[indent][indent][indent]
[center][url=https://ibb.co/R4DgPdGb][img]https://i.ibb.co/Nd27RzGX/Andermonde-Overview-A3-ezgif-com-resize-1.png[/img][/url][/center]
[h2][color=#d5bcba]❧ THE WORLD: ANDERMONDE[/color][/h2]
[b]Andermonde[/b] is split between two continents and two ages. The [b]Old World (Nonotoule)[/b] is where this story unfolds: an industrial, rational, low-magic civilisation of airship lanes, universities, factory smog, and fading faith. The [b]New World (Xyletl)[/b], colonial name [i]Chevataille[/i], lies across the ocean: ancient, magical, barely understood, and recently invaded by Old World expeditions hungry for magical relics and land.

A generation ago, the Royal Academy of Tovair published [i]The Origination[/i] and declared gods and demons disproven — the [b]Death of Worship.[/b] Reason had won. Then the first artefacts returned from Xyletl and refused to uphold the chosen narrative: statues woke, objects warped, the dead began to stir. Magic re-entered the world as [i]contamination[/i], smuggled in crate by crate. The Old World is still pretending it has everything under control. It doesn't.

It's also an age of hard inequality. The rich were promised a golden century of innovation and kept it for themselves; the poor were promised the same and got ash and empty stomachs. That class gap is the fuel under half the schemes in this world — your patrons' included.

[h3][color=#d5bcba]The Old World — Nations & Cultures[/color][/h3]
[b]Croussai[/b] — [i]Empire. Industry & iron.[/i] The brute powerhouse of the northeast: vast resources, vast factories, vast armies. Short on social freedom, short on imagination, but no one out-produces it. A Croussai upbringing means discipline, hierarchy, and the belief that strength is measured in tonnage. [i](Good for: a hard, drilled, institution-shaped fighter — favored or frontier-grim.)[/i]

[b]Incharde[/b] — [i]Council-state. Money & motion.[/i] The equatorial port-city at the mouth of the Mer Mortou — the most influential trading hub in the world and the main gate for westbound airships. Scientists and new-money industrialists flock here. Cosmopolitan, mercantile, ruthless beneath the polish, where a fortune (or a person) is made or unmade in a season. [i](Good for: dockside grit, self-made ambition, a new money patron's wealth.)[/i]

[b]Noutaine[/b] — [i]Duchy. Old blood & old gods.[/i] One of the world's eldest nations, once the seat of faith, now declining genteelly in a scientific age. Its capital, [b]Hautnoir[/b], is all soaring cathedral architecture and dwindling congregations — beauty outliving belief. Noutainians carry a sense of fallen grandeur, of being the past the future stopped needing. [i](Good for: faded aristocracy, a devout streak, the ache of a name that used to mean more.)[/i]

[b]Claireville[/b] — Neutral ground. The order's city. Where the tourney is held: an old, grey port on the inland Mer Mortou, loyal to no nation. Its entire prestige rests on hosting the [b]Chevaliers de la Monde[/b], which fills it with nobles without courts, inventors without permits, and pilgrims who've found a new object of faith. When the Tourney is called, the city triples overnight.

[i](Other names you'll hear: [b]Enchaire[/b], the eastern airship port; [b]Haunder[/b], faded seat of the old Church; the [b]Mer Mortou[/b], the grey inland sea Claireville sits on.)[/i]

[h3][color=#d5bcba]The New World — Xyletl, In Brief[/color][/h3]
The frontier across the ocean. The [b]Twelve States[/b] claim it on paper; in practice, the interior answers to no one. Archaeologists compete with treasure hunters, settlers rename places already named, and smugglers move artefacts faster than any law. Wild, magical, dangerous, and looked down on by every polished soul in the Old World — which is exactly why an initiate who came up out there is such a scandal in the Claireville lists. [i](Good for: an Interloper's origin, or anyone who's brushed real magic.)[/i]

