User blog:EvilhariboMadness/Introducing New Athens!



Hi everyone! I know this is the long awaited second-part to a previous blog of mine, but here it is! Whilst the original purpose of this blog was to serve as an IC mission call for Camp Half-Blood and an announcement, it has since shifted to being an announcement blog in itself. As per this vote, the Champions of Othrys event has ended prematurely and thus the mission that had been concerned with all of this will not be happening.

Subsequently, this blog is an announcement for New Athens!

What is New Athens?
New Athens is, so to speak, the resurrected Nearby Town. It will serve a similar purpose as the Nearby Town did but with added features to increase the depth of our wiki. As the name suggests, it is based around the concept of Camp Jupiter’s New Rome with there being a town of sorts for demigods to live beyond Camp.

New Athens itself can be explained through two parts, an IC perspective and an OOC one.

IC

Following the successful defence of Camp, though at the detriment of the Nearby Town, communications between Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter were reopened. It was during these discussions that a Greek equivalent of New Rome was created. Alexander, deciding that having a larger amount of demigods with experience in the vicinity of Camp would be beneficial, set orders to erect New Athens.

Unlike New Rome, however, the only requirement a demichild, nymph or spirit would have to fulfil to reside there is a pledge to remain civil and loyal to the Gods. Allegedly, children of Themis routinely check to see if residents honour the pledge.

OOC

As we all know, age is somewhat of a large topic here in Camp. With our youngest campers being nine and no age limit on the oldest, it begs the question on where do the older campers - who’ve outgrown the Camp culture - go? Our current options are the Broken Covenant, Champions of Othrys or sending the character away with a narrative of finding a new life. Likewise, telling people they couldn’t reserve 30+ year old models to make aptly aged characters was an issue because, really, there was no reason as to why they couldn’t other than ‘but other characters aren’t that age so…’

The implementation of New Athens aims to rectify that, allowing us to roleplay older demigods - an aspect that the admin team believes will be fun to do. It also gives us a place for us to send our older characters without feeling the need to get rid of them and say goodbye to them when, perhaps, we might not want to. We’d be able to roleplay their domestic lives - see them settle down and make the families that we roleplay them fantasising over with their partners.

Why New Athens?
I’m sure some of you must be thinking ‘why not just revamp the Nearby Town?’ Essentially, that is what we’re doing. However, since we as a wiki have an affliction towards roleplaying on the pages themselves, the quantity of comments on the pages related to the Nearby Town poses some issues for that and instead of overhauling them and losing some roleplays, archiving those pages seemed to be a better fit. The Nearby Town was in a desperate need of a revamp and this, wholly, is a large-scale revamp.

A secondary reasoning being the Champions of Othrys event; the destruction of the Nearby Town and the creation of New Athens slotted in perfectly with the narrative of the event. The plot of a rival group destroying the leisure centre, perhaps a large place of morale for Camp, seemed apt and natural in a group’s quest to lay dominance over everything.

When it came to piecing things back up from the ground, it seemed fitting that the Gods would extend their presence to the town beyond Camp - how would they explain the destruction of a town to mortals? In all, it appeared that the Nearby Town just lent itself to the possibility of a New Rome-esque location and the admin team has decided to capitalise on that.

What’s Happening to the Nearby Town?
The Nearby Town pages won’t be deleted! Even though, from an IC perspective, they would have been destroyed and replaced with new buildings, none of the pages are going to be deleted due to the rps on the pages and the fact that, since the wiki’s creation, the Nearby Town has been a large part of our roleplay. Instead, there will be a template of sorts put onto each one that denotes that the page is an archive and thus can’t be roleplayed on anymore.

The template is as follows;

Whilst from an OOC perspective we can still see what the pages once were, IC characters can only reminisce about their times going to the Nearby Town, making it become a distant memory that’ll slowly leave as Campers get older (save for the few immortals, of course).

