Summer Camp 2024: Pledging at Dawn

Sixfold are the years of suffering, sixfold are the years of joy. Winter's grasp is upon the south and yet in our hearts, we hear summer's noise.

It's that time of year again! For those new to Istralar, Summer Camp is a WorldAnvil yearly tradition. It is a month-long worldbuilding challenge in which a number of prompts are released throughout July, with the goal being to complete as many as you like. For every year that Summer Camp has existed, I and Istralar have always entered something for every single prompt. This shall not be the year to change that, though I must admit, it is going to be far more challenging this year.
You see, I've played Final Fantasy XIV since.. 2015ish. The new expansion releases on June 28th this time; Summer Camp begins on June 29th. You can, I hope, see the issue this brings? I'm also heading out skiing for a week in the middle of July (it is winter in Australia), so that's going to make things *doubly* fun. This won't be the first time I've been writing whilst on holiday, but it's going to be quite a stressful time, I suspect.
Anyway, as usual, WorldAnvil have released some homework to build hype and readiness for Summer Camp. This is the article in which I go over that homework. There are four assignments per week, and four weeks -- and of course, I'm writing this article merely days before the event begins, because I certainly never did my homework well before the deadline in university and I shan't begin doing so now. Shall we begin?

Blue of Titania's Court by Hanhula (via Midjourney)

The Usual Tracker: My Progress

As always, I document my Summer Camp plans and progress in a spreadsheet! Interested in using this? Here's the link to the singleplayer version I'm using here. I've embedded it into this page using an iframe statblock!

Catoblepon and I made a multiplayer version of this for tracking your work with other people, too, and it's compatible with my single-person version. Both trackers are pinned in the WorldAnvil Discord in #summercamp-2024 as usual!

Week 1: Change

Chandna, Empress in Dreams by Hanhula (via Midjourney)

Assignment 1

Consider what kind of change would fit in with your world's themes, genre, and other foundational points.

To add the missing context to the quote: the theme for the first set of prompts will be Change. Now, the way the theme assignments are worded this year is a very interesting way to tell you to look at your world's meta without telling you to look at your world's meta. I'm not a particularly big fan of ascribing too much of a genre to an entire world and the universe around it, honestly. Unless your setting is extremely homogenous, there's little fun in having the ENTIRE SETTING be ONE GENRE. Honestly, what's fantasy without a little horror, romance, adventure, et cetera?
Change is actually one of Istralar's more pivotal, reoccuring themes in and of itself. Change is a very powerful force, and nothing remains the same forever. Some cling to the idea of their static eternity, but even they will change in seeking their perfection. Istralar is in a very transitional phase at this moment - not only as a setting, but as a planet. After the redemption of a Shard to its former status as a god, the world has been left trembling. Weather sweeps across the globe in frantic, unnatural manners, and the barriers between the physical world and all else in existence threaten to fracture.
Holy Princess Chandna of Shiar, who I wrote for a previous Summer Camp, exemplified this prompt recently, actually. She reached out through the dreams of many psychic spellcasters, aided by the Earth-Mother's Gift and its control over an avatar, and changed not only herself but others into idealised monstrosities to fight my party in hopes of creating a world she could live freely in. Despite her loss, she and others have been forever changed by this experience. Whilst her story is told, perhaps these prompts will give us a reason to look at the other stories that hers touched...

There is much to write here, if the prompts are right. And if they aren't, I'm sure we can get some more bread attacks or somesuch!

Assignment 2

Based on this, decide how many prompts you'll go for during Summer Camp. Then, download the pledge document and fill it accordingly!

The same, again and again and again: I will write as many prompts as there are. I sincerely hope that the number shall remain at 40! I should have gone to the hospital for the ocular migraine that the additional 2 added last-minute last year caused me. It was a really bad time and caused me to miss work. The extended time to write this time is lovely, and I hope that no decision is made to stress out everyone going for the challenging goal of doing every prompt by adding more (unless the deadline is ALSO extended).
If you're wondering how I manage, by the way, I set a time budget for each article on each day. An average article takes me about 2 hours to write. Something like Alysia's Farewell takes longer - that was more like 6. So - I figure out how many articles I need to write each day, I come up with ideas whilst I'm at work, and then I turn on my creativity after work and bang on the keyboard for a bit.

Pledge Time

And here's my pledge! The colours are allowed to be chaotic, it's my treat.
Did you know Istralar has an official logo? I don't get to use it very often, but I'm still happy with it. SVG continues to be the bane of my existence, but it worked OK for that.

