On the 20th of Milli, in the year 960 A.E., an experimental spacecraft was launched from Omni Station, bound for the far borders of the sector. Fitted with an experimental skipdrive, modified to use the temporal crystals that have become ubiquitous throughout the sector, the ship was populated with a crew of scientists and explorers, and piloted by Holgorath Ironbound.
In addition to the captain, the Event Horizon’s crew consisted of Erni and Lynair Ironbound, Jaidyn Nova, Lanaya, Isabella, Rogzel, Shardclaw Dragonlord, Akiko, Ordarris, Lain T’rath, Soza Phis’tor, Naldan T’aeir, Steve Sol’lun, and even the Lord Commander of the Song Dominion, Vega T’rvati. Of course, the entire reason for the voyage existing in the first place is all thanks to Fl..i//[ERROR: FILE NOT FOUND]p –//#%%%- ia.
The Event Horizon, as it was called, was donated by the Ironbound dynasty to Fl..i//[ERROR: FILE NOT FOUND]p –//#%%%- ia – an unknown explorer, who piloted the ship to RS-7749, just inside the border of the Ibyssian Brotherhood region of space.
While locked in broad orbit around an unpopulated star, experiments were conducted upon the Event Horizon that researchers are still attempting to understand. What is clear to everyone is that the entire galaxy felt reality and time go into temporary flux, locking everyone into a frozen state for a short period.
Reports are conflicting as to what actually happened to The Event Horizon. Those on board the vessel state that the ship was destroyed, that it wasn’t destroyed, that it aged before their eyes.
Rescue of those stranded on The Event Horizon was only possible after an experimental maneuver with the skipdrive of Fl..i//[ERROR: FILE NOT FOUND]p –//#*%%%- – after which the wreck and everyone on it once again became accessible to the commsphere. Fortunately, Erni Ironbound was able to rescue the stranded crew in his ship, the Alternating Current.
Long range scanners confirm that the wreck of the Event Horizon remains in orbit in RS-7749, ruined beyond any hope of salvage, the dangerous, anomalous lifeforms within sustained by a strange energy.
Breaking news from the Starmourn News Network! Over the past few weeks, citizens of the sector have come under assault by bizarre behaviors in the fabric of space and time. Reports are coming in from every faction about unplanned trips to what seems to be the past. People have claimed to see Oldtown before it was old, the planet Song before it was irradiated, and the subnet before it was buried. There have been repeated instances of monstrous anomalies springing up in random locations, assaulting unsuspecting citizens with horrific visions of the past and future.
Strangest of all, perhaps, are the unnatural prisms that seem to be linked to these temporal incidents and anomaly attacks. Efforts by scientists and researchers to understand these incomprehensible, physics-defying objects have led to nothing but destruction, misery, and a great deal of death. A representative from H.E.T.E. claimed that ‘business had been very good lately’ – a statement for which the cloning monopoly later apologized.
What does it all mean? Is there a purpose to these seemingly random, unconnected events? Can anything good ever come from meddling with the fabric of space time? Does the fate of the universe hang in the balance, or is a hungry mad scientist just trying to find the long-lost original recipe for Scatterhome Gumbo?
One thing is sure, the weeks to follow will almost certainly shed some light on what’s going on. You wouldn’t want to miss it, would you? Log in today!
Want to learn more about what all the fuss is about? Check out our discord!
Have you ever wanted to work on a professional MUD?
Iron Realms Entertainment is looking to hire a new part-time coder for Starmourn. In this position, you would be working with Eukelade (Laura Lindborg), the lead Producer for Starmourn. Even though your primary job revolves around code, you would be part of the visible face of the MUD to the players. Applicants need to enjoy communicating with players in addition to being a skilled programmer.
While we don’t expect you to have all the following skills, the ideal candidate for Starmourn would:
- Be a coder. You don’t need to be a Google level engineer, but you do need to be good at programming.
- Be currently working or running an active MUD. If you don’t work on a MUD, you’ll definitely need to be someone who loves to play them. If you stopped playing or working on them years ago, we’re not interested. We prefer to have someone with significant MUD experience and being part of a team, whether commercial or non-commercial.
- Be a fan of MUDs. That doesn’t mean you played them for 2 months six years ago.
- Be a creative, disciplined, and logical thinker. Even as a coder, you will be part of the Starmourn development team. You must be able to code game design systems and also assist in creating logical systems. You need to be able to see the big picture as you add these features to a game with hundreds of intertwined skills.
- Be a people person. Our players are very passionate about their games. You must be able to communicate with them in a calm, collected manner when they are upset about the latest nerf to their favorite class or system.
- Be self-motivated. You’ll be working from home. You must be able to focus and get things done in that environment. We don’t care where you live and we won’t be telling you what hours to work. We have a couple of weekly meetings that you are required to attend with set times. Outside of that, you can plan when to meet with the producer and what times you would like to work.
- Be familiar with Starmourn or even other IRE MUDs. This would be great, and it will make getting into the code much faster. It is much easier to know what parts of the game need balance if you’re familiar with all of the intricacies.
This is a part-time position and compensation is based on the candidate and their qualifications. There are opportunities for raises and future full time employment. Employees will receive a quarterly bonus based the performance of the game. Just to reiterate, this is a part-time position and the pay will reflect that.
If you think you might be able a good candidate please send an email to resumes@ironrealms.com with the subject line “Starmourn Coder”.
Discuss this post on our forums or on our official Discord channel.
For several years, our enthusiastic playerbase has been discussing Starmourn in an unofficial, fan-made Discord channel. In fact, the community has grown to such a great size, and has such a great moderating team, we’ve decided to take steps to improve the Discord experience and integrate it more fully with our game. Starting today, the Unofficial Starmourn Discord will now be known as the Official Starmourn Discord!
