Getting Started

Listen2Reason · Post by **Listen2Reason** » Tue May 30, 2006 9:31 pm

...

...how does it work? >_>

Shard · Post by **Shard** » Tue May 30, 2006 9:54 pm

Hi, I was wondering if you were gonna post!

The Nexus is a collection of dragon adoption sites. Here in our forums we frequently exchange images (giveaways), announce site-based applications (which usually require a pre-made webpage), and just shoot the breeze.

If you're interested in sharing your art with us, or writing, by all means do so - we've got the Art and Writing section there

If you want to get started adopting cyberpets, I suggest looking through the Ideas, Updates, Clutches and Candidates areas to see if anyone has something open (there are usually a lot of open candidate-based apply-and-wait nests waiting for people to populate them).

Generally speaking, apply-and-wait candidates are a single character on its own web page, with a description (stats such as name, age, gender, skills, personality) and usually a short story (between 2 paragraphs and... well, novella size for some of us). Not every site requires a full story, but usually a page should be up to show you're interested.

Each of us has slightly different rules for how we adopt out - though in the Giveaways section those rules are often tossed out the window.

Anyway, just glance around! I was looking at your forums, looks like a fun place too!

Mystic Dragon · Post by **Mystic Dragon** » Tue May 30, 2006 9:56 pm

XD Oh geez. That's a mouthful of a question.

I'm Mystic, by the way. Owner of the Hathian Dragon Adoptions. Welcome to our insanity!

In order to get started, I suggest you look around at some of the sites listed in our links. All of them have rule pages which pretty accurately describe how the Nexus operates.

We all own dragon agencies from which we send out our dargons. People write up candidates to /get/ these dragons and then put them up on pages on their own site.

It seems complex from a first glance, but it's rather simple once you get the hang of it.

Listen2Reason · Post by **Listen2Reason** » Tue May 30, 2006 10:27 pm

Interesting, interesting. I should probably mention that I can't draw...like, at all. ^_^; However, writing I can probably handle.

Thanks for taking the time to summarize the process...You know what would be good? A flowchart. Hmmm.

Let me see if I have the idea, or at least I have something that kind of fits in. Let's say I think up a fantasy world with people living on it and dragon-like creatures. I write a history for some of these people and then I submit one of those characters to another of the linked websites here and have that character chosen to bond with a dragon. Am I right so far?

By the way...You went to the Chaoseed forums? Yeah, I have a bunch of creative projects I work on, and there are some people who enjoy talking about them...and just hanging out and stuff. So it's fun.

Cacopheny · Post by **Cacopheny** » Tue May 30, 2006 10:52 pm

Drawing isn't necessary ^^ I don't have an agency-- not everyone here does. I'd say maybe half the active members have agencies. I, personally, stick to writing except for the odd gift or exchange. Heck, a number of events don't even require writing ^^ You'll be fine ; )

And your summary seems pretty good! You don't hafta have your chars be from a world of your own making, though a lot of us do. Any world, existing or not, of someone else's creating or your own, will usually do.

Shard · Post by **Shard** » Wed May 31, 2006 12:21 am

Exactly - so long as they're not *already existing characters* (ie: trademarked/copyrighted by someone other than yourself) any world is open game to host em.

Part of the fun, actually, has been to have dragons seep into worlds we've created otherwise and outside of this setting. (Mine, dozens of em, just should not have dragons on em. yet... now there's a version of the worlds which do.

)

DNS · Post by **DNS** » Wed May 31, 2006 4:17 am

I was in your place not too long ago~
And I'm still not totally familiar with everything, certainly not enough to tell you what to do. ^^; but it's not that easy to get into the flow, so to speak. I just put my own world in and started producing characters.

Post by **Dray** » Wed May 31, 2006 7:15 am

Yep, you can create a world, or you can just create a character and the background doesn't need to be entirely fleshed out. The world doesn't have to have dragons of its own, though it can be fun to create a world which /needs/ them (and give you an in-character reason to send characters out to adopt them!)

Once you create a web-page with the information about your character, and/or a story about them (Usually the story is more so that the agency owner can get an idea about what your character is like in action, though plot is nice, too!) you usually have to fill out a form and email it to the agency owner.

At that point, you'll have to wait either for the candidate-submission deadline, or for the clutch to 'fill' (that is, for everyone else to send enough candidates that there are enough to match the egg count.) Sometimes you can send more then one character in at a time, sometimes not.

Once the clutch you've applied for fills, the owner will announce that it has hatched and will usually post a pickup-page that contains images of your dragon (sometimes a youth or hatchling image, sometimes simply the mature version of your dragon) and sometimes further information. The owner will also announce a deadline within which you need to put up the image of your dragon. (This means that you need to save the image to your hard drive, then upload it to your web-space or a place like photobucket or flickr, then use the {img src=" image_url.gif "} to have it show up on your web-page.)

The deadline to put up a dragon is often around two weeks, and after that, if you don't have it up--and don't have a reason--the dragon can get 'abandoned', which means that either the owner takes it back and marks it as deceased (which you'll find more often in the Pern-based agencies) or will re-adopt it out to someone else (this is happening more often.) It's usually rare that a dragon will get abandoned, though! We love our babies! XD

After you have your dragon, you can choose to write more about your character, /or/ you can start writing another character (heck, you can start writing other characters while you're waiting for your first one to bond!) to get /more/ dragons! If you really enjoy writing, I'd suggest restraining yourself to a few characters, at first, as you'll find that there are /so/ many clutches that it can be hard to decide just which one to pick!

You can also use your dragons to breed to make /more/ dragons (which is my favorite part, since I'm less of a writer and more of a drawer.) How that works is
1. You have to have your dragon paged, and it has to be an adult (seeing as how some places give you that hatchling image first, and only when you have it up do you get the adult, or mature image!)
2. You fill out a form at whichever agency you'd like to see your dragon breed at.
3. You sit back and wait for their 'flight' (since with dragons, a single female will usually lead a group of around five males on a chase so she--read, the owner of the female dragon--can choose her favorite.)
4. If you dragon has mated and sired (or mothered) a clutch, you can write another candidate to adopt one of their offspring!

I think that's all there is to it (though I know it's a little complicated sounding when you're just starting out! Lawd knows it was for me! XD)

Here's a few links that you might find as useful examples.

A typical stats sheet of a rider and their dragon-bond
http://www.deviant-uprising.com/dray/bonds/ailshea.htm
(Feel free to borrow some of the HTML and CSS if you like, if you don't enjoy coding pages, yourself!)

An example of the forms you would have to fill out to send in a candidate (at bottom)
http://www.deviant-uprising.com/dray/BWR/bwrcurrent.htm

An example of a previous pickup page (with both sets of images)
http://www.deviant-uprising.com/dray/BWR/12Wpickup.htm

I hope that helps!