Boring backstory...

Given that Ambrosia Software is on its last leg, there's been a lot of discussion about moving the community to a new home. Some of the EV folks started a Discord for their board, and I believe there's one Avatara setup for Cythera. Additionally, I've made a couple attempts at different boards hosted on Cythera Guides. In any event, my main goal has been to preserve as much of the history of the existing boards as possible, and so I wasn't satisfied with any of the options out there.

Due to Avatara's ongoing insistence that we look into something more Discord-like with Markdown support, I decided to return to one of the most promising forum systems I tried years ago: NodeBB. At the time, it felt too different and didn't run on any of the databases I used, so I returned to myBB. However, it's made progress in recent years, most notably shifting to a Mongo backend by default.

Long story short, the document-based database schema in NodeBB is so simple that I was able to do in a few days what would have taken many months on myBB -- write a crawler/converter to pull all the information from the existing boards and port it to the new system. There's a couple issues (search is on the fritz at the moment, plus some dangling links to Ambrosia's boards remain), but it's a comprehensive recreation of the Cythera boards on NodeBB.

I thought of deploying it on a staging subdomain to share, but since the myBB software has been so lackluster and there's no posts on it, I just directly replaced forums.cytheraguides.com with the new system:

New Cythera Guides Forum!

NodeBB has some very appealing features. Foremost is built-in Markdown support. I know that will be popular with Avatara. One of my personal favorites is combined flat/threaded topic views. That is, all posts are presented in the standard flat order, but individual replies can also be viewed directly inline. It's a powerful feature that combines flat and threaded layouts optimally, and I've always been surprised that so few chat systems employ it.

Another key aspect of NodeBB is that everything is "live." Private messaging is live chat. Posts update in realtime. Pagination is eschewed in favor of infinite scrolls. Most of these capabilities rely on sockets and cookies, so if people aren't a big fan of cookies, we could enable pagination.

It's also very fast. Even though search isn't working correctly at the moment, it's as easy to browse through posts from the beginning of the forums as recent ones.

The system is remarkably resilient. I've tested with a lot of garbage data, and it doesn't flinch... one slightly wrong field in a single row of a single table in a SQL-based system like myBB and the whole system is dead! Combined with built-in email testing, plugin management, dynamic device support, and other features, I'm finding NodeBB to be a welcome change from myBB.

Usernames and notes

You'll probably notice that all of the users right now have "_bot" in their name. I did this to leave options open for anyone wanting to register with an existing name. If you want to create a new account and leave your robotic doppelgänger intact with all your post history, that works. If you want to take over the bot account and restore all of your (Cythera) post history, you can do that too; it's what I did.

To take over an existing account, you can register a new one with your desired password. I can then merge the two, but you would need to login one time as the "_bot" user and set the username as desired. From there, you can also change your username and update your email/profile settings.

Alternatively, I can give a temp password to people wanting to take over a bot account, and you can directly login to the system to reset password, email, and username.

I'm not sure how much anyone cares, but the option is there.

A few tidbits:

• I've only moved the Cythera forums. Post counts and such will reflect that. I might port over some other Ambrosia forums later, not sure. None of the others are really used, so a static archive like Pallas' one makes more sense. That being said, since each subforum is its own category, it'd be pretty easy to bulk import others at any time.
• Most of the older topics are locked by default. I unlocked at least the last decade in the main forum and a couple years back in the chronicles.
• Attachments and images are not moved. There's no way to even access attachments on Ambrosia's system anymore; that content is unfortunately lost.
• NodeBB doesn't support subtitles or polls as far as I can tell. My converter places the subtitle in bold at the top of the first post. Poll options and votes are put directly beneath that if applicable.
• I used another tool to port the html to Markdown text, so some information like non-reply quote boxes wasn't preserved.

In Closing...

If you're reading this on the new Cythera Guides Forum, welcome! If you're on Ambrosia's boards, feel free to make an account and hop over to Cythera Guides! NodeBB is a little different than what we're used to, but it's more "modern" in that it takes cues from Discord and reddit.

As I said, my main goal has been to get a new board system running that maintains the existing history, so this was mostly for my own interest. I hope others find it useful as well. I'm sure there's still a lot of lingering issues with the conversion yet to be discovered, but with some kind of backup in place, I personally feel a lot better about the possibility of Ambrosia's web board vanishing overnight.

To the Ambrosia side:
It seems strange to say this, but this is likely to be my last post here. It's been a lot of fun, but creating these temp accounts is getting more and more difficult and frustrating. I'll continue to be active on the Cythera Guides side. Farewell, Ambrosia!

Very nice find, Buzzzzy! I couldn't see any direct images of him from that page; would you be able to link one?

The possibility of an unimplemented easter egg occurred to me, but given that they had a contest and everything, surely there would have been some pressure to do it!

