Stormy City of Goren

Draugvan · Nov 21, 2016

This is being edited and added to, and is a place to save my work until submission is due.
Proprietary GM - @Draugvan

Apologies for the incomplete submission. I hope that what I have here will give you an idea of what I have in mind for the world.
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Goren
Key:
Flags - Principle nobility estates (NW=Ferme, SW=Derhial, E=Sata)
Striped - Trade (Primary+Secondary sector industry)
Grey - Tenements
Black - Low Goren
White, central 3/4 - Merchant (Tertiary sector industry)
White, other - Nobility housing
White, peripheral - Rock
Hash - Fields (Primary sector industry)

Goren=5 km diameter, taking roughly one hour to navigate South Gate-North Harbour, or 40 minutes from the eastern mountain-East Harbour.
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Expectations
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This is fundamentally a mature roleplay setting. It handles a lot of dark themes and nuances both unsuitable and unmanageable by most of the younger audience. It is not grim-dark fantasy. It is gothic. The difference being that we are not here to rape and murder every other citizen to our heat's content. In fitting with the gothic aesthetic it relies heavily on the player's romantic hedonism. The city is ruled and upturned by the reaching for sought desires. And this also includes literal romanticism. While not a smut setting, one can expect to be met with the odd flirt, especially where human hunters are in abundance. For this reason this roleplay is not advised for minors. The overall the subject matter is not molded with them in mind.

Players are encouraged to post at leisure. The only thing restricting post intervals being Non-Player-Character responses. You as a player are not special and have just as much agency as the background characters in this world. Goren is organic in its own way and will spit out anyone trying to bull their way through it without the requisite social backing. NPCs will post in order as any other player. However as an externalised component their responses will brief an opaque (roughly one paragraph), creating a more dangerous world out of the unknown. To this end players are not strictly limited to shorter posts, but are not recommended to exceed three paragraphs, which allows for character thought processes.

The most striking face of this roleplay is an expectation of excellence. While participating in larger events among the noble elite the way you type and your word choices are a keyhole to how your character presents themself, and could seriously impact their future. Typos when describing words and actions will be treated as a slip, a stutter, a stumble, which will likely have an effect on their social standing. Making the wrong move or choking up in a terse situation could truly spell the end. However this is not so much of an issue in colloquial settings where the common man may swear his nut off without rebuke.

Finally, your characters can die. Grievous wound, hands of fate, and lethal misfortune can be applied to your character at GM discretion, without your permission. This is an organic world, not a toy sandbox to play around in. Participation requires pre-emptive acceptance of this property - ignorance of the rule does not mean exclusion from it.

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Overview
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The nation is a thunderous landscape, wracked with perpetual storms. Azure, sodden rain clouds get between any shining light, and the land is swallowed by an overwhelming gloom. Thick blankets of rain fall upon twisted streets of the City of Goren, making them run like veinous flow.

Inflow. Outflow. Men and women enter through Goren, seeking asylum and hospice and refuge from a ravaging world - seeking new society - or following political ambition to this Capital of the eastern lands. And much like the tidal and perennial rush of water that follows its flagstones, men and women will exit through Goren with a loss of hope, looking south unto the next city with frantic, fervent eyes, gambesons heavy. Cathars and custodians be wary, Goren is an unforgiving and despicable place, where convictions and resolve will be tested.

Men and women will worse yet leave in body bags, consigned to the great dividing river that runs east to the coast. Goren is a large and multifaceted, tiered and layered city, but its population is a fierce and frail lot and Goren can hardly hold many more. The unfit are given no second chance. They are simply scattered and trodden underneath.

And men and women should hope not to leave Goren, because of the gentry and - for their disposition so decidedly fiery, and their awful, decadent tastes and wineries, lads and lasses all clad in finery, who desire to be - flippant and fanatically! - finally!! - characters of some distinguishment and substance, who keep foul beside partners and who care not tiptoe in their laced, lacquered boots over forgotten, fractured forms of a struggling, all-too-human population. These fiends push men and women to leave Goren as monsters, unequivocally - changed to their very core.

