SUMMER CAMP 2026: WEEK 1
Week 1 Homework: Love
Theme: Get your world ready
The Week 1 hopscotch is about foundations. Before the prompts arrive in July, the goal is to ensure the world is in the best possible shape to receive them. For Aethermarch, that means honest assessment rather than wishful thinking. This is a large, complex, non-linear world. Some things are polished. Some things are works in progress. The article below documents where things stand.
Tier 1: Homepage and World Primer
The Aethermarch homepage and world primer are in good shape. The core documents — the Institutiones Aethermarchae, the Orbis Descriptio, the Annales Mundi, and the Gentes Mundi — cover the foundations of the setting with appropriate depth. The narrator voice of Gaius Caecilius Plinius Secundus Aethermarchensis is established and consistent across the major articles.
However, Aethermarch is a living world. Articles are produced in sequence, and as understanding of the setting deepens, earlier articles sometimes need to be revisited. The homepage and primer are treated as perpetually current documents rather than completed ones.
Known outstanding corrections:
- Ael'canoras articles still carry old Triumvirate names from earlier drafts. The confirmed v4 names (Caladris Ael'ven, Mirewen Vel'thuris, Aeveth Lith'sera) need to be applied across all affected articles in a dedicated correction pass.
- Any primer references to civilisation coverage should be updated as new provinces and settlements are completed during Summer Camp.
Status: Work in Progress
Tier 2: CSS and Maps
Two distinct tasks sit at this tier. Both are significant undertakings, and honesty about scope is more useful than optimism.
World CSS and Layout
An Aethermarch visual theme is planned. The aesthetic direction is established: imperial Roman register, warm brown-red colour family, sandstone borders, Alegreya SC and Alegreya typefaces, IM Fell English for blockquotes. The CSS has not yet been implemented in World Anvil. This is a known gap and a project in its own right, requiring careful compliance with World Anvil's security filter rules.
Summer Camp is not the moment to attempt a full CSS implementation from scratch, but it may provide a useful deadline to at least get a working base theme in place before the July articles begin appearing.
Status: I've added a starting CSS scheme, still some work to do
Maps and Timelines
Aethermarch currently has no maps. This is a significant gap for a world of this geographic complexity. Nine civilisations occupy distinct regions of a shared continent, and the interplay between those regions is central to the setting's premise. A proper cartographic project is on the horizon but is not a Summer Camp deliverable.
The Annales Mundi timeline exists as a written document and covers the major events from the First Permutatio through to the current Rift XIII crisis. It is reasonably current but will benefit from a review pass during prep to ensure the framing of the present-day crisis is accurate and complete.
"In my experience, a scholar who claims his maps are finished has simply stopped looking at the territory."
Status: World map has been created and uploaded, but there's still more to do
Tier 3: World Meta Document
The Aethermarch meta document covers the setting's core premises in reasonable depth: the Permutatio events, the nine civilisations, the Roman dominance of the continent, the Rift XIII crisis as the active campaign driver, and the epistemological framework of Plinius as narrator.
A review pass during Summer Camp prep will focus on:
- Confirming that all nine civilisations are represented accurately, reflecting the current state of article production rather than earlier planning documents.
- Ensuring the Rift XIII framing is presented clearly as the active crisis, with appropriate hooks toward the campaign material being developed.
- Checking that the era naming convention (Ab Permutatione / A.P. for the post-Rift calendar) is applied consistently, and flagging the still-open question of pre-Rift era naming for resolution.
Status: Checked and reviewed, a couple of minor changes, but it's looking good
Tier 4: Update Old Articles
Aethermarch is built non-linearly. A settlement article written early in the project may predate the establishment of naming conventions, NPC frameworks, or civilisation-specific guidance that came later. This is not a problem to be embarrassed about -- it is simply how large worldbuilding projects work.
The correction pass is a standing commitment rather than a discrete task. As Summer Camp produces new material, earlier articles will be revisited to ensure consistency. Specific correction priorities heading into July:
- Ael'canoras Triumvirate name corrections (as noted in Tier 1).
- Any settlement or district articles that predate the three-tier depth system and may benefit from structural alignment.
- Cross-references between articles, particularly NPC entries that link to locations and vice versa.
The goal is not perfection before July begins. The goal is a world coherent enough that new prompts can be answered without creating new inconsistencies.
Status: Work in Progress
Optional Warm-Up Prompt: Write a Settlement Associated with Love
The Week 1 warm-up prompt asks for a settlement associated with love. In Aethermarch, this is not a difficult brief to fill. The world has festivals, founding myths, diplomatic marriages that shaped borders, and harbour towns where sailors return from sea. A candidate will be identified and written as a full settlement article, linked here when complete.
Status: Complete
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