Revision as of 20:07, 29 June 2017

This is a massive and sprawling landlocked city that is easy to get lost in, with heavy real-world Italian influences.

Description

The architecture sports colorful stucco walls, terracotta roofing, and hilly cobblestone or wheel-worked dirt roads with tightly placed buildings at its main hub. As the city expands outward, buildings become further spaced apart, giving it a more picturesque countryside appeal with rolling green hills dotted with farm plots. Carvings and decorative structural art are generally themed around the Great Skald, particularly in older parts or centers of gathering places such as mass markets, festival locales, and so on. Sometimes these pieces are subtle, the clef note appearing at the top of pillars or in the corners of door moldings or as a door handle. Sometimes they are grand, such as an entire fountain dedicated to their creator.

The city spans for what seems like forever and is such a maze that no matter the starting point you always feel like the building you're after is just the next street over... but then you realize there is yet another street between you and it. Even the relative elevation gives you nothing to infer either as the cobblestone streets wind this way and that as well as up and down. The buildings range in a simple but colorful palate that pair well with the terracotta shingles on the roofs. Occasionally the stone walls will have lush green vegetation blanketing them, keeping the beauty natural and making the congestion feeling a little less claustrophobic. Music, string or wind in nature, is often heard as the players practice in their homes with the windows open. Shops can be found strewn throughout as well and little cafes are often hidden in shaded side streets like little rendezvous points.

The crowds, when encountered, are lively and move with a choreographed precision, with no one bumping into one another that you could tell. This is helpful, as the main market hub just south of the central plaza is nothing but a mass of bodies in motion. You can hear the calling of the sellers as they market their wares but you can't actually see their stalls to know if you are positioned right to swoop by, but some how the crowd works you through the endless dance to your destination. At the center of this buzzing hub is a large roofed area where the richer merchants set up flea-market style where the merchants must cart in and out their wares daily and their