If you're a member of the Santharian Dream and would like to add stuff to our People section, please post in the People section of the Santharian Development Message Board. People will then comment on your new addition and if the entry is approved it will eventually move to the site in one of the coming updates.

However, in order to design people, whether they are kings, poets, mages, philosophers, heroes etc. for the Santharian Compendium the following necessary sections need to be covered. If you still aren't sure what you should put in certain sections, please read through some entries first and see how others have done their entries.

GENERAL RULES

• How to write names
  If you describe something, always write the first letter of the thing/being and in this case the person's full name including a possible title or surname in capitalized form (e.g. "Thar the Great", "King Redbeard", "Captain Dimeye Beringstin") throughout the entry. On the other hand always use lowercase letters if you mention other things/beings which are mentioned within the entry ("dragonfly", "ranlesh" or "black rose").

• Describe everything in "medieval" form
  Always remember that words like "vitamins", "chemicals", "genes", "fossils" etc. usually are unknown terminology to medieval researchers. So keep away from these things, and also don't try to explain everything in detail what researchers of the 20th century have found out. Researchers of the Middle Ages weren't really "scientists", but mainly investigated what they could see, watch and thus describe. We have alchemists in the "medieval" world of Santharia, no chemists, which is an important difference, as alchemists are still lacking the profound background chemists of nowadays have.
  
  In the same respect I guess we can't emphasize enough that though evolution and belief don't necessarily have to contradict each other in our world of today, it was impossible to think of such things 1000 years ago. Especially in a fantasy world like ours I think that we should forget about evolution in the Darwinistic sense completely. We have other explanations why the original landmass split into various parts (Gods/War of the Chosen) and a typical evolutionary theory doesn't fit too well to our mythical concepts.

• Keep it as Santharian as possible
  Also try to make your people as unique "Santharian" as possible. Try to use names which represent the culture they come from, not simply random, exchangeable names. Also if you describe a person there should be a reason why this man or woman got his/her own entry in the Compendium, so try to make clear why this person has become such a celebrity.
   

PEOPLE SPECIFIC RULES

• Basic Overview of the Person
  Give a general overview on the person on top. When you look at this overview you should see at once
  
  - who this person is/was
  - what he/she did
  - where this all happened
  - and why there is a Compendium entry for this person
  
  Important: Don't forget the exact life dates in this section (e.g. 456 b.S.-398 b.S.)!

• Appearance (Optional)
  Please give a description of the person. The more accurate the better, as this may also help artists to draw a good pic from this information later on. A description of a persons's appearance is not always necessary, depending on the type of person you want to describe in the entry.

• Personality (Optional)
  Add all personality traits of a person here, which you deem important to be included in the entry. Mention whether this person has a humorous character, is stern, determined or hot-tempered - or everything at the same time. What does he/she do, like? - Whatever helps to define the individuality of the person should be put in here. Like the Appearance section this section is not always necessary, depending on the type of person you want to describe. However, usually a Personality or Appearance section often is very helpful to have.

• Biography
  Write in detail where the person grew up, which education he/she got etc. Just mention all important incidents in the persons life, and as often as possible: Try to add dates which make the entry more accurate from the historical point of view. You don't really need to go into all the exact details - at least the entry should also be an interesting read, eh?
  
  Mandatory as well to be included: What is very important is that you add short captions in front of paragraphs (if possible with dates), whenever you move on to a new event in the person's life.
  
  Examples:
  
  1598 - Mysterious Birth. Dalmac was conceived and born in the little town of Chaun, on the edge of the Vontron Forest (near the Ximaxian peninsula, just north-west of Horth), to a wealthy farmer, Martyn Brandivere, and his wisewoman wife, Jennet. etc.
  
  1605 - Dalmac's Childhood. Thanks to Jennet’s written account, and the reminiscences of various ancient wisewife cronies of hers, we have some notes on Dalmac’s earliest days. etc.
  
  This way the reader can skim through the entry and find information he/she seeks much easier by looking at the captions only. The more meaningful the paragraph captions, the better the organizarion and the more efficiently a reader can retrieve information.

• Importance
  At the final section of the entry you can/should try to talk a bit about the general importance of the celebrity, e.g. if you describe a king you can describe how his people liked him, which impact all the things he did were for later generations he did, if there exist some kind of lore or anecdotes etc.

• Picture (optional)
  Also try to find a pic perhaps for the person you describe in the Resources Forum. You can also go to the Resources Forum first of course, decide that a certain pic would make a good entry and start your entry according to the pic (but you should check back first on the Forum if the pic isn't already reserved for someone else).

If you follow these guidelines I'm sure developing People is much easier and will produce better results. - Happy developing!