Sharden

Sharden, per Teves map from 2nd Edition.
And then gussied up a bit.

I've wanted to do a piece on Sharden for a long time, and it just sort of blew up on me while I was working on the Lexicon project. So SEGMENT: SHO-CAUDAL #8 will have a memoir from a Tologra who has is coming to the end of a two-cycle tour of the planet before returning home.

I want Sharden and the Tologra to be something more than just another fantasy race, so I brought some of my ethnographic interest to play to paint a picture of the people as they saw themselves, their relationship to Shantha, Ramian, Salu, and Blount, and their reaction to Bronth missionaries almost thirty years ago, when they spread out to bring the Iscin races together to share their common history of Iscin.

It is not quite a religion – the Tologra knew their own history but had lost contact with the other Iscin races. They do not worship Iscin - they revere him for his work to make their races exist. The had their own version of captivity under the Crugar, and then under the Bronth before three Tologra escape to Sharden. Tologra had been "lost" since the Great Wanderings, so we learn how they came to Sharden, and what happened when the Bronth arrived to bring them "into the family" of Iscin's Children.

It is what I look for with new Jorune pieces - entertaining and revelatory. Even to me.

Satisfying to work on, and I got to do one of my favorite things. A map. Love me some maps.

SEGMENT: SHO-CAUDAL #8, coming soon to an email near you. If you subscribed. Or bought a block.

--------

It is comforting to see a clear line of future issues mapping out before me. I should be able to meet my at-least-one-a-month schedule by quite a bit, even with my Joe-isms and reduced typing ability. Slowing down might work. I'm willing to try it.

Flime Ties

That would be a proper Jorune phrase, wouldn't it? Flie ties when you're having fun.

Time changes things, and I just had it pointed out that my subscription system for SEGMENT; SHO-CAUDAL is out of date.

I just had someone subscribe at $5 a month who then asked about getting the back issues.

Something I have not harped on is that I am only committed up to issue #14. And I have some ideas about that issue already. SEGMENT: SHO-CAUDAL is not a forever-and-ever project. It was born of frustration with the DriveThru-RPG pre-press system that kept rejecting covers and interiors for reasons no one could answer. SSC gave me the flexibility to get out an idea, quickly and under my control.

The PDF format allowed me to issue orthopedic edition, correcting the errors that seem to be the trademark of my production history. So 1c, 2b, became the early issue labels. But more recently I just make that notation in the colophon of the second page.

But subscriptions. Originally 12-Issue subscriptions seemed appropriate, but now - not so much.

So I guess part of my day will be spent wandering the mystic e-halls of PayPal to:

• Delete the 12-Issue subscript.
• Put up a 6-issue subscription.
• Change the short subscriptions to Back Issue options.
• And then post those changes to the subscriptions and SSC pages on the website.

I have a fairly clear idea of the remaining issues, but am not sure what order they will be in, and feel jes' fine about adding material to make the issues a bit fatter. And there will be some spin-offs that may become separate purchases.

But I am halfway to the 14-issue commitment. And understand no one is paid up to #14. I extended the subscriptions for a couple of people because of a screw up in coding their names properly to get their copies as part of the mass mailings. I plan to do something different with #13 and #14, outside the original subscription-newsletter model.

But I need to think about what I'm doing, and then reflect the new thinking on the website.

United Geeks and OCD

Well, someone actually volunteered to help with the Lexicon project so I have to shift gears into database and tables development mode.

Anyone with some previous OpenOffice Suite Base databases - just a few fields with at least three lookup tables - your help is also needed.

The design is simple. The basic design would have a few up-front field, with three (so far) look-up tables.

• RECORD NUMBER - with scribe id and file numbers - bookkeeping for reference at some later date. (10 Char max.)
• WORD (20 Char max.?)
• PRONUNCIATION KEY (20 Char Max.)
• DEFINITION - 150 characters Max. (?), anything beyond goes into Notes. Or it needs to be a basic flexible field. Is that even possible?
• LANGUAGE/CULTURE (look-up table) - Tongue, or Racial group, or Nation - 20 Chars.
• SOURCE (BOOK or FANZINE that is the origin - look-up table) - 1st Ed, 2nd/3rd Ed, Fanzines/Webzine, Newsletters/Columns
• CLASSIFICATION - Item, Geographic (Jorunographic?), Isho, Earth-Tec, Personality, Historic. (another lookup table eight or nine classifications)
• NOTE - anything that needs elaboration, such as a Colonial tongue, but it has to be specified as Thanterian/House Adwa or some such. I hope this can be just a flexible field.

