Nice to see a member of the Royal Guard still about. And, you too, ZV. I interpreted that last post in Streets of the Redead as some sort of ambiguous grand farewell. To answer RG Zane’s idea he mentioned earlier, I would prefer if the topics that were inactive but not yet in the dungeon stayed in their current place for now. At least long enough for me to achieve their locations before they are moved. I have a sort of goal in mind of going back and reading all the topics on this old site. I know it’ll take some time. As I was reading them, I was hoping to create a digital backup along the way, copying posts and labeling them with the location of the topic, the identity of the poster for each post (naturally), and the dates of each post. It would be quite the undertaking, and will no doubt require a vast amount of time spent on my end. But, if I wanted to go back and read everything anyway, it shouldn’t be so bad. And I can get to archiving the locations of all the topics not in the dungeon first. Then, at least those locations will be recorded for whatever the future holds. Obviously, my goal in this is to first preserve the work and ideas of the very talented writers of this site, whether they have long since retired, are still active, or perhaps are yet to discover us. Additionally, I have my own visions about world of HA2, and I think by reading everybody else’s thoughts, especially the official posts from The Narrator and RG’s, I can help gain a broader idea of how to better mesh my concepts into the grander scope of the collective vision. I know, it’s a lot to do, and it’ll take me some time, but it’s the least I feel I can offer to this site that, as ZV and Nogare have pointed at, got me through some rough patches in my life and helped hone my writing skills in ways I never thought possible. Yes, the least I can do is read it all, archive everything, and continue to be active amongst the posting community of this site.

Onto active topics, if you Nogare, or anybody else wants to, feel free to join my active topic at t19 in the Tantari. Right now, it feels a bit daft, the story that I’m painting. And, I confess, I don’t have everything planned out yet for that particular story thread. I have a lot of ideas, but very little typed or written down. Trust me when I say though that my intent is to have a fully fleshed out settlement and a compelling band of ruffians by the time I’m finished with it though. I want to make a topic, or perhaps a small series of topics to tell this story, that sort of have a Majora’s Mask feel in that there will be plenty of NPCs with their own schedules and personal lives to interact with. I’m sure it’ll take me lots more planning to actually make something that fulfilling, but at the rate the topic is moving (no offense to Leth, play by posts naturally seem to have a slow rate of momentum) I think I still have some time to sit down and really crank out a miniaturized world that feels real, especially with the ideas I’ve developed in my head. As I said, it’s open to anybody, though I may have to find a way to fit other characters into the topic. I am sure, however, like Streets of the Redead, that it may take YEARS to complete though, despite the idea in my head that’ll it’ll just be a day or two at the aforementioned settlement followed up by maybe another day or two of raiding a bandit hideout in game time. I have some neat concepts I’ve been thinking up that might enough some grid based searching and a fully realized searchable terrain map. But that seems like it’s going to take a considerable amount of real world time to get to that, so don’t expect to be dazzled by the topic straight up. As of right now, I check HA2 at least every three days, and if I saw a reply on the topic, from Leth or anybody else, I could probably have a reply out in a week’s time, probably less. If anybody does decide to join, I just hope they like it. And, I’m sure I’ll have learned a lot of useful information about running an adventure by the end of it.
To answer your question, ZV, I don’t believe I do have KP’s contact information, but I thought I was one of those to reach out to him when Jack pulled the plug from TDC and KP had to, if I’m remembering correctly, be informed that the site was down so he could put up a backup, if possible. Which, he did, very graciously, on his own site. Sometimes people give KamakaziPlumber a lot of grief, but bless that admin for putting the site back up and hosting it so graciously. I’ll try to see if I have any contact info to give you, ZV. I’ll let you know whether I find something, or if my search comes up empty handed.

If anyone of you needs to get a hold of me, I’ll try to put a concise list of where I can be reached below:

Mattwittherson on Skype
Theropro@yahoo(dot)com
blawr4@mail(dot)com (yes, that is just mail(dot)com)

Then again, I’m not always on skype or checking my email, I probably check HA2 more than any other means of communication, so also feel free to try PMing me too. Assuming my inbox isn’t full, I should see any message via PM within a couple days of it being sent. I think there was some issue before of me not getting the little pop-up window because of some sort of pop-up software I was running, but now I always check to see if there’s any unread messages on that bar near the top of the HA2 webpage, the same bar that has the dossier and usergroups.

