Project Cruentus

Project Cruentus is a community-wide project on the Star Wars Fanon Wiki started by the user "Darth tom." Project Cruentus began as a part of the Completely Unofficial Star Wars Fanon Newsletter, where the participating users invited others to participate and tossed around ideas revolving around one central idea, the Cruentusian War.

Synopsis
Main synopsis:
 * It's 24,299 BBY; the Rakatan Infinite Empire was crippled by the disease that swept through their species, and the Empire is in dissarray. The slaves and species that were under the command of the cruel Rakatans have risen up, and the Rakatans are in full retreat back to Lehon, leaving behind only a few factions to try and guard their rear and, if possible, take back the Infinite Empire. The slaves have formed themselves into their previous species, and returned to their home planets, but disorder and havoc wreak their way through the galaxy. With no order to rule, crime and disorder is abundant. Yet from the ruins of the Infinite Empire and from the havoc that is the known galaxy rise warlords, battling for command of the Infinite Empire's former Empire. These warlords fight across the galaxy, starting what is known as the Cruentusian War...

Participants

 * Arav the Undersith
 * Darth Nyne
 * Darth tom
 * Gnosis is knowledge
 * Joe "Obi maul12" Butler
 * Troyb
 * Trak Nar
 * Unit 8311

Original conception
The original conception for the idea of Project Cruentus came to the founder, Darth tom, during the month of April 2008. After browsing through the previous partners of Star Wars Fanon, Halo Fanon, a wiki that Darth tom still professes disdain for, yet one that he feels has potential. Seeing the way that the whole community was brought together by such Projects, in large, collaborative works, he decided that Star Wars Fanon would benefit from one, yet with improvements from the areas in which Darth tom felt that Halo Fanon had made errors in organizational areas.

Originally expecting disdain from other users at the original idea being conceived after inspiration from Halo Fanon, a wiki Star Wars Fanon no longer holds good relationships with,, Darth tom proceeded to talk to Brandon Rhea, the editor of CUSWFN at that time and a administrator also, on Windows Live Messenger, where he asked whether such a Project would infringe on any Star Wars Fanon policies. When the answer was no, Darth tom proceeded to unveil the Project in the ninth edition of CUSWFN, and provided a place where users could sign up for the Project, before it was made.

The first user to sign up was Joe "Obi maul12" Butler, who has been reading through the edition before its release, and so a proposal for a Project Cruentus Portal was made in the consensus track forum. Although the proposal failed Proposal failure, Victor "Squishy Vic" Dorantes suggested a plain forum be made in the consensus track, and the forum was made in order for the participants to discuss collaborations, matters of time issues and such.

Soon after, such users as Arav the Undersith, Victor Dorantes and Unit 8311 signed up for the Project, allowing the forum to start in use, Arav the Undersith, originally planning to merely submit ideas, later changed his mind and accepted the idea of becoming a writer, As ideas began to grow, Troyb signed up, planning to mainly work with images and a little on the article side As the Project developed, articles began to be discussed and, subsequently, written, the Project grew somewhat, before taking a blow from the resignation of Victor Dorantes, who professed to being unable to ‘work like this’.

Although Victor Dorantes, the user with the most featured and good articles at that time, left the Project, the Project still continued, despite only Unit 8311 having a featured article to his name at that time. However, the Project then later faced the resignation of Arav the Undersith, although he was later persuaded to stay. which meant that the forum still retained the very active users it had at that time. Arav the Undersith began work on battles between the smaller factions, whilst Unit 8311 and Darth tom started planning bigger battles between the Srav Federation and Necasian Military, on planets such as and, leading to articles such as the Battle of Dagobah (Cruentusian War) and the Battle of Raxus Prime (Cruentusian War).

Although ideas relating to being in the war were turned down, after advice from Brandon Rhea, the Project maintained many of the factions it held, with new ones coming into existence, such as the Lost Ones of Darth mavoc, and the Savi Alliance of Joe Butler. Trak Nar became a participant soon after, with her intentions being to help with the non writing side of things, with spell checking and image drawing,, and she was soon after asked by Darth tom to draw an image of a Zayre, and was praised by many for her work when she showed how the ideas for it were coming along, , whilst the Lost Ones, the only faction, were introduced by Darth mavoc.

Soon afterwards, the Battle of Cul-Huq (Cruentusian War) article was started, the first good article of Project Cruentus, as part of a collaboration between Darth tom and Unit 8311. , and ideas for each faction to have a powerful weapon were made, with such weapons as the Tsarka Bomb being decided upon. The idea for many field commanders, such as Renard Curl for the Necasian Military, was also proposed by Unit 8311, and accepted by the community.

