Basically, we should or could assume that whenever we post that we got the letter already, and can start preparing to go there to introduce characters, or en'route. Us closest can spend whatever IC time doing palace intrigue until we're all there.
Quick description of your nation: The Kingdom of Cor is a vast landscape comprised of diverse territories. From the Low Wood of the south to the vast plains of Erien of the north. Scattered throughout the kingdom are the scattered fiefdoms and territories of the Cor, presided over by ancient families whose fiefs hold as few as seventy to as much as several thousand or more. And too betwixt those the stalwart free domains of peasant enclaves who have managed to resist the interest of nobles and merchant alike with their even more ancient ways. Along their coasts and through the rivers run a thriving trade from the coastal guild cities to the interior merchant middleman.
The side your nation was on during the 3rd rebellion: The Throne
Population/races: The dominant race in the Kingdom of Cor are the Avan, a race of half-man and half-bird, although they were never blessed with the ability of their wild peer's ability to fly. Some would say it was a joke by their ancient gods, or a blessing, or a curse for some past sin that they as a whole have been cast with the burden of having a bird's head and feathers growing where they may else have hair.
But besides them are scattered populations of the other races shifted into the territories since the time of the empire and through the realm's old loyalty to the imperial crown.
Culture/society: It is said an Avan never forgets. Whether that be a slight or a gift. For that reason powerful rivalries and impenetrable alliances have been formed between communities within the Kingdom of Cor and abroad that has lasted for centuries. It is said the worst of wedding massacres have been carried out because of some long ago minor theft between two peasants or because of some mis-management of a few sacks of grain. Likewise, enduring and unshattering alliances have been formed on the mere presentation of gifts.
In fact, among the Avan and the peoples of the Cor who have long settled there, gifting is an important ritual. It is unspoken of to ever visit anyone without a small token of gratitude or generosity. What is often not obtained by gold, is often obtained by a complex relationship built on gift-fiving or having a debt of a gift or a favor between not just individuals but sometimes entire communities. The behavior has not just been a fluke of Avan behavior, but has enveloped the entire social make up of the Cor holding it in strict relationships of blood feud and blood brotherhood.
If there was any moderation to any of this that keeps the region for slipping into complete chaos until one coalition or the other purges the entire country it is the double institution of The King Who Walks The Low Forest The Falcon Mountains And Wades The River, or the Walking King and the All Council, an annual gathering of all the residents of the Cor – in theory – who issue judicial indictments and to legislate on matters of public policy every autumn before the first snow.
Religion: The people of the Cor follow an ancient pagan religion, where-in the land itself is held as sacred and the whole of the world as far as they can see is home to any number of spirits as there are people to populate it. Their relationship to the world urges a reverent respect for it, as well as fear and even passion for it. They believe nothing should be at odds with the harmony of that world, least they bring out of the dark holes of the Low Forest the monstrous creatures that lurk there, and devour children in their crib.
In a more metropolitan setting, due to the nature of empire there can be found communities still practicing a number of other religions and often their practices have been grafted into the practices of the traditional belief, often transforming it and distorting the native orthodox and orthoprax. But this has been a long process, as in the Avan's long cultural memory: they know. But in such a way entirely new relationships to their metaphysical world have opened to them and whole communities have adopted to their entirely new and unique worldviews readily through acknowledgment of this “divine weathering and erosion of the world”.
History: The history of the Avan and of the Cor at large has been as maddening as the history of the continent itself with thousands of independent threads of stories woven between dynasties, villages, town, and castle. The mountains run flush with it and it lurks in the shadows of the ancient trees of the Low Forest. In this confusion, the origins of even the Avan have been obscured by the distortion of location and participation in such events with some saying the Avan sprung from the mountains, or the low forest, or from the ground itself one warm night and stormed across the land.
Writing itself never came to the Avan until the arrival of the Empire who impressed the old kings with their gifts, inadvertently sealing a strong alliance, although the early errors of the empire to not keep facilitating the respectful ritual of gift giving has often strained the relationship and threatened to take it out of the realm of confident friendship and into colder waters, if not straight betrayal.
Many in the Cor believe that with the end of the last rebellion the relationship will remain as it has. However with the death of the king, and the inability for his son to ascend to the throne doubt besets the realm if it will. Some whisper that perhaps the unthinkable must happen: the Avan must be the ones to break off a relationship if court intrigues run afoul. Others insist that they need only wait and see before passing judgment. A third party insists on no matter the change: a friend is a friend, and the Arkron have been a friend.
Government: Monarchy with an annual general parliament
Economy: Agrarian
Military: Many, though not all nobles in the Cor are capable of maintaining at least a small retinue of trained and dedicated professional warriors, like those of knights. Often paid out of their master's pocket for their arms and armor some are sometimes permitted to take work on the side whose revenues they use to arm themselves. These make up a small body of generally well armed and armored men at arms or noble soldiers who follow their leige-lords and high chiefs off into battle as his house guard. The most successful of this corp or those who belong to even wealthier lords can themselves afford men at arms of their own and often head into battle with their own personal guard at their side, as dedicated to the art of war if not as well equipped for it.