I already have the look up tables for Language/Culture and Source, am deciding on classification but do not think that will take all that long.

That will then allow reports to be extracted for Shanthic, Isho-related, specific countries, historical personalities, wars ... whatever kind of report is needed. And will appeal to people who just want to soak in the Jorune word pool.

So I need additional scribes to pull the words (don't want the new guy to get lonely), and now I need help with the database design.

I used to work in dBase ][, but that was in the early 1980s. My last database was 1982.

And things have changed.

The Geeks of Jorune Unite

Uncle Sho Already At Work

Uncle Sho Wants You

Time to move on something I have mentioned before. A return to the previous future.

Time to activate The Lexicon Project. To create a database of the words of Jorune, and code them for the source (book, fanzine, web article, etc.), the Nation (country, culture, or language), the pronunciation key, etc., grouping, (place name, proper noun, common noun, generic word) composed into a database table that allows a simple input screen, and multiple scribes to do the job on inputting from various sources.

We have the basic 1,600 word database that has circulated for years, but we have many more words with the reemergence of the First edition (available as a PDF through archive.org), but we now have the fanzines (Sarceen's Knowledge, Sholari, Borkelby's Folly, and Annals of the Tan Soor Historical Society), webzines (Danstead Traveller), newsletters (Segment: Jorune, Segment: Sho-caudal) and such other sources as may appear.

I'm working on an Open Database (.odb) file for equal access through an open source Office engine to create the master table, a basic glossary to which each scribe will enter for their assigned source, and then combine them all into one big master glossary to serve future Jorune development, should there be some (which is a real possibility).

It would be nice to have some small group of us decide on the best way to create the database. An .odb startup would be easy to convert to a more advanced system if it were proven to be superior.

Act Now

Are you a Jorune geek with an interest to help develop a tool for use in whatever future Joruning there may be? Games, adventures, articles, etc., would be able to use your work for their references.

I would like to get this project up on the web as a freebie in the fairly near future. There may be big Gemlinks for your in your spare time, with nothing more than eyeballs and wiggling fingers on a computer keyboard.

Really. If you volunteered to do work for a Jorune project before but never did, this could be your big chance. Write me for details.

Segment: Sho-Caudal #7

Yeah. It's about to be mailed out. With less than 20 subscribers. But ... I feel like Horton the Elephant. Just sitting here, hoping something hatches. I made a commitment.

There is an article on Isho and the need to define it for various game systems, which is part of the growing BLENDED JORUNE development - blending the world of Sho-Caudal to an existing, near future, science fiction game, before the human colony, and then transporting them 3,500 years into the future to OUR Jorune. Isho will be key to any conversion to a system for a Sholari's home game.

Another article from the Red Gate adventure - the Kolo Dissal, a Thriddle escape device that may seem familiar to some people.

And the Crystal Lattice, a relic of almost religious significance, if Jorune had religious significance, that ties into a power struggle between different Thriddle cultures.  The underdogs plan to use it to coerce cooperation from their Tan Iricidi cousins.

But I may be able to get #8 out a little faster - and may change the whole production technique.

But in the meantime - #7 is almost ready to boot out into the world.

I have committed to 14 issues. Halfway home.

-------

Addenda:  Jan 22 - just got the last edits in, will apply them tonight and hope to have the issue in the email Tuesday night. Fingers crossed.

Juvenile use of the word Boner

I have been forced to admit one of the biggest mistakes in the development of Return to Jorune. Almost as big as getting involved with the Return to Jorune effort.

But it is bad. And it is big.

But only the very clever Joruni will identify it. Maybe.

So I won't even say what it is at this point, but it requires a rework of material that might go into a larger Jorune frame in the near future.

It is enough to make me feel dumb, even if nobody else ever knows. And somebody else already knows.

Damn.

But - push. Just push.

Neil Sedaka on Jorune

I love, I Love, I Love My Calendar ... hmm

Song - Calendar Girl. But for Jorune I think it would be Calendar Ke.

