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mc776[2012.10.02: Added Thrazán and Tocanno.]
[original post from August 2012.]
Figured I'd finally start writing a bit more setting stuff down, maybe even start naming a thing or two and seeing where and if any of the ideas floating around in my head actually connect with each other.
(If you don't care about stuff I make up, skip this post. Otherwise, please let me know if any of the names is a dirty pun on something or otherwise sounds like something stupid or inappropriate.)
The world is split into two known continents, one to the north and one to the south. Travel between them is a long and daunting task, riddled with risk of storms and pirates, monsters and strange winds, where people often disappeared and turned up dead from heat stroke crossing the equator. At its height the Empire spanned both, then retreated to its former territory to the north: for a time it had discovered a way to move great masses instantly past the sea, and with its wealth and promise of power it had directed seven coastal cities in the north to build seven great teleports, each linked to a complement in one of seven cities to the south.
The seven cities to the north are Razval, Angorrul, Thrazán, Tulgoz, Aqravi, Rodellos and Luboc.
The seven cities to the south are Idrepholon, Aitreias, Xiniënar, Luluthuega, Schezatharai, Tocanno and Tobhainan.
Jutting out from the western edge of the great Bay of Athara like the top of a great spiral staircase, the prehistoric fortress overlooking the modern city of Razval was the natural site for the Empire's first great boast to the unconquered lands to the west. Soon after its annexation the tiny barbarian fishing village in the shadow of those cyclopean relics grew into the Empire's greatest trade port before the south was even discovered. As the southernmost coastal city in the Empire, Razval was the natural starting place for the first teleport project. In the great tumult of the Disconnect Wars Razval lost little of its former glory and in the shadow of the recent Reclamation project there have been murmurs in some circles of seceding from the Empire entirely.
Rodellos remains a major trade stop between the Empire and the Kolodonese Republic to the north, but the hole that Tocanno left behind can be felt instantly by any visitor. The damp, mild climate of the Rodelloar Lowlands makes the port city's many abandoned neighbourhoods easily overrun with plants and wildlife - while letting them still hold many secrets for prospective Citizens to raid on their southern pilgrimage. Since the Disconnect it has become infamous as a dreary, out-of-the-way refuge of lax enforcement and cheap contraband, in particular the shipment of rope-weed from Kolodos where it is a staple, through the Empire where it is a novelty, to the lands occupied by the Qoduz Confederacy where possession for trafficking is punishable by guillotine.
Very often the Empire purported partnership when it intended control, and the ancient metropolis of Xiniënar was deliberately paired withconservative, militaristic jingoistic, militarized Thrazán for a reason. When the Disconnect Wars hit, the Thrazanites slaughtered tens of thousands and destroyed centuries of art, writing and architecture before the outdated Xhel infantry could breach their own coastal fortress walls and disable the teleport from their own side. To this day necromancers are forbidden from entering Xiniënar's walls or leaving the pier if entering by ship, lest the resulting torrent of old pleas for aid and revenge resurface and disturb the tentative restoration of the city to its former order if not its glory. It now functions as a major nerve center for the slow but sure development of a new Empire founded to counter and avenge the aggressions of the North.
Most of the provinces and client states refused to allow teleports in their capital cities. Schezatharai was the one exception. The stereotypically hot-blooded, scheming people of Sauressche, many of whom claim descent from the original Hadzaranthai imperial stock and were thus natural allies in the Empire's expansion to the south, felt they had nothing to fear from the backwater peoples of the Qurva hills. Except, it turned out, the waves of humanity seeking the worst of Schezatharai's luxuries, developing unstoppable obsessions for what were thought to be idle pleasures and feeding a new underworld of crime and desolation that no Great Witch has yet to come to power whose policies could curb.
Only the Disconnect Wars managed to save Aqravi from itself. Before that it was the drug and slum capital of the northern Empire, swarming with derelicts looking for their next hit. Many met tragic ends forcing or sneaking their way into the quarantined teleports fleeing to Sauressche, others were deported elsewhere or "rehabilitated" in whatever manner was fashionable in the Empire at the time; but in any event the worst of the super-hard drugs stopped coming in and Aqravi once more became a minor western shipping port with not obscenely more than its fair share of crime and poverty.
A curious effect of the Rodellos/Tocanno teleport was that each opening of that route would cause a sizable volume of water to move from the Hlodon Strait into lush, cedar-rimmed Lake Tocanno. Eighty years of irrigation later, after the permanent and violent decommission of the Rodellos teleport and three generations of people trying to maintain a lifestyle beyond their means, the Tocanno Salt Basin is home to countless skeletons of old ships and abandoned homesteads. Tocanno proper survives as a minor tourist attraction, selling trinkets and tours and trips into partially restored bits of Old Lowtown as people would try to relive what it must have been like in the prosperous days of the century before. Slowly but surely a new, bitter variant of Kolodonese rope-weed, naturally accepting of salt-ridden soil, is making tiny green cracks in the unforgiving white earth.
Thrazán's Ministry of Righteous Knowledge has been substantially successful in scrubbing the province's local populace of its memory of their forebears' less noble deeds in Xiniënar. The Empire's disbandment of the independent Holy Imperial Paladinic Order and agreement to stringent, Thrazani-specific armistice conditions in the years following the Disconnect Wars were under naked Razvalin pressure as the Empire desperately sought a bailout loan from its most rebellious Northern colony (itself a hotbed of suspicious Thrazani draft-dodger and Xhel refugee activity), and such acts were easily explained away as more of Razval's political maneuvering against its rivals that supported the foreign allegations none at all. Nonetheless, the disarmament treaties under the Idrepholon Protocols remain alive and honoured today, and in the decades following the forced diversification of its economy Thrazán has become a thriving financial, technology and trade centre famous for its towering white forests, intricate multi-storeyed walled gardens and artisanal pastries.
