The opening account
About
A fully synced Skyrim, under the stars of Mundus.
About I
A Shared Province
A persistent multiplayer world.
Aurbis will soon begin Open Beta with a text-only canon heavy roleplay server with invite-only access codes. When the gamemode nears release, we will begin a whitelist process. A premium voice chat server will follow soon after.
We have successfully synced the entire province of Skyrim on a shared world clock starting at Morndas, the 17th of Last Seed, in the year 4E 201. By syncing nearly all vanilla gameplay and adding some of our features and algorithms where necessary, we are close to making combat, skills, survival, professions, economy, leadership, factions, families, NPCs, animals, mounts, enemies, and quests fully available to all players.
While work on the gamemode continues, the daunting questions have to be asked: What can we achieve if we truly work together to build a world? What is necessary to make this work at scale? These are monumental questions when you begin to consider what the Elder Scrolls and Skyrim have to offer.
The current goal is to design the gamemode for everyone's character to find a role in a living province with real functioning survival, economy, politics, and warfare. While the gamemode is nearly complete on that front, the community is not. Skyrim is an ancient province of a grand Empire and we want to simulate that properly.
We hope to integrate qualified groups and individuals as existing "Lore Artifacts" in Skyrim on Aurbis. You'll have to post a public application and we'll let the community decide on seeding the major factions and holdings. The public whitelist server will have the same vision but operate with more strict and organized administration.
We will not dictate the world to you. We hope the players will set the standard and build the world piece by piece. This server will be an experiment in chaos and order and Aurbis is the perfect title for it: "The Gray Maybe" for nobody knows if it will stand the test of time.
About II
The World Itself
The challenge ahead.
The technology has not been lacking for a server like this to exist. The problem lies in the world itself. This is a more complex, more dynamic world than anything any modern roleplay game has to offer, and not because of features we built, but because of the richness of the Elder Scrolls world and the legendary games that influenced us all.
Think of the systems and governance in a modern roleplay game, there are potentially 6 avenues of gameplay and authority: a cop, a gangster, a doctor, a lawyer, an admin, or a citizen. In the Elder Scrolls universe there exist thousands of potential roles and experiences. Hundreds for every race, combat, and skill class, hundreds for factions and holdings, hundreds for resources and crafting, hundreds for every supernatural aspect and beyond.
Who can claim to conceptualize or maintain a mortal plane like Mundus? Who can claim to have the knowledge and authority to govern an Empire consisting of 10 proud and ancient races, Jarls and High Kings, witches and wizards, zealous religions and cults, dragons, werewolves, vampires, and nearly every other fantasy you can conceive of? Anyone who has scrambled and attempted this hastily will almost certainly only lead to disappointment and frustration, if not complete implosion. The only real option is to build something together that gives everyone the chance to achieve their dreams.
You can make Skyrim an arcade, a fun theme for your own gamemode, but people can play any game for that experience. What players truly want is immersion and significance. A thousand MMOs and roleplay servers have come and gone but your best gaming memory comes from a foggy morning in 2012 embodying your favourite Skyrim character and thinking "I wish this was multiplayer."
A living, breathing world where they have the opportunity to find the role that suits them and not be shuffled through weak and broken systems. A place in a world for everyone with every interest and every skill set under the stars: The Warrior, The Mage, The Lord, The Lady, The Lover, The Thief, The Serpent, The Shadow, The Steed, The Tower, The Atronach, The Apprentice.
About III
Factions and Public Administration
Cohorts, factions, succession, and public administration.
We have designed a public House/Clan/Family system called Cohorts which is available to everyone. We have designed factions with 5 base hard-coded succession systems with automatic cadence for disbandment. We have designed Holding, Nobility and Guard faction systems with their own internal features. We have designed the canonical Skyrim factions with their own unique features and massive room for updates and expansions. We have designed three functional admin controlled public institutions that will maintain and administrate the world.
Cohorts can be created in-game by any group of 3+ players. These Cohorts will be the foundation of the families, guilds and factions that end up forming our world. Faction and holding leadership positions will often be decided on a Cohort basis and not an individual one. We want to see real, functional blocs form and receive the rewards they earn. Existing groups can migrate to Aurbis and establish themselves as a collective, and even integrate themselves with our world and lore via the Lore Artifact system.
The canonical Elder Scrolls factions which have direct ports to our gamemode are: The Companions, College of Winterhold, Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood, Bards College, Imperial Legion, Stormcloaks, Thalmor, The Blades, and The Vampire Lords. Each are built meticulously to integrate their vanilla features and integrate custom ones that will be discovered in-character. Other factions may be created over time as they become integrated into the world, often formed from coalitions of Cohorts.
There also exist Public Factions. Temple Factions of Priests and Priestesses of the Temples of the Divines, whose duty it is to rescue and tend to the wounded of body and spirit. Stable Factions to buy, sell, and maintain mounts and pets. Holding factions will maintain their own public affairs and manage businesses and properties within that holding. Guard factions are connected to Holdings and have their own ability to detain, arrest, and place bounties.
These are functions that we will ultimately all integrate into the gamemode as advanced systems in ways that no other MMO or roleplay server has. The idea is to build the foundation for something we can all enjoy fairly and freely. The admin team will have to seed the original holdings/factions and stimulate the environment with the goal of turning Skyrim into the grand Imperial province it is.
Staff in the server will operate through in-character admin-controlled civic institutions. Server administration will be done publicly through the Greybeards, the East Empire Company, the College of Winterhold, and The Grand Moot. This allows us to make acceptable authoritative statements on the state and direction of the server while remaining consistent and in-character. Admins will not be "playing" these characters, they are our version of admin duty.