IC Explanation
Following the Champion of Othrys’ shocking successful conquest of the Nearby Town, Camp looked to expand its defence system beyond the borders of Camp. There were many debates within Camp on how such a thing would come about but the destruction of the Nearby Town focused eyes in the direction of establishing an even higher demigod presence around Camp - sacrificing the risk of more monsters being present for the added security of more demigods with experience nearby. With their main place of recreation destroyed and communication recently opened with Camp Jupiter, Camp Half-Blood put their efforts into creating a New Athens.

Aiming to be a haven for the older campers to reside when feeling too old for Camp and a place for older non-cabin demigods to live, New Athens serves as a secondary Greek Mythology hub alongside Camp Half-Blood. Shrouded by the mist to appear as a desolate ghost town of ruins, New Athens is a place for any demi-child and clear-sighted mortals.

Mortals?
As the Nearby Town was home to many mortals as well as our characters, I’m sure the question of the presence of mortals is sure to come up and, in the past, it has done.

It has been decided that New Athens is to be exclusively for those involved in the Greek mythological world. The only mortals who would be able to see New Athens in all its glory are those who can see through the mist. Any other mortal would see ruins, as mentioned before. Signs littered around the perimeter nudges them in the direction that a big developer has bought the land and, as some large companies tend to do, went ahead with the demolition without any input from the locals. With the help of the Gods, any mortals living there were relocated safely and had memories wiped of such a place existing. A messy solution, so to speak, for a messy situation. Much like Camp Half-Blood, there’ll be a charm protecting it from mortals entering and, thanks to the Gods once more, a barrier protecting it from monsters.

Features of New Athens

 * A bunch of residences for former Campers and non-Cabin demigods to reside
 * Stores and locations much like the Nearby Town
 * These can be character owned (see below!)

Important Information
Below are the vital bits of information that you, as a user base, should know in regards to New Athens. The list is admin-team approved and will be taking effect as soon as New Athens is up and running.


 * 1) The youngest a resident of New Athens can be is eighteen-years-old. People younger can, obviously, go into New Athens and sleep there but nobody below eighteen can permanently reside there. This applies to claimed, roleplayed characters. Non-claimed and non-roleplayed children of characters over eighteen can reside there, providing they're predominantly NPC characters. As legacies have yet to be figured out, children of two demigods cannot be roleplayed unless as an NPC, period. Otherwise, nobody under eighteen is allowed to permanently reside in New Athens.
 * Children of Non-Cabin Gods can reside in New Athens, thus allowing them to be roleplayed! To reside in New Athens in a permanent sense, however, they must be loyal to the Gods. Non-Cabin God characters will be included in the Camp section of your character count.
 * 1) The children of Non-Cabin Gods will be permitted to enter Camp for training only. To combat the feeling of being left out, please see the end of the blog for a question posed by the admin team! Please note that this does not mean a non-cabin character can’t be rped in Camp to, for example, date a camper, it just means a non-cabin character cannot live in Camp or be there excessively IC.
 * 2) Legacies will be discussed later when New Athens is up and running; please refrain from suggesting them!
 * 3) To have a store in New Athens, you must tell an admin who will notify the admin team. There must be a majority approval on the admin team's behalf for the shop to go ahead. This will be done to avoid an excess of locations that aren’t used and to ensure that all of the admin team are on the same page.
 * 4) As per the two recent New Athens blogs, a camper can leave for New Athens at any time providing that they’re above eighteen-years-old. If they hold any cabin title - Head or Lieutenant Counsellor - they will be forced to revoke it. The only way they can challenge back is if they move back to Camp permanently - which they are free to do at any time so long as they are a child of a cabin god.
 * 5) Whilst the Broken Covenant and the Champions of Othrys will, effectively, be able to have a presence in New Athens, the admin team asks that they don’t for the time being. R&D has plans for a mini-event to introduce this new dynamic and meeting place for the three groups of demi-children.

To end off the blog, we as an admin team ask this of you;

What locations would you like to see in New Athens?

Leave any suggestions as a comment and the admin team will work to make them happen!

We hope you enjoy the introduction of New Athens!