[OOC] The Elder Scrolls: Colony at Septimia

The Elder Scrolls: Colony at Septimia

Introduction:

It is the 1st of Morning Star, 3E 289, and with the sun dawns the inaugural year of "The Province of Akavir". Unerring and vainglorious,the young Emperor, Uriel V, has plied the talents of his rule into the construction of a vast invasion fleet, dubbed "The Far East" and manned by some seven of Tamriel's battle-hardened legions. Having bloodied it Esroniet and the smattering of isles that dwindle, spine-like,from Tamriel's north coast, The Emperor personally delivered his armada to where no recorded Tamrielic soul had ever tread, to the heartland of that timeless plague of invaders; Akavir.

Landing, the Emperor quickly drove his army up the coast, and in the wake of he and his ferocious legions of battlemages, sword-singers and nordic-screamers, the locals meekly scattered into the trees. With the vast fear his expedition seemed to command, the Emperor was able to hollow out a ready-walled and fertile city, Ionith, seated at a fulcrum point of crucial rivers and life-giving flood-plains. It was here that he named his capital, garrisoned his troops, and prepared to choke out the natives who had so often plundered his Empire, only to retreat to their abundantly fertile, bejewelled homeland, and to here would flock droves of Tamriel's destitute and hopeless, eager for the prosperity such untapped and freely-offered land can grant.

Yet, just a short barge-trip upriver, another settlement has sprung. Obscured beneath the seasonal monsoons, whose rains slop across the terraced fields and mist up once more in haze against the still sun-draped soil, shivers the town of Septimia, defined only by a muddy palisade and the frothing-green ocean that laps and then hammers the coast at erratic intervals. It was here that the Emperor first flirted with a provincial capital, before his intemperate urges drove him to the more contentious ground to the east. Needing the security of a port, however, and acknowledging the susceptibility of the settlement to river-raids and coastal-reavers, necessitated a commanding Imperial presence. 

Titus IV Alorius, descendent of Tiber Septim's great general and pacifier of the feuding kingdoms of the High Rock region, commands the city as its governor. Quietly displeased by the Emperor's flippancy, Titus seeks to forge a cultured, strong and lasting settlement. To do this, Alorius has sold of the remnants of his estates in Colovia, and used the funds to offer financial incentive to the more enterprising, though, perhaps, not as prosperous, of Tamriel's citizenry. Having dispatched messengers to each of the nine provinces, lobbying for colonists, Alorius hopes to make this settlement his magnum opus - far greater what he might have achieved among the stones of Colovia.

The Premise:

Thank you for taking the time to read thus-far, I very much appreciate it. 

Colony at Septimia is, as its name suggests, a RP centred around the ill-fated Septimia colony founded by Uriel Septim V in the 3E on the continent of Akavir. Our characters will be colonists who have taken up the bursaries offered by the city's governor, Titus IV Alorius - perhaps simple tradespeople and farmers, perhaps guards or mercenaries, perhaps skilled workers, potters, alchemists, tavern owners and bards. Anything that a budding young town might have need of - our characters will have to fulfil those roles. This is a port city, and as such, trade will be of great import as well.

The format will be that of a "slice-of-life" RP, focusing on the day-to-day running of the town, the threats from the environment (this is Akavir, both the wildlife and the natives are aliens to us, and potentially hostile at that), and the politics of malcontent that often crop-up in community. There will, of course, be larger events, those that know the lore will be aware that the city is eventually destroyed by the Akaviri (although we might not follow this path) - this is a frontier and dangerous society, and the kinds of people that take up the offer of joining the conoly will be aware of this. They may be redeemed convicts purchased from prison, they may be economically, politically or religiously ostracised (think Puritans from our world), or they may simply be greedy - but something must motivate these people to take the perhaps thousand-mile journey, and to forgo the prospect of ever seeing Tamriel again. 

Characters will, by and large, have lead fairly ordinary lives up until their departure - this is their big adventure. Of course storied warriors will be welcomed, but not every character can have been present at every fulcrum point available in our timeline.

