EDITORIAL & COMMUNITY NEWS

Hello and welcome to another issue of Updates from the Forge, your Exilian newsletter of geekery and creativity!

Quite a bit of news this time as we've just updated Exilian to the Simple Machines Forum 2.1 software series. This is a big jump, we've been running the 2.0 series since ca 2011-12, and it will mean a few changes for how the site works. You'll be able to see some visual changes on the forum, and that we've got a much more responsive system for using the site on mobile browsers: we've also now got some useful new functionality for saving draft versions of posts, and there'll be other new features coming soon. That said, tech changes (and this is the first of several planned for the second half of 2024) can come with teething problems, so do let us know your thoughts or if you encounter any issues.

Do also refresh yourself on our new rules on generative language/image model ("AI") systems. As a community we've decided against supporting the use of these technologies – the very large environmental impact, the damage done to artists in our community, and the very difficult potential issues with intellectual property rights were all things we discussed in coming to that decision. As such, we won't be giving slots to AI-driven work in newsletters like this one or in Exilian competitions and social media, and we're committed to support projects in avoiding generative AI becoming something  that they use.

We've also got some really interesting new site content for you to check out if you missed it: this includes the various entries for our Hibernation creative competition, which was won by the excellent Spritelady, and also three new articles, both the second parts of two-part series. The first of these was a discussion of travel in Mexico by indiekid, covering reflections on the later parts of his journey through the country down to the southern border: the third, in much the same vein, has been a fascinating travelogue on indiekid's journey to the isle of Chiloe and the 'edge of the world' facing the Pacific ocean If you'd rather mystery instead of discovery, though, we have you covered there too: Jubal's "The Problem of Focus 2: Focus and Magic" is an article for writers and developers on how to use what he terms "low focus" magic, constructing magic systems based on ideas of miracle and virtue instead of magic being a reliable, studied toolkit. If that sounds good, do give those things a read!

Finally, we have a couple of recent welcomes, where Exilian has now started sponsoring independent academic groups by providing them with web space and infrastructure. Two organisations, the Medieval Caucasus Network of scholars who work on (shockingly) the medieval Caucasus, and the Middle Ages in Modern Games conference, now  have Exilian-hosted websites. If you're in a similar position with a network or collective that needs a small amount of online space, then do have a chat with us and we'll see what we might be able to do to help.

And with all that said - it's time for a bunch more updates from the nerd forges of Exilian. Do take a look at what's going on below...

CONTENTS:

• Editorial & Community News
  
• Game Development
  
  • Set off for the stars in Cepheida: The Exploration Game
  • Where does the Devil Hide?
  • Tusky's TTRPG GM-Pad
• Arts & Writing
  
  • Microfiction on Exilian
  • Jubal's Writing Blog
  • The Earthwitch Approaches...
• Miscellany
  
  • Summer game fest discussions on Exilian
  • Elden Ring Explorations with Rob Haines

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Jubal's game setting Cepheida has been knocking around on Exilian for a number of years: it's a sci-fi setting that focuses on a quirky, less human-centred, more exploration focused approach to spacefaring. It was originally conceived in the early 2010s to be the setting for some sort of skirmish wargame, with randomised planetary. It's been given sporadic world-building updates since then, including one published short story, but now there's some significant new development going on.

As of recent months, Jubal has been adapting the Hetairos ruleset to produce a new Cepheida exploration game. The new game and rules will include a range of different alien factions and asymmetric objectives: as crews of explorers, playing aggressively at the expense of your real aims might spell disaster. You can find out more about this project at the Cepheida forum, and learn how to make your way across hostile environments as dedicated S'ruba recon missions, lordly Verwynn out to carve out new homes for their subjects, or strange Tangalak cyborgs, among other inhabitants of the Cepheid star cluster.

That's not all the updates either, as we've had some new little bits of concept art released, including not only some alien sketches of Jubal's but some lovely new banner art with a planet by the talented Adriana Pasierb, as seen above. Stay tuned - more updates will come along in the next few months!