[h3][color=#d5bcba]Technology & Daily Life[/color][/h3]
[list]
[*] [b]Airships[/b] move the world over distance: licensed, scheduled, lane-bound by buoys and markers, prey to storms and sky-pirates. The grandest run 900 feet long.
[*] [b]Rail and road[/b] stitch the Old World together; [b]gaslight[/b] lines the streets; [b]telescopes, presses, and engines[/b] are the pride of the age.
[*] [b]Clockwork automatons[/b] are real and not uncommon. The Chevaliers field them in the tourney as living opponents. 
[*] [b]Arms:[/b] steel and gunpowder both. Blades, lances, and crossbows share the field with early firearms — a knight is as apt to drill with a pistol as a sword.
[*] [b]Universities[/b] rival the old temples for influence. This is a world that trusts a laboratory over a prayer.
[*] [b]Medicine[/b] is skilled and brutal: surgeons, sutures, laudanum, no miracles. A clean wound you walk off — a fouled one kills you slow. Anything that heals faster than that is contraband, and trusted by no one.
[*] [b]Word travels by rail, wire, and the morning broadsheets.[/b] The tourney is front-page theatre. A name is made or broken in print as much as on the sand, which is half of why working the crowd matters.
[*] [b]Daily life splits hard by purse.[/b] Gaslit avenues and airship promenades for those who won the century; filth, pollution, and tenement cold for everyone else. Most people never leave the city they were born in — a berth in the sky costs a month's wages.
[/list]
[h3][color=#d5bcba]Magic[/color][/h3]
Rare. Restricted. Smuggled. Unstable. Every scrap of it traces back to Xyletl, and the Old World taxes and bans it into a thriving black market run by the [b]Chevataille Trading Company.[/b] A wand that spits fire, a cloak that turns a blade, boots that run a person across rooftops — these exist, but they're contraband, costly, and prone to [i]side effects[/i] no one fully understands. For the tourney: [b]assume your character fights mundane.[/b] An enchanted blade won't win you the lists. It'll win you a scandal, a rumour, and a target painted on your back.

[h3][color=#d5bcba]The Chevaliers de la Monde[/color][/h3]
A nation-less order of warrior-protectors: peacekeepers, arbiters, philanthropists whose word carries weight in every court. They are the social summit, [i]the best of the best[/i], and they serve for life. When one falls to age, injury, disgrace, or exhaustion, the gap must be filled, and the call goes out to Claireville. Their creed is the thing this whole story turns on:

[quote][b]They seek protectors, not champions.[/b][/quote]
Skill at arms only buys you through the door; what they actually weigh is [i]temperament, judgement, and restraint[/i] — which is why a patron demanding you win dirty is asking you to fail the only test that counts.

[h3][color=#d5bcba]The Tourney — Structure & Rules[/color][/h3]
Open to anyone who can reach Claireville and survive the opening trials. No fee — but you must [b]abandon all prior allegiances[/b] for its duration, and you are [b]watched constantly.[/b] It runs up to [b]five days[/b] and has five components: 

