Time for that promised FAQ post. Also known as Frequently Asked Questions, or “Busy/Lazy Author stalls for time.”

Starting from the top, questions about the ship. There is the small chance that in cleaning up editing earlier posts I missed a point on something. If I did, feel free to give me a nudge and I’ll bemoan and try and fix it. I also apologize that a few of these questions were asked in person. Others have just not had a chance to come up in the story yet. I’m not huge on 5 page info dumps, so it’s hard to kneed it into the narrative.

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How big is the ship, how many people does it hold?

The ship is pretty large, explicit size not stated but the crew/passenger compliment is about 5 million.

How many crew are there?

At any given time there are about a thousand people as topside crew. Those are the ones in real time, double checking maintenance bots and doing small repairs. There is a small topside command staff, but they almost never leave the bridge area.

How do they choose crew? What if no one wants to be crew?

Crew have to first train and pass a lot of certifications and tests. Once they qualify and are seen as reliable, they an go on the waiting list for a crew slot. Yes, they would have to re-certify periodically. The waiting list for being crew is pretty long, as it is the only way to increase your allowance of Cores. If the list ever starts to get short, they can just increase the incentives.

So none of the dreamers are on duty?

Oops. I gave the wrong impression here. There are people working from within the ships Net. There is a virtual bridge with command staff, able to react in the accelerated 5x speed of the ships Net. There are even people working part time shifts for some things. But the pay for virtual crew is far lower, given that it’s less stress on the body and runs at a 5:1 ratio.

But if there is a dreamer crew, why would they need anyone topside?

When you have over 5 million lives on the line, your own included, redundancy is a good thing. You wouldn’t want a system glitch to cause to ships to crash, to cause your ship to veer off course or to let your ship break down. Having a catastrophic failure during a long range FTL flight is a bad thing. A very bad thing.

Wait, did you say other ships?

*sigh* Yes. There are other ships in the Exodus fleet, but no they aren’t actively communicating. So no, no inter-ship game events. The lag would be horrid and defeat the whole ‘radio silence’ thing. For the most part, they are just keeping track of each other’s positions and running as a convoy.

Cores, Credits, Coins… “I C-”

*Groan* Accidental alliterations, honest. I’m sorry if this confused anyone. Ahem:

Cores are the allowance granted to people on the ship. They can be used to run programs ‘pay’ or ‘subscribe’ to join someone else’s programs. They represent an chunk of processor cycles per second and RAM to go with it. Every citizen was alloted 5 to start with to see to their basic happiness and need for mental stimulation. If you do not spend your Cores, you don’t get to keep them. That is done to prevent abuse of the system. Conveniently *coughs* Cores renew just before most games ask you to renew your subscriptions. If you want more, to do more, you have to earn it. See above.

Credits are the OOC (Out Of Character) currency used in the game “Dreams of a Forgotten World.” (IE old earth myths). Every week there is downtime, for patches, updates, new content generation and for the player’s sakes. What I mean by that part, is it forces them to spend time back in their real body so they don’t disassociate from it. If you were to play for example a Naga, you would slowly get more adept at moving with a tail instead of Legs. That would really suck when you got back into your real form. Ergo, time in the lounge as yourself. Credits are used to buy food you missed or can’t get in game…for nostalgia sake. Yes, you can buy some small temporary boosters if you save enough but it is less rewarding than comfort food. You get an amount of Credits when you first sign up for the game, and every day you stay subscribed you get 1 per subscription core level.

Coins are the IG (In Game) form of money. It is described in CH 38, so just look there. *grins* Anything you do or earn in game will be in coins. As they say, money makes the world go round.

But Darin only subscribed at 5 Cores, is he wasting the other 5?

Yes, he actually is. During sign up they didn’t ofter a higher subscription and he didn’t ask. On the one hand, it gave him the option that if he didn’t like the game he could leave and still have up to 5 Cores to do try something else. Most people don’t have more than 5 cores yet anyway. On the other hand, he’ll probably face palm when he realizes it later.

So he’s extra powerful since he’s paying 5 cores right?

Nope, no pay to win here. What he gets is that the system puts more effort into making his simulation life like. Sight, sound, taste, touch and smell are rendered with extra depth. For example a 2 Core subscription(minimum level) wouldn’t get a lot of flavor from food and drink. He also does get minor perks, but they have to stay minor. Like he was allowed to Borrow the amulet that produced light, when going to look for his shell. He didn’t have to beg or promise to make future repayment etc. It was minor, but it made his life less tedious.

But he got the super rare epic ultra dragon?

Uh, keep telling yourself that one. He got something a bit special because he didn’t choose his character. Most players go into the complex process of designing a character, tweaking everything and often min/maxing but he didn’t. He let Muse roll a random choice off of a list of races/sub-races that met his criteria. Doing so, he ended up with a sub-race that wasn’t yet unlocked for public use. Especially since it hadn’t really been play tested yet.

Size Scale: How big are dragons? How do they compare to other races?

Such a simple question and you made me to MATHS. You hear me folks, MATHS!

