Carja

The Coven

 Pelaria  No Responses »
Jan 182012
 

“There is no place that is closed to us,
No riches that are beyond our grasp,
For we are the Coven and your own shadow is our haven.”

– Oath of the Coven

From the journal of Ardebast Raconteur:

The Coven is an organization of thieves, assassins and rogues that operate behind the scenes in Pelaria. They are ruled by the Council of Thirteen who are said to have their paws in every facet of animus life. Their name stems from the fact that original thirteen members were seen by the public as beings that inhabited the shadows of society and accomplished impossible tasks, just like witches.

Not every rogue is a member of the Coven, though almost certainly all have come across them at one time or another. The Coven is content to let others operate independently unless it directly interferes with their business. The fur that crosses them once does not usually live to do so a second time.

Despite their dark reputation, not all members of the Coven are strictly evil. They simply operate by their own code.

Carja’s Notes:

As I was writing The Meeting of Sass and Mouser I decided that I wanted to have some sort of thieves’ guild that operates in Pelaria. I thought “The Coven” was a cool name for such an organization, because it seemed dark and mysterious. Eventually, the Coven developed into much more than just a simple guild of thieves. They’re a major antagonist presence in Pelaria, because hey! Any story could use an antagonist!

Spam Doesn’t Taste Good – It Doesn’t Look Good Either

 Carja's Corner  No Responses »
Jan 162012
 

The site is three months old now. I still obsess about how many visits I get, so I check the site stats several times a day.

I use WordPress to run the site, which is a weblog tool. I don’t consider my site to strictly be a blog, but it’s an easy way of running things. I’m not up on web definitions though, so maybe it IS a blog. Who knows?

Anyhoo, WordPress tells me whenever visitors leave comments. I set it so I need to approve them before they appear on the site. At first, when I would see the little number next to comments it was exciting, because it meant that people were checking the site out. After a while though, it became obvious that the comments being left were some kind of generic spam comments because they never commented directly about the content, only saying things like “Wow! You’ve given me things to think about!” or “This was precisely what I was looking for.” Others were for suggestions to improve my site by adding some of the bells and whistles that I had already included.

At first, I kept a couple of the comments because, they were questions I felt merited answers, even if the person who asked the question was just leaving spam to try to get me to link to his blog. Now, I just delete them. See WordPress ALSO tells me when people visit a particular page. If I get a comment on a page that got no hits that day, then to me that’s spam. I don’t know how these spammers do it, but I’m not going to play into their game by posting the comment. I put up a warning to that effect in the sidebar, but it hasn’t helped.

I expect that most comments will be left on the home page, it just stands to reason. For some reason though, Funny #003 – Tinker Toys, is extremely popular for the spammers. I don’t know how that one stands out for them, but it’s just the way it is.

SO…the lesson here is, if you want to have your comment posted, it helps if the comment is about specific content. My “articles” are comics, drawing and stories about anthropomorphic animals. I don’t know that any of these “articles” are particularly informative, though I do hope they’re entertaining. So don’t tell me you learned something! Tell me my little gag made you laugh, or that you enjoyed my story. Oh and you should probably leave your comment on another page beside Funny #003…that just raises my suspicions as to your intention.

If somehow you leave a legitimate comment and it doesn’t get posted within 24 hours, send me an email to let me know!

Nektara’s Tale – Part 1

 Stories  No Responses »
Jan 132012
 

The oursa looked over the scroll she had been writing. It still wasn’t right! She had been wracking her brain for the past three days trying to compose her thoughts in an orderly fashion. But everything was a jumble up in there. The more she tried to focus, the more she ended up going sideways. She’d never get accepted into the Academy at this rate.

As she so often did when her brain refused to cooperate, she reached for her flute. A gift from her father when she was still only a cub, the instrument was a reminder of a home she could never return to. It soothed her just to hold it, to feel the polished wood between her paws. Bringing the woodwind to her lips, she belted out a soulful tune. Her mind went blank as she let the music carry her.

How long she played, she couldn’t remember. She woke up the next morning to find herself hunched over the desk. The flute had been set aside and in her paw she still held her writing quill. The scroll she had fallen asleep over was now filled with words. She read them over. This was it!

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