Aquazine 2020 | 27 - Tama Zétény

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AQUAZINE 2020 | 27 Free weekly magazine by the Aquarion tribe. With Art Contest And new lore insights! Is the Polaris actually using ice as currency in the Ice Bank? Find this out and more! Summer Skirmish Tournament about to begin! Contents Polytopia News 3 – Zebasi Tribe Moon Best scientists in the field 3 – Flora and Fauna art contest Going botanical 4 – Interdimensional snowmen Revisiting Polaris lore 10 – Tournamen preparations How to get 1000 members in a week Fun pages 6 – Vexil Wonders Antigua and Barbuda 7 – Astrology What do the stars predict? 11 – Dæmon A devilish fan made tribe Aquarion News 8 – Aquarion City on Giant Coral Epic piece of fanart 9 – Newest Newspaper on the Square Yeah it’s about this you are reading right now Aquazine 2020 | 27 | Page 2 Tamarissz Zebasi Tribe Moon The Zebasi moon arrived on the 1st July, as scheduled. It was leaked before that the topic has something to do with Polytopia flora and fauna. The lore blurb is: "M'basana Jerozi, more commonly known as the "Geroffy," was the first of many animals to be cataloged by Zebasi scholars in the Zuzanna Yaya, the Square's largest compendium of flora and fauna. Horticulture, zoology, botany, and biology are all fields of study for the inquisitive inhabitants of Zeboya." We can learn some news from this text. First of all, that the land of Zebasi is called Zeboya. Second that animals and plants have scientific names in Polytopia. Or at least according to Zebasi. The image to accompany the blurb depicts a Zebasi landscape with farmers working on the fields and also a Zebasi scientist, in the process of catalogizing the M’basana Jerozi. As it is customary with tribe moons, the :giant: emoji was changed to Zebasi Giant and an art contest was launched. A full length song of the Zebasi theme is expected sometime during this month, as well as a gameplay challenge in the second half. The art contest is flora/fauna themed too. The artists have to create an artwork about an animal, plant or any live creature that the Zebasi biologists might have included in their famous Zuzanna Yaya. The deadline is July 14th, as usual. Then the community will decide the winner with a day-long vote. This far, on the first week, 4 valid submissions came in, and there was some problems with low- effort and spam posting. Karaoke Espark organised another karaoke session on the server. 8 people performed singing or music this time. The timing was too late for Europeans and Asians. Aquazine 2020 | 27 | Page 3 Tamarissz Interdimensional Snowmen Although the Polaris was released over a year ago, the many mystery that surrounds it has still yet to be completely cleared up. Its concept opens new worlds (literally) and it challenges the meta actively. After another discussion with canon lore creator Zoythrus about the topic, I decided to write what we know in one place once again. Gaami Gaamis come from another dimension. The only thing we know about this third world is that it is constantly incredibly cold. They are most likely able to travel to the Square but they haven’t yet done that. What we see instead of their true self are just avatars. The avatars possess a fragment of a Gaamis real power. This explains why Mind Benders can convert Gaamis. Mind Benders can use their magic to sever the connection between the avatar and the pilot. They can’t take full control of the avatar, they can just give it some limited „magical programming” to walk around and terraform a little. The Polaris has to perform a work- and resource-consuming ritual to bind a Gaami to a specific avatar, or they can use a center of great magical energy, like a ruin. That’s why they can get Gaamis from ruins. Just like all the unts in the game, what appears on the screen is just a representation of an army of soldiers. Super units resemble one single soldier but they are still not to scale. This is even more true with Gaami avatars, as they are not even the same size as in their own dimension. In reality, they could be any size, ranging from microscopic to Cthulu-sized. It’s unlikely that they are any bigger than a tile though, considering the final goal of their evil plan is moving in on the square and living happily ever after. It’s for sure that they are a race of evil ice sorcerers and are the actual villains of Polytopia. But in contrary to the tribes, they do not know that Midjiwan exists. Only he can save us! The Gaami plan: 1. Kill all other tribes than Polaris. 