New Rome, Maybe? Working On A Map, Sobbing In The Back Rooms-

New Rome, maybe? Working on a map, Sobbing in the back rooms-

Summary; I lie about talking about anything of substance, and am thinking about starting a companion in character blog, I’m caving on my plushie obsession, I lie about what I’m gonna post about because it’s gonna be Dakota or the Dionysus twins

I’m tired and slightly unhinged while writing this, but so far I’ve made a total of 5 maps roughly, of various designs of Camp Jupiter. I still have to actually uh, make a proper map; but then I’d have to decide what actually everything was looking like, buildings, how training actually works in CJ and where that takes place; etc, etc. anyway I’m not here to sob over that (yet- especially after I’m doing the whole ‘but what if it was more alike to the og legion??’ Shtick)

But for now I’m gonna talk a little about my concepts for and what we know about New Rome, layout, buildings, and other things based on a mix of various canon maps, actual historical records of Roman city structure, general assumption, and descriptions of New Rome (mostly that would be from SoN and MoA i think- I’ll have to go re-read the New Rome parts respectively before I begin layout work-)

HOWEVER,

I’m going to start a notebook specifically for the documentation and my thought process of the whole New Rome/Camp Jupiter/PJO-verse?? Re-imagining. And I’ll probably begin reporting back on my findings and post on the actual jumbled ideas for this because instead of working on that fun little thing where I re-imagine how the seven plot works (because that means I’d inject a extra book in there and I’d actually sob if I’d have to re-read HoO because I only finished it in August of this year and the rate at which I got through books was disproportionate, please I finished SoN in one day then it took me 2 months to finish MoA-)

But yes, New Rome New Rome- there are very certain things I’d want to settle out. Or for right now at least, before I through my self back into designing a city-

Both the Chariot racing, and Gladiator battles for war games take place in New Rome, as the respective areas for each are hosted in New Rome. I’d imagine that New Rome have their celebrity athletes inside of the modern Rome society of people that play classical Roman sports/games. I have been working with the assumption that both Camp and New Rome have some form of a ‘Forum’ area- in the most basic idea of a Forum area for Camp; I’m looking into making a good balance of how I want Camp to be made so I might change any of that- we’d just have to see.

Okay, okay, but the important things!

I might make a different blog in rp for my character Mercury (or I posted her as Calliope, but I guess she’ll never escape being named after Gods- though Mercedes or Sicily are still name options and I’m getting off topic-) just for the actual official; formatted ideas for New Rome and Camp Jupiter. I’d probably present it as ‘oh this blog is for New Legionnaires/ young citizens in New Rome waiting to join the Legion’ and would present my thoughts more coherently.

Basically here is where the goopy thinking parts of making the ideas would be; whereas over there would be where you would get the actual information (I might also finish the notion page I was working on but that one genuinely hurt my soul to repeatedly work in and on)

But I dunno; I got the idea from a separate blog that I just followed (I’ll link it after I post it so I get this right, @new-rome-historians-association the actual inspiration for the companion blog )and it seems like a fun idea, but I don’t know if people would be interested as it is purely fannon.

Anyway; I’ll get either that CJ fatal flaw PT. 2 post up finally, a Luke Castellan thing, maybe the Gods, or Octavian

ALSO IM GETTING THE WOLF PUP BUILD-A-BEAR, I CAVED; HIS NAME IS AUGUSTUS BUT WE CALL HIM GUS- ILL SHOW PICS WHEN HE ARRIVES!!

Okay, byeee :3

Talking about Piper McLean?!?!

We all know that Piper is repeatedly characterized that she is a vegetarian because of a meat factory thing- idk I haven’t read the books in a few months and I don’t want to go look at specifics,

But, I’m saying this as someone that currently at least; doesn’t like piper’s character too much, I find her boring, minorly annoying. Her personality gets a little same-ey and reading her chapters is boring- incredibly boring.

Okay finally the point; what if Piper’s clear empathy and compassion for animals extend to monsters? Am I saying make Piper a pacifist? No, at least not really. But making her much more averse and against killing monsters, that sounds interesting. The only other character that we get that has some sort of overall attachment to monsters is Octavian. And I think Piper getting this facet of character to her sounds interesting

But I don’t really talk about CHB kids; so this is new, and I will do more with them.

I’m working on the legion system for Camp Jupiter and rankings and size and all that fun stuff- it’s a lot and it’s super fun and silly-

I drew Octavian. There’s not much to it, but I tried my best :]

I live!

