I joined this server when I was... basically in middle school. I'm a senior in high school now, and it feels like so much more time has passed then what actually passed. I played a werewolf cursed with a bleeding sigl. I did drawings of this character. she had friends, including a cat person who lived in a tree, and I created the goddess Vermella to fill the niche of "redstone god".
honestly, the gods of Altera didn't hold much power back then. they didn't dictate wars, didn't come down as great and powerful beings. they were simply ... concepts. Harateth was a concept. Shalherana was a concept. you followed certain gods if the concept of who they are resonated with you. my character followed Vermella, because she liked the underground the most. simple as that.
this... irrelevance of the gods was because at that time, Altera was ruled by the god-kings: a warriors hall of great and powerful beings who each carried their own distinct powers, but had one great power in common: they had the ability to shape worlds as they fit, and they were the ones who created Altera, as a refuge from the ravages of technology. these god-kings were played by the mods.
I still remember some of the names of the mods at that time. there was Cherbert, of course, the high king. there was Legion, Cubey, Steelcryo, who seems to have left before I came back. Fitz didn't quite have a character, he just did lore. and... thats about it. I think most of the staff got slowly replaced while I was gone.
back to Fitz. way back when, we didn't have a unified lore. the general idea was that since Altera was a safe haven of the multiverse, that your character could be just about anything. the whitelisting process didnt require a roleplay test, or for you to explain your character. there were no core races. it was honestly just us. the players, and the God-Kings. Fitz came around to change that, and, headstrong as I was, I immediately went about sending Fitz about a million messages, writing this and that and the other thing, trying to make sure I could make a worthy contribution to lore.
specifically, I wanted to write about the gods. not the god-kings, the gods: Harateth and Killrox and Shalherana and Sallana and so many others. I wanted to give them a stronger personality, make the modes of worshipping each of them unique. I wanted to encourage an active priesthood for every god, and plain and simple give them more information that a simple "stat block" with some symbols and mottos on it.
but, since I was young, I, er... wasn't very good at this.
it is said that Bilworth hates Jax for specifically mocking his motto. Jax, in return, thinks Bilworth is a tool (which is specifically why he mocked Bilworth's motto).
it should be noted that war is both Good, Evil, and Neutral. it has been long debated by philosophers where exactly the line between good and evil is drawn. for the moment, though, don't trust anyone who says they worship the god of war.
Sallana is often worshipped through love songs and stories. many a bard has considered her their muse. many bards have also proposed to her.
Jishrim's preists are required to be mentally damaged.
that is the sum total of my contributions to the official lore. honestly, I want to go back and mess with them. write more. but, eh. things have totally changed. (for example, Jax's motto is no longer "fortune favors the fortunate", mocking Bilworth's "fortune favors the rich")
Vermella, of course, was actually a part of the main pantheon back then. she was (understandably) removed.
there were other gods that started to be created after Vermella. such as Lycanria, god of snow, the moon, werewolves. I believe I remember people starting to notice all the effort I was making to try and improve the god lore, and they'd come to me with ideas of new gods (or was it just that orc guy coming to me with an orc god?)
anyways, I attempted to make a wide-scale event, with godly battle, demonic forces, and werewolves galore, with the end result being Vermella's followers curing Lycanria of his lycanthropy. but, being young, unaware, and completely lacking in both management skills and moderator power, this whole thing kinda fizzled out.
while that was fizzling out, the entire server was preparing for the First Exodus.
I hadn't been following on the ongoing struggle between the God-Kings and the demons. I was more concerned with the God-Gods. that time, I remember, was a time of great confusion. I could find no information on what the Exodus was, I had questions, all left unanswered. I heard rumors of the mods cracking down on lore, and I feared Vermella, Lycanria, my werewolf character, and ultimately, myself, were all going to be left in the dust. pushed to the side. forgotten.
I tried to forget about the Exodus. told myself it doesn't concern me. tried to focus on my own wide-scale event. but I found myself hitting roadblocks. roadblocks I didn't fully understand.
in the end, I saw that my struggle against these changes was futile. one day, I simply left. no announcement, no farewell speech, nothing. Gabriela the cursed werewolf was, plain and simple, gone. I stopped visiting the forums, stopped playing Minecraft, even. I went on with my life, and HollowWorld went on with their Exodus without me.
I guess the reason I'm telling this story is because, reading about Michcat's demotion, I notice the same confusion. the same sense of being pushed out, for something you do not quite understand.
I eventually returned, of course. and looking for a server, I asked myself "hey, whatever happened to that HollowWorld server?"
so I read. found the lore. read on that. tried my best to understand it, as my younger self failed to do. thankfully for me, the lore was in a stable place. stable, it was easy for me to understand. I was perhaps embarrassed about my old character, so I didn't seek to bring her back as a legacy character. I decided to make a new werewolf character, sort of reinvent my old one, tone down the gory curse factor.
obviously rejected. no supernatural powers.
I toned down the supernatural, then. made her a caparii, made her werewolfyness only part of a religious ceremony.
rejected again. no werewolves.
honestly, I found myself being brought under fire again. I saw they removed Vermella from the pantheon, saw Lycanria was no more, saw that the sum total of my lore and rp contributions were pushed aside, and only a pathetic footnote remained...
I was upset. angry. I felt there was some vague injustice going on, that I was being pushed away with all the old Altera, that I didn't have any real place in this world anymore. I was upset. I even texted one of my friends about this, asking what I should do.
in my third piece, I dropped the werewolf. this character was a caparii who followed Vermella, who had family and friends and was happy then, until people came, and pushed them out, destroyed them, because they did not belong, because they followed a god who was no longer recognized among the pantheon. the character did not understand this when it happened, did not know what a heretic was. she fled, but still clinged to her old ways. she was now an outcast. no past, no friends, a beggar of a hated faith, completely and utterly uninfluential.
accepted.
