Dara Brae Third Anniversary - June 6, 2017

Today (June 6, 2017) is the Third year anniversary of the formation of Dara Brae!

Three years ago we purchased (06/06/2014 at 21:47:42) our Holdfast that we would call home.

Dara Brae was the fourth Player Owned Town introduced into Novia and the first with the Island template. I am honored to of been part of the creation of the island template. If you look at the bottom part of the map - that was my idea. From the tall mountain, a perfect spot for a Ring of Stones, to the smaller connected island by a bridge. Plus the area that stretches two city lots long.

Our Celtic themed holdfast is a celebration of Celtic-Medieval English, Scottish, and Irish in the world of Novia, brought by a few Outlanders. This culture is exciting to me and I want to share as much of it with you in the few ways I can.

Over the last three years we hosted the Welcome Quest here a few times, re-did many events (Farmers Market, Irish Ceilli) and held two Advanced Dungeons and Dragons events where other citizens used dice in real life to defeat monsters and disarm traps, the Archaeology events in the discovery of Dara Brae, which led to an event of planting a tree seed that our Druids helped grow into a Druid Tree home. Ultimately. we opened a Nature Reserve that highlights real world Skara Brae myths while intertwining Ultima Skara Brae stories.

Once of my favorite event stories was the spreading the Yew tree splices from our large Yew Tree on Dara Brae. Lore was created that an ancient manuscript was found on Dara Brae that outlined the survival and fulfilled by anyone buying a Yew tree in the add on store. I don't see any of that money, but each purchase helps the game grow and get finished. Something I wanted that was not in the game, the Yew Tree, became a reality due to our town. That is special to me and the rest of the Dara Brae citizens.

I want to thank our citizens for helping shape our town and a big thank you to the SotA community for embracing our vision into the world we all love, New Britannia.

What happened early on and where our name came from:

This small holdfast would quickly escalate to something that we would implement as soon as possible in Release 6 on June 26th, 2014 in-game in the temporary home of NorthShire. We felt that establishing our town sooner would help us test housing concepts so we would know when we had our planning meetings with Portalarium we would be ready.

Things we tried include:

- Farmers Market with player-to-player trading of items. We found out gold was not able to be traded then. Plus Lord British was present to participate in this concept during a Welcome Quest.

- The Irish Ceili. A gathering where the storyteller would share their stories to a group of friends from a central chair up front. Even on a village lot this worked out. The aether radio helped bring voice to our stories.

- Standing Stones. On a village lot there is not a lot of space to put tables and chairs for meetings. Good for group gatherings.

- Druid Tree Home. This worked out as a good "base of operations" with lots of space around it for crafting tables and other items. We found you could "section off" areas with wooden wall barriers to "make rooms".

Originally I would of selected a NPC town like everyone else but when this opportunity came along I had to grab it to establish an area that would be perfect for the stories I wanted to tell within the SotA universe. The stories I like to tell relate to two things that I hold dear to my heart: Irish and Scottish Celtic heritage, and the King Arthur stories of Medieval England. Everyone who was part of the group agreed that a Celtic town would be good for the community.

The temporary name was "The Celtic Holdfast". This conveyed to others what it was going to contain and the size. We decided on a more permament name was needed to establish our identity. We looked at a lot of Irish, Scottish, and Celtic names. There was also something else I had visited a year earlier that had a positive impact on me...

In 2013, I had an opportunity to visit Scotland for an event. I decided that I needed to visit the village of Skara Brae as two of my favorite games from my childhood had Skara Brae in them. So I expanded this trip to include the Orkney Islands in Scotland just to see what this place was all about.

After touching and learning about the village I felt a personal connection to it's past and this made sense what part of our holdfast name had to include: Brae.

Brae is a Scottish word for a slope of a hill.

After looking and debating we decided that it should have a first part of the name. We discovered upon an Irish word that means Oak Tree, Dara.

An oak Tree on the slope of a hill. Perfect! Dara Brae was decided on.

I hope you all have had a chance to see Dara Brae and enjoyed the stories. We started in the past year to share our lore in the form of in-game books that all of you can read. We enjoy storytelling and getting others involved as much as we can. Dara Brae is now off of Kingsport in the Hidden Vale due to a new story line which involved displaced anger magic.

Are you with us?