Difference between revisions of "New Hibera"

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Dissolution of the Eastern Reach of Hibera

As of midnight of the twenty-eighth of the ninth month, A.R. 214, the fairies left the Cave and exited safely by means of magical gateway to return home to the ancestral kingdom found in formerly Old Hibera, thus finishing the reunification of the combined kingdom. This was on peaceful terms as dictated in a treaty left with Lord Steward Aloisius Treadwell. From an OOC perspective, this means that the location of New Hibera has been abandoned inside the Cave by its former owners, largely sealed off from all outside interaction save The Tunnel that connected them through the cave wall to the outside world.

Therefore, all references to New Hibera below can be considered purely historical in nature.

Name of the Kingdom

The marriage of King Oswald Grimley, formerly of Old Hibera, to Queen Mother Marian Aengus has led to the reunification of the two separate kingdoms under the combined title of Hibera. References to Old Hibera and New Hibera thus are slightly complicated: historical references dating before the marriage will generally reference the older names for the formerly divided kingdom. References that specifically post-date the marriage will refer to the two lands by their newer names of The Western Reach of Hibera and The Eastern Reach of Hibera.

Topography

The tiny fairy kingdom of New Hibera sits, roughly, in the south-central region of Myrken Wood, being positioned underground in a cave on the southern border of Silver Lake. Its actual borders extend only a couple hundred square feet at most, which is ample for its thousand or so citizens, most of whom stand a mere four inches. The region is rocky and damp, being below ground in a cave, but fairy magic keeps the place slightly lit and warm enough to be comfortable.

Location

The bulk of the kingdom is isolated to the one town of New Hibera, which is centered on the Queen Mother's palace with the business sector around that and the residential areas at the outskirts.

The chief entrance to New Hibera, and the only one currently known to the Myrken Wood Council, is a cave about 100 yards behind the cottage once owned by former Governor and Councilor Aloisius Treadwell, on the southern border of Silver Lake, a short distance from the Broken Dagger Inn. Two caverns into this cave, which slopes downward and is filled with the usual murkiness, two green-winged fairy guards stand at their post: a six inch around passage known solely as "The Tunnel." The Tunnel itself stretches only a few feet through the rock, approximately ten or fifteen feet underground. This is the only entrance accessible by the average fairy citizen. The other entrance is known as "The Passage."

"The Passage" is the newest addition to New Hibera, and, truthfully, is an attempt at forcing another exit from New Hibera to Myrken Wood, this one being unknown at present to the Myrken Wood Council. It is, like The Tunnel, six inches around, but it goes underground about six feet through the dirt and rocks before going in a reasonably straight line under the heart of Myrken to The Deck in the middle of town. Its entrance under The Deck is covered with a hollowed out rock in the bottom right corner of the empty area beneath the platform itself. Currently, there are no fairy guards posted in that empty area and no indication that anything is out of the ordinary to prying bigling eyes. Plans concerning this unauthorized expansion are unknown.

The relationship with Myrken Wood is unclear at best, depending on who is answering the question. Myrken Wood's records of the kingdom's official existence--a peace treaty recognizing such, established in 145 AR between the then-current council members and Richard Aengus--have been lost or destroyed. New Hibera, however, maintains its records of such, keeping them safe in the palace library under lock and spell. The current opinion of the Myrken Wood Council appears to be one only of uneasy tolerance.

In 214 AR, after King Richard Aengus desperately underwent a magical procedure to alter his gender so that he might have children as Queen Mother Marian Aengus, New Hibera was united with Old Hibera again by Marian's marriage to King Oswald Grimley Aengus, who took on Marian's more favored last name of Aengus per her demands. The official names for the two halves of the reunited kingdom are now The Western Reach of Hibera and The Eastern Reach of Hibera. Their relationships with Westenford, Amasynia, and Myrken Wood are assumed to be the same as before the marriage of the King and Queen Mother.

Climate

The white-winged fairy mages of New Hibera keep the climate inside the chief cavern -- especially the immediate area in and around the town -- pleasantly warm and only mildly humid. If one travels more than a few feet outside of the town itself, though, the caves themselves are damp, chilly, and hardly conducive to comfortable living for fairies. No rain or snow ever covers the town or the rest of the kingdom's land, as there are no direct openings to the sky.

Transportation

New Hibera, being structured more up than out, is designed with fairies in mind: buildings are multi-leveled, with doors and landings up and down their outermost walls. Most fairies go around individually on their wings, and there are three levels for flying on each thoroughfare in the city. However, that all depends on social class. A strict caste system exists based on inherited wing and aura colors, and it regulates everything from job selection to marriage to inheritance laws to travel.

