So the first entry is for som
So the first entry is for some non-A letter, including 3 references to phantom (not yet existing) texts. Subsequent entries are for B, C, D by everyone, and must include 1 reference to an existing text, and 2 to phantom texts? Dibsing seems a must if you can't make duplicate references.

Has anything been established about the library in the game? Wealth of Vim texts? Secret stash of Eleanoraen scrolls? Paucity of Terram & an overabundance of mundane fishing texts?

Or perhaps Scattered Sequence.
I like that one, because everybody's in a different place, alphabetically. Keeps the same arbitrarily rigorous progression, but we don't have all the Bs being written at once, and As and Ys and Zs don't end up short-sheeted on links. And while the rules aren't crystalline explicit, it's clear people take turns posting their entries, rather than each letter going up at once; that way, you avoid double-dipping, so dibsing isn't as vital as it seems.

Anyway, I rather imagined we'd hash out the specific approach here before getting started.

As for the library itself, we do know some of the books, including some stuff poached from Bethelion (and Isrillion). My impression is it ain't huge. If there's 4 players in this game, we'd end up with 104 books by the time we're done, and that would be most of what we've got. (If we group letters—A, B, C, D, EF, GH, IJ, KL, M, NO, P, QR, S, T, U, VWXYZ as a for instance, though we might tweak it for Latin if anyone knows offhand letter frequencies in Latin—we'd end up with fewer books; that, plus not having 4 books that begin with X, is a strong argument in favor of letter groups.)

I'd definitely prefer scatter
I'd definitely prefer scattered sequence. And grouped letters.

A quick google on the question of frequency in latin:

e-list post
My own count of Latin, made by running a text (the Five Books of
Moses, j and i, v and u distinguished; ligatures expanded) of the
Vugate through TACT, looks like this: e a i o t n l r s c m d p u
v b g h f q z j x. I have, naturally, left out y and k.

andfrom letter frequencies for various languages
Latin: eituasrnomcpldqbgvfhxyk (z) (jw)
(Caesar, 52000 words)
ietuasnmorcdlpqvbgfhxyz (k) (jw)
(Seneca, 18000 words)
eiuatsrnmocldpqbgfvxhyz (k) (jw)
(Livy, 17000 words)

Follow the phantoms
Personally, I think I prefer the "follow the phantoms" variant, in which the phantoms can begin with any letter, but players must take a phantom entry if one is available. That seems like it ensures a much more densely linked network.

On the other hand, a densely linked network may be less important or desirable for a library write-up.

Presumably, links to non-Nimus Animae texts would also be fine, but wouldn't count as phantoms for the purpose of the game.

What is known about the library
What is known about the library:

Sonata brought with her 18 books: 6 books of Lem (black, red, yellow, green, blue, westmarch), 2 purpurean books: (unread and blank with commentary), 2 books of spells (containing 270 levels of spells), 6 lemmite concordances (texts that aid in studying specific arts from the books of lem) for mentem, intellego, muto, ignem, herbam, animal. Oh, and 2 of the books of Elenor (which aren't in the library, but could definitely use some detailing). Plus an unspecified (but reasonably large) number of non-magical texts (she used to pay visits to the Sophian booksellers on supply expeditions from Argutator Purpureus).

Tully brought with him a big chunk of the Acus Doris library (34 magical texts, mostly related to Touccian arts, rego, ignem, terram, animal, but doubtless others as well, nothing definitely specificied an unspecified number of non-magical texts).

Giles brought with him Mosley's Compendium of Spririts, an herbam book, a grymoire of useful spells, and one other which I can't remember. Oh, and an elenorean text (duplicate of one of the ones Sonata has).

I don't know what magical texts Calvus or Perdyx brought to the covenant. Calvus definitely has non-magical texts concerning Dawnish cultures and magical practices and militry histories.

Well I think I'm in, since I
Well I think I'm in, since I seem to be working on my first entry willy or nilly. It occured to me that the latin letter frequencies don't tell us anything about what letters are more likely to be first letters of words. I don't know what that those frequencies are for english, except that s and m are ridiculous when you look at lists of names.

So may be we shouldn't worry about it.

Perdix' books--
I believe I settled on about a dozen in miniature in the trunk, and a baker's dozen large books, of which there are two or three volumes of overlap with the miniatures. Perdix' habit is to sit outside the trunk reading a large volume and inside the trunk making a miniature copy for the tiny castle's eventual library. As everything is scaled for someone who is about a foot tall, the miniature books are just barely usable by someone who isn't preternaturally shrunk. Perdix' taste is rather eclectic, and they're monstrously fond of theory (brought up as an essentialist with some Touccian training at Bethelion, but anything goes, really), so anything and everything could be in those 25 books. I was going to at some point try to figure out the broad outlines of what might be in there, but hey! Here's this game!

