L'oiseau

Chapter 6 continued at Al Norris

Chapter 7 continued at Al Norris

Al Norris

The Scireians

Part of the Revolutions Universe

Chapter 8

Eric Aune
Changing Connections
Part of the Revolutions Universe
Chapter 23

I've been reading the stories on Castle Roland now for about a year, I think.
I like the Revolutions Universe, of course Kandric Universe and a lot of the other authors.
I'm a fan of Arthur, Chowhound, Eric Aune and Ken Barber and several others. Sorry I don't remember all names (at the moment), but I hope I'm not standing on any toes, here.
English is not my native language; but about 95% of the stories I read online is in English. Some German and ofcourse Dutch.
While some stories online alas were never finished... (other sites). Hopefully The Kandric Saga will continue. It's anyway the oldest story I follw and I've read it
from the early start. I've chatted with Kyle many times.
Before I was just a reader, a lurker in the background. I will try to make myself at home here and try to make comments on many more stories.
H.

Hi,
I like the story so far. In the context of the Revolutions Universe. I concur the cliffhanger from 4 is a good one but I like to read on. ' I know'  I'm just the reader and Eric must write it.
I hope to see nr 5-10.. soon.
Speaking of the Revoltions Universe, I hope I'm not in the wrong place but not a lot of activity here. Is it because the real world is catching up with the fantasy... I sincerely hope, for anyones sake he is not like mr. Ashwood.
Or are you all writing follow up's and we just wait and see?
Anyway, way to go Eric.

I've not read all stories. Am trying though. Sometimes it's confusing who'd write a story because at the forum many have different names.
Anyway: I recommend all stories of Kyle Aarons especially: The Kandric Saga. Mr. Arthur is also a favourite writer; Drummer Boy, Elios to name a few.
Most stories of the revolutions universe because I like this SyFy, fantasy, reality mix a lot.
Stories with Dwarves, Elves too but the Star Trek series with follow up from the original stories not so much.
Sorry if your name is not on the list; there are just too many good stories and writers...
So cheers !

OK< this is about the best I can do for character sheets I started with Aster- Kandric looks like I will have to type in since I have him in an even harder format to paste in, and just to do this I had to change over to my note pad since I cannot copy and paste from my main computer.
 
Keep in mind all stats are based on a number of 1-100 with 50 being dead average
 
 
At the Start of Story
 
Character Name: Aster
Age: 45
Human Equivalent:  12
Race: Alphar/Darkforest
Sex: Male
Weight: Heavy
Height: Above Average
Hair: Classic Silver
Eyes: Classic Green
 
Current Social Status: Secondary Echelon (Merchant)
Birth Social Status: Royalty
Current Attack 125
Current Counter 55
Magic Defiance 98
 
Training
 
Field: Animal Adept
Subfield one: Healthman
Subfield two: Metalworker
Guild Rating: Secondary
Actual Echelon: Secondary Step 5
Force 8
Experience 86
Birth Traits
Primary Hand: Right
Power
81
61
Agility
67
51
Hearing
77
IQ
80
60
Sight
89
Charisma
79
79
Smell
60
Quickness
48
36
Taste
73
Appearance
88
88
Touch
43
Talent: 92
Learned Traits
Acrobatics
42
32
Bartering
87
66
Climbing
50
38
Cooking
57
43
Diplomacy
77
58
Language
49
37
Leather Quality
76
57
Metal Quality
94
71
Music
65
49
Nautical
68
50
Navigate
44
33
Perception
72
54
Riding
44
33
Running
66
50
Swimming
78
59
Wood Quality
60
45
 
Where there are two Numbers the first is the Base number (when adult age of 16 Equivalent is reached) the second is the current age adjusted stat
 
At Chapter 29
 
Character Name: Aster
Age: 45
Human Equivalent: 12
Race: Alphar/Darkforest
Sex: Male
Weight: Heavy
Height: Above Average
Hair: Classic Silver
Eyes: Classic Green
Current Social Status: Secondary Echelon Guilded (Merchant Caste)
Birth Social Status: Royalty
Current Attack: 160
Current Counter: 95
Magic Defiance: 190
Training
Field: Animal Adept
Subfield one: Healthman
Subfield two: Metalworker
Guild Rating: Secondary
 
