The mundane city of drizzle, waterwheels, and caffeine-fueled productivity. Eldin is famous for its genius engineers and superbly crafted ships and airships. These vessels are made with delicate precision from the high-quality timbers of the local temperate rainforest, and almost every step of the process is powered by the region’s innumerable and sophisticated waterwheels.
The city has multiple levels of underground tunnels, useful as shelters from the ever-present rain: the top level is an old canal system raised high and dry by a century-old earthquake, and the bottom level is a partly flooded network of old Dwarven mining tunnels. Nearly everything about the city, from architectural styles to governing system to attitudes, is highly functional but bland. Efficiency is among the highest virtues, and the Temple of Efficiency serves twelve different functions, ranging from quasi-religious center to nightclub to engineering school to wedding venue. Spirituality and organized religion are of negligible importance to human Eldinites; some speculate that this is because the focus of most human religions (the Sun) is almost never visible under Eldin’s blanket of drizzling gray cloud.
Eldin’s ruling industrialist elite are known as the “Wheelers”, since they own the region’s source of industrial power: its hundreds of sophisticated waterwheels. The Wheelers are countered by a strong, influential military comprised of (and led by) working class folk. The large standing army is more like an engineering service; in times of peace it does little combat training, instead focusing on public works and infrastructure projects like walls, roads, docks, and of course Eldin’s ubiquitous waterwheels. Their current large project is pumping the seawater out of the flooded Dwarven mines beneath the city. (This is a problem for the Dwarven minority, who view the mines as sacred and wish for them to remain flooded.) The city prides itself on its egalitarian institutions, but conveniently overlooks the downtrodden Dwarves.
If Magic or the Supernatural features in your use of the Terra Trema setting: Eldin will have none of that. The locals don’t hate or fear magic, they simply find it an unnecessary or unbelievable frivolity at best; a dangerous and avoidable liability at worst. Eldin has developed technological workarounds for most anything its neighbors accomplish using magic, and has some mysterious means of actually suppressing magic within sight of the city (and along most of the Drizzling Coast, for that matter.) Some say that the overwhelming mundane-ness and unbelief of the people is what causes magic to fizzle here; others claim that this is spiritualist nonsense and that Eldin’s researchers have developed sophisticated anti-magic technologies – perhaps hidden wards or magic-repression fields. Whatever the case, magical and spiritual effects of all kinds are underpowered here – not to mention frowned on. Even divine magic doesn’t seem to work right; most humans worship the Sun, but Eldin rests beneath a near-permanent blanket of cloud, and its people don’t seem to believe in anything beyond getting more work done.
Eldinite Heritage: Primarily 4th Wave Norrish. Also Ancestral Dwarven.
Eldin Stats: Population: 7 (135x)
Cultural Influence: 6. Eldinites don't have time for frivolous nonsense. "It's all well and good if someone wants to be an artist or singer or some other ridiculously unproductive thing that doesn't contribute to society, just so long as my sons and daughters don't get that perverse notion into their heads!" Culture, in general, in nearly all its forms, is not a priority here. Eldin's best authors write technical manuals, its best artists paint elaborate diagrams, and its best dancers are just exercise instructors.
To the extent that left-brain-only culture is a real thing, Eldin is the global seat of left-brain-only culture: styles of rigid mathematical perfection and productivity. Art that improves your job performance by 12%. Music expertly designed to enhance memory. Novels that can be read in 98% less time than a standard novel because they have been streamlined down to only the necessary components and are actually just flow-charts of the plot and character interactions. Eldin's "optimization of artistic efficiency" has actually been somewhat influential, if not in a "cultural" sense per se. For example, Eldin's ultra-efficient camouflage patterns have seen widespread adoption after they were proven to be 23% more effective than the leading camouflage pattern in live-fire spy-hunting exercises.
The Dwarven songs and carvings of the Drizzling Coast are gaining some popularity in foreign lands, but the local Eldinites look down on Dwarven works.
Economic Influence: 12. Eldin has been a boon to global productivity. Most innovation related to cost-effective engineering, maximizing human resource value extraction, assembly-line optimization and logistics streamlining has originated here.
Experts believe that the only reason the city is just middling-wealthy (as opposed to filthy rich, like Fortuna) is because passive income is shunned in favor of active labor and a productive lifestyle. It is actually illegal to own a production facility (factory, shipyard, lumbermill, etc.) without working there in some capacity - in a managerial role, at least. Eldinites (especially the wealthy “Wheeler” class) concede that this law creates certain economic inefficiencies, perverse incentives, and barriers to complete integration with the international financial system. But it is strongly in keeping with Eldinite cultural values and so, after a lengthy cost-benefit analysis, they have decided to continue enforcing it.