2. Convert land to ice. 3. Move in. 4. Backstab Polaris and kill them too. 5. Live happily ever after . Aquazine 2020 | 27 | Page 4 Mooni Moonis are somewhat similar to Gaamis because of their otherworldly appearance. But unlike them, Moonis aren’t avatars and don’t come from the permafrost dimension. The Polaris people have to build a snowman and in a similar ritual, they come to life thanks to Gaami magic. They are semi- sapient and like to play in the snow instead of work. They spread ice by using their antlers to focus the power of the moon, naturally, through Gaami magic. Ice Bank The Polaris uses stars as a currency just like any other tribe, but they also have ice as currency which they exchange in the Ice Bank, the replacement of Customs houses for Polaris. But how does paying in ice working when anyone could juts go to the frozen ocean and grab some? Basically, this is one those situations when the sole purpose of it being used as a currency is that ice is constantly used. The Polaris have to use many of it and often, for performing various rituals and emerging buildings. For example the mighty Ice Bank and some of their monuments. Only the Gaami knows what those are for. Aquazine 2020 | 27 | Page 5 Tamarissz Vexil Wonders Antigua and Barbuda Is a country in the Caribbean consisting of two main islands, Antigua, where the capital city St John’s is located, and the slightly smaller Barbuda up north. But what makes their flag so iconic? When they became entirely self-governing and independent from the United Kingdom in 1967, it was time that they change the flag to exclude the Union Jack, which normally shows status as colony of the UK. The government decided to organise a flag contest where more than 600 locals submitted their designs. The work of nationally well-known artist Sir Reginald Samuel got accepted. The rising sun symbolises the dawn of a new era, the V shape is for victory. The colour black notes the african ancestry of the population, blue is for hope and also for the Caribbean sea, the white is for the sandy beaches and the red symbolises energy or the life of the people. The proportion of the flag is 2:3. Source: Wikipedia Explanation for the next page: Astrology There is a prediction for what will happen to each tribe in this or the next week. The reader can either follow the predictions of their favourite tribe or the tribe in which month they were born in. We use the Stone of Time to determine that. January: Yadakk May: Luxidoor September: Hoodrick February: Ai-mo June: Kickoo October: Quetzali March: Imperius July: Zebasi November: Vengir April: Xin-xi August: Oumaji December: Bardur Aquazine 2020 | 27 | Page 6 Tamarissz & Kenz Yadakk Astrology You will realise that the road Zebasi you’ve been following is a circle. You will find a Waongii with Ai-Mo blue insides. Eat it. You will accidentally mistype Oumaji an ï letter as an i. A sandstorm is coming Imperius in your private life, get ready. You’re going to win the next Hoodrick game you play as Imperius. A tree will fall on your head. Xin-Xi Quetzali You will easily climb the next mountain in front of you. You will get two cities named Wopwop in the same game. Luxidoor Vengir Your Phantrix will give birth to twin Phantrix eggs. You will forget Pinky Day! Kickoo Bardur Don’t hunt the next whale you One of your Ullefurgh bottles find, it would bring bad luck! expires in 4 days. Drink it fast! Aquazine 2020 | 27 | Page 7 We take no responsibility if any of the predictions turn out to be untrue. This is for entertainment purposes only. Tamarissz Tunicorner Stunning Aquarion City on Giant Coral video emerges from the depths of Polysthetic’s render machine The amazing project consists of a monumental 3D model of an underwater Aquarion city with animated animals, accompanied a wonderful remix of our tribe’s music theme. The artist, Polythetic was already well known in the Polytopia community with similar art projects, such as the Game of Thrones intro, the Necrosus and the Pholyxi tribes, and a Vengir mountain city model. The video starts at the shore of Kickoo terrain, then the camera dives deep in the ocean, travels through the Gate of Power and then around the coral mountain. The video showcases all of the Aquarion monuments and city blocks, as well as a crab, whales, a school of fish and a turmelon. The model was made and animated in Blender Insight and it took more than 500 hours to render the video, Polysthetic states on the website. „If you take away one thing from reading this article: don’t use displacement shaders for animation (use modifiers instead).” The creation process is detailed on the Polythetic.com website which I recommend for you to also read. We can read about the music composition too, which is the modified version of Midjitone’s original Aquarion theme but more metallic and ocean sounding. This piece