For larger engagements or campaigns mass levees are not unheard of in the country side. Many in the Cor are skilled with the bow, particularly in the country side to protect their homes, crops, and livestock from beasts or bandits. Otherwise, the spear and the pike is easy enough to drill with in mass. Though they are not armed much beyond that and the burdens of acquiring armor and protection is on the shoulders of the levees themselves. Long serving veterans of numerous conscriptions or descendants of such may be in the possession of heirloom armor or loot once taken from the corpses of the dead if chance and inheritance allows.
Territory:
Factions: This feels like something I should hold off for when the RP starts and as I write them in.
Characters: King William Who Walks The Low Forest, Falcon Mountains, And Wades The Rivers of House Coarsecrane Age: forty-nine Male
I've been at work all this time so I haven't been able to cook up anything. But now that I get one day off I have the opportunity to at least cook up a flag, so when I get that finished I'll be moving it all over.
Quick description of your nation: The Kingdom of Cor is a vast landscape comprised of diverse territories. From the Low Wood of the south to the vast plains of Erien of the north. Scattered throughout the kingdom are the scattered fiefdoms and territories of the Cor, presided over by ancient families whose fiefs hold as few as seventy to as much as several thousand or more. And too betwixt those the stalwart free domains of peasant enclaves who have managed to resist the interest of nobles and merchant alike with their even more ancient ways. Along their coasts and through the rivers run a thriving trade from the coastal guild cities to the interior merchant middleman.
The side your nation was on during the 3th rebellion: The Throne
Population/races: The dominant race in the Kingdom of Cor are the Avan, a race of half-man and half-bird, although they were never blessed with the ability of their wild peer's ability to fly. Some would say it was a joke by their ancient gods, or a blessing, or a curse for some past sin that they as a whole have been cast with the burden of having a bird's head and feathers growing where they may else have hair.
But besides them are scattered populations of the other races shifted into the territories since the time of the empire and through the realm's old loyalty to the imperial crown.
Culture/society: It is said an Avan never forgets. Whether that be a slight or a gift. For that reason powerful rivalries and impenetrable alliances have been formed between communities within the Kingdom of Cor and abroad that has lasted for centuries. It is said the worst of wedding massacres have been carried out because of some long ago minor theft between two peasants or because of some mis-management of a few sacks of grain. Likewise, enduring and unshattering alliances have been formed on the mere presentation of gifts.
In fact, among the Avan and the peoples of the Cor who have long settled there, gifting is an important ritual. It is unspoken of to ever visit anyone without a small token of gratitude or generosity. What is often not obtained by gold, is often obtained by a complex relationship built on gift-fiving or having a debt of a gift or a favor between not just individuals but sometimes entire communities. The behavior has not just been a fluke of Avan behavior, but has enveloped the entire social make up of the Cor holding it in strict relationships of blood feud and blood brotherhood.
If there was any moderation to any of this that keeps the region for slipping into complete chaos until one coalition or the other purges the entire country it is the double institution of The King Who Walks The Low Forest The Falcon Mountains And Wades The River, or the Walking King and the All Council, an annual gathering of all the residents of the Cor – in theory – who issue judicial indictments and to legislate on matters of public policy every autumn before the first snow.
Religion: The people of the Cor follow an ancient pagan religion, where-in the land itself is held as sacred and the whole of the world as far as they can see is home to any number of spirits as there are people to populate it. Their relationship to the world urges a reverent respect for it, as well as fear and even passion for it. They believe nothing should be at odds with the harmony of that world, least they bring out of the dark holes of the Low Forest the monstrous creatures that lurk there, and devour children in their crib.
In a more metropolitan setting, due to the nature of empire there can be found communities still practicing a number of other religions and often their practices have been grafted into the practices of the traditional belief, often transforming it and distorting the native orthodox and orthoprax. But this has been a long process, as in the Avan's long cultural memory: they know. But in such a way entirely new relationships to their metaphysical world have opened to them and whole communities have adopted to their entirely new and unique worldviews readily through acknowledgment of this “divine weathering and erosion of the world”.
History: The history of the Avan and of the Cor at large has been as maddening as the history of the continent itself with thousands of independent threads of stories woven between dynasties, villages, town, and castle. The mountains run flush with it and it lurks in the shadows of the ancient trees of the Low Forest. In this confusion, the origins of even the Avan have been obscured by the distortion of location and participation in such events with some saying the Avan sprung from the mountains, or the low forest, or from the ground itself one warm night and stormed across the land.
Writing itself never came to the Avan until the arrival of the Empire who impressed the old kings with their gifts, inadvertently sealing a strong alliance, although the early errors of the empire to not keep facilitating the respectful ritual of gift giving has often strained the relationship and threatened to take it out of the realm of confident friendship and into colder waters, if not straight betrayal.
