Vilageidiotx

Colonial

And here we go!

Colonial

In the Deep Woods Gwynda padded wildly through the dark with only starlight to show her the way. It was the darkest part of the night - the Hag's Hour - and her heart trembled as she thought about all of the superstitions that surrounded the lonely shadows of old-growth forests. For her, this was a spiritual experience. She could feel it in the way the cold light of distant stars crowned the branches of the trees and their vernal buds; the way those trees grew unique from each other, no root or trunk twisting in the same way as its neighbor; and the way the air kept the faintest hint of the winter chill that still threatened frost in the planting season. These things all took on a primal air and made her imagine the world when it was young and full of heroes. And it reminded her of when she was young. She knew, in the nagging rational corners of her mind not yet drowned divine ecstasy, that she must have looked like a fool. Gwynda was a woman in the wisdom of her middle years, having seen thirty eight winters on this earth, but she was acting like a little girl. Auburn hair whipped around her head, no braids or buns to hold it back. She was only wearing her undergarments - a white undershirt and flappy bloomers, now all brown and green with earthly stains. Her feet were bare, and her skin -ghastly pale and freckled - was soiled by the wet springtime mud. She was darting through the forest like a child, smiling and cantering from outcrop to glade, and stopping in her tracks when she struck a particularly shadowy part of the woods, where she would creep by, staring awestruck at the brooding shadows of old oaks and moss covered cypresses. In those dark places, colored by the shrill song of insects and the low croaking of toads, she imagined terrible things. Banshee's screaming in haunted graveyards, Batghouls descending from a dank highland cave in search of fresh buried corpses, like the stories she heard as a child in the old world, at the home of her Father's people in Tembree. But she also imagined stranger things - the stories of the new world. She thought of savage natives dancing naked around fire pits in the deep woods, painting themselves with the blood of murdered infants. And she thought of the terrible Sea-People that explorers claimed to see in the coastal swamps, their limbs replaced with eldritch tentacles and their skin covered in terrible scales. When she was in one of her dolorous fits, she feared these things and tried to hide herself from this world, but when her Goddess was with her and her spirit was lifted into religious ecstasy, this place took on a horrible beauty. The religious ecstasy did not come from nowhere. It was born in her devotion to Athdara - the Goddess-Queen of Strength, Courage, and Honor. Athdara had been a living woman in the distant past. She had been the daughter of Preavic, the legendary first High King of the Sorsetii who's Kingdom became Sorset. The story of Athdara was a heroic one - she had been the only child of Preavic, and she was only fourteen when her father died and left her the crown. The Kingdom, by all rights, should have perished with its first king, but Athdara kept it thriving. She bested her warriors in feats of strength, and showed a capacity to rule that rivaled her heroic father's. Under her command, the Sorsetii expanded and conquered their neighbors, and when Athdara died, she was given a place in the center of the heavens. As in life, the Goddess Athdara had no equals. She was Athdara of the Ten Thousand Glories, the master of the heavens. The forests south of Uponhill hugged the Adair farm, Gwynda's home in exil. The forests grew thicker as you went further south, until they closed in around each other to form a vaulted ceiling of branches and leaves that closed off the sky in some places. Patches of wet, marshy soil came together to form a natural barrier against the sea, which they met with reeded salt marshes and unnavigable lagoons. Gwynda knew nothing of warfare, but she had been told that the harshness of this wet woodland protected the colony of Uponhill from southerly attack, and Gwynda agreed. She agreed for different reasons though. She was but one woman, and she could navigate this place with ease, but there were other things in the forest that held more power than swampy ground or dense treelines. There was an ancient power, one that drew her to it, and she had absolute faith that it would protect her and her own. This forest held a relic, and it strummed at something deep in Gwynda's soul. She had learned the path to its place, and the place of every tree and glade and rock that lead to it. The forest seemed to grow thicker as she continued her late-night pilgrimage. She stopped at times, scrapping the bark from the trees and watching it dirty her fingernails. The smells in this place were the earthy scents of damp vegetation and living rot. She began to think of herself as a woodland nymph, or a faerie blessing the ground that she passed over. She almost fell entirely to her imagination, but an unnatural marking jerked her back into reality. It was a symbol carved into the jagged bark of a leaning Cyprus tree - a circle, crossed with a deep-cut V. And owl sign. She knew it immediately. Brodric, her steward, liked to hunt these woods. She knew he had belonged to the Society of Owls, one of the old martial Fraternities of Tirna-Sorset. When it was first reported to her that someone had been making odd markings in the woods near their farm, Brodric confessed. He claimed these markings to be an "Owl sign" and promised that they were little more that markings he made to remind himself where he brought down prey while hunting. Brodric loved to hunt, and the idea that he would