SimplySeo

Let me state that, in no uncertain terms, I never set out to create Numendil, or even Barrowton.

This might come as a shocker to some of you, but when I made my character, Uther, two years ago (and some change) I did not intend for him to become all that significant, nor did I even know what a Templar was. I wanted to play a Hedgeknight, and the only reason Uther was an Adunian was because I was asked by my dear friend @DrHopeto play in his new settlement, Cartref Mor. And the only reason I wanted to play a hedgeknight was because I wanted something new. I had, as many of you know, played in the Dwarves for a number of years, they were the playerbase I first joined and I still love them dearly, though when I left Urguan NL, it wasn't on good terms. I felt like I had botched the whole affair, and was embarrassed, as such I wanted to RP somewhere else. My first instinct was Norland, since I had befriended @AstriaSand @DAENGIEback when the Iron Accord was a thing. I gave it a good go for a few months, though ultimately Norland didn't pan out, It was particularly inactive during the time period I was trying to do stuff there.

Being the beaten husband that I was, my first instinct after the Norland stuff fell through was to go back to Urguan, though I swiftly found myself in the position of being unsure of what to actually do, having accomplished pretty much everything I wanted to feasibly do on my Dwarf, he was somewhat in limbo, and even if I made a new Dwarf, it would mostly be treading new ground, especially since I would inevitably just end up RPing with the same people I did on the old character.

So, rather uncharacteristically, I planned to make a human, and when Hope told me he was doing human stuff independently, of Oren, I jumped at the chance, the Urguan programming back then was (and still kinda is) very strong, so I didn't want to touch Oren with a ten foot pole. That having been said, I did not mesh well with most of the original Cartref Mor players, and Uther, relatively early on into me playing him, was left somewhat adrift. DrHope introduced me to Templarism, which I thought meshed well with the Hedgeknight roleplay I wanted to do, so I jumped at the chance. Five days after he connected me, DrHope went to an event and PK'd. Leaving me without a reason to really anchor Uther in Cartref Mor.

For the next few weeks, I was actively seeking out opportunities to get Uther killed so I could PK and free up the persona slot, the whole Templar thing hadn't worked out, and I wanted the character to die with pride (that and I find suicide rp kind of cringe) so I resolved to just do increasingly dangerous shit on the character until he finally died. So, thats exactly what I did, occasionally I'd rp with some of my friends' other characters as sort of a revolving cast, but Uther was mostly a loner. That was until one day during the last real war with Oren, I ended up escorting a noblewoman out of CT to her home. It was the middle of the war, so there was a not-insignificant chance that we'd be jumped by bandits or mercenaries, and I was kind of hoping we would so I could finally have 'Ser Uther' die doing a noble deed.

We were not, in fact, jumped on the road, and when we reached her home, her husband, played by @M1919offered my character a shed to live in, and since I needed somewhere to put the persona until he finally died, I rolled with it. Besides, I had waned a lot on the 'anti-human rp' thing and I wanted to see what it was like on the other side of the proverbial berlin wall. So, I roleplayed in Acre, there were some fun spooky events at the time, and I ended up befriending several of the people there in Acre. Within a few days of my arrival, Acre rebelled against Lionbliti's Oren, and since I 1, was looking for an excuse to PK, and 2, never needed an excuse to fight Oren, this was the perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, as far as I was concerned.

The Harvest Revolt, despite how it ended, was extremely fun, honestly it was the most fun war I've ever participated in during my time on LOTC, in no small part because I wasn't super invested, but I did enjoy the narrative, enough that when it ended, not only did I decide I wasn't going to pk Uther at the drop of a hat, but because I was gushing about how much fun I was having in VC all the time, my friends, @Pepto @sneakybandit @Josh3738 and @Crunchiest_Leaf decided to come play with me and do wandering Hedgeknight rp. During this, and for the most part, the entire period of our stay in Acre, we were just a band of former bandits and sellswords trying to turn their lives around by pretending to be knights, I was a Templar still, yeah, but a t1 templar the entire time. Since Acre was Owynist and this was when the Lectors were around, I eventually ended up meeting @Islamadon @Reckless Banzai Screamer @milksodaand the other Lectors, mostly by coincidence, as I don't think either of us (me and Islamadon) knew the other was a Templar irp until it came up in conversation. Islamadon heard how my character didn't have a teacher, and decided to teach me himself since, at the time the magic was struggling and I was RPing at Felder's Rock a lot anyway, since Uther was learning how to read and becoming a lot more devout. (Uther was never meant to stay a Canonist, I just didn't like the Adunian religion so I never had him end up converting.) During my time RPing with the Lectors, we fucked with the Frost Witches, which was also very fun.

Around this time, while M1919 and Ryanark were banned, I did what I could to pitch in and help with Acre leadership, and was given a small parcel of land for the heartlands rebuild as a reward. Unfortunately, things when ass over teakettle when AGardenGambit's (rest in piss) character came of age and inherited Acre, his first and only real act as Baron was to raid Balian, and start a war with them, Haense, and Urguan which resulted in the Harvest Confederacy, and Acre falling apart. Being on the receiving end of a Haense-Urguan coalition for a change was hysterical as much as it was frustrating.