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From the maker of the zany sci-fi Twilight Oracle comes a much darker adventure in Devil's Hideout, still in the point and click genre but with a classic cultic horror feel and story. When Lauren, the protagonist, learns from a mystic that the little sister she once thought dead is still alive, she must return to the hospital where her sister was once cared for and unravel how a mysterious cult wove a web of false deaths, disappearances, and devilry...


Devil's Hideout promises immersive, horror-saturated pixel art settings for Lauren and her friend Atticus to explore, with an abandoned hospital and its surrounding town brought to live with chilling sound effects and seen from a first-person perspective. With classic item/inventory gameplay and other staples of the point-and-click genre very much in place, this looks an interesting piece for horror adventure game fans to check out.

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Tusky has a new project for folks running sci-fi TTRPGs: he's aiming to create an updateable tablet/laptop app to allow game masters to beam information through to an interactive "ship's computer" or pip-boy or similar for players at the table. Originally designed to work with Mothership it should also work well for Starfinder or other SF space-crew RPG settings.

The testing version of the software already has a good range of features, including not only log messages with image support but also a flexible system for editable mini-maps for the players to use which can include variably visible icons and visible/invisible region designations. If you're interested in getting an early look at the project and being able to get in on the early features discussion, do head over to the relevant thread below.

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From very long form to very short form indeed: new Exilian member Rob Haines has been posting about his microfiction writing! Microfiction, often seen as a format on microblogging sites like BlueSky and Mastodon, is the art of writing extremely short minimalist stories or vignettes that imply much of the surrounding tale. It's a great exercise for writers in what can be done with very limited word counts and how to imply the surroundings of a story quickly without providing long information passages.

Some of Rob's archive of over a hundred microfiction pieces include the sci-fi vignette While We Run, exploring the image of being hunted in a futuristic-tinged world; Song and Sonnet, a tale about what might happen to a sword long un-used; and For Having Been Broken, a story of repairs to shattered things and of the giants we might make of them. You can find all of these and more at his collection – links below:

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Quote

In any case, Jean-Jacques: I'm wearing a wedding ring, and have been since we met."

"I've worn wedding rings plenty of times! They were just from other people's weddings!"

"You are a dreadful thief and a scoundrel, d'Alvaratanne. You know that?"

"In this life," said Jeanne, leaning back in the punt and gesturing with an imagined wine glass at the world, "we're all scoundrels in our way. Or ruffians, or weirdos, and I know which of the three I'd rather be."

"In my professional opinion as a weirdo," Ansaler began, and Jeanne burst out laughing before he could finish the sentence.

After finishing a (still as yet unpublished) children's book in 2020, we've not had much in the way of updates on long-form fiction writing from Jubal for a few years, as he's focused on game dev, academic writing, and short stories among other formats. Recently, however, his writing blog has creaked back into life, with a few new snippets from a story recently appearing with a cast of paladins and scoundrels taking shape.

The as yet unnamed story will be book-length and currently sits at a bit over 10,000 words in its draft form: we know that it will be a fantasy adventuring tale, and the snippets posted reveal a concerned council of holy warriors, a linguistic mishap over explaining the birds and the bees, and a discussion of weirdos and wedding rings. If that all sounds like the sort of thing you might be keen to read, why not take a look at the thread?

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A new story from rbuxton, The Earthwitch is a short tale of environmental damage given a magical twist. Two children have a companion, Maxwell, a beach-spirit of stones and pebbles: but when something goes wrong for him, the children are drawn by a mysterious figure into a far more deep and fearsome world of spirits, pains, and fears than they could have imagined.

In a world where we're all very aware of the potential dangers humans pose to the planet, the idea of the planet fighting back or being corrupted into our own destruction is a powerful one, and the questions of danger, sacrifice, and what we can ask of people are very real ones even if approached through the fantastical.

Read on to discover more of this witching tale – with its deeply uncertain ending...