mark trees to create a map of his successes was not in the least surprising. It bothered her, though, to imagine an animal being skinned and slaughtered along the path of her sacred pilgrimage. She skipped away, trying to forget about it. She entered the clearing, where the trees parted around an outcropping of thick limestone rock jutting out from the ground like ships sinking into the earth. Moonlight cast a blue hue over the land here, and the distant granite face of Mons Aen glimmered above the treeline. She glided into a furrow below, where a slick, mossy slab of rock jutted out of the soft ground. In front of that was a small pond, and in its center was a natural pillar of speckled black granite carved with an unnatural face. The features of the face were simple - two closed eyes, a simple nose, a mouth carved as a straight line, and the slim lines of a female face. Wild rifts in the stone squirmed like snakes along its top and gave the appearance of untamed hair. Gwynda could feel the power of the thing, and she had no doubt in her mind. This was the image of her Goddess. Athdara of the Manifold Spears. Gwynda fell onto her knees at the edge of the pond, squelching mud soaking through her cotton bloomers. She could hear dozens of prayers racing through her head at once. Athdara who keeps us well. Athdara who mastered the sky. Be good to those who are good to you, and keep your truths so that we shall know them. Gwynda's mind was inundated with memories of temples, and incense, and priests dressed in the finest fur-lined robes. She could remember her first fits of ecstasy when she was a child, and how it had lead her to boast that she could read the entire Athdaric Edda in a fortnight. She had succeeded. When her mind filled with this ecstatic energy, she could do things that scared others. It was like she had the willpower of a Goddess, but her mortality could not sustain her ecstatic fits and she always sunk into deep melancholia afterwards. Those she called her dolorous fits. They were, like the swinging of a pendulum, the two states of mind that had defined her life. She had married Riordan Adair in fit of ecstasy, which had caused her to insist on consummating their marriage three separate times their first night. She had also been in an ecstatic fit when they arrived in the new world, and she ordered the Adair Farm to be built on the far side of the river from the rest of the colony. Her spiritual excitements felt like patches on an uneven quilt that came together to tell her story despite the grey, depressed wool beneath them. She remembered her ecstatic moments vividly, and her dolorous moods almost always became vague mists in her memory. As she kneeled in the cold mud, a frog chanced by her. It became victim to her fancy. She grabbed it, and crushed its head in her fist. Blood and entrails oozed between her fingers, and she lifted the animal up as an offering. "Athdara" she crooned. It was foolish to be so loud in the wild, where the savages patrolled for victims to rape and kill, but she could hardly care. "I renew my service to you. Keep my children well." she felt unfinished, and scrambled for new additions to her prayer. "Keep our town safe from the savage, and show the savage how to behave. Remember the corn!" she thought of the horrible winter and shivered. "Yes! Remember the Corn." She dropped the mangled corpse of the sacrificial frog into Athdara's alter pond. "I am yours, Goddess!" she pulled open the buttons of her undershirt and bared the center of her freckled chest as if her present her heart for sacrifice. She beat on her sternum like a drum. "I will serve you in this new land! I will do whatever you wish me to!" --- By the next day, Gwynda's night-time pilgrimage had passed into memory. She stood in the warm spring sun, a neatly kept patterned turquoise tea gown covering her entirety from neck to ankle. Her hair, far from the wild mess that had followed her through the woods the night before, was done in twin braids that twisted back and forth to form a symmetrical bun with two ends hanging from its center. The Adair farm was a tamed meadow in the middle of the marshy southern woodlands. It was ringed with a waist-high stockade wall, the wall's logs whittled to points as sharp as spears. Most of the property was tilled earth, neighbored by smaller gardens, animal pens, simple outbuildings, and rows of log cabins for their attendants. The farmhouse dominated at the center of the property. It consisted of two floors, with raw, unpainted clapboard siding and small glassless shuttered windows. A river stone chimney rose from one side. Gwynda fiercely desired glass windows, and the lively painted walls that she had known in the old world. She wanted to see intricate scroll-work, and walkways lined with marble balustrades, and flower-gardens dotted with fountains, and shrines, and those deftly sculpted small statues that perfected any garden. This place was far from all of that. Her new home in exile was plain. It's grounds smelled of cow shit instead of roses, and the well-dressed maids and butlers had been replaced by sweaty farmers and their rag-clad children. They were looking out across the fields, where the farmers were tending plowed ridges of fetid black-green mud. Insects fizzed endlessly in the trees beyond, and their timbre became the base for dozens of other sounds. There were the caws of nearby crows resting in the bare, twisted treetops overlooking the farm. On occasion the chatter of squirrels, or the shrill goatish bleet of the tiny bog deer overcame the dull human sounds that filled day to day life. During the day, these natural noises easy to forget about, but at night they could be overwhelming. The bugs were their loudest at sunset. At that time, you couldn't