Recent correspondence for Jorune needs some clarification on dates, and I got tangled up in the terminal condition I have which is called "Joe's Brain" (it's going to kill me) and wanted to make a couple of clarifications.

The current year on Jorune is 3517. CR - Colonial Reckoning.

The formula for conversion to Jorune year has been:

• Current year in the Gregorian calendar
• Plus 1500
• Minus 1

(I have no idea how this was determined other than Sholari's whim.)

So this is 3517 CR. The year for a game that would start in the next twelve months.
However, Year Zero on Jorune is 2203 AD, 23rd Century.

So the year 3517 CR is year 5820 AD (2203+3
617)  on Earth. If it still exists

But probably not - there are differences in year lengths and day lengths. I'll dig out those number and hope for a spreadsheet formula to give that conversion.

I seriously doubt they will be using an A.D. calendar, or CE, in the Fifty-Seventh Century.

But I'm narrow-minded.

Don't get  your panties in a bunch because of it. Currently, on Earth, it is the year 2018. AD/CE. There are other calendars. Wikipediais says:: 

Gregorian calendar	2018
Ab urbe condita	2771
Armenian calendar	1467
Assyrian calendar	6768
Bahá'í calendar	174–175
Balinese saka calendar	1939–1940
Bengali calendar	1425
Berber calendar	2968
British Regnal year	66 Eliz. 2 – 67 Eliz. 2
Buddhist calendar	2562
Burmese calendar	1380
Byzantine calendar	7526–7527
Chinese calendar	4715 or 4655
Coptic calendar	1734–1735
Discordian calendar	3184
Ethiopian calendar	2010–2011
Hebrew calendar	5778–5779
Hindu calendars
- Vikram Samvat	2074–2075
- Shaka Samvat	1939–1940
- Kali Yuga	5118–5119
Holocene calendar	12018
Igbo calendar	1018–1019
Iranian calendar	1396–1397
Islamic calendar	1439–1440
Japanese calendar	Heisei 30
Javanese calendar	1951–1952
Juche calendar	107
Korean calendar	4351
Minguo calendar	ROC 107
Nanakshahi calendar	550
Thai solar calendar	2561
Tibetan calendar	2145 or 1764 or 992

And that's just one planet. Don't you feel educated?

Threads

There are a couple of new ideas that intrigue. Some articles for SEGMENT: SHO-CAUDAL. That is because no one else is writing for SSC, but people might want to write expansion or counterpoint materials. Maybe.

First - "WHY ISHO IS NOT MAGIC" or something similar. It would explore the nature of Isho for foreign game mechanics. Isho has an internal logic and there different gaming systems would each require tweaks to introduce Jorune into their world. It treads dangerously close to my dreaded "conversions" trigger, but I think I can dance close to the edge of the cliff without falling off.

This would be part of the BLENDED JORUNE thing that came up during the writing of SSC #6 and would be part of a stand-alone document to get near-future sci-fi games involved with Jorune.

CA Seal of Nine Stars
Jorune is one of 19 Worlds

Second - "LEAVE YOUR WORLD BEHIND" is an exploration of the marketing of Jorune for colonists. Why would anyone leave 24th Century Earth for a primitive world that barely reaches 21st Century levels of primitive technology? Sure, you could expect 120-130 year lifespans of cognizant, active, healthy living, and you could raise several generations to live according to your own idea of an ideal pocket culture, but is that enough to draw people away from the luxury and ease of 24th Century technology.

I see a window for a very different Jorune without all the races and mutations in the Jorune we know, with the Keeper Rod mechanic for sucking them into the 35th Century of Sho-Caudal.

Colonial marketing to potential emigres would be interesting - to discover in the writing of colonial reports, restrictions and maybe even to read why anyone would have come to this backwater planet. It will allow me to activate my old COLONIAL AUTHORITY material, and some very interested second world science fiction materials - particularly Brazilian comics and sci-fi. People would come a) to establish their lives outside the heavily monitored, marketed, and served overculture of Earth of that era, b) scientific research, particularly in Isho as a natural technology, and c) economic exploitation of Jorune products to trade with earth and expand holdings. "Work like a dog, live like a King."