So, I guess by order of likelihood of reaching me, it would be via HA2 PM, then the yahoo email, then skype, then the mail(dot)com email. Really, I’m open to any channel of communication. I know that the easiest way to get me to focus on paying attention to active topics is to send me reminders every now and then, especially if the topic has been inactive for a couple weeks and someone has only recently replied. As of right now, I’m directly checking every topic I’m active in when I check the site, but I can’t promise I’ll hold to that level of vigilance. I can promise to try to stick to that method though. Hopefully, therefore, I shouldn’t need to be messaged, unless it’s not about me getting a reply out and is, in fact, about some other aspect of the site, such as ideas for future topics, rallying contact info to reach out to users, discussing writing methods or critique, or anything else really. I will always make the time to talk to my fellow writers.

Ah yes, and Nogare, I did check out the links in your new signature. They seem very intriguing. Can’t wait to see what you have planned.

EDIT: To my knowledge, I checked my records ZV and that's a negative in terms of having his contact info, sorry.

Hey Orph, before anything else, I'd like to bring up that I'm working on that too. I have a document going which will hold the link to every single topic in chronological order of posting by the time it's done, with the name of the topic and who created it in the link name. There are 4000 topics in HA2. I've linked up to about 600 so far. Anywhere in particular you guys would like to have that put up? I was considering either the Hylian Times or the North Castle Library, but it's up to you.
Here are the first 10.
1. (No longer exists)
2. Traveling Within the Castle - Courtyard by Narrator
3. Traveling Within the Castle - Town Square by Narrator
4. Traveling Within the Castle - Temple Quarter by Narrator
5. Traveling Within the Castle - Caravan Quarter by Narrator
6. (No longer exists)
7. [Shop] Quartermaster Hithos by Narrator
8. [Notice] Joining the World of Hyrule (Read This First!) by Narrator
9. [Announcements] The Hylian Times -- 02/19 by Narrator
10. [NPC] A Goron Looks Amiss by Narrator

Again, so far I'm up to 620 written longhand. I got it covered. (Also expect to see a lot of characters staring out into sea. It's kind of amazing, Consider it an official HA2 cliche )

As far as actually figuring out what happened here before we arrived and after we arrived and in the times we took breaks, reading through everything, I'd be down for working out the specifics of a linear set of lore for either an HA3 backdrop or something for us to refer to. Because that is something I would like to bring up if there is an HA3; we're all trying to be constant one-shot Dungeon Masters, and it's hard to keep track of what's what. Like, let's be real. Whose grave IS it at f18 anyways?

And I'll check out that Tantari spot for sure. And a town like that sounds like a good idea. Actually when we that skype chat group was a thing and I was having all those problems, I had talked to Alpha about my thoughts regarding staying in touch with each others' stories, and I thought it might be helpful to have 1 on 1 with everyone so everyone has some small snippet of knowledge of what is happening or will happen in the stories so stories can converge in ways beyond what the characters themselves are aware of, so the world would seem more connected. Alpha seemed to approve of my idea but then that's when tumbleweeds decided to populate the streets instead of us. Leth Kasei and I had a personal category area in the talk forums courtesy of ZV, but unfortunately nothing ever came of it. But that was the idea behind it. So it's a thought; I have something in mind for what's happening with these mysterious strangers who have cropped up on my signature, and you've got a nifty idea for a town of ruffians, we can see if we can make that something cool. Plus this idea for reading through everything and building on the old stories and we may have something really cool to check out. (Although off the bat, if we want to start taking liberties, I recommend only taking from the lore of players with characters in the graveyard rather than the hostel)

Run-on paragraphs, awesome! XD Get back to me on all this guys, and we can start giving this old place some right proper CPR!

Everyone, I'm always around. I come by the site every month or so to see if there are new topics/posts so that I know whether to worry about DB backups or not. It always makes me happy to see a "2017" post in the mix somewhere.

Also, you can always reach out to me at kamakaziplumber@gmail.com. I'll still get notified promptly. I think I might also still get PM notifications but I'm not sure.

Anyway, for the rest of October I'm going to be super busy (moving partway across the country) but I'm never so ridiculously busy that I don't have time to at least consider HA2 stuff!

It's great to hear from you, KP. Glad to know you're still around. I'll let you know if I need anything from you specifically, but I think I found a workaround during the silence. I'll keep you posted, but I've got ideas. Ideas, KP. I'll be in contact with the RG's to see what I can do to help on my end.

Good to see you, KP. Glad to see that you still make time for us over here. Good luck in your move.