I like strict alphabetical sequence.
I think I'd prefer it if you had to take a phantom slot only if it's available in your next letter. That preserves the alphabetical sequence for each player, and limbers things up a bit otherwise. —Of course, that opens us up to "gotcha": I know Emily's next letter is Q, and she's got the turn after me, so I tart up a hellacious Q title in my entry and drop it in her lap.

Anyway, I'm voting that Emily gets the first turn, since she's already begun. If we're doing Scattered Sequence (it looks like we might, yes?), I'd propose we each announce our intended start letter/group before any first moves are posted.

Of course, we'd have to settle on a grouping mechanism. (One crude way of checking start-letter frequencies would be to quickly count the number of pages per letter in a Latin dictionary, which I do not have at hand myself.)

sequences
The rules aren't clear on turns. I'd read it as being simultaneous. It makes good sense to go one by one though. Anyway, I'm working on Z.

Hm. Looking over the variants more closely, I think I'd best like nonsequential (we each pick any letter each turn, no predetermined order), with codependence (2nd turn on at least one reference must be to an existing phantom). With emphasis on the rule in nonsequential that says that you can never do a new entry for a letter unless there is no phantom and encouragement to use existing phantoms, Charles, would that fit the bill for you? Would this drive you crazy, Kip?

(So the three references after turn 1 would be: one to an existing entry, one to an existing phantom, and another to either of those, or to a new phantom.)

Yup, it's done. I'll post it
Yup, it's done. I'll post it once we figure out the order we want to use. I made a "Nimas Animae Library" category that we can sort for the entries out with, I think.

Nope, I'm stumped. If they are wiki nodes, it gets an error in the path alias if I put it under a different category. How can we find just our little book nodes easily?

I feel so lost.
Okay, so there's no strict alphabet to follow, or number of letters, and we don't have to worry about Rule of X or letter groups, since we just stop when we stop. And the thing grows herkily-jerkily: at the end of the first turn of a four-player game, there's four entries, eight phantoms. At the end of turn two, there's eight entries, four cites of written-up books, four codependent phantom cites, and four additional phantom cites, for a total of eight phantoms, though not necessarily, since there could be overlaps that change the dispensations if not the total number, and after that the math gets muzzy, but I'm always muzzy about math. Still: I don't think there can ever be more than eight phantoms per turn, and probably less. Usually less?

I'm having a hard time seeing the shape of it, I guess. What concerns me is having sequences of tightly interconnected bubbles that have few or no connections between them, rather than a fully if messily interleaved net, which would be the ideal. And it doesn't look like that's a grave concern with this model, but again, I'm muzzy on the math. (I was never very good at Hunt the Wumpus, say.)

But more importantly: we'd need a fourth, unless we just want to launch with three. (What does adding new players several moves in do? Hmm.)

Simpler would be fine with me
Simpler would be fine with me!

On the letter frequency front, I'd like to have us use the English frequency groupings you suggested, Kip. Then afterwards we can translate them into Latin & get an arbitrary latin distribution that way.

I don't think we need letter groups.
Not if we're doing a follow-the-phantoms, non-sequential game. We just go where we go. If I'm reading the rules right. —I suppose we could all agree to only do one entry in any letter/letter-group, despite the fact that we're skipping around order-wise, which would make following the phantoms less onerous, since you could only follow the phantom if you hadn't already done an entry for its letter/letter-group.

Oh, it works. I just had the
Oh, it works. I just had the path alias wrong. Had a space in it.

I don't think we need any letter-related rules at all
Look at any library of a hundred or so volumes - probably most of us have such a library shelved in our home. (Use just part of a bookcase, if necessary). You probably won't find that titles are evenly distributed throughout the alphabet; such an arrangement is unlikely.

If we're not going to do scattered sequence, then I say we just use snowball - pardon me, I mean, follow the phantoms - and let the letters lie where they fall.

By the way, I'm in. (But please don't expect me to write anything at all in Latin.) Can we have more than 4 players?

Calvus' library
As Charles commented to holds military history, studies of Dawnish cultures, military ideals and their magical practices, as well as treatise on other diabolical or theocratic cultures. His magical library is abysmally small. It would include a few, like 4 or 5 of his own, two of which would be spell books. One would be utility spells for all occassions the other a military campaign spell book. However its possible he might have a couple more magical texts that are from the past couple years having been scribed by N'dape.

What do you think of that Kip?

He definitely owns books on the anthropological findings of Carnifex and other such travelling covenants and perhaps a mundane text on Quintillican practices from a Quintas Opacan point of view.

