The Auraxis Literary Awards. Your chance to write new backstory or lore for Planetside 2 for 2000 SC

Dear Auraxians,

Do you think you could write the lore behind the bases, outfits, weapons, vehicles or factions we see in game? Do you feel that you could add depth to the Planetside 2 backstory? Well now here’s your chance to contribute your ideas and stories to the community.

The long-awaited Auraxis Literary Awards are here! A Planetside 2 Lore competition with four prizes of 2,000 SC up for grabs for the best additions to the backstory, as voted for by the community.

Head to http://lorecompetition.talesfromauraxis.com, or send an email to auraxislore@gmail.com to submit an entry between 1st and 30th April, following the guidelines below. Voting will take place between 1st and 14th May. All the rules for voting and winning are also below.

Good luck to all entrants, and if you have any questions about the entry procedure or voting then please let us (myself or Gaalsien) know!

NOTE: You can also check out the competition website to see examples of how the stories will appear on the site and the voting form. Also, you can read the rules there.

Submitting a story

1 - The competition has four categories for submissions - New Conglomerate, Terran Republic, Vanu Sovereignty, and Neutral. Writers may submit up to four stories, one for each category. Submissions should be emailed to auraxislore@gmail.com, or submitted directly on the website http://lorecompetition.talesfromauraxis.com using the 'Submit an entry' option (top menu). All submissions should contain your Planetside 2 official forum name and the title and category of the submission, e.g. ‘Sonnyjimmy, The Eternal Soldier, Terran Republic’.

- Faction-specific submissions: Write a story, history, description or tale from the battlefield that adds to the background lore for a faction in Planetside 2 (i.e. the New Conglomerate, the Terran Republic, or the Vanu Sovereignty). Your entry could involve anything that adds to the history or background of the faction: e.g. any weapon, vehicle, or outfit that belongs to the faction, or any battle or event that that the faction has been involved in.

- Neutral submissions: Write a story, history, description or tale from the battlefield that adds to the background lore for Auraxis, humanity in general, or any neutral organizations (e.g. Nanite Systems) present in Planetside 2.

2 - Submissions should be <5000 words and in English only (we plan to run competitions for other languages in the future, however we only have the resources to do one at a time). In addition to the story, you can prepare an excerpt (150 character max.) that will be displayed on the home page of the competition website when your story is in view. If you don't wish to do this, the excerpt will be the first 150 characters of your story instead.

3 - Please do not resubmit a story previously submitted to the Prosieben War Stories' competition. If you would like to submit a story previously posted elsewhere, please include proof that you are its original author, or you may be exempt from the competition. Example of adequate proof: if you posted the story on one of the Planetside 2 forums, send us a message through the same account that you used to first post the story.

4 - Writers have from April 1st to April 30th to enter submissions.

5 - All submissions will be hosted on http://lorecompetition.talesfromauraxis.com during and following the competition. If you would like your story to not be hosted following the competition, feel free to state this via email.

Community voting and choosing a winner

6 - Winners. Of the submitted entries, one winner will be chosen from each category by community voting, which will take place at http://lorecompetition.talesfromauraxis.com, and will commence on May 1st and conclude May 14th.

7 - Voting procedure - at the bottom of each post is a rating form. You are required to enter your Planetside 2 forum name and your rating of the story in three different categories: style, content and fits into current lore. These are weighted out of 10, 10 and 3 respectively to give a total score of 23. These results are converted into a score out of ten ((total score / 23) * 10), and will be displayed on the leaderboard page of the site.

- Style: is the story well written in an engaging, entertaining or interesting way?

- Content: does the story add interesting concepts to the official lore? Does it give the Planetside 2 backstory greater depth?

- Fits into current lore: does the story match with the official lore stories posted by SOE? The 'official' lore, as considered by this competition, is published in full on the following two pages:

http://wiki.planetside-universe.com/ps/Lore_Archive

http://wiki.planetside-universe.com/ps/Lore

Lore or writing from any other source than these two pages is not considered to be official lore.

- Comments to author: If you have any additional comments to give personally and anonymously to the author then please write them here. It may be interesting to give constructive advice, good writing advice, or well-thought out opinions about the story, as the authors will choose the 'best voter' in a subsequent mini-competition (see 11.) following the end of the main lore writing contest, where you too could win a prize. Voters who do not wish their rating to be entered into this competition can simply untick the 'Enter this rating into the 'best voter'' box at the time of voting. Please see point 11 for more details.

8 - Voting is intended to be as fair as possible. We have made several rules to eliminate duplicate and unfair voting, described below:

- Authors cannot vote for their own story, or other stories within the same category that they have entered.