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Regular game fests throughout the year are often interesting showcases of what's coming out in the ludic world, and we've had some good recent discussions on the forum of upcoming games and game projects which might make a good read for some recommendations. Rob, Spritelady, and Jubal have been discussing things including fantasy revenge tales from South America, a generation ship city builder holding the last remnants of humanity, and a cosy castles and glades builder among other upcoming titles. If you're looking for some new games to play and want to uncover a few titles you never realised existed, this may well be something to check out:

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It's an exciting issue when we get two new projects from a new member, and we have just such an eventuality here as Rob Haines, whose microfiction we report on above, has also been doing a really lovely screenshot project in Elden Ring. Taking on the mantle of an in-world recorder of place and aesthetic, Rob delves around the world and find places and spaces that maybe even the devs might not have thought of as a vantage point or angle on the setting, recording the lavish game world with a photographer's eye for vistas and settings as he goes.

This isn't Rob's first game screenshot project: he's also done a similar adventure for the cosy environmental horror sci-fi puzzle game Outer Wilds (yes that's a lot of adjectives, and arguably self-contradictory ones, but some games defy easy tagging). This sort of game art and appreciation is something we're keen to support and see more of, so if you're thinking of tinkering with something similar, do let us know about it!

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And that's all this issue has to offer! It is, of course, only a taste of what Exilian as a whole has to give: we hope to see lots more developing projects across our new-look forum space in the coming months. If you've got something you're working on, whether big or small, practice or profession, a little new hobby or a grand design - we'd love to see it here and help support and encourage your creativity. That's what we do here, and we're very keen to host and help more of it happen in the months to come. See you then, and see you in autumn for another set of updates from the Exilian community's creative endeavours!

Dear all,

After some recent tech issues, we're happy to welcome you back to a slightly new-look Exilian, now running on the SMF 2.1 series of software rather than the old 2.0. This is a once-a-decade level of tech upgrade: the new version of SMF will come with a slightly different mix of features and, most importantly. This is the first part of a series of tech changes we're hoping to make, with the plan also being to move Exilian onto a new hosting package later this summer.

A few notes on the changes that you might notice, or that are coming down the line:

• We are going to return to a dark theme as default, though the current light theme, 'Skyclad', will remain available when we build the dark theme.
  
• One major new feature that's now available is post drafts! You can now hit the "save draft" button to keep the text of a post safely squirreled away for whenever you get time to finish your thoughts
  
• We'll be looking at other new features to be made available - the 2.1 series allows for tagging other users in posts and some improved notification systems - so do stay tuned for more updates there.
  
• You can't currently create multiple polls within a single thread: the mod we used to do this doesn't function on the 2.1 series, and we're actively looking for a replacement.
  

Most importantly, we're keen to have your thoughts and opinions on the new system: it's important to us that we're getting the look and feel of the site right going forwards, so if something doesn't feel right or there's functionality you're missing then please do let us know.

New Hosted Projects: June 2024

Today we're very happy to announce two projects that Exilian is now helping support with web hosting. Part of our mission here is to support independent academic as well as creative endeavours, and we're delighted to be taking the chance to help two really great scholarly events/networks have a stable, workable home online that can ensure their work reaches more people and is more accessible than ever before.

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The Middle Ages in Modern Games is an online asynchronous conference where participants provide ideas and discussions of medieval worlds in gaming in a short written format. The conference's first to fourth years were as a Twitter conference before the format changed in 2024 to a WordPress site hosted by Exilian. This week is the fifth Middle Ages in Modern Games conference itself, which will see academics from across the world provide thoughts and ideas on a wide array of aspects of games and game dev. This includes sessions on Warfare, Empathy, the Fantastic, Aesthetics, and the Dev process, among others: it should have some really interesting reads for developers, historians, and members of the public alike.

We're excited to welcome MAMG to Exilian alongside our existing work in this area which includes hosting the Coding Medieval Worlds workshops every year!

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The Medieval Caucasus Network is a group of scholars from around the world which exists to help connect people and expand understandings of the Caucasus and surrounding regions through the medieval period. Their work includes organising conferences, running a mailing list to connect scholars, putting scholars in touch with potential funding sources for conference travel, and much more besides. Their work includes not only academic staff but independent scholars and graduate students, and covers a wide range of disciplines and areas including archaeology, digital humanities, and art history as well as historical approaches to all parts of the region.