Rules and Requirements: 

Character Interaction:

Gregarious vs Introverted - This RP focuses strongly on character interaction, and will be almost entirely driven by it. For that reason, please try and submit characters whose day-to-day functions involve the necesity of speaking to other players. You might play a boat-builder who has to haggle for lumber from the local mill, You might play a trader trying to negotiate a trade-contract from the governor, whatever it is that you choose, ensure that you are not isolating yourself. I leave the personality of your characters up to you, but please ensure that they meet this stipulation.
Romance - Personally, I dislike RPing romance, at least between my own character and another player's, and will likely not engage in it, however, I have no qualms with other characters participating in such a storyline by mutual consent. Having said this, I would make three stipulations. Firstly, ensure that the characters whom you romance have a believable and readily identifiable connection with one another, and be sure to develop it to a point where they acknowledge this in a way that does not seem engineered. Think about how you personally would conduct yourself in a relationship, or how you would like to, or about relationships in-media that you have personally found compelling. This isn't really the setting for one-night stands - I find that sort of drama tiresome. Secondly, I would ask that you keep romances tame, or, as the Americans among us might say, 'PG-13'. Thirdly, I don't want the focus of this RP to be relationships - this is not gossip town - if you're going to have relationships, make sure they occur at the end of a character's story arc, or at a cursory point along it, not embody that arc altogether. 

Posts and their Content:

Grammar, Punctuation, Spelling and Syntax:  - I don't particularly enjoy reading posts that do not utilise correct grammar, are not punctuated smoothly or are not organised into easily digestible paragraphs. I'm happy to give pointers to those whose native language is not English, as best I can, but I will not generally accept players who do not display effort to address their use of language, and sculpt it to each context.
Posting Frequency - I understand that we generally need to make do with what were given, however, I will require players to post at least once every 7 days (although I may vary this), unless, of course, there are real-life mitigating circumstances. Obviously, I'm not your employer, I don't need the details, I won't mind if you tell me beforehand that you will not be able to make the deadline, but please don't abuse my trust by making a habit of asking repeatedly. If you really can't post on a regular basis, please do notify me of your dropping out, rather than disappear. I won't be disappointed, but I do need to know.
Post Order - Since this will focus on character interaction, and ideally will have multiple interactions running concurrently - hence requiring that I afford players autonomy to play out their own interactions. To allow for this, I will be running a time-stamp system, which I will explain in the next section.

Game Running and Admin:

Time-Stamps: - Every so often (usually every three weeks, to give everyone a chance to get at least three posts in), I will make a post in which I will establish a setting for the RP. Each setting will occupy one 24-hour-day, which I will move weekly from Morning to Afternoon to Evening/Night. In each scene-setting post, I will establish an event for that day, if there is to be one, or any environmental conditions that will colour the behaviour of our characters. For instance, I intend to start the RP on new year's day, and hence, the town will be preparing for celebrations (in TES, the holiday is called "New Life Fesitval", the particulars of which I will explain in the opening post in the IC). Characters will then be free to make their weekly post (you're welcome to make more frequent posts, though!). Once we have moved through three weeks, I will change the setting, and establish a new one.
Multiple Characters - I'm more than happy for players to have multiple characters, but I would like to wait a couple of weeks before accepting applications for them, to allow other prospective players the chance to create a character to fill one of the essential roles outlined. Keep in mind that the rule for one-post-a-week applies to each individual character, not each player. If you take on another character, you'll need to make multiple posts. Additionally, if your character will use any minor supporting characters that will only appear in some of that player's own posts, but will not interact independently, then I will need to see a CS for that character as well. 

Accepted Characters and Required Role: 

Character Sheet Format: (Please submit CS's via PM)

NAME:
AGE:
RACE:
GENDER: M/F
OCCUPATION:
APPEARANCE:
PERSONALITY:
BACKSTORY:
REASON FOR LEAVING TAMRIEL:
EQUIPMENT BROUGHT WITH YOU:
TYPICAL APPAREL:

Accepted CS's:

Roles that require filling:

Commander of the Guard:
Gondola-Diver: (To ferry supplies to the Emperor at Ionith)
Trading Post Operator/General Store Owner:(Perhaps an East Empire Company representative?)
Imperial Messenger:
Innkeeper:
Farmer:(The Environment is similar to what you might find in Cambodia and Vietnam - rice is the staple crop and fields are sodden and rain-drenched)
Lumberjack and Mill-owner
Baker:
Adventurer:
Discharged Soldier:
Alchemist:
Priest (Perhaps one with unorthodox beliefs, such as an Alessian Order adherent)

Details of the Setting:

Akaviri Enviornment:

Akavir's environment very closely mirrors that found in the far-east, particularly the monsoon swept nations of Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. Rice is the most arable crop, the swamped marshes from which it is reaped being constantly replenished by stair-rods of sheet-rain, and gondolas are by far the most effective method of navigating the region's extensive, ancient canals and flood-plains. The Imperials under Emperor Uriel V, in a stubborn resolve to civilise the untapped continent, have thrown vast resources into the construction of Tamrielic style molten-stone roads, the rocks for which are hastily hacked from the nearby foothills and laid in crude cement, lest they be swiftly sublimated by endless torrents of rain. 