Thalier Scythe

Third - Rebranding Jorune. Someone has come up with an idea that could lead to a new edition. Commercial Jorune. I would be part of the crew, if it ever happens, but I might use SSC to try out some new ideas on a fresh presentation. I like the old ways - Miles Teves art, Old parchment pages, Albertus and Palatino type. But a new look might be interesting.
So, I have some direction on playing pre-Colonial Jorune and Early Colonial Jorune.

It could be done. And I might be the right one to do it.

Blendings and almost 5% increase.

Well, we went from 18 to 19 subscribers. Right direction. Actually, it is more than 5% increase, but I'm not good at math either. Typos and bad math. But is always nice to see an uptick

The Blended Jorune idea that came up while writing the Keeper Rod section of SSC #5 is going to get some tweaking for an Isho schema for various gaming systems. Rather than get into the swamp that is licensing we shall do different systems who-dare-not-speak-their-names. An Isho conceptual model for the different dice, and non-die choices. I think it does offer a campaign idea to take people from where they are to the Black Hall of Tan Iricid's Mountain Crown in one easy sleep. 

No trademarked names, but the clever reader might be able to do something with Isho in another mechanic. 

Blended Jorune

I think I'm going to build on the idea of Blended Jorune from SEGMENT: SHO-CAUDAL #6.

It would be a simple way to bring a team of players to Jorune for some world discovery. If you think the only purpose of gaming is to go through labyrinths to find treasure, you can do that on Jorune, too. I probably won't be publishing much on that. You could do it, though.

Advanced Isho, as I have seen it, Including Mashal on the left, under Gobey/Desti.

The biggest issue is the use of Isho in other game systems. Isho is not magic, but a system with an existing magic system could be tweaked for replacing cantrips, chants, readings, and potions with "weaving" to create the dyshas. Dyshas are not spells and have very specific, even limited, effect.

Just a random piece of art I found on the
web. Don't know who. Isho naull?

But it could be done.

I had such a horrible experience doing conversions for release as a free web document, that I am loathe to step back into. But I think I could take the existing conversions and extract their Isho systems, plus my own notes.

As a side note, GOMO GUIDE; TAN IRICID, may be getting a new boost from someone who is at least willing to edit/proof the issue. That would be nice.

One or two other projects may get out of the box. but I'll deal with those later.

Isho systems seem to be the demand of the moment.

Oh, SEGMENT: SHO-CAUDAL will have a couple of other bits intended for RED GATE with SHOLARI v2n2. If that magazine is to come out, I will have to debate reworking the clips I've published in SSC for representation, but so few people see the newsletter, it might be doable. it requires that I do the wrong thing - art. My art. Not happy about my art, but... I seem to be available to do it. :(

I cruise the web to find inspiration, and I like this mapping technique.
Will steal it, I'm sure. And it will most likely be Jorune.

I'm having a series of projects and I need to pick one that will produce an income - a trickle at least. My freelance jobs have dried up - my favorite client has had to close down his business, and another who paid me up front has yet to say what he wants me to do with his logo and website. But I'm continuing to search. If you don't look, you are unlikely to find.

I am also looking at some non-Jorune projects. There is my own Lost Colony setting, started as a novel several years before Jorune, but adapts well to the whole mythos of the forgotten settlement.

KOHLNE is a corruption of "Colony" with multiple races against established aleins, but also a fight between factions of the human population, driving a purity-bent against those who have been genetically modified to better suit the world in various environments. It is the most Jorune-like, but I have a far future narrative on the resurrection of a human culture under the benign guidance of two entities who pronounce themselves to not be gods, lest the be confusion. There are three books for that, with the working title MORE THAN THIS. Maybe some novellas to follow on character through adolescence, late teens, and full adulthood, exploring the options of the church culture, with an eye to how people behave in the here and now.

As much as I love Jorune, it is the here and now where I live and things must associate with the here and now to be worth my time. Even Isho.

But from the here and now - Forward into 3517. That is the current year in Burdoth, but there are other calendars. 2018 here. 1439 dating from the Haj, 5210 Kali Yuga, 5779 Hebrew, 4713 (or 4653) Cock Chinese (until February 2, when it becomes Dog), 174 Baha'i, 2561 Buddhist, 1734 Coptic, 3183 Discordian, 1938 Shaka Samvat Indian (I like living in 1938 again), 2144 Tibetan, 4350 Korean...  and so on. The sun comes up, the sun goes down - we make up the rest of that shit.

