[For clarification, your characters are very young: roughly 13-16 years old.]

The scorching heat tingles on your skin even through your robes, and your wide hoods can scarcely keep out the glare of the sun. Behind your scarves, the air has become damp and hot, but to remove the scarves would be to expose yourself to the billowing clouds of salt in the wind.

It’s been a day since you left the orphanage in search of a means to repair the Generator, and the journey has not been easy, though not treacherous. As you left you’d heard the panicked sounds of the caretakers discovering your absence, but no one came running after you. It is disheartening, in a way, but one less mouth to feed is one less mouth to feed. And as your throats run dry and scratchy, you think you can understand that sentiment, at least a little.

Still though, the dryness of your throats is beginning to prove concerning. Dehydration and heat strokes are very real concerns out here on the vast sun-mirror of the salt flats. You do have several full water bladders, but it would be best if you didn’t exhaust it all so quickly. After all, who knows how long your journey might be? And then there is the matter of not actually knowing where you’re going…

And what luck! In the distance, you espy a trundling caravan surrounded by people, walking slowly. What will you do?

Previously…

“For now, we have built some back up generators. But as you have already seen, they are nowhere nearly as effective as the Generator, and they consume fuel at an alarming rate. These back ups may last us a few months, but no more. Beyond that, we must adapt to this heat, or perish.”

A heavy sense of despair and fear settles over you, for you know that there are many younger ones in the orphanage who could not hope to survive the full onslaught of Korvarrin heat, and just as many who would freeze to death without the cooling systems’ insulating functions when night falls. Perhaps Lou was right, it would be folly to give up hope so quickly without at least seeing for yourself if there was something, anything at all, in your power to do.

Beneath your feet, underground, the ever-present hum of the Generator is conspicuously absent.


Aylon turned to look down the right-hand corridor where he had seen Lou go, and his face hardens.

“Well if we have to stay here, then we have to fix the Generator don’t we? C’mon Ek!” the bigger boy beams at the other, grabbing his hand and pulling him down the corridor.

They followed the long corridor as it winds down underground, the lamps lining the walls flickering weakly as the Generator’s power failed. Soon, they were feeling their way along the walls in the dark, taking care not to step and stumble on each other’s cloaks. So accustomed to the dark of the corridor they became, that when it at last widened into the chamber housing the Generator, they both cried out in surprise and pain at the dim light.

Blinking the stars from their eyes, Aylon recovered first, and noticed a motionless dark lump on the ground.

“It’s Lou!” He cried, rushing forward to check on the man.

Ektor on the other hand, was distracted by a large imposing structure. It pulsed with a weak, red glow, a muted hum vibrating the ground beneath his feet. There it was. The Generator.

“He’s alive,” Aylon concluded with some relief, “but I think he’s burnt? See the marks on his hands.”

Ektor inspected the scene, and discovered an open panel in the Generator. Within, he could see a strange red crystal, larger than he was tall. As he approached, he could feel the heat radiating from it, but occasionally it would fade to a duller red, and then the air would feel cold in the absence of its pulsing heat.

“This must be what powers the Generator,” said Ektor, “And Lou must have touched it, thinking to inspect or replace it somehow, and it burned him.”

“Then it is dangerous!” cried Aylon

“It’s just out of power,” is Ektor’s ponderous response, “If we found a new one, we’d be fine.”

Mind made up, Ektor returns to his rooms and begins gathering his things. Aylon chased after him, hovering worriedly at his elbow and attempting to dissuade him.

“Hey, we’re just kids! Did you see what it did to Lou? We’ve never even left this place before!”

“Aylon, someone has to do something,” Ektor sighed, pack full and heart set, “Besides… No one needs me here. You can stay here, Aylon. You have friends here.”

Aylon blinked, startled by the sadness and loneliness in Ektor’s voice. All at once, his hesitance was banished.

“I’m coming with you.”

I have identified the six attributes of myself that I want to explore for this first project: my introversion, rationality, and my love for science, world-building, games, and my indulgence in escapism.