I just made a "book" Topic un
I just made a "book" Topic under Magic and deleted the library category. Seems like having the entries be wiki nodes that are organized as a book under the Nimus Animae game would be best. But the entries don't seem to show up in the wiki index, even when entered under that category.

Hm. I'm not familiar enough with all this.

Yes!
'k. Made a book this way:
Content type="book page".
Parent=letter of wiki index.
Path=wiki/[name].
Category type="wiki node".
Topic="Book".

Seems to work.

thanks..
Sarah you have put together such wonderful structure & content here. Thank you for these brilliant & effective pages.

Sure.
Calvus probably has a number of compilations he's compiled: "best bits" from this or that larger work copied and somewhat haphazardly bound together in one loose argosy. That's what Kieckhefer's going on about in the passages quoted above: it's not a single cohesive work, but folio after folio of nigromantic magic copied and assembled in a hodge-podge (hotch-potch?). So Calvus in the course of reading this or that larger volume may have copied (had Ndape copy) this or that passage pertaining to combat, etc.

A lot of magical books—especially personal workbooks—are going to be like this, and end up as weird assemblages with strange titles.

Well, if we're following the rules...
I'd gotten the games confused: non-sequential specifies that one must use each letter or letter-group only once. It's follow-the-phantoms that doesn't require a set sequence of letters at all.

So: to recap:

• Each player starts with an entry in a letter or letter-group of their choice. That entry must cite two other books that could be in the library. (As these entries are presumably written by librarians at Annalum, Bethelion, and possibly Antrum, Nimas Animæ and the magi's personal workbooks will not be directly referenced. —I suppose it's possible for Barry to, say, write as if he were compiling Tully's own notes about the stuff he pinched from Acus Doris, but I think the more distant tone will be better.)
• When this entry is posted, the player announces what letter or letter-group they intend to take next.
• In each subsequent move, a player must write an entry for a phantom cite from an earlier move, if such a phantom cite is available in their announced letter, and if they were not the author of the entry that made the citation. This entry must cite one book already described, one phantom book cited but not yet described, and one new phantom. Additional citations to books already described are allowable.
• On a player's next-to-last letter or letter-group, the entry must contain only one phantom citation, which may be to either an existing or new volume. Any number of citations to books already described is allowable.
• On a player's last letter or letter-group, the entry must contain no phantom citations. Any number of citations to books already described is allowable.

Make sense? Did I miss anything? We need to do up the letter-groups in some final, agreed-upon form. And yes, sure, more than four indeed. I just picked a likely round number as an example.

Known Books
How do we want to handle known books?

There are two levels of known books: named books, such as the Unread Book of Westmarch, and unnamed but known books, such as Sonata's concordances (about which we know that they are concordances and which arts they focus on).

My thought is that we should populate the library with all of the known titled books as phantoms, and also create a list of all of the known but untitled books. Either when referencing a phantom, or when claiming a phantom, the author can specify that it is a specific one of the known but unnamed books. This will slightly hem in the creator of the phantom, but will help to ensure that we end up matching what we know about the library.

Sound viable?

Another weird idea: maybe we should shelve the known phantoms, and play simply by shelves. This frees us from coming up with letter groups, but still gives a similar structure to unstructered, rather than follow the phantoms.

What I mean is this:

• Shelf one:
  • Lemmish concordance on mentem
  • unknown book
  • Mosley's compendium of spirits
  • unknown book
• shelf two:
  • unknown book
  • Red Book
  • Unread Book of Westmarch
  • unknown book
• Shelf three:
  • unknown book
  • unknown book
  • and so on for a few more books
• and so on for two dozen shelves

On the first round, I might write the entry on the Lemmish concordance on mentem on shelf one, creating links to the first unknown book on shelf three and to the Red Book on Shelf two, and declaring that I will be moving on to shelf three next turn. Kip might write the entry for the Unread Book of Westmarch on shelf two, link to some books on shelf three and seven, and declare that he is writing on shelf one next turn. Next turn, Kip could write any of the unwritten books on shelf one, and I could write the book Kip linked to on shelf three. If a third player had also declared that pe was going to write on shelf three, then we would choose between us which one took the book Kip linked to, and which one took an unlinked book. If, for some reason, a shelf is already fully written and you haven't been to it yet, then you can add a new book to the shelf when you take your turn on the shelf.

I'm not sure whether books should be shelved by subject, size, or binding color. Subject would be interesting, since it would help to ensure that every subject gets written about by every player (so everyone would need to write a Book of Lem entry), but that will happen to some degree anyway, since books of the same subject will probably tend to reference other books of the same subject, thereby ruling out the author of one entry from writing another (e.g. if the Unread Book of Lem entry references the Red Book of Westmarch, then the author of the Unread Book entry can't write the Westmarch entry).

