Fall from Heaven Lore Compendium, Second Edition

My goal is to compile the loreful bits of the pedia into something that can be read with both leisure and pleasure. I find the format of the in-game or online pedia keeps the reading from flowing well--the xml text file is almost easier to read. Not anymore.

The Second Edition brings us up to version 2041d. Only elements of the game that have lore entries are included. Strategy texts and general explanations are not. If something is missing from the book then it doesn't have a lore entry. Some entries in the Compendium are no longer in the game.

It looks great, especially the "old tome" effect you applied to the pages! Barbatos' picture is a bit unclear though, it just looks like a blob.

Oh dear... It'll be recurrsive Infinity if you include my sig though!

(ie - I am SO adding this to the sig!)

Hints on Formatting, but reliant on Software I suppose.

For Barbatos, lower the levels a bit before you do your effects. It should be possible to get him down to being nearly just outlines, but still in color, then do your effect to make it look like it is pencil work.

For the PDF, if you are using Acrobat you can also adjust the manner in which it opens to force it to be 2 pages visible. Then it reads a bit more like a book, and the map is guaranteed to be all visible at once.

Good Job...

maybe have a section on the heroes?

pretty good work there :) and yea barbatos looks like a blob.

As far as the lizardmen go, if they are cold blooded, then how come I've seen them in tundra and snow? lol. I'm not disputing you or saying that you're wrong, just that it's a little wierd.

So those lizardmen either need to be unable to enter tundra or snow (the same thing was done for Wilboman and desert), or maybe give them a huge disadvantage in tundra and snow.

I attached some modified DDS files which might take better to what you are doing to make the images. Let me know if it is helpful, but not quite right and I can possibly do something better :)

Oh, and about the map: the first time I saw it, I thought the light coloured parts were land, and the dark coloured parts water. I think it's because the light coloured parts just jump into view better that the others. Plus, the writing is also darkish, and thus less easy to spot. Maybe you should try switching the colours?

Oh dear... It'll be recurrsive Infinity if you include my sig though!

No don't think about that!

Hints on Formatting, but reliant on Software I suppose.

For Barbatos, lower the levels a bit before you do your effects. It should be possible to get him down to being nearly just outlines, but still in color, then do your effect to make it look like it is pencil work.

For the PDF, if you are using Acrobat you can also adjust the manner in which it opens to force it to be 2 pages visible. Then it reads a bit more like a book, and the map is guaranteed to be all visible at once.

Lowering the levels is a good tip. The main effects I'm working with are High Pass and Threshold, so adjusting the levels helped me choose what comes through the High Pass. And I hadn't even considered keeping their color :)

With the graphics I'm going for that woodcut look in old books. I find that very often they are hard to make out and look like blobs (so, compliment, thank you :)). I figured that people will know what the pictures really look like so I'd go for something more "stylish." I don't have to figure that way though. Barbatos is actually one of the darkest of the popups (I've done leaderheads too), so most of the others look better. Here's Barbatos without the middle layer, which was the original picture desaturated, gaussian blurred, and set to color burn (meant to look like ink fill and just plain old):

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=175331&stc=1&d=1209142834

The other limitation with the graphics is that there are nearly 100 of them, so I'm not going to do each one individually. I'm going to set up an action and batch them all. The Barbatos you see is a lighter version, believe it or not, that I did to compensate for the darker images.

What do you think about that?

As for the PDF, I thought that was up to the reader to change: View>Page Layout>Continuous - Facing. If I can set that to default I will. I'll check that out.

Thanks for the tips xienwolf!

As for the map, evenb, I keep seeing it that way too. That's why I added a bunch of lines and shades. I'll invert the two colors. Maybe that will do it. I never intended for the text to be readable, but "hard to spot"... I'll try some things. Also I need to add the locations of the world improvements.

If you are using Acrobat, just go to File-->Properties and you can set it yourself for what the default is. Normally it uses the system set (for who opens it) default. But for my own manual I like to force it to open up in Book mode, Cover facing. Since you haven't got a cover yet, you could do just plain book mode.

I find too many people don't actually know/care how to set up the 2 pages viewable at once feature :)


New Barbatos image definitely looks good. And I would also do them all as a Batch, but then you clean up the odd 1 or 2 that doesn't quite come out right :)

Alright, the First Edition is complete. It took a while because I started my new job as Technical Publishing Specialist this week, which means I do this same exact stuff for eight hours a day, just with environmental impact statements instead of fantasy game backstories. So, when I come home I'm a little less enthusiastic about doing more of this stuff.

