Kaelaroth
2010-09-12, 03:13 PM
Fort Diomedes
Somewhere to the north, the snow rather sets in, cold and chilly. You're not so far north that worrying about being frozen all year round is an issue, but the winters here are long, and they swallow the summer's lands and lakes with ice and hail, wrapping the area in a cold slumber for much time, causing fires to be burnt almost all year round, and heavy furs to be worn by many.
Sandwiched in the start of this cold front is a town on a hill, walled by heavy stone, filled with stout buildings of dark stone design and many chimneys, settled precariously on one side over a cliff, overlooking a huge, dark lake. Steps crisscross down the clifftop from the walled town to the lake's bottom, but falling dramatically's a regular possibility, and it worries some.
From the other side of the town, the walls overlook rolling hills plastered with pine trees - a forest which hides the more populated areas of Nexus on its other side.
Within the stone walls, the buildings lie mostly crumbling. The town, Fort Diomedes, has experienced a vast number of problems over the years, and has struggled to survive. Though numbers remain, working as fishermen, or labourers, or as logcutters, or heading down to the mines within the cliffs, finding what minerals they can, they have a hard life, especially given the town's misfortune. Traders come from Inside and other towns, but no commercial source has yet been able to revitalise this dying place, with its empty beerhalls and eerie keeps. With the town's reputation for evil and "badness", many a mage comes to the area, looking to harness the local leyline's powers, which have been enhanced by the death and misery that's everpresent. Crime rates have also started to race, as the people, desperate, turn on eachother.
Scattered about the town lie guildhouses, some sparsely populated, and many a deserted tavern. The residential area now clusters around the town centre, where a small church to the Norse gods lies, opposite the town hall, and a smaller chapel of no particular faith. Guards and watchmen patrol the town, but with little avail. No good comes here.
Lake Cetus
Lake Cetus is huge, and dark. Its murky waters contain hundreds of thousands of fish, and beneath them squid and octopi, and sharp and jagged rocks beneath them. Ships sail across it from time to time, and fishing vessels, from which the town on the cliffs above makes some good money. However, the lake is cursed. Within its waters lies a foul spell - any soul who dies on or in, or by, the lake's waters, is brought back to life as a foul spirit, lacking in body, filled with malice, left to patrol the waters, the coast, and sometimes the town, seeking for human warmth and life to end and destroy. Sadly, this has cost many lives already, and at night the town shivers in fear, as, in the water at night, one can see the pale green glow of rising spirits - notably the damned dead of the ship The Great Thetis, which sank to its death at the town's very foundation, its now piratical former shipmates roving the waters to kill...
The Caspian Mines
In the Caspian Mines, many men, sweaty and covered in soot, wander the catacombs, looking for gold, minerals, and other buried trinkets, seeking for that which'll provide their next pay, while struggling to keep their air, little canaries found fluttering about at each and every corner. However, alongwith the miners, all working hard, other things lurk in the mines. Evil spirits, demonic in nature, hide in the rock, whispering to men to let them into their heads, offering money and power, while hordes of nastier rock creatures and humanoids can be heard deeper beneath the mines, working their foul acts. Deeper still, some say, lie runic powers left by a dead god, but that'd need to be investigated...
The Wailing Woods
The Wailing Woods, the pinetrees, contain a dark secret that haunts the town. Many years ago, as the fledgling town became overwhelmed by ghostlings spilling in from the waters of Lake Cetus, the town elders made a pact with woodland spirits, dark and mysterious, to give some form of protection from the hellish attacks that came, glowing green, at night, to steal their children and take their breath. For a time, the woods protected Fort Diomedes, but when the elders died, unable to fill their side of the bargain, whatever it was, the trees turned against the town. Traders passing through are likely to die, becoming muddled and misguided, or stabbed and sliced to death by living, wild plants - and those that survived are changed, kissed with fairy illnesses, or riddled with lycanthropy, sent back to the town to pass on their inhuman maladies. There're some good sides - the woods, less touched than humans than most, are home to tribes of centaur and unicorns, but the more humans that seek such mystical company, the more that die...