We should probably start out with the same number of books per shelf as we have players. If we end up picking up additional players, then we can simply add extra unknown books to some of the shelves.

They can be shelved here.
They can be shelved here.

Just added the first official phantom book
Very cool.

Since the earlier thread is squished up against the margin.
So if I'm counting correctly:

There's 86 specific book slots noted above:

• 6 books of Lem (black, red, yellow, green, blue, Westmarch);
• 6 Lemmish concordances: mentem, intellego, muto, ignem, herbam, animal;
• 5 spell books, grimoires, compendia, or argosies;
• 3 Eleanorean texts;
• 1 Unread Book;
• 1 Blank Book with Commentary;
• 1 Mosley's Compendium;
• 1 unknown book on herbam;

and 62 unspecified books, covering (among other things) Touccian magic, military magic, and rego, ignem, terram, and animal. Note that the specific numbers above are minimums: we almost certainly have more than 5 spell books (as such), but we need to spec at least 5 to account for what's been designated.

Shelves by subject: I'd want to stay away from speccing out books just by the five and ten: we'd end up with the same strictures of the Ars Magica system that we're trying to blur, mess up, and sidle away from. I mean, yes, we do have some works up there that are specific to this element or that essence, but let's not make that the overall organizing principle. We'd want, maybe, I don't know:

• Spell books, grimoires; compendia, argosies;
• Theory (and its subsets):
  • Lemmish;
  • Elementalist;
  • Essentialist;
  • Ægidian, religious, old skool;
  • Amicitian;
  • Eleanorean, Dawnish, Quintillican, theocratic;
  • Theophrastian, Giovannite, other dead ends;
  • Et cetera.
• Practicums regarding specific uses of magic: divination, illumination, oneiromancy, healing, curses, epistemology, etc.;
• Practicums regarding specific enterprises: agriculture, warfare, construction, etc.;
• Workbooks and laboratory texts for specific echantments, rituals, or schools of spells;
• Concordances with things not arts: days, hours, the calendar; weather and tides; landscape; birds; hunting; colors; jewels; gestures and dance; food; etc.;
• Summæ and tractatus on specific arts.

I'm just throwing things up to see what sticks. This is hardly a definitive list. Please, help! —Anyway: it might seem that Sonata's 14 Lemmish books all need to be filed under Theory, Lemmish, thereby weighting our overall library rather heavily in that direction, but note that her 6 concordances could be either filed under Theory, Lemmish or under Summæ. Now, we might want a library that for consistency's sake filed all Lemmish concordances on the same shelf, but the game is bound to get expedient, and we'll probably want our apprentices to reorganize when we're done.

Also note that a lot of magi are going to produce monographs and essays as well as honkin' huge books, and these smaller pieces might be encountered by themselves, bound together with other essays and monographs on the same topic by a mage who wanted them all in one place for easy reading, creating a book that others want to copy (making a scattershot summa or concordance or practicum, perhaps); or maybe bound with other essays and monographs by the same mage (theory of one sort or another); or stuck between a recipe for Vindex' favorite punch and a list of Tyrulean gestural insults to incorporate in perdo spells (a compendium or argosy).

If we do group by shelf, we'll want to have several shelves for each topic, and weight them accordingly, I think: 2 or 3 shelves of compendia; a shelf each at least for each theory subset, though some get 2 or more; so forth and so on.

Shelving
I think an interesting compomise might be to shelve the existing books roughly by category, and operate under the suggestion that the undescribed books on those shelves were probably shelved there for a reason, but not strictly require that the books fall tightly into categories.

This would help with the fact that at the moment we don't know if we have any Amicitian theory texts, so we don't know how much space to set up for them. Maybe it will turn out that that shelf of completely undeclared books is all Amicitian theory, or maybe it will turn out that we have no Amicitian theory at all. In fact, it also helps with the fact that we don't know how the 62 unspecified works divy up by type (do we have a lot of summae or very few? Only time will tell).

I think your categories look good as a guiding principle, although I think maybe we should shelve theory in a jumble, rather than splitting it out by shelves.

And the concordances could get shelved under concordances (as opposed to Lemmish theory or summae). By the way, by specifiying their arts, I don't necessarily mean that they are specifically about, say, mentem in the Red Book, just that the topic of the book relates to mentem in some way (so, perhaps it is actually a concordence of references to dreams in the Red Book).