Many in the Cor believe that with the end of the last rebellion the relationship will remain as it has. However with the death of the king, and the inability for his son to ascend to the throne doubt besets the realm if it will. Some whisper that perhaps the unthinkable must happen: the Avan must be the ones to break off a relationship if court intrigues run afoul. Others insist that they need only wait and see before passing judgment. A third party insists on no matter the change: a friend is a friend, and the Arkron have been a friend.
Government: Monarchy
Economy: Agrarian
Military: Many, though not all nobles in the Cor are capable of maintaining at least a small retinue of trained and dedicated professional warriors, like those of knights. Often paid out of their master's pocket for their arms and armor some are sometimes permitted to take work on the side whose revenues they use to arm themselves. These make up a small body of generally well armed and armored men at arms or noble soldiers who follow their leige-lords and high chiefs off into battle as his house guard. The most successful of this corp or those who belong to even wealthier lords can themselves afford men at arms of their own and often head into battle with their own personal guard at their side, as dedicated to the art of war if not as well equipped for it.
For larger engagements or campaigns mass levees are not unheard of in the country side. Many in the Cor are skilled with the bow, particularly in the country side to protect their homes, crops, and livestock from beasts or bandits. Otherwise, the spear and the pike is easy enough to drill with in mass. Though they are not armed much beyond that and the burdens of acquiring armor and protection is on the shoulders of the levees themselves. Long serving veterans of numerous conscriptions or descendants of such may be in the possession of heirloom armor or loot once taken from the corpses of the dead if chance and inheritance allows.
Territory:
Factions: This feels like something I should hold off for when the RP starts and as I write them in.
Characters: This feels like something I should hold off for when the RP starts and as I write them in.
During the time of the Blando Pelliedo Grondas the stars were their most valuable resources.
They swam in black oily perfection in the high heavens shedding fragile illumination on the world of the Blando Pelliedo as they forged the world from the ash and steam of the chaos that preceded them. And from the stars they pulled forth great magic that they used to create life. This power was radiated onto them, cursing them with the mortality that eventually killed them. For even in time all stars die in utter brilliance, bursting forth their energies across the cosmos to shed life and creation like the fires of Pyrosyna.
Refining magic from the stars created three magics in creation: Consciêsie, Spiri, and Magio.
Into life was spun Consciêsie and Spiri. Respectively, the power of conciousness, and the spirit of life itself. In all things that grow, die, breed, and live is the capacity to remember and to be aware, to hold conciousness, to possess the magic of Consciêsie. But to bind it into form and to prevent it from evaporating into the void Spiri was created. Living spirit; the very essence of soul and life bound into all life. Without the magic of Spiri, all things become as muted and still as the rocks that litter the landscape, or as influenced and determined as the water in the stream, or even fire itself.
But most divine of the magical energies is Magio, raw magic. A primal blend of consciousness, spirit, and the raw unrefined creative potential of the universe and the stars themselves. As the giants worked they learned to take that raw power itself and to trap and pack it into its own vessel. Becoming weary over the eons of reaching for the sky to reach ever more distant stars to do their work they consolidated their efforts to create a vessel from whence to draw a closer supply of this raw primal clay. They sought to have near at end an eternal supply of such power. And so they took the last of the world ash and the last of the primal fire and fought to create two containers. They dubbed these creations Lua and Solea; the Sun and Moon.
To be near enough to be easily at reach, but to not directly interfere they placed these newly created vessels in the sky. There they traveled one after the other to not let one giant be without their power. Both were a spectacle of their own and were revered by all the giant's living creations, foremost the dragons who held the Sun and Moon and the Blando Pelliedo in awe and reverence.
But it was in making Lua and Solea that in the end sapped the giants of their living energy. As t he Blando Pelliedo died, Lua and Solea took on their ultimate brilliance. Filled with the everlasting power of the primal artisans they shone with their own world-influencing magic. They shone down on the bodies of the giants, who decayed into the earth and lending the last epoch of their final creation to the world. Their bodies rotting sewed the last fertility into the soil, and the last essence of their magical power creating the last forms of life: the mushrooms and carrion eaters of the world.
The dragons, inheriting the world from their elders' now revered the Moon and Sun with awe and terror alone. They came to be understood among them as Creator and Destroyer. Able to engulf creation in life-ending fire or ice. Or to bless either with the incubating warmth and soothing coolness of day and night. With the power of Lua and Solea the permanent mist that shrouded the world faded and was absorbed back into the earth.
Without the giants to tend them, their forges sputtered and flashed with unhinged chaos. Incapable of being controlled by the dragons they took on a life of their own. Some cooled and became frozen dormant mountains, simply dying. Some continued to broil and froth at the mouth clouding the skies, living on in agitation. And the rest flared and smoked continually on and off, being restless in their waking moments and their restful ones.
The seas took on life as well, slowly swallowing the old bridges and churning up storms from the fires of the forges. They smote the shore, dragging and shifting the world built up by the giants that had tamed them.
And above this new landscape, shining down with their influential magic orbited both Lua and Solea. Their eyes cast down as they tugged and pulled in their own way.
“As you said, you found boats?” Gabraldi asked, reclining on a mattress laid on the ground.