Anyway, please share your comments with me and please let me know if you notice anything wrong with it.

Most of all, please enjoy the stories!

Just finished read through it - it's great to have everything in one place like that - nice work :goodjob:

The only thing I was unsure about was the images. As you said, there are a lot of them and it's difficult to process each one individually into the woodcut/engraved style, but how would it look if you left the images unprocessed altogether?

Having them unprocessed (i.e. full colour originals) would definitely remove some of the "effect" - but it's certainly not unheard of for old books to have full colour artistic illustrations. The benefit is that the original art is excellent and perfectly clear.

Another alternative would be a simple batch sepia effect, at around 128 opacity (so that it allows some of the original colour through but unifies the aged look).

first off, i have to say great job! a couple of suggestions..

like vehem said, the images are a bit unclear at times with the wood carving effect.
also, is that the official canon map of erebus? i didnt think kael had come up with one. and also about the map, it is really hard to interpret it. is the dark parts water? or is the light parts? i assumed the dark parts were water but then looking at it, it had what i thought was water as having landmark names. I would change it from dark to light brown to a mossy green color and a light, faded blue color. or maybe even just outlines with pictures of mountains and trees and stuff on the land and little pictures of the leviathan and kraken on the water like in old maps.

again, great job!

first off, i have to say great job! a couple of suggestions..

like vehem said, the images are a bit unclear at times with the wood carving effect.
also, is that the official canon map of erebus? i didnt think kael had come up with one. and also about the map, it is really hard to interpret it. is the dark parts water? or is the light parts? i assumed the dark parts were water but then looking at it, it had what i thought was water as having landmark names. I would change it from dark to light brown to a mossy green color and a light, faded blue color. or maybe even just outlines with pictures of mountains and trees and stuff on the land and little pictures of the leviathan and kraken on the water like in old maps.

again, great job!

Thank you.

There is no canon map. In fact, this map is incorrect if anything given that Kael has said that Erebus is flat (and you can see that this map is cylindrical). It is Nikis Knight's pseudo-pangaea, which is my favorite map. Also he included signs of the landmarks. It seems that many of the upcoming scenarios take place in those landmarks.

As far as the art goes, I think you're right about adding color. The map is so 50/50 that it's really hard to tell. Also I'm not happy with the text. I should have varied the text size at the very least. Anyway, comments like these are very valuable to me. Thanks :)

Just finished read through it - it's great to have everything in one place like that - nice work

The only thing I was unsure about was the images. As you said, there are a lot of them and it's difficult to process each one individually into the woodcut/engraved style, but how would it look if you left the images unprocessed altogether?

Having them unprocessed (i.e. full colour originals) would definitely remove some of the "effect" - but it's certainly not unheard of for old books to have full colour artistic illustrations. The benefit is that the original art is excellent and perfectly clear.

Another alternative would be a simple batch sepia effect, at around 128 opacity (so that it allows some of the original colour through but unifies the aged look).

I like the color idea. More so than the sepia, but I'll see what happens. Commonly woodcuts would have a couple colors, in addition to black, and I was thinking about that, but perhaps the colored originals with a slight effect to make them look printed would be cool. I'll try stuff. Thank you :)

Thank you for this. And thank you for making it available as a PDF and not on your preferred medium of human skin with the text inscribed in the victims blood! ;)

There do seem to be some entries that must be for earlier versions of the game. (e.g. Ash Bearers.)

As for the illustrations and map ... I did not have a problem seeing the illustrations, but like others, found the map difficult to view. Perhaps higher contrast on the various sepia tones?

That is really quite an impressive collection of lore loocas. The sepia tone is a great touch too.

/Hey MagisterCultuum, you've got a challenger! :lol:

That is really quite an impressive collection of lore loocas. The sepia tone is a great touch too.

/Hey MagisterCultuum, you've got a challenger! :lol:

Challengers if anything. What I'm shooting for here is a new standard of knowledge. Plus, MC knoweth much that the xml doth not.

And thank you for making it available as a PDF and not on your preferred medium of human skin with the text inscribed in the victims blood!