The Labourer's Eye
The largest guildhall still in operation, the Labourer's Eye is a great brick and thatch building, distinctive among the normal dark-stone buildings for its design, but also for its size, standing as one of the greatest buildings in size in all Fort Diomedes. Within its walls, one may find a criss-crossing section of huge rooms, where all manner of administrative activity takes place, along with some other actions. The Labourers' Guild, one of the richest left, now has rooms selling food and drink to the masses, alongwith concert halls, and areas where trade agreements and the like can be arranged. The guild also offers bounties and warrants where necessary, paying much of the town's law enforcement, overruling the town council, often. However, the guild is also corrupt, and in its myriad rooms, many a criminal deal can often be made with a wink and a nudge, and this can be dangerous - or profitable...
Other Notes
Magic is somewhat stronger in the town that it normally is - that is, magic that draws on ambient forces to work. The ley-lines beneath the town, saturated and fed with the dark, evil, violent energies under, power up mystical activity, and can cause mystical pracitioners to also heal, move, and think quicker, while their spells work better, or stronge, but they may also be tempted to evil each time they cast, the ley-line trying to seep into them as they siphon from it, with or without knowing they're doing so.
The town's weather is very often cold and snowy, but rainstorms or sudden blasts of sun can occur quite frequently, so if you're sick of roleplaying trudging through the snow, don't have it that way.
The town's primary sources of income come from exporting fish and wood, and also the mines which work their way beneath the town.
The town is close enough to other Nexus locations to make travel to them worthwhile, but it is still a sizeable distance away, and anyway of getting to the other areas via mundane methods is oft-fraught with danger. The town's likely nearest to NO, of all the organisations.
As with most other threads, standard rules apply. Please keep all "curtain"/squick activity to a minium, don't destroy the whole place without express permission, post adequately long posts, and be nice to one another.
Somewhere to the north, the snow rather sets in, cold and chilly. You're not so far north that worrying about being frozen all year round is an issue, but the winters here are long, and they swallow the summer's lands and lakes with ice and hail, wrapping the area in a cold slumber for much time, causing fires to be burnt almost all year round, and heavy furs to be worn by many.
Sandwiched in the start of this cold front is a town on a hill, walled by heavy stone, filled with stout buildings of dark stone design and many chimneys, settled precariously on one side over a cliff, overlooking a huge, dark lake. Steps crisscross down the clifftop from the walled town to the lake's bottom, but falling dramatically's a regular possibility, and it worries some.
From the other side of the town, the walls overlook rolling hills plastered with pine trees - a forest which hides the more populated areas of Nexus on its other side.
Within the stone walls, the buildings lie mostly crumbling. The town, Fort Diomedes, has experienced a vast number of problems over the years, and has struggled to survive. Though numbers remain, working as fishermen, or labourers, or as logcutters, or heading down to the mines within the cliffs, finding what minerals they can, they have a hard life, especially given the town's misfortune. Traders come from Inside and other towns, but no commercial source has yet been able to revitalise this dying place, with its empty beerhalls and eerie keeps. With the town's reputation for evil and "badness", many a mage comes to the area, looking to harness the local leyline's powers, which have been enhanced by the death and misery that's everpresent. Crime rates have also started to race, as the people, desperate, turn on eachother.
Scattered about the town lie guildhouses, some sparsely populated, and many a deserted tavern. The residential area now clusters around the town centre, where a small church to the Norse gods lies, opposite the town hall, and a smaller chapel of no particular faith. Guards and watchmen patrol the town, but with little avail. No good comes here.