Aaaa- okay, I haven’t posted in.. a while. And that. Is probably because I’ve generally been a little unmotivated, I’m gonna stop making the maps for a little because they are draining and I’m not very interested in it for a moment so they can be put on the back burner. What I will be doing though, is working on the ranking revamp- it’s a (very unsurpsing) shocker that Roman military ranks are a little confusing (I’ve had to re-read some articles like 15 times and I’m gonna first try and find some diagrams that will present me with an easy place to begin branching).

But I have been halting my posting for a bit because I have been, pretty busy. Just got to quarter 2 of school, and a lot of work. We had to write a narrative so I tried out my cool character for a spin and was working on integrating my Re-imagine of CJ inside it- I got to mention Fontus so that was a pretty rad day.

And I love Thomas Jefferson JR From Magnus chase. When I read the books know that he will be the main reason I will read. Live, laugh, love TJ Jr.

But sorry- I have a lot going on. And a lot of people don’t really read this stuff for super transformative content, but I still feel a little bad for not putting things out-

Anyway, next thing that I pinky promise I’ll work on is talking about Bryce Lawerence. He’s only mentioned in BoO and I have strong opinions on him. He’s also my 6th favorite character; don’t come for me.

And maybe after that or inside it- a Michael Varus thing. Since I made my main OC directly related to him there’s no doubt that I do really like him, and I’m a little sad they like- kind of fell short with the opportunity to use him and stuff (Most of my HC are just my fabrication because we know actually nothing about him!!)

Plus here’s some art of updated (my OC) Mercury 👀,

Guys I’m making bad choices but I’m making a big collage of some Camp Jupiter characters that would be in positions of power with each other + Bryce Lawrence because for some reason he is a side character that has entrapped me, this is the layout idea

*Im going to tackle Octavian and Michael first after trying to do Jason and Reyna because the very sparse anatomy needs to be worked out for posing and I need to go sob in a hole- updated note 😎

Camp Jupiter Reimagined

(It took me the uppermost(?) of two days to write this because of school-)

In the last post I was ranting in I mentioned a lot of a project I was doing to Re-Imagine Camp Jupiter (and maybe share my re-imagining of the whole PJO concept and the characters- does that qualify as an AU? Maybe, I don’t know. But I like the world and I like being able to branch off existing concepts and make my own interpretations).

Some set dressing before I get into this; I love Camp Jupiter and the greater PJO franchise and world-building. It’s pretty well-done in my opinion, and it’s how Rome became one of my special interests (or maybe it just added to my greater Greco-Roman world interest and I just really like Rome) *But* how Camp Jupiter and New Rome is done just kind of feels a little underwhelming. It’s super cool and a great concept, and it fits. But I feel like New Rome and Camp Jupiter weren’t really thought out, just kind of happened and then we all just accepted it. Now; I’ll probably update some opinions when I read ToA (I’m currently reading the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid beforehand) but characterization doesn’t feel consistent to what is told before. There are things I don’t see happening; like an example being the legion being shrunk to 5 cohorts (Roman legions had 10). While that is for plot reasons to not make Camp and the Legion huge for reasons. We are told that Romans dislike change to the point they had a *mutiny* over a *name change* for the legion. But I have to hold my disbelief that they would *get rid of 5 cohorts*! So I decided that I would just Re-Imagine Camp Jupiter (and the Campers, and down the line PJO in general). So uh; here is some of the things I’ve defined in my brain for my re-imagination of the Camp/legion,

things, all the things,

I added back the 5 removed cohorts; HOWEVER, what I chose to do that made sense in my brain was make cohorts 6-10, *outposts* or Roman settlements around the Americas. They are mainly used in my mind for scouting, expanding the glory of the New Roman Republic (not a Empire for now, maybe a future fanfic, idk). But they’re there to scout out areas, help transport demigods across borders to the main camp, etc.

Along with that I decided they all had SETTLEMENTS (little tiny towns) that had thematic naming to it (still deciding on that)

Speaking of which; the outposts aren’t really respected; at least not how like the main 5 are respected. Sure they do important things, but no one takes them *as* seriously

They also act as reinforcements (auxiliary troops?) but I’d assume it would go; main 5 cohorts, 5 outposts, and then the veterans. In how they are called upon.

Maybe there is some conflict on the leaders (the Consuls? I think, I’m writing this while still doing research and while everything is still in the primordial soup stage) of the outposts divided on helping Octavian or if he didn’t assume power correctly and therefore wasn’t the leader of the legion.

It adds a sense of more overwhelming dread to facing Camp Jupiter in the big battle (which; I will be kind of mixing up) because in my idea it’s a bigger body of groups. We get a more ominous build-up of slowly watching and having to just hear or see in visions more cohorts (which the outposts are smaller than the main cohorts; I figure that’s also important) slowly congealing together with very shaky loyalty to Octavian. Being slightly disjointed from each other and the main cohorts.