Vexuan Dreaming by Hanhula (via Midjourney)

Assignment 3

Get your categories and tags organized!

Baby I am so far ahead of you. I made an ENTIRE PROGRAM FOR DOING THIS. Admittedly, the category manager is still private to me (because it's not done and it's a bit messy on the API side of things), but the tag manager is VERY much in and working. I've already made multiple indices - check the Index of Indexes - by utilising Brigid's tagging & tag-searching functionality.
Please let me know if you use Brigid, too! I'm motivated to work on adding cool Brigid stuff by hearing what people do with it, and what else they might want from it. My work is extremely busy right now (I'm a game dev, the game is near a huge milestone, go figure..) so I've had little time OR motivation to do anything to Brigid recently, but... maybe that'll change after SC?

Assignment 4

Take a look at your meta, primer, and any other high-level document and update it according to the current state of your world.

No.

Week 2: Refuge

Assignment 1

Consider what kinds of refuge would fit in with your world's themes, genre, and other foundational points.

I'm not really a fan of how these prompting questions are worded, so I'm electing to ignore them and focus on their real meaning: what sort of things does 'refuge' conjure for me? Istralar is an old world, so it has many small places one might find refuge, whether they be fey grottos or popular Aletheian holiday locales, and I can always find room for more of these.
But 'refuge' is not so simple a term to only mean places one might stay to rest. One might seek refuge from war or chaos, or as an escape from trauma. One might be a refuge for another, a beacon of safety in the crowd. One might be forced to become a refugee, shivering in the wreckage of your once-home. These are the tales I long to tell. Let us hope the prompts play nice.

Assignment 2

Find a community—whether that’s our Discord server, Facebook Group, your RPG or friend group, or something else.

Y'know, I think moderating the community for 6 years on Discord might count for this one. I'm also the leader of the chapter Tabletale, and have a lore-obsessed Pathfinder campaign group with whom I regularly trade ideas. Not to mention folks like the Cheems or Qurilion, whose servers and DMs I lurk in. I don't even know how I ended up in all of these places, but the worldbuilding community is overall too lovely for its own damn good!

A Brief Escape by Hanhula (via Midjourney)

Flight of the Dwarves

Assignment 3

Find ways to improve styling and layout in your world!

We all know I'm going to come up with some interesting thing that I want to do in CSS and lose a day or so making it pretty. Last SC, I made a whole new theme for some articles. With that said, Dimitris has teased a new presentation UI enough that I'm refraining from excessive CSS/layout tasks at the moment. I have no desire to spend 10+ hours perfecting a design only for it to need to be redone in a few months!
As usual, by the way, I'm happy to help out with everyone else's CSS, so long as the requests are reasonable. Just pop into CSS-help in the Discord with a link to your page and a clear explanation of what you want done! If I feel like you're asking too much of free assistance, I'll point you in the way of the lovely folk who do paid commissions, like TJ and Oneriwien. CSS is a significant part of my day job and I do enjoy practicing on WA's varied themes, but please treat myself or any other CSS helper with respect, and respect our time by giving us links to your work and not poking one specific person all the time!

Assignment 4

If you’re a CSS wizard, maybe take the time now to give it a polish!

CSS is styling, why is this a separate assignment? See above!

Week 3: Belief

Assignment 1

Consider what kind of beliefs would fit in with your world's themes, genre, and other foundational points.

Something something reject the question, accept my interpretation. Belief is a very core concept to Istralar and I'm really hoping this category of prompts in particular gives me a chance to write up the tale of Tyreos - Istralar's newest god, who was also a god before. His rescue and ascension is one of my party's biggest achievements to date and I'd love to get to capture that in a SC article.
I'm also hoping this isn't purely belief in a religious sense. Belief is such a fun thing to toy with in storytelling, for myths and legends can have interesting grains of truth in them. That's always been one of my favourite ways to tease at what's true in Istralar, as seen in articles like Whispers of Divinity. By writing what the common stories and beliefs are, rather than what is true, I can not only tell a more intriguing story -- but also allow myself plenty of room as a gamemaster. Istralar is not a setting made simply for my own enjoyment; it's the home of a small herd of nerds (there's EIGHT OF THEM right now???) who play in my campaign.
Vague stories and seeded myths within other texts offer them hints to what's really going on in the world, and give them new plot threads to latch onto for future sessions or for the next campaign. If everything was fact all the time, I'd be writing myself into a corner and spoiling the story they've been uncovering since early 2016! So: 'belief' is one of the more promising SC themes we have... you know I'm going to come up with some cool tales for it!