Actual Echelon: Master Step 2
Force: 18
Experience: 251
 
Birth Traits
Primary Hand: Right
Power
91
68
Agility
89
67
Hearing
77
IQ
80
60
Sight
89
Charisma
79
79
Smell
60
Quickness
48
36
Taste
73
Appearance
88
88
Touch
43
Talent: 92 +131
 
Learned Traits
Acrobatics
42
32
Bartering
96
72
Climbing
50
38
Cooking
57
43
Diplomacy
85
64
Language
49
37
Leather Quality
76
57
Metal Quality
100
75
Music
65
49
Nautical
81
61
Navigate
44
33
Perception
72
54
Riding
61
46
Running
66
50
Swimming
95
71
Wood Quality
60
45
 
Where there are two Numbers the first is the Base number (when adult age of 16 Equivalent is reached) the second is the current age adjusted stat

I could let others answer that for me, but basically, yes. Brile and O'Connell have that degree of would building and so does Defenders and Re-E. Destiny is to a lesser degree, and I still think the main reason I was brought into the RU was because I like to build worlds and my services were desired primarily for that reason. The world with the least detail of all my stories is AQ, and I still have world maps, backgrounds, psionic power charts, wormhole tech specs, and that sort of thing

Glad the maps helped, Roger & Tyler
 
Ricky And anyone else who really wants to get down to the nuts and bolts of age equivalency ratings:
 
age equivalency is something I spent a long time figuring out before I could even start writing Kandric and it is a whole host of things so it is more than just a mindset. I built an RPG based on this world and in the game concept the longer it takes for a person to age the more experience he/she needs to advance within the echelon framework I set up. In simple terms a person with a longer lifespan needs more magic to fill his or her pool  of magic than someone with a shorter lifespan.
 
Wen I first started trying to conceptualize this concept I came up with a way my brain can fully understand it so I will try to explain it here in the same way.
 
Think of each race as having an inner pool to start with. Everyone starts with some magic at the bottom of his or her pool. The more magic a person starts with the more innately talented they are. However, unless someone trains to utilize this magical pool the pool starts to dry out and is totally empty by the time a person is the human age equivalent of 25, but between the ages of 16 to 25 the base talent line dwindles so for every 2 years past the equivalent age of 16 the pool forever looses 25% of the being's base line talent. This doesn't mean the being cannot start to train and work to start filling the pool up, but it means he or she starts with less magic than he or she would have otherwise had available at a younger age. By the time a being reaches 25 the pool is empty and cannot be filled at all this person is now totally mundane.
 
Once fully trained, however, the being can then work to pour more magic into his or her pool. This is done though book learning, apprenticeship, or using the magic within the pool in the real lto gain needed understating of the magic to pour more in and thus advance. In simple terms the pool is getting fuller though learning.
 
Now, with this in mind, let me go back to races.
 
I want you to think of the Echelons as an upside-down stepped pyramid (look up Djoser if you do not know what a step pyramid is) each step needs to be filled before a being has enough knowledge and ability to advance to the next Echelon. However, on the path to the next Echelon, there is some advancement in abilities and magic, this is the steps within the Echelon.
 
The longer living a race is the bigger their pool is to start out with. The longer living races tend to have more magic inside them from the start. For instance a Garm or Alphar spell caster starts out with considerably more casting force than a Human. In simple terms their upside-down pyramid is bigger to start with. To understand this think of it in terms of filling up a container. If you have ten square containers each with a different sized bottom, but each starts with a single centimeter of water at the bottom, the one with the biggest bottom will have more water, but will also take more water to fill it up. At the point the container is full, it is time to "graduate" to filling up the next container which is even larger than the first one. In this case it is magic, not water, but the same thing applies.
 