hear somebody talk unless they were nearby. After sunset, when she was trying to sleep, their droning was joined by the croaking song of toads. Sometimes, it kept her awake until passed midnight, or even until the Hag's Hour. They had been working desperately to make certain a good crop of corn came up from the ground, memories of the hungry winter still fresh in their minds, and all of the Adair Farm's attendants were spending time working in the muck. There work was amounting to little. They had emptied latrines and chamberpots into the field, spreading it as equally and carefully as they could. The stench of that had been near unbearable. As Gwynda watched them working, she could see the mud caking onto their bare feet. It made her feel ill to think about. "The Savages plant their corn with fish." Oifa said. She was the matron of the Adair servants. Old age was coming upon her, and she was in her early fifties by now. Her years had caused her skin to go loose, and her breasts were beginning to sway when she moved. She was of peasant stock, brought into the household after a plague of Pockmouth killed her mother and sent her father to asylum after his mind had been boiled by fever. This had happened long before Gwynda married into the Adair line, and Oifa had been as much a part of the clan its estates had been. "With fish." Gwynda scoffed. She held a sea-green sachet to her nose. It smelled like rosewater and anise. The scent soothed her, and made her forget about the awful thought of a field filled with moist, rotting fish. "Mistress scoffs, but it is true." Oifa went on. "I've never been one to set a lot on foreign superstition, but those savages do know these parts, and we have hardly a sprout to show for our time." "It is early yet." Gwynda insisted. "How silly would it be for us to buy a barrel of fish to plant in the ground? I don't want to worry about that right now. But I do have other thoughts." "Other thoughts." Oifa repeated. She gave Gwynda a suspicious look. Oifa knew about the spiritual ecstasy that had sent her mistress into the dangerous wild at night. Gwynda suspected that Oifa knew more about her pilgrimage that she let on. She had been confronted that morning by the green-eyed matron, who brought a pair of stained bloomers as evidence. "What in the name of Billy Blind have you been doing?" she had scolded. Gwynda had lied. "I went out last night to check on the corn. I was worried a frost was on." Oifa hadn't questioned her further than that, only babbling about how difficult grass stains were to rub out. But for the rest of the day, Gwynda couldn't help but see knowing in the aged servant's eyes. "I want to double our crop of bloodcorn." Gwynda ordered. "Set up trellises nearer to the ditches." "Bloodcorn." Oifa grumped. Whatever she knew about what her mistress had been doing that night, Gwynda knew that the aged matron was aware of the ideas her spiritual ecstasies gave her, and she was always skeptical of those ideas. "Bloodcorn is a waste of time, and mistress knows that. We shouldn't be putting hours on those fruits." Gwynda knew what Oifa meant. Bloodcorn was a hard plant to grow, but it was one of the few things about the new world that she liked. Though it had a menacing name, the fruit itself was a pleasure. It grew on vines, and when it came to maturation it looked like a cob of corn swollen with blood. A mature bloodcorn was thick, shaped more like a gourd or a squash than corn. When it took on a juicy crimson color, and began to shimmer wetly in the sunlight, then it was ripe enough to eat. The kernels burst with an acidic juice that stained the teeth red, and it left behind a spicy aftertaste that reminded one faintly of peppers. When they first arrived, they had traded with the savages for a few bloodcorn fruits, and someone had baked a cake out of them to celebrate their new home. That cake had been the best thing Gwynda had ever tasted. The problem with Bloodcorn was a simple one - it was hard to tend, as servants had to prune and tease a vine up its trellis. Worse then that, one vine rarely produced more than two fruits in a year. They were a stubborn, indolent crop that some people thought to be native to some other land rather than this one. But Gwynda was persistent, and her spiritual ecstasy pulsed through her head like thirsty tendril, driving her to obsess on the issue. "I would have a few bloodfruits for the harvest festival this year. The servants are not so taxed that they cannot watch a few rare fruits, now are they?" she sniffed, taking in satchet's scents. She hoped that would be the end if it, so she changed the subject. "Where is Brodric? I would like to speak with him." "Brodric is out hunting." Oifa replied. "He went out this morning, before the sun had time to rise." Hunting. She questioned why she kept him on as steward. He did well enough at his job, but it seemed as if he spent too much time on his own affairs. He hunted, and visited nearby savages to trade. When he was at home, he read well into the night, and when he went to town he spent his time trading books and pamphlets, and chatting with educated men like the radical Doctor Browning. When he found time for balancing their books or attending to their stores she did not know. An Owl, she thought. Who can trust those? She looked up at the sun, and an old youthful worry crept up on her like a wraith from a long-dead life. That sun will do horrors to my skin. I should get indoors. Life on the edge of the world was guaranteed to sap at a person's vitality, but the she still dreaded the red, painful skin that a sun-scorching would promise her. Summer will be here sooner than I like. "I hope you have this work... in order, Oifa?" she said allowed. "I will be retiring to the house now."

