The Spider King's Scrapbook

[Poison]

Four Months of Mizahar & Something More I've decided to give scrapbooking a try ... I’ve been in Mizahar since February now, and it’s been pretty amazing. As I’ve stated on occasion, I’ve gotten pretty tired of my old forum. Mizahar isn’t perfect, but it has an original world, admins that are actually active and care about the game and the website as a whole looks quite nice. If I’d known how much fun it would be here, I would probably have made a character sooner rather than simply lurking and stalking the occasional PC (and especially Velarian, Jilitse, Malia and Kendall – I’ve been reading their threads long before I joined). It took me a while to form a connection with Veldrys and understand him. In the beginning I was only writing about him rather than as him, if you know what I mean. That’s changed, and he’s consequently surprised me. When I made Veldrys‘ CS, I had the idea of a Symenestra who resents his race and uses Morphing as a temporary escape in mind, but it’s turned out that he simply wants to study other races and eventually use Morphing to heal. He’s also turned out to be really religious, which I definitely didn’t anticipate. I’m not a particularly religious person in real life. But one of his biggest goal is to become a priest and receive a gnosis mark from Viratas. In the beginning he was this almost asexual man that only lived for science, but I think he may at least be bisexual. He really likes being kissed by Seven, but he also seems to react to Lucette in some way. My plans for him for the season of summer, 511 AV include learning Glyphing, becoming Competent in Morphing so that he can do more complicated transformations (he has 20 points in Morphing now so it’s a realistic goal) and doing more as far as the worship of Viratas is concerned. I also want to put more of an effort into portraying him as what he is: a Symenestra. Sometimes I’m afraid that he comes across as a venomous albino human with fangs and claws rather than somebody who isn’t human at all. I’ve also made a second PC a while ago. While Veldrys turned out to eventually have some things in common with me – he is interested in medicine, languages and history – Lucas isn’t like me at all, apart from the fact that we are both kind of short. He’s fun to write – he doesn’t really take a lot of things serious and sees life as one big adventure – but at the same time I’m struggling a little with him. He’s supposed to be a prankster whose pranks don’t always work out, but at the same time I don’t want to portray him as an idiot. It’s a fine line, and I’m still trying to find the right balance. I’ve also become an AS a little over a month ago. That’s something I wanted pretty much since I joined Mizahar. As much as I love playing my PCs, I love developing locations and making up adventures for others just as much, and that’s something you can only do in a very limited fashion as a PC. I’m not sure how content the PCs and moderators I work with really are with what I do, but I’m modding three threads now with a fourth thread possibly coming soon, and I think that isn’t a bad sign. Before I started as an AS, Kalinor didn’t have any active threads. My next goals for Kalinor are to write up a starting guide, develop Symenos and eventually run an open adventure. I’m also tempted to apply for DS when I have more time this summer, but we’ll see how things go. I’ve often thought about whether I want to use my Scrapbook to write about my real life issues as well, but I’m not completely sure if that would be a good idea. On one hand it can be liberating, but I don’t want to come across as an attention seeker, as whiny, a freak or something worse. My life is actually quite enjoyable, despite whatever things currently aren’t as they should be. There are people that are much worse off than I am. Reading Gossamer’s Scrapbook entry about rumours made me think. If you write about yourself, you will be judged, no matter how much people claim they are neutral, objective, unbiased, tolerant etc. and some people will always see what you write in a negative light, talk about you behind your back and assume things that aren’t true. It's a fact. Besides, some people come to this site to forget their problems for a while and don’t want to read about other people’s problems. P.S.: Isn’t my new avatar awesome?

[Gossamer]

Your new avatar is currently my absolute favorite on the site. Also, welcome to the world of scrapping. I hope your scraps - whatever form they take - bring you every bit as much pleasure as my scraps brings me.

[Lysander]

Your avatar made my day. In return, I offer an equally cute arachnid (credit to Crow for actually finding and
showing it to me). I drew the happy mouth on him.

[Irriari]

I love your avatar. And I think your concept for Veldrys is different. I like it. If it makes you feel any better, I sometimes feel like Irr is just a human with wings. I guess it's because I usually play healers and such, so being downright mean is difficult at times. I think that in Miz, while his Sym side will come out, there are different personalities on the continuous spectrum for each race. He may be more human in some ways, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

[Poison]

My Threads I think I need a list of all my threads and a to-do list on top of it so that I don't forget to post or what my projects are, so here it is: Veldrys [Flashback, Hunters' Gather] Chit-chat (Veldrys) [Flashback] You mean you can store a spell in a scroll? [Flashback] A Chance Meeting (Vizyous) [The Strangers Welcome] Creatures of the Night (Veldrys) Far from Home (Alvina Celandine) On the Trail of a God (Tabarnac) Seeking Guidance [Veldrys] [Temple of Nikali] The Spider in the Temple (Lucette) [Flashback] Under Star and Under Moon Lucas [Training Ground] Care for a little spar? (Dimitri) [Stone Gardens] The Squire in the Fountain (Kendall) [Training Ground] Are you lost, little boy? (Jokor) [Stone Garden] Vision and Execution [Lucas] [Windmount Stables] Foiled Again! (Jaelyn) Poison: The Morning of the Moths (Vizyous) [Flashback] A Question of Ethics (Poison) [The Place of Purging] [Flashback] Autopsy (Poison) [Flashback] An Autumn Hunt (Lanvira) Projects: Starting Guide for Kalinor Writeup for the Symenos Language I've also come to the decision that my absolute maximum amount of threads is going to be something like 20. This will allow me to usually post to each thread twice a week and enjoy writing for Mizahar rather than being frustrated and burning out quickly.

