Things going on in September (Patreon)

So things have been very busy of late, both with game design on a game called Fault and with working on an original pony story that I was commissioned to do.  I'm also subbing again so... yeah.  It all works out to a lot of stuff, and I feel really guilty for not posting here.  I'm going to try to change that.

I'll post the Gallus story when the person commissioning it says it's okay to.  In the mean time, I'm also trying to flesh out more of Ferria and Quintus with things like world building.  And I am going through Homelands as well....

Whew, that's a lot of balls to juggle...

Well, I'll find some way to make it work.

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World Building: The Wonderous City of Dyne.

Dyne is a economic, cultural, magical, technological, and industrial marvel of Quintus.  Dyne was once nothing more than a large Island at the convergence of three rivers: the Kol, the Bol, and the Hrad.  The island itself is a granite spur thrust up during the shattering, providing the foundation for the rest of the city, supporting the weight of the buildings constructed upon it.  The island itself was little more than a arrowhead shape, allowing for the creation of a harbor where the three rivers poured into the Inner sea.

Early Dyne was well known by Sumerlan traders and sailors, who used the granite spur as a landmark to find the mouth of the rivers.  Called Dhynnee, it was home to one of the earliest colonial settlement in the Riverlands.  The flat base was an ideal harbor for ships to tie up out of the river's main current.  First people would pole down the river with goods for trade with Sumerlan merchants.

Dhynnee was renamed Dinee by Cuprina explorers, who recognized the potential, though seperated by the Shattered sea.  Attempts to colonize the rock with a perminent Cuprinan port failed due to distance and difficulty, but the efforts allowed both Sumerlan and local people to build the roots of the modern settlement.  When Arani explorers arrived, they changed the name to Dyne in an effort to undermine Cuprinan claims.  It worked, and the new spelling stuck, though with some variation over centuries. (Dynee, Dhyne, Dine)

In 561 AF, a group of alchemists from Ossia came investigating claims of a strange source of magic capable of miracles.  They discovered a mystic order that had access to a rainbow glowing white fluid called the Blood of Creation.  This would later be renamed 'dyne' to the annoyance of historians everywhere.  Dyne had remarkable, unpredictable effects.  The alchemists struggled to stabilize the fluid into a more useful form, and successfully created the first dyne formula to create liquid fire.  The success caused the alchemist's compound to burn to the ground, and incinerated much of the harbor, but it showed the potential for dyne.

Twenty years later, with the advent of a dyne infused ceramic that could safely contain dyne, the alchemists approached the mystic order with a deal.  If they could provide raw dyne, the alchemists could convert it into a variety of highly valuable commodities.  The mystics agreed, provided that they would be in charge of distributing the amount, and would be in charge of all governance of the island.  This resulted in the signing of the 'dynepact', a document which established twelve 'official' dynehouses with exclusive rights to produce dyne products, and the Dynelord, who would offer an amount of raw dyne every year in exchange for a tax on their profits.  This also starts the 'dynepact', or DP calendar.

The twelve dyne houses were Pyros, Chryis,  Aeris, Teros, Feros, Photis, Khinis, Hydris, Necris, Biosis, Psychis, and Lectris.

Over time, Dyne would become known for two things: incredible wealth and cut throat politics.  Dyne in all its forms proved to be immensely profitable.  A drop of pyrodyne, properly diluted, could instantly light a fire.  A flask of hydrodyne could supply a ship with weeks of clean, unspoiled water.  Kinetodyne 'canguns' started an arms race with terodyne infused fused stone walls.  Dyne went from being an advantage in war to being a necessity.

However, the Dynelords maintained a tight grip on supply.  Raw dyne is incredibly dangerous, and only the bloodline of the original mystics can handle it, and even then it is risky.  The Dynelords kept the supply of dyne limited in an effort to curtail the dynehouses.  A dyne sharing method was set up, called, unoriginally, the dyneshare, where every house got a percentage of raw dyne.  Originally even, it didn't take long before some dynehouses began to surrender shares of raw dyne for favors or wealth.

The struggle came to a head in 210 DP, when Dynelord Abbatas cut off all houses from raw dyne in a play to force the dynehouses into yielding more authority to the dynelord.  The dynehouses hired mercenaries and battle raged on the island for more than a year.  In the end, a compromise was reached:  A guarantee of raw dyne, the establishment of a parliament of dynehouses to create laws, and that the Dynelord would have exclusive right to military power on the island and that all property on the island resided with the dynelord.

This arrangement proved beneficial to the Dynelord, who played the houses against each other.  Rather than uniting against the Dynelord, they turned against each other in an effort to undercut each other's share of raw dyne.  The Dynelord cemented their control over the island itself.  With some hiccups, the arrangement continued to be extremely profitable, as Dyne continued to command an ever rising price.