Willow-like vines drape and skirt the edges of the canals and semi-stagnant waterways, giving way to thickets of ivy, roots and walls of great-trees at the foot of the mountains, which rise sharply to surround the Province of Akavir on all sides. Within the forested recesses, thousands of slinking beasts and beast-folk ply for their sustenance - picking at spiked-fruits, berries and hard-nuts alien and undocumented to the hitherto-denizens of Tamriel, who now cling fiercely to the walls of their expeditionary settlements. In the rice-paddies and flood-plains, tamrielic settlers and emboldened tsaesci peasants scrap over land and what smatterings of koi and tadpole-like swimmers choke a living out of the stagnant paddies enough to provide sustenance.

Construction Material:

What buildings remain in Septimia following the Emperor's conquest are cut from a stone not native to the region. Charcoal black and drenched in a sooty, moss-like slime,it seems the Tsaesci who slaved to build this, for all appearances, ancient city, must have transported it from a region of the continent lost to the Imperial academia and cartographers. Ionith, too, is at least partly constructed in this alien material, and should the Province of Akavir survive to see significant immigration and transportation of peoples, the speculation as to the motivation for this effort, be it religious, magical, or practical, should tantalise scholars for as long as they sleep among their dripping, sodden roofs.

City Map:

Governor Titus IV Alorius' Citadel:

Septimia's military presence is concentrated in the south-eastern most extremity of the city. Before the city's capture by the Septim Empire, this site had been little more than a crude light-house,a scorched firepit rimmed by polished brass and fine-fired glass to magnify light and project it out onto the waves. Though the city and its encircling waters had been found deserted upon Uriel V's landing, and though the small rowing-galleys and river-boats dispatched as scouts returned without sighting so much as a trade-barge , the fire-pit, roaring, as if just lit, had been seen some ten leagues south of Akavir - a distance navigable in a matter of mere hours of sailing. This has lead Titus IV, and his legates, to privately speculate that it may serve a religious function, given that the city's former denizens had so diligently maintained it, within clear sight of what must have seemed an insurmountable fleet of invaders.

Nonetheless, being a devout follower of the Imperial Pantheon, and taking a fancy to the location, tall and sparkling against the churning solent mere meters behind, Titus commissioned the lighthouse as his personal centre of governance. Sealing a storey of its base with billowing Nibenan dream-cloth, striped with the blood-red dye of Nibenay's shore-shuffling barnacles, and ringing the tarp with hastily cemented walls cobbled from the dust and rubble of torn-down derelict dwellings in the south-west of the city, Titus was able to cheaply and warmly garrison his entire three-hundred strong regiment, and to fortify them against any hitherto feasible assault. The pinnacle of the lighthouse became Titus' personal quarters, the imposing set of mirrors and domes being adorned with Imperial-Dragon drapes and a large, oaken chair for receiving patronage and business - not dissimilar to a throne.  A hastily assembled driftwood barrier partitions the administration area from his living quarters, replete with imported silks, citric mulled wine and fiery spirit casks, a sizeable collection of books, and a partially covered balcony to observe the now every multiplying lights of the colony below.

In the courtyard below, two vast tracts of paddocks house seemingly ever-slumbering stallions, densely packed and languishing lethargically amongst the sparse smattering of their manure, smoking against a cloudless sky and the shredding sea winds that swell over the fortified walls. Given that the supply chain stretches leagues, Titus has seen fit to breed his own warhorses, sired by the brood of 12 pure-breds he had ferried on a private galley that could otherwise have delivered two legions to his hearth. The lesser of the commodities, then, Titus soldiers resign themselves to huddling in the wake of torch sconces whilst on patrol, or striding purposefully and diligently across walls that look like to never be assaulted.

