OOC: Academy Grounds

The Jedi have (somewhere) a map of their settlement that was drawn up, and I was thinking that it might be helpful if we did the same. Everything seems nebulous from an outsider's view I think, and it might be a good idea if we mapped out a few landmarks/points of interest. Maybe the layout of the academy grounds? I can throw together something in PS, but it would be basic to start, and could be added upon as we go on.

Another thing that might be useful is to adopt the mission holocron framework that Ossus has. It's a really good way to offer missions/training opportunities for folks, and I think it would really help draw folks in here. Possibly call it 'Missions of the Dark Holocron', or just rebrand it as 'Sith Mission Holocron' *shrug*

Thoughts?

For the map, yes, I've been keeping a list of general places and figuring out what I imagine the Academy to look like. But if we could codify that with a little map, that would be great. I could potentially draw something up to give you an idea of what I'm thinking.

I toyed with the mission holocron idea but decided to stick with my original training idea from way back when. Factions tend to get formed and then just fade away like McFly in that picture from Back to the Future. I want to have regular events for our characters to participate in. Unfortunately, the last event TSO did ended up being the in story end of the order. But, it was fun to write and it put all the characters into a common story. We need more common stories. If I get my way, we should have board-wide stories when TSO riles up conflicts with every other faction. In fact, coming up, we will be doing a story with the Imperial Knights.

So with that in mind. Our training system will be participation in group events. We do have a set of levels to climb through.

Acolyte -> Apprentice -> Knight or Marauder -> Master

Acolytes are the newbies, Apprentices go on little two character adventures with the existing Knights or Masters. I'd like to see a revolving apprentice system so each apprentice gets some story time with the other Sithies. We're trying to form a more cohesive group here, so if each new character has some sort of history with the others.

And that is how you advance through the ranks. Instead of pre-scripted missions, I'd rather let our more established members to write a story with the newcomers that is at least interesting to one character, if not both.

I'm more than happy to lend a hand with getting things mapped out and whatnot, so definitely post up the stuff you had in mind :)

Also, there's been talk of adding an initial subforum for the groups/factions, so that might be helpful here. Something like 'The Headmaster's Office'? A place for people to go for info like the academy grounds, info on The Gears Corporation (as much as you feel needs to be given, of course), a list of the teachers at the academy, etc. Basically something that's got all the necessary info that someone would need to join TSO and start getting involved.

Oops, wrong character.

What I've been thinking is that it might be cool if the Academy was similar to Mont St. Michel in France (if you're not familiar, look it up on google images or think of Minas tirith from LotR). But instead of a church and abbey there are the administrative buildings and the teaching buildings for advanced Force students. throughout the lower levels of the town are the minor teaching buildings and classrooms. A student literally works their way up the hill as they advance through the school. The students that show promise and are invited to stay occupy the pinnacle with the other "teachers." Later they are allowed to do start the process of apprenticeship and advancement in TSO.

The general feel for the other students ought to be that of an old city built into a mountain where daily life is side-by-side with academic life.

Of course, we wouldn't be TSO if we didn't have secrets, which is why in the rocky mountain are passages and rooms that make up the TSO headquarters. This is where all the sinister plotting and such goes on.

In my mind, the Academy when it secured financing from the Taanab government, agreed to revive a historical landmark on Taanab by making use of its buildings and renovating where necessary. As a result Taanab has someone taking care of it's historical landmark and the Academy has a home.

In the meantime, I'm wondering if a little guide to TSO characters might be in order. I have a handful of characters I use to write ought the politics on Taanab, one of which being directly above. I have my main TSO character (Lady Frygt) and one apprentice (Alazne Gni Los). Of course there's Ezra and there's Razadi who seems to be fairly active here now so perhaps a post with some short bios might be nice, if only to make things easier to navigate for any potential newcomers.

And yes, I think a subforum would be good, if only to separate OOC from IC posts. We can keep our maps, how to and bios there and use it as a staging area for our story events.