  • Introvert

01

As in introvert, I place a strong emphasis on personal boundaries.  I am also not very social, and will almost never take the first step in a new friendship by initiating conversation. In large social gatherings and situations, I withdraw into myself even more, becoming tired, irritable, and even a little hostile. As such, I wanted to use a font that depicts this self-contained nature of the introvert, a font that obtains its form by going inwards, rather than outwards. I rejected the first two subtractive fonts I tried, as the circular one looked too cute and bubbly whereas the square one looked too bold. I then considered other normal fonts that looked subtractive, and settled on insular script. Insular script also has additional pun points because insular->insulate implies my desire to hide away and insulate myself from social situations. I also considered using the representation of a fence as a symbol of a literal barrier between myself and others. I rejected the initial idea of a picket fence because it brings to mind an American suburban neighbourhood which felt too homely and normal and neighbourly for my purposes. When I thought about barriers and impenetrable places, I thought of looming stone walls and ornate wrought iron fences. I hence chose the wrought iron fence design as it’s usually topped by what looks like sharp spear-tips, and the swirling repeating designs easily incorporated the roundness of insular script letters.

  • Rational

02

I value rational thought, by which I mean I don’t enjoy nor empathise with people who enjoy acting on impulse or emotion. I also hate it when people attempt to justify their actions by saying things like “because it’s the law”, “because I’m your authority and I say so”, “because God said so”, “because magic”, “because it’s the done thing”, “because rules are meant to be broken”, “because everyone else is doing it”. Considering the sheer number of people who think that way, I feel like I’m constantly surrounded by weirdness, stupidity and/or borderline insanity (although I do recognise that I’ve fallen into such traps myself). I wanted to represent this by showing a ludicrous mess of unnecessarily decorative fonts in the background while my name is written simply and cleanly in black.

  • Science

03

I enjoy learning science, especially the moment where things finally begin to come into focus and make sense. The joy of deriving meaning or connection between seemingly disparate elements, of discovery and learning, is what I wanted to convey. I made it look like a page of a field journal of a biologist, as biology is my favourite science, to bring across the moment where the scientist first sees something new out in the field and spontaneously records their excitement and observations. In the text and illustration, I plan to subtly incorporate the shapes of my initials ‘M’ and ‘T’, so that the viewer too can have a moment of revelation and discovery when they do manage to find the letters and understand. I will also use a script font as old field journals typically were written in the common cursive handwriting of the time.

  • World-Building

04

One of my hobbies is creating imaginary worlds (as evident by the bio section of my OSS profile). More than directly telling the story set in it, I enjoy creating the setting, about figuring out what languages exist, what dialects there are, about trade and currency, about social and economic strata, about flora and fauna and the ecosystem, etcetera. Thus I tried to show this by having a progression from 2D to 3D, to bring across the idea of bringing a world to life. The initial half of the 2D card is mostly clean, and has colour. Any images added there are complete and whole. The letters have depth to them by adding jumping clay (an air-drying clay), which can be painted to look like mountains or buildings or trees or large animals. The latter half of the 2D card becomes increasingly more sketchy, with erasures and half-formed animals and random notes as that world-creator (me) continues to puzzle out how the rest of the world should function.

  • Gamer

05

My other hobby is playing video games. While I play a wide variety of video games, my favourite are role-playing games (RPGs), likely because it ties in to my above appreciation of world-building. In an RPG, your character interacts with the world the game designer has created, thereby impacting the world and progressing the story. Some of my favourite RPGs are Dragon Age and Undertale, where players are given many choices and scenarios with the non-player characters (NPCs) and environments reacting differently to you depending on what you did. I wanted to convey that idea of agency and interactivity, hence I chose to design a game interface, specifically the character-naming screen, as this is the screen that usually marks the end of character creation and the start of player influence on the game world. Many players also spend ages on this screen thinking of a name for their in-game avatar, while others choose to name the character after themselves to play the game as a literal self-insertion. The font itself can be something pixel-y such as 8bitoperator to complement the old Gameboy design. By building it out of cardboard, I can include a real interactive element where pressing the A-button causes the ‘e’ to slide into place, completing the name ‘Madeline’. Pressing the B-button will slide the ‘e’ out and replace it with a blank, giving the appearance of backspacing (on a Gameboy, A is the button to press to insert or accept an option while B is to reject or remove an option). The challenge is in getting the measurements correct so that the interactive mechanism can function smoothly.