Tyreos, the Protector by Hanhula (via Midjourney)

Assignment 2

Apostate by Hanhula, via Midjourney

Create a bank of inspirations! Quotes, music, description of experiences and shower thoughts, etc.

I've actually been doing this throughout the year, and will be continuing to do so! Istralar has a Discord server, and I typically post anything particularly inspiring for Istralar's themes and vibe into the #istralar-inspiration page. This can be art, quotes, or whatever really catches my fancy. The other place I store my inspirations is my Tumblr, where I've got tags for inspiration & writing reference that I've been collecting little tidbits of intrigue in for something like a decade now. It's a good time. Fair warning if you follow me on Tumblr: I reblog a lot.
For some specific writing inspirations, I'm going to point to two fanfic series. The first is for Tolkien's Silmarillion, but can be read and understood easily if you have some grasp of Lord of the Rings and its worldbuilding. It's "Your shadow rising to meet you" by Chthonion, and it might be one of the greatest character studies I've found in a long while. The depth of storytelling and yet the accessibility of the tale is beautiful to watch, and I still refresh my fanfiction inbox every day in hopes that there'll be an update.
The second series is the Bloodied and Broken series by Blue, which does require an understanding of Dragon Age Inquisition. Dragon Age is an amazing setting on its own. This series takes the worldbuilding of Thedas, the storytelling and pitfalls of Inquisition, and bolts across fields and through mountains to tell its own tale. Politics weave through deep character focuses as we explore Ixchel's attempt to build a better life for herself. I greatly enjoy pieces where the protagonist is trying their best, but doesn't always succeed, and is sometimes so deeply flawed in their own approach that you can see it from outside.

Assignment 3

Find art and pictures that inspire you, and grab a map if you don't have one (and need one).

...Refer to above, I suppose? As for maps: I've got public maps for Takawaoku and Iskaldhal, a draft private one for Xin-Jiyu, and many sketches/drafts of Valathe. Istralar as a whole has a general map posted in Geography of Istralar that I'd like to one day overhaul when I've completed the maps for the other regions, including Kudara (which will be added some time in the future when it comes time for my second campaign to begin).

Assignment 4

Check your inspirations again. Are they still relevant? Can you find any that better represent the current state of your project?

Sorry, are three of the assignments this week just 'check your inspirations' in different ways?! I.. regularly check my inspirations! I'm always looking for new things that inspire me. Nothing really gets 'outdated' when it comes to inspiration - you may simply draw all you can from a piece, or find things that you prefer.
We are influenced and inspired and marked forever by all that we see, minor or major, and I don't think we can pass specific things as 'irrelevant' necessarily just because they no longer spark the same thoughts as they once did. Hell, we all know 'Harry Potter' has gone from being an inspiration to an entire generation to a big red cross through all our memories, and the inspiration we now get from that series - if any - is to do better than what that horror of an author did.
I really can't think of anything else to write here that hasn't already been covered!

Gaia, the Avatar by Hanhula (via Midjourney)

Week 4: Decay

Istralar Bleeding by Hanhula (via Midjourney)

Assignment 1

Consider what kind of decay would fit in with your world's themes, genre, and other foundational points.

DECAY IS SUCH A GOOD THEME. I'm never around for the announcement streams when it comes to things like prompts being posted or themes being revealed, because they're always at ridiculous hours for me. That said, as soon as I saw this one mentioned, I was immediately excited. Decay is probably my favourite of the themes this time around. It has so much potential as a vessel for storytelling. My immediate thoughts went to themes of former grandeur and the decay of years setting in - ruined mansions, lost glory, ghosts haunting the places they once stood - and to representations of time overall.
Rot, mould, mushrooms, and cycles of consumption also link heavily into this theme, and I can see some very intriguing species being conjured up both in Istralar and other settings. I'm not the biggest fan of species articles, as anyone that heard me writing for last year's summer camp can attest, but I do hope there's one for this theme. I want to see how many different mushrooms we can get across every world competing in SC!
Beyond actual decay or the decay brought on by time, there is also corruption, and I think we all know by now how much I adore themes of corruption. Taking pure morals and twisting them to darkness, or tricking those fighting for good into dying to further evil causes, or eating away the very threads of a mortal's fraying sanity with something unknowable -- these are all things I love to play with, and I have so many more toys in the toybox still when it comes to these tales.

