I hope you've all been well! I'm here to talk about what I mentioned in my previous article about my new beginning.
A Note
Should I decide to not pursue this when the day comes, anybody is welcome to take the plan and use it for themselves in this game!
Team Information
Team Crest:
Team Name:
L'Académie de Saint-Vaury (Saint-Vaury's Academy)
Stadium:
Stadium Name:
Bastion de L'Espoir (Hope Fortress)
Team Mission
L'Académie de Saint-Vaury will be working to take in young players with great trajectories and help them along their way to other clubs so that they can perform to their greatest ability using our state-of-the-art facilities. In other words, this project will be essentially an Academy, where I'll be taking in young players and selling them on to other clubs the minute they reach a certain age. I'll be using my normal blogging abilities to create stories and narratives for everyone so you can follow our players as they go about in this strange game/story-narrative combination that I'm going to try and create. I'm going to use a 3D player creator at my disposal to create detailed images of our players so I can bring them life and give them interesting personalities. I'll also be providing background information on our club, including its origins. I'll also be following up with players who have graduated from the Academy as they move about in their primes. Please use our team as a scouting ground for any players you might need, and be assured that they will be getting the best training they can! And I hope that if one of our players happens to join your club, that you treat them with the utmost respect, just as we did.
Rules
- Players in L'Académie de Saint-Vaury will only be from the ages of 16 to 22. Once a player turns 23, they will be omitted from any games and placed on the transfer list. If he goes the entirety of the season without being sold, at age 24, he will be released. After age 23/24, I'll be monitoring his progress until he retires.
- Teams cannot poach our players until they become available at age 23. This is to prevent any teams from getting potential superstars before others.
The Trajectory
I will be creating statistical graphs keeping track of players development, along with their respective stats in matches. I'll be charting on a season-by-season basis a player's value, rating, total skills, and club, including any transfers that took place and their value. I'll be compiling all these data to construct leaderboards for players and teams in order to determine which players have been the most successful to graduate from the Academy, and which teams benefited most from having our players. I'll then be updating seasonally everyone with players and their trajectories so you can get a feel for how things are moving along.
The Story
Saint-Vaury, France: 1349, The Middle Ages.
Étienne was a brilliant young man who had a passion for innovation and kindness to everyone around him. He often helped villagers with their groceries, and always ripped up his bread into little pieces to leave just outside his front door as snacks for nearby little animals. He was a strong character, an apprentice at his local blacksmithing shop where he helped make swords and armory for regional nobility. He also had a passion for sports. To pass the time, Étienne had been playing his own variation of la soule, an ancient Medieval hybrid hockey/football sport: rather than use sticks to whack a leather ball at goalposts, he just used his legs and feet. Étienne gathered up his friends to form a team to play together. They had attracted the attention of neighbors and nearby villagers. Others became interested and formed their own clubs, and they had eventually set up a little league. Tens of villagers flocked to the fields of Saint-Vaury to see the spectacle. Life was exciting and beautifully communal.
Soon, that excitement turned into dread. In 1349, the Pestilence (also known as the Black Death) ripped through France, decimating families and leaving rotting bodies everywhere. Cheering spectators now lay dying alone in mass graves, groaning as they were splashed with incendiaries to be lit on fire. Étienne had joined his friends in the fields to play their game to take their minds off of the disgusting and rancid plague, until they too were brutally taken away. Now Étienne roamed the fields by himself, occasionally reminiscing of the community he and his late friends were on the verge of creating. It wasn't long either before Étienne also found himself knocking on Death's door. Sensing that his days were numbered, Étienne, laying in bed, quickly wrote a letter in his broken French, detailing the events of his small creation of la soule and all the happiness and excitement that came along with it. At the bottom of the paper, he wrote: "Il que ne joue pas dans la vie, n'est pas en vie." (He who does not play in life, is not alive). And with that, Étienne shuffled to his side, and shivered until his life gave out. He greeted St. Peter at the Gates of Heaven, and spends the rest of eternity playing la soule with his friends.
It's been a little more than 650 years since Étienne wrote his heart out on that piece of paper. I now find myself holding that very piece of paper. I'm just confused as you are as to how I've come across it after all this time. But all I know is that I'm determined to carry out Étienne's dream through this club. And so, L'Académie de Saint-Vaury was born.
The Quest
To uphold Étienne's tradition that with competitiveness comes respect. To create world-class talent that go forth and prosper to serve other clubs to help them reach their dreams.
Conclusion
March 31, 2023 will be the day I decide if Union Omaha will close its doors and pass on into history, or if L'Académie de Saint-Vaury will remain dormant. And of course, things are not what they seem in the Academy, and many strange, bizarre, and horrifying things will occur!
Let me know what you think! Thank you. :D