Red and orange fairies are solely lower occupations and manual labor; they are the only ones restricted to the lowest flight paths in town unless necessary for their work. The majority of fairies are yellow-wings; they may hold most jobs available to average members of society, including hunting and manufacturing, and must travel accordingly in the middle of the air. White fairies are born into the upper classes, ranging from highly respected physicians to lawyers to magic-users who live only to make life simpler, safer, and more comfortable for the populace; they are the ones with the strongest inherited magical abilities, and magic is crucial to common life in New Hibera. They are restricted to the uppermost flight paths, so they rarely see any connections with the lower classes except, as with the red- and orange-wings, for what rare dealings might come from their contact with others from their work.

Finally, there are exceptions to the typical rules enforced on well over three-quarters of New Hiberan society. Green-winged kingdom and royal guards, blue-winged messengers and officials of middling status, and the royal family pink-winged fairies (King Oswald Aengus, Queen Mother Marian Aengus and any of their children) may travel as they wish or need within the city, the royals usually favoring travel by a coach pulled by trained honeybees that are cared for in an environment tightly controlled by a sizeable number of white-winged fairy mages. No other fairies enjoy such costly, expensive, and simply ludicrous luxuries.

Public Service

The green-winged Hiberan Guard protects the Hiberan people, serving as police and military with their specialized emphasis on their human-toothpick-sized pikes. The Guard is a fairly sprawling organization made up solely of green-winged fairies, the social caste designated as military and police figures in both Old Hibera and New Hibera. Its members typically travel in groups of four and are known at first glance by the green auras that all green-winged fairies put off as well as by their ever-present toothpick-sized spears and pikes.

The Hiberan Guard has three chief functions:

1. Serve as law enforcement figures in Old Hibera and New Hibera, a job that rarely needs more than minimal devotion due to the equally minimal crime rate, yet
2. Demonstrate sufficient fighting prowess to serve as military companies when under duress from outside forces, such as those of biglings or anything else larger than three or four inches, and
3. Protect all members of the royal family and or of any current Lord Protector from any and all possible threats to their persons and safety.

Meanwhile red- and orange-wings take care of construction (and the rare demolition), whereas a few white-wings serve as capable physicians.

News

Information spreads through New Hibera mainly by word of mouth or town crier.

Leisure Activities

Most fairies have little time for leisure, but there are a few places of general interest in the city, from a small museum (with its permanent exhibits on those odd biglings of Myrken Wood) to a gallery for arts and crafts. The mostly urban life and the hostile, cold environment of the cave lead to minimal room for exploration unless absolutely needed.

Local Economy

These fairies have next to nothing to offer to or take from their human neighbors, maintaining self-sufficient, isolationist policies out of self-interest. Magic is relied on quite heavily for everything from repairs to construction to food creation. Given the nature of the kingdom being in a cave, there is very little available that can be molded to proper currency, making barter systems and exchanges of services extremely common, although silver is especially prized for its beauty and malleability. With the recent reunification of the two Hiberan realms, though, reconciling this barter system with the use of the Old Hiberan cap will need to occur if the economy of the combined Kingdom of Hibera is to prosper.

Contents of the New Hibera/Myrken Wood Peace Treaty

AR 145 Myrken Wood Meetinghouse, Myrken Wood Province Raymond Elias, scribe and Councilor for Administrative Sanctions (AR 143 to Present) for Governor Maxwell Beauregard (AR 143 to Present)

Treaty of Acceptance and Recognition: New Hibera

It has been decided in the course of our events that Myrken Wood cannot and will not remain an entirely isolated whole to itself for all of time. As a province of Trae Kelsa, we border upon other territories, they border upon our own, and, we have found in the past year, others have been in effect long before our own might have even been conceived.

One such of the last is a realm of the Fae Folk, who hail from a land they refer to as New Hibera. To their reckoning, their kingdom has been established, either through another location to the west or through the present, for over the past six hundred years. They are ruled by one Richard Andrew Aengus, the third in a list of monarchs from a family of the same name, and a recent mission from his scouts to seek out further sources of food to alleviate recent famine in their cave by the lake has caused a need for acceptance and recognition of one province for one kingdom and one kingdom for one province.

Without recognition of such sovereignty, our very existence on what each considers the other's soil is potentially quite dangerous. Currently, the fairy realm apparently means no harm to the territory we inhabit, and we mean none to them, so in an attempt to enable further cooperation, we have drawn up this initial agreement, as dictated below.

ITEM: The existence of Myrken Wood and New Hibera will be mutually agreed upon from this day forth. The proposed relationship is that of neighbors with mutual respect for one another's realms. The need for such is apparent; to prevent needless bloodshed, apathy, or isolation from one another, we must work together.

