Edward Kann

Re: Story Art Games Athos, Thanks for bringing to the table your concerns and issues. I will address them each in turn. First. Tom Matthews and I have an open line of communication as we have had for the last five years. Tom and I are good friends and remain good friends. Tom and I touched base in emails month ago about me moving forward with the .pdf book and even gave me permission to go with the original title Realm of Shards which was Tom's idea back when we worked on that project together. At the time Tom gave me the go ahead. The Realm of Shards as a setting even before it had that name was a project that Steve Holmes, Rob Perez and myself worked on together as far back as 1993. The vast majority of the campaign setting, ideas about how the world works and so forth started with a Fantasy Hero table top game in 93 and I ran forward writing additional material for them all the way from 93 until 2001 with the Realm of Shards kids adventure book. If anyone could be credited with having the first idea for a world with floating landscapes it would be Steve Holmes. Steve and I are best friends and remain best friends. We've been close since the 1980's and Steve is both a supporter of AEC and StoryART. Steve was one of the origional investors for StoryART back in 1998. Tom touched base with me last week and his email was cordial and upbeat as usual. Despite the tone of your email Athos and your attack on me without, apparently, knowing me personally or having any first hand knowledge of any of the actual business...all of which in my view have been positive...I am not going to engage in any sort of unprofessional attacks or negative talk about anyone. Not even you. That is not my personal style or policy. The Transition and Evolution of AEC Athos is correct in that I founded the Adventure Education Company with the investment of some friends. Between my own cash and the small contributions of a few close college friends we started out with only $10,000 in our pockets. I am very proud that AEC continues to rumble forward today despite the tiny amount of start up capital I had to get things going. Rather than some sort of fiscial irresponsibility I think that the ability to run a company on a shoe string points to my traits as a frugal business person and someone willing to make many personal sacrifices so that the company can survive and move forward. What Athos fails to mention however is that despite the fact that during our first year of being in business that we barely broke even at the end of the summer, that I paid out additional cash bonuses to who? To me? No. To Cameron and the rest of the AEC staffers for all the hard work. At the end of the summer I had exactly ZERO dollars left in my own pocket out of the money we made in our first summer. I had to work not one but two day jobs to make rent and keep food on the table at home. Also. I can think of at least twelve different families over the first three seasons that I worked as the founder and owner where I allowed their kids to attend summer camp FOR FREE. When one of the kids from our camps was badly injured in a vehicle accident I volunteered my own personal time to go over to his house to mentor and spend time with him to keep his spirits up and help him through his difficult recovery period. When a kid showed up from an underpriviledged family without a jacket for an overnight camp I -gave- him one. Tom Matthews is someone I can not say enough great stuff about. Tom joined me as a staffer during our third summer of operation. Tom has always been the most dedicated person I have ever encountered as far as the kids go and the quality of his adventures and functions. Tom is a fantastic guy and I count myself lucky to call him a friend. My wife Valerie gained an opportunity to make a significant move forward in her own career and in 2001 we moved to California to allow her to pursue that dream. It was always my intention after moving to California to hand the reins of the Colorado AEC branch over to Tom. Instead of keeping ownership for myself and paying Tom a salary I felt that the best way to support him as a friend and show my admiration for him was to hand over the business in Colorado to him. Tom is not the kind of guy that would force someone to hand a business over to him. I am also not the kind of guy that would not extend praise and support where it was due. With Tom in Colorado doing most of the work with that branch and doing it exceedingly well, better than I could do it in fact, it only seemed right to hand him the reins. Investors - Getting back to those investors that you claim I screwed over. Over the years I have kept all of them in the loop on developments in the company and any major decisions I had to make. Several of them have even met Tom and the rest totally and enthusiastically support the direction the company is going in, in Colorado with Tom at the helm. For most of them, like myself, the fact that we probably spent more money working with kids over the first few years than we ever made was immaterial to the ability to do such great