“Yes your honor.” a marine scout said, he too sat on the ground with his heavily plumed helmet resting on a raised knee.
They sat in the middle of Gabraldi's tent, which served a multi-functional purpose as the expedition commander's living quarters as well as temporary command. With a canvas wall it was the center of the nucleus of the operation where the tents for the other expedition officers were also pitched, from whence radiating outward the other members and functions of the expedition spanned out in accordance to their relative importance to it all. This spot acting as a form of court, many of the non-commissioned nobles in the expedition struggled to keep themselves as close to this spot as they could.
The space itself was well lit by a number of lamps that cast a soft orange glow that combined with the late evening sunlight that filtered through the heavy canvas. The dirt and grass of the space cleared for it was covered with heavy decorated carpets that also smoothed out the rugged spaces of the ground underneath. Several pieces of furnishings lended a homeliness to the space as crates yet to be unpacked promised a further evolution to the current condition of the expedition commander's living quarters. As of now, the space was dominated by the acidic smell of burning lanterns and a moldy saltiness.
“Suppose, your honor,” spoke up an officer himself reclining across the ground as he sketched on a piece of parchment the description of the boats found, “that this is a peasant race or a noble race?”
“I could not tell. We only found the dugouts. From them I would say they are a peasant race.” the scout said.
“This doesn't actually say anything however.” Gabraldi cautioned, “A peasant may have a master or may not. Finding his hut does not confirm as much.”
“I agree.” said another nearby, sorting through the crates for a bottle of wine, “This discovery if anything at least confirms that people live here, and those fortresses are not of some race of man or beast that did not bloom and die in a fortnight, and they persist here in this land.”
“What else did you say this boat had?” the officer, reclining and drawing asked.
“An outer beam, running parallel to the hull.” the scout answered.
“Very well.” the artist said.
“Suppose your honor these people possess the Moon, or know where it went?” the office rummaging for wine asked, finding it, and smiling as he carried the large ceramic jug to the circle.
“Then we will deal with them, as we do with the rest, Montreau” Gabraldi answered, “They will need to know of our mission, and if they are willing to part with the piece. Then we march on them if they do not. The standard rules apply.”
“So soon and we may finally see action. I hope to stretch my sword arm again.” Montreau, a middle-aged man with a bulldog face said with a long sigh, sitting down and uncorking the bottle. He passed it to Gabraldi.
“No, we can not risk them tampering with or harming the moon if they have it.” the sketch artist said. His attention wandered to the scout as he finished the drawing and held it up to the scout, “Is this what you described?”
The soldier nodded and the artist smiled, handing the canvas to Gabraldi, “Here's their boat.”
“Fascinating, thank you.”
“But back to the matter at hand: we are now not as lonely as we thought. But we can not risk harm to the moon, or any more than we can avoid. We do not fully understand its magical nature or what it means for it to be on the earth. Causing too much ignoble death around it may be like poison to it, and would be an insult to the divinities. We must retain pure intention approaching it, or we risk insulting the spirit of Alrique.”
“Yes, but eventually we may need to fight, Sevilo.” said Montreau.
“Yes, but not right now. And not at first.” Sevilo responded, and turning his attention to Gabraldi: “I have to urge diplomacy. We don't know who these people are, if they are at all a noble race or have Lua. We could throw away opportunities in acting rashly.”
“I agree.”
“I don't know, how can we even confirm their intention for peace or for war?” DeGrand said, speaking up from his spot on the floor, “While yes: diplomacy will be the most attractive option. More so because if there is any possibility of danger it may hold catastrophe at bay. And if we can confirm the location of the moon we can send back to The Court, or if we find any tribute for that matter. About where are we?”
Everyone looked at one another pensively as Gabraldi rose. Moving to a nearby table the scout stood and asked, “Excuse me your honor, but am I excused?”
“Yes, you did what you can. You may leave if you wish.” The scout bowed low at this invitation and left the tent.
At the table were a series of charts painted on wide sheets of parchment. They depicted much of the known world to the Expedition, and much of what they had found. Much of what Gabraldi had discovered in his tenure had been sketched in with charcoal over the years and as proportions became finalized and theories confirmed in travel finalized with the ink brush in slow delicate thin lines. There was a gap in the map though, a place marked with the words “Unknown Sea” that had long been avoided by merchants and travelers alike who had for centuries or longer chosen to merely sail along chains of islands and secure coasts that linked the whole world with itself. These men and crews had long brought to Sandovarra tails and stories of the distant lands the Expedition itself went to. Territories at one point or another have been claimed – if at least on paper and in word – by the guile of ancient kings in Parva using the temporal majesty granted to the seat by the dragon Roalumi himself. But these motions were mere gestures at time back up by intertwining the realms with marriages and adoptions since they were often so distant from the court to be directly influenced by its laws.
But the Expedition coming to their shores had been the most direct contact with the kingdom had with these realms in some centuries and confirmed to the court that they were actively independent if not dismissive of their powers. The implications of such discoveries were kept secret from the Expedition, though the routine waves of exiled nobles from the homeland was often considered an indication of the uncertainty and lost faith this news brought to the secluded court.