  • Escapism

06

Escapism refers to the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy. Although I typically scorn those who wilfully believe in fantasies, especially about themselves and the role they play in society, I also enjoy indulging in fantasy from time to time. More often than not, they are not fantasies that involve myself, but rather my favourite characters. I spend a lot of time viewing and creating fanworks (art, stories, games, videos, etc) about these characters in increasingly bizarre and fantastical situations, about utopias and dystopias and magic and dragons and court politics and so on. Rarely do my imaginings involve regular real-world scenarios or day-to-day drama. So it seems like I indulge in power fantasies and reject the capabilities of normal people, including myself. I tried to depict this in a number of ways, most involve trying to break, or escape, from the framing device (such as the box, or the shape of the letters). The parts that break out include words like “strong, smart, cunning, power” and so on, as I am fully aware that I am not really any of those things in any significant way, hence they are clearly fantasies I escape to. Also, my is MADeline and many people have called my by the short form MADdy or even just MAD, so I tried to do something with the first three letters of my name, including the quote by the cheshire cat “we’re all MAD here”. I am still uncertain about what to do for this attribute.

Korvar is a fractured land, infamous among its neighbours for its ludicrous weather and lawlessness. There is no one true higher authority the people submit to, and the political system could be considered tribal, perhaps even anarchic, despite the land’s official standing as a Kingdom. Some of the greatest concentrations of power are listed below

Religion

The main, officially recognised religion in Korvar is the worship of the ancient High Ones, powerful beasts that both personified and commanded the elements. This is known as Dracoism, and the followers are known as Dracoists. However, to presuppose that it is a unified religion is both naïve and blatantly incorrect.

There are three main denominations, or sects, of Dracoism. The unifying text for all three denominations can be found here, although each sect has its own alterations, interpretations, and further texts.

  • Korvarrans: The earliest recorded sect of Dracoism is Korvarran Dracoism, which had its roots in this land, ultimately named Korvar. The Kovarrans posit that the High Ones Korthet and Varros had a pure and kind love, and that all of dragonkind loved their child Venya despite her destructive tendencies because she was a good and kind High One whose waters brought life and growth to all. They also posit that Tod, if he ever was good before, became corrupted by jealousy and hate. Korvarrans believe that Tod is now the only High One presiding over the holy land of Kor and Var, and that his hate and fire is killing the land. They believe that constant prayer and ritual ceremonies done to honour Kor and Var will eventually release them from their entombment in the northern Verothet Mountains, and they will return in triumph over Tod. They will then rule over mankind as benevolent parental figures, and they -and all their revered dragon servants- will treat their faithful with as much love as they once did their child Venya, restoring eternal life and vitality to all their new children as Venya was once lively and vigorous herself.
  • Venyans: The second most prominent sect is Venyan Dracoism. Much like the Korvarrans, they believe that Tod has grown sick and corrupt with hate, and that Kor’s and Var’s holy family is now the only one remaining of the dragons that yet bears love for the humans. Unlike Korvarrans however, Venyan priests believe that the ultimate life-giver, and the true innocent, is Venya, the Child of Water herself. They believe that Venya is the one true High One, meant to eventually conquer the other three and grow into her rightful throne and title of Lady of Water and Queen of the High Ones. They believe in the coming of the Second Great Sea, when Venya will exit her long rest (or rise from the dead, depending on the translation), flood and purge the land of evil, and eventually reign supreme. Some more active Venyans constantly try to dig deeper into the earth or otherwise discover new wells and springs, in the hope of finding the source that will one day trigger the flood to begin the Second Great Sea.
  • Tottans: The third most prominent sect is actually rather unpopular and generally treated with much mockery and spite in most popular culture, although they are a sizable minority of Dracoists. Tottans believe that Tod is and always was a good and kind High One, genuinely invested in humanity’s wellbeing. They believe that while Tod’s rage was horrifying, it was justified, and that he is still searching for the wicked and the dishonest amongst mankind to remove them, and only by converting all of humanity to good and honest lives will Tod finally rest. Tottans believe that Tod is a fair and just deity who will punish or reward all their due in his afterworld as the Master of Death, whereas Korvarrans and Venyans believe that Tod either stores souls in an eternity of frightening nothingness only to resurrect them as dracolich servants, or that there is simply nothing after death.

Of course, these are simply the three largest and most prominent sects of Dracoism. Many other smaller sects exist, and even within the three main sects disagreements frequently arise regarding the correct interpretation of their texts and the correct ways to worship and so on. Other religions also exist, though these are called cults and are not officially recognised by the state. And then there are of course atheists and lay Dracoists and other lay religious persons. For these reasons, religious authorities such as monks and priests do tend to have greater authority than the common man.