Along with that; if I do like re-imagine HoO (which; would mostly be character work in my opinion, I don’t have *too* many qualms with the plot. I’ll probably say more when I get around to that). But if I do re-imagine and like half edit-half fanfic through the books I would love to include a Camp Jupiter POV in at least from MoA onwards, but that’s random here uhhh cohorts-

I’ve sort-of re-categorized the Cohorts (might also take some inspiration from what we know of the legions that share the same number in personality, if that makes sense?)

But each Cohort gets a sort of more defined personality to each other rather than the sort of muddled greater characterization we have for the groups in canon. (I’ll probably have another post that goes more in-depth on the ‘personalities’ of the cohorts)

Main 5 cohorts

First Cohort; I decided that this was going to be a very selective group in who gets accepted into the Cohort. I decided that along with a minimum of 2 letters of recommendation, legionnaires have to show some outstanding quality to them that the first Cohort wants (this takes from the ‘elite troop’ idea with the first *legion* and I needed a way to differentiate the 1st and 2nd, while this also plays off of all the 1st cohort legionnaires being said they had *something* special about them; Octavian and his talking stuff and prophecy, and Michael Kahale for uh, football and being giant? I’ll workshop it) while this of course means the 1st cohort is on the smaller side; they make up for it in general prowess and ability. On the rarest of rare occasions (like Jason, or maybe even Percy for my re-imagining) the first cohort will try and request recruits to join their legion (there’s probably a technical term, but basically what Dakota did for Percy in SoN; I’ll have to re-read HoO) but this isn’t a very common occurrence.

Second Cohort; I really like my concept of the Second cohort because it just really amuses me- simply put, their the rejects from the first cohort. Snobby kids who had good letters of Recommendation and were looking to ride off the coattails of their relatives. They are the ones with recommendation letters but nothing too crazy and special about them that makes it reasonable for the 1st Cohort to want them.

Third cohort; I decided on a whim that the third cohort would be the kids that are SUPER into the fighting parts of Camp; training? They’re down, the War Games? they want to win, they will win. They aren’t too into the political side of camp, they mostly are there for protecting their home.

Fourth Cohort; the fourth cohort is the one I have been purposely putting off characterizing Specifically because of the Camp Jupiter classified book where the protag is 4th cohort and I want to read that before making my conclusions. But if anyone currently were to ask me, they’re the trouble makers :]

Fifth Cohort; I kept the characterization of the Fifth cohort being the ‘rejects’. The unwanteds, however I decided to include the fifth cohort taking in legionnaires that had to get transferred cohorts. They are the largest cohort and there is a very varying personality to the cohort but the general idea is ‘Everyone doesn’t like us but hey, at least we can hold a sword :]’

Five outpost cohorts

My fan created cohorts based on concepts I discussed earlier on in this post :]

I chose in these to keep them relatively away from any important areas that are in the books (why Cohort six isn’t close to someplace like Quebec, or why the Eight cohort isn’t on an Puerto Rico or an island super close to Puerto Rico)

On that note; let it be known that these Outpost Cohorts also do help find legionnaires (i mention it in some of the descriptions for the cohorts)

These cohorts are much, much more rough around the edges currently because I’m still in the primordial soup and research stage; these are the roughest concepts for these Cohorts. I will first then out more… hopefully.

Cohort Six; the sixth cohort i decided would currently be stationed in Canada (I decided it would be in Canada so I could have a Frank tie-in and because I needed one in the north that wasn’t in Alaska) I also currently have the outpost at Great Bear Lake; close to Port Radium and Cameron Bay; though that might change. While the cohort is there with the Settlement New Britannia (name may be subject to change)

Seventh Cohort; The Seventh Cohort, which is considered the ‘best’ out of the outpost cohorts, located at the Sierra de pénjamo mountains in Mexico; along with the ‘New Hispania’ settlement. They deal with a lot of monster outbreaks along the equator.

Eighth Cohort; located on the Inagua Islands (I chose the larger one with Lake Rosa though might be changed) unlike the Seventh; the Eighth is the outcast of the legion; being the legions big naval force that deal with the islands on the east of South America, settlement possibly called ‘New Hispania Balearica’

Words about the ninth and tenth cohort; I had a sub the day I was working on their notebook pages so I don’t have very set locations for them.

Ninth Cohort; located in, somewhere Brazil. Meant to scout the eastern side of South America not including the islands

Tenth cohort; The tenth cohort is located in somewhere, Argentina. Does what Ninth does but just for the west side of South America

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Aaaaaaah, so sorry for the drop in quality at the last two but I’ve been writing this for like 2-3 days, I’ll write more about (probably Octavian) and my Camp re-imagining