Colonial

Keep in mind this from the same people who brought you Sexy Captains of Industry! This is the shit they show in between the marathons of aliens and the pawn shops.

@Byrd Man

At least it is a step in the right directions. Sexy history is better than no history at all. And really, I think they've done pretty well with Vikings, considering how crazy low budget it is.

Colonial

Vilage, why you have no physical description. It makes me sad.

@Dinh AaronMk

Pfff, what is this, the little leagues? Imma do that in post =p

Colonial

Name: Gwynda Adair Description: 38/F/Uponhill Background: Gwynda Adair was born Gwynda Umbrahme, the daughter of the Erle of Tembree. Tembree was, in ancient times, an independent kingdom who's people subsisted off of fish, whale, and seal while their warriors ranged across the moors finding opposing tribes to plunder. Those harsh times came to an abrupt end long ago when the young Kingdom of Sorset invaded and swallowed the small, unpeopled moors of Tembree. This conquest had been achieved by a Sorsetii Queen named Athdara. The Warrior Queen's personality cult grew strong in this far off place, and it has remained the unofficial main religion of the Tembree people, who's provincial nature has largely kept them isolated from the cosmopolitan Ethahnic faith. Tembree's barrow-pocked moors and climbing basalt cliffs set the stage for her early childhood. Her father was gone for much of her childhood, leading a detachment of Provincial Light Horse in the early stages of the Brugii war. This left Gwynda's education to her mother, and to the astrologers and court witches that her mother tended to favor. Gwynda was a strange child, taken to fluctuating moods that she would later relate to the spiritual world. She was imaginative, putting stock in old superstitions and falling deeply into the Athdaric cult. At fifteen, she was married off to the young Erle of Siltbruce, Riordan Adair. The Adair clan came from ancient blood, and they trace their lineage to a time so far back that legend and myth are too mingled in the history to prove them wrong. Riordan had entered public life as a cavalry officer, and by nineteen he had already been inducted into the Society of Banshees - a secret society of distinguished Cavalrymen who marked themselves by making their faces ghost-white with cakey white powder, running lines of greasepaint below their eyes to represent banshee tears, and screaming in battle. Though his induction was undoubtedly due to his social status rather than any sort of veterancy - he had only fought in one pitched battle before being brought into the society - it was still a badge of honor he wore with great pride. Gwynda was happy in her marriage. The Adair clan only paid polite attention to the Ethahnic religion, attending more to a routine of traditional ancestor worship, and their lack of devotion allowed Gwynda to practice her particularly devout worship of Athdara. Riordan was a patient man and seemed to handle her flights of fancy well enough, and the Adair wealth allowed her to indulge these fancies with some extravagance. The couple had one son who they named Nevin, and two daughters who they named Blaire and Braithe. The War of Brugii Sucession had began when she was just three years old. In the early years of their marriage, Riordan had been tasked with commanding the defense of a nearby border, a job which allowed him to live on his own estates and saw him only a handful of small skirmishes. Gwynda had always lived comfortably, and she had developed an ignorance of the outside world that made her way of life seem immortal. until the third decade of the war began, eight years into their marriage and just as they discovered that Gwynda was pregnant with their second child, that Riordan's assignment was changed and rode off to war in an extended campaign at the head of a column of light dragoons. Gwynda did not doubt that he would return. Riordan participated in the charge