I am opening a call for Celani and coders. Because these calls are sometimes a matter of routine, I want to give a few definitions.

Celani -- Helpers who give up their regular characters to volunteer and contribute to Aetolia's building and roleplay. From an in-character perspective, Celani do not exist, and that can be isolating for a while. After a few months of training and a few small projects, Celani may adopt one of the God roles that interact with players. Sometimes it takes longer than a few months, and that's okay, too! Celani are expected to build areas, describe mobs, write simple scripts, and participate in roleplay through NPCs during their learning process.

Coders -- Like Celani, these helpers give up their regular characters to volunteer. However, they go through a much quicker building tutorial and are not expected to roleplay. They do not often adopt godroles, and interact with the playerbase infrequently. They are expected to have programming experience or formal education, and go through a detailed training process.

While the positions are strictly volunteer, do not discount the possibility for advancement or outside benefits. I myself started on Aetolia as a volunteer coder around 2009, then fell off the radar when life got in the way. I went through the more formal Celani process on Imperian in late 2011, and I was hired as an Assistant Producer here in 2013. IRE volunteers have gone on to awesome careers with game development companies (such as Blizzard), creative endeavors (such as Wizards of the Coast), and even boring old button-up business. As your Producer, I can serve as a reliable professional reference in a variety of job fields.

With this new crop of Celani, I'm looking to make a few changes to how Aetolia's volunteers interact with the game, and I want you to be prepared for those. These ideas are based on feedback from our awesome current volunteers and the successes we've had on Achaea. Some include:

+ You will be expected to keep your role as a volunteer confidential. Of course, you will continue to talk to your Aetolia friends OOC, but it's important that you leave your volunteer spot out of it. This is in large part to protect you guys, as it's a big source of burnout. Without fail, knowing you're a volunteer encourages people to pump you for information or try to get an inside line on what's happening in the Pools. It only takes a few Skype or Discord rants from a slighted player to regret letting them into that part of your life.

+ In a similar vein, you will be expected to sign a non-disclosure agreement. This affirms that the work you do as a volunteer doesn't entitle you to payment or intellectual property rights, and gives us a clear recourse if we find you're leaking information. Maintaining the integrity of our plans for the future has been a big challenge on Aetolia for a variety of reasons, and it's crucial that we do better.

+ You're going to contribute to gamewide projects in addition to pursuing your own passions. It's my sincere hope that you'll find something about Aetolia that sparks your interest and creativity, but volunteers should not expect to spend time with the parts of the game they enjoyed as mortals. One of the most helpful components of telling a good story is a little distance from your familiar surroundings.

Any volunteer applicant should include the following in an email to oleis@aetolia.com :
+ Legal name
+ Date of birth (must be 18 or older)
+ All characters on Aetolia
+ Why you're interested in volunteering.
+ How much time you'd be able to devote to Aetolia per week. I understand that this is flexible and based on your real-life demands! No commitment is too small, so be as honest as possible.

Celani applicants should include:
+ These 2 room descriptions (length as you see fit): a calm beach; the ruins of a village hall after a powerful explosion.
+ These 2 NPC descriptions (appearance, examined, enter, leave, corpse): a burly barhand; a sour-faced Imp cobbler.
+ What you consider to be Aetolia's biggest strength.
+ What you consider to be Aetolia's most glaring problem.

Coder applicants should include:
+ Programming experience, in and out of games.
+ Familiar languages.
+ Any *completed* projects publicly available, whether as lead dev or contributor.
+ Description of combat experience in IRE
+ If you could change anything with the wave of a magic wand, what would it be?

I will be closing applications 10th Feb. Each applicant will hear from me personally one way or another. I speak for myself, Razmael, Hadrak, Keroc, and all of our awesome volunteers when I say that I can't wait to work with you. 2017 is going to be a massive year for Aetolia.

Penned by my hand on Tisday, the 16th of Variach, in the year 464 MA.