Wintercamp 2025 Prep

VIVA LA RESISTANCE

Summer camp is dead! All hail Wintercamp. Let the tyrany of the northern hemisphere feel the chill of June through August!   No seriously, for me, June through to August is hot soup, stew, thick jumpers and delicious cleansing rain.

Week 1

As such, especially with a first theme of nourishment I shall be delving into at least to start the Forbidden Forest and giving the world a good, healthy dose of winter. You'll have noticed by now many of my world prompts for Levis are a blend of Aussie-cana, Japan and a whole lot of early paperback classics. Plus mills and boon and horror, but if you're here that's obvious.

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While Levis has a lot of the solarpunk theming to it, it also has those flavourings, and nourishment for much of Levis is about staying connected to your community, your environment, and yourself. Fostering those bonds and self actualisations is key in keeping you healthy and hale. I've deliberately created Levis to have that backbone of having what the average being needs to survive - so that when we eventually delve into the cyberpunk hellscape of Tyr we can see that disconnect between what is healthy and what is a system designed to suck the soul dry. (And that's not even touching on the demons :P)

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Going for the diamond (and cracking open my damage per day stat excel spreadsheet) as the 31 in 31 AND WorldEmber2024 (110 articles) and NovelEmber have all proven I can crack out an easy 42 and with all them prompts its going to be even easier. As long as too many prompts aren't too specific or warlike. Or 'favourite mineral' that would kick my ass.

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The Meta and the vibe of Levis has been updated in January with Blue Fairy's challenge and then again when I was doing the CSS rebuild with Catoblepon. While she probably needs a temporary refocus on the Levis part of the Levis universe (and in an ideal world I'd rename the universe to give the continent a better focus), I'm happy and content where we are for this bit.   Though if you are here, give Path of the broken way. and Natare a peek to see some of where we are vs where we've been. May-be needs another look was great for reminding me to check back on some old stuff rather than constantly splattering forth. Thanks Tillerz.  

Week 2

Roots. This theme is a little harder, as I'm not a person to return to things I've left in the past. Learn from them, yes, but going back is harder. Its why re-edits tend to be harder unless I'm adding something new. Just redoing for the sake of redoing is.... off for me.   Given the ideal focus of Wintercamp is going to be the Forbidden Forest, the origins is going to be delving alot more into the human settlements that have been taken by the forest, the history of the demon encampments within its depths (and possibly some splatterings of context back to Infernus) and more on the witch Astrid and her acts within the quiet years.   For this week I created Levis at a Glance to act as a region specific primer. It needs a little more work to incorperate more of the magic and tech built into the world and the wonder it brings, but its a nice thing to start off of for those wanting to just glance and get the gist.   And now for my least favourite part of this week - the looking into the way back machine. While I won't link you like some others, my first project was actually a supernatural Urban fantasy heaven v hell type story. Built in the fictionpress era, each chapter was built to a song I recorded on an old series of cassette tapes. Because I was still rocking a tape deck back in the early 00s. Mistakes I want to avoid from that project was a need to constantly one up the threats, I had very heavy drama type needs and this caused everything to be overly teens level dramatic and I need to remember that quiet moments are a good and relaxing necessity too. Something to be proud of from that era was the physical notebooks I used to use alot more than now. The more I use world anvil the less I've been using physical media to record things, with the knowledge that rewriting ideas is my least favourite part.  

Week 3

As we've discussed elsewhere in the world, Levis is a world constantly changing. From people wanting to become other things to Changes in government to changes in the fabric of intercity communication to the whole world adapting to the new presence of demon factions within society. Levis is a mess of adaptation and change. One of the main groups trying to stop the change is the Cult of the Endless Eye - a group I really should expand upon someday :P.  

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For outside inspiration (Very vague way to get this btw) I read a few chapters of "No Treason without tea" by Rebecca Thorne and a little more into "Till Death do us Bard" by Rose Black, two very gay, very sarcastic stories. It reminded me that I'm allowed a little more sass in my works and these things don't have to be as wikipedia as I keep trying to make them to appease to others. I also listened to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyS2EgLcdM8&t=520s which is a lovely dark music collection that filled me with desires to squirm into some of the darker corners of the Forbidden Forest.

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This part of the assignment is barely on topic dears, I'll do it, but this is more because every prep really does have to follow the same formula. Checked out Qur and remembered how abandoned the more beastial gods of Levis have been, and how the wilder wants and thoughts can have lasting effects. Had a look at these guys: wild pigs and was reminded that I have a boar like being and a stone ferret I need to explore more, and to focus on the wilder nature of such beings.
Bring on Week 4

Week 4

Look What Life Gave me today. With Levis everything is tomorrow. I've jumped around the history of the world so much to stuff it with so many stories and paths that my future players and future readers can enjoy. Right now I'm playing with tokens and DM screens (and engraving some of the art I've got onto wood but shhh). I'm working in an 'agile' organisational manner, along with my journals and journal holder. But what about the world? I'm exploring the movement of the camp of the demons in the Forbidden Forest, we're seeing where Br1n and her network goes - and the people building up the technology for it, and we're about to keep track of the technology in the technomagic. We're slowly playing with hiking photos for the world backround (and we still have to comission the horror and romance headers). We have the statblock for tracking numbers, and we have the old excel spreadsheet for the actual words (going to get back into that). As with every 'one a day' type challenge we will be doing more 3am writing :P As for community we have 3 of them, my fistbumpables who have been doubling down on the support. The discorders (I should jump in chat more you wonders) and my Tumblrinas (so many of the people there keep me strong).   Bring on Wintercamp (also stealing Blue's Bingo card and being a good little Feral).