The officers in the room rose as Gabraldi produced a golden compass from a brass box and began charting out their route from the regular logs the ships' navigators had kept over the course of the expedition. Passing around the jug of wine they watched Gabraldi meticulously follow their rough course and direction from far-flung known ports to the rumored islands they had found and confirmed in the middle of the Unknown Sea. Gabraldi was no amateur in this art, as well as in many other arts he was a skilled navigator and cartographer and the twisting and looping course they had followed at the will of wind and tide took shape in charcoal to end at the spot on the map they had ended.
“It's a long journey.” he said flatly, “It may be five months under a steady wind to send for home if we find anything.”
“There is no reason to cut it down.” Montreau said.
“We will need to sail it many times.” Sevilo corrected.
“It does not make it a non-option.” DeGrand pointed out, “Merely a long one. If we can leverage diplomacy as a way to stall war and to get an advantage, it would only be a year or more.”
“Yes, but by then what can happen?” Montreau asked.
“We can not know.” Sevilo added, “We can not even go to war well if we are not fully aware of who it is we must kill, lay aside any other righteous concerns here. Any good diplomat here would be like a spy to take measure. Montreau, your sword hand may be strong but here you and I I am sure can agree: we have to have a lay of the other race here.”
“I agree.” DeGrand said.
“I'll concede to that.” Montreau sighed, “Well in any case, how do we go about this? Your honor?”
“I propose we first set a watch on the boats, to know who it is owns them. We can follow and make our approach when we know more. Establish what they have, and what they mad need. If this is one kingdom or several we do not know yet either, but we can learn this in time. This may be a dozen tribal polities.”
“And then we can do war.”
Gabraldi nodded, “Yes, that'd be the harmonious way to root ourselves. And in the meantime we can gather what we can to send as tribute to The King. Enforce our position as the long term strategy, and go from there.
“Hence I propose this list of orders to carry out: to seek and identify the boat builders, establish contact and gauge intent. If they mean us war: we must reinforce out position here and wear them out. If they will accept a peaceful existence: carry out exchange with them. We will need to become embedded among them, learn the language. Sevilo, those are your talents.”
Sevilo nodded, smiling under his gray beard. “Further more, how is your magic?” Gabraldi asked.
“It is tired from the voyage as I am still. But give me time.”
“Very well, you are dismissed.”
“No, my friend: all I am saying is that this is a land that shall make us all noble!”
A spirited looking man of young peasant stock sat atop a rock by the sea. In his hand he held a rock like a plate and a knife in another. Sea urchins split and unsplit took up residence on the black basalt sea stone he was using. With the knife he scraped out the delicate orange flesh of the urchin's gonads and ate the sweat, salty flesh.
His companion, a lanky pale skinned man in recovery from scurvy reclined weakly at the bottom of the rock, his toes buried in the pearly sand, “How and why do you say that? Do you know that all land is owned by The King and his Princes?”
“Yes, but they are not here now, and all land must be worked to have value: right? And who is here to work it but us?” the spirited peasant eating urchin said.
Behind them the encampment glowed higher up on the coast. Throughout the day the region was cleared rapidly of trees. Their rough trunks now forming the beginning of fortification against whatever may lurk in the wilds. But now the sun was low it was alight with torch and lamp light and sparkled in the growing purple light of a light spring day. The coldness had lifted and the weary bodies of the newly arrived had been spirited into activity beyond the work day they had. Many went on on unused logs to fish from the sea, others wandered about the shore searching for the easy crabs or clams that were buried in the sand for a fast meal or to add to their rations. It had been months since they all knew a good meal.
“Where did you get such an idea, Gonzo?” asked the other with a light cough.
“Just now. What I think I'm trying to get at is this: if the Honorable King demands tribute from his people, but all tribute flows through the nobility to him: then in a land as fresh as this we can become our own nobles!”
“That makes no sense.”
“Then Sallo I will have to break it through your head!” Gonzo declared, tapping the knife to the rock to punctuate, “When we harvested grain at home: to whom did that harvest go to?”
“My Count.” said Sallo weakly, “But then he gave me up to the Expedition to avoid a debt.”
“That bit is besides the point. But to whom does your count send the grain to?”
“The King.” said Sallo.
“Exactly. So why do you send your grain to your count?”
“Because I farm his land.”
“Yes. And here we are on virgin land. Who owns this land?”
“None of us.”
“And there you have it.” Gonzo said with a smile. “No one owns this land.”
“But that means The King does not take tribute from it.”
“But he can.” Gonzo reminded him, “And who is there to say who can or can not own it?”
“The Expedition Commander, Gonzo. Don't you see: he owns this land now.”
“Does he though? Or does he govern? What determines ownership?”
“Listen friend, I am not really in the mood.” Sallo complained, “Is this really worth it?”