I want to start by saying that I would prefer to take as few liberties as possible when it comes to incorporating characters not of my own design, or said characters backstories and backgrounds. A pre-established place, maybe, but I’d feel wrong taking any level of authorial control over the direct character of another. I’m sure, on its face, that you’d feel the same way, Nogare. So maybe I misunderstood your comment on taking liberties. You might need to specify afterall?

I’m glad for you links to the topics, those will prove very useful. I’m not sure where you should post them. My best advice would be lets see what the mods who are still active have to say. I imagine Dogura has some good ideas. Although, I believe you might have misunderstood my eventual goal in archiving the site. I want to back up every topic on a text document, so it’s not just restricted to only being accessed via the internet. Not that I think KP will ever take this site down, but in case there’s ever an incident that somehow corrupts his site I would prefer if everybody’s legacy was intact at a separate location, you follow?

As a final thought on the purpose of cataloging all of HA2’s topics, I would like to say that it might only prove useful for the confines of HA2. I’m not part of the HA3 team, not by any stretch of the imagination. But, I think when the idea was first being discussed on this site, there was the potential that it may not be a direct HA2 tie-in. I personally think that if the whole of HA2’s story and each character’s personal story is woven into HA2, it will encompass so much lore as to scare away any newcomers, which hopefully HA3 will be able to draw in newcomers, especially if it has a simple-ish url and good advertising. Of course, I still think it’s very interesting to look through HA2 backlogs for HA2’s sake. So I’m all for the idea of this project. And even if I have to do some additional work to backup all the topics, I’m proud of your efforts in the fight, Nogare.

Now, as a side thought, I would say that for at least the last four years, I’ve stop seeing the screens as literal. I see them as figurative representations of their respective areas. In this example, there might be several graves in the area that the screen that f18 represents. Nor do I think that graves only exist in areas where there is a screen that has a grave on it. If that makes sense? Of course, this last bit is just my opinion.

Lastly, I don’t mind the mixing of story elements across a wide variety of topics. This is collaborative storytelling after all, it’s in the very nature of what we do. I should specify, in case you haven’t started reading my Tantari topic yet. It isn’t a town of ruffians. It’s a simple village whose main export is fish and this small village has only been set upon several times by small raiding parties of ruffians who steal valuables from town and then run back to their hideout. Sorry if you feel misled.

Long story short, keep up the good work Nogare, and I’m looking forward collaborating with you, whether it's in one of my topics, or in one of yours.

Egad! A legendary figure approaches! Sup Kami. ^o^

And really quick, everyone, and as it is the cringe is real for me because of how I was with it before, but interested in a new skype chat group centered on HA3? Aaaand if that's the case, can I help out? I've been a bit fringe on the whole thing, but I'm honestly interested in helping to make it work out. Doesn't matter either way. At the very least though I'd like to contribute via what Orpheous and I come up with.

On that subject, good Scribe, what I mean by liberties is especially not about the characters that took place, but everything around them. Let's take a really old player for example, Malciore of Noe. Noe, as I remember it, is a country separate from Hyrule like Calatia. Not sure about the rest of the details, except obviously that Malciore's came from there. So, in whatever comes next for us once we're done spelunking through everything and have a good idea of what's all happened and how far we've come, we could still keep Noe as a canon place in HA3, even if not necessarily a place to go and visit. That make sense? So, in applying it later, maybe we have a visitor from Noe who needs someone to deal with a monster that the royal family is struggling with and they can only hire an adventure of very high repute to make the journey (don't use that example, that's straight from Witcher III's Blood and Wine DLC).

That said, on the topic of what will end up hanging over the canon, what ended up happening to all these legendary adventurers? Out of character obviously we know they quit. My thought, on the liberties end is to take the Spartan from Halo route and say they didn't die they're just MIA, but put in such a way that pertains to whatever direction their story was taking.

And I definitely get wanting to preserve it elsewhere. I don't really use Reddit, but maybe we can put the archives up somewhere like that when it's all said and done? And to have a new wiki going. Just to keep everything straight. Cuz whatever third installment we make of this, I want to know what happened in this one, and maybe even the one previous, to sort of let history rhyme, you know?

On the subject of the grave, it was a joke, but I do completely agree with you. Especially if someone 'hogs' all the spots like that. No, it's MY grandfather buried here, no it's MY cave hideout, no it's MY family's estate, etc. Any way besides what you said would just be chaos. O_O

Really quick though you mind putting the link to your town somewhere? I went to the spot you said but there's only a topic by Worru there.

btw I'm at 1300 topics linked as of just before replying here. *Sigh*... Dat FoG tho.