Exilian has long had some links to this area via our executive officer's work on Caucasiology, including us hosting some of the earliest versions of what was then the Caucasian Prospography Project and is now known as the (still unreleased) Prosopography of High Medieval Georgia database. Whether you know something or nothing about medieval Caucasia, there will doubtless be much more to discover!

We're now well into spring in the northern hemisphere and that means it's time for our Hibernation themed winter competition to be complete. Thus, it's time to share our showcase of results, which you can read below. We've got a lovely cosy little set of five miscellaneous project on the Hibernation theme with some lovely bits of work for you to look at, and the most important thing as ever is adding more to this great showcase collection. There can, however, only be one winner (at least, there is only one winner in this case).


The judges called this one a "psychologically smart first-person narrative " and "suspenseful, well-crafted writing" - you can read the result below! Spritelady wins a copy of Priory Games' medieval life sim Under the Yoke, which follows a peasant family through the subsistence needs, tithes, and village life of the high middle ages, and a copy of Jubal's RPG book Rockpool, which is a mini tabletop RPG system for being tiny little weird creatures that live around the eponymous rockpools and must content with the tide, dangerous whelks, and other such perils.

Thanks also go to our judges, Yvonne and Daniel, and to Owen of Priory Game for sponsoring the competition. But more important than the winning is the creativity, as ever, and we're delighted to be able to share with you below the full showcase of all five contributions, from computing puns to poetry to photography. Do leave a comment and let us know what you think!

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WINNER: 6 of Telochi, in the year 647 - Spritelady

Quote6 of Telochi, in the year 647

I have returned to face the beast. This is my third attempt to defeat the creature, and the first that I have made in the cold season. I hope that what I have learnt will be enough. I pray that I have the strength to destroy it.

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When I first learned of people going missing in the Forest, I thought perhaps it was a Tiyanak, maybe a Wendigo. When I arrived at the logging base, the woodsmen told me that they had been there since the cold season, and had seen no trouble in those first months. But then members of their group began to vanish. There was no trail that could be followed, and their belongings remained in camp. The woodsmen began to fear walking among the trees, but they were stubborn. They needed to work.

In my experience, the patterns they had described suggested a creature that hunted those foolish enough to walk alone. Or perhaps that was capable of luring its victims away from the safety of numbers. This would hardly be my first encounter with such creatures, and I approached the job with confidence. Arrogance, I later realised.

I went to begin my hunt, as I had so many times before. The creature tore through me in moments, left me clinging to life. I never saw it, had not even known it was there as I began looking for its trail in the woods. But it had seen me looking. And it had not cared to be hunted.

Why it left me alive, I had no idea. I should have died from my injuries, but was saved by the grace of the Lady and the kindness of those woodsmen. I left their camp, promising to return to kill the creature, knowing that my advice to move camp would not be heeded. These people needed work, and there was little else to be found.

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I returned as the harvest season began. I had spent my time away recovering, regaining my strength, training until I was twice the hunter that I had been before. I was deadly in the woods, but my arrogance had been curbed. I knew not to underestimate my quarry. I knew it would take all my skill to hunt and kill this beast.

   There were fewer woodsmen than when I had left. Their numbers had dwindled as the attacks had grown more frequent. Even travelling in groups did not seem to deter the creature; it took its prey nonetheless. But they stayed and I admired their stubbornness. I felt responsible for ensuring that they could remain, that the threat would be dealt with. And once more, I entered the woods.

   At first, my hunt went well. Or at least, it lasted more than the brief seconds of my first attempt. I found traces of a trail and followed them deep beneath the canopy of the Forest. I tracked for hours, following hints and signs of its presence. The woodsmen had told me they had begun to see signs, trees scraped bare of bark where the creature had passed, gouge marks left in the dirt of the forest floor. At times, I lost the trail, searching before I found another sign, could continue moving further into the Forest.