Here’s a few questions you probably have, and, hopefully, answers to these
questions.
Q: What will this change for people who are already active participants in this online community?
A: The biggest change is the presence of the #newbie channel, which is a mirror of the newbie channel in game. That means people on the discord can talk to people currently in the game, and vice versa. We hope this will increase the pool of available people new players have to talk to. Note that #newbie will have some mild slowmode features enabled to prevent spam, and we expect all chatter taking place on it to be discussions and answered questions that serve to grow and support a new player’s journey.
Q: Ok, anything else?
A: We’ve integrated the in-game Conflict and Deathsight channels to display on our Discord. Other things that have changed are the links to the Discord channel on our website, Facebook, and forums. We’ve also brought Bandus, our hardworking Discord moderator, into the ranks of the Starmourn “Storytellers” (though he’ll continue to just do what he does best and run our Discord, unless he wants to do more!)
Q: Does this mean I can file issues and bugs in the Discord?
A: Nope! Issues, bugs, and other things will continue to be filed through all the regular in game channels. Talking on Discord about changes you’d like to see is also not guaranteed to get a response from the development team – use the IDEA command, or start a new thread on the forums, for a better chance of a discussion that sticks.
Q: Will the Starmourn staff be actively moderating the Discord?
A: Because of the ever-scrolling nature of the Discord, it’s impossible to enforce the rules from our forums and game there. We are going to continue to enforce good behavior in both areas with seperate moderation strategies, but because it’s currently impossible to link game accounts and discord accounts with any consistent accuracy, consequences for poor Discord behavior will be limited to Discord, and consequences for poor game behavior will be limited to the game.
Q: Will the regular community question and answer sessions continue?
A: Yes!! We love those!
We want to thank Bandus for all his hard work over the years. Without his efforts (and the supplemental efforts of player moderators like RocketCat, Chimera, and Ordarris), we wouldn’t have been able to do this. So thank you, Bandus, and welcome to the official team!
Interested in joining the Official Starmourn Discord community? Click here to start chatting!
Discuss this post in our forums!
Over the last week, millions of people have protested the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless others. Citizens of the United States and other countries are demanding justice and equity. We’re seeing a movement for change that hasn’t been seen in our lifetimes, and it’s long overdue.
First, we stand with the Black Lives Matter movement. We stand against racism. We stand against police brutality. We stand against systemic injustice.
That said, what are a bunch of words from our little company going to do in the grand scheme? Not much. Real change doesn’t come from making posts on social media and sending newsletters. Real change comes from taking direct action. Real change comes from replacing ineffective and bad leaders and changing harmful laws and procedures.
We recently watched Barack Obama’s speech about the George Floyd protests. We’re not going to pretend everyone shares his political views, but we feel Mr. Obama made good points that transcend our differences.
His main point was that while the protests highlight problems in our society we need to combine protests with action and create realistic solutions based on research and data shown to effective. We need to make local leaders put evidence-based procedures in place that we know work. If you haven’t watched this presentation, here is a link:
In short, protest if you’re willing, and then take other action as well. What action can you take? You can call local and national leadership, sign petitions, and donate to charities and programs. And, of course, you can and should vote out those who act as impediments to change.
Many of us at Iron Realms have been out protesting and making donations to a wide variety of groups related to Black Lives Matter, and we strongly encourage you to do the same. Here are some of the groups we’ve been giving to, in case you’re looking for somewhere to give and aren’t sure where:
- https://blacklivesmatter.com
- https://www.restoringjustice.org/
- https://www.knowyourrightscamp.com
- https://www.naacpldf.org/
- https://www.gofundme.com/f/georgefloyd
- https://action.aclu.org/give/now
- https://www.communityjusticeexchange.org/nbfn-directory
- https://www.nlg-npap.org/donate/
We’ve also found this to be a useful top-level resource for all sorts of info and resources around BLM:
We’re living in historic times. Let’s all work to make sure we come out of this better than we were before.
In solidarity,
Jeremy Saunders, Matt Mihaly, and the Iron Realms team.
Starmourners, for the past two weeks, our game, and the rest of the Iron Realms games, have been raising money to donate to a special charity. Here to tell us how we collectively did (spoiler: amazing, and I for one am so proud to have been a part of this) is our President, Jeremy Saunders.
Iron Realms Entertainment is excited to announce a donation of $15,000 dollars to the Covid Heroes Fund from RIP Medical Debt. This is a direct result of your credit and pet purchases. Everyone at Iron Realms would like to thank our players for their generous donations. The support and response to this effort was amazing. Players purchased over 500 pets in the last two weeks.
Your donations will help American first responders and healthcare workers by purchasing and abolishing their medical debts. Healthcare workers around the world have been laboring nonstop to assist the sick and elderly during the global COVID pandemic. Many of these people have struggled with inadequate safety equipment, protection, and wages. Combined with the financial stress of job loss and medical debts, many of these families are struggling to survive while continuing to help others in their communities.
Your purchases help relieve the pressure on these families.
You can read more about how this money goes to work on their website. https://ripmedicaldebt.org/campaigns/
RIP Medical Debt will make a purchase of debt with your donations later this month. The moment we receive the details about this purchase, we will share the details with you.
I want to thank you for helping make a positive difference. Your support encourages us to continue finding ways to help our local and global communities.
Jeremy Saunders
To put things in perspective for everyone, $15,000 in donations will purchase a substantially larger amount of medical debt – it could be as much as one hundred dollars per dollar donated. That’s incredible, and will make a huge difference to people who really, really need help. So from everyone staffing Starmourn to everyone playing Starmourn, thank you for your part in this. We could not have done it without you!
Think we're pretty cool? Tell your friends!