work. Again we are not talking about any kind of massive conspiracy here although that seems to be the picture painted. Athos, AEC has never been about the money to me. It will never be about the money to me. Its about the kids and doing good things for them. Its about feeling proud that I was able to start something positive as a business and when the time came for me to move that I could hand that thing I had built up to a good friend. A good friend who loves working with kids and doing adventures in the same way that I do. I am very proud of the work I have done with the kids and I am very proud of the work that Tom does. AEC - California Ok lets talk about AEC in California. In California I have been doing quite a bit less of the work than I did in Colorado. The reason for this is pretty simple. Now that I am pushing 40, I have developed some health issues that have forced me to restrict how much I can run around in the park sword fighting packs of 8 and 12 year olds. I still do work with kids here in California but the occasions are pretty limited. All of the events that I run in California are stand alones that I provide for free, to kids in limited income programs or special needs programs. I wish I could get out there more. I really miss the work. Legal Stuff All Tom has to do, or even Cameron for that matter. Is email me, or call me, and say that they would rather not have me continue to go forward with this particular project. The results of those email conversations between Tom, Cameron and myself are our business. For my part Tom and Cameron can count on me to be supportive and positive, no matter what. Period. That has always been my policy. I suppose in doing business for six years that it is inevitable that someone would post some kind of a rant or flame. I am certainly human. The rants and flames related to AEC or kids work for me have been very, very, very few and far between. In fact I think this is the first negative post I have ever had to respond to in six years of doing work with kids. Neither Tom nor Cameron has to resort to legal action because I treat people with respect and listen to the opinions those I work with or maintain as friends. Even those I haven't talked with in many years. Will Realm of Shards change directions? Possibly. Tom and I will work things out. How would that effect the book? The good news on that score is that the vast majority of the material that I put into the fantasy book that I am currently working on is completely new. The vast majority of the locations are completely different from the old AEC material. Certainly the Tale of Girl and Rocketship Empires have absolutely zero to do with anything I have been working on previously. I am not afraid of accusations of being some kind of a plagerist. Because I wrote the book I am supposedly plagerizing. As far as copyright infringements go, those won't become an issue because, again, Tom and I will work things out as good friends. As we always have. Athos you mention that there are similarities between some of the Realm of Shards book material and this material. Well. Of course. Considering that I wrote the vast majority of the Realm of Shards campaign setting material and a very large portion of the spells, skills and also came up with the entire alchemy, trade skills, etc... It is no surprise that there are similarities. Again. I've been operating up to this point with Tom under the understanding that everything was fine with him. Tom did send me an email recently (within the last week) and the spirit and tone of it was upbeat and positive. If we have things to discuss and work out then GREAT! I always welcome any opportunity to talk to Tom. To be honest I miss him. I haven't been able to make it back to Colorado in a long time. Tom Matthews is someone I would walk through the fires of hades to support. I have no problem making adjustments and changing directions on a project if he asks me to. Doing things out of a spirit of kindness and support have always been at the center of AEC and remain at the center of that Colorado AEC group to this day. Writing Projects in General... I am glad you like the Realm of Shards setting Athos. That is a huge compliment to me as someone who developed it. Thanks! Tom also contributed a huge amount of work on that project, not to mention organizing all of the artwork as the art director. Cameron created The Free City of Measure and did some work on the races and creatures in that book. I also understand that he did some of the editing along with Tom, although my understanding is that Tom did the -vast- majority of the editing on that book. I think your passionate leap to defending the body of work only points to how good it is. I believe your leaping to the defense of Tom only points to how great a guy Tom is. I agree with you that Tom is a great guy. We wouldn't have worked so many years together, so closely, on so many projects if he wasn't a great guy and if we didn't have a good relationship. I am not going to engage in a back and forth or arguement around these issues further. Because of the intensity of Athos's posting I felt the need to stand up for myself. Athos you can rely on Tom and me to work out things in a positive and supportive way. I wish you the very best. Edward Kann The StoryART Games guy

