The Origins of Eventru
Well, once countless aeons ago, We were a small twinkle in Dynara’s eye, whipped together as a grotesque amalgam of protoplasm on an unborn creche, eventually seeded and encouraged and grown, into a half-formed and then a full Elder God, shedding such a weak form into Our most glorious and radiant of Selves….
…Or, I was a scared little ephemeral. Take your choice, they both make for interesting stories. Estarra’s badgering us to make a blog post (in her kindly, grandmotherly way), so I suppose I shall regale you briefly with the story of my Ephemeralhood.
I must tell you, Estarra and I had quite the rapport looking back, and I’ll quietly acknowledge it wasn’t the best of them. Still, following my Sophmore year of college, I decided to apply when an ephemeral call. Actually, I should rephrase. I wrote up an application, saved it to my desktop, and told myself, ‘If you still want to apply in a week, send it in.’ Mind you, I did say this was following my Sophmore year of college, so it was pretty easy for me to get lost in the proverbial hay. It ended up being several weeks before I remembered and decided to submit it. A rather, “Well, if I’m accepted, I’ll give it a shot!” sort of moment. In truth, I didn’t actually expect to be taken (see: rapport).
Still, for some obscene reason, Estarra and the standing administrators decided to give me an interview. Now, probably most of you don’t recognize this, but after you submit your application, all of the gods offer their opinion, and Estarra makes the calls on who gets interviews. I must say, sitting in Estarra’s little office, and being asked things like, “What is your favourite thing about Lusternia?” and “What is your favourite colour?” is, well, intimidating. Actually, intimidating is an understatement. It is downright terrifying.
Yet I was given the opportunity to role as an ephemeral – with minimal building background, no coding experience, and a penchant for over-writing. Still, Estarra saw something – so there it was. I was actually the last ephemeral in my group to be taken – Estarra had more or less forgotten to take down the applications – and I came up to find two or three other ephemerals already versed and on their way towards their second project. I was quietly given the run-down by Lisaera, who held my hand through much of my Ephemeralhood.
My first project was interesting – to make a pet. Allow me to say, I do believe that I can be extremely creative, but I was filled with so much terror and fright that I was left with really only one choice. Yes, I made a pet rock. A pet rock. Do you know what this rock did? Not a whole lot. It may’ve peed itself, but that’s the extent of it. Now, I thought my interview was terrifying, but showing Estarra my pet rock truly topped the cake. Following that, I took up my second project. That was a lot easier, but also much harder – I spent hours upon hours straining over understanding all of this $gget() and $pvget() and $pvar() and event this and if that and elseif those and endifs for everything and endevent and indenting and OH THE HUMANITY. Lisaera, however, was a champion – between her and Morgfyre (Now Ishap, but he’s still the spaghetti monster to me), they really kept me moving, and answered every (truly) idiotic question that I possessed in my little head.
In time, I finished my project, and moved on to the next. Though, as an ephemeral, I was a fair bit of a lump. It took a lot of time, but eventually I managed to learn to script and design quests, mobs, even toys. In fact, one of my practice efforts became quite the hit, when players saw me toying with them – my first was an Elohora doll, who pom-pom’d and cutesied her way into the hearts of admin. Of course, that wasn’t terribly appropriate for my ephemeral’s meager character, so I made another – and who wouldn’t want to yank on Nifilhema’s strings? A couple weeks or a month later Estarra told us to start thinking of silly little artifacts – little did any of us know they’d be so damn popular! Oh, I also made a gnome stripper who popped out of a cake for Estarra’s birthday. No, you won’t find that anywhere in a dingbat shop!
I think, looking back, if there is anything I regret, it’s those damn dolls. Every time there’s a new round of dingbat items, “Dolls?!” Suddenly what was a cute Ephemeral’s toy became a God’s nightmare – upkeep, adding in new ones (six every round!). Oh, the humanity! Thankfully, though, we’ve moved to a point where the ‘sets’ have come to an end. All five supernals, all five demon lords, all the Moon and Night avatars… Abeytu, the Wyrdling. Peace, I say! Peace! I consider it a godsend that I’m not the only one doing them anymore – with other gods, I’ll admit, the work does go a fair bit faster now on them!
Given time, I wasn’t just an ephemeral anymore – I moved on to become the glorious and radiant Eventru, the Crown of the Exalted, the Exalted Lord, the August Healer, the Pious Father, and whatever other monikers can be made for him. With more time, I came to conquer the scripting that always gave me nightmares! Eventually I was invited to learn to code in Rapture which, needlessly said, has been a nightmare for a number of reasons (largely related to oddities in the behavior of my computer).
Though, I’ll say – I didn’t always want to grow up to be the goodly god of light and overwritten entry messages. Estarra had to talk me into it a bit – but I feel like I’ve taken to it! Celest, once an organization I was just sort of warm to, has become one of my favourites – it has such a rich history, so many unwritten stories, and great quantities of untapped potential. Of course, I love all the organizations – they all have their flavour and stories, with Serenwilde and Gaudiguch probably being in my top three, lore-wise. I’ll not go on about that, though – I could probably write a whole post about my perceptions and appreciation for each and every organization. They’re all so unique, and with some of them striving in spite of their history, because of their history, and with history nearly entirely wrought by players, they’re all utterly fantastic.
Yet at the end of the day, I think I’ll take a good, pious Razielan merian sipping her tea over anything else. But hey – what do you expect from the dazzling guy with yellow text?