Korvar holds historical significance as the location of the seat of the old High Ones, the location of the Old Sea, and one of the countries on the border of which the Verothet Mountains sit. For this reason Korvar attracts regional tourism mainly of the religious pilgrimage variety. However, Korvar’s harsh, uninhabitable terrain quickly thwarts the ill-prepared and wears on the weak of will. Most Korvarran pilgrims take to becoming mountain climbers, trying their best to survive the wildly fluctuating and treacherous wilderness around and near the Verothet Mountains. Venyans will seek out subterranean dig sites to visit blessed and ordained ‘holy wells’. Tottans will become wandering nomads, braving Korvar’s harsh lands, winds, and dirt, in their search for Tod’s true lair.

Monarchy

The Korvarrin (not to be confused with ‘Korvarran’, many foreigners make the mistake of using the terms interchangeably) royal family is the Yarronacht family which has been ruling since hundreds of years ago. Prior to them were the Elogmyr and Vereye families, neither of whom lasted very long due to the intense political backstabbings, plots, and counter plots going on at the time. By ‘not very long’, one should not assume that they had only ten years on the throne each. No, the Elogmyr and Vereye families were bitter rivals that fought for the throne for generations, and their total reigns combined lasted a good five human lifetimes.

The Elogmyr and Vereye reigns were characterised by a long spell of prosperity, richness, and excess. Trade flourished, technology and art was steamrolling forward, and Korvar was a tourist hotspot. As resources were depleted and the land grew hotter and hotter, the weaknesses of the Vereye (the family on the throne at the time) reign became more and more apparent. The Elogmyr family rallied the army and staged a coup d’etat and crushed the Vereye family and their personal guard. However, before the Elogmyr could assume the throne, the Porvissian general, Yun Yarronacht, stormed the severely weakened country and utterly destroyed the Elogmyr. Thus began the reign of the Yarronachts.

Despite being Porvissian, Yun had no interest in conquering Korvar for Porvist. As Korvar had already begun showing signs of worrying decline at the time, the King of Porvist permitted Yun to crown himself King of Korvar and run the kingdom independent of Porvist, provided they remained non-hostile and open to trade. To this day, Porvists still view Korvarrins as stupid and of lower class, and take a very elitist stance against them, no matter if they are merely tourists on Korvarrin soil. Many richer or better educated Korvarrins also adopt Porvissian accents, to varying degrees of success. The retreat of at least 75% of Korvar to the sheltering coolness of the underground to escape the ever-climbing surface heat have certainly not helped elevate their social status relative to Porvissians in any way.

The current king has very limited ability to directly affect his country. This is due to a combination of depleted natural resources, limited and poorly educated manpower, the sheer size of the country, an inefficient bureaucracy, low national funds, and because the king simply doesn’t care all that much. Possibly the only reason why the people haven’t risen up as an angry mob and rebelled is simply because they have formed many self-governing unofficial ‘tribes’, a phenomenon which the king has no interest in regulating or disbanding.

Tribes and Crime:

People dissatisfied with their current tribes are usually free to remove themselves and to seek out other tribes. Naturally, gang violence and border conflicts have erupted all over the nation, earning Korvar its ‘lawless’ reputation. None of these conflicts have ever really escalated too greatly however, as an ever-present scarcity plagues any ‘army’ that attempts to form, and many quickly disband or lose members due to their need to take care of more pressing basic needs such as their health. Not to mention that one of the earliest things Yun Yarronacht did as king was to prohibit civilians from bearing arms, a law which remains in effect to this day. Guns and ammunition are simply far too expensive and difficult to obtain or create for any civilian army. If they do bear weapons, expect them to be wielding knives and daggers.

Mirror Guard:

Korvar is not entirely weaponless though, the weapons are simply manufactured in an extremely small quantity for a group of guards called the Mirror Guard. Initially a small arm of the much larger Imperial Army, the Mirror Guard was formed to protect and maintain the large mirror halls scattered over the underground of Korvar. By making sure that the mirrors remained in position, clean, whole, and free of vandalism, the Mirror Guard would ensure that the vast underground cities of Korvar would still be able to receive sunlight from the surface. The Mirror Guard also defends the wells and springs that provide water for the people, though their role in this regard has dwindled greatly as more springs are found than Guards can be recruited. The increasing poverty also means many mirror halls have no Guards to attend to them, and have collapsed into disrepair, and their associated sections of the country plunged into darkness, leading to mass exoduses.