I was stupid not to realise what was happening. The creature had been aware of me from the moment I entered the woods. It had toyed with me, leading me closer and closer to its lair. In the seconds before it struck, as I beheld its massive form for the first time, I knew I had made a crucial mistake.

I reflected on it later, as I recovered from the wounds it dealt me. It had taken all my considerable skill to escape, and even then I somehow knew, I could sense, I only lived because it had grown bored of me. Before I faced it again, I would need to be smarter. Need to understand more. To truly face this creature, to kill it, I needed to know everything I could about it.

   I left the woodsmen again, felt their sullen, resentful stares as I walked away, when their friends and comrades could not have. I knew they were losing their faith that I would handle this creature, as I had so many others. My reputation would only last through so many failures.

~

   
I returned home, and gathered every scrap of knowledge I could find about creatures that dwelled in the Forest. Last time, as I recovered, I had strengthened my body, my physical prowess, and had thought that would be enough. I had underestimated the creature's intelligence, its awareness. I would not make that mistake now.

   I read every piece of lore I could find, scoured libraries and archives for mentions of the creature. I compiled the best collection of ancient and forgotten tomes that had been seen in years, all in my attempt to learn something, anything I could use to fight this creature and survive.

Finally, after months of learning, I found something I thought I could use. I had forgotten the woodsmen's first stories. That they had lived and worked through the cold season undisturbed, before the creature had begun its attacks. At the time, I assumed that the creature had simply wandered into new territory, found the woodsmen's camp and begun its attacks. But as I read, as I learnt about the denizens of the Forest and those that came from its deepest recesses, I found a common thread.

   Hibernation. Almost all the creatures we knew of in the deep woods followed an annual cycle. They would hide themselves away throughout the coldest months, when food became scarcer, and wait until the rainfalls to emerge. Perhaps that was why the woodsmen had seen nothing of this creature in their first months at camp. Why they had become settled enough in their lives and their work not to be able to move on when it began to strike. It would almost have been funny, the irony of that terrible timing, had it not been so disastrous.

   If this creature did indeed hibernate, maybe that would allow me to approach. Other accounts described creatures that sleep deeply, barely alive as they wait out the coldest months. I could find my way back to the beast's lair, that I had been led to so foolishly. Perhaps I could remain unnoticed for long enough to dispatch it. I have prayed to the Lady that this will work.

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I have returned to the woodsmen's camp. I can see they no longer believe I will be successful, though some seem to admire my resilience. I think they respect that I have returned, despite twice being left on the brink of death. They do not realise it is the same resilience that I admire in them. The same stubbornness.

Tomorrow, I will go into the woods for the third time. And if I should not return, if my guesses are wrong, my newfound knowledge is not enough, I ask whoever reads this to deliver my account to the collection of lore that I have built. Add to the knowledge I have hoarded of the monsters that roam the deep woods. Let someone else learn from my mistakes, and perhaps one day return to kill this creature.

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Overslept - A Microfiction by Tusky

Quote"Woah, 2235? I overslept. Where is everyone?"

"Dinner time was many cat-naps ago. You snoozed through tuna surprise time. Displeased."

"Wait, a talking cat! Am I dreaming?"

"Meow, please. You have awakened in a PAW-some future run by cats! Now, scritches behind
the ears, then can opener. Chop-chop, human."

"Huh. OK, dinner time it is then! Just don't judge the sleep wrinkles, your royal purrness."

"Wrinkles are beneath me. Tuna, however, is not. Now move it, hairless servant. The sunbeam won't wait."

Editorial note: the entry was submitted with an illustration, which can be viewed here. The illustration, however, was AI generated and so the entry was judged and included only on the original element, the text-microfiction above.

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Hibernation Database - A Database of Hibernating Creatures by Jafeth (Who is Also Here)

What it is
The Hibernation Database is a Java application that offers a simple interface to a database containing a table of animals that hibernate. It can be called to create new animal entries, and modify or delete existing ones.

