In the land of Handon marriage and partnership is everything. It determines your future of not only you, but all those that will come after you. Marriage is the ultimate sign of trust and the majority of the legal system is devoted to writing up vows for the altar. Through this system alliances are made,subjugation is enforced and names rise or fall by the matters of the heart and cold shrewdness of the mind.
The wise, King Merin, has stepped down from his throne on his 99th birthday to allow the new generation to obtain the seat. While a king can only be male, his authority and power spreads both to the queen and her house. Between the 10 houses an arena of personal happiness, distant love, power, politics, and ambition will open up for all nobility. Each man must gain the support of as many houses and popular commoner vote as he can from each land to claim the title of king. The brides to be dance with the young lords in a shuffle of obligations, duty, desire...and ruin.
---------------------- On marriage:
The idea of a divorce doesn't exist in Handon. To have an affair or leave a married partner is considered a crime equal to homicide. It is more a legal and cultural process than a religious one although some houses may have religious aspects tied to it, that has little baring on its societal impact.
Working on a strong communal reputation, marrying "down" can spiral into a weaker family name. Marrying a criminal can move that stain onto your house, as you have sworn to abide them in all things. Vows are carefully tailored, serious, and binding contract. While Marriage can assure an alliance, a prince or bride can be married off for the purpose of pushing a vow that effectively turns the other house, and it assets in service to the first house.
In Handon society it is considered normal to have double digit children in noble families."love", is still meant to be the purpose and motivator of marriage but this nothing more than a face. Arrangements can be made, and forced, if the house can keep the bride or groom to be silent. In Handon to say your not marrying for love is a reputation killer, even if everyone knows this without saying it. To have it implied is considered a dire offense equal to spitting on the person in question.
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Handon
Handon is a large land to Rival America, Texas and Africa combined, connected only by a narrow path called, "Grey Valley", to another, much smaller kingdom inhabited primarily by a league of species that didn't want to live in human dominated society:
Gariang
While Handon is prosperous in food, supplies, trade, cities, and culture the neighboring community has struggled due to a series of volcanic eruptions destroying most of their budding towns and reducing their farm lands barren.
Handon itself is magical. Most people can use magical items for mundane task such as; levitating books or making a broom sweep by itself, but actual schools of magic requires decades of training at an academy in their respective lands. If you tried to use proper magic without training you'd more than likely hurt yourself than anyone else. Mages and Sorceress regularly have numerous scars from even monitored and controlled lessons in their fields.
Kings and Queens
Kings are the ultimate authority over the land and when they die it is traditional for the queen to step down too. Former queens reside in the Widows Castle with a cut from the treasury to ensure a happy and full life. Even a widowed queen is powerful and supremely rich but it is considered bad manners to try and marry her within 10 years of the Kings death. The biggest downfall is the queen must put up an air of constant sadness during this period, evidence of joy or flirting could ruin her.
The Queen takes the kings seat when he is away. It is expected from the crown to lead wars at the generals camps, travel to handle land issues personally, aid the poor and be in person to hear problems when possible. In times of turmoil the Queen will more or less be the person at the throne, making all the large over sight decisions with her only restriction being any policy the king himself has made.
but this is most the time not the case and the king can be expected to perform a traditional role of rule.
There will be 10 house spots. I will allow players to make their house, lands and cultures. These can be any species but traditional angels and demons. The more creative with your house, their land and their species the more chance I will accept you.
and there will be 1 Gariang spot which will be played by a none-human. The more ODD and monstrous this character is the better chance it will be accept for the Gariang spot. As long as it's not so monstrous it's silly. We don't need a acid bleeding xenomorph trying to marry someone. I went through that once, I RP to get away from my marriage.
IF somehow there is no queen at the end the RP will have one final section where the king must pick a bride.
If you are interested but don't want to be bride, groom or possible king then let me know. I will probably open some spots for councilors, body guards extr.
Min being 2 paragraphs and max being 5. Certain scenes where activity is low or high will be excused for this. I will mostly rely on players own judgement. Don't expect me really to act unless you are consistently too long or too short.
We can start with 6 people as a balance between sexes isn't required for this setting.
This was moved from the general interest check. Please be lenient with any mess ups, I've always been bad at grammar and trying to get better.
@ScreenAcne Are there slaves in the kingdom? If so, using slaves for pleasure is like using objects so it shouldn't be considered a violation of oaths. And what if the oath doesn't include the "having an affair" part when the husband says it but it includes it when the bride says it? Can the groom bang his house servants or have affairs freely?
Slave are not needed in Handon because most manual labor can be done via magic by everyone-pretty much any domestic role-
Marriage doesn't work on cold, contractual logic. It involves social cues, emotional reasoning and abstract purity. Put it simply, if you don't act as if you're marriage it legit, then the courts won't pretend it is either and could get you, and your house, into very deep legal trouble. Remember, while it is not religious, marriage is still meant to be about love and coupling. This idea of being a true commitment is a big part of honor, face and legality.
TL/DR: you can assume your vows have a standard, monogamous commitment ideal in it no matter what. No court would actualize a contract that wasn't so.
Geriang is the monster society beyond the Grey Valley. They, actually, Do have slaves because of the economic destruction from the eruptions that happened a while back. Their slaves would mostly be their own monsters though.