And this is where the age equivalency ratings come into play in advancement as well as in physical development: Because the longer living races have a bigger upside-down pyramid to start so it takes longer to fill it up to get to the next stage of advancement. While the average Human can get fully trained in five years, an Elf needs longer and an Alphar needs much longer. It is because of this the vast majority of longer living beings take their time and learn at a pace more in line with how fast they physically age.
 
I am going to put this in game terms so you can all see numbers:
 
 human who is in training gains experience as he or she works under his or her Teacher and slowly gains extra magic to fill his or her pool until the Training Echelon is totally full at 11 points of experience. When the 12th point is gained he or she breaks out of Training Echelon to become Primary Echelon, or fully trained (at which point he or she is no longer considered a child as well) however along the way, ever 2 experience points, the apprentice gains a step within the Training Echelon as the magic within his or her pool increases.
 
Now lets take a look at an Alphar.
 
An Alphar who is in training also gains experience as he or she works under a teacher and gains extra magic to fill up his or her pool until the Training Echelon pool is filled, but they have a bigger pool and it takes longer to fill so they need 21 experience points to totally fill up their Training Echelon pool until at 22 points it overflows and they become primary Echelon. While this looks like it would only take twice as long, it actually takes longer because the base line mindset gets in the way.
 
Think of a Metal Worker Subfield Apprentice at a forge: Those who are around other races see a human progressing faster and my be jealous at first but then they see all the mistakes, all the rushed work, and see their counterpart growing up so much faster and they roll their eyes and shrug. They have plenty of time to learn and the Human's work is so rushed and shoddy. Wouldn't it be better to spend an extra couple of years pumping the billows and lean how not to have the hot sparks burn your arms by watching those older and stronger? Besides, pumping the billows builds strong arms needed for the harder work to come. The Alphar's slow aging also means slow body development, so until he or she is old and strong enough to pick up a forge hammer and really work on the metal , what is the rush?
 
This is further reinforced if they are only around their own kind. Life doesn't need to be rushed. There is time to do perfect work. For does it really matter if a suit of armor takes an extra couple of months to make when one will be wearing it for decades if not longer? Why make it flawed. You will be wearing it for a century or two if you really do it right and take care of it. So make it comfortable, pretty, and functional all at the same time, for protecting one's self is not the only thing armor is good for.
 
On the other hand, there is nothing really stopping an Elf, Dwarf, Garm, or Alphar from jumping in and taking the hot sparks to the arms and learning from mistakes. It still takes more life expericne to fill up the pool to break into the next Echelon, but they can do it quickly. It would normally be frowned upon in communities of their own kinds and could easily end up as being seen as "trouble makers" and find themselves without a teacher. Conner, Aster, Kandric, and many of the others in the Kandric Saga didn't have people telling them they needed to slow down and learn some wisdowm. They had people pushing them while they also pushed themselves.
 
Also and equally important, when one defeats someone in the Kandric world, even if they only subdue and not kill, they "earn" a gifting of magic from the defeated being in the form of a magical and knowledge grant. This normally does not mean the winning person knows something about the defeated person, but gains some "insights" into what that person knows about magic and magical force. So,  when someone who is lower than his or her enemy in Echelon and ability takes down someone more powerful the "gifting" gives considerably more magic to fill the pool while if they defeat someone below their ability, there is very little to be learned so the gifting is much smaller. Also a very high power defeated being can gift part of himself to the winner as a way of showing respect and by making the person stronger it makes it look like the fight was more even than it really was. This saves some face since the person instantly becomes a much more fierce opponent and thus is seen by others as being deserving of credit as well. However, this is not something commonly known since it is exceedingly rare for it to happen. Instead many see such gifting's as a "bow of deference" to a superior being which keeps the mystique of the defeated powerful foe intact.
 
Thus someone who walks around picking on Mundanes all day long will gain almost no experience while a person who manages to take on and defeat a demon is likely to get a couple of really big waves of knowledge which causes faster advancement as the inner pool gets buckets of magic dumped into it.
 
