Aran

Being a Pralgradian Emperor sure seems a risky job. However, last time I checked the timeline, Baltimore I. reigned 45 years, which is not all that long. How long do Sylvians live? >100 years, or even >200? So the Aizonian Empire only existed for 150-odd years. Strnage, but - okay.

I'm coding it in a text editor, with the aid of a load of html books. I'm still learning. My sister has the demo of Dreamweaver, and says it's really cool because it saves her the work of coding. But then, she already learnt html ages ago when I was still mucking about with the trial versions of editors, so she's ahead of me. And I've already thought of a cool title for a page providing info on this world: <p align="center"> <font size=2 face="MaidenWord" color=#BBBB33>"Encyclopaedia Ermariana"</font> Cool, eh? Whoops, I actually posted html in this board. Hope I'm not breaking any rule here. But then, I'm not spamming or anything... EDIT: This refers to your post below Zharrad, I don't want to have every other post in this thread: Geocities/Yahoo, same as yours. And I didn't do any more for the map, only things remaining are those mysterious funky colored areas and the cities. And some place names would also be cool. Are there any scenarios set in Vantanas that I could browse through? Edit 2: I actually forgot to close the align tag. Bad html-er.

OMG, that would mean that would mean that I drew the woods inversely . And drawing them is so much darn work too. Well, I'll just pretend it's the other way around. You'll notice, however, that most of the brown areas are near and around rivers. That's a common location of forests. And about the maps done by me - host them on your site if you want, but I have my own that I'm working on. I'm going to link to yours, and you can do the same. Doston is, as far as I've heard, the fifth continent of Ermarian, but it's not mentioned in the series. Seemingly another fluctuation of reality caused by BoE scenarios inventing new stuff. Dunno about the relation of that to the rest.

What about Doston? Is that unknown?

"Dark areas represent mountains." Does that refer to all colored areas on the map, or just the two gray shades marked Northerlands and Sarkegrad? I can do that one too, Zharrad, if you want. And I *still* don't know what the purple and the green stuff in Vantanas is. Tropical forest? Swamps? Countries? What is it?

Good idea. I think both versions of the map would probably be cool. When all the maps are done, we should make a site to put them up, yahoo or tripod or somewhere. Would make a nice addition to the BoE webring. The rest that remains to do are the cities, and the names of mountains, rivers, lakes, forests and stuff. Now the veterans can make themselves useful. Put up the info!

The first is a woodcut, the second a washed out parchment, right? Dunno how we could fit those different textures into one world map, however. The best thing would be if we could just make the world map in one go - for that we'd need the exact position of the continents; the drawing can be crude, but it must be accurate. Anyone have/can make one? Drakey, TM, *i, anyone?

If you examine the timeline closely, you'll notice that the Anama moved to Bigail, and were existent before then. I didn't know of it either, and I very much think that in Avernum III Ahonar says he founded the Anama on Bigail in the first place, thus causing a logical error. We could assume that the Anama were wiped out in the Anama war, and were later refounded by Ahonar. It's not an uncommon thing for a sect, eh, minor religion. And is anyone going to reply to my question about the number of Aizonian Emperors?

Okay, now that we're back on topic (with emperors), I got one question: If Zion I was the first real Emperor of the Aizonian Empire, and Baltimore I followed after him and was the last, does that mean that there were only TWO emperors in all the history of Aizo? I didn't imagine it's existence to have been that short, but if you insist... Whoops, Zharrad posted in between here. If you find the thing being too vague in some point, ask, I've tried it a few times and I may be able to explain.

If you want to see the tutorial btw, click here: Santharian Map-Making Tutorial It's pretty easy, but it requires a lot of practice before it'll look nice. This is my fourth attempt with it, and it's still very rough. Btw, Arti doesn't specify on how to draw the trees. It's easy though: Just select a brush color from 70-75%, brush size 1 pixel, zoom in and draw a short vertical line; then make a simple circle at the upper end. When you have the lower edge of the forest (the side with the tree trunks) done, just add fuzy circles at the top of the thing. You'll get the hang of it.