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Anyone remember the old Protector's Hero Group? Here are some quotes from around the old game table with Scott Heine at the helm as our Game Master... Situation: An agent is holding a woman hostage during, what should be, the early "easy" part of an adventure. While several heroes are trying to decide how to negotiate with the Viper agent and save the hostage the player of Helios pipes up. "Ok so I blast him...I use my most powerful killing attack and I blast the Viper Agent." Helios goes on to roll three one's on his attack roll and incinerates the poor female hostage on the spot. As our entire Hero Team (almost all of us have high levels of Code versus Killing) gape at the smoldering crater that was the hostage Helios turns to us all and shrugs saying... "Oh well...no more hostage situation." The various incarnations that Mechanon would appear in as a reoccuring villain in some of the more tongue in cheek Protector's episodes... "The Mecha-Salesmen" Mechanon decides that commerce is the way to conquer the world and opens his own assertive door to door vaccum cleaner salesman business. "Mecha-Tree" Mechanon decides that the most populous life form on earth are planets and decides to organize a revolt among the trees of the national forest against their vile human oppressors. "Mecha-Claus" This one was one of mine. Mechanon decides that the way to conquer earth is to steal christmas. To do so he uses a shrink ray and kidnaps hundreds of Macy's christmas santas figuring that sooner or later he'll capture the REAL santa claus and then the world will be doooomed doooomed. Mechanon dresses up in a santa suit and holds the mini santa clauses hostage in glass christmas bulbs on his tree. Situation: The Protectors are involved in a potentially universe ending plot thread where they can either talk their way out or creatively think their way out of a situation or risk ending the entire universe... Helios' player again decides that he's finished waiting for the rest of us to try and figure out the situation and man of action that he is decides to risk everything by taking out the bad guy with an attack... Scott, something like..."Are you CERTAIN you want to do this. If you do I am going to have you roll a dice. If you roll a 1,2 or 3 the universe is ok. If you roll a 4,5 or 6 the entire Universe is destroyed and all of you with it..." Helios. "What could possibly go wrong..." "Sure I'll roll" Visions of screaming flaming hostages swam before the eyes of several Protector's players that evening but it was a pretty hilarious moment for those that were there. Ed

Re: Playing 3.5 after Fantasy Hero The challenge that I have faced in trying to write 3.5 material is that there is no universal standard for what a point means or what a d6 means in the game system. The entire 3.5 game system is pretty far all over the map and you need to very nearly have a photographic memory (tough on us old guys with poor memory to begin with) to keep track of the ten zillion different spell exceptions, rules exceptions and all the million different feats and skills that go with all the countless prestige classes. On the one hand it is fun to have so many options but it can be a little difficult having to re-study several chapters in several different hard cover books just to make sure you are putting an individual encounter that will last maybe 20 minutes in game together. To my mind the trade off should best case be about two to one on writing up adventures and game material for any game system I want to run in. In the Hero System I am very familiar with the rules and I can consistently create a four hour adventure with everything i want written up with a good amount of detail and that includes villains, magic items, coming up with some spells and creatures and the entire ball of wax in about 8 hours of work for a 4 hour adventure. In 3.5 on the other hand while I also have run a DnD campaign off and on for the last 30 some odd years the rules have changed so dramatically and there are so many countless books that even while I own MOST of them and keep them on a shelf within arms reach of my computer and desk it usually takes me about double the time to write and adventure using 3.5 if I want to make sure that I have all my basis covered. This is not because in 3.5 I am even creating any new material. In fact the vast majority of the prep. time that i face writing 3.5 adventures is in making notes on all the rules and all the abilities of existing creatures, spells, feats and magic items scattered through all four to seven books i have to keep open on the floor around my feet while I am writing up the adventure. Also. When creating an adventure in Hero it takes me exactly five hot seconds to come up with the experience point reward for an adventure. In d20 I have to break out TABLES and hack through a