*Ahem* This same question was asked in a few ways by a few people, but to answer it I have to fist explain the “Size Scale”.

As I said, I hope, 1.00 on the size scale is the average adult human. Taking both genders into account and the fact that they’ve drifted from us slightly in the last few thousand years I hope no one takes offense to the numbers. A 1.00 human is about 5.5 feet tall and 140 lbs(stones). This is a rough estimation of the body mass. The bigger your physical body, the bigger your Size. Your base Strength is multiplied times your Size to get your active strength. Endurance is multiplied times size, but with other factors. Agility on the other hand is divided by your size.

The average dragon hatchling has a size between 2.0 and about 3.0. As they gain levels their size will increase slowly over time. It is often a geometric growth based on a percentage of their current size. I should point out that different sub-races and evolutions can change size at different rates. IE a melee type evolution will swiftly gain in Size, Strength and Endurance. An example might be a Bone Dragon path evolution. While a magic focused evolution will probably gain in Intelligence and Wisdom.

Other things can be affected by size. Swift Blaze’s flame breath for example is a tiny cone of fire because of his body size. But in his favor, the mana cost is also reduced by his small size.

In case anyone forgot, poor Swift Blaze has a Size of 0.25. So around 35 lbs in a quadruped form… so small-mid sized dog? Yes, for a dragon that puts him small enough that some of the Elders have to be careful not to step on him. But with his high agility, he can fly like it’s second nature to him. (Thanks program code assists!) This is also why when looking at the wooden block in the currency display he commented about it being his size. Oh yea, and that’s why he hates door handles with a passion right now.

But wasn’t the “Mother” supposed to be huge?

*Evil grin* She can pick up an elder dragon in one claw. I’ll leave that to your imagination. Tip, don’t piss off the goddess of dragons in her own home.

In the Starting town, Are the buildings and roads dragon accessible? Like the adventures guild.

Most things are made to accommodate a mix of sizes. It wouldn’t be a problem for most hatchlings, but an elder dragon wouldn’t have an easy time in a starting town. A few places can bypass this by being more spacious and having double doors on the way in. Still most dragons hang out in the massive caverns of the home, or in other locations with similar design. Water sub species may prefer oceans, rivers or lakes…but that is to be expected.

How many races and sub-races are there?

Oh ye gods, I don’t even want to think of that. I’ll answer thousands and leave it be. Remember, it started with myths from earth…and expanded from there.

In an emergency, would they use a copper bar as a weapon?

You’d have to be hard pressed to beat something down with money. On the up side, it would probably have unlimited durability. On the down side it would never count as more than a crude improvised weapon. Worse, if it was used in PvP and they managed to tap the end in combat… you might find yourself with a fist full of change.

If Cores are a precious recourse, why not just slow things down and not run the ships Net at the full 5x speed?

The ship has enough power to easily assign everyone way more cores and still not make a dent in the available resources. But they are used as incentives to get people to work.

But why would anyone work if they loose all those years of life?

A standard topside shift is 1 year. During that year you’d miss 5 virtual years sure. But you’d also be given the best medical treatment available to reduce any affects of aging from your time surface side.

Will we ever learn the history of the Dragons after the "Stars Fell"?

If you mean Dragons as a whole, parts of that info will be scattered across the story slowly. It’s not an absolute history, as some segments are murky or missing. If you mean Shadow and Ember (loved those two), I’m not sure. Only so much was put in the original memory for their hatchlings. On the other hand, the caves are so old there are pieces of history stored away in long forgotten corners. And you never know what one of the more learned dragons may have tucked away somewhere. Dragons are big on their history after all. Final answer: Play it by ear?

Paraphrase: Hey, this isn’t bad for a Fan Fiction.

Swift Blaze, burninate them! *Ahem* I mean, no…this is an Original Fiction, not a Fan Fiction. There are a lot of good FF on this site, and there are others with no effort put into grammar, logic, readability etc. It is of course the second set that often gives FFs a bad name.

Original Fiction: Your own world, characters, mechanics, plot and creativity. You have only your self to rely for better or worse. In that sense OF is hard and even harder to do well. (Ergo being thankful so many people take the time to read mine) Typically you own the copyright of your work, unless you lose it by posting on a site with a nasty EULA. This means only you have the rights to market it commercially or try to make any coin off it.

Fan Fiction is a different beast entirely. It’s when you borrow the world, setting, plot, mechanics and or characters of someone else’s work to make a new story. It is easier in the sense that you don’t have to create those from scratch. Also there is very often a fan base of the existing work. Ex: Harry Potter, writing about what happens during summer break. Dull but okay, that’s a FF. Lord of the Rings, you write about Gimloy’s epic bar crawling celebration after the Sauron is defeated and he meets up with the other dwarfs. Even crossovers fall under this, Ex: Naruto meets a Jedi. Yea, I got nothing for that one.

But now that you can see the difference as established, you can see why we might occasionally give people dirty looks if people call original works a ‘fan fiction’. Oh, and to be fair to all the skill FF writers out there… Yes, there are plenty of OF stories that were never meant to be. *cringe*

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Thanks all!