Chris Hartpence

Chris Hartpence (known to his friends on the net as Velociryx) lives in the deep south and has had a long love affair with writing.

At some point in mid 2002 he quietly lost his mind, and in his insanity, hit upon the notion that he and a group of friends could invent a totally unique fantasy world from the ground up…every rock and tree, every bird and beast.

Shockingly, several people from all over the world latched onto this idea, and so the Candle’Bre team was born.

Six years of struggle later, and world of Candle’Bre began bearing its first fruit in the form of the novels.In that time, ”Team Candy” (the name the group came to be called) gained and lost a great many members, and Vel came to the slow realization that this particular journey might not have a true endpoint, and that was okay, because in the final analysis, maybe it was the journey that mattered. The friendships forged along the way, and the sense of community that comes with creating.

There are a great many plans stretching out to the horizon, and a great many things yet to be done. There’s never any shortage of creativity at Vel’s house, one of the advantages of two artists marrying. He hopes to work on Candle’Bre for many years to come, and continue adding his voice to the chorus of voices that echo through the land and control the shape and direction the world takes as it continues to evolve.

Dave Sobotka

David Sobotka (aka hexagonian) lives in the Chicago area. He is a graphic artist, and his hobbies included creating historically-themed hex-grid board games during the mid 1990’s, then backstabbing his friends in heated battles across those gameboards. Once he got a computer, a whole new world opened up for him with the possibilities of altering and modding existing computer games. Projects included the creation of one of the best and immersive CTP2 Mods, Cradle, and taking part in the development of CTP1/CTP2 MedMod, as well as Cradle’s heir, CTP2 Ages of Man. Civ4 projects included providing graphics support for Firaxis’ official release ‘Beyond the Sword’ with his work on the Mods Road to War and Fall from Heaven II – Age of Ice.

In 2003, after Chris played, enjoyed, and analyzed CTP2 Cradle, Dave found out about Candle’Bre and volunteered for the project. Over time, the project offered him the means to create artwork that was not under any sort of constaint or pressure to conform to a narrow vision…and that freedom allowed him to grow and develop his art skills. He greatly appreciates the friendship that has developed between him and Chris. After all, it is the journey that matters, not the destination.

Daniels Umanovskis

According to the best available information, he is actually a construct, a living machine built in a secret military base just outside of Riga, Latvia by the third cousin, twice removed of Prokhor Zakharov.

He has secretly been with the project for a number of years, lending assistance on numerous fronts, and has more recently assumed the title, God-Emperor-of-Candle’Bre-Code. Unverified rumours state that, indeed, he’s behind the working versions of the game.

He positively thrives on coffee mana and is driven by an insatiable need for it. When sufficient quantities have been ingested, and critical caffeine mass is achieved, our mild mannered code guru turns into a coding MONSTER and cranks out volumes of new Candle’Bre material to the delight of everyone involved.

Richard (BigRich) Gregson

“Richard (BigRich) Gregson first met Chris through his SMAC (Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri) strategy guide. To this day he’s not entirely sure exactly when or why he wandered into the Courts of Candle’bre forum but he was intrigued by the notion of building a brand new game and a world to play it in, from the ground up. Undeterred by his lack of practical skills (his ZX Spectrum programming skills being a little out of date) he chipped in some ideas to the ongoing discussion. Some of them seemed to go down well, some of them sank into obscurity and others were kicked around, mulled over and ultimately improved beyond recognition. But most importantly, it was all good humoured and it was all tremendous fun.

Somewhere along the way, this generated a short story and some other odds and ends of Basin related writing.

These days Richard is having a great time writing more Candle’bre fiction and thoroughly engrossed in playtesting the end results of the collective vision and imagination of the Candle’bre team past and present, now brought to life by Solver’s coding, Hex’s artwork and Vel’s writing!”