How it works
The application uses the Spring Boot framework to provide REST functionality as well as database connectivity. Internally Spring Boot uses the framework Hibernate to do this. (Yes, Jafeth made this entire thing for that joke. You're welcome.) The programme is built to run in a Docker Container, which is a small virtual machine containing only what is necessary for the programme to run. It connects to a PostgreSQL database which can be hosted anywhere but is most easily run as another Docker container. (See the deployment.yaml file for an example).

How to access it
There are github repositories available for the frontend and backend parts of the system. Those who want to run a copy of the database will find relevant instructions on those pages: Jafeth kindly self-hosted an instance for the judges, but this is no longer operational.

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Thawing - A Poem by Jubal

QuoteAnd if there is a dream that is called spring,
Then we must intend to dream it:
Holding in a suspended mind's eye
A simulation, an imaginary of what was and could yet be,
For there are dreams, dear one, that enclose the dormant buds of truth -
Dreams that are a promise of the sun's return.

What spring brings we can only imagine -
That is, after all, what dreams are for,
The thaw, the rolling waves of blue sky after grey,
The bursting of each blossom in a cascade of trees
In patterns and patchworks that we cannot intend
Or know
Or guide
For if there is one thing that is true about the unimaginable seasons' turn,
It is that spring comes only with creation and the shape of new impossibilities
With old songs sung from new trees
By voices that know not how they know the tune
Only that they dreamed it, once
When the world was a dream
And beyond the dream was wintertide.

But there is a dream that is called spring,
As long as you intend to dream it:
As long as you intend to speak and to sing it,
As long as you come to know and to love it,
For the hibernation of hope is the stepless path through dormant time
That will end not with rage and crashing ice,
Or the creation in fire of a world burned into newness,
But with the slow revelation of spring-water
Of bough and breeze and the creeping hope of dreams
And, always, with life.

Editorial note: this entry was excluded from judging as it was created by a competition organiser.

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Crow - A Photo by Jubal


Editorial note: this entry was excluded from judging as it was created by a competition organiser.

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And that's our Hibernation set done and it's time to wake up for spring - and for Exilian's newsletters, articles and events in the coming months, where we're hoping to have more exciting and fun things to do as a community. Hope to see you for those, and that you enjoyed this hibernatory showcase!

As many of you know, machine learning based tools for generating content from large data models have been significantly expanding in their usage in recent years. ChatGPT, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and other text and image generating services are increasingly prominent in popular discourses about art, games, and the future of creative works.

The voting members of Exilian have recently voted on a new policy for how we handle this sort of content. We recognise that it's something people are going to want to discuss and play with, and we want to assure people that discussing these technologies isn't unwelcome here. However, there are a lot of concerns about generative AI, including but not limited to their potential for disinformation, the effect on artists and writers whose content is taken and reconstituted by these systems, the environmental impact of very heavy data model usage, and the issues of huge quantities of automatically generated material flooding the internet. The legal situation around generative AI is also still unclear and it's important that we protect this community from any potential legal issues. We don't think that we can simply ignore those problems, and we want to keep Exilian as a space that supports and cherishes human creativity first and foremost.

In future, that means that Exilian will not be providing formal support to projects that use generative AI. That includes not giving newsletter space or social media shoutouts to such projects, and it also means that generative AI pieces will be explicitly banned from entry into future competitions and site events. We also have some new expectations about posting generated content: that people should keep it limited and not flood the site with such content, that you mustn't post work that explicitly mimics specific writers' or artists' styles, and that if you're posting content produced by an AI then you have a responsiblity to clearly label it as such.

What we can do on these issues as a small community is limited: "AI detectors" are themselves largely machine-learning systems and have significant flaws, and whilst we will take what steps we can to avoid content you post on Exilian getting scraped by large generative model providers, as a public-facing forum without a legal budget there are limits to how much we can prevent machines reading content on here. Nonetheless, we're doing everything we can on these issues to make sure that we keep Exilian as a space that will support our artists, game developers and writers in their own creative endeavours, and we hope that taking these steps will help with that.

You can read the full text of our Generative AI policy here.

With best wishes,

The Exilian Team