Military Influence: 11. Eldin's military is among the largest and best-organized in all of Terra Trema. But it isn't quite the formidable fighting force the numbers would suggest. Eldin is obsessed with multi-purposing, and the military serves a dozen other functions, most notably policing and infrastructure construction & maintenance. Thus it's not exactly a battle-hardened or bloodthirsty conquest-machine.
Eldin's mastery of combat engineering can literally change the shape of a battlefield. Its soldier-engineers can dig defensive trenches and build fortifications remarkably fast - sometimes even mid-battle. These are essential for keeping enemy cavalry and infantry away from Eldin's ranged troops and heavy ballistae for as long as possible. Eldin is famous for its powerful, accurate ranged weapons - many of them automated or mechanical. Ranged combat is emphasized, due to (they claim) 27% increased survivability afforded by ranged vs. melee fighting styles. Eldin's soldiers are powerful, efficient warriors... until an enemy gets into melee range.
Eldinite generals are masters of logistics, power projection, and problem solving on a whole. But Eldin is not inclined toward military endeavors. The military is needed to build bridges; wars are expensive and grossly inefficient. Eldin would prefer to produce its own goods rather than pillage from others, like shameful Alba or barbarian Neven.
Eldin's navy is formidable, though still no match for the Albish Armada. Its ships are fairly small, and they don't look like much of a threat. But due to efficient sail design, auxiliary paddle-wheels, and expertly constructed hulls, the small warships are faster and sturdier than they look. They are also mass-produced and run by fairly small crews; thus they are fairly inexpensive to build, and cheap to produce & operate. During peacetime, Eldin's navy has about thirty small warships; during war, that number can grow into the high hundreds with remarkable speed.
Defense: 12. Eldin's emphasis on function over form means that the city is better-defended than it looks. Its wall is short, but the parapets are slicked and angled to prevent siege ladders from finding solid purchase, and the moats are full of nausea-inducing alchemical substances. (Not lethally toxic - lest the local children ignore the warning signs and swim in the moats - but sufficient to distract invaders.) Its defensive ballistae are few in number, but can be aimed and fired with incredible speed.
Eldin's defenses are designed with two key threats in mind: the Albish navy, and the Svorati army. It balances land and sea defensive needs well. Eldin's harbor is still clogged with the wreckage of Albish warships, and its moats cluttered with Svorati pinwheels; twin testaments to the city's well-planned defense. (It also lost half its walls, six government buildings, and twelve waterwheels to ballistae bolts and fires, but Eldinites relish rebuilding. The scars of these battles are now erased, but the badges of honor - wrecked Albish ships and lost Svorati pinwheel-banners - have been kept in place.)
"Big Bill" is the world's largest ballista. It oversees Eldin Harbor and can pierce the hulls of powerful ships (e.g.; Albish dreadnoughts) just below the waterline (where they cause the most damage) at a range of over a mile. Big Bill was destroyed during the battle of Eldin Harbor, but only after sinking eight Albish warships. It has since been rebuilt. And then disassembled and rebuilt again, for practice.
Eldin Cultural Stats:
Government: Ruling council elected by and from the Industrious Oligarchs (the Wheelers). Led by a High Councilor, and tempered by an influential working-class military.
Most Common Criminal Acts: corporate espionage, mugging, sabotage, intellectual property theft, arson, burglary, ship theft, absentee ownership, manslaughter by unnecessarily dangerous hat.
Justice: Tough but fair. (Except for dwarves.) Capital punishment is rare, shaming & exile are common.
Climate: Exceptionally mild and maritime, with near-constant cloud cover. Drizzle and fog are the norm. Spring fades slowly into Autumn and then back into Spring, skipping Summer and Winter.
Nights: Some street lighting, good indoor lighting. Many citizens work night shifts but there's little nightlife.
Food: Dairy products are rare, but seafood is common, as is some fruit. Lots of fish, rain pears, and “gray mash”, which is protein paste (probably fish-derived?) mixed with fermented pear juice and salt as preservatives. Also, “gray loaf”, a hard and flavorless bread, served with fish oil and pear vinegar. Food is typically washed down with large volumes of coffee, Eldin’s largest import.
Clothing: Cheap, efficient clothing either made locally or imported from Alba or Mathersport. Work clothes are typically un-dyed. Function over form is the norm – even for women, who face high expectations for beauty yet have no interest in wearing anything impractical. Hats are common for both genders. Military uniforms are a common sight, but they look very similar to standard, practical blue-collar worker clothing. (They hide light chain armor.) Even the Wheelers dress casually and simply – though they can be identified by their hats, which become increasingly large and bizarre with increasing status and wealth.