very cumbersome and incredibly unwieldy experience reward system that often takes me another 30 to 45 minutes to hash out adventure experience for the upcoming game on TOP of what it took me to write it. Bottom line is that I play both games frequently and have done so for a very, very, very long time. Chances are good I'll still be using both as I simply have two different player groups that prefer and are more familiar with each system. For me it's not so much getting tied down to any one game system although I do prefer some over others but in being able to run a good game for my player group. I find that a lot of time if I want to play with a particular gaming group that I wind up adopting whatever rules system they are more comfortable provided it is one that I already own and understand. At this point with something like eight or twelve game systems on my book shelves I am loathe to purchase a new system. Edward

Re: Anyone have Tomb of Horrors? Maybe a Demi-Lich is a Lich that has gone insane? Maybe it secretly hopes to be destroyed, on some twisted subconscious level it sends out little clues to lead powerful adventurers possibly capable of dispatching it to it's layer. Once they arrive however the sadistic and incredibly bored aspect of the lunatic Lich come into play and it just can't help itself in trying to make life difficult for our heroes, even kill them if they make an error. Maybe the whole dungeon environment is the last pathetic entertainment that a Demi-Lich can generate for itself trapped as it is after centuries of slow decay in it's previous Lich form? Just ideas. Couldn't help myself Edward

Re: Perry Rhodan Hero Wow Perry Rhodan. Now THERE is a blast from the past. I remember walking into a used book store YEARS ago and filling my arms with Perry Rhodan paperbacks. They were great! But I haven't seen a single one of them since then. Thanks for reminding me about that series. Now I have another set of good old books to pick up and look for online. Edward

Re: godless fantasy "How do faith and magic co-exist in a fantasy campaign?" I suppose it depends on how you define magic and how you define faith. The great thing about writing a story, in my view, is having the freedom to create your own setting and push and pull on things to tell the story that you've been trying to craft for your viewers, readers or in this case players. I would say start with the story first. You might come up with one hundred and fifty different spiffy new spells, character types, skill sets, monsters, descriptions of religions, whatever... It all is sort of a pointless exercise unless it hangs together and means something in the context of your story. Ok that's not completely fair. I do like crunching out a few magic items and spells or monsters at random like the next person does and not necessarily just for plugging them into a setting. I suppose what I am trying to say is; is this the real road block you are facing as a writer and storyteller? Is it in coming up with a nicely meshed magic and clerical system of spells? I know THAT can be tough from my own perspective. When I work on my own material I always go back to the story. What am I trying to communicate? Are priests protagonists or antagonists? Are wizards all antagonists? What is it about the priests that makes them heroic. Are they all heroic and is the setting very three color? Is there room for individual groups to be villains in the priesthood and how do you account for their magic still working if they are? If your trying to craft a story where the good priests get their magic from "Norma the Kindly Plant God" but loose their good magic when they become evil and have to conceal the source of their magical spells as coming from "Fruit Roll Up The Vile - Evil Pastry God of the Underworld" well then you have the beginning of some plot complications and some nice layers to your story. Try focusing on the characters and what makes THEM interesting and also the setting and how it might appear if it were illustrated or in a film. Anyway that is my advice in the moment. Take Care, Edward

Re: Story Art Games We just received the contract to do the Hero releases and put those together within the last two weeks. So we are going to put together Hero versions of the .pdf downloads that will follow on the heals of the d20 material about 30 to 60 days after the d20 release dates. We want to make sure that we don't rush things and that the Hero material is very, very solid for the Hero versions. There is a download of our early Fantasy .pdf promo here. Fantasy Promo Early So what you will see is the d20 covers for now. We'll be posting firm release dates for the Hero downloads before long. I would expect to be able to put up some dates in October after we've had some time to coordinate things with Hero Games. Fantasy books should be no problem with having a fairly timely release date. Rocketship Empires may wait to coordinate with the release of Pulp Hero in the summer. We just need to work things out with the awesome crew at Hero Games to make sure we all have our ducks in a row.