“It is, because I am telling you: this can make us rich and independent men. Far beyond what the Homeland of which ever country anyone here could have made us. Whatever territory the Expedition Commander sets, we can go beyond that. There is no claimed land here, it is all free for us to take. We may have farms and estates where we only owe so little of our produce to someone else, and we may own the rest. Imagine that: our own noble lineage, there is no end to the possibility of us being free, landed, Companiera.”
Sallo only groaned, mumbling something about an ache in his tooth.
“If you will not have a conversation then so damn you to ignorance.” Gonzo spat, “I will have to find someone else.”
“Can this just wait until I am not feeling so tired?”
The Expedition Commander has decided to take option A towards the boat builders.
Meanwhile, the rest of the encampment will go about working on the food supply for this turn
Hold your shivering, and draw close the blankets. Sit and be still, for here is how the world came to be.
In the beginning, there was nothing but void, fire, and water. In the vast sea of emptiness, its deep crystal depths was the realm called Nadania. It held nothing, and was nothing. To its north rushed sea, Agaelia. Its rough waves were bright as silver and foamed; heavy and salty it rushed west through Nadania. On the south of Nadania, there was the fire: Pyrosyna.
Nadania, though vast and shapeless offered no resistance to either fire or water, and both forces met. In a crash the universe was filled with a mighty volcanic roar as sea and fire met. The two forces fought one another in violent conflict. Splashed over and under one another in long suffering spasms and devouring. They battled up other one another. With waves of water and fire racing up and up. Waves rose like pillars into the dark sky, as the illumination of the sparks from Pyrosyna shot towards heaven with the screaming and yowling of fire works. In the mad chaos of their battle, the fire got the upper hand as the brilliance of its embers rose into the sky forming flares of stars whose light was hot and boiled the great seat away until it was steam and cloud that softly spread over the battlefield as it quieted and settled. In the wake of either combat were vast deserts of ashen gray landscape illuminated by the weak fires of the stars overhead.
In the haze the ground cracked and sputtered as the latent hear brooded and fermented. Over distant horizons the endless fire sea of Pyrosyna sputtered and burned on. While opposite the endless depths of Agaelia churned and lashed against the sea. But the vast emptiness was beaten, and the baking embers over head warmed the world. The clouds released from the confrontation rained upon the sooty earth. The rain drops boiled and steaming from the ashen ground and rose again as mist in the sky. The great lashing dunes of the elemental battle were eroded.
As the dunes flattened, the shoulders of great giants shifted. Lifting their heads from the blackened earth rose the great Blando Pelliedo Grondas, the White Giants. Two by two they emerged from their dunes as the rains washed over them. Standing naked in their great bleak and gray world they looked out at the the new creation of the world and realized its emptiness. They gathered together, and realizing the bleakness of the world sought to build something out of it. They reached to the ashen ground and brushed aside the mud and the slop and pulled out the clay. In their hands they molded and formed, creating the world around them.
They created great mountains, built celestial palaces. They set to the sea of the north and the fires of the south and laid out great bridges. They brought fire to their mountains and opened forges. They brought water to the troughs and filled great seas. They reached for the stars and brought down great shimmering gemstones and metals which they spun into the veins and bones of great creatures, packed them tight with clay and forged life. They worked with a silent innocence and love for all that they touched and their works filled the sky as it did the ground. They sat at their benches, their heads in vast clouds and hammered into creation great works. In every move they made they put in their love and their life.
For eons they worked. Until so much of their love and life was spent that the great giants fell back from their tables and died. Their creations mourned them. Their bodies were buried in the great earth. From their bodies came a last creation as they rotted, green life came into existence and astonishment came to the world. The halls of their palaces were filled with luscious forests. The taming of the seas became home to great forests of kelp. And the premier of their creation, the dragons looked down upon it all.
The first boot touched the ashen shore with a muffled thud as the long boat came to a stop. Around the sailors an eerie snow was settling over the landscape. Behind them was held a silent sea. A light wind blowing from over the horizon held a gentle lapping of the waves but nothing more as the longboats unloaded unto the shore. For the better part of three days the detachment at open sea had prowled along the coast of this island in search of an ideal landing spot. They had in the end found it at the furthest tip of a great bay, guarded at the one end by a large island. Exhausted and legs wobbly from months at sea the sailors and marines finally once again felt dry land.
“Santiago.” hailed a sailor. He turned back to the men getting off the boat and in a dour tone spoke, “Once you get your land legs back take a group of men and scout the surrounding area, establish a picket.”
The sailor, dressed in a loose fitting shirt and a leather tunic nodded. He leaned on the long pole of a pike as he staggered ahead a short distance and fell down in the cold sand to rest. Moving quickly the commanding sailor helped men and equipment get onto land, pulling the boats further ashore so what little tide there was would not pull them again out to sea. After several minutes passed of walking and stretching many of the marines and sailors were just losing their sea legs and a patrol was sent out. Many of the others moved by habit to move up to the dunes and highland overlooking the beach to find cover from the elements in the immense oaks, mangrove, and fading palms of the shore line.