The Mirror Guard bows to the authority of the Imperial Guard, the king’s personal army, many of whom are descendant of early Porvissian nobles and immigrants. Members of the Mirror Guard discovered to have neglected their duty, sabotaged the mirrors, or had their weapons sold/stolen/lost would be immediately expelled from the ranks (the older punishment was execution, but that was outlawed some eighty years ago). Thus neither the Mirror nor Imperial Guard has ever really attempted to rebel either, simply because they get paid decently well, are widely respected, and losing their position if caught is swift. Civilians pay a small tax for the public service that the Guards perform, and have been largely satisfied with doing so, with tax evaders being punished by their own community.

Money

As it is in most cases, the daring and clever, in positions to amass and protect personal wealth, tend to get ahead in life. Many achieve this by frequently leaving to trade with Porvist. These people usually set themselves up as wholesalers back in Korvar, providing for their neighbours, if they don’t outright apply for Porvissian citizenship and leave. The greatest commodities in Korvar are typically meats of herd or forest animals, fuel such as firewood and charcoal, and metal tools. Despite living underground and so near the earth, Korvarrin earth is unfortunately almost void of workable metal ores. Scrap metal from old constructs, left behind from the old days of plenty, can rarely be used without adequate fuel to melt them down into a reworkable form.

The first mini-project we had to do for this class was to design three name cards, of sorts, modelled after the name tags organisations like Alcoholics Anonymous would give out.

Instead of my name, I chose to use an attribute (well, two, actually) to represent myself with. They are ‘quiet’ and ‘reason’, as I am a very solitary person who values silence and personal space, and also (I believe… I hope) a very logical and rational person who is not very impulsive or prone to doing or accepting things ‘just because’.

Typography

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All the letters are written in lower case, without any flourishes, in fact without any serifs at all. The letters are also small and spaced out quite far from each other, and the background is completely bare. This is to bring across the feeling of solitude and silence, and the letters are presented as not shouting, but more like whispering. The extended neck of the ‘n’ at the end mirrors the tail of the ‘q’ in the front, a way of neatly closing the text via symmetry so that it looks more self-contained. The ampersand in the centre is written as its original Latin form as ‘et’ (meaning ‘and’), showing how I don’t like to take facts of life, such as they are, for granted, and am instead interested in reasoning out and investigating the origins of things.

Abstract

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I attempted to convey the idea of ‘quiet’ through the use of diagonal lines, as a symbol of moving from ‘high energy’ to ‘low energy’. The middle diagonal is absent as I felt that its presence made the scene too crowded and noisy, and it is for this reason that the background is likewise left blank. The use of lines in this manner is inspired by electron energy diagrams and reaction energy diagrams. In the centre is a circle, an enclosed and self-contained line. The curvilinear lines from the base or the card seem to grow up and around it, representing my desire to investigate both the origins and consequences of phenomena. The upwards growth also seem to be cradling the circle, a reference to this (in)famous book cover. Although the biblical apple of Eden is often used as a representation of forbidden romance/sex or more generally as temptation or sin, the fruit in the bible was actually from the Tree of Knowledge (of good and evil). Hence its presence here is a symbol of my desire to search for truth and knowledge (and damn the consequences, maybe).

Conceptual

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For my conceptual piece, I chose to use the image of a cat. Cats are stereotypically solitary, independent, and anti-social (not really true, as any cat-lover will tell). They are also (mostly) night hunters who hunt alone (actually true). The solitary cat, with its enlarged pupils representing the night, is hence symbolic of my preference for the aloneness, solitude, and quiet of the night. The cat, with its keen senses of sight, smell, and hearing, as well as its sensitive whiskers, enable it to see clearly and hunt effectively in the night, representing my desire to ‘pierce the illusion’ (to quote a certain game) of ignorance and ‘hunt’ for the logical truth. The tabby patterns on this cat are stylised on the forehead to look like an open book, another symbol for scholarly/logical pursuit. Additionally, the stripes near the eyes make it look like the cat wears spectacles and the spots above the eyes look like the letter M. These are normal tabby cat markings that only incidentally symbolise me (I wear spectacles and my name begins with the letter M).

“The old texts tell us of the Time of the Old Sea, a time when most of the lands of Korvar, which in those days was nothing more than a collection of warring tribes, was covered by a vast body of water.