Besting a Dragon, especially a Great Dragon... well there is a sure fire way to get a gushing of magical understanding and experience beyond the reach of all but a very very few and will also get the given gifting from the Dragon because, let's face it, no Dragon wants to be seen as being bested by some scrub. For even in death Dragons have a hell of an ego.
 
Now does this make more sense or did I just totally muddy the pool

hope this will help you on that some

Since there seems to be no one place to talk to all the authors or comment on several stories in the universe, I decided to try a topic here.
The first thing I wanted to do was to say that you all have created a very real, too real or overly grim, place and do a great job with it. I wish that there was a guide to show which chapters should be read in which order to get the time line in context. It seems that some of the things may not be in perfect order in a few of the chapters of some of the stories. That being said, the fact that there is any order at all is amazing, considering how much you have to keep track of.
One thing that I MUST say is that if Adam and Bucky are truly dead, I will protest and scream at someone. There have been way too many people killed already and I know you want real, but there is such a thing as taking it too far. Yes I understand killing off characters, but killing off hybrids and main characters seems to be a bit much, since there are very few hybrids to begin with and with main characters you may kill off someone that some readers may be invested in. You run the risk of keeping folks from connecting to your characters at all.
I am glad to see that characters from geek squad, unit and Metamorphosis are starting to combine in some of the stories, as I have thought that having many of them in the same place would truly be a major help for some time now.
You all are doing an amazing job on these stories and I appreciate all the hard work you do!!!
 

Enterprise,
Thank you so much for the kind words.
We had attempted to make a guide in which order to read but found that it was purely subjective. There really isn't a logical order except I always recommend you start with the Title story Revolutions as that sets the tone and back ground, after that you can bounce around anywhere you want.
As for Bucky and Adam, I am sorry this was done not only to show the impact of war and the harshness of reality, this incident will be used later to push certain characters and challenge their resolve.
We have already received a few tongue lashing and the only thing I can say is this type of event is the hardest for an author to write and we do not enjoy it any more than you enjoy reading it.
 

Thanks,
I would have to say, that keep it all in some semblance of order is a big task.  For the authors it takes a lot of work and constant communications between us.  But and it's a big but, it is also the editors who work behind the scenes to help keep everything straight for us.  With content editors and continuity editor and editor editors and English professor editors, and punctuation experts, etc, going over every chapter of every story with a fine tooth comb, it would be well nigh impossible to keep the stories straight.  Even with all of that, sometimes a last minute rewrite is needed to keep it in line with the rest of the stories.  We work hard along with the editors to make sure that one author doesn't write something that messes up another's story.
A big part is lots of communications in the background helps us to make it work.
I'm glad you enjoy them and as Ken said you are not the first who has given us a tongue lashing for things like that. 

Castle Roland's PR staff needs your [The Reader's] input... We want to know what stories here at The Castle you like and would recommend to others. This is something only you can tell us... So think of your favorite story and post telling us which story and why you like it.. All Input is appreciated.

 If you would like to make your recommendation for the the Readers Choice Story of the Month visit:
Readers Choice on The Castle Roland Community Forum