Descending through the substrate and foundation sweat the battlemages, cramped into a hollowed out crevice of stone, spiralling gently through the cliffs such that each step constricts its traveller into space not-actually rescinding. Here, water slips over jagged stone, sucked underneath by the sodden marsh above, or trodden, squelching, by some flustered solider, to dribble along his colleagues' heads unwittingly below, whose smouldering hearts in turn excite the dew, whipping it into a clammy mist that drenches everything that it envelops. The bowels of Titus' citadel have become particularly popular with vagrants and ill-disciplined soldiers alike - desperate for any small release from the cold-damp-due of Akavir's early morns, but they prove less popular with their intended occupants - the smog curls and warps the edges and words of the Battlemages' spell-tomes, irreplaceable, hand-crafted works of scholastic marvel the likes of which, if they existed, could only be retrieved after thousands of miles of travel. Not wishing to accelerate their tomes' demise, most of the garrison recant under gloomy mage-light.

In what few rooms open, through a clumsy window, through the cliff to be graced with salted, driving sea-breeze are kept the provisions, and huddled among barrels and crates are, in turn, crude bars and chains to accommodate what surely will be a growing criminal underclass.

At the base of the structure, a jagged-cut staircase affords access to the mouth of one of the region's great canals, this one having culminated by running a kilometre or so beneath the city's southern flank. Titus' swelling fleet of barges slip in and out of this crevice at all hours, unloading the haggled state-rate grain from what little surplus can be afforded by the alien settled farmers, and bequeathing parchment rolls replete with troop movements, and the increasingly abstract and arbitrary pronouncements from the blood-addled Emperor, twiddling his thumbs in Ionith to the north.

Public Buildings:

Sequestered neatly among snug-fitting trees along the road west north-west of the Citadel lies the greatest and final stamp of Imperial authority - the seat of the new Province's Imperial-Cult Archbishopric - Tiber Septim's Chantry. In the months since the conquest have flocked hundreds of priestly-devotees and holy-order warriors, drawn by the benighted Paragon of the warrior-emperor and called to ascetic introversion and piety, far from any hope of return to the base and sinful delights of Cyrodiil and the vibrant Nibenay valley. The devotees, under Titus IV's direction, have seized a curious, rounded stone tower flanked, conveniently, by eight bejewelled and vine-choked turrets that have come to house the lesser shrines to the remaining eight divines. The Temple itself comprises a single, domed expanse, broken sparingly by windows being steadily stained into religious iconography by what few craftsmen of note have braved the journey - for a severely elevated salary, of course. In the centre, a three tier altar culminates in a polished-onyx figure of the divine, ten-metres tall, and rippled with glimmering torchlight from the pit of sconces enveloping the base. The figure sizzles at the touch, an obscure metaphor for Tiber Septim's heart, scalding with righteous indignation, yearning to harmonise a discorded world so that all might know the love of a divinely appointed Empire. Many of the devotees' hands are blackened or charred themselves, finding spiritual solace in pressing their palms endearingly against the stone as the recite with full-voice and weeping eyes their prayers of entreaties for their own divine sovereign.

Even during the night, and over the sloshing monsoons that beat against the city's hard-stone, the tuneful voices of the prayers-of-the-chantry ring out across the city. With this fixture, there can be no doubt - Tamriel has arrived with all its splendour, and might soon be too stubborn to be driven back into the sea. 

As so often churches are, the outskirts of the chantry has become a centre of culture and community, and a infantile market has begun to spring up, stacked with Nibenan spice-sellers striped with reddened body-marks, Khajiiti sugar-merchants and dour Colovian wine-peddlers.

The North-west of the city houses Titus' veterans, afforded their pension almost immediately after the completion of the city's conquest. Either side of this sector's dwindling dust road lies fertile rice-paddies, flooded yet sheltered from the fiercest of the rains which might sublimate the precious crop and carry it off into the hungered flood plains. Around the paddies, the settled soldiers have pulled thatch across their rubbled dwellings, and, perhaps for the first time in the city's history, smoke of oven-baked colovian bread can be seen drifting into the moonlight.

OKAY, THAT'S ABOUT IT. THANKS FOR READING, AND I LOOK FORWARD TO REVIEWING CHARACTERS :)
[OOC] The Elder Scrolls: Colony at Septimia

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