This place reeks of putrefaction and rust, and of pain and ruinous lust. Where a traveler may find passage into Goren with relative ease, it's leaving wholly intact that's truly unheard of.
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Geography, Locations, Infrastructure (incomplete)
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Derhial Manor: Great doors to Derhial Manor open wide into the night, and into the night also breathes a bright, inviting fire. Immaculate wooden walls hung in shades of red trappings bear contrast to the wet, soot-covered, blue-grey stones outside. A brazier from reception banishes cold to the bottom of the steps where now wait a trail of rich, costumed guests, with a host of sombre figures controlling entry at the threshold.

Ceaseless, senseless chatter reaches where you are at the gates, bursting from the frothing lines of guests, all dressed in their best, all clothed in airs, and hairs and lashes arrayed impeccably. Sycophants awaiting their turn to stand for judgment. And alongside this mess, characters in modest clothing and masquerade stalk past lines of self-appointed hierophants, moving with unearthly grace and poise to enter unmolested through the great doors.

From inside, wisps of joy and merriment and a few faint notes of music are caught on the wind and carried away, remorselessly disturbing the neighborhood's sleep.

Derhial Manor stands as the second largest structure in all Goren with tall steeps encircling an intimate maze of chambers. Wide boulevards snake up the hillside to meet the grounds. But snakes are want to eat their own tails. One will find that though a hillock this may be, it is a pit, where the strong eat the needy, the weak, and the kind alike.
Sata Rotted Keep: The night sky seems to disappear before you as you round a corner to the Sata residence. A subtle black edge stands out against the starlight, outlining the keep. Unlike the the surrounding area deep inside the High Disrtrict, no candles at all are lit on the outside of this building. Bright candles in shop windows and intimate whispers contrast to make Sata Keep seem dead when compared to the nobles' active nocturnal life.

Sata Keep had been forsaken years since Ferme's audacious grab to become the prominent noble line in Goren left Sata in disgrace and without leadership. The noble people present took pains to disregard the great stone mass as they strolled along the perimeter. Sata Keep pertained to a bad memory - best forgotten.

However when you allow your eyes to adjust to the dark you see that one facet of the monolith winks with the light of a distant candle, providing that perhaps some life still resides within these walls. A shadow will sneak sometimes through this door in the blanket of night, without sound and without mention, as though they had never existed.
Ferme Keep: Placeholder
Ferme Ward: Placeholder
North Harbour: Placeholder
East Harbour: Placeholder
High District: Placeholder
Trade Districts: Placeholder
Tenements: Placeholder
Low Goren: Placeholder
Gabrielle Moor: Placeholder
River Remora: Placeholder

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Political Ediface (incomplete)
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Derhial Primary Line: Certain Derhial have earned a reputation for the debauched behind their ivory smiles. Situated nearest the Tenements, screams echo out into the night, and those vagrants who find their way in may never find their way out again. But the odd devils who do will have proven themselves capable of shaping Goren's sickly clay as aptly as any nobility. Derhial prefer to seduce falsely, playing on emotional considerations.

Head of House: Placeholder

Second Chair: Placeholder

Intelligence: Placeholder

Diplomacy: Placeholder
Sata Primary Line: The Sata are half-broken souls, what happens when one loses the Game of Houses, and known for their fine tempers. Falling from such an elevated position is a dire cause for stress. Sata are commonly erratic, flighty, and impassioned. Similar to cornered animals, they cannot be held accountable for their actions.

Head of House: Deceased

Second Chair: Deceased

Intelligence: Deceased

Diplomacy: Deceased
Ferme Primary Line: Ferme is the most powerful House in Goren. Elegant balls and festive events are the hunting grounds of these intelligent manipulators. Their power stems from forming genuine alliances with rationalised, favourable outcomes. However they always seem to get the longer end of the stick. The Ferme are keenly aware of what it takes to thrive in a competitive environment, and will leverage any advantage to succeed.