EDIT: And the elephant in the room. That green-capped, iconic Ganon buster and his whole shtick. At some point we gotta address him. I have thoughts on that, but I'll hear out anyone else first.

The problem with making any place actually canon in game, outside of the screens of Hyrule that we see, is that one person’s take on lore might disagree with another. While I like to think there is room for everybody’s hypothetical regions and countries in this vast game world, I think there are some, however small a minority, that might disagree. It would be one thing to have a topic established where Noe would be, or the closest spot to Noe. A topic that simulates their being a community there. It is another to force people to accept that location as undisputed canon, espeically considering these are fan regions. I too have thought of multiple different countries across the vast seas in this world of Hyrule. I would never insist any of them be made canon though. Those who want to accept them can, but those who wish to deny their existence can too. The only thing making them canon does is deny certain people that right of denial. And who am I to say a village like Naercabgon (that’s t19, not t20), is a real place.

On the subject of other player character’s, if that player said, in topic, or out of topic, that the character is dead, I would mark them KIA. But, most players don’t directly state what happened, so it’s probably fair to say that the character is MIA. Then again, if the author for the character decided to come back tomorrow and pretend like their character has lived a quiet, or even exciting life, in or around their home area this whole time, and it’s just the fault of the other adventurers for not checking in on them on a day that they were home, I’m fine with that too!

I would want to personally have a copy of the archive on my computer system. But I wouldn’t be opposed to having it accessible at other places too. And, naturally, once I read up on everything, having a concise wiki will certainly help.

And, lastly, as to Link, I’m not sure if you mean the real deal, or the player who kept trying to play Link. You may want to specify. The link (no pun intended) to my topic is

<a href="viewtopic.php?t=3595" target="body">Arriving at Naercabgon</a>

I had a reply but I deleted it. -_- If you read it, I apologize for getting a little 'too' excited about the idea of getting the band back together and letting my imagination run wild. It was a hot mess. So fresh start, more candid, less jumping jester.

If I archive a canon, I'll do it on my own time, and whatever application it would end up having it'll only be offered as advisement for the Royal Guards. That's the beginning and end of that.

What I'm more interested in is this post-Nogare story I'd like to do. I'm envisioning it like a campaign, but there's two things I'd like to clear up. First, will you guys want to stay with it if it's fairly long? And second, do you suppose it's harder to follow everyone's stories if there are more topics dotted everywhere? What I want to throw out there is, if we're thinking of a new topic, we try something out; if there's someone else we know is active who wants to add something to the paradigm of their own story, but are worried they'd have to compete with your new topic, we make a habit of sending a request to combine your ideas for the sake of the topic. Like 2-3 players max of course, don't want everyone in on the surprise, and no one at all on the full picture, but it's something simple to make topics easier to go between. It's just an idea for agency-heavy topics, Force of Gold stuff. Not another adventurer looking out to sea in the Tantari where we can just RP and have fun, those topic begin with the setup and end whenever people are tired of it. Co-op topics can be seen as more prominent that way. Main quest vs side quest mentality. More people, more incentive to continue.

Let me know what you think. ^_^

Double post. I am throwing the bloody doors open for this one.

Orph and I have been talking over skype, great stuff, but then it's all BTW something something Yuletide and Link's here and the topic's unfinished.

...

K. This is a muster. A freaking call to arms, and a summons. Everyone around because we're interested in starting this up again, I beseech this as our current main objective and rallying point. We have Link and we have some Valaryn jerks apparently giving him problems. If we're the adventurers we claim to be, we gotta prove it and give the Hero of Hyrule whatever help he needs. And Artorious apparently. Gonna binge the topic soon as I get home tomorrow. For now, what say we use that as our bowstring to fire us into what comes next.

Royal Guard wrote:Oh, please. You're never on your own. There's always an RG lurking around here. We swore an oath after all.

RG Zane, at your service.

How can I assist you?

I dunno how I missed all of these replies. Seeing all of you here is... really encouraging. I was all but convinced we'd never see mod activity here again. RG, ZV, and KP... it's good to see you guys.

Sixth Annual Grand Celebration when?

Honestly though, I do think about those unfinished quest topics a lot. Yuletide most of all - because Link - but Into the Deep, Deserted Dwellings, and all those untouched Group of Beasts topics (there's an "active" one at the Laruto Falls summit - L1) haunt me to this day. I don't know if those will ever see completion, but I can at least be better about replying to topics that I'm already involved in and creating my own stories. Orph, I'm working on it!