Types and cites.
I was thinking after I wrote it up that we'd need to specify what shelf our cite is supposed to be on, or coherence and phantom-following won't work so well. The type of shelf is our organizing principle, rather than a letter. With the alphabet, it's rather unambiguous where a book falls; with subject as we can see, not so much.

So we each have to write a certain number of entries for each shelf, or we have a certain number of shelves for each type, and we each have to write a book on each shelf. Okay. And we need to specify what shelf-type we intend to write next when we post each entry.

So if we specify the type of book it is in the cite—either unambiguously in context, or with some sort of metadata attached to the post (heh)—then it's clear when it comes time for me to write an entry whether there are any phantoms on the shelf-type I'm about to write.

If we don't specify the type of book it is in the cite—whether it seems unambiguously clear in context or not—then it must be assumed that one of the available phantoms must be on the shelf-type I'm about to write, and by golly, it's my task to figure out which title is the best fit for the shelf and come up with the best description to make it seem entirely plausible that Cameron might have absently stuck it on that shelf while dusting, sure.

Either way could be fun. Hmm.

Those other forms
I hadn't thought about it at the time, but Calvus would also have texts about the Savacion combat forms, emphasizing siege craft of course, but certainly have treatise and manuals on the pure forms. Nothing of course on dance form or the Wendelion abilities.

Cite by name and shelf
Actually, I think when you cite something, you need to create the phantom link (as Emily and I have done with the Unread and the Black books). When you create the phantom link, you need to enter it onto the library page on a particular shelf. If I cite the Alabaster City, by "Flying without Wings", I might turn the unspecified book on Shelf One into Alabaster City (or some other unspecified book on some other shelf). I couldn't simply leave it up in the air which shelf Alabaster City was filed under. The column 'Ph?' is marked 'y' for "yes it is a Phantom."

D'oh.
Why, yes. That would indeed solve the problem. With metadata, no less!

Now we just need a number of shelves. 86 known slots divided by 5 possible players equals 17.2, or 18 turns; 18 turns times 5 possible players equals 90 total books described.

So. 18 shelves? We have four players now that I know of: me, Charles, Emily, and Barry. Do I hear five? More?

A problem with subject shelving
Barry pointed out to me that if a listing is supposed to cite works not on its own shelf, then subject shelving becomes a problem. The most natural works for a Lemmite listing to cite will be the other Lemmite books, but if the Lemmite books are all shelved together, then they can't cite each other. While there are enough Lemmite texts that they would spread over several shelves, other smaller subjects would not.

Barry suggests we go with shelving by color (which is to say, random and arbitrary shelving of the known books).

The other possibility would be to remove the rule that books can't cite other books on the same shelf. I'm not sure what effect this would have. That cites must be to future letters only seems definitely relevant in the standard game, but I may be missing its effects.

Lets see. I write a book and cite phantoms on other shelves. When I get to one of those shelves, my choice of books is reduced by the number of cites I've already created on that shelf. If I write a book and cite phantoms on the same shelf, then I never write on that shelf again, so those phantoms never constrain my options. I'm not sure how it matters.

One other effect of shelving by subject, though, is that if Lemmite texts take up 2 shelves, we each will end up writing 2 Lemmite texts (and no more). If Lemmite texts are all over the library, then it would be possible for one person to write nearly all the Lemmite texts if no one else was interested in writing Lemmite texts. Even if I cite 2 new Lemmite texts each time I do a Lemmite entry, I can do 4 texts before I have cited all the other entries and can't write any more Lemmite texts. If I wrote them so they never cited Lemmite texts at all, I could write all of the Lemmite texts. I think the design in which it is possible for one person to do a large chunk of a particular type of work (if that is what they are interested in) is the better design, but I can see arguments in the opposite direction.

I'd prefer the arbitrary shel
I'd prefer the arbitrary shelving method, I think. Color would be lovely. Although that means we have to come up with 18 colors. What color is the Unread book? Do we have a black shelf forming?

I may need some coaching with respect to the various theory categories, but then that just means that there's a golden opportunity for those entries to get written for the wiki. Or at least, the freedom to write entries & then get suggestions about which theory group the book would likely fit, and nudge it in there. That's sure to blur some boundaries!

Since it would be good for th
Since it would be good for the last three columns to remain short, maybe we can use a code: shelf# then letter for position in shelf. F'rex (2A) for the Black Book.

The unread book
Well, I suppose it is either red like the Red Book it satirizes, or not red, since it is the Un-Red Book.

I've always imagined it being Red, so that it is indistinguishable from the Red Book until you open it. The blank book is specified as being like the black book, except blank.