Although Xwing327 joined the Project, meaning to create a faction of, although his faction idea was later deleted at his own request, leading to some members believing he’d left the Project. When Darth tom eventually closed the Project, meaning all entrants had to apply for entry, and the Project members would discuss their idea on a case by case basis, the Project had ten participants, many more than Darth tom had originally imagined would be interested.

Project targets
The original aims of the Project, as stated by Darth tom in the ninth edition of CUSWFN, consisted of only four, relatively simple, aims, the first one being to create a minimum of three featured articles, in order to make the Project appear professional and of good quality, and so that the new era Darth tom had aimed to create would have its own share of featured articles. Although he set the bar at just three featured articles, he felt that more featured articles could be gained, six or over if a lot of effort from many Project members was put in, as had been done previously to make the first featured article of Project Cruentus.

The second aim of the Project was to create a new ‘extensive new and intriguing era’ to occur before the events of the, just after the collapse of the Rakatan , when the galaxy would be in turmoil. The aim was to create a professional era of the same calibre as some of the eras on, the "Star Wars" canon wiki, and one that a lot of the users on "Star Wars" Fanon also contribute to. As this would be considered a hard challenge by many, Darth tom hoped to come somewhere near to this aim, and doubted that the Project would actually fulfill it, although he hoped that it would.

The third aim was to build a good relationship between users, something that Darth tom felt was lacking in areas of "Star Wars" Fanon. Having been a member of the Star Wars Role Play site, Darth tom had experienced the ‘life’ of a user on there, and found the atmosphere to be much more friendly and community based than on "Star Wars" Fanon. Although he knew they were completely different things, he felt that a better relationship between users could be built up in such a way as this, and set about it by making this a Project aim. He felt that this was the most easily attainable of the first three Project aims, as it didn’t rely on the ability to write, but rather the ability to connect with other users.

The fourth, and final, aim, as specified by Darth tom in the ninth edition of CUSWFN, was that the participants would ‘enjoy themselves’, something that Darth tom stated in a way that wasn’t completely serious, but in a way that he hoped would come true all the same. He had designed the Project to be a fun experience, and not just a way to attain the other aims specified above, although they were aims. This aim tied in with the third aim, as enjoyment would, in his opinion, bring about a stronger relationship between the various users of "Star Wars" Fanon. Although stated tongue in cheek, Darth tom aimed for this to be an attainable feat nonetheless, and believed this aim to be the most attainable one of all four.

Development
After Project Cruentus was first announced and created as a Forum in the consensus track, the obvious issues regarding development soon presented themselves, such as developing continuity and such. Although a category for articles that were a part of Project Cruentus, there would always be matters of continuity that would hold problems. So, in answer to this, Darth tom checked up on the articles in that particular category regularly, and also encouraged participants of the Project to regularly use the Forum to discuss matters of continuity. Because of this, users had an easy way of discussing continuity, and Darth tom soon discovered that the Forum negated many of the obvious continuity issues there.

In terms of collaborations, the Forum was also designed to discuss matters of collaborations between authors too, so that the collaborations would be able to be seen by all of the Project Cruentus participants, in an organized manner, and not be restricted to talk pages, as that would force many members to trawl through many talk pages, something Darth tom felt would be detrimental to the fourth aim of the Project. Collaborations were merely proposed in the Forums as a query of whether one author would be interested in collaborating with another, and then the collaboration itself was discussed. Darth tom, Unit 8311, Arav the Undersith and Darth Nyne, amongst others, made full use of this, collaborating upon such articles as the Skirmish at Simiyar (Cruentusian War) and the Battle of Kothlis (Cruentusian War).

In terms of organizing the factions and their battles, Darth tom was inspired by the way that the "Star Wars" RP site, a partner of "Star Wars" Fanon at that time, had ‘faction leaders’ for the particular factions role played on the boards their. Although Darth tom was careful to make sure that Role Playing was kept strictly out of Project Cruentus, the inspiration gave him the idea to make each user ‘in charge’ of a faction, such as Darth tom himself being head of the Zayre and Necasian Military, Unit 8311 the Srav Federation and such. This allowed users to keep the factions as one idea, rather than the jumbled ideas of many users, and a way that made collaboration much easier, as it allowed battle articles to be a collaboration between just two people.

Each collaboration article then went through a developmental stage in the Forum, between the two authors, that went through such ideas as deciding upon a name, a discussion that other participants could give their input on, although the final decision remained with the authors themselves. The actual content of the article would then be discussed between the authors, such as the outcome, the different stages and the commanders of the battle, before the article itself was started. Changes to the article were then confined to the forum, and users used it to tell other users in the same collaboration as them that the articles they were collaborating on could do with some input from them, allowing a better, more organized, collaborative approach.

Behind the Scenes
The actual article about Project Cruentus was originally a small article, until Atarumaster88 requested that Darth tom expand it, to allow him to gain information for one of his many Projects, and one that he was undertaking at that time.