Back then humans lived among the great beings known to us as Dragons. The four greatest of these are called the High Ones: Korthet, Lady of the Land, is who the Kingdom of Korvar is named for. The second is Varros, Lord of Winds, who is also honoured in the name of the Kingdom. Venya, Child of Water, is the child of Korthet and Tod, Master of Fire and Death.

All the Dragons are said to have adored the child Venya, and so she was given free reign over the lands, playing gaily in the vast waters. Her games both delighted and distressed the humans, for though she was sweet and cheerful, she was mightier than the strongest man with the carelessness of a child. She would drag whole ships under the Sea, her dances caused whirlpools and storms, and sometimes she would venture into her mother’s lands, flooding whole villages.

Her father, Tod, was then busy with rescuing the drowning humans, for it was not yet their time to die. He also gave them fire and heat to stay warm and dry during his daughter’s wild storms, for he was compassionate and kind. He too, was frequently distressed by his daughter, and did not love her as the other Dragons did.

It was after one particularly devastating storm that a young kingdom was nearly wiped out. Although no one died, their houses and crops were destroyed. Furious, the human king gathered some men and rode off to demand an audience with Korthet, intending to have her intervene and stop her daughter’s mayhem.

When the humans reached Korthet’s abode however, they found her entwined in passion with Varros. Varros’ skin, they noticed, was the same blue as Venya’s, where Korthet’s was green and Tod’s was red. Quickly, the humans fled to Tod with the news of his wife’s betrayal.

When Tod learnt of this, he was furious. He cried out in anger and rained fire upon all the tribes in the land, burning away the sea. He eventually found Venya, who was frightened and confused, for she knew nothing of her true parentage. But Tod, overcome with rage and cruelty, saw only her blue skin and his wife’s infidelity, and struck her down.

Tod then searched for Varros, and prepared to burn him to death. But Korthet saw this, and threw herself between her husband and lover, and was scorched by Tod’s fire in Varros’ place. She begged for Varros to be spared, and submitted herself to Tod’s mercy.

But the reason Korthet’s betrayal had pained Tod so was because he had loved her dearly. Unable to bring himself to kill his wife, Tod banished her and her lover into the mountains, where they and their followers are said to remain to this day. Now Tod and his Dragons are the only ones to rule over land, his heat burning the earth, for his bitterness has eroded away his compassion.

It is also said that every year, on the anniversary of Venya’s death, Korthet and Varros mourn her. Their sorrow and tears are so great that it spreads from the mountains into the land like a great storm, flooding the land briefly in remembrance of the Old Sea.” 


 

Korvar is a dry, hot salt flat, and is all that remains of a vast lake, known to locals as the Old Sea. The salt of the ground reflects the sunlight as a blinding white, which makes it look like snow, except that it’s scorching hot. At night, the ground loses heat quickly, making the air easily drop to near freezing temperatures. Occasional dust storms are also to be expected. Hence most locals live in mud-brick houses, although some nomadic tribes use canvas tents.

Vegetation is extremely scarce, and the wildlife largely constitutes of lizards, scorpians, and burrowing shrews. The mountains to the north block the progression of rain clouds, hence the scarcity of rain, though some moisture does make it across as a light fog or mist. During the rainy season however, great storms quickly flood lower-lying areas, and the winds knock less stable structures over. It is this rain which sustains the hardy wildlife in the Kingdom.

Scattered on the landscape, evidence of the Old Sea remains in the form of brittle coral skeletons and the dark, looming husks of old shipwrecks. When travelling over land, travellers are advised to be especially wary of two things. First, the flatness of the land is deceptive, many places exist where the top layer is so loosely compacted that stepping onto it means getting sucked into veritable quicksand as the salt rapidly gives way under your weight. Second, the echoing roars one occasionally hears suggest the existence of giant beasts, and it’s probably in a traveller’s best interests to not discover what’s making those sounds.

The remnants of the lake exists as a large muddy bog to the south of the Kingdom, straddling the border of Korvar and Porvist, a veritable no-man’s land. Porvist shares much of Korvar’s western and southern borders, and these are porous borders where people are, for the most part, not restricted from crossing. The bog is similarly unregulated, although anyone attempting to set up a commercial venture there should expect to face persecution by both Kingdoms. That is why the bog, although relatively resource-rich compared to the dry salt flats of Korvar, remain unexploited.