There is a definite need for background entries, and I think that it will be a beneficial effect of the Lexicon game that some of those entries will get written. I think that it should definitely be a rule that each book entry can reference an unlimited number of non-Lexicon wiki entries, but that the non-Lexicon entries referenced can't be left completely phantom. So if I write up an Amicitian theory text, I would need to create the wiki entry for Amicitianism to link to from my entry on the text.

I don't think that pun works in Cholæic.
Just sayin.’

But yeah: the other plus is going to be filling in biographical entries for authors as well as magi mentioned.

Utterly arbitrary, perhaps—
—with the shelving criteria to be revealed at the end by looking at what we've got. We just scatter the known slots across the 18 shelves, and if you cite a book, you have to put it on a shelf, and when you write an entry, you have to indicate which shelf you'll pick from next, and when you go to get a book from a shelf to write about, you have to grab a named and described phantom before a blank book, and we have two categories of blank books: ones specced at the beginning, as per the list above, the ones scattered across the shelves before we begin, and utterly completely wide-open blank books. Of course, a cite could point to one of those specced blank books, thereby giving it a name and turning it into a phantom. I don't think we need to specify that a specced blank book has to be done before an utterly blank book, or vice versa.

Just as a reminder: two of those shelves will be in Perdix' trunk. And: the personæ I'm contemplating would be librarians at Bethelion and Annalum and Antrum. So: they're either describing the specific book before it was dragged to Nimas Animæ, or if it's a popular or well-known book, they're describing another copy of it. The personæ could be rough contemporaries, or some years earlier, and it'll be fun when we're done to figure out who at Annalum or Antrum or Bethelion they must be. (I think that's better and healthier, as it were, than personæ at some point in the future, reviewing stuff that's already happened.)

In latin, no. In Choleic ...
It is well established that puns that work in English work in Choleic, while puns that work in Latin only sometimes work in Choleic...

Yeah, filling in authors will also be nifty.

Sources of commentators
I'm waffling between a Bethelion student or one of the mages at one of the elder Lemmite covenants (probably a Circulan). It might be interesting to get a Circulan point of view.

I agree on the librarians being current or past. We should probably establish which is which if it is a mix. One problem with not playing current librarians would be that some of the books are quite recent vintage. A problem with playing a mix of periods would be that some of us would be able to comment on other's citations, while others couldn't.

Also, we should assume that the librarians, where ever they may be, all correspond with each other (if they are concurrent), so that they can reference each other's opinions on works.

Oh, also, how do we want to handle the two/three Elenorean texts? I would love to have entries for them, but nobody besides Sonata, Giles, Gratuitus, Tydfal, Neque and Stagnum Ranarum have actually seen them (okay, the list is starting to get really long), and Neque and Stagnum haven't seen Giles' volume. I suppose one way would be for the librarians to quote at length descriptions of the originals, now presumed lost.

I know mine is from Annalum.
I know my scholar is from Annalum. Are we signing them? I'd prefer a pseudonym to deciding on a given mage. I'm thinking mine has a wavery hand so I've been thinking of her as QuiverQuill.

For the Eleanorean text, let them be commentary written by the scholars we're posing. We can presume that their comments were researched by one of those in the know.

If we're fairly settled, mayb
If we're fairly settled, maybe we can start. Let me know by the end of the work day & I'll post. Otherwise, perhaps Monday? I'm out of email touch over the weekend.

If more people want to join they will have until the end of the first turn to do so. And, you know, I'm sure we could weave them in, if need be, later.

Shelves 17 & 18 are in Perdix
Shelves 17 & 18 are in Perdix' trunk.

We need some agreement to the rules.
Just to make sure we're all on the same page. And I don't even think the rules as such have even been written down in one post, yet.

More lexicon links. Or at least one more lexicon link.
I am advised via email of this wiki page re: lexicon games, and we are invited to add ours to its listing of active games, if we so choose.

What do we agree on so far?
What do we agree on so far?

What we're figuring out:

Anything I forgot? Thoughts?

My preferences
Specific: I think full arbitrary, with freedom to construct a partial filing system as we go seems best.

Posting schedule: same day. that way, if someone is running late, they simply post later (and conceivably even end up missing a turn) rather than there being a question of whether the next person in line is supposed to wait until they post.

Signing: I think that we should agree that we are each writing as a single librarian, and should specify where we are (so that we can reference each other directly if we want: "While the esteemed Annalum librarian considers this a minor work, it is this librarian's opinion that she has entirely missed the nuances and hidden meanings that make this one of the most daring and original works on the nature of metal ever written."), but that we don't need to specify which mage we are at this time (unless we want to).

The other question is period: my preference would be that we are all current day magical librarians, writing contemporaneously, so that we have full knowledge of events, and are able to fully interact.

