User:The Archivist

• scribble scribble scratch*

Hmm?

Oh, hello. Do come in. Sit down, there's plenty of chairs. Like that red one best myself- nice and comfy.

You know, you never quite realize how hard it is to write a world from scratch. To record its history, its legacy, its triumphs and tragedies. But I can't really stop now, can I? Heh. I know, you're thinking I'm a doddering old fool. Well, let me tell you, it's not easy being given the chance to write up your own world. And yet, how could you live with yourself if you let it pass by?

So sit here, read one of the volumes I've finished already. I think the cocoa is almost done, and I could really use some company.

*scratch scribble skritch*

Me

I'm the Archivist, also known in various circles as BoSS|Communist, Dr. Joe, and NovaKrazny. I'm also responsible for creating Ricasa and for bringing the Americana setting to this Wiki.

If you want to help with either project, I'd advise against leaving a message anywhere but on my talk page- I'm only around sporadically, and since I'm just heading into college that's a situation that's only likely to get worse. If you need to contact me, send me an E-mail at novakrazny@gmail.com, and by the next day at the very latest you should have a reply.

Current Projects

IMPORTANT: READ THESE IF YOU HAVE INTEREST IN ANY OF MY WORK. THEY MAY BE SUBJECT TO CHANGE.

Ricasa: Ah, Ricasa. This was my first-ever attempt at writing a campaign setting, cobbled together in my traditional style from a dozen existing sources and mythoses. According to popular opinion, it turned out fairly well, though there are obvious and gaping holes in the fabric of the work. Not bad for a first try.

Ricasa is still not completely finished, and to be honest it probably never will be. The idea well for this project has sort of run dry. Which is not to say I'm abandoning it- more than one dry hole has turned back into a gusher before- but I probably won't be contributing anything for a while. Feel free to do most anything you want to or with the setting save completely rewriting everything, and if you feel the need to ask my permission for something just shoot me an E-mail.

Americana: Ah, Americana. This isn't technically my idea, but it's not really anyone's idea- Americana was conceived and founded by 4chan's Traditional Games board (/tg/), meaning that 90% of the original contributions are Anonymous. The whole thing centered around a single image that now sits on the Places page ("How Japan Sees America") and- well, go take a look. I've stopped contributing for the moment due to college, but I have no end of ideas for this thing and will be back.

Americana is a project by the people, for the people- anyone is welcome to contribute, though as always I'd prefer working with you on it than working around you. If you want to pitch in with your local perspective, feel free to drop me a line at novakrazny@gmail.com, and we can get straight down to brass tacks.

Holding Cell

Not sure where this goes, just yet. I'll let it rest here until it finds its place.

The Americ revolution in flight owes itself to two figures: August von Zeppelin and Mikhail Poletiazhelyi. Both were and are native Chicagoans: von Zeppelin, a geographical surveyor; Poletiazhelyi, an engineer. The latter had worked all his life in the Smith & Stuart Engineering and Railway Company, and was fascinated by the properties of smoke, steam, and gas. He made several small improvements in S&S engines that turned them tidy boosts in profits, but went largely unnoticed, working on his own designs. If hot air and steam could make something go along, he figured, why not up? He tested small designs for years, but always ran into an insurmountable problem--there was no gas that could lift enough weight, not even hydrogen. But one day in 97 A.G., his friend August paid him a visit. August had discovered a crack in the earth in southeast Chicago that was venting a seemingly endless stream of gas, and he wanted the opinion of an "expert" on what it was.

Poletiazhelyi might have expected carbon dioxide, likely from a long-burning coal fire underground. He got something quite different. The fissure was shooting out a sort of gas not listed anywhere on the Elemental Register--it was inflammable, non-toxic, quite nonreactive, and on first glance completely worthless. But Poletiazhelyi did a quick test and made a great discovery--this gas had easily twice the lifting power of hydrogen.

Poletiazhelyi asked his friend to keep quiet about the fissure, which von Zeppelin saw no problem with at all--the country was in the thick of the Twenty Years War, fending off a combined force of Dallasites and Vegasites, and even if he'd shouted it from the rooftops he doubted anyone would have taken notice. Meanwhile, the engineer quit his job at S&S, hired twenty workers, bought a large amount of steel and canvas, and disappeared from Chicago proper for eight years. The war at the gates of Chicago City never moved that far east, and the trade routes passed a good ways north and south of the area, so for all that time, no-one paid any notice to the vanishing of one railway engineer. But in the last days of 105 A.G., as the war gave its final gasps, something enormous appeared in the southeastern sky.

The assembled armies, the city's citizens--all simply stopped and stared as the massive canvas shape passed overhead, humming with the clatter of distant steam engines. It picked its way ungainly through the broader streets of the city, making its way to the Royal Gardens behind Palace Tower. With a heavy guard, Queen Dorothy herself walked out into the gardens as the great shape lowered itself down until its canvas skin was nearly touching the surrounding walls.

Hanging underneath, in front of the massive coal-fired engines, was a glass-and-metal cockpit. Inside were three operators, seventeen grubby-looking workers, and one man in the uniform of the Royal Geological Survey. And hanging from a rope ladder dangling from the cockpit's door was Mikhail Poletiazhelyi, wearing his best suit and an enormous grin.

And after he had dropped to the ground and officially presented his Queen with the Royal Chicagoan Air-Ship (R.C.A.) August von Zeppelin, Poletiazhelyi had ushered in a new Americ age: the age of flight.