Festivals & Holidays: Multi-tasking day (an anti-holiday where people compete to be as productive as possible), The Build-a-Boat Race, The Waterwheel Festival, Public Service Day, The Sportsball Championships, Do-It-Yourself Day, and Founders’ Day. There is a complete & conspicuous lack of any sun-related festivals or holidays, or any ancestral Norrish holidays (though Public Service Day evolved from the Norrish Solaria Holiday). Dwarves celebrate some of Eldin’s holidays and festivals, but never Founders’ Day. Additionally, they celebrate Deepmas, Brewmaster’s Eve, and occasionally (in secret) Regnor’s Day, commemorating a successful raid by Dwarven leader Regnor against the early settlement of Eldin.
City Appearance & Architecture: Neat and clean, with wide paved streets. The city is compact and buildings are tall, but they’re all roughly the same height so none of them really stand out. What does stand out are the enormous waterwheels that harness the power of the many small rivers that flow through and near Eldin.
Common Sounds & Smells: Surprisingly quiet and odorless for a large city.
Governance Building, Iconic Structures & Landmarks: Government Structure (literally named “Government Structure”), The Golden Wheel, the Temple of Efficiency, the Temple of Efficiency Annex (doubles as the University of Efficiency), Waterfront (West) Barracks, Moat (East) Barracks, Big Bill, the Clockwheel, the Big Tarp (Stadium), the Grand Abacus, the SeaGuard Monument (atop wrecked Albish warships in the outer harbor), the LandGuard Monument (atop abandoned Svorati knight pinwheel-banners in the moat). Albish warships just recently toppled the SeaGuard Monument, and repairs (and the addition of a new ballista turret overlooking the outer harbor) are underway.
Districts, Sectors, Zones, Regions, Wards, and other big places: Wheelers' Estates, Gray River Wheelyards, Rust River Wheelyards, Old Canal Tunnels, Deep Tunnels, Umbrella District, Abacus District (Technical Workers/Engineers), The Shipwright District, the Dendrimer (a single, highly branched pier that fills most of Eldin’s harbor), the Offal District (downtrodden but well-organized slum by the fish processing facilities), the Rubble District (Dwarven Enclave/Ghetto).
Produces, Exports: Lumber (lots!), fish, ships, furs, silver, textiles, copper, whale oil, pears, airships, hats
Demands, Imports: dyes, horses, wool, platinum, rubber, pumice, balsa, COFFEE, helium, glass
Satellite Cities & Towns: Port Vance, Thrazakhum, Kesselton, Skookumchuck, Seafair, Hawking. Port Vance is a city, the rest are small towns. Their culture roughly matches that of Eldin, except for Thrazakhum which has a dwarven majority. All are semi-autonomous but part of the nation of Eldin. (Probably. As always, satellite cities can be conquered or influenced by powerful neighbors.)
Highly optional game-related or story-related material:
Important People:
Plot Hooks:
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City of grain, grain storage, grain shipping, and peasants who harvest grain. Svorat is the only large city on the Servator Prairie, a fertile breadbasket that produces an immeasurable amount of wheat and other foodstuffs. Most of the farming is carried out by serfs who are bound to their land – but they are allowed to travel to Svorat to sell their grain and produce. Thus at any given time (but especially just after wheat harvest season) the city is full of visiting serfs awed by Svorat’s pinwheel-topped walls, towering palaces, and brightly-colored cathedrals. Nobles and foreign commodities consortiums buy this grain and export most of it, shipping it south down the river - and then to every corner of Terra Trema. In addition to grain silos, the skyline is dotted with spired cathedrals, the domed towers of nobles’ palaces, the temples of theater, and, of course, the King’s Keep. There is a small but vibrant middle class and some active guilds, but no grandeur is afforded these people or institutions – excepting perhaps the theaters and art houses of Thespian Lane. The peasant hostels are generally clean and safe, but the slum that houses the permanent serf-class residents (often runaways who have broken the bond with their lands) is dilapidated and dangerous for all manner of reasons.
Svorat is famed for its many colorful windmills and pinwheels; most towers in the city also double as windmills. The keeps and castles of the minor lords that dot the Servator prairie are similarly ordained, so on a clear day hundreds of colorful spinning blades can be seen from the walls of Svorat. Pinwheels are the iconic symbol of Svorat, and they feature prominently in the city’s famous paintings and moving sculptures.
Heritage is everything in Svorat and the Servator Prairie: if your parents were serfs, you will be a serf. Or, increasingly common, you will run away to another part of the world – generally to wherever the next grain ship is going.
Svorati Heritage: Primarily 3rd Wave Ustrachi, also some 2nd wave Sunder & Vasa Lothran. Some Ancestral Dwarven in regions under the city’s control, near the border with Eldin.
Population: 9 (190x)
Cultural Influence: 13. Svorat is a major historic center for dramatic theater and traveling circuses. It is also famous for its curious moving sculptures and dynamic artwork. Its one-note literature leaves something to be desired, however. (The Svorati are obsessed with heritage, and it shows in their literature. There's not a single Svorati novel where the main character isn't a long-lost noble or king who discovers his or her secret heritage; this helps justify why the character is so amazing despite being seemingly "only" a serf.)