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Looking around his site, he apparently was a part of PrintNet, some sort of corporate print service from the mid-90s? Can't really tell much because their main site was behind a pay wall, but it's gone through a number of hands over the years: Blue-Line Online in the late 90's, where it was folded into the larger "ProjectNet", Cephren in the early 2000's, which itself managed to raise 10's of millions during the dot-com bubble and later merged with Bidcom to become Citadon. Citadon was bought by Opidis, which is now a subsidiary of idox. ProjectNet still existed under Citadon, but who knows what became of those various people and properties over the years?

... Also, I have no idea why I looked all that up except that company lifecycles utterly fascinate me.

I was searching the old Ambrosia Times newsletters to find some Ambrosia-related terms for Pallas, and I came across something very interesting.

In 6.2 What's New, ASW mentions a Cythera contest held by Insanely Great. Using the Wayback Machine, I found the announcement at Insanely Great, plus the contest details.

It looks like a promotional run by Ambrosia in which readers of Insanely Great could enter to win one of 5 Cythera licenses. One winner would receive the grand prize: appearing as a character in Cythera!

Which brings me back to the title. From the AT article:

Well, after a random drawing, the winner was Stephen R. Banks, who is thrilled that he's included in the game.

Now the funky question is... where do you find him? And how do you get him to divulge his real name? Is he the only easter egg in the coming game? Would I be mentioning it if it weren't? Looks like you'll have to kidnap me to find out. Muhahahaha...

I looked through the rest of 6.2, but I couldn't find anything more about Stephen Banks. There are some "easter egg" screenshots in Sneak Snapz. On that: showing Ursylph's prison makes sense, but by showing the spring under Cademia, I still wonder if it was meant to be more than just a healing fountain.

Back to the topic at hand, I searched these forums and found no mention. I also searched the complete dialogues and found no mention. Am I missing something obvious? If not... where or who is Stephen R. Banks in Cythera?

I uploaded the raw data generated from webforum_to_nodebb's converter scripts; that can be downloaded from here. It's basically a Python object containing the JSON entries for NodeBB, and you can automate the import using the "fields_to_db.py" script linked above.

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Regarding the ambrosiasw.com domain name, I was checking the whois records and found that it has been renewed! Just a couple interesting notes:

Originally, ASW's domain was managed by Network Solutions. It looks like Andrew renews it on a 5-year cycle since the previous term was initiated in 2015.

Domain Name: AMBROSIASW.COM
Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.
Updated Date: 02-feb-2015
Creation Date: 22-mar-1995
Expiration Date: 23-mar-2020

Last month, not only was it renewed through 2025, but the registrar was transferred over to Tucows.

Domain Name: AMBROSIASW.COM
Registrar: Tucows Domains Inc.
Updated Date: 2020-01-24T05:33:48Z
Creation Date: 1995-03-22T05:00:00Z
Registry Expiry Date: 2025-03-23T04:00:00Z

This made me wonder if the domain was transferred to different ownership entirely; perhaps Andrew was not the one to renew? So I checked his current consulting business and found it also registered through Tucows since 2017.

Domain Name: NYSTUDIO107.COM
Registrar: Tucows Domains Inc.
Updated Date: 2017-03-22T18:02:23Z
Creation Date: 2005-03-07T03:55:56Z
Registry Expiry Date: 2022-03-07T03:55:56Z

I take this to mean that Andrew is still personally involved in keeping the website domain, and he merely wanted to consolidate to a single registrar. The fact that he's holding on to the domain might mean something... or it might not. Either way, the server's still down and he is keeping the domain.

Stream posted to Youtube: https://youtu.be/gXH_-XkNn2E. It was fun; thanks all!

Now this is very interesting! I didn't notice that reference, but it does sound an awful lot like aspects of Cythera's story come from there.

Spoil away, Pallas! I don't know that I'll get around to reading the books, but I am curious about a couple things. Two Jacks mentions that the high one may actually be a shapeshifter in disguise. Is that the case? Cause it makes us question a lot more about Alaric... Although I'm not sure that gandreas would go that far as having Alaric be an Undine, especially if Cythera II would have had Magpie bemoaning Alaric's death. Plus we have the main storyline of the Undine trying to take control of Alaric.

But I do wonder about a twist on that theme. For instance, what if Jhiaxus had been killed along with Jinrai and the one we meet is actually an Undine pretending to be Jhiaxus? Seems odd there were the two beds there but only one died? Gandreas repeatedly warned not to trust Jhiaxus, at least that was my perception of his comments, and it would make sense of everything: gandreas' warnings, the story of the two inseparable lovers being separated, and the eventual downfall of Alaric after our hero has thought to have saved him.

Edit: I was trying to set up spoiler tags, but the main package relies on websockets and dynamic nodebb, which I don't really have configured, so for now we'll just have to warn about spoilers if people don't want them.

