The Seed is a unique living novel. It is the history of the world Erinn, and the fun bit is: You get to create it. Erinn is a world where magic and technology exist side by side. But this co-existance is not always peaceful: The twenty thousand year history of Erinn offers plenty of space for conflicts and power struggles, heroism and cowardice, comedy and tragedy.

The threads of The Seed can be read as series of interlinked short stories, and anybody can contribute to The Seed with stories of their own, making The Seed an organic, forever growing book.

The history of Erinn is set only in the loosest terms to begin with. You can tell your own stories within it - at any period of history, in any part of the world. This world is what you write it! As more and more people contribute to The Seed - the history of Erinn - the richer and more detailed it gets. Any story, once written, is history and cannot be altered, but added on to by others. You can use places, events and characters already in existence and then go exploring, discover new continents, start wars, build trade empires - anything you like. Or you can use entirely you own characters and document their history, and that of the towns, events and myths you create.

Alternatively, you can read the stories created by others, follow one character through his adventures, watch the rise and fall of cities and empires, be witness to scientific discovery and learn more about the eternal struggle between magic and technology. Because The Seed is constantly growing with new contributions, you can always find new stories. Hopefully, this should turn out to be a book without an ending (always the worst thing about a truly good book). Unfortunately, this project is still in its early stages, and we only have a few finished stories. At least that makes it easy to find your way around the story index.

So far, 16 stories have been drafted, and a bunch more are being worked on. They are designed to provide some ideas and starting points for more stories. We have tried to set them in very diffenrent areas and periods of time to roughly define some of the history of Erinn. Still, huge parts of Erinn's landscape and history are totally blank, which is the beauty of it. Please feel free to pick your own era, your own place on the globe, and invent whatever people and creatures you like. Maybe one could compare Erinn to the Discworld - with large parts of the countrysied full of raw magic, anyting can happen. Just make sure that if your ideas get too surreal, or could have implications for wide areas or a long period of time, you first check your plans with the bookmaster.

If you feel like writing a story, we have a more detailed writer's guide available.

The stories that have been finished so far can be found in the library. If you have any comments, I would be glad to hear them. Please e-mail wrench@pavilion .co.uk. We have set up a mailing list for all contributors and anybody else who is interested in The Seed. To subscribe, send an e-mail to majordomo@lists.august-systems.co.uk with the words "subscribe seed" as the body of the text.

 

 

Back to Index