that saw the death of King Brandon Aeloy, though Riordan was leading flanking maneuver meant to unhinge the enemy line while the King's men charged into its center and therefore did not witness the King's death himself. In fact, it wasn't until the battle ended that he learned what had happened. Like many of the noblemen, he was nervous about the new King Ilroy's ability to rule, but the war was still there to fight. Riordan was part of a mission to ride around the enemy army while the Battle at the River Tirus took place, and he returned home after it ended. Ilroy's death shook up the entire political world of Tirna-Sorset. The nobility saw in the rising Aenda an authoritarian who would usurp their ancient rights, and they supported the young King Michael in what ways they could. When the rebellions came, the Adairs sided with the true king against the usurper Aenda. Riordan rode to war again, and Gwynda was still absolutely sure of their safety. Riordan joined with the other members of the Society of the Banshee, who's peculiar cult-like rites and elitist culture sided them with the anti-Aenda faction. They hired mercenaries and attempted to join-up with the other rebels. They won several skirmishes, but when faced with the professional army in a pitched battle, they were defeated. Riordan was imprisoned, taken to the capitol, and executed on the steps of the palace along with dozens of other nobles. Gwynda's world was turned upside down. She fell into a deep depression, made worse by her fluctuating moods. She was imprisoned, along with her children, Riordan's sister Maude (who's husband had died in the early years of the Brugii War, causing her to move to the Adair lands), and Maude's children. Though they were not executed, the decision of Aenda's judges was hardly less horrifying. Nevin, Gwynda and Riordan's eldest son, was taken to a surgeons and castrated in order to end the male line of Adair's. Their lands were taken, and they were forced to join the settlers being sent to Uponhill. The Adair's live on a farm outside of the settlement, though they winter within the walls of Uponhill with the rest of the colonists. A winter fever killed Gwynda's sister-in-law Maude, leaving Gwynda as the matriarch of the family in exile. They are assisted on their farm with a small circle of servants and staff. CHARACTER SHEET Adair Family -Riordan Adair: Former Erle of Siltbruce and noble patriarch of house Adair. Executed by the dictator Aenda. -Gwynda Adair: Riordan's Widow. Emotional state flucuates between "Spiritual Ecstasies" and "Dolorous Moods". Sheltered upbringing. Zeolotrous worshiper of Athdara. Description/Introduction --Nevin Adair: Nineteen year old son of Riordan and Gwynda. Was castrated at end of rebellion. Now he mopes in his room all the time. --Braithe Adair: Fourteen year old daughter of Riordan and Gwynda. Was something of a tomboy as a child, but has since grown into overconfident, flirty girl. Seems to see herself as the natural heir of the Adair heritage now her older brother is a eunuch shut-in. --Blaire Adair: Nine year old daughter of Riordan and Gwynda. Sickly, nearly died that winter, very attached to mother. -Maude Adair Culwen: Riordan's older sister. Widowed during Brugii War. Died during the winter. --Desmond Culwen: Maude's twenty five year old eldest son. Was deployed with the navy during the Brugii war and was unaware of rebellion until it was over. Spends his time drinking and trading war stories. Still holds a grudge over the events of the rebellion Adair Attendants -Oifa: Matron and unofficial head of household servants. In her middle fifties. Description/Introduction -Brodric: Steward of the Adair household. Admitted member of Society of Owls. Interested in reading and outdoorsman activities. Alleged connection to natives. POST CATALOG 1:Gwynda goofs off into woods to see statue. New World Agriculture 101. Description of Adair Farm.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

