Achaean News
The Grand Contest, more clarifications, and a revelation.
Written by: Elaniara Blackrose-Baudelaire
Date: Tuesday, July 28th, 2026
Addressed to: Everyone
To the realms,
I have received more questions and am here to offer more answers! Please stay with me through the answers for a special announcement regarding the Grand Contest. Please read PUBLIC 23066 and 23070 for the initial contest and a light question-and-answer, respectively.
Q1: How do I submit something? The guidelines seem a bit... vague.
A1: For designs, works in progress, poetry, contests, ambitions, examples of your patronage, please send me a letter! You may also send me a letter referencing any past works that you believe qualify. Please include your name, the reason why you believe your submission qualifies, and if you are sending multiple completed works, feel free to include them in the letter. I'll make sure they get to our judges.
Q2: What qualifies as an entry?
A2: This is the broadest answer, and the question I hear most often. Generally speaking, anything may qualify if it includes the submission itself and a reason for why you believe it speaks to Wealth.
When I say anything, I do mean anything. We currently have several contests ongoing in the realms that could qualify for entry under Patronage and Service.
Several grand ambitions have been completed, including Ashtan's acquisition of Empire, Cyrene's win in the Capture the Flag event, and even our most recent Staff of Nicator holder. All of these would qualify, easily, for ambition and achievement, but they are not the only measures of success.
The realm is awash with designs old and new that represent some of the highest quality in Crafting and Making. Please, send us your work, and you could win.
Art and Beauty are all around us. Submit a poem, performance, letter, observation, image collection from your discs, and tell us where you've found Art and Beauty in the realm.
Knowledge and Trade suffuse the realms and ensure that our rifts are full with curatives of all stripes. In addition, they ply the seas for the continued exchange of goods and to collect valuable sea monster trophies. Please, tell us your best methods for generating wealth here. You may submit a treatise, an example of your best mercantile wheeling and dealing, or show us how you create Value and Wealth for yourself with examples such as a massive estate or an auction win.
Q3: Is this contest limited to adventurers?
A3: While I suspect that my credit rewards may not suffice for the denizens of the realms, I would offer an alternative in service or in gold to be credited to an organization of their choice. To the Bankers of Delos, please, offer us your greatest insights. To those of Houses Rakum, Gaviir, and Bavingor, show us the riches and mercantile might of the Vertani. These are but a few of those who might participate. I will be travelling the realms encouraging all to enter once more.
Q4: Why are you doing this?
A4: And here we come to our grand announcement. I am but a humble mouthpiece for a grander work.
Some of the more gossip-oriented among you may have heard rumours that Lord Prospero's Order is shaping something in His honour, and that this contest has some part in it.
Those rumours are true.
The Grand Contest is not the whole of that work, but it is one way by which Sapience may lend voice, meaning, and substance to it. I will thus leave you with words offered by my patron, which helped clarify the heart of the work:
This contest is part of a larger Prosperian work: an offering being shaped to honour Lord Prospero by gathering what Sapience understands Wealth to be. Not merely coin, not merely possession, but the works, choices, risks, refinements, teachings, beauties, ambitions, and acts of patronage by which mortals create value in the world.
This is not a promise of Divine notice, nor should it be treated as a contest to win favour for oneself. The hope is simpler, and I think worthier: that those who have something sincere to say or show about Wealth will lend their voices to a work greater than any single entrant.
Finally, I leave you with my own words to ponder alongside his.
I have faith.
Good hunting to all in the contest. Eighteen months remain until the close of entries, and judging will begin. Please, get your entries in to us if you plan to do so! Please read PUBLIC 23066 and 23070 for more information.
In service,
Elaniara Blackrose-Baudelaire
Penned by my hand on the 20th of Phaestian, in the year 1010 AF.
The Grand Contest, more clarifications, and a revelation.
Written by: Elaniara Blackrose-Baudelaire
Date: Tuesday, July 28th, 2026
Addressed to: Everyone
To the realms,
I have received more questions and am here to offer more answers! Please stay with me through the answers for a special announcement regarding the Grand Contest. Please read PUBLIC 23066 and 23070 for the initial contest and a light question-and-answer, respectively.
Q1: How do I submit something? The guidelines seem a bit... vague.
A1: For designs, works in progress, poetry, contests, ambitions, examples of your patronage, please send me a letter! You may also send me a letter referencing any past works that you believe qualify. Please include your name, the reason why you believe your submission qualifies, and if you are sending multiple completed works, feel free to include them in the letter. I'll make sure they get to our judges.
Q2: What qualifies as an entry?
A2: This is the broadest answer, and the question I hear most often. Generally speaking, anything may qualify if it includes the submission itself and a reason for why you believe it speaks to Wealth.
When I say anything, I do mean anything. We currently have several contests ongoing in the realms that could qualify for entry under Patronage and Service.
Several grand ambitions have been completed, including Ashtan's acquisition of Empire, Cyrene's win in the Capture the Flag event, and even our most recent Staff of Nicator holder. All of these would qualify, easily, for ambition and achievement, but they are not the only measures of success.
The realm is awash with designs old and new that represent some of the highest quality in Crafting and Making. Please, send us your work, and you could win.
Art and Beauty are all around us. Submit a poem, performance, letter, observation, image collection from your discs, and tell us where you've found Art and Beauty in the realm.
Knowledge and Trade suffuse the realms and ensure that our rifts are full with curatives of all stripes. In addition, they ply the seas for the continued exchange of goods and to collect valuable sea monster trophies. Please, tell us your best methods for generating wealth here. You may submit a treatise, an example of your best mercantile wheeling and dealing, or show us how you create Value and Wealth for yourself with examples such as a massive estate or an auction win.
Q3: Is this contest limited to adventurers?
A3: While I suspect that my credit rewards may not suffice for the denizens of the realms, I would offer an alternative in service or in gold to be credited to an organization of their choice. To the Bankers of Delos, please, offer us your greatest insights. To those of Houses Rakum, Gaviir, and Bavingor, show us the riches and mercantile might of the Vertani. These are but a few of those who might participate. I will be travelling the realms encouraging all to enter once more.
Q4: Why are you doing this?
A4: And here we come to our grand announcement. I am but a humble mouthpiece for a grander work.
Some of the more gossip-oriented among you may have heard rumours that Lord Prospero's Order is shaping something in His honour, and that this contest has some part in it.
Those rumours are true.
The Grand Contest is not the whole of that work, but it is one way by which Sapience may lend voice, meaning, and substance to it. I will thus leave you with words offered by my patron, which helped clarify the heart of the work:
This contest is part of a larger Prosperian work: an offering being shaped to honour Lord Prospero by gathering what Sapience understands Wealth to be. Not merely coin, not merely possession, but the works, choices, risks, refinements, teachings, beauties, ambitions, and acts of patronage by which mortals create value in the world.
This is not a promise of Divine notice, nor should it be treated as a contest to win favour for oneself. The hope is simpler, and I think worthier: that those who have something sincere to say or show about Wealth will lend their voices to a work greater than any single entrant.
Finally, I leave you with my own words to ponder alongside his.
I have faith.
Good hunting to all in the contest. Eighteen months remain until the close of entries, and judging will begin. Please, get your entries in to us if you plan to do so! Please read PUBLIC 23066 and 23070 for more information.
In service,
Elaniara Blackrose-Baudelaire
Penned by my hand on the 20th of Phaestian, in the year 1010 AF.