Things moved along as more and more boats landed ashore. The commanding sailor fell in with a recovering group of men as they helped them along. From these boats came various ill and famished sailors, pale as a winter's gale and their gums bleeding. Scurvy. Helped by the doctors and surgeons of the ship they were moved up on their stretchers to the high beach where they laid out and a fire lit to keep them warm.
“If we do not find some fruit soon, I fear for them, don.” said a surgeon in gray formality, “They are well advanced.”
Scurvy was by no means an unknown ailment, or one hard to treat. Everyone knew this. But it lifted a weight off the old surgeons chest as he brushed his graying bird and turned to look back to the sea. Adrift in steel gray waters still as a mirror's edge sat five immense hulks. Three packed levels of canon deck and perhaps enough stores to sail around the world, though none have thought to try it; many things aboard a ship has a tendency of going sour. But he looked at those boats not as a promise for some great deal or potential but as a nursery for plague and disease which had long haunted them over their trip no matter how much they tried to chase it off with gunpowder and burning incense. Of the original number of the crew, fifteen to forty men each aboard each ship had died many more convalesced by one disease or another, least of them was scurvy. There were plenty more aboard the dank decks feared too sick to move still.
“I already put out the orders for a patrol. If we find any fruit in the area they'll be the first to receive it.”
The surgeon nodded and his eyes shone with a hint of gratefulness. He wandered off to tend to his patients as the commanding sailor stood to look out at the operations coming to shore.
Many things were coming to order. It had to, the officers of the fleet had spent the last two days making a plan of operations for when they would find a suitable spot. They had sailed past plenty of coast and wave-breaking cliffs since finding this land. They knew little of what might possibly be here, though more than a few ruins of fortresses seemed to have been perched high above the ocean cliffs. Their walls looked as sturdy and bleak as the gray granite escarpments that met the waves. On this island though they did not see much of the sort from the sea.
From the great boats was launched one more longboat. The sailor stood erect and crossed his hands behind his back as he saw it make its approach. A great red banner flew from it. A golden canopy covered the hull. He could see the shine of full armor dress as the men aboard shone in the eerie low sunlight. The oars of the boat beat at the waves as it crawled in towards the shore where the men now were working. The sounds of axes struck the breezy air and the first trees were beginning to gall. Clearing was under way and soon would rise the first of the tents. The sailor knew a number of engineers would be at work surveying the area to begin work on initial fortifications; who knew what lived in this land with them now.
As the dressed boat neared close to shore the sailor stepped back onto the beach and towards the wash to greet it. He came up to the waves just as its bow hit the shore and the first armored boots sunk into the moistened gravel and sand. The wood growled as it pulled across the wave washed pebbles as the men aboard stepped out. The sailor bowed low to the commanding figure who stepped onto land.
“Don deGrand.” the sailor greeted the tall lithe figure under the wide brim of a flapping hat, struck with a long gray feather, “Welcome to a whole new world.”
The lithe man, his skin sun kissed and his features sharp and emaciated through hardened stretched skin smiled down at his officer through bright blue eyes. “The pleasure is yours.” he said softly, “You were the first to land.”
Laughing the two grabbed each other by the forearm and pulled each other close. Sir Gabraldi, or Domi Gabraldi Samprosio SantoSillisia DiCorlone gazed out expectantly at the land they had come to. His eyes were filled with the religious fervor of finding the moon and setting it free again, where ever it might be. This land, he thought to himself as he scanned the shore looked as though in better times it would have been a tropical paradise full of heavenly birds with the potential for much wealth. But under current conditions, the mood was dampened and the possibilities were scant. He may be able to put potatoes and corn into the ground and expect to feed his men with that much. But to again taste coffee and rich Sanerican Oranges were a luxury long dormant even now. Men lived, but they did not thrive. All were forced to be monks. These days were good for Heaven, to receive so many pure souls who did not need to wade the fires of Hell for so long to clear their souls and minds before they stood on the gates of eternal resplendence or blissful reincarnation. But what joy was there in the meantime, except drunkenness or suicide?
In contrast to the lithe gentleness of Domi Gabraldi was his minor officer, the commanding sailor Fussolino Falango Rumero diCapal. A short stacked figure whose graying features were bruised and scared from a number of fights and scuffles on the grand endeavor he was on. His black beard salted with hints of white and gray and growing wild. His pale gray eyes shaded under the visor of his polished helmet. He wore his musket on his back, a long precise Perto sword at his hip on which rested a heavy gloved hand, while at the other hung a pouch of already wrapped packs of powder and shot.
The two strolled together up the beach as sailors and marines worked around them. On their expedition they had acquired many different hands. The expedition itself was no longer simply one from and for Sandovarra. While the king still financed the effort, even more so as it produced tribute for his court, manning it was no longer a prerogative of the court itself. Disgraced nobles or overzealous schemers still come to the expedition to seek redemption, but they do not fill the entire ranks. From shore to shore the expedition established many foot holds, or many offices and consulates in foreign lands. Under the red-gold dragon banner of the King of Sandovarra many were offered council or guidance, or hooked fully into the expedition as it seized principalities for trying to excise it. As such, the laboring hands of the expedition were numerous in size and shape. Men and women blue-blooded and not came to be a part of the expedition and they toiled and labored here on the beach to set the next step in its long mission. Children even had been born to it, and these Expediodarra helped pull the labor, doing the simple things.
