New Abargrapt
07-04-2009, 01:39
A Princely Swann Song and the Birth of a Hero
KINDSLEY, PRINCIPALITY OF ABARGRAPT
“...aaand mate.”
“..Damn. That’s three-one. What was it, a hundred and fifty? Here, I’ve only got hundreds.. no, keep it, I’ve-”
Ernest brandished a great wad of banknotes, indicating that he had rather a lot, really, and didn’t need the fifty change offered by his old friend.
“Well.” He said, rising from the upturned crate on which he sat, and stretching as he glanced up and down the dreary cobblestone lane. “This is hardly worth the sport, anymore. Perhaps we should play for bread.”
Alfred, Ernest’s leather-skinned friend, grunted in displeasure as an attempted hundred thousand kindsleymark paper plane fell foul of the gutter. Displeased not because the worthless scrap of paper was soaking in waste, but because it only flew two yards to get in that way. “It hardly IS sport, you’ve not won two games all week!”
Ernest laughed a little though he’d already started away, evidently keen to be near the front of today’s breadline. Alfred wouldn’t follow for hours yet. It looked like rain, again, and the old fellow was on orders from his wife not to catch his death. He instead creaked and cracked his way back into the ramshackle hovel that his family called home, almost tripping over a stray giant continental rat as he went.
BREADLINE, KINDSLEY CITY CENTRE
Almost four hours after losing two hundred thousand kindsleymarks in a chess duel with a decrepit half-Mauatu Eastgate War veteran, a hungry young man named Ernest Swann was on the verge of throwing a public fit. Not that anyone would have taken much notice, save perhaps to steal his place in the queue.
He’d already lost that once today, a fairly mild result for one who’d been caught trying to cheat the Principality. Someone must have told on him, he thought, looking around with fire in his eyes. What were the chances of an officer of the City Guard picking him out from a crowd of hundreds on the one day he’d tried to sneak through in the wrong line?
“So I don’t have any hungry babes at home! I’m still hungry!” He cried out to nobody, everybody, kicking the kerbstone with some force. “We’ll never get out of this if we let healthy young men waste away! OH!”
Ernest staggered across the street and sat down hard on the far side, pulling off his shoe as he realised that he’d split one of his last pair.
“Oh!” He exclaimed a second time. Falling back on the pavement he had time enough before fainting to realise that he’d again lost his place. Ernest still managed to curse the Prince as an Eastgater puppet before delirium won out in him.
* * * * * * * * * *
The Principality of Abargrapt lay on the northeastern corner of the huge Pacific island often known as New Eastgate. Every locale seemed to have its own name for the landmass, but so far as most people in Abargrapt knew it was simply The Continent.
Abargrapt’s borders were pretty well defined- west were the foothills of the mighty Clades Mountains, Mt.Caligo visible from some of the Principality’s own, lesser, peaks. North and east was the mightier Pacific, and south the impressive Gran Desavi, The Continent’s largest river.
This tidy arrangement hadn’t satisfied certain elements of Abargrapt’s exceptionally small oldest generation. The then republic, after a few years of seizing native land (in the course of which Alfred’s mother came to Abargrapt as a servant) Abargrapt had come to blows with New Eastgate, the continent-dominating nation that birthed Abargrapt out of civil war and a mass migration lead by one Senator Kindsley.
Abargrapt, economically and technologically its parent’s inferior, had done badly from the war. At the time of its outbreak, Abargrapt's fifteen million people faced forty million in the Eastgater Federation. The idiot Prince, Willard, son of the King of Eastgate, had been imposed upon the shattered republic, and the backward state left to the care of the backward child.
Though not in direct control of every detail of Abargraptine life, New Eastgate’s relatively mighty economy and intact industrial base had strangled the war weary Principality, imposing tariffs, enforcing treaties, policing borders, and harassing shipping.
OOC Thread! (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=589311)
KINDSLEY, PRINCIPALITY OF ABARGRAPT
“...aaand mate.”
“..Damn. That’s three-one. What was it, a hundred and fifty? Here, I’ve only got hundreds.. no, keep it, I’ve-”
Ernest brandished a great wad of banknotes, indicating that he had rather a lot, really, and didn’t need the fifty change offered by his old friend.
“Well.” He said, rising from the upturned crate on which he sat, and stretching as he glanced up and down the dreary cobblestone lane. “This is hardly worth the sport, anymore. Perhaps we should play for bread.”
Alfred, Ernest’s leather-skinned friend, grunted in displeasure as an attempted hundred thousand kindsleymark paper plane fell foul of the gutter. Displeased not because the worthless scrap of paper was soaking in waste, but because it only flew two yards to get in that way. “It hardly IS sport, you’ve not won two games all week!”
Ernest laughed a little though he’d already started away, evidently keen to be near the front of today’s breadline. Alfred wouldn’t follow for hours yet. It looked like rain, again, and the old fellow was on orders from his wife not to catch his death. He instead creaked and cracked his way back into the ramshackle hovel that his family called home, almost tripping over a stray giant continental rat as he went.
BREADLINE, KINDSLEY CITY CENTRE
Almost four hours after losing two hundred thousand kindsleymarks in a chess duel with a decrepit half-Mauatu Eastgate War veteran, a hungry young man named Ernest Swann was on the verge of throwing a public fit. Not that anyone would have taken much notice, save perhaps to steal his place in the queue.
He’d already lost that once today, a fairly mild result for one who’d been caught trying to cheat the Principality. Someone must have told on him, he thought, looking around with fire in his eyes. What were the chances of an officer of the City Guard picking him out from a crowd of hundreds on the one day he’d tried to sneak through in the wrong line?
“So I don’t have any hungry babes at home! I’m still hungry!” He cried out to nobody, everybody, kicking the kerbstone with some force. “We’ll never get out of this if we let healthy young men waste away! OH!”
Ernest staggered across the street and sat down hard on the far side, pulling off his shoe as he realised that he’d split one of his last pair.
“Oh!” He exclaimed a second time. Falling back on the pavement he had time enough before fainting to realise that he’d again lost his place. Ernest still managed to curse the Prince as an Eastgater puppet before delirium won out in him.
* * * * * * * * * *
The Principality of Abargrapt lay on the northeastern corner of the huge Pacific island often known as New Eastgate. Every locale seemed to have its own name for the landmass, but so far as most people in Abargrapt knew it was simply The Continent.
Abargrapt’s borders were pretty well defined- west were the foothills of the mighty Clades Mountains, Mt.Caligo visible from some of the Principality’s own, lesser, peaks. North and east was the mightier Pacific, and south the impressive Gran Desavi, The Continent’s largest river.
This tidy arrangement hadn’t satisfied certain elements of Abargrapt’s exceptionally small oldest generation. The then republic, after a few years of seizing native land (in the course of which Alfred’s mother came to Abargrapt as a servant) Abargrapt had come to blows with New Eastgate, the continent-dominating nation that birthed Abargrapt out of civil war and a mass migration lead by one Senator Kindsley.
Abargrapt, economically and technologically its parent’s inferior, had done badly from the war. At the time of its outbreak, Abargrapt's fifteen million people faced forty million in the Eastgater Federation. The idiot Prince, Willard, son of the King of Eastgate, had been imposed upon the shattered republic, and the backward state left to the care of the backward child.
Though not in direct control of every detail of Abargraptine life, New Eastgate’s relatively mighty economy and intact industrial base had strangled the war weary Principality, imposing tariffs, enforcing treaties, policing borders, and harassing shipping.
OOC Thread! (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=589311)