A Cause for Celebration!
Annakol Gazette - Despite the troubles to the north, their Majesties announced that the Annakolia Festival will take place as planned. Baron Talanque vowed that the Annakol City Guard would keep the peace and monitor security.
"We have every reason to celebrate and bring hope to our people." Queen Fina said.
A list of the preliminary schedule of events includes: Queen's Champion
Tourney,
Baron Talanque's Archery & Missile Weapon Match, Annakolia Street
Festival,
Bardic Competition, Hillbert's Famous Tours, and Golem War. The city and
countryside is a buzz with anticipation.
"Them northern long shank soldiers swaggerin 'round ain't much good." A halfling at the Feisty Chicken Tavern said. "Time we had somethin to smile 'bout."
"We're already putting in orders for extra ale and cheese," said Fiona Diaz, co-proprietor of the Feisty Chicken. "This will be good for business." Her co-owner and husband, Lino Diaz expressed some concern that deliveries would get through.
"The usurper Emrys doesn't want this to succeed." Baron Talanque said. "But we won't let his patrols get in our way."
Tharbad offered to hold the Queen's Champion Tourney in the city arena. The city remains neutral in the political upheavals in Annakol. The Mage Council officials could not be reached for comment.
"Benthar will bless and protect the people of Annakolia." The priest of Benthar said. "A festival is just what we need to unite us and overcome these tribulations."
From the Ashes
The DMs and players on Annakolia are fantastic people. Nothing showed me that more than how they pulled together when in early December the server failed. We lost the hard drive and database. The DMs team sprang into action, posting information on the forum and fielding questions from worried players. Before the day was out, Barry put up a temporary server on his own computer. The database loss hurt everyone. An older database was rescued, yet many characters were lost. We decided that restoring characters to the best of our ability would be a priority. All the DMs got involved. Feather set up a Help Desk in the Entry Area and the DMs took turns manning it round-the-clock. Flamecrow spent hours screening character bic files sent from players.
To add insult to injury, the same week the server crashed, our router died. Barry replaced it and within 24 hours with Annakolia was back up on Barry's computer. Meanwhile, initial news on the server was not good. After replacing the two new hard drives with a RAID, but we put the server back online we suffered crashes. Again, the server went into the shop. Turned out the motherboard needed replacing. Things looked grim.
Then the players pitched in with donations. Without their help we could not have moved ahead with repairs. In the end, the server is totally rebuilt. It's back and better than before with a new case and cooling system, a RAID system, motherboard, and memory.
Annakolia would not be what it is today, both in game and in real life, without the players. It truely is a community. So, from the ashes the phoenix rises...