Also, I think we should allow extensive quoting of "historical sources", so that we can include non-current day entries (so that we can handle the Elenorean texts), but that they should have at least a little current day author framing of the quotes.

The site is going to go down tomorrow...
Since the entire website is going to go down tomorrow for an unknown number of days (until Sarah rejiggers the database for the new site), maybe we shouldn't begin until after the site is back up.

Rules
I think we should try to agree on the rules before the site goes down, and start the game when the site comes back up.

What do people think of my proposed rules?

They're fine.
They are fine by me. I agree to adhere by whatever variant of them you all agree to.

I'll be out of touch until Monday.

Some addenda:
Two cites in the first entry. Three after that, except: back to two cites in your 17th entry, and no (phantom) cites in your last entry.

Fully arbitrary? Or specify your next shelf when you post an entry?

"Current day magical librarians, writing contemporaneously, so that we have full knowledge of events, and are able to fully interact." I agree whole-heatedly. I think I'll take on a crank librarian at Antrum. (Keeping in mind that our personæ could be auxiliary Cristofereans, and thus not listed at all.)

And we need to seed the shelves with all of the various specced phantoms.

Lemmite and Aegidian procopians as well.
I'm sure no one calls them that, but the Lemmites and the Aegidians also have substantial non-magical branches (proper lemmite and aegidian covenants are non-magical monasteries with an inner circle of mages), so unlisted Lemmite and Aegidian auxillary librarian personae are also a possibility. Just thought I should mention.

I'm taking a Circulan Lemmite librarian, who I'm pretty sure is a mage (but possibly not).

Further rules thoughts, effect of known sequence of shelves:
I think specify your next shelf when you post. That adds the interest that your next choice may be constrained by the phantoms created on the same turn (shelf 13 may be empty when you declare that you want it, but full of phantoms when it actually comes time to write).

Actually, sequential with non-matched starting points might be interesting, since it allows the players to know how soon a particular phantom will get filled in. If you create a phantom, and you want to up the chances that it gets written soon, or that it gets written by a particular player, then you shelve it on a shelve that particular player will be working on soon.

On the other hand, non-sequential does allow more freedom for players to decide that a particular phantom strikes their fancy this week, which is probably a good thing.

Preferences?

Oh, right.
Procopians. I knew that.

Leaning.
I'm leaning non-sequential. —You call it and then are constrained (maybe) by what gets put up that week. You can dibs a slot when you call a shelf. Any collisions (one slot left to write, two people call it the same turn) can be handled ad hoc. But if others feel strongly, I'd go scattered sequential without a fuss. Actually, that might be more fun: preserves the artificial march nature of the original alphabetical.

Oh, I'm just terribly decisive today.

Lets make Barry decide
Emily's agreed to go with whichever version we decide on, and both of us can't make up our minds, so maybe Barry choose which one it is.

I'm leaning non-sequential as well.

We shouldn't run into collisions (unless we add players) assuming we are keeping the rule that you only write on each shelf once (which I think we should).

So by sequential & non-sequen
So by sequential & non-sequential, we're meaning in order of shelf, correct? So if it was matched sequential, we'd all start with a book on shelf 1, next turn 2, etc?

And if non-sequential, then we'd "call" the shelf we'd post to next. I like that. Makes the placement of phantoms more strategic.

Getting ready to begin.
I could, tonight, use some dice mechanism to randomly scatter the bookslots listed above and seed the shelves in the library. That ought to be done before the first moves are posted.

And then I should maybe figure out what my first move is going to be.

Any objections, comments, recriminations, brickbats, or resignations before we begin?

I believe...
Barry's decision was that we each pick whichever shelf we want to start with, but after that proceed sequentially.

So you maybe start with shelf 6, while I start with shelf 13. Turn two, you're on 7, while I'm on 14. And we keep on keepin' on around and back again till you've written for shelf 5 and I've written for shelf 12.

Right?

Quick question:
Is the table itself listing the shelves and contents hand-rolled? Or am I missing some auto-construction step that's triggered somehow and updates it automagically whenever you add a book?

I mean, I can stick 'em in by hand myself. I just wanted to know for sure before I started tinkering.

No automagic
It was all just hand rolled. Please feel more than free to shelve the known books. I've been meaning to do it, but I haven't gotten to it yet.

I started creating categories:
Lexicon
Lexicon -> first shelf
Lexicon -> second shelf

which I think will also be a useful way of organizing the books, but I don't think it substitutes for the table (no meta-data, and no easy way to represent unspecified books).

I've changed my mind.
I now favor total arbitraryness. People can do whatever books they want, on whatever shelves they want, so long as they fufill the citation requirements.

