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Novaris 2026 is in for some changes so read ahead to see what's going on.

Lore Pipeline

Every entry in the Gitbook is now going to get one of 3, maybe more later, tags.

New: A freshly born idea that comes from some inspiration or thought up. These will mostly live in a new Group called New Ideas. These are not placed anywhere and are currently being better understood. A new idea moves to Developing once it is fully understood, or ready to be placed into the Universe. A new technology I want to add needs to be understood and able to break down to bare components while soft ideas like a new magic system can move to developing as soon as the science of the system is in place.

developing: Now that we know what it is, where and how it works it can be placed into the Universe but in an unofficial manner. I'm not sure if there will be magic but if it exist, this is what it looks like and who has it. While in the developing phase more learning may occur as the idea isn't set in stone. It can change and develop into something that better fits the setting. I'd also need to explore how it affects each other canon item. The Asida have magic, but call it something else entirely or do they never unlock it for some reason? this needs to be decided in order for the idea to be mature.

Mature: Once everything has been considered and I'm happy with how it works with the setting it can finally be promoted to Mature. Only Mature content makes it to vdd.sh, everything else stays here. Novaris is a developing setting, things may occasionally move from Mature to developing but the goal of Mature is to prevent this by admitting few things into this category but when it does happen the vdd page is updated with a simple recant banner, if the subject goes away and is removed from the setting the page is deleted and we pretend like it never existed. If it is added back later with modifications the changes are made and the recant banner is removed.

I hope that this workflow pushes me to make more content and to better gauge the proper growth rather than gauging growth by this Book slowing down in my browser. This will also allow me to share a professional version of the setting while also sharing a WIP version to artist all without sharing the most secret things, which are in another Space entirely.

After starting to use this in practice I want to add: The goal is to make individual ideas whole but as small as possible. The Broad Culture Change is named that because it makes a lot of chances that are all Culture based but it could be broken down with one section for "How the various Sentient Species feels/acts" which could then be broken down again into each species. The Conflicts section of the Broad Culture Change could be broken down into individual conflicts and in fact this is exactly what I will be doing but the point is; when you're in a creative writing groove, don't worry about how things will break down later, and keep existing things in mind but write them as they come to you, they can be made to work cohesively later, like the Vull - Republic conflict. It is clear the conflict must happen if it stays in it's current state, but later we'll need to determine if this is the correct conflict to portray then decide to do away with the Bubble zone or canon-ize it but only after we've considered other conflicts including why the Republic may be in favor of the Bubble zone so much that they act now, ask for permission later.

Art Fund

Once the vdd is at an acceptable place I will establish the Art Fund. It's simple enough really, it will be a PayPal account that accepts donations and I use to pay artist. Where this gains momentum is in the fact I will ask for donations on the vdd so as people run into the site they can support me by helping have more art made, which makes it easier to show off and the cycle continues. Of course AI art will not be allowed and provisions will be set in place to prevent AI art from being accepting in the Art Bounty program. The Art Bounty program will be a page on the vdd with request for art. Artist will be asked to reach out to begin the commissioning process, what I'm willing to pay will be listed on the site as well as what I'm looking for but reaching out helps align their style to what I'm looking for and delisting the request. It will go back up if the artist for whatever reason doesn't complete the work but to secure their funding and not have to answer questions for the same piece, it will be removed. The hope here is that I write well enough that people want to draw it and people I pay to draw it post it and bring their audience to the site to perpetuate the cycle of donations to funding art.

Social Media

Hinted at above but, once the art fund goes live there will be no reason to not marketing the setting and I don't have a product to market, it's not complete enough to market traditionally and frankly it's more about building online relationships than anything else so of course I will be posting on X and NOSTR. I have no timeline when Novaris will be Mature but I'll set a goal for July 12 2026 to be mature enough to begin posting.

Games

I would still like to make a SWN conversion for Novaris, NWN but I think once the setting is largely mature this is a trivial task.

I'm also starting on, officially, a Novaris open world interactive story. In it you'll be able to walk around and explore various places in a Novaris location I haven't determined but likely Bionica City. You'll be able to work jobs for money and boring jobs can be more or less automated to the point where "have an internet connection in 6 hours to begin your shift" could be a thing and your shift is AI training so boring work that you can skip, or it could be things like "Burger machine tech" where you play a mini-game fixing robots that make burgers, which is optionally automated. The real purpose of the game is to meet people, walk around the city and enjoy the various things there are to do. Over time I plan on adding more places and more things to do until you have a full scale Novaris Sim but that's so far out of mind I won't even think about it.