About Us
So what is Royal Archivist?
We’re a community of storytellers building a shared universe home to all manner of speculative fiction stories, whether they come in the form of prose, art, role-playing games, or even cute little plushies. While everyone has a story to tell, we especially wish to represent characters who are women, people of color, LGBT, and other people underrepresented in mainstream speculative fiction. Our semi-official motto and guiding principle is “play fair” and it’s something we seek to practice in every relationship we form.
Sharing the Universe
One of the inspirations for Royal Archivist is the so-called “Lovecraft Circle” of about a century ago. The Lovecraft Circle shared and borrowed ideas with and from one another in a small community of creative writers that eventually produced the famed Cthulhu Mythos so well-loved today. In the same way, throughout the year 2012 we will open up and share much of the Ingressa with other creators, either through the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license or even by making parts of it open to the Public Domain.
Copyright List
Unless otherwise specifically noted, assume everything is still under copyright. For now, we know the following shall remain under copyright of both Royal Archivist and their respective creators: the six factions, the mechanics of Stepping (but not pergressors, per se), the Inner Worlds and Novagallia, Umbral, and Adax (but not Adax’s books). Full explanations are forthcoming.
Attribution-Share Alike
Here is a complete listing of all articles and column entries from the website available under the CC By-SA license.
Public Domain
Coming soon!
Safe Space
The Internet is full of hate, yet we needn’t allow it to propagate on our website as well. So we don’t. Our goal is to make this website a Safe Space for as many people as possible (such as by listing possible trigger warnings on stories) and to build a supportive, positive community. When you come to our website, leave your intolerance at the door.
Who We Are
The current RA staff looks like this:
Sean McNeil, Creative Director
Sean got his start writing for an audience with the science fiction and fantasy author’s club Dragon’s Pen back in 2003 and hasn’t stopped since. He and his partner live in Seattle with their cats Kershach and Drannor.
Ann K. McArtor, Managing Editor
Ann has, over the last two decades, run and participated in many large scale stories for creative audiences, including as a moderator for White Wolf Publishing’s official online RPG, New Bremen. She got her BA in Classical art history at the University of Washington, where she met Sean McNeil at the science-fiction and fantasy writing club, Dragon’s Pen. Later, she met Mike McArtor at a writer’s conference. She hasn’t been able to get rid of either since.
Dora Wang, Art Director
Dora has been a fan of interactive storytelling since falling in love with comic books at an impressionable young age, and later on getting sucked into the world of tabletop RPGs. Also a graduate of the Dragon’s Pen spectulative fiction writing club, Dora now lives in Seattle with her partner Sean and their two cats.
Rommel Degracia, Technical Lead
Rommel was an Informatics major and Music minor graduate from the University of Washington in 2003. From there he has gone on to work with companies such as Primate Games as a composer/sound engineer and The Boeing Company as a web developer and programmer. He currently fills his days with stuff such as video games, music composition, silly programming projects and nerding out at home with his wife about D&D and together pondering the puzzles of the universe such as if they should invest in the newest videogame consoles.
Mike McArtor, Storyteller
For the past decade or so, Mike has worked as an editor for several companies on a variety of publications, largely related to various games. He is probably best known for his work on Dragon magazine. Mike is also an award-winning short-story writer, but don’t remind him of that or else he gets a big head. :3 In addition to his editorial day job and column for RA, Mike also contributes to Story Papers, maintains a rather undisciplined private blog, and takes photos.
Special Thanks
In addition to us and our supportive loved ones, RA also has relied on the expert skills of the following individuals. We couldn’t have gotten even this far without help from these fine folks. Thank you all! :)
Kickstarter Supporters
Everyone who supported our recently concluded Kickstarter campaign is a rock star in our book. Thank you everyone for showing your support and giving us a chance to buy some art. ;)
Tammy Vince Cruz & Rachelle Abellar
The layouts for all of our PDFs were done by the GeekGirlCon design staff of Tammy Vince Cruz and Rachelle Abellar. We think they nailed the feel of the Ingressa and we hope their awesome designs help set the mood of the setting. Thanks Tammy and Rachelle for making our documents look great!
Jessica Eggerth
The first sketches of the Ingressaverse were done by Jessica back when Mike was just going to post some illustrated stories (months before it became the Ingressaverse). Jessica is now working with Mike to bring to life those stories for which she originally did sketches.
Jeremy Golembiewski
Golembiewski helped us get RA up and running and is one of the cofounders of the community. He is currently working on universe design and expansion.
Chris “Gigz” Hantzmon
As an RA-community cofounder, Dragon contributor, long-time Magic: The Gathering tournament player, and someone more than willing to disagree with Mike, gigz is a perfect fit as developer for our game-related releases.
Drew Pocza
Many of our logos and design elements were done by Drew. Check out his homepage at pocza.com.
Anne Trent
Our beautiful website was built by talented web designer Anne Trent.
Dan Woo
In addition to acting as Royal Archivist’s attorney, Dan has been extremely helpful as a mentor, providing several hours of advice and assistance without charge. His homepage is at dwooiplaw.com and his Avvo page is here.
Amazon Affiliate
Royal Archivist Publishing is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.