[original post from August 2012.]
Figured I'd finally start writing a bit more setting stuff down, maybe even start naming a thing or two and seeing where and if any of the ideas floating around in my head actually connect with each other.
(If you don't care about stuff I make up, skip this post. Otherwise, please let me know if any of the names is a dirty pun on something or otherwise sounds like something stupid or inappropriate.)
The world is split into two known continents, one to the north and one to the south. Travel between them is a long and daunting task, riddled with risk of storms and pirates, monsters and strange winds, where people often disappeared and turned up dead from heat stroke crossing the equator. At its height the Empire spanned both, then retreated to its former territory to the north: for a time it had discovered a way to move great masses instantly past the sea, and with its wealth and promise of power it had directed seven coastal cities in the north to build seven great teleports, each linked to a complement in one of seven cities to the south.
The seven cities to the north are Razval, Angorrul, Thrazán, Tulgoz, Aqravi, Rodellos and Luboc.
The seven cities to the south are Idrepholon, Aitreias, Xiniënar, Luluthuega, Schezatharai, Tocanno and Tobhainan.
Jutting out from the western edge of the great Bay of Athara like the top of a great spiral staircase, the prehistoric fortress overlooking the modern city of Razval was the natural site for the Empire's first great boast to the unconquered lands to the west. Soon after its annexation the tiny barbarian fishing village in the shadow of those cyclopean relics grew into the Empire's greatest trade port before the south was even discovered. As the southernmost coastal city in the Empire, Razval was the natural starting place for the first teleport project. In the great tumult of the Disconnect Wars Razval lost little of its former glory and in the shadow of the recent Reclamation project there have been murmurs in some circles of seceding from the Empire entirely.
Rodellos remains a major trade stop between the Empire and the Kolodonese Republic to the north, but the hole that Tocanno left behind can be felt instantly by any visitor. The damp, mild climate of the Rodelloar Lowlands makes the port city's many abandoned neighbourhoods easily overrun with plants and wildlife - while letting them still hold many secrets for prospective Citizens to raid on their southern pilgrimage. Since the Disconnect it has become infamous as a dreary, out-of-the-way refuge of lax enforcement and cheap contraband, in particular the shipment of rope-weed from Kolodos where it is a staple, through the Empire where it is a novelty, to the lands occupied by the Qoduz Confederacy where possession for trafficking is punishable by guillotine.
Very often the Empire purported partnership when it intended control, and the ancient metropolis of Xiniënar was deliberately paired with
Most of the provinces and client states refused to allow teleports in their capital cities. Schezatharai was the one exception. The stereotypically hot-blooded, scheming people of Sauressche, many of whom claim descent from the original Hadzaranthai imperial stock and were thus natural allies in the Empire's expansion to the south, felt they had nothing to fear from the backwater peoples of the Qurva hills. Except, it turned out, the waves of humanity seeking the worst of Schezatharai's luxuries, developing unstoppable obsessions for what were thought to be idle pleasures and feeding a new underworld of crime and desolation that no Great Witch has yet to come to power whose policies could curb.
Only the Disconnect Wars managed to save Aqravi from itself. Before that it was the drug and slum capital of the northern Empire, swarming with derelicts looking for their next hit. Many met tragic ends forcing or sneaking their way into the quarantined teleports fleeing to Sauressche, others were deported elsewhere or "rehabilitated" in whatever manner was fashionable in the Empire at the time; but in any event the worst of the super-hard drugs stopped coming in and Aqravi once more became a minor western shipping port with not obscenely more than its fair share of crime and poverty.
A curious effect of the Rodellos/Tocanno teleport was that each opening of that route would cause a sizable volume of water to move from the Hlodon Strait into lush, cedar-rimmed Lake Tocanno. Eighty years of irrigation later, after the permanent and violent decommission of the Rodellos teleport and three generations of people trying to maintain a lifestyle beyond their means, the Tocanno Salt Basin is home to countless skeletons of old ships and abandoned homesteads. Tocanno proper survives as a minor tourist attraction, selling trinkets and tours and trips into partially restored bits of Old Lowtown as people would try to relive what it must have been like in the prosperous days of the century before. Slowly but surely a new, bitter variant of Kolodonese rope-weed, naturally accepting of salt-ridden soil, is making tiny green cracks in the unforgiving white earth.
Thrazán's Ministry of Righteous Knowledge has been substantially successful in scrubbing the province's local populace of its memory of their forebears' less noble deeds in Xiniënar. The Empire's disbandment of the independent Holy Imperial Paladinic Order and agreement to stringent, Thrazani-specific armistice conditions in the years following the Disconnect Wars were under naked Razvalin pressure as the Empire desperately sought a bailout loan from its most rebellious Northern colony (itself a hotbed of suspicious Thrazani draft-dodger and Xhel refugee activity), and such acts were easily explained away as more of Razval's political maneuvering against its rivals that supported the foreign allegations none at all. Nonetheless, the disarmament treaties under the Idrepholon Protocols remain alive and honoured today, and in the decades following the forced diversification of its economy Thrazán has become a thriving financial, technology and trade centre famous for its towering white forests, intricate multi-storeyed walled gardens and artisanal pastries.
(no subject)
Date: August 21st, 2012 02:50 (UTC)