Head of House: Placeholder

Second Chair: Placeholder

Intelligence: Unknown

Diplomacy: Placeholder

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Citizen Models, Backgrounds
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Far East Continental: Goren sprawls on the eastern coast of an inhospitable continent. But further east across the briny ocean two weeks' sail is a mecca of transport and trade. Though Goren lacks the institutional coherence to produce ships capable of crossing such distances, the far east does on occasion send a vessel of its own. And in such instances bright-eyed opportunity-makers and wander-sick adventurers pay fare for what is perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime trip. For surely, life as they knew it will never be the same.

The main plank creaks with the sway of tide and swollen ship while linen sails each the size of houses let loose a tense sigh. The ship is restless and just now taking her first breath of stale dockside air. Collecting your meager possessions you look out over the railing toward Goren's East Harbour. The gleeman spoke of a free market where the bold prosper, he spoke of a machine of endless trade. It seems everything he'd told you had been technically correct, though skewed through a lens of romanticism. Seeing from the deck now you realise the story-maker had sold you on a dream.
Ragged Traveler: Goren is not the only city to rise up on this continent. In other corners of this sodden world towns have prospered off of the land's natural resources. But just like Goren, overpopulation and limited expansion push many into self-imposed exile, searching for a new home. Searching for space, food, solitude. But Goren is just the same as the city you left. And you think, maybe, that you don't have the energy to seek another city, that it might just be easier to clear a space in Goren and lie down.

Coming from the south-west through Gabrielle Moor, your boots are heavy and caked with mud, your shoulders slumped low from weeks of travel. Goren's gates are open into the early evening, a sure sign of an inviting hearth and a warm mug of ale. But as you start through Low Goren, the ever expanding slums, the sight is as familiar as your last destination. Every pained outcry saps just that bit more of resolve for finding a new home. And there is no turning back.
Wretched Infant: You have grown up in Goren your entire life, no stranger to lurking shadows and bumps in the night. You've never know the shining light of hope those outsiders cling to - the ones who come from other cities and across the sea. Man is belligerent.

The twisting, half-shaded alleys of Goren have always been your spook. Too familiar with haphazard cobble and shoddy low-town construction. You ought to have someone watching your back in a place like this, but you're on your own now.
Tradesperson: You have grown up in Goren your entire life, no stranger to back-breaking work for very little pay. Manual labour is a must but there are more sweating bodies to take your place for a shilling or yet a knife in the ribs. You are left with enough coin to scrape by and work for another day. It is not work to brag about it but it keeps you alive, fed, and most often warm.

Positions in the Trade Districts vary by location; from builders, carpenters, painters; to shipping and security; to fishing and farming; to guardsmen. This is most common for working-class citizens in Goren.
Heritage Merchant: Usually this citizen has grown up in Goren their whole lives, but on the odd occasion has been unfortunate enough to be drawn in carriages from the south by rumours of an unsaturated market.

Too often you have found the market to be lacking income rather than suppliers, but starving nonetheless. You will have your hands full with thieves on a daily basis, or otherwise have to beg for business along the the dividing river in the Merchantile District.

The heirloom sales person will have been fortunate enough to inherit a shop from family or close associates, and trade above the rest with bigger shops and noble connections.

These citizens tend to be tailors, grocers, performers, waiters, chefs, and clerks.
Inconsequent Nobility: You have grown up in Goren your entire life in a rare privileged position. You have known coin, comfort, charisma, and caviar. Most find it fitting to follow the arts as the gentry aught. Your generous free time during the day may be spent at leisure in one of the many haunts north of the Remora, or whipping encouragement at subordinates.

During the night you may be found out stalking. But more often than not you will enjoy a midnight soiree with any number of the smaller Houses, tempting danger for one more straw of hay to lend to your air of weight. At these fetes and assuredly at larger event balls, younglings of Ferme, Sata, or Derhial bloodlines would become a liability.

Stormy City of Goren

Draugvan

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