But My take is different. Have a Happy NOW! It's where you live.

Just discovered a page on Facebook

Another page but with great reproductions of the fanzines that made me want to do a modern version of zines for Skyrealms of Jorune.

Fanzine Appreciation and History

Beautiful scans of the amateur magazines that were my source and inspiration.

The Corrected CYMK cover.

As part of my personal fanzine karma, I finally connected with someone to get a clean 300dpi scan of STAR STUDDED COMICS #7, published by the Texas Trio (Howard Keltner, Buddy Saunders, and my old fan friend Larry Herndon). It went off to the printer for the wonder of 4-Color Lithographic (Offset, actually) printing for a litho fanzine, the creme-de-la-creme of zine publishing.

But the printer reversed the Cyan and Magenta plates. I have previously tried to correct that error but was limited to the 72 dpi scans I could find online. Which were insufficient.

300dpi allowed me to go into the graphic, convert to CYMK, copy the four plates (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) into a new Photoshop file, make each level "Multiply" for overlay viewing, and then "colorize" the black copies of the plate to the appropriate key color.

As it appeared in 1965 (1966?)

I'm pleased with the result, even if it is "too green" for me. I would have colored it differently - but as an effort to clean up the original ...

I must confess. I tweaked the Defender, whose costume was Red White and Blue, but Howard's color assignments made it brown white and green. I also made the fog blue, as Biljo White said it should be. But the rest - witness the burning of 50-year-old karma, which started the first time I saw STAR STUDDED COMICS #6 and #7 on Wayne Baldaro's kitchen table, on my first visit to him after having my letter published in TALES OF SUSPENSE #63 (the Origin of Captain America).

Yeah, I'm old.

Burning karma for the new year. Free at last.

Alien Skyrealms

Jorune is not the only source of skyrealms and art about flying mountains. Just a few I've found along the years. I'd like to find other examples.

This last one is a scene I like. I would take it as a scene beneath a skyrealm as it is freed from the ground by whatever force of levitation raise it.

There might be a story in that.

Regifts for the Holiday

A young Joruni from Idaho showed up to fill the vacuum from the other editors I don't have. He's young. He doesn't know any better. But as a result, SEGMENT: SHO-CAUDAL #6 is out. Again. Without the debilitating sadness that is Joe's Brain, in all its buttery goodness. The horrendous error, that hideous truth, has been removed so some day in the distant future people will not know it was even there. Back to 16 pages, but i don't feel bad about it. It's my commitment.

I went to siphon material out from the doubtful SHOLARI v2n2 and put the nuggets into SSC at the measured flow. A steady Jorune drip. Go ahead, you can call me that - I won't get offended.

INTRODUCTION TO WARP MECHANICS - A revision from the article that originally appeared in ANNALS OF THE TAN SOOR HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

BLENDED JORUNE - and idea to bring your near future sci-fi team to Jorune as it exists close-to-now- with an option to move them forward in time to enjoy the Jorune we know. After if breaks their brains. We are assuming most of your players only know Jorune as a cool game they bought, oooh'd and aahhhh'd over the art, and never played. Your group, your system, you need to spend some time working a way of Isho into the game, but ... not much of a problem since Human's can't play with isho.

THE MES DIG, a location from the planned RED GATE from v2n2, but available for your own adventures in Sydra. Including over 60 items that you might want to use to pay, bribe, or have the horror of watching them steal them. A good deal of information on Keeper Rods, too. Why they don't make them much these days, what to find in them, and some Earth-tec or Trade goods, too. More of THE RED GATE will be extracted for future SSC.

YOU ARE NOT WELCOME IN WESTERN DRAIL - Something is up and the people who would know about don't come back to tell us what's going on aren't coming back to tell us what's going. We don't know what' going on, but we thought a warning would be a good idea. Trarch can get ugly. And angry, too. Ow.

There will also be a new freebie on the website - the Blended Jorune article, plus some information on the whole Return to Jorune Line with links to over 800 pages of free downloads. Give me a day or so.

A recent letter called my charging for Jorune material "Offensive." Really. Oh, I am wracked with grief. Seriously. There could be tears.