Ossia (Plane)
by razorborne
Status: Private (at least until the current storyline is completed.)

I warned y'all this was going up soon... this is the official submission of Ossia, a plane created by razorborne. below you will find a link to descriptions of the world as it currently stands narratively, as well as background and detailwork for the races involved. if there is any additional information you would like added, please let me know and I will try to accommodate. I'm putting this up a bit early because it's a lot of stuff and also Luna asked for stuff to go up early if possible anyway. it's a lot of reading, but if you want to skip the narrative descriptions then that chops out a lot and just gives you the bare details of species involved. the narratives have a lot about the geography and culture though, so I'd read them if I were you. anyway!

Ossia Dossier

...sorry.

I'd happily vote this in with or without the lich kerfluffle that occurred. At least I think it was about this? It was about this, right? Ulrexes or something.

Anyway.

Everything I've seen and read about Ossia reminds me a great deal of Redwall by Brain Jaques. I don't think I've read any of those books for years now - I think he's still writing more, and there were a lot, but I digress - war, misunderstadings, alliances, evil, actual wolves... And no humans! Or even elves.

I'd vote this in because you worked so hard on it. I'd vote this in because Gargoyles are awesome. I'd vote this in because of the SWEET symbols CKY did. I'd vote this in for a lot of reasons, to be honest, but I'm voting this in because it deserves to be in. Because it is well thought out and written, and because it's a plane where non-human walkers can thrive, and human walkers have to explain/hide their presence.

Great work, here. Thanks for posting.

And don't apologize.

yeah, that was this one. wound up skirting the issue by calling him a "necromancer" instead, since him being dead wasn't super relevant to the story being told at a broad level. it'll come up again if I decide to write a real story about it, but that's a bridge we can cross when we come to it.

I actually haven't read basically any Redwall. I think I started reading the first one as a kid but it didn't grab me. that was decades ago now, though, so I couldn't tell you why.

thanks! those symbols are really awesome.

I'd like to hear about the art and culture of the isles. Maybe some music?

I've actually done some work on folk music for a couple Isles, but it's not ready to showcase yet. until then, the flavor text on Open Sea will have to tide you over.

thinking things over more, the population levels I put seem too low. in order for the war to be sustainable some amount of death needs to be acceptable losses, and with the numbers I put I think that's a little implausible. I'm gonna double them across the board. the relative populations are right, I just need the numbers to be higher. I suspect no one based their votes around the specifics of those numbers, especially since without land mass size estimates it's pretty difficult to say what a reasonable number would be anyway. the only established land mass estimate is that Blackrock, by far the largest Isle, is about 10 thousand square miles, roughly the size of Sicily, and its population after doubling would be about 1/50th as dense. for scale. but anyway just wanted to let everyone know 'cause it's been bugging me for a while.

I like this plane a lot, but for reasons I have presented here, I'm going to have to vote Not As Is on this one, until my concerns are addressed, or someone is able to convince me otherwise.

Sorry.

I'm choosing to abstain based on the concern raven raised about the implied canon.
Vella feels like she needs a complete entry of her own since she's so vital to all of this.
Mind, I don't feel it necessary to vote NAI on this, because the lack of bio feels more like an incomplete vote.

On another note, those symbols are really solid. Makes me want to go annoy cky for something.

yeah I can't do a dossier for Vella before the end of the voting week, but it's something I want to do anyway so I'll definitely work on that.

yeah, like half the reason I'm planning to work on another faction world after this one is to bug CKY for watermarks again. they're just so gorgeous.

Between everything else going on with me, I wasn't able to get through the entire thing. I'm inclined to share Ruwin's opinion of accepting it on the basis of how much work really went into it. Despite minor quibbles I might with it, it is really rigidly organized (which I of course appreciate), contains a lot of information broken into many small bites that are all of a consistent size, seems to be internally consistent (from what I have managed to read), and is even illustrated, which are all great positive points for it. We have a number of planes that got accepted that are nowhere near this intricate or developed.

Due to the concerns others have raised, and the fact that I barely worked my way through even half of the dossier, I'm not comfortable casting my vote for this.

I have to raise the question about CKY's vote, however. Do we consider him to have a vested interest in this work, or is his involvement minor enough that we count it?

if that's a concern, it's worth noting that CKY was also involved in the building of Ossia as a set, although again in a minor fashion, mostly suggesting a couple cards and providing typical YMtC-style feedback. I wouldn't think that would matter (it's more akin to story feedback here than any active creative involvement) and I don't really think doing the watermarks really count either, since they're in no way an integral part of the world being voted in, just an added piece of awesomeness, but then I am probably the least unbiased opinion one could possibly have here.

I've never been really comfortable with this metric of "effort = inclusion." I mean, a ton of work has gone into Magic: The Musical, but that doesn't mean it should be accepted as canon. I think it potentially sets a very dangerous precedence to say that just because someone spent a lot of time on something and made it look pretty, it should be voted for. There are often a lot of subtle continuity issues that can come up in a project this big, and I don't think we should be ignoring those things.



From what I understand about CKY's involvement here, I would consider it minimal enough to allow the vote to stand. We don't consider Keeper a co-author of Fisco Vane just because of the portrait, so I don't think the faction watermarks (which, as others have stated, are awesome) warrant an "Abstain" vote for CKY.

I can understand that stance, but I think I'm just so used to seeing Sturgeon's law in action -- from the App Store to Steam to the MLP fandom (especially the MLP fandom) -- where a majority of available works are as lazy or cynical as you can imagine, that seeing this much effort being put into making something that's got both depth and ease of accessibility really inclines me to view it positively. It may also be a phase I'm going through, since I haven't recently been following anything with a deep continuity and instead been diving into a larger variety of self-contained works. I definitely recognize that over the last year I've drifted more toward being looser with consistency from plane to plane and instead viewed each plane as a way to create an entirely new and self-contained canvas for creativity -- a place to make new rules for how magic works and explore new powers and cultures.



That's kind of a false comparison because Keeper didn't make that portrait of Fisco until Fisco was already accepted canon for years. Here, we're voting for the completed dossier which included CKY's watermarks since as early as I knew about it.

For the record, I wouldn't think that CKY was involved enough in forming Ossia to discount his vote, but I also don't actually know any of what went into that formation, so I wanted to bring it up as much to find out as to make people question it. I imagine either razorborne asked CKY if he could draw up some watermarks or CKY just saw how cool Ossia was and volunteered to do so; either way I wouldn't object to his vote. But, as I said, I don't actually know any of the behind-the-scenes stuff for Ossia, so I wanted to ask the question of everyone.

for the record, it was the latter. CKY hit me up, said they wanted to do watermarks, and asked for my input and advice. not sure this matters, but full disclosure and transparency and the like.

I'm still catching up on this plane, and I would like to abstain from voting in this case because I think it's a bit beyond my experience-Although I would probably vote yea, but I'd like to leave such a hefty project in more capable hands.