Summer Camp 2025

Hello all! I've been around on World Anvil for some time now playing in a good friend's world, but I decided to take the plunge and create my own only a week ago. I am also something of a glutton for punishment, so I decided to jump into summer camp with only a week under my belt. It seems like an excellent way to jumpstart the creative process with articles and ideas I might not have thought up on my own and an interesting way to introduce myself to the community. I've had this world rattling about in my head for years now. I have been galivanting around in it with my friends since 2020 and with my daughter since she was four years old. Now seemed like a good time to commit the details to paper.

The Plunge

Okay, here we go. I may still be figuring out how the site works and what I can do with it, but one thing I do know how to do is produce. With that in mind, I will be pledging diamond (glutton for punishment!). It might not look pretty, but it will hopefully be intriguing!

Homework

I didn't do my homework. To be fair, I had to get help just to figure out how to create the Camp document. Still, here's what I've brainstormed so far - mostly this morning.

Week 1: Nourishment

Who doesn't love a good meal: family, friendship, and food. In a world where ingredients are plentiful and so is peril, the rituals that bring us together so often revolve around a campfire, a pot, or even a keg.

Article Ideas

• Ward and religious festivals in the cities of Frosthold and Redoubt.
• A cross-cultural beverage share - when cultures and races are insular and uninviting, sometimes beer can bridge the gap.
• Ceremonies of renewal and regrowth among some of the more tribal cultures of The Far Reaches.
• Spiritual and religious traditions among the cities and tribes - because not all nourishment is food.
• Meat pies! (sometimes, inside jokes end up on the outside).

Week 2: Roots

Every world came from somewhere. Karos is no different. The conflicts of the past are integral in the lives of all Karosians.

Article Ideas

• The Divinity Wars - there is a good reason for the shaken faith of so many Karosians. When gods tear down the world, many can stop their worship.
• Cultural clashes - the races have been at war for millennia. Scars from long-lived conflicts take time to heal.
• Colonization - many of the races of Karos hold to an idea akin to manifest destiny. With relationships already damaged this leads to fresh conflicts every day.
• Building the future from the past - ruins still dot the landscape of The Far Reaches, and treasure seekers delve deeply into those forgotten places hoping to forge the future.

Week 3: Metamorphosis

This week will probably be the hardest for me, not because change is hard (okay, maybe it is), but because I am still building a baseline for where my world is in the beginning. Chronology is important in my process, and creating out of order is something that is incredibly uncomfortable for me.

Article Ideas (super rough)

• New technology is rare, but old technology sometimes surfaces out of old ruins.
• Even in insular cultures, outside influences can generate change. Elves discovering human bagpipes or Dwarvish throat singing can have a ripple effect.
• The Far Reaches is a land in which changes are constant and yet change comes hard. Conservative organizations, especially in Frosthold fight tirelessly to ensure that change is rare and that, if it does happen, it favors their own factions.

Week 4: Tomorrow

The human denizens of The Far Reaches immigrated thousands of miles through harsh conditions in search of a better tomorrow. They seek the freedom to find their own way and the hope that their sweat and blood will provide a better life for their children.

Article Ideas

• Shipbuilding and trade - though human expansion has been frustrated by elves in the east and The Tempest Tides to the west, the Frosthold Shipyards work tirelessly to churn out craft that will ensure human naval dominance and security.
• While the human presence in the Reach is relatively new, spanning only about 70 years, many hope to see the dawn of a new empire begin here. Children are raised on tales of the wonders of old, and as they grow up, many seek to lay the foundations of what will become the next great empire.
• Humans are not the only culture in the Reaches. Elves and Gnomes seek, in their own ways, to care for the world and the myriad creatures that inhabit it. The tribespeople to the south seek glory in battle and conquest, and the Reacher Half Elves long for a place where they can live free of the persecution of their would-be kin.