I just wanted to take a moment to talk about the Necropolis, as a developer, and give it a proper send off.

The Necropolis was my first real stab at coding a quest. I'm a huge fan of dungeon crawls and I always liked the GM led one at previous Ebon Gates. The original Necropolis took elements of things I liked in other portions of the game and applied them to a just-under-100-room dungeon. The Necropolis was an underground occultist church to Luukos at Feywrot Mire. Each year I added more to explore until you are left with what got carried over to Caligos. The Necropolis is still located at Feywrot, you're traveling through a portal to get there still.

The first year introduced the whole thing. I didn't know much about instancing, so I did it the brute force way. I created 4 separate Necropolises in 25-level groupings. There was a mine shaft there that you got to ride a cart to a special area of the quest, but it wasn't used too much, so I retired this portion after year one. It was also a way to get out of the Necropolis early if you wanted to get out. The map changed every year, but the Sunken Tunnel area is a giant W for Wyrom. There was also a "save point" called the Dark Sanctuary. When you exited the Necropolis, you went into a Phantasmal Forest that was on fire, that was the area near the Cemetery, and there was an easter egg early on that you could find a lake there and see gnomish vehicle (train) with three NPCs, a monk (before monks were released), a warrior, and a rogue (heavily inspired to be Sabin, Cyan, and Shadow).

The second year introduced the underground lake, gondolas, and castle (inspired by Castlevania). The castle sort of looked like Castle Grayskull though. This is where the Luukosians were. They were also trying to summon some ancient evil. If you sat around the castle long enough, you would see visions of altered timelines.

The third year, the quest prize was more the focus, designing a better idea for people to improve their black ora hearts, instead of grabbing a second. There were minor changes to the map, but this also started to become an exhausting point, because we needed to rebuilt it 4 times.

The last two years of the Necropolis focused on the story. There was this powerful lich (not Skryn) and you were seeing visions of him throughout the years. The final year when you could unlock the secret power of the black ora heart that became a ball of ether, you would learn that there was some sort of temporal phenomenon going on where you had already been here in another timeline and were killed. The lich gained power by draining your soul, he would also remove your heart and encase it in black ora to lock you away forever. The lich was aware there some sort of paradox was occurring and tried to stop you, but that's why if you fully unlocked your Feywrot quest item, you now have an empowered spirit, because that was you.

However, during the whole fiasco, the lich gained enough power by everyone doing the quest to escape the area. To this day, the lich is at large.

A side note, the satyr from Coraesine Field (now Coraesine Forest) played a role in Feywrot Mire and is also at large still.

The Necropolis is being completely retired this year. A lot of the Necropolis went on to build other systems.
* The mine cart system I built would later become how you enter your own personal arena at Duskruin, AotA, and ToT rooms.
* The way creatures spawned to your level would later become how the Night of the Academy would get updated.
** This method would also later create how the Duskruin Arena mechanics worked for spawning creatures to your level, and pieces of it likely formed Reim.
* There is a large boobytrap system that I made and is completely modular and will likely be used for many years to come.

There are also several areas of the Necropolis that were never discovered.
* There are hidden vents to skip areas.
* With a proper group, there are walls that you can skip large portions of the area, like a Skoopy Doo episode.
* There were dozens of easter eggs over the years (like some I mentioned above). Many movie and game references, too many to really go into.
* In the second year, you could find a secret room over the final boss to send a magical orb down to kill it instantly.
* In the last years, if you communed to Luukos in the castle, a special event would have unlocked.
* There were undiscovered REAL gems in the Necropolis in 2015.

Things you might not know...
* You can SEARCH most objects in the Necropolis, you'll mostly find creatures, but you can find loot, seashells, and hidden treasure.
** Someone in year three found a vultite claidhmore doing this.
* There are many ways to solve the boobytraps.
* The gondolas have a lot you can do with them. Unfortunately, I think they break when large groups try to use them.

And with that, I say goodbye to my old friend. The current Necropolis that you can do is watered down a bit, but if you haven't done it ever, definitely should give it a shot. It's basically the building blocks of my tenure as an event developer.

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Wyrom, PM

Things I have found on this run:

2 ways out of the Necropolis (before the big bad)
2 vents bypassing an area/key door (same area)

The gondola maze is trippy.

Wee Sleepy Gnomette's player

From nearby, you hear Vyrshkana yell, "Why I's still drunkifyinged!"
Zicune yells, "Phenomenal cosmic liquir!"
Zicune yells, "Itty bitty drinker!"

>>Perhaps that "slow down and explore" is intended for those NOT in the rush?

Yeah, there are definitely different mindsets for events. But one thing we wanted to do with pay events when we moved to the new model is keep the grounds open for everyone. So those who do want to grind, can. EG also has downtime, even during Feywrot Mire's time.

My game design theory is not to make things a rail ride, I hate hand holding in the storytelling. There are obviously limits, but the story unfolds based on player participation. Skryn, for example, was Teekhum from Grawood. Small time scribe from a farming village that found an interesting book. In it, arcane magic about powerful relics. He sought them out, and in the Brokenlands become intoxicated by the power. Adventurers (players) decided to go straight to a hostile encounter and it resulted in my NPC Khlat to die. I really liked Khlat and didn't want to do that, but I didn't want to have plot armor. My NPC Rawgur also died, but I wasn't really enjoying him, so I was fine with it. Teekhum ended up finding a lich's phylactery, but it was protected and when Teekhum grabbed a hold of it, his soul was sucked out and awoke Skryn. Skryn has a lot of Teekhum's humanity, hence why he's not an evil lich, and a lot of Skryn's hunger for power died with Teekhum.

Anyway, the point of this is, I really enjoy how things unfold. I wish I had more time to do this sort of stuff. Each event definitely has a ton of lore pumped into it though. There are always things to be discovered. Duskruin, for example, has a lot of little pieces. There are special areas there. There is at least one spot that I think is mostly undiscovered. We also have the Sunken Temple that led to the DragonSpine range (where a yeti lived).

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Wyrom, PM

Wyrom, I'm honored to have died, every time, in your playground. Now make another :) Fun times!

-Khaell