Edit 2: Also good call, Two Jacks, about the similarity of the maps!

This may compound the blasphemy, but I wanted to share that there will be a livestream celebrating 20 years of Ferazel's Wand this Saturday. At present, I think both Ben Spees and Eric Speier will be participating! Here's a little promo: https://youtu.be/lgq6QKo6eW8

Thanks for making this thread, BW!

Since the livestream, this topic felt like the last important thing to discuss. Tree of Life was confirmed an incomplete side-quest, Seldane as a language with historic inspiration, and then the hints given about the Cythera sequel.

Looking back through the prophecies, I'd thought of a couple comments as well.

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First Prophecy

In the first prophecy, I agree with your uncertainty about the Lost returning. See, I'd initially figured the "Voice of a God" referred to Alaric and the Lost being the mages, but then with the Voice being destroyed as the last act of the Tyrants, it must be a reference to the Cult of Scylla, which makes sense given the religious overtones tying them together. But that does leave the question of Lost. It makes me wonder as to the nature of the Scylla themselves. Perhaps a subservient species to the Undine or exiled or something, but are they trying to come back in opposition to the Undine? Or are the Undine themselves the Lost? Tavara said the Undine played him for a fool with Abydos, but he was clearly still associated with them during the times of the Cult, despite UrSylph saying the "traitor" attempted to subvert the humans by worshipping false gods.

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Second Prophecy

Again, I agree with most everything you say about the second prophecy. I'm also baffled why it says the Traitors do not fail since that seems to invalidate the Comana brothers. But from what we know about the Cythera sequel, it's not clear that we actually saved Alaric at the end, so I guess they didn't fail? If so, it's also unclear whether or not they were responsible for Alaric's fall or something more insidious (recall gandreas specifically called out "trust no one" when we spoke with Jhiaxus during the livestream).

The Hidden does seem like the Undine since they joined forces with the Traitors, but my initial thought was the Cult of Scylla. That feeds back into prophecy one where the connection between the cult/scylla and the undine is not completely clear.

In this case, I think assigning Master to Alaric is the most reasonable interpretation. The in-game mention of Master is interesting though. Perhaps the Hidden are the scylla and they are trying to overthrow the Undine? Comana may also have been trying to overthrow the Undine in the same way Tavara was working with them while seeking personal revenge.

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Third Prophecy

The third prophecy beginning with the end of the second age and passing of the Great Unifier lines up with the first and last line of prophecy two, suggesting to me that the "Second End" is a reference to the second age ending.

The rest is really open to interpretation. Are there more Air and Fire around to wreak havoc? We know the land will break into pieces, so is the One to Many Cythera itself or a reference to the crolna being broken again? The world is mentioned as being sundered separately, and so is the Opener of Ways (crolna from prophecy two) but as One.

The Fifth Element seems to tell us how the Cythera saga will end. I thought humans had been referenced as a fifth somewhere before but may be misremembering. These "Walkers" seem like something different. I suppose today that refers to zombies, but I expect here it refers to humans or a class of humans like evolved mages.

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Those are my long rambling thoughts about the prophecies.

One and Two are mostly clear. I just question the exact nature of the Cult of Scylla and how they tie into the Lost/Hidden. That question affects a couple little things, but in the grand scheme of the things, we know the third prophecy is more concerned with Alaric's death and the havoc of the other elements until the "Walkers" appear.

I hope this covers a lot of the discussion that was had about the prophecies on Discord. Thanks again for making the topic!

... This reminds me I still need to make a topic about difficulty level in Cythera.

Good point about transliterated as a separate branch, Buzzzzy! I guess it's true that we don't know what all was inspired by Egyptian or Greek, and you and Pallas are right about the original intention for the language possibly being different.

Adding their names and places makes sense too. I recall having some discussion in the past about whether Ayrit and Maayti are the formal place names or more general terms like "home."

We got some interesting comments from Glenn Andreas during the 20th Anniversary Livestream (BW kindly provided a transcript!). Among them was the remark that the Seldane language is based more on phonetic Egyptian than anything else.

I thought we'd discussed the Seldane language in depth before, but I could only find one topic which partly addressed it. At the time, we were understandably looking more at Greek inspiration, so I figured it's time to revisit the discussion following Glenn's comment.

Conventions

For simplicity, I've split the analysis into two sections: written and spoken Seldane. Since we don't know their relation, it's hard to say how related they are. We're given symbols and translations for written signs but only transliterated English for the spoken utterances, which may correspond to symbols but we have no examples or translations to work from.

Also, we need a better name than "Seldane language"... Seldanese? Seldanian? For that matter, is it clear who all used their language? Maybe it's Ancient Elemental. My computer would like to submit Sedan Ian for consideration

Written Seldane

First, I wanted to upload images of the Seldane signs since the links in the old topic are dead.