of art is a must-watch for all Aquarion lovers, so hurry up if you haven’t seen it already! Aquazine 2020 | 27 | Page 8 Tamarissz Tunicorner The first issue of the Aquazine surfaces After long planning and thinking, we decided to publish a newspaper on our own. After seeing the successful Ai-Mo Times newspaper published daily by the Ai-Mo tribe, we couldn’t help but fantasize about a magazine made by Aquarion. Now that dream became reality and we can finally deliver everything we think is worth to read in the way we imagine it. We do not want to be an arch nemesis of Ai-Mo Times however, and if there is any interaction between the two, we would like to be not more than friendly competitors. The goal is to satisfy the readers afterall. Discord server advertisement The Crab Cult The official server of the Aquarion tribe! We have: - Aquazine publishing - Roleplay - Game bots - Underclasses - And all things Crab! Aquazine 2020 | 27 | Page 9 Tamarissz Tournament preparations It’s summer, and there is always a tournament on the Polytopia server during summer, this year is not an exception. However, this year it’s not Tribe Duels but the Summer Skirmish. This year’s Tribe Duels will still happen, just later in Autumn. Although it was announced last week, Director and Ai-mo Tribe Leader Artemis has been working on this event for a long time. The Summer Skirmish is a completely new kind of Polytopia tournament, where anyone with a phone multiplayer access can play. Players get three 1v1v1 Free-For-All matches and the winner gets promoted on the next level. Every five days, if someone has less than 3 matches going, they get more. First 9 players to reach level 7 are the finalists. They then play against each other for the ultimate win. Rewards include Steam Edition Early Access, and Polytopia merchandise. Artemis has been promoted to Head Director and several other members got the Director role to help out in coordinating this giant event. The announcement said this is will be the biggest event in the history of the server and to be honest, I was skeptical about it. Winning 7 games is no match for pro players and there are many of them. But the largeness of the event lies in the amount of participants here, and there are more than 1000 of them now before the event even started. To make things more manageable, Artemis coded a brand new bot, called „The Polytopia Summer Skirmish”. It creates games automatically and manages registrations. The reason why so many people registered is because Zoythrus posted invites to the server all across the platforms of the Polytopia community, alongside the announcement of the championship. Members joined so fast that one could think the server was under raid attack. The 24 hours after the announcements, more than 300 members joined, setting an all time high in members/day. The server reached 23000 people on the last day of June, and now on the 6th of July, it is at 24000 already. But unlike how it used to, there hasn’t been a gameplay challenge at every 1000 members. Other events are happening and there is no space for more. The Summer Skirmish starts next week where we will see how the first days of it are going. Fingers crossed! By the way, poor Kickoo is on the Summer Skirmish poster but is actually banned from using in the game. Aquazine 2020 | 27 | Page 10 Bookard-Edu Dæmon Design The design space I wish to take up with the addition of Dæmon is that of a demonic presence in the square. Demonic themes are very diverse in their representation, so it is important to hone-in on a few key themes in order to create a tribe which is easily identifiable and unique. The themes which I would like to delve into are destruction, sacrifice, and summoning. Destruction The destructive aspect of Dæmon would be its unique environmental interaction feature. Dæmon are able to create fires on tiles (3(2?) cost, similarly placed to Roads but only within Dæmon territory) which burn over 3 turns. Players cannot create a Fire tile on an enemy occupied tile, but can create a Fire tile under a friendly unit. Fire tiles cannot be created on cities. Passing over a Fire tile deals damage to enemy units which pass through or land on the tile depending on how many turns the Fire tile has left. Using Engulf creates a fire on the chosen tile (except Water, Ocean, or Ice) and destroys any buildings on that tile except for Roads. Engulf does not require Construction – Destroy (to offset the cost of creating a Fire tile). An example of Fire tile damage could be: Turn 1: 6 damage to enemy units which pass through or land on the tile. Turn 2: 4 damage to enemy units which pass through or land on the tile. Turn 3: 2 damage to enemy units