ITEM: The kingdom of New Hibera, however, must take into account the size of its neighbors. It has been agreed upon that this initial agreement restricts them to the caves just north of the western shore of Silver Lake by approximately one hundred yards. They have agreed to establish an outer perimeter two caverns into these caves, posting guards at an entrance they refer to as, simply, "The Tunnel." Otherwise, they are free to make use of the resources available within those caves to further their own survival. No domestic expansion to outer territories--such as the shore of the Lake, the woods, et cetera will be permissible without prior agreement from the Myrken Wood Judiciary Council.

Currently, these tunnels are not in use by any of Myrken Wood's citizens. It is for this reason that we of the Council feel it safe to allow the fairies their kingdom there.

ITEM: The Myrken Wood Judiciary Council has agreed to assist, free of charge, the Fae with a show of good faith by offering them necessary food and water to bring an end to their current famine. The amount of supplies given are surely minimal on our part--two (2) large bags of fruits, vegetables, meats, and bread with two (2) large jugs of fresh water. The king assures us that with proper rationing, these should be sufficient for getting the fairies through these leaner times.

ITEM: In an equal show of good faith, the people of New Hibera have, through King Richard's word, promised assistance in the future. This assistance, he assures us, might be drawn from magical means such as healing, scholarly means such as the wealth of fairy wisdom from the past hundreds of years, or even military means if necessary.

With these terms, it is thus initially agreed. This original document will be stored in the office of the Governor in the Meetinghouse. A copy will be given to Richard Aengus of New Hibera for safe-keeping in the New Hiberan records. A copy will be sent to the offices of the Trae Kelsan Crown, a copy will be given to Altruian Mudd for storage in his Library on Dyer Avenue, and I will keep a copy of this in my own records as the official scribe for the Governor. Further copies are only recognized as valid if they are made totally from one of these sources without alterations. Any copies given to or to be accepted from the fairy king will, of course, need to be smaller to fit them.

(The document ends with a variety of signatures and titles, ranging from the aforementioned Governor Beauregard and Councilor for Administrative Sanctions Elias to people filling the other three (still existing) Council positions to the signature and seal of Richard Andrew Aengus of New Hibera.)

Contents of the Treaty Recording the Dissolution of New Hibera

Treaty of Dissolution and Notification of Going Home: New Hibera

It has been decided in the course of our events that Myrken Wood cannot and will not remain a whole with a piece missing from within it for all of time. As it is a province of Trae Kelsa, bordering upon other territories, sovereign in its right under the rule of its king, it borders upon our own, that is the realm of Hibera, once known as New Hibera, and we, the rulers of Hibera, have found it fitting, just, and necessary to end this adjacency humbly and peacefully, thus returning full rights of ownership to the land we occupy--namely, the Cave where we have lived since before the signing of the Treaty of A.R. 145.

For the duration of this stay, this kingdom has been ruled in one form or another by the Aengus family, currently led in perfect sobriety and peace by one King Oswald Aengus and the Queen Mother Marian Aengus.

ITEM: Since 145, Myrken Wood and New Hibera--now known as the Eastern Reach of Hibera--have lived in peaceful coexistence as dictated, living in mutual respect for one another's realms.

ITEM: The kingdom of Hibera, however, must take into account its own growing population and its adjacency to its neighbors. We seek to return to our ancestral home secured within what we know as the Western Reach of Hibera, formerly Old Hibera, to the northwest in the province of Amasynia. We have a tested, suitable, magical gateway devised that will see all of the approximately one thousand inhabitants, their belongings, and their pets safely home before being sealed permanently.

ITEM: The government of Myrken Wood may, upon our leaving of these grounds, do as they wish regarding the remaining properties and structures within, from the Royal Palace at the top to the town houses below, assuming they wish to knock out the wall wherein lies The Tunnel to The Eastern Reach of Hibera. Any magic left within the Cave will be immediately extinguished at our complete absence, so any visitors will be in complete safety.

ITEM: As a parting show of good faith, we will leave first and thus trust Lord Steward Treadwell and any of his fellows to act judiciously regarding this matter. We trust his signature on the treaty form below. We leave no other parting statement other than one of wholehearted praise for him in all his roles.

With these terms, we thus set forth at midnight on the twenty-eighth of the ninth month, 214. We will be gone by morning. This original document, like the Peace Treaty before it, should be stored in the office of the Lord Steward in the Meetinghouse. We will maintain a copy for safe-keeping in the Hiberan records. We wish all in Myrken Wood well.

We have thus settled our affairs and are finally returning home to finish the unification of our kingdom. We wish Myrken Wood the greatest peace and stability in reestablishing her own governance under the rightful rule of her King.

(The document ends with a trio of signatures--King Oswald Horace Grimley Aengus, Queen Mother Marian Ora Aengus, Orin Barrin: Royal Physician--and an impression of the Hiberan royal family seal. A suitable amount of blank space is left beside these with indications for "His Excellency, the Right Honorable, Ld. Stwd. Aloisius H. Treadwell" and room for two witnesses and the Governor's seal of Myrken Wood.)