To the north, a range of ice-capped mountains define Korvar’s northern border. The mountains are shrouded in mystery, and no one has any conclusive evidence of what it’s like there. The locals reverently called them the Verothet Mountains, after two deities of their local religion who are said to dwell there.

Mealtime, for the most part, was a dull affair.

The children sit at long tables and are made to say a unified word of thanks (which generally tends to end up sounding like a dull droning chant most times), before the older children would cart out bowls filled with the dubiously-coloured gruel of the day. Then they would dig in, chatter aimlessly among themselves, and when the meal was done, the younger children would stack the bowls and cart them back to the kitchens. Another word of thanks would be said, then the head matron would release everyone back to being rascals.

Today, in spite of the curiously stale air, everything seemed par for the course.

“…ight be too risky, Mother Emelda?” despite the din of the lunching crowd, snippets of an odd conversation reach the ears of two orphan boys.

The great hulking figure of Mother Emelda seems to fold in on itself as she sighs, “it’s all we have, Lou. What would you suggest?”

Lou, the mousy young caretaker with a curious problem pronouncing his ‘r’s, wrings his hands, “but that backup might work for two months, three, at best! What will we do after that?”

“The Generator is as old as the foundations of this refuge, in which it resides, said to have been built by the High Ones themselves in the Time of the Old Sea. Not even the Old Supply Man could hope to understand its workings. Only a miracle, Highnesses granting, could restore the artifact.”

“We could move!” Lou tithers desperately, following the head matron out of the room, “surely the subterraneans…”

The rest of the conversation is lost to you.

Chap1

[Text in square brackets, like these, will be our form of OOC communication.
As you did not assign yourselves names in the previous comments you can pick from these (or come up with something that sounds similarly lore-appropriate): Yun, Aysac, Aylon, Vorn, Vanya, Ektor, Evka]

I have ever only been marginally interested in the art of typography, and so when tasked to research ways of using type to represent myself, I found myself coming up at a loss. A quick google search and Pinterest trawl later however, and I have found certain types of type (pun unintentional) I am partial to, and some that I’m… not so partial to.

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Decorative text that interacts with a larger body of main, subject text:

The decorative text in both the above examples have been enlarged and warped so thoroughly that they are practically illegible, yet both maintain enough form/context to imply their meaning. The decoration then goes on to interact with a larger body of smaller, presumably content, text. In the above example, the decoration is used as a unique framing device, and the bottom example has the decoration crashing into the body of text. The implied nature of the header text is pleasing to me as it engages the viewer in a more active manner than blatant presentation, while the interactivity and framing shown above presents text as a dynamic work of visual art rather than simply words on a page.

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Beautiful and interesting fonts:

The bottom two examples engage in the use of positive and negative space, in the ‘W’ to imply the boundaries of the letter, and in the ’49’ to mimic a flat-brush’s strokes. The ‘W’ type also gives a slight illusion of depth and texture. The brush-stroke type features jittering and blots, errors arising from human uncertainty and/or lack of practice, and largely absent from the standardised perfect calligraphy world of font, so it’s an interesting and refreshing change to see such ‘errors’ deliberately made or left in the final work. The topmost picture features the spines of a few hardcover books, most actually bear unremarkable standard serif or sans serif fonts. However, they have been harmoniously woven into a lattice of decorative motifs and together produce a sophisticated and interesting design.

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Shape fonts:

I call these fonts ‘shape fonts’ because they deliberately imitate a certain image or shape. In the above, the font invokes the blue and splatter of water, the shape of the ‘A’ itself largely unimpacted or otherwise altered. Likewise for the Snow White ‘S’. It looks mostly as thought they had a regular ‘S’ printed and taped on a few extra white and red parts. I do like these two, because despite being unsubtle, they have been executed fairly tastefully and are not garish or over-the-top. String several of these together however, like in a word or phrase, and it would look disgustingly overdone.

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Functional 3D fonts: 

I call the above 6 examples ‘functional’ 3D because they make use of their 3D medium. Some fonts I found in my search for 3D typography  (such as the last one, I’ll get to that in a bit) appeared to merely pay lip service to the word ‘3D’, and was nothing more than a regular 2D font stretched on one end (height). In these examples, the different ways the 3D medium is employed are, in order: a topological relief reminiscent of the earth’s surface, the drop shadow of the railing is what makes the text readable rather than the railing itself, a multiple layered piece employing lights and frames, and interactive moving parts built into the font. The sixth piece, though not employing the 3D nature quite as interestingly, is not dull for me as the negative spaces (the boards the lights sit on) are also given detail and attention. The height of the font is also not artificially raised, stretched, and elongated meaninglessly for the mere sake of it, but rather is shown as a coincidental side effect of the way the light tubes work.  Contrast that to the seventh and last piece, which I do not like at all, with its meaningless and gratuitous extension of the height dimension of what is basically an ordinary sans serif font without any further addition of function or detail.