Lake Cetus
Lake Cetus is huge, and dark. Its murky waters contain hundreds of thousands of fish, and beneath them squid and octopi, and sharp and jagged rocks beneath them. Ships sail across it from time to time, and fishing vessels, from which the town on the cliffs above makes some good money. However, the lake is cursed. Within its waters lies a foul spell - any soul who dies on or in, or by, the lake's waters, is brought back to life as a foul spirit, lacking in body, filled with malice, left to patrol the waters, the coast, and sometimes the town, seeking for human warmth and life to end and destroy. Sadly, this has cost many lives already, and at night the town shivers in fear, as, in the water at night, one can see the pale green glow of rising spirits - notably the damned dead of the ship The Great Thetis, which sank to its death at the town's very foundation, its now piratical former shipmates roving the waters to kill...
The Caspian Mines
In the Caspian Mines, many men, sweaty and covered in soot, wander the catacombs, looking for gold, minerals, and other buried trinkets, seeking for that which'll provide their next pay, while struggling to keep their air, little canaries found fluttering about at each and every corner. However, alongwith the miners, all working hard, other things lurk in the mines. Evil spirits, demonic in nature, hide in the rock, whispering to men to let them into their heads, offering money and power, while hordes of nastier rock creatures and humanoids can be heard deeper beneath the mines, working their foul acts. Deeper still, some say, lie runic powers left by a dead god, but that'd need to be investigated...
The Wailing Woods
The Wailing Woods, the pinetrees, contain a dark secret that haunts the town. Many years ago, as the fledgling town became overwhelmed by ghostlings spilling in from the waters of Lake Cetus, the town elders made a pact with woodland spirits, dark and mysterious, to give some form of protection from the hellish attacks that came, glowing green, at night, to steal their children and take their breath. For a time, the woods protected Fort Diomedes, but when the elders died, unable to fill their side of the bargain, whatever it was, the trees turned against the town. Traders passing through are likely to die, becoming muddled and misguided, or stabbed and sliced to death by living, wild plants - and those that survived are changed, kissed with fairy illnesses, or riddled with lycanthropy, sent back to the town to pass on their inhuman maladies. There're some good sides - the woods, less touched than humans than most, are home to tribes of centaur and unicorns, but the more humans that seek such mystical company, the more that die...
The Labourer's Eye
The largest guildhall still in operation, the Labourer's Eye is a great brick and thatch building, distinctive among the normal dark-stone buildings for its design, but also for its size, standing as one of the greatest buildings in size in all Fort Diomedes. Within its walls, one may find a criss-crossing section of huge rooms, where all manner of administrative activity takes place, along with some other actions. The Labourers' Guild, one of the richest left, now has rooms selling food and drink to the masses, alongwith concert halls, and areas where trade agreements and the like can be arranged. The guild also offers bounties and warrants where necessary, paying much of the town's law enforcement, overruling the town council, often. However, the guild is also corrupt, and in its myriad rooms, many a criminal deal can often be made with a wink and a nudge, and this can be dangerous - or profitable...
Other Notes
Magic is somewhat stronger in the town that it normally is - that is, magic that draws on ambient forces to work. The ley-lines beneath the town, saturated and fed with the dark, evil, violent energies under, power up mystical activity, and can cause mystical pracitioners to also heal, move, and think quicker, while their spells work better, or stronge, but they may also be tempted to evil each time they cast, the ley-line trying to seep into them as they siphon from it, with or without knowing they're doing so.
The town's weather is very often cold and snowy, but rainstorms or sudden blasts of sun can occur quite frequently, so if you're sick of roleplaying trudging through the snow, don't have it that way.
The town's primary sources of income come from exporting fish and wood, and also the mines which work their way beneath the town.
The town is close enough to other Nexus locations to make travel to them worthwhile, but it is still a sizeable distance away, and anyway of getting to the other areas via mundane methods is oft-fraught with danger. The town's likely nearest to NO, of all the organisations.
As with most other threads, standard rules apply. Please keep all "curtain"/squick activity to a minium, don't destroy the whole place without express permission, post adequately long posts, and be nice to one another.