Economic Influence: 7. Svorat exports a mind-boggling amount of grain. And that's pretty much its economy right there.
Military Influence: 13. Svorat has a very large, feudally-organized military: local lords manage their own defense, banners (technically pinwheels) are called, knights ride out in great charges, the usual. Despite its seemingly outdated system, Svorat's lumbering army is quite effective at overland campaigns, especially when not fighting far from home. (Their logistics are a bit poorer than average, and their armies are known for being rather slow.) Since all male serfs (and some females) are conscripted during wartime, Svorat can technically boast that it has Terra Trema's largest army. (During periods when it actually has an army.) Svorat's armies don't march to battle with flags or banners, but spinning pinwheels in the colors and styles of the various noble houses.
Civil wars are more common than usual in Svorat; a consequence of the feudal system and the winner-take-all prize: the royal keep. Yet the noble houses are patriotic and will always align against any foreign threat, even if they dislike the current king.
Svorat's navy is... not really a navy. It's really just a vast armada of enormous grain-transport ships; some of the largest (and least maneuverable) ships in the world. During wartime, all nearby transport ships become "warships", outfitted with catapults and stuffed full to the brim with soldiers. The ships are notoriously bad in combat situations (the catapults are powerful, but their aim is atrocious) but they can hold an enormous number of soldiers. They are great troop transports, so long as enemy vessels aren't nearby. And if enemy vessels ARE nearby, Svorat's ships attempt boarding maneuvers. Once a Svorati troop transport is docked against your ship, it's game-over; they have at least twenty times the number of soldiers on board, and they're much more interested in killing you than in keeping their own ship afloat. Two of Svorat's warships (their only *real* warships) were captured in this way: one from Eldin, and the other from Alba.
Defense: 10. Svorat's walls are massive, and the city stores more food than any other location in the world. It is, for all intents and purposes, immune to protracted sieges. However, the city's massive walls are aging and built of soft stone; they can be torn down in places by well-designed siege engines. Additionally, despite all the sturdy stone construction, none of the buildings inside the city save the King's Keep are designed to be defensible against an invading army.
Svorat has reasonably good defensive fortifications along its rivers. It learned the hard way how important those would be to have, back when it did not have them and Alba decided it would practice a little ballista-boat diplomacy.
Svorat Cultural Stats: (average of serfs and nobility, who have somewhat different cultural attitudes)
Government: Absolute monarchy, but the Council of the Wise chooses which son or daughter (including all half-siblings) becomes monarch.
Most Common Criminal Acts: murder, rape, burglary, arson, buggy theft, horse theft, bootlegging
Justice: Unfair to serfs; sporadic example killings. No exile, but many run away.
Climate: sunny, semiarid, warm temperate. Often very windy.
Nights: Little lighting. Citizens may stay up and party on full moon(s), otherwise go to bed early.
Food: A thousand and one different ways of processing grain. As the hub of the world’s most productive grain-producing region, hunger is almost unheard-of, even among serfs. Some cattle ranching and fishing helps supplement the Svorati diet with protein. Most fruit is imported. Spices and herbs are rare.
Clothing: Colorful, with lots of patches. Nobles have fancier patches and brighter colors than serfs. Status is denoted by the number of moving parts in one’s ensemble. Nobles garb features pinwheel crowns, spinning cuffs, and rotating patches.
Festivals & Holidays: Solaria (Ustrachi variant), Harvestover, King’s Blessing, The March of Winds. Monthly full-moons parties (when it’s bright enough for nightlife).
City Appearance & Architecture: Lots of sturdy stone structures, topped with colorful windmills and pinwheels. A very late-medieval-Europe vibe, but more colorful.
Common Sounds & Smells: Lots of animals, not a lot of sanitation - extrapolate from there.
Governance Building, Iconic Structures & Landmarks: King's Keep, Tekarrel Estate, Novroin Estate, Pavela Estate, Servator Cathedral, Celestine Cathedral, Universe Temple of Theater, Overlook Theater, the King's Silo, the Aurochs Pen
Districts, Sectors, Zones, Regions, Wards, and other big places: The Pinwalls, The Silos / Shipping Docks, Thespian Lane, Runaway Slum, Windmill District, Baker's District, Fishmonger Docks, Old Svorr, Kingsgarden, Hostel Hill
Produces, Exports: Grain (lots!), wine, cattle, horses, chariots, carriages, trolleys, buggeys, meat, paper
Demands, Imports: steel / iron, ironwood, tin, dyes, copper, fruit, spices (royalty only)
Satellite Cities & Towns: xxxx
Highly optional game-related or story-related material:
Important People: xxxx
Plot Hooks:
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