Precipice China needs something like this.

Colonial

Uponhill, not Townhill =p The only things I think you need to add are the name of the city he slummed in, and a reason why he has a Slavic name. If the former is the capitol, you might want to ask Aaron what the capitol of Tirna-Sorset is called. And with the latter, just say he immigrated from a foreign place and give the place a Slavic sounding name.

I guess having the punishment cease at some point is good enough. I was worried every exiled noble would have to abide by the no-willy rule and they'd all be Unsullied.

@Pepperm1nts

There is always a way to work around this shit. If all else fails, we could say that Aenda just really didn't like the look of Nevin's balls.

Colonial

Well, it hasn't all been filled out yet. Or maybe castration was being used in the context of a proscription style money raising campaign where Aenda's supporters would save the castration punishment for nobles who are the singular heirs of their executred fathers, so that the government can exile them and, instead of being required to give that land to an heir or risk a lawsuit by a future potential heir, that government can claim that land an all of it's incomes. Maybe the church gets involved and requests castration being ceased by citing it as barbaric. Or it was typically used in the military as part of a dishonorable discharge, and Aenda was a middle class career soldier who saw no problem with using military punishments in this context, but it is considered poor form to use the same sort of punishment on nobles, so the nobles who supported him got nervous and pressured him to knock it off. In this way, only a small number ever got the (tiny) axe. Or maybe the common masses have some sort of beef with debeefing, so a grassroots "Free Willy" campaign begins. This would tie in nicely with the enlightenment values suggested by Byrd's app. Aenda brings up an old punishment for traitors, and legalists fear that this will set a precedent for bringing back all kinds of harsh sentences, so they print and distribute essays and pamphlets decrying to tyranny of capital punishment and cause enough of a ruckus to cause Aenda's regime to take a more flaccid approach and simply exile the young noblemen, balls and all.

Colonial

Jesus, Vilage. You really made it easy for noble characters, huh? I guess my character won't have a wee-wee.

@Pepperm1nts

He was the singular male heir of a rebel leader who was also a pagan. His cousin will still be packing heat. You could come up with some excuse to remain endowed i'm sure.

Colonial

You might want to play with the naming convention a bit. I'm digging the Federalist Papers reference, but I think Aaron was wanting to eschew the latin cultural trope altogether, and the names might be a tad too modern anglo. The naming convention in the OP seems to be a more mix of celtic and old english.