Re: Story Art Games I don't know if this will spark any interest or questions but working late tonight and one of our starships came in for Rocketship Empires 1936. This is our Lucky Lady. Our flying boat turned starship. A flying boat makes for a GREAT ship for an adventuring party. You can fly to remote planets and any place that has oceans or lakes or wide rivers provides you with a ready landing strip. She's a real beauty and we'll be doing an entire feature on her with deck plans, images of how to strip down her ball turret, all of her equipment and stats and schematics. Sort of a car owner's manual but for a starship. The Lucky Lady Starship Do you guys like the color pallette? We are trying out doing some of the interior artwork in a 1930's style comic book color pallette. Edward Kann StoryART Games http://www.storyartgames.com

Re: Story Art Games Any good fantasy series unfolds as the story unfolds. With that in mind I began putting together the first Realm of Shards book starting back at general world concepts... What is the setting? Who are the major villains and factions in the setting? What is the geography? How does shipping and traveling, navigation and magic work? How do we include everything without leaving gaping holes? Well. Your right on some points. Instead of presenting every single Holy Order or Thievies guild or presenting the entire monster manual which would fill all 200 pages on its own, I've broken things up with the most core elements the real center and soul of the setting in book one. So in book one I present a chapter with the ten creatures that probably best define and are useful in the setting. Most of these are flying mounts to be honest and a number of floating plants and exotic creatures that are fairly fundamental to life for characters in the setting. I leave out the other monsters we'd like to present and divide them up between the five books. All of what I would consider to be the most interesting and useful monsters, creatures and mounts for day to day adventure in the setting and for some epic pieces are include in the five books the other creatures we'll pop into some free downloads of monsters and creatures on our website as things progress. You could take book one and you could run the Realm of Shards. You would never need to buy another book for the setting (although I hope that you do obviously) and you could certainly get a lot of mileage out of the maps, ideas, pictures and material presented in book one. The Tale of Girl and The Realm of Shards are really designed to be complimentary works. But I've gone out of my way to make it pretty easy to pick up one or the other and use it for the basis for your own campaign using the ideas or to import the material into your own setting or current adventure series. Book one ~is~ 200 pages. That is fairly huge for a download .pdf book. Also that is getting fairly close to the size of say the core Forgotten Realms book so we can get a lot of material packed into 200 pages or more. To be honest the books are likely to be more than 200 pages (lets the cat of the bag) but I wanted to post something that I knew for certain we would be reaching and likely exceeding as far as page count. So, we have a lot of room to include time lines, history, maps, and that sort of information in book one in a grand scope sort of view. By the last chapter though in book one we are really starting to focus in on the territory immediately surrounding the Tale of Girl. The last chapter of Realm of Shards is basically a city book for Ravarna, the first city and the starting point in the Tale of Girl. In the Tale of Girl, in book one we expand on this city map even further getting down to life on the street, what a running duel over the roof tops and into the canals and catacombs is like, who are the street level organizations and lesser thugs and villains in the unfolding story of The Tale of Girl. We continue this more city scale and regional scale focus in Realm of Shards book two. So instead of just giving you more fluff we really get into the extended histories of places, provide maps not only for say a city or location but details on how the place has evolved over time. For instance. We've sunk a considerable amount of energy into the religious art history and religious evolution of beliefs in the setting. I'd be happy to launch into all that if you like although it would probably fill an entire posting all on its own. Sorry if I tend to go on and on. I'm rather enthusiastic about the writing and the setting and characters if you hadn't noticed. Getting me to talk about them is pretty easy. Getting me to stop yammering on and on is rather another thing altogether. So.. Ultimately what will make the difference for players and GM's is whether they like the setting. Some players love steam punk and some do not. Realm of Shards is certainly not steam punk but it has its own flavor that may (hopefully) wildly appeal to some and may not be the cup of tea for others. That is ok. No book or film or comic or setting will appeal to everyone. I happen to like quite a range of genre's and settings myself, some more than others. What it comes down to is that The Realm of Shards is something that we've really poured our hearts and souls into as creators. Over the last six years that I've been writing and working on this setting I've really fallen in love with it and this particular fantasy world and the story line have a very special place for me as a creator and writer. Five books and 1000 pages or so of material is a LOT of information. Keep in mind that there are literally drawers and drawers