The Orient's Scribes have a question for you. We really don't have anyone working (let alone leading the effort) to create a neighborhood in the Red Phoenix District for our neighborhood rollout. And we have very little for the Black Turtle Province. So, we were wondering if anyone was still interested in taking on these regions? Or, for that matter, would anyone like to work with Ningyo on the Green Turtle Shogunate, Lalita on the White Tiger Domain, or with me on the Yellow Lion Region?

Before you decide either way, let me tell you what that would entail. The structure of the neighborhoods is going to be a "kingdom" page, then under the kingdom a page for each city, and under the city a page for each district. These pages are similar to the Orient homepage, but not covering as much detail.

So should you choose to work on a neighborhood, you would start by choosing a kingdom from whatever region you're working on. My area, China, has been fairly simple, since it's just China. So, I'll give you an example from the Black Turtle Province (BT).

The BT covers Mongolia, Manchuria, and Korea. So I've created a "kingdom" called The Mongolian Empire (which might get shortened to The Mongols *lol*). Their empire actually stretched beyond the borders of what is known to day as "Mongolia", so we don't confine ourselves to those modern day boundaries. At the kingdom level, I have written a brief (2-3 paragraph) synopsis of the Mongols' history.

For the next level down (city), I chose "Khanbaliq" — which was actually in China and eventually became Beijing when the Chinese retook their kingdom. Here, again, I wrote a brief synopsis of the city's history, including some pictures. Then moving to the third level (districts) the preparations become a bit more difficult. If we don't have historical records of the actual layout of the city, we have to use our imaginations. We need three or four areas of the city, such as the Artisan's District or the Emperor's Court or even the Marketplace. In other words, places where people actually lived and worked. If you get that far down and have problems finding historical information, let me, Ningyo or Lalita know and we'll see what we can do to help.

Anyway, mainly what we would ask you to do, would be to choose a kingdom and at least one actual historical city from it. Then if you could write just a few paragraphs about the kingdom's and the city's (or cities') histories, that would be of tremendous help. Any pictures, graphics, or maps you have for the area would be terrific, too.

If this looks like something you would be interested in participating in and have time to do, please leave one of the Orient Scribes a scroll letting us know what you're working on. That way, if more than one person expresses interest in the same area, we can direct you to each other. Then just...have fun! *g* Of course, if you don't have time to do it, we certainly understand that! In which case, maybe you'll be able to help out later after the first hoods are open and we start to expand. *g* Either way, thanks for thinking about it!