[Kendall Saarinen]

I loooove your new avi Spiderman! Very cute!! I did not know that you read Kendall's threads prior to joining! I'm glad you liked him. He tends to be a bit of a dork sometimes. I'm really glad you joined the site. For a while we did not have a lot of Symenestra. It is great players like you (and Seven even if he is a quarter Sym) who tend to inspire people to play the less played races.

[Poison]

Yes, I read your threads (and those of a few other PCs) prior to joining. You have a really original character concept, so I enjoy reading Kendall's threads, even if he's a dork sometimes.

And I hope that my PC and my work in Kalinor inspire other people to make Symenestra PCs. Mizahar needs more of them.

Thanks for liking my avatar by the way. I like it as well and am probably going to keep it for a long time.

[Poison]

Absences, Delays & Such I have finals coming up at the end of June/the beginning of July. As some of you know, I'm doing a degree in law and graduate studies in linguistics on top of it, so you can imagine that I'll be very busy. I won't disappear - even I can't study 24/7 - but as the end of the month draws closer, it might take me a little longer to reply. As for summer, I'd initially planned to go to Russia and attend a language course there, but the whole thing turned out to be extremely badly organized, and I had a massive argument with one of the people that were supposed to accompagny me, so there is currently a 75% chance that I'm not going. I'm seriously considering delaying my trip to Russia for a year or two and go to Paris instead or see if I can find cheap tickets to one of the Scandinavian countries and spend at least part of the summer there. Either way, I'll be a lot more present than I initially expected.

[Poison]

Symenos and Nuits Some of you know that I'm working on Symenos, the language of the Symenestra. Here's a quick overview of what Symenos will be like. That's actually the first part of the first draft of my writeup, before I explain the grammar in detail and list a few important Symenos words. At the moment I'm mainly wondering if it's okay to use terms like "morphemes", "agglutinative" and "plural marker" or if it's too complicated and will only discourage people from making a Symenestra PC. And since some people were curious about which RL languages I'll base it on, the sound of it will be reminscent of Slavic languages, the grammar will have Slavic as well as Finno-Ugric influences, and it will have a honorifics system like Japanese. Of course I'll also add my own touch to it. Symenos is a language that is spoken by less than one thousand people, mainly in the city of Kalinor. Most of the speakers are Symenestra. There are very few members of other races that have learned Symenos as a second language or know more than a few words in it. There are no languages that are related to Symenos, although some scholars claim that there are at least a few words that have their origins in the old languages that were spoken before the Valterrian and that there was some form of contact between the Symenestra and the other races that inhabitated Falyndar at the time. Symenos is mainly an agglutinative language, meaning that words are formed by joining morphemes together. Like Common Symenos uses 26 letters and about 44 different sounds. Unlike Common Symenos doesn’t have articles however. That means „ranekh“ can theoretically mean „a moth“ or „the moth“. Whether a noun is determined or indetermined can usually be deduced from the context. While a plural marker exists, it is not used by anybody besides the priesthood and a few old people. It is considered very formal. In everyday Symeonos „ranekh“ can thus either mean „moth“ or „moths“. There is also no such thing as a future tense which has led some people to talk about how the Symenestra race as a whole has no future. The present tense is used to both indicate happenings in the present and the future. Another difference from Common is that adjectives are placed behind the noun, not in front of it. The most outstanding characteristic of Symenos is its elaborate system of honorifics however. Certain syllabes are attached to a name to indicate differences in rank and age. I'm also going to make a third PC. With no uni for three months (summer holidays in my country last that long!) and since finals were not nearly as much work as I expected, I suddenly find myself having a lot of free time. I already thought about making a Nuit when I first came to Mizahar. My Nuit PC won't be the ancient Nuit with the gnosis of Blight that I initially wanted to play however. Instead I'll make a new nuit, maybe as new as a month old. Most of the Nuit PCs seem to be hundreds of years old. I want to do something different. I don't think there are any really young Nuit PCs in Mizahar. I think it could be really interesting to play a Nuit who is still learning what it means to be a Nuit and clinging to the remnants of his old life. He might even still be in his original body. And he'll be a (former) Vantha.

[Malia]

Hey, we should totally get together and thread since our holiday times are the same and I want some fast threads too.

Also, I'm looking forward to your Nuit. Back when Miza was still new and shiny, there was a Nuit girl who had just been changed into one and wanted to reverse the process and become human again. Cosette Merryweather... just fyi, since you don't want to have a similar concept, I imagine.