- Asking others to vote up your submission or vote down other submissions will lead to exclusion from the competition.

- Official Planetside 2 forum name - Voters are asked to give their official Planetside 2 forum display name to vote. This is done to ensure that votes are tied to a genuine person, and that we don't get multiple votes from the same person for the same story. If we do not find a valid name connected to a vote in the Planetside 2 official forums database then the vote will be rejected, so be careful to spell your name correctly! Your name will not be shared at any point to anyone other than the competition organisers (Sonnyjimmy and Gaalsien), and the data will be deleted following the end of the competition. If you win the 'best voter' competition (see 11.), the forum name given will be contacted via the official forums to receive their prize.

- One vote for each story per IP address - the IP addresses of voters are noted at the time of submission. This is also to ensure that we don't get multiple votes from the same IP. The IP addresses will not be shared at any point to anyone other than the competition organisers (Sonnyjimmy and Gaalsien), and they will be following the end of the competition.

9 - Winning - The story with the highest average total rating from all four voting categories will be declared the overall winner. In the unlikely event of a draw, the story with the most votes will win.

10 - Prizes. The winner of each category will receive a SOE station cash code worth 2,000 SC. Prizes will be emailed to the address from which the submission was sent.

Best voter competition

11 - Every voter's name will be anonymised (i.e. their IP removed and name replaced with the number 1, 2 etc.), and their 'comments to the author' will be sent to the relevant author at the end of the competition. For the 'best voter' competition, each author will choose their favourite anonymised voter from all of those who voted for their story.

The voter who is selected by the greatest number of authors will win a SOE station cash code worth 2,000 SC. In the event of a draw, the voter who rated the greatest number of submitted stories will win. If that doesn't get a winner, then the voter who wrote the most overall characters in the 'comments to author' boxes will win.

Suddenly, nanites...

That's a good start

This is very cool! Can't wait to wee what stories people come up with!

Not thinking of writing one yourself ?

Not much of a writer myself. I do love a good read though!

I'll definitely enter this, had some ideas detailing civilian life on auraxis just as war was breaking out that could make an interesting story.

The complete lack of civilian presence in game always bugged me a bit.

Definitely intend to do this. I've had some theories on ESF mechanics for a while now

I bet this will produce better lore than the official lore for this game, which was written by some famous comic book writer. Man, that stuff is terrible.

Yep, that's what we're hoping. I know there are a number of great writers out there in the community. We'll also try and nag SOE to allow the winners of this competition to have some place on the official PS 2 site, so the best lore can live on for years to come .

Sonny

It was a dark and stormy night

Thumbs up for writer's block.

Apologies for the forced bump (no edit available after 30 minutes, bah):

IMPORTANT EDIT TO RULES 25-03-14: After feedback, we've decided to remove the 5,000 word limit to the entries. Write them as long as you like! But keep in mind it's a community voting competition, so think of how much people will want to read .

Nah, it's more of a lack of immersion.
PS2 has never really tried to generate suspension of disbelief; or even called back to the lore.

I don't understand how what you're saying has anything to do with what I said. I mentioned the original lore was badly written, and you bring up immersion. What?

I'm too lazy for this. I will write 3 pages now brb

And then the NC mooned both the Republic Elmo's and the Vanu Barney's.

And it was good.

The Tyranids invaded and became the 4th faction...

I would spend all my time on that continent.

For months, the battle of the crown raged with no end in sight.

As the three immortal armies clashed, their combined might taught the meaning of obliteration to the once peaceful summit. The ground was blackened and torn up, what little vegetation was annihilated, and the Nanite Systems installation that had originally been located on the top was reduced to a charred heap of bent metal and smoldering ruins.
The defenders had long since been forced to dig down in the hill itself as all cover was annihilated and the summit had been turned into a wasteland, which over the first two months had shrunk by two meters from the constant bombardment.

A thick smog had formed over the notorious crown, kept alive and constantly fed by the continuous and never-ending shells that mercilessly hammered the hill day and night, and the guns of the fighting soldiers they launched yet another ill fated attack.

The lone road to the top of the summit was littered with a sea of charred vehicle wreckages blocking the path. The soil was contaminated by thousands of bodies in varying states of decay, lying in pools of spent shell casings that littered the hillside that had been exhumed by the powerful explosions.
Any attacking force had to plow through the wrecks of the previous attack force to clear the road, and with each attack they left their own mark on the Crown by contributing to the ever rising pile of bodies and charred vehicles that represented the largest graveyard on Auraxis.


That's just my idea of the crown if the game's engine was a little more sophisticated