You asked earlier by what company it is, it's Adobe. It's $600 usually, and the lowest price I've seen on the web is $350. But I know there are sites on the web that offer the full version for download. I don't think they're legal though, so I won't give links. Do a google search or something.

Geocities, Tripod and Yahoo be damned. Well, I guess they only disallow image linking, not html pages. Go to thie page: Map.html I guess your maps are colored though. Not sure what to do then... . When you patch them together you should remove the banner and signature though.

Zharrad: Are you doing a map of Vantanas too? Because I just learned a form of map-making with Photoshop 7 from a tutorial, and it is ideal for converting this sketch: into a beautiful-looking map, like, for example, this: Isle of Denilou Of course, my skillz with the program aren't as good as that yet, but I could make a similar map as the one linked above, with Vantanas. If that's okay with you, of course. I don't want to usurp your job. It's just I have nothing better to do with Drakey, *i and TM unanimously asserting that I should keep my fingers of Aizoan history. EDIT: If you want to see what the map would approximately look like, here's a link (hope it works, geocities seems to have a nasty habit of intercepting links to images.) If it doesn't work, type the Url in: "www.geocities.com/arancaytar/gifmaps/Vantanas10-map.gif" . Continent of Vantanas Second Edit: What do the purple and the turqouise areas stand for? Heaths and swamp respectively, or something else? I assumed the grey areas stand for mountains and the brown one are forests.

That's what's in the timeline already, and it's even in that part of it that we all agree on.

I'll admit that this bit of timeline was made "with little thought". It was just a suggestion though - I didn't say that this should be made the standard. I'm going to see if I can become a 'veteran' (might take years... ), and then try again.

Well, they might mean the number of posts (>1000), but I don't think so. It could also be the number of years being a member. Or it could mean the number of good scenarios. Neither of us are Veterans. We might become so, though. Just don't give up, newbies never do have an easy time on message boards. Edit: By the way, is it possible to enter several scenarios into one category in the design contest? I'm going to try and make a good scenario on the founding of the Empire.

That's why we're going to ask Jeff to check the thing afterwards: Nobody's asked to accept stuff that's "made by some stranger who isn't Jeff Vogel". Also, nobody needs to conform to this; it just makes matters a bit more understandeable if a kind of general consent on certain tidbits - like the number of continents etc. - is reached and open on the web. That doesn't mean that scenarios that contradict this are 'invalid' or something. It doesn't mean that scenarios are forced to agree on these things. It just means there is anything that can be agreed upon. PS: If you only want to accept history info that comes in a finished scenario, I'll be happy to make a _lot_ of scenarios, set in all those historical events. Mmh, might even be a nice source of inspiration. Edit: This is my idea for a brief early Aizoan (for some reason I prefer Aixoan, but never mind ) history: Code: Rolnic I. Ormessos -650 -590 Founder of the Aizoan Empire, Known as the Farseeing (Ormessos).Rolnic II. -590 -540Rolnic III. -540 -526 Assassinated in a coup, Fleetfoot, a General, seized powerFleetfoot I. -525 -495 His rule was tyrannical, and he persecuted MagesFleetfoot II. -494 -475 Was killed in a coup; the Rolnic family took over againRolnic IV. -475 -430 Was loved by the people for restoring benevolent orderRolnic V. -430 -396 Known as the Conqueror, under his rule the Empire expanded to all of Aizo, and several islands.Rolnic VI. -396 -385 Died at a young age, of a fever. He left no heir.Artimidor I. -385 -350 Known as the Lawgiver. Established a codex of jutice that has been in use with minor modifications until todayArtimidor II. -350 -346 Assassinated, and a long era of civil war started. 45 years of Civil War and absolute Chaos covered the land. It then became clear that the Aizoan Empire was doomed to fall eventually. A long line of short-lived rulers followed:Conrad I. -300 -294Reynhart I. -294 -289Lorn I. -289 -275 Overthrown and killed by his own sonLorn II. -275 -260 Tried to start a genocide on non-humans, but failedConrad II. -260 -256 For a short time, tried to bring back Rolnic's I. traditions of peace, justice, and racial equality.Mark I. -256 -224 Ruled with an iron hand. Hated magic and non-humansMark II. -224 -215 Ruled with tolerance and farsight. Was murdered by his own father, who then set up his bloodthirsty unclePychron I. -215 -203 Was a raving maniac. Killed millions of people on whims.Heavyhand I. -203 -191 A general. Managed to reestablish order for a whileSteelhammer I. -191 -164 Heavyhand's brother. Continued wise reignSteelhammer II. -164 -154 Commited suicide. Eventually, his advisor Zion took over. The history we've established so far takes over from there. I guess there is a major discrepancy to a lot of known Aizoan history, so experts who know about what was before Zion, please tell me. Sounds good though, doesn't it?