I just haven't found any volunteers yet.

YET.

p.s. The current text xml has many entries for techs, units, etc. no longer in the game. I'll take what I can get.

If you are using Acrobat, just go to File-->Properties and you can set it yourself for what the default is. Normally it uses the system set (for who opens it) default. But for my own manual I like to force it to open up in Book mode, Cover facing. Since you haven't got a cover yet, you could do just plain book mode.

I find too many people don't actually know/care how to set up the 2 pages viewable at once feature :)


I may be odd but when it comes to pdf's I prefer to have it set to single page continuous with it fit to width

I sometimes get annoyed when i have to go in and change it everytime I open a pdf file.

Then again I own accrobat so I could always change it and save.

Great job on the book, just gave it a quick look through. I am new to fhf and will be reading it leisurely over the next few days.

Woa.

Great job. :)

This bump has been made for the reasons of great justice.

Also to increase awareness of this Compendium, and in hopes that it will inspire it's creators to update it.

hey, any updated version for new versions? :)

This bump has been made for the reasons of great justice.

Also to increase awareness of this Compendium, and in hopes that it will inspire it's creators to update it.

hey, any updated version for new versions? :)

My most profuse apologies. I've got a new full-time job 2 hours' commute away, which leaves me little time for gaming, let alone side projects. Please don't hate me for this, but I've also been playing other games. :blush:

But there has been a considerable amount of added lore and an update is definitely needed. I will make time.

Thank you in advance!

Thanks for this. I have some documents with lore I found on the forum. Might post it here for you to go through, maybe I got something you missed.

This is incredibly awesome. My god, I love this community.

Thanks for this. I have some documents with lore I found on the forum. Might post it here for you to go through, maybe I got something you missed.

Oh please do. Can't have too much material. I was thinking of asking people to help gather the bits and pieces spread across the forums.

This one (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=246382) is old, and surely outdated - still, wouldn't it be nice if alternate versions of the lore could be included as an "apocripha et spuria" section?

The Second Edition is complete and uploaded.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=197465&stc=1&d=1229475804 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=265888)

Wow... you had me totally tripping with that Amazon mock up. Sadly, my search for "Xienwolf" did not match any products.

Awesome work Loocus, it was brilliant to sort the book by Angels. :goodjob:

Awesome, it looks great! I'll go ahead and zip up all I have in case you don't have it already.

Ok here is what I've collected, not sure how much it is. And it is often written as an answer to a question by Kael so to fit the format of your pdf you will probably need to edit it to fit.

Ok here is what I've collected, not sure how much it is. And it is often written as an answer to a question by Kael so to fit the format of your pdf you will probably need to edit it to fit.

Thanks a ton. I knew I saw a more complete Tale of Saverous somewhere sometime. Couldn't find it for the life of me. I've been considering for a while how to include this material, and I think footnotes might be best. I'll give it a try and see how well it works, but other ideas could be useful. As far as editing, I think I'll cut out any reference to the mod, D&D, or other RL references.

Thanks again, GF.

I posted all of the snippets for Saverous in the Trivia thread quite a while back. It is 3 seperate Pedia entries is all, so you've probably already got it, just might not realize that one of them is Saverous (doesn't actually say that it is IIRC, except in the last line stating the source). Kael said he had worked on a full story for him, but IIRC said he hasn't finished it.

I posted all of the snippets for Saverous in the Trivia thread quite a while back. It is 3 seperate Pedia entries is all, so you've probably already got it, just might not realize that one of them is Saverous (doesn't actually say that it is IIRC, except in the last line stating the source). Kael said he had worked on a full story for him, but IIRC said he hasn't finished it.

And I am really bad at searching.

I find it odd that the Meshabber of Dis entry is in the Tale of Saverous, and not Rosier the Fallen's. Ros's entry seems a much more likely Act 2 Chapter 1.

And I was too lazy to search then ;)

My Post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6407731&postcount=476)

Kael's Post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=4210512&postcount=12)

Each have almost completely seperate bits of the story.

Good. Sav's and Valin's overlap with the complete Act 1, and then there's Mesh's Act 2 Ch 1 and Rosier, which is on the same subject. Guess that's all we got. Time for an an update then.