Fires were lit to help against the alien biting chill and the two officers surveyed their future encampment. Gabraldi was pleased to see they had found such an ideal bay. The distant small island at its mouth was not far off either and could be seen as a thin strip behind the great masted ships. At a future point, such an island would become an ideal location for fortifications. From that point guns could look out over the steel gray waters and hold off hostile ships. In a more ambitious future, a chain might be pulled up from the sea to seal the water off and break the hull of any hostile vessel seeking to land in their bay. And from the inland they were guarded by the forests and wilderness where any attacking army would have to struggle against first before he could muster an army to hold them at land. The site of a river mouth opening into the sea opening the potential for an inland route for any advanced detachments sent inland. He counted up his possibilities, and thanking the divines that there was nothing yet to contest their presence. A more perfect position he could not think of.
Orders? Uhhh... I guess whatever is needed to start things off.
Nation: Expediao DiParva Represented Color: Dark Red Race: Human Capital: Encampo Nuvo Parva Ruler: Domi Gabraldi Samprosio SantoSillisia DiCorlone
Type of Government: Colonial Government
Religion: The Salvation of the Internal Soul
Geographical Location: The southern island at the inlet at the river
History: The seas ceased to rise and the weather became uncertain in the days after the moon fell. Across distant oceans the court wizards of the Kingdom of Sandovarra befuddled at the disappearance of the moon were called to answer for what had happened. Across stormy and clear nights they sought to scour the skies themselves and collected any hint of evidence that would indicate a theory from whence to pursue. But to no avail, they could find nothing from the cloistered royal seat of the Sandovarran kingdom. Their failures shot through the small insular court a haranguing of argument as winters fell early and left with shocking rapidity. An apocalyptic scenario seemed to have befell the world without the pearl of the White Dragon, the moon. It came to a head that with violence the king cast from his court hundreds of courtiers and nobles who had grown heavy on his patience and they wailed from outside the city walls to be let back into civilization, but the king had shut his doors to them.
In the rising arguments and more and more purges threatened the suggestion was posed to send an expedition to search for it. “After all.” said a prince at court, “Where could the moon have gone if not down below the horizon where we can not see it?”
The suggestion put the court at ease and they had a plan of attack on which to attach themselves. However, the proposal carried a price to pay for the prince who having offered the suggestion would be forced to leave the confines of the royal palace and city and leave Herarri. Perhaps for all time. But the poet mastermind that was the prince bolstered his confidence at the opportunity to put his plan into action and perhaps be named Heir Apparent by the ailing king and he gathered together his retinue, his attendants, and all his cohort and left the royal city for the country-side.
The mission to construct the expedition the prince knew would not simply be a matter of recruitment and contracting worthy volunteers. While the king had endowed him with a hearty purse to put things underway leveraging the abled bodies would be a hard thing to do. He would need a flotilla he imagined, and hearty seamen could not just be raised from the soil. And in the times since the moon dropped and court purges had exiled many hundreds of angry nobles into the countryside the realm was looking uncertain as the stability of court and the realm were both thrown into question. As such, the mission to recruit and to build became that of a military campaign across the realm to acquire men to comply with royal orders and to seize what resources which can be carried off for the port given to the prince by the king. The war which lasted eight years laid waste to the ancient foundations of five old houses and the prince nearly emptied entire baronies to bring the people to the sea to build and equip his navy.
At the end of the ninth year the Prince had his flotilla, and sending out across storm black seas he went in search across the ocean for the lost moon. Leaving well behind him the very center of the world.
The expedition traveled to foreign lands and back again across several decades. While it found no moon it established new frontiers, brought to the court new riches and new sources of tribute to the king. The Prince's efforts were so bountiful that while he was never named Heir Apparent he was named Domi D'Expediao, Lord of the Expedition. The Expedition itself transforming into an institution and a court away from court as in intervening years nobles cast from the royal court in shame shuffled to the Expedition to seek redemption under its great unfurling sails.
The Expedition carried on for decades more and the Domi D'Expediao died of age at sea. Never to be laid to rest in his home country under the boughs and in the shade of the orange trees of the court he was wrapped in the banner of the expedition and dropped into the steel gray sea in ceremony and state. His hand was cut off, and place into a vase so that it could be delivered back to home where one part of him may be laid to rest in Sandovarra soil.
The command of the expedition passed on in election to a young officer considered second to the Domi D'Expediao and Gabraldi Samprosio SantoSillisia DiCorlone was declared the new admiral of the mission. Under his command the expedition continued to spread out to seek out the moon, and Gabraldi ordered his command to see out the land of Haleath, which some ports had whispered was where the Moon had gone.
May the grace of the divine and the purity of soul, in the name of his highness the King and Son of Roalumi guide the hand of the faithful to put the moon back in its throne.
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