which pass through or land on the tile. Acolyte Turn 4: The fire dies out and the Fire tile disappears, leaving a blank tile. Sacrifice Sacrificial elements of the tribe are taken from the Disband feature. Currently, with all other tribes, Disband removes the unit using the ability and refunds half the cost of the unit rounded down. Disband, in the case of Dæmon, would be replaced by Sacrifice. Sacrifice would allow the unit to remove itself from the game (in the same way that Disband does), except rather than refunding stars, the unit would spawn Imps. Each Imp is worth 1 star. Disbanding (Sacrificing) a Warrior would spawn 1 Imp where the Warrior was Disbanded. Disbanding a Knight would spawn 4 Imps on and around where the Knight was Disbanded. You may not Sacrifice units in Water or Ocean tiles. Aquazine 2020 | 27 | Page 11 Summoning Summoning should play a role in unit construction. Dæmon uses Imps as fodder in order to summon more powerful units. This is balanced around losing your own basic units in order to create Imps, and then losing said Imps in order to create the new summoned unit. Units can be summoned with Mind Benders (Acolytes) and the unit summoned depends on the amount of Imps surrounding the Mind Bender in a 3x3 square. There are three possible summons available: Imp Cost Name Attack Defense Speed Health Range Skill 2 Imps Ghoul 2.5 2 2 15 1 Dash Dash, 4 Imps Revenant 3.5 2 3 20 1 Persist Ghoul 8 Imps Ifrit 5 2 2 25 1 Persist Technology The unique technology to Dæmon is a spin on the Philosophy tree. The new tree would look like: Climbing (unchanged) > >Occultism (Meditation) > Summoning (Philosophy). Occultism • Mountain Temple is renamed to Sacrificial Altar Revenant • Defense bonus on mountains is unchanged • Warmonger task instead of Pacifist: Attack for 5 turns in a row to get Altar of War Summoning • Acolyte replaces Mind Bender • Lieracy is unchanged • Genius task is unchanged Units Acolyte The Acolyte retains the Mind Bender’s ability Convert. Heal is replaced by Summon. Summon would have three versions (this could be reduced to one adaptive ability) depending on the amount of Imps surrounding the Acolyte. The Acolyte should be more powerful offensively than the Mind Bender and should take on a more “wizardly” role. Abilities: • Summon: Allows the unit to summon additional units by Ifrit consuming surrounding Imps. • Convert Aquazine 2020 | 27 | Page 12 Infernal The Super Unit of the tribe. Similar to the Gaami, the Infernal is surrounded by a fiery aura which damages enemy units in a 3x3 square around the Infernal each time the Infernal moves for a moderate amount of damage. Ability: • Auto Ignite: Allows units to damage enemies automatically as they move. Imp Special unit created by disbanding other basic units. Imps are worth 1 star each. Disbanding (Sacrificing) a unit will grant an Imp for every 2 stars that Disbanding would have granted the player (ie., Disbanding a Defender would grant 1 star, granting 1 Imp. Disbanding a Swordsman would grant 2 Imps. Disbanding a Giant (Infernal) would grant 5 Imps). Imps cannot be created by disbanding naval units. Imps cannot gain veteran status. Imps have 1 attack, 1 defence, 1 movement, 5 health, and 1 range. Imps cannot be created by cities. Imps cannot become naval units. Imps are used to summon stronger units via Sacrifice. Ability: • Scurry: This unit can move on the turn it is created. Gameplay Dæmon’s gameplay loop centers around creating extra units to Sacrifice, then using Imps and Acolytes to create more powerful units than are available for other tribes. In addition, since Dæmon would spend quite some time defenseless in order to set up their Acolytes and Imps, they would use extra gold income (which may have been spent on tech in other tribes) to Engulf surrounding tiles to create damaging barriers which would give them the time they need to set up their army. The endgame of the Dæmon is to summon Ifrit to solidify their position with a large defensive(?)/offensive(?) unit which protects their Acolytes or forward position and overrun the enemy tribes with Ghouls and Revenants. They do well in open spaces which allow Imps to position favourably around your Acolytes, while an island spawn is highly disadvantageous. Aquazine 2020 | 27 | Page 13 Credits Editor-in-chief: Tamarissz Reviewers: MatthewPyro, Ftag15 Cover art by Midjify Game sprites by Midjiwan, Midjitree and Midjify Dæmon art by Apizku Aquazine logo by Tamarissz Special thanks to Zoythrus, Polysthetic, Artemis and You, the reader Next week on Aquazine! SUMMER SKIRMISH It’s on! Rebirth of Aquarion roleplay Best to start with a contest Steam edition Where is it now? Aquazine 2020 | 27 | Page 14