I could've quit then, and honestly, the thought crossed my mind, since Acre had pretty much dissolved and most of the people from it who I liked were gone. But I had a not-insignificant amount of money saved up on Uther by then, and I still had my boys (We called ourselves a Warband purely because we likened ourselves to a Mount and Blade adventuring party), so I decided I was going to try and get us some land. We briefly considered going with Aaun, and truthfully at the time I was in favor of it since I was friendly-ish with the Heartland Barclays, but a few of the other members of our group vetoed the idea, and since i wasn't married to it, we went ahead and started planning to start our own settlement. In the two-monthish meantime, we stayed in Minitz, which is where I ended up befriending @GoodGuyMatt, @MadOne and @Miniguy15736 on Uther. Towards the end of Acre, Cartref Mor fell apart and four or five players from Cartref joined me, so I spent a good chunk of my stay in Minitz RPing with them.

Eventually, we collectively saved and scrounged up enough money to found Barrowton. Why did I found Barrowton you ask? Honestly, because I was, at this stage, just curious to see how far I could get. Turns out people liked RPing with me, because the answer was pretty far- Although it helped that I had some hyper-competent old Dwarf players with me at the time. After the situation with GardenGambit, I wanted to either succeed or fail purely because of my own choices, not because my NL was an idiot.

So, we left Minitz, and together, the original hedgeknights, two or three of the people from acre, and like, 5-6 of the people from cartref, started Barrowton together. One of the first things we did as a settlement was raid Sedan with @Borin while it was allied to Haense. How we survived that I'm still not entirely sure. I like to think that the sheer, unwarranted confidence warded off all harm, in reality though it was probably because Borin shilled for us hard, among others.

Ultimately, why we ended up attracting so much traffic I still don't really know, we were in the middle of nowhere and it was late map, but we were active enough to carry over onto Almaris, and so we started preparing for map transfer, originally we were just going to stick with the medieval british/arthurian/slightly warhammer aesthetic we had in barrowton. Why the sudden shift hard into Adunic stuff and Lord of the Rings RP you ask? Its because we had a mountain.

That was it, that was the whole reason, we were originally going to settled around the area Veletz ended up going but while we were flying around looking for places to settle, we saw a big mountain and an archway, Sneakybandit, our main builder fell in love with the place, I was skeptical, until I realized we could just build actual Minas Tirith on the White Mountain, it was on my mind because I had just read the Silmarillion. Sneaky wasn't enthused with the idea at first, and Josh thought it was a terrible decision, Pepto wasn't a big fan of the LOTR aesthetic, but I said Minas Tirith enough times that I managed to get them on board with the idea, that and watching Return of the King helped.

On the subject of the build, pretty much everything in Numendil was built by @sneakybandit @ImmortalShadowZ @Fimlin @Crunchiest_Leafand a handful of others. Mostly them though, give the lads credit.

While they made the dream come true, I went to great lengths in order to justify the dramatic thematic and cultural shift, which is when I wrote my culturepost 

 which remains to this day probably the best thing I've ever written for LOTC. God I ******* love that post. Anyway- There wasn't much OG Adunian lore for us to go off of, we were pretty divorced from the old school Adunian RPers, so I didn't really want to infringe on 'their' lore so to speak, since I had little to no connection to it, plus it felt like taken something that wasn't mine. So I wrote the Numenedain subculture instead.

After map transfer, I was pretty burnt out, so not too long after, I eventually ended up giving Numendil to @AstriaS. She'd been playing me heir since Barrowton- A decision born purely from the fact that she volunteered because I, not really being a human RPer (and, I will remind you, never having originally intended to found a nation on this character) didn't have anyone lined up to play Uther's heir, and had panicked about it a little until she finally offered to do it. It worked out in the end, and honestly she's done more than maintain what I started, but carried it further than I did by a mile. I'm very proud of her, and the Numendil community as a whole.

In no small part because I have no ******* idea how we got this far.

LOTC can be pretty gatekeepy, it can be hard to make a splash when you're just one fish in a very large pond. Don't be afraid to throw shit at the wall and see what sticks, and don't force yourself to conform, honestly, if you can't find a place for the RP YOU want to do? Go out and carve our own little corner out there somewhere. If not a nation (we have a lot of those at the moment) then don't be afraid to branch out into communities you're not super familiar with. You might end up bumbling your way into some really great players like I did.

Thats all, I just wanted to tell the story since its a little silly. Much love.

- SimplySeo/MalchediaelVult/Kornazkarumm/DixieDemolisher

ᚾᚨᚱᚡᚨᚴᛟᛉᚴᛟᚱᚾᚨᛉᚴᚨᚱᚢᛗᚾᚨᚱᚡᚨᚴᛟᛉᚴᛟᚱᚾᚨᛉᚴᚨᚱᚢᛗ

The guy that stole that guy's hammer.

Throughout much of history, surface-dwellers have made a habit of stealing the belongings of venerable Dwarf Lords out from their hoard, usually relics and frequently hammers. As such, I find it immensely amusing that for once, it is a surface dweller whose hammer has been stolen. Therefore, I announce myself as an interested buyer of said hammer. I want to see the item for myself and negotiate a fair price. If you are interested in doing business, please do not hesitate to reach out. Good afternoon.

Jorvin, son of Kazrin, son of Gardath, son of Osram, son of Koryk, son of Kazraden son of Skalf, son of Gotrek, son of Urguan, Lord of Gotrek’s Folk, Clan-Father of Elder Clan Starbreaker, High Reckoner of Urguan, Keeper of the Book of Grudges, Grand King Emeritus, Founding Councillor of the Fourth Grand Kingdom of Urguan, Conqueror of the Voidspawn Photania, Conqueror of the Korvassa, Slayer of Gazardiel, Hero of the Brathmordakin