Even if you don't, someone else might. The purpose of this is not to research what you care about. Sorry. [/useless flaming] Ahem. I don't really know who's currently involved in the 'project' (if it can be called that), and there's definitely no one to ask permission from. It's a good idea to announce what you'll be working on, though, so no one else will do that. From what I've read now, the following parts have been taken: Anama War (Drakey) Maps of Valorim/Aizo/Pralgrad etc. (Zharrad) First Visitation (Karzoth) Rise of Aizoan Empire (me) Start of Imperial Era (me) Looking forward to seeing your work.

How much land did the Aixoan/Aizoan Empire span before it collapsed? Only Aizo, or other continents as well? I'm currently trying to get some info on the founding on the first Empire, just for fun. EDIT: Please, someone tell me how far back knowledge of the Aixoan Empire reaches! I'm trying to make up a Founder that would have ruled about 650-590 b.P. (before Pralgrad). Is that approximately possible, or does such a founder already exist?

What about Hawthorne IV. and V. then, and Prazac II.? Are those taken out again?

Where did TM say this, in a scenario or here on the board? If it's the latter, I haven't found it anywhere... Not sure; did the Aizoan and the Pralgradian Empire ever truly coexist as separate nations?

What we are doing here is only a general timeline for reference in creating history - we are not yet describing the individual emperors. Also, I'd say that these names are all surnames: I don't think anybody would be named 'Ironclad' or 'Strongarm' by first name. Let's just assume that in Ermarian they call the emperors by their surname and not by their first name. Concerning designer freedom - I agree that not the whole world should be developed. However, there has to be a compromise between freedom and consistency: If the history we make here is too vague, then scenarios are going to contain major contradictions to each other sooner or later, likely sooner. If scenarios are set in a world where there might or might not be another continent right off the coast, it's just confusing. So there should be a general idea for the timeline. Concerning civil wars - we already have some of those, one century (that's a lot) of chaos and strife after the Aizoan (Aizonian) Empire collapsed, 25 years of struggle after the assassination of Viceroy, 4 years when a power-crazy archmage (Garzahd) controled the Empire, and so on. Empires don't need to have that many civil wars. Probably there are going to be many designers who want to set their scenario in such a time, but they've already got plenty to choose from. This timeline already offers most settings for scenarios: Tranquil peace, golden eras, civil war, mayhem, tyranny, exploration, colonization, ethnic cleansing (nephilim, Giants, etc.). It's all there.

What form will that map be in? I just want to know if it shows anything other than land and water, ie. Mountains, forests etc.

Does that mean the Collapse of the Empire is taken out of the history? I'd like that, because it leaves more room for scenario designers if Ermarian and the Empire is not a doomed world... Oh, and I see that this list is slowly becoming more feasible, accurate and complete. We could maybe have this structure finished in a week or so. Also, where there any emperors before Zion in the Aixoan/Aizonic/Aixonian/Aizonese/Aixonish whatever empire, or where there only the two?

Please refer to the timeline in the other topic, which is more up to date, and in which emperor Stewart has indeed been fitted in before the Hawthornes, assuming VoDT to be set 10 years after Exile III, in 843 a.P. By the way, the objective of what we're doing here is to make a canon timeline, since their doesn't seem to be any complete timeline yet - so we have to add certain things, be a bit creative, while at the same time we adjust it so it fits to what has been known before.