# Product

## Register

product

## Platform

web

## Users

Active Shadows Over Westgate players. They already play on the Neverwinter Nights persistent-world server and use the forum day to day: reading announcements, posting in-character and out-of-character threads, and browsing the wiki. The forum is the whole SoW website, so the same theme also greets anyone who lands on any SoW page.

## Product Purpose

This is `nodebb-theme-westgate`, the visual layer for the SoW community forum and website (NodeBB, child theme of Harmony). NodeBB is used for everything: plugins add custom pages and user-interaction flows such as applications and reports, and this theme must cover those surfaces too. It exists so the community's web home looks and feels like the game world it belongs to. Success is immersion plus usability: the forum feels like part of Westgate while staying fast and easy to read.

## Positioning

SoW's visual home. The forum serves the entire website, so every page — boards, wiki, profiles, search, custom pages — carries the same theme with full thematic parity. No screen falls back to a plain, out-of-world look.

## Brand Personality

Black velvet silk, darkness, vampirism, decadence, and decay. Plum and near-black as the dominant base, muted gold for accents and important affordances, red only sparingly as a subtle detail or state color. Depth, restraint, texture, and rich contrast over loud ornament.

## Anti-references

Not bright, playful, clinical, or flat SaaS-style. No loud ornament. Nothing that reads as a generic default forum skin.

## Design Principles

- Thematic parity everywhere: every surface, including edge pages and admin-facing lists, stays in-world. An unthemed page breaks the spell.
- Atmosphere never taxes reading: the dark palette and texture must not slow down scanning threads or posting. Usability failures are theme bugs.
- Restraint over ornament: depth comes from texture, contrast, and material (velvet panels, etched gold), not from decoration piled on.
- Stay a small child theme: override only what Westgate needs; inherit the rest from Harmony rather than rebuilding it.

## Accessibility & Inclusion

WCAG AA: at least 4.5:1 contrast for body text on the dark palette, visible focus states, usable hover and active states, and reduced-motion alternatives for animation. No text hidden purely for visual effect without an accessible alternative.