However, all this lead to the attempt by the Ventaros Empire to annex the island in 264, the first Dynewar.  The Empire had enclosed three quarters of the island, leaving it accessibly only by sea.  However, Dyne appealed to Aran, and the Arani navy prevented the Ventarans from cutting off supply.  A series of raids were then attempted, all rebuffed by liberal application of dyne.  The fighting came to a head when the Empire, with help from House Taros, began constructing a bridge of terodyne infused stone across the river.  Dynelord Fenar walked to the edge of the river and flung a single drop of raw dyne at the invading army.  The detonation not only obliterated the army, but also a tenth of the island's population and Dynelord Fenar.  The Empire quickly sued for peace, but the damage was done.  Dyne would demand concessions and tariffs for all trade passing through the city's waters.  These taxes and tariffs would eventually lead to the economic failure of the Empire in 333 and allow its vassal states to rebel.

The inadvertent wealth threatened to overwhelm the dynehouse's own authority.  The dynelords began a system of intermarrying with the dynehouses.  This, they hoped, would lead to their own member who could manipulate raw dyne.  However, the efforts failed, as most heirs felt loyalty to the dynelord's house and not the dyne houses.  However, their opportunity came in 393 when dynelord Turs came to power.  Turs foolishly attempted to usurp the dynehouses, resulting in the dynehouses unifying against him and appealing to foreign assistance.  The civil war raged for six months, and Turs threatened to unleash raw dyne against the rebels.  His own son killed him, and the two parties would decide terms.  The dynelord lost a great deal of their authority in the exchange, with Dynehouses being exempt from taxation.

Over 394-470 entered the period know as equilibrium.  Much of dyne's wealth went into the construction of city works, doubling and then redoubling the population to the highest in Ferria.  While the island had no farm land, it imported food and building material from all over the world, many of it barter for dyne, as the world's gold supply struggled to keep liquid.  This lead to Dyne minting its own coins called, unoriginally, dynecoin or dynemarks.  Dynemarks, terrodyne or ferrodyne disks, did not decay or rust, and thus were just as reliable and rare as gold.

The Ventaran collapse, from 333-455, left dyne with multiple neighbors rather than a single empire.  The Dynelord and dynehouses, seeing opportunity, attempted to annex land off the island.  This prompted a rare unification of every power against the island.  This time, the Irrynian Empire closed the city to sea trade in 470 DP and started the second Dynewar.  After five years, the dyne houses signed the Compact of Dhyne.  In it, all of the city state's neighbors acknowledged Dyne's independance.  Dyne and the houselords agreed to never acquire or hold territory, property, or title in foreign lands.  It also required dynehouses to sale on an open market rather than to offer exclusive deals to each nation or noble.  Finally, it required Dyne to negotiate only with leaders of the various nations, and not their nobility.

While some chafed under the dynepact, it was after this point in 475 that dyne underwent its final transformation.  In 480, house Pyros and Teros produced the first boiler using dyne.  The power produced immediately became apparent to everyone, and dyne soon became a major industrial center, transforming raw goods into finished products and selling them locally and abroad.  The houses hoarded the details of production, constraining their use abroad, but used their economic power to carve concessions out of the Dynepact.

By 564, Dyne had reached its zenith.  The elimination of the elven Primus removed the only foreign power that presented a direct threat to the city, and the destruction of the Dwarven Dominion cemented Dyne's place as the foremost producer of goods and materials.  The population of the island proper was over a million, and the surrounding cities that traded directly with Dyne approached another million as well.  However, all this came with severe ecological and health problems.  Disease was a constant threat to the workers in the factories and mills.  The poisonous fumes sickened or killed countless other.  Wealthy homes built up, above the toxic miasma, while the poor suffered.  The sheer amount of waste caused some streets to simply be bricked over, enclosed, and turned into sewers.

Worse, the dynelords refused to increase the supply of raw dyne.  Some dynelords even talked about cutting back on raw dyne supply.  This lead to a crisis in 580 when Dynelord Xeraphos tried to cut back raw dyne supply by 25%.  At the time, it was believed that he attempted to do so in order to extort more money from the dynehouses.  However, during Calibration in 580, the Dynelord's own guard rebelled and slew him and most of his family.  The guard was captured, tried by the dyne houses, and executed.  The three surviving dynelords, all girls, were taken into the 'protection' of the dynehouses.

by 600 DP, Dyne is in severe decline.  With no strong central authority, power is split between the Dynehouses, the dyneguard law enforcement apparatus, and bureaucrats that have turned public works into minor fiefdoms.  Struggle is constant, and both the dynehouses and the nations abroad wonder just how long the city can remain standing.  What is clear is that more dyne than ever is being produced, but that it is of an unstable and even hazardous variety.  Nation states wonder just what is cooking on the island, sending in spies and seeking informants.  Even more disturbingly, monsters are appearing from a strange vapor and ravaging helpless citizens.

And now dyne is in need of a hero.

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Anyway, that was also for a story and game idea.  There's a lot more to it, but I should work on other stuff I'm late on.