Ruins

Cave Under LKH Access

Outside UrSylph's Prison

I haven't found a good table plugin yet, so I made a little document outlining the written examples we have:

Table of Written Seldane

The leftmost column is the text representation as seen in the data files. This is likely meaningless since it's only used to map a character to a Seldane symbol for displaying in game.

The top 3 match the signs we encounter as above, while the bottom 4 are only in the data files, unless I'm missing their location in-game. They appear to be part of a puzzle or something that was never implemented.

Based on the translations we have, written Seldane appears partly logographic (which would make sense given an Egyptian basis). All but the first end in "door this" and have matching symbols, one of which looks like a doorway. If so, the "hall" referenced in the first example looks like a caret or arrow symbol. Beyond that, I'm struggling to identify any other direct matches. It may be similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics which included some form of alphabet characters as I understand it. We need Pallas' expertise for this!

Spoken Seldane

Table of Spoken Seldane

Jhiaxus and Uset (Herald of the second Ayrit) say the first; Unhayt (Doorkeeper of the second Ayrit) the second; Seqedher (Watcher of the second Ayrit) third; and the last is a quote from Glenn Andreas himself regarding the status of Cythera's sequel.

Sadly, we have no translations for any of these phrases. Once you learn the language, they no longer give greetings.

The second column of symbols have been drawn directly from the text using the Seldane font, but just as I felt the text didn't have any meaning when being used to display symbols, I also doubt the symbols have any meaning going the other direction here. If the text representation does match with symbols... maybe. At first, I hoped so because of the presence of the door symbol in Seqedher's statement, but Seqedher is the watcher; it's Unhayt who's the doorkeeper. Regardless, if the text is transliterated based on some phonetic structure or rules, then there's likely no connection.

I couldn't understand much out of phonetic Egyptian conventions, so I started looking up the terms with "Egyptian" thrown in, trying to trace any of them to a meaning. I didn't find much, but I did locate some noteworthy mentions regarding the Cythera 2 remark: Har em akhet xepheru.

Har Em Akhet was actually a name given to the Sphinx, apparently meant to impart its two-fold nature.

From Origin of the Word Sphinx:

The word Armageddon is derived from the Hebrew word “Har Megiddo”, which means “Mountain” or “Range of Hills”. In Greek it’s rendered as “Harmagedon”. The Hebrews derived this word from the Ancient Egyptian “Har” or “Ar Em Akhet”, meaning ” “Lord of the Two Horizons”. If we break down the word Armageddon: “Ar” in Egyptian means “To rise”, “ascend”, or “mount”. “Har” or “HR” signifies the name “Horus” or “light”. “Adon” in the word “MegiDDON” is semitic in origin, from the Hebrew god “Adon”. According to the Ancient Egyptian Wisdom Keeper “Hakim Abdel Awyan” the name “Har Em Akhet” was given to the Sphinx to Masculine her from her Feminine name “Tefnut”. The word “Har Em Akhet” may have a hidden meaning, considering the Sphinx is believed to be two-folded in nature, or a two-horizon in nature; half human/half animal. Perhaps the real Armageddon is the war within us all, the constant and perpetual battle we face between our Animistic nature (Lower Mind), and our Humanly divine nature (Higher Mind). Metaphorically speaking, it could be analogous to the adept ascending to his or her higher divinity.

Xepheru was a bit trickier. Fantasy books, essays, and religious systems include references to the name. The most useful discussions of its meaning come from that last link, all in reference to the temple of Set, who is apparently the Egyptian god of chaos, fire, and trickery and who also shares my name in an Americanized form...

Anyways, the image on the Path of Xepher reminds me a lot of our speculation about the Tree of Life, only it's an 8-part path rather than 10. These are the translations given by that author:

Step 1 - Arise
Step 2 - Transform
Step 3 - realize
Step 4 - enter
Step 5 - Take Place
Step 6 - Exist
Step 7 - will be in the Future
Step 8 - introduce the solution

From this, I get the sense of a process or idea of something taking place over time and into the future.

All this is to say I think you could roughly translate Har em akhet xepheru as "king on the horizon will be in the future" or similar. That glosses over many of the deeper aspects about multiple meanings in Har em akhet or the process of going from "unaware" to "aware" along the path of Xepher, but from a high-level, it communicates that Cythera 2 is a process to happen in the future.

Well, there you go! Another topic about Seldanese. What do you guys think? It all reminds me a bit of that one Star Trek episode.

Thanks for the transcript, BW!

It's opening in a separate window for you because the .rtf file downloads and gets recognized as a TextEdit document by your system. You can disable automatic opening of downloaded files to avoid that, so it would just go to your download location and you could choose what to do with it. That's considered a little more secure but wouldn't change much otherwise.

To avoid the Rich Text version download, here's a plain text version which will open directly in most browsers:

cythera_20_transcript.txt