[b]I — The Opening Event[/b]
[list]
[*] [b]The Skyfall.[/b] Leap from an airship some 300 feet up; choose a parachute (steady) or a glider (bold). The crowd loves nerve over caution.
[*] [b]The Battle Mobile.[/b] Race a 500-foot track hunted by two automatons — outfight them or outrun them. They don't tire. You do.
[*] [b]The Ranger's Test.[/b] Strike a distant mark from sixty feet, three shots, with a weapon you assemble yourself. Pure accuracy, no luck.
[/list]
[b]II — The Open Days[/b]
[list]
[*] [b]Jousting & Duelling.[/b] Sign up, or call out a rival. In a duel, the [i]challenged[/i] party chooses the weapon — and [b]no magic, no poison[/b], ever.
[*] [b]The Arena Presentation.[/b] Sponsors pay to loose exotic beasts or automatons for initiates to fight before the crowd — a display of their wealth and your nerve. Single combat earns more acclaim; teams are encouraged. No explosives, no area weapons.
[*] [b]Crowdwork.[/b] You're judged off the field, too. Bravery, humility, and visible self-sacrifice win the public; working the crowd between events matters as much as winning in it.
[/list]
[b]III — The Oathswearing[/b]
[list]
[*] [b]Choose a virtue and be tested on it;[/b] knights are known by it — "the Bold," "the Pure")
[*] [b]The Pure[/b] — endure cold and deprivation without breaking from devotion.
[*] [b]The Good[/b] — be forced to choose between your own success and helping another, and choose right.
[*] [b]The Bold[/b] — face a clearly superior foe and refuse to yield, even unto a (survivable) death.
[*] [b]The Great[/b] — given only to one who wins everything, secures patronage, and swears every other oath. Awarded three times in the order's history.
[/list]
[b]IV — Patronage[/b]
Every initiate needs a [b]patron[/b] — an old family, an industrial house, a charity, a political bloc. Patrons take them on to raise their [i]own[/i] standing, and each prizes a different quality: ruthlessness, courage, honour, ingenuity. Securing one is a social battle as fierce as any duel. [b]Lose your patron and your run is over, no matter how well you fight.[/b] This is the lever yours holds against you.

[b]V — The Final Initiation[/b]
Only those who held a patron and proved themselves arrive here. The survivors are loosed together against a single, overwhelming automaton. [b]No single combat is allowed[/b] — the order is watching for [b]teamwork, leadership, and sacrifice.[/b] Which means the trial cannot be passed by beating your rival. Only with them.

[h3][color=#d5bcba]The Rot Beneath[/color][/h3]
Initiates can be [b]poisoned[/b] by rival competitors, [b]bribed[/b] into yielding, [b]sabotaged[/b] by mechanics tampering with the automatons, [b]framed[/b] for cheating. Worse: an [b]inner cabal[/b] within the Chevaliers quietly culls candidates it deems "unsuitable," merit be damned — and an outsider is exactly the sort it has in its sights. Looming over all of it is the [b]Chevataille Trading Company[/b], the smuggling cartel whose money corrupts institutions across the world. The tourney is a complete story on its own. But pull any of these threads and the tourney turns out to be the opening act — [i]if[/i] we want to keep going.

[h2][color=#d5bcba]❧ GLOSSARY[/color][/h2]
[b]Andermonde[/b] — The world itself; some call it [i]Tzakla'tun[/i] or [i]Ynverrai[/i].

[b]Chevataille[/b] — Colonial name for Xyletl, the New World; also the smuggling cartel that took the name.

[b]Claireville[/b] — The neutral port-city that hosts the Tourney; its prestige rests entirely on the order.

[b]Croussai[/b] — Old World empire of industry and iron; short on freedom, long on tonnage.

[b]Enchaire[/b] — The eastern Old World port where westbound airships depart.

[b]Haunder[/b] — Faded seat of the old Church. (Distinct from New Haunder, a separate university city.)

[b]Hautnoir[/b] — Capital of Noutaine: soaring cathedrals, emptying pews.

[b]Incharde[/b] — Old World council-state and the busiest trading port in the world.

[b]Mer Mortou[/b] — The grey inland sea Claireville sits beside.

[b]Nonotoule[/b] — The Old World: the industrial, rational, low-magic continent where this story takes place.

[b]Noutaine[/b] — Old World duchy of fading nobility and old faith.

[b]Salle[/b] — A hall of arms; the formal school where a properly-trained fighter learns the blade.

[b]The Twelve States[/b] — The colonial governments that claim Xyletl on paper, controlling little of it in fact.

[b]Xyletl[/b] — The New World: ancient, magical, recently colonized. Mapped by its colonial name, [i]Chevataille.[/i]
[/indent][/indent][/indent]