So no order of shelves, and no need to "call" a shelf ahead of time.

Maybe instead of all posting at once, however, we should each pick a different day of the week on which we'd post. So there'd be a playing order - I'd always be Tuesday, Em would always be Thursday, or whatever - but not a shelf order.

Arbitrary good
I do prefer same day of the week though, it kind of adds an oomph to it. Plus it means we're all in the same position of looking at each others entries at the same time, and running up against a deadline at the same time. I'll suggest Tuesday as the day for books to be submitted.

So the only remaining function of the shelves is that we can't return to them? Once I write a book on shelf seven, I can't write another book on shelf seven? Or do we want to even keep that? It still has the tactical aspect: "Well, if I file this book on shelf seven, then Emily will have to write it, since everyone else has already been to shelf seven."

Ah freeformers, never a rule they actually like...

I do like the idea of pushing another specific person to write a book entry by making in character reference to that other player's character's interest in that work: "The codex of Wendell's fugitive arts, on which the esteemed Annallum scribe has written so beautifully," linking to an as yet unwritten book. Anyone can write the entry, although if it weren't the Annalum scribe writing, they might respond to the imagined Annalum scribe's analysis. It is a much more intriguing method than simply shelving it on the shelf they are about to work on.

I'm down with all that.
I'm down with all that. I like having us all post on the same day too. Tuesday is fine. Completely arbitrary is great. The seeded books are fantastic. I'm bubbling with happiness. : )

I just realized I didn't need to dibs the black book to cite--apparently it's verboten to cite your own work or fill out a phantom you made up, but there can be multiple citations to books & phantoms. Dibsing is only really needed on a given phantom for a full write up, that way we don't get reduplications.

All we need now is our rules written up all in one place. I say we set a tentative start date next week, Tuesday work for all?

First book of first turn
I added Concordance for the Birds to the table. I also added the new phantom Systems of the Mind. Also, I created some details about the author of the phantom. Some other entries came up along the way, so I tossed them in as well. And I stayed up way too late in the night/morning doing it.

Enjoy.

Shelf links?
Charles, I noticed your entry on the library shelf has links to books on the other shelves. Yet somehow it seems to bring you to the wiki node entries. Could you talk about what/how you did that?

shelf links = url alias
Any entry can have multiple names. I gave each of the book wiki entries a name based on its location on the shelf. To add additional names for an entry, go to admin -> url aliases (second from the bottom). On the URL aliases page, look up the current alias for the entry, and find teh system name for that page (something like node/640). Now select the add tab, and enter the system name and the new alias and submit. Now you can get to the page through either alias.

Is that what you were refering to?

yes, thanks.
yes, thanks.

No Spaces
Just remember that the url alias/original wiki name cannot have spaces. It mucks up the system if there are spaces in either the original title (which forms the wiki name) or the other url aliases, and you get snarly red complaints from the system when that happens.

We're currently at four players, right?
I think we're off to a good start.

I'll call 6e for next week, unless Barry, Emily, or Charles would rather claim it.

5b
I'd like to do 5b next.

summer takes its toll
finally got the black book done. Next, I'd like to turn my hand to Morgensterns Guide. Forbidden & Terrible for me!

Yea! everybody has a book in
Over the past 3 weeks, each of us has done a book. Each all aloney-o in our own week as it happens.

Shall we try for a book each, next week?

I'll take Lucerna et tintinnabulum, suspicious psuedo-Elenoreanism if we are to believe Iohannes Monachus.

Black Book of Lem
And to save others the hunt for the Black Book, there's the link. Not being a new entry, it doesn't show up on recent posts.

Lucerna et tintinnabulum?

I’m eager to see what results, since I was cribbing something very specific, and now I want to see where it ends up instead.

Me, I’ll bag the Unread Book of Westmarch.

And still no book
I still have hope of getting it done this week, but we'll see how that goes...

I’m working on it—
House guests. Also, trying to make “the Unread Book” pun in Cholæic for reals. As it were.

I may wait another week then.
I'll eagerly await your entries. I'm on a phantom hunt for the next little while & I want to do one of Kips phantoms next. But I'd like to see what Charles does with Lucerna(?) etc. I think I've cut me a good enough swathe of controvesy baiting for now. I look forward to hearing another opinion on the things.

Plus, I'll be away & busy most of next week, so it won't be a good time to write. If y'all catch up, maybe we can be back on track for the following.

Then I'll be in your midst again! Yay!

busy busy busy no book
Okay, I still don't have a book, and I'm at sea tomrrow, so no book tonight or tomorrow either. However, I'll be in a motel room with nothing much to do tonight, so I'll take a note book and see how it goes with no web access.