Give me an excuse to write more weapons like the Light Rampant or conditions like Censoring Ophthalmia, please!

Assignment 2

If you like special tea when you write, stock up for a month. Tidy your office, make a “do not disturb” sign, and think about any other last-minute strategies to optimize your writing space and time!

hehehe 'special tea', 'specialty'. Don't think I don't see you punning, Ondo/Janet/WA team. I think I've already commented on my time management strategies above, actually.
To reiterate, I'll be budgeting hours each day for summer camp writing time, and will take breaks as necessary. There are 31 days in July and the team are giving us an extra 5 days this time around, so in total, 36 days. If you assume 2 hours of worldbuilding per article, then that's easily doable with a few days having more writing than others for 40 articles completed. I'll be trying to write a little more each day once Dawntrail's content is complete so that I can claw back the time lost to FFXIV and maybe build a buffer prior to my holiday, but we'll see how things go.

Assignment 3

Review your world homepage to hook potential readers!

As mentioned prior, I'm not doing excessive changes to Istralar's styling at the moment. It's not been that long since I did a huge overhaul of the front page, and I don't have the time or energy to tweak something that'll be irrelevant when WA eventually releases its presentation overhaul! Until I decide to go on some wild reorganisation binge, we're sticking with our current spinny glowy homepage. ;)

Fungus Among Us by Hanhula (via Midjourney)

Assignment 4

Take a look at your author profile and pillar articles on your world and polish them!

I read this, groaned, and mumbled something about effort. I think we'll be skipping this one, honestly. My author profile is Good Enough^tm for now, and I'll need a lot more time than I currently have to make any changes to the world's most important articles. I've been working on the currently-private article for my party, the Lost Ones, on and off throughout the year. It's now the longest article in the world. I still have YEARS of campaign lore to catch up on before you can read it. My gods.

An Important Postscript

Like always, I have a few extra things to note.
Firstly, and most importantly, there are a number of extremely tumultuous things happening in real life right now. For me personally, and on a more global scale, for everyone. Personally, I'm dealing with an extremely stressful time period at work as the cool game we're working on gets ever closer to completion, a number of health issues, and the lengthy & expensive visa process to try and keep my partner with me permanently. Not to mention how much my rent's gone up this year alone... It's a hard time right now, basically.
On a global scale - well. We all see the news. We see Israel committing genocide and claiming anti-Israel sentiment is antisemitism (it isn't, by the way, just like being anti-America isn't being anti-Christian). We see climate change worsening. We see our rights being taken from us, especially we women, and we see our trans siblings being attacked.
I bring this up because what I write is, inevitably, influenced by the world. I would not be surprised if Istralar's tales this year are darker in light of the world's climate. It's not as easy for me to write light-hearted tales of gnomes being punted or sentient bread at the moment. I'll try and keep it from being too grim, but you may want to check my articles for content/trigger warnings before reading them. If I deem them in need of one, they'll be in red, right above the sidebar or above the main body text.

When things get too hard, it's good to have some videos of peace or silliness to fall back on. This is one of my safe videos.

Secondly, use of AI. I have a standing policy on this that needs updating for some recent developments, but the important parts boil down to: AI imagery should be used with extreme care, and any money you put into an AI service should be paid back into artist pockets as best you can. My finances aren't the best this year, but I'm still managing this: I'm currently subscribed to an array of different artist patreons that ensure an approximately 4:1 ratio of artist payments to AI bullshit.
Please try to keep the environment in mind as well with these services, and investigate their environmental policies. I will continue to use AI imagery for strictly non-commercial illustrative purposes, and never for any text. As always, please do not debate me on this; you're better off spending the time looking at beautiful human-drawn art.

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Thirdly and finally: I live in Australia on stolen land, on land never ceded to its rightful owners, taken without treaty. Specifically, I live in Melbourne, which is largely the land of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong peoples of the Kulin nation. I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of this land on which I live, and pay my respects to Elders past and present. The First Nations people of Australia have a lengthy and beautiful tradition of storytelling, and I hope that whilst I live on their land, that I can honour this land's first storytellers with tales of my own.
If you'd like to learn more about the Wurundjeri, they have a website sharing some of their stories here. The Bunurong people have an official website here, and some of their tale is told here. I'm sure they've got many more resources if you'd like to learn more! I certainly didn't know nearly enough about any of the First Nations peoples of Australia until well after I moved here.