[colour=gold][u][h1][centre]Empire of Violette[/centre][/h1][/u][/colour]
[centre][img]https://i.imgur.com/fRiTWvK.png[/img][/centre]
[hr]
[colour=gold][centre][h2][i]Le Patriote[/i][/h2][/centre][/colour]
[centre][h3][u]Rain on the Tracks[/u][/h3][/centre]

Workers on the recently finished Confluence-Nerrard rail line suffered rain on their parade today, as the ribbon cutting ceremony for the Empire's first modern train network was plagued by heavy downpour. Perhaps a small relief, their plight was held in common with many fellow Veletians across the country's northern interior, with major rainfall reported from Rosemère to Artran. Some low-lying communities north of Valenois experienced minor flooding, but no injuries or major property damage has been made known thus far. Despite the cumbersome weather conditions and interruptions to festivities, the trains themselves were able to depart on time, making their first of many trips from Confluence to Nerrard. A number of lucky private passengers were able to book tickets for the trip, including many well-to-do citizens of Confluence simply looking for a round trip, just to experience the novelty of Violette's latest advancement.

Constructed under the [i]Pinnacle Programme[/i], Minister Marcelet Gavreau's ambitious attempt at economic and technological modernization, the rail line is only the latest in a long list of the programme's successes. Besides infrastructural advancements, revenue from the investments undertaken by Pinnacle has also gone into commercial research, with the Fairmont Company (inventors of the popular Vert camera) achieving major commercial success with the assistance of loans under Pinnacle. Scholarly and scientific endeavors have also been aided by Pinnacle, with Minister Gavreu's efforts including a grant given to renowned Veletian physicist Reynault Farriet, whose advances in that field have brought the Academie des Sciences in Confluence to the international scientific forefront.

[hr]
[centre][h3][u]Lac-Arbrouge, Empire of Violette,[/u][/h3][/centre]
[centre][img]http://flashbak.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/152246401.jpg[/img][/centre][centre][i]Lake-goers celebrate the arrival of spring in the south of Violette[/i][/centre]
If Violette's north was the political and economic heartland of the nation, the south was the heart of leisure. Far from a rural backwater, the [i]Sud de la Violette[/i] was a liberal and cosmopolitan region, full of quaint country villages home to a great many down to earth Veletians living the simple life—and nearly as many elaborate manors for the foreigners and northerners looking to emulate them. The south had largely ignored the urbanization of the industrial revolution (or perhaps been ignored by it), and was still a mostly rural region, dominated by hundreds of tiny towns and villages with folksy names and pretty architecture. There were no smokestacks soaring into the sky or throngs of coal-dirtied day laborers migrating about the city each hour. Instead, one found only fresh air and farmers and artisan craftsmen that looked as if they were ripped from a tourism brochure. Socially laissez-faire, the locals of the South of Violette cared little for one's origins and were even quite welcoming of accommodating alarming social changes; in some towns in the south, women could even vote in municipal elections. Such was the idiosyncrasy of this world-famous region, that even when it seemed locked in an idealized past, it was also at the cutting edge of society.

Known for its calm weather, its fine wine, its beautiful scenery and its vibrant culture all in equal measure, the South of Violette was where everyone who was anyone in anywhere else in the world wished that they lived. The shores of Lac-Arbrouge, a hot-spot for tourism (and home to probably the most expensive lakeside property in the world), were warm ten months of the year, and in those ten months they were waded in by every artist and Bohemian who mattered. Spotting celebrities in the south was mundane, and most important political figures in Confluence had a spring manor in the southlands too, needing time each year away from the hustle and bustle of the capital. It was a fact begrudgingly accepted by the rest of the Empire that the south was special, and would stay that way. The decisions impacting the daily lives of families from Lorre to Labelle would be made in the western countryside of Monne near half as much as they would be made in Confluence.

Within the region, there was usually a clear divide between those towns and neighborhoods of cities settled by wealthy foreigners versus those populated by ordinary Veletians. While the two got along, they simply led different lifestyles; a local would quite frankly not be able to afford to eat where the tourists ate, and foreigners were rarely clever enough to learn about the holes in the wall—serving the finest cuisine in the world—that the local gentlemen and ladies preferred to frequent. Not that the two classes never got to know each other, of course. There were burly young men aplenty in the Sud de la Violette for rich older women to get to know, and the ladies of the South of Violette were infamous for all of the exact same reasons you'd expect. There were plenty few half-Veletians littered about the country vineyards and stoney roads of the south, and more than a couple babes with astonishingly Veletian features born to ladies of grace in Tara and Zellonia. To their fathers, they were simply handsome sons and pretty daughters: to their mothers, they were reminders of the best trip they ever took.