I owe you all an update so bad. Right after I made the first edition I got a job doing the exact same work, editing and formatting. My workday and commute are 12 hours everyday, so I'm much less enthusiastic about doing more of the same in my few hours of computer time in the evening. That's my excuse. I feel bad about my absence and have done my love for FFH a disservice. You may smite me and I will complain only very little.

Anyway, I could use some help with this update. It will just be a catch-up one, but still have grander hopes for it. I still need to do my WinMerge-and-compare with the newest text xml, but off the top of my head I know the new version will include:

The Tale of Saverous
The Fall of Mammon
Loki
Tebryn
Gibbon

What more have I missed?

EDIT: Merge revealed these:
Pagan Temple
Sculptor's Studio
Rob Grave
Taunt
Iron Working
Necromancy

(Seriously, with a name like Henri Ghouls, what can you expect...)
/EDIT

There is so much material in the game and on these forums. I am in awe of the original work itself and the outpouring of inspiration in the stories threads. This compendium will be canon only, which includes anything Kael writes that isn't in the pedia (I think Saverous' story is the only one). That will include the little lessons of Kael's that have been kindly collected for me in previous posts on this thread. I don't know about the scenarios yet. This book needs to be friendly towards new players, so spoilers are bad. Perhaps an appendix or a second, extended, version. Your thoughts?

As for the stories threads (can I say fanon?), there is wonderful stuff there. I'd love to compile a best-of, sort of like the "Year's Best SciFi/Fantasy" books. Perhaps some dabbling in democracy. Yeah?

In the "Laroth" thread in this subforum, there's a lot of new information about Laroth, such as the Cult of Temelchus and a story (partially explaining) how he fell... all by Kael.

None of it's in game, to my knowledge.

Yeah, the stories are great. I have a compilation of my favourites from the Random Stories Thread :)

Yeah. About the Random Stories and Fragments: theoretically, I was supposed to catalogue its contents in the first post, but I've since failed in that duty.

Do you have Kael's description of the hells included?

You might want to check the various pedia threads for FF, FF+ and Orbis. I think there was also one in the main FFH though that must be six months old since it was last updated. The various minor leader threads might be pretty handy too. Of course, a lot of this material is non-canon, so if you include it you might need to shunt it to an appendix called something like "Rumours and Lies: Unconfirmed tales from Erebus"

Really nice job there. It is a very nice way to be able to ingest the behemoth that is the pedia. Do you plan on adding every single entry eventually? Some of the buildings are pretty cool, like the theatre, and some of the spells, like Hyborem's whisper.

You'll find an update in the first post. Keep in mind that the hyperlinks ("see also") don't work in this version. I'm going on vacation tomorrow and didn't get those done. I'm still not satisfied with the pictures either. I think they blend in with the oldish style of the book, but they kind of hurt to look at. Same with the map. Anyway, I'll fix those when I get back. Until then, I'll be here (http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&t=h&msa=0&msid=100466763204376725279.00046e3769ea98399e08f&ll=49.948238,-94.60207&spn=0.032752,0.090895&z=14).

This time I also included a zip of the .doc files of just the text, in case the .pdf is too intense for anybody and they'd prefer to set their own text options.

I'd love feedback on the the general readability, the organization, or anything else if anyone has opinions. I want this to be look all nice and stuff, but ease of reading is most important.

Enjoy!

Beautiful work, Im honored that you spend so much time on this. You really make it look nice! :goodjob:

Beautiful work, Im honored that you spend so much time on this. You really make it look nice! :goodjob:

Aww. Thanks! It's a lot of fun and I love doing it. I remember how extraordinarily my experience of the game improved once I started reading the pedia entries. The stuff's just that good!

thanx for the update, this one is definitely a good read :D

kudos to the storywriting guys of the FFH team, you guys rock!

bump for awesomeness.

I downloaded this and I am blown away by it. It's got pretty much all the lore of FFH (disregarding mods like Fall Further or Rise From Erebus), but it's very detailed. I recommend this for everyone looking to read the lore of FFH. I even found out why Ethne the White is a leader in the first place. Turns out she's the daughter of a king.
(Brought to you by Advertising Inc.)

A question: How accurate is the map featured here? Is it canon, or merely extrapolation?

This link will probably prove useful in this thread. Modmod Lore can be found here. None of it is canon, but there are plenty of ideas in there to feed aspiring GMs: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=334470