of adventures and notes that did not make it into the final books. Lots of the material was fun to write over the years but I wanted to present the very, very, very best of the material so that readers might have a chance to fall in love with this setting in the same way that I have, while writing it and running adventures in it. Also. It is great to be able to do these books in the Hero System. There are a lot of great game systems out there and I've played many of them and still do. The Hero System has been a favorite though of myself and our little cadre of local gamers all the way back to the very first publications. I used to game around the table with Scott Heine who was our GM and played one of the origional Protector's characters. (Lady Ace...yea...I plead guilty to playing a chic). So from High School days through College and beyond I've always had a Hero game of some type going steadily. To be able to finally do some books for publication is quite exciting and to be able to present them in the Hero System is a real honor considering how much fun I've had with the game all these years. I've been a gamer myself for almost 30 years now. So I know exactly how it feels to pick up that campaign book or adventure book and go.."whoa...how cool is this!" I deeply and strongly feel that gamers deserve the very, very, very, finest work that I can deliver as a writer and the finest material I can put together for artwork, character sheets, props, maps and adventures. I've sat in the same chair that you all have sat in as a GM and I know how great it feels to run a really excellent game or series of games. It's a special talent to be able to storytell to a small group of players in the kind of immersive and rich settings we all love to present. So in a way these books are my small thank you to a hobby and to other writers and artists who have gone before who have inspired my gaming all of these years. Anyway that's far too much soap boxing. If someone wants to pick a topic about either setting or the Tale of Girl just ask and I'll give you all the inside scoop. Edward Kann StoryART Games

Re: Story Art Games The Realm of Shards - Geography Imagine a gas giant. Now set the gas giant into a fantasy setting where anything is really possible. In creating the Realm of Shards I was going for something that could be visually stunning / breathtaking when placed into art. I wanted something where my players would really suck in their breathe and say, "wow that looks really cool". I was also looking to create something that had never (as far as I knew) been done before for a fantasy setting. Back to our gas giant. Within the atmosphere picture an expanse of open sky filled with clouds, your standard weather patterns of rain, snow, clear sky and so forth and make this expanse have quite a lot of depth from the deepest point in the atmosphere up to the highest point. The inhabitable swath of atmosphere in the Realm of Shards is called The Empyrean. In fact instead of seven seas or oceans the open sky regions of our setting are divided into the seven Empyrean and each is named for trait usually related to either it's size or the weather that can most often be encountered in that region. The Empyrean is only one portion of the great atmosphere of the gas giant. Descend too low into the atmosphere and you pass into a region known as the Deeps. Within the cloud banks and heavy atmosphere of The Deeps the air becomes so dense and heated and the green house effect so pronounced that things evolve into more of an exotic environment requiring the use of magic or some form of racial evolution to survive. Passing even deeper and deeper down into the Deeps one reaches a point where the atmosphere is simply uninhabitable. Airships are crushed, magical protections are no longer of any significant use and past a certain point life ceases. The point in the Deeps where life ceases arrives long before a vessel or character will encounter anything remotely resembling "the ground below" or a planetary surface within the gas giant. For all practical purposes the environment of The Realm of Shards is an open sky environment which is fairly bottomless, meaning that there is never any main planetary body visible below. What about land? The lands in the Realm of Shards are called moonlets. These hang suspended within the Kether (air) of the Empyrean. A moonlet can be large enough for an entire county, duchy or small kingdom to rest upon it's upper surface. Complete with forests, lakes, cities, castles, even small mountains. The climate of a moonlet varies depending upon it's position high or low within the Empyrean. A moonlet moving in a low course through the Empyrean will often be covered in cloud and mist, humid rainfalls and hot steaming jungle environments. The climate of a moonlet in the central Empyrean has a more varied and temperate climate. Some moonlets may be deserts others might be covered in forests. Habitat in the central region is both a mixture of altitude and the weather patterns that spiral out from the central stationary storm that is located at the center of each system of moonlets. The climate of a moonlet placed high in the Empyrean will be thin in atmosphere and cold, often covered in ice and snow all year. The Realms Moonlets for the most part travel in a course that looks like a planetary orbit around a central, stationary, permanent storm. The central storm manifests itself as a massive tornado like column that extends from as far down as one can see into the deeps all the way up into the heavens. These central storms are called Storm Eyes or Gods Eyes depending