The new season of Strange New Worlds ended and Lower Decks begun, and though it is hard to resist, we will follow OF policy of not bringing in lore from new shows that many have not had a chance to see yet.
However, I do have news items to share! First as was announced recently, our database has gotten a nice new layout and is in the process of getting a facelift with nice new layout pages for ships and species. In addition, there are some exciting new options for contributing database articles and adding content to existing ones. More on that below, but speaking of species, we now have Tellarites in the database. Many thanks to Sea of Stars, aka Njessa Ajzure, CO of the USS Tanjura, who put it together for us. Additional thanks are also owed to him for a suggestion that led to some of new enhancements du Lac has created to let everyone add or edit their own DB Articles.
What kind of articles, you say? Nearly anything you want to share that enhances our collective lore.
You’ve heard of Memory-Alpha, the repository of all things canon for Star Trek? We’ve created a database category called Memory-Obsidian for all of our collective OF specific lore. The only small hassle is that you have to go into the dashboard and edit your article to assign a category to it (or you can DM or email me and I’ll take care of it).
The idea here is that so many of us have come up great ideas that contribute to universe building – everything from new civilizations developed for mission interactions to a species-specific food idea you’ve invented and want to make available for others to reference. So, much like Memory-Alpha articles, these could be detailed and pages long or “LT A on ship B mentioned enjoying Andorian Z, which is prepared from Y” (which is how most of the Memory-Alpha entries for food go, though I would prefer that if you do this, you make a list of several foods from the culture and add to it as you come up with new ideas). The point is that if you have something you want to make available to the wider community for reference, you can.
For example, the <i>Vesta</i> crew had collectively created a species that believe in ‘uplifting’ other species by identifying those with potential and quietly influencing them to make it to the stars. As a result, they are appalled by the idea of the Prime Directive. To make interactions even more interesting, they also don’t view domain as ‘region of space’ but as alliance, so they whole ‘You are in Federation space’ gets a tentacly shrug from them. Minawara and I had bought them into discussions during Obsidian Day 2022 (Wow, has a whole year really gone by this fast?) and there’d been some interest in a write up for others to use. Well, now the Qoird are officially available in Memory-Obsidian.
I look forward to seeing what everyone has to offer.
As always, if you have any questions, concerns, or ideas, you can reach out to me on discord.
- Cam, Dark Mistress of Lore