Denis P
Castle Roland PR Administrator
 

Thank you.  I'm glad you like it.  Yeah a timeline, I'm sure it could be handy.  I don't know if there is any plan to publish such a thing for the readers.  We have a timeline that helps us, so we don't step all over each other when we write, since a few of us use some of each other's characters from time to time in our stories, and we don't want to write something about another person's character when they are doing something else at the same time in another story.  Some of us are at times closely entwined, others not as much.  So we do what we can to make sure that we don't make such mistakes.  I've used Roland's characters and he's used mine as has Ken Barber.  So we work to keep from mixing up the stories.  You will find that Roland and I are closely connected a lot of the time.
Time Quake - 6/10/10 to 11/10/12(end?)   Revolution - Jun 2010 to 11/8/12(End)     Geek Squad - 11/4/12 to 11/10/12 (and continuing)     New Beginnings - 11/5/12 to 11/9/12 (end)     Footprints - 11/5/12 to 11/8/12 (end)
Metamorphosis - 11/5/12 to 11/11/12 (and continuing)     Changing Connections - 11/8/12 to 11/20/12 (and continuing)     Dawn's Early Light - 11/6/12 to 11/14/12 (end)     Scireians - 11/6/12 to 11/20/12 (continuing)
Justice for All (mini series) - 11/5/12 to 11/1212 (end)     Dogs of War - 12/12/12 to 11/22/12 (continuing)     Operation Black Pearl (mini series) - 11/14/12 to 11/16/12 (end)     Broad Stripes and Bright Stars - 11/16/12 to 11/22/12 (continuing)
We're not going to take it - 11/9/12 to 11/17/12 (continuing)     Resistance - 11/5/12 to 11/8/12 (continuing)     Scout's Own (mini series) - 11/5/12 to 11/18/12 (end)     Chief of Staff - 11/14/12 to 11/18/12 (continuing)
APOC - 11/21/12 (just started)     Paradise - 11/19/12 (Just started)
So there are the current RU stories with a time range for each.  You can see several are ended, but in some cases those that ended are picked up by another story by the author.  Not sure if this helps any, hope it does.

It should be soon.  Sorry it took so long it was sort of hung up for a little while.  It will be posted soon.   Again sorry it took so long.
 
Eric

Kyle,
You 've done it again. I just have read quickly some parts. I will have to sit down to read it all.
Some parts come together while again another story lines are created.
I believe it will continue for a while...
However it would be nice if Kyle would post at least a chapter a year.
But he has had good reasons why not, but a man can dream..

I've been reading the stories on Castle Roland now for about a year, I think.
I like the Revolutions Universe, of course Kandric Universe and a lot of the other authors.
I'm a fan of Arthur, Chowhound, Eric Aune and Ken Barber and several others. Sorry I don't remember all names (at the moment), but I hope I'm not standing on any toes, here.
English is not my native language; but about 95% of the stories I read online is in English. Some German and ofcourse Dutch.
While some stories online alas were never finished... (other sites). Hopefully The Kandric Saga will continue. It's anyway the oldest story I follw and I've read it
from the early start. I've chatted with Kyle many times.
Before I was just a reader, a lurker in the background. I will try to make myself at home here and try to make comments on many more stories.
H.

I love the Netherlands, although I've only been to Amsterdam. Great people and everyone was so friendly. I hope to get back there soon.
(By the way, I hear that Parker Sheaffer fellow has some cute stories here.)

Welcome to the Castle forum. We are glad to have you. While English is not your native language, you seem to have a good grasp of it. Thank you for your comment and we appreciate your continued support.

Thank you for your nice words.
H.

I've been reading the stories on Castle Roland now for about a year, I think.
I like the Revolutions Universe, of course Kandric Universe and a lot of the other authors.
I'm a fan of Arthur, Chowhound, Eric Aune and Ken Barber and several others. Sorry I don't remember all names (at the moment), but I hope I'm not standing on any toes, here.
English is not my native language; but about 95% of the stories I read online is in English. Some German and ofcourse Dutch.
While some stories online alas were never finished... (other sites). Hopefully The Kandric Saga will continue. It's anyway the oldest story I follw and I've read it
from the early start. I've chatted with Kyle many times.
Before I was just a reader, a lurker in the background. I will try to make myself at home here and try to make comments on many more stories.
H.

I've been reading the stories on Castle Roland now for about a year, I think.
I like the Revolutions Universe, of course Kandric Universe and a lot of the other authors.
I'm a fan of Arthur, Chowhound, Eric Aune and Ken Barber and several others. Sorry I don't remember all names (at the moment), but I hope I'm not standing on any toes, here.
English is not my native language; but about 95% of the stories I read online is in English. Some German and ofcourse Dutch.
While some stories online alas were never finished... (other sites). Hopefully The Kandric Saga will continue. It's anyway the oldest story I follw and I've read it
from the early start. I've chatted with Kyle many times.
Before I was just a reader, a lurker in the background. I will try to make myself at home here and try to make comments on many more stories.
H.

Thank you for your nice words.
H.