on who you are talking to. Wind and weather patterns spiral outwards from the central Gods Eye in a counter clockwise pattern when viewed from a top down map. The Moonlets on the other hand universally orbit a central Gods Eye like planets orbiting a star. Moonlets moving in their orbits which we refer to as a moonlet's course travel in a clockwise direction when viewed from a top down map. Moonlets often move in clusters. There is usually a large primary moonlet and a number of smaller moonlets that share it's orbit and are positioned around the primary like a chain of floating islands. Some of these floating islands might have waterfalls spilling off their sides either to vanish into the open sky below or to fall onto a lake of another moonlet below it. There are four large systems of moonlets each surrounding their own Gods Eye. These four distinct systems look something like star systems although on a much smaller scale. The four known Realms (an individual system of moonlets and their associated Storm Eye or Gods Eyes is called a Realm) are: The Dominion The Free Provinces The Cantons The Hinterlands The Cardinal Directions In this environment there is no standard North, South, East or West. A central storm eye generates a magnetic field that will pull a compass needle to point in the direction of the closest storm eye. This manifests a reliable navigational reference of "sailing into the system". This direction is called "Core". With the compass needle pointing behind you and sailing out of the system you are traveling "Spinward". This refers to the tendancy of objects to fly outward off of a spinning plate. Within a Realm all weather consistently spirals outwards from the Storm Eye or Gods Eye from the same direction. Standing on a moonlet that is moving in it's course around a Storm Eye one can count on wind, cloud and rain to consistently cross over the moonlet from the same direction day after day. Wind and weather always cross over the leading edge of the moonlet first. The direction one faces when facing into the wind is called "Windward". Ports are often constructed down the trailing cliff face of a moonlet so that the body of the moonlet provides a natural wind break and weather brake to airships at port. This downwind direction, or facing downwind is called "Haven". Standing anywhere in any Realm and facing into the wind. Windward is always in front of you. Core is always to your right hand. Haven is always behind you and Spinward is always to your left hand. I should have some nice finished pieces of moonets and cities upon moonlets to post here by the end of the week or certainly by next week. For now here is an image looking out over the Imperial capital in The Dominion. This city is called The City of Doors after the hundreds of permanent magical gates that once were active here. The gates have been closed for centuries now, for the most part. City of Doors - Early Concept Sketch Here is an image of one of the long closed permanent gates on a side street in The City of Ravarna. These gates once linked the entire known world together making every moonlet more or less a connected suburb of the City of Doors. Long ago the City of Doors was constructed by The Order of Sorcery and was the center of the known world. Abandoned Ancient Teleportation Gate Again this is a concept sketch. The final is in process. Let me know if this sparks any questions and I will post more about other parts of our fantasy setting for readers to incorporate or use or maybe even look forward to the download books coming available on November 1st. Edward Kann StoryART Games

Re: Conan vs. Elric Waves hello and jots down a long list of great sounding books. Unfortunately I agree that Elric would butcher poor Conan even though I much prefer the old Conan series. Conan would begin to wax poetic about "the secret of steel" and Elric would sneeze, his hooptie sword would fly out of his hand and gak poor Conan where he stood. Sigh. The early Elric stories were fun to read. Thanks for the good book recommendations. Edward Kann StoryART Games

Re: Story Art Games Yes! I would know quite a lot about it. Our site has only been up for four weeks and so far we've had about 250 emails from interested .pdf customers and people interested in when we'll get the books into print. On the 17th of September we had our all time record of 2,900 visitors to the website which is more than a little exciting. It is quite late. About 1:20 in the a.m. here after another long day of editing, writing, and organizing. I will happily post all sorts of inside information about the setting, artwork, crunchy bits and all from any of our upcoming books. If you go to http://www.storyartgames.com and go to the downloads section we now have up our early promotional download for Realm of Shards and Tale of Girl (our fantasy book lines) and Rocketship Empires 1936 - think WWII era pulp action adventure but in a science fiction setting with starships, hundreds of colony worlds, aliens, alien technology and all that sort of thing. All of the downloads on our site currently are free. I'll hop back on here in the morning to answer any questions you might have and post some information and artwork. For now here is an image of one of our flying ships drawn for us by Michael Kaluta. Michael is a friend of mine and is doing the cover and some interior artwork for the Realm of Shards Fantasy Book Series. A direct link to what we are working on in a brief catalog of material for the end of 2004 and leading into 2005 is available here: Have a good night everyone and talk to you tomorrow. Edward Kann StoryART Games