is written today. I’ve had some ideas around trying to define the everyday things like;
As a stretch goal, it might be interesting to begin to explore the Rundaba, though they’ve not been overly impactful in the world to date.
The Orgs
Second is organizations, specifically I’d like to actually put pen to paper this WE around the Shaf Yadursmaj - the secret intelligence organization of Eastern Vath’azen. Then there’s the Tobechnny, the dwarven equivalent, and the unnamed elven group under Habri Qalekkt.
The Kingdoms
Third are kingdoms. There are the newer lands defined in 2024: Shavomyr and Tahlerun. How diametrically opposed those two elven kingdoms stand: one a vice-kingdom under the new imperial throne of Al’jymoor, and and another of loyalists devoted to the old ways. If I’m struggling for words here I might look to the dwarven lands of Kungaroun, which came to life behind the scenes of WE23, but has never been well-defined.
Customs & Traditions
I'd also love to drill wayyyyyy down to think about small details like what exclamations do the different races say, and what’s the history behind them? For example. in a recent episode of
Tales of the Inner Council,
Yahri Negdahe yells
“Clouds and clay, woman!” when surprised.
Other recent thoughts around customs and traditions:
What do betrothals look like across the peoples?
What is it about the stars that draws the hearts of the Vyr?
How are birthdays celebrated?
Meta Review
After a thorough review of the meta, I find it's still largely appropriate. There are very small adjustments I've made (and a spelling correction or two) but overall it still adequately reflects the character and theme of Gokrenxia.
Homework: Week 2
Homepage Review
Broadly, I’m satisfied with the homepage. I like the theme, mood, and color scheme and think they appropriately reflect the overall character of the world. I did make a small adjustment to the intro, but am otherwise fine with it as is. I’ve never liked the three column layout for the Codex, Recent Articles, and Maps. Specifically I don’t like how the articles end up squished on smaller resolutions (ex: mobile).
World Primer Review
I created my the Gokrenxia Primer early in 2024, and am pretty happy with the contents there. I’d forgotten much of what I’d written, but it still looks pretty accurate to where the world has developed. I made a very minor change to include the names of the two new elven realms of Shavomyr and Lysandre.
Community Tools
Everything is enabled. My writing is being captured under the top-level Prose heading in the World Codex and sidebar. I’ve not started using subscriber groups yet, but perhaps this is something I could explore in the future.
CSS Wizardry
I’d love to say that I’ve moved all of my images away from the clunky style credit rectangles, but alas no. I’ve banged my head on the CSS for credits on and off for the last two months and haven’t been able to get it to behave like I want (which is a mouseover effect on the image). When I can get it to work, I inevitably find edge cases where it doesn’t and end up rolling the changes back.
On the upside, I *did* manage to remap my sidebar settings to make it much more compact. I’m very happy with that change!
I wish you a wonderful Worldember and look forward to the articles you will write. I would be particularly interested in the traditions you listed.
Thanks Blue! I'll try to get at least one or two of those just for you. :)