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Decorative 3D fonts: 

Not quite ‘functional’, but definitely not gratuitous either. These fonts are 3D simply because the medium they are made with happen to be 3D. It’s entirely possible that the fonts can be simplified and vectorised as a 2D computer-input font without too much of a loss in a viewer’s ability to appreciate them. The 3D presentation is therefore kind of extraneous, but the employment of the medium for the creation of text in the first place is rather unique and interesting.

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Obscured or abstract type:

The arrangement and presentation of the letters in combination with the typeface they are in makes it impossible to see a word before seeing the image. In the case of the bottom example, it is even likely that there is simply no text to be read, and the letters are really only there to create visual mass. In the above example, which I personally really enjoy, viewers will initially be deceived into thinking that it’s a simple depiction of two side-glancing eyes. What it actually is is the number 1984 written sideways, with the 9 repeated to look like eyes. Itself a very cute, interesting, yet minimalist design, it gains another level of significance as a visual pun when one is aware of what the book is actually about (a ‘big brother state’ that watches the lives of all its citizens).

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Stuff I really don’t like: quotes rewritten in hodgepodge fonts.

Too many arbitrarily employed fonts and effects that have little to no significance and contribute nothing other than a vaguely off-mood illustration for the more obvious and literal parts of the quote. Poor sizing choice also means that the punchline of ‘just kidding’ is almost entirely ignored. Poor mood perception means the contrast between the idealistic first half with the harsh second half is not felt at all. Too me, it feels like the person just grabbed a random quote off the internet, understood individual words and made arbitrary and needless illustrations for some, plunked the rest of the words in a filter-generator, then gathered all these bits and pieces and lumped them together and called it a day. Just. No. This one isn’t actually quite so bad; at least it limits itself to 2/3 cursive and sans serif fonts.

If you like it, good for you. None for me, thanks.

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Stuff I do rather like that looks a bit like the stuff that I don’t like:

This ‘poster’ seems to contain unnecessarily fancy calligraphy, with lots and lots of flourishes, as well as bouncing up and down and around for no real reason other than just because, has obvious ‘illustrations’, and is likewise presented in that vague arch shape that the previous thing (and its ilk) was. So why do I like it? First: the calligraphy is fancy, but at least it limits itself to a single font. Second: there are calligraphic letter flourishes, but at least there are to no banners, random lines, or awkwardly orphaned single words (the most common victims being connectors and prepositions such as ‘if’ and ‘on to’ etc). Third: the bouncing around I believe is due in part to the flourishes, they take up space and warp the rest of the text. Fourth and fifth: This is an advertisement, they’re squeezing as much information as possible in the standard poster size, the seeds on the display are advertising the seed sale. So the medium and the execution may be somewhat similar to the quote rewrites, but considering the context and content the former two are more than excusable.

The two main protagonists live in a rundown, overland orphanage. It is small and overfull, the children are rowdy and the caretakers are overworked. The crummy little building is three storeys tall, and sits near the border of the nation of Korvar and Korvar’s key (though hostile) trading partner Porvist. Isolated from most major city centres, supplies are brought in to the orphanage once a week by a bedraggled old man. Rusty brass-coloured pipes line almost all the interior walls, bringing water and power to the plumbing and appliances.

The sweltering Korvarran heat is made more bearable by the complex cooling systems and mud walls of the orphanage, which doubles for warming the building in the freezing desert nights. No one is really sure how it works, but it’s been running for as long as the building has stood, dating back to even before the birth of the Old Supply Man.

[Please create your characters:

  • they are human (please provide a brief description of their build, hair/eye colours, and sex/gender)
  • they can be either caretaker or orphan

Please also allocate your attribute points.]

For my final pieces, I used creatures and beasts as my main subjects to represent my overarching love for zoology. I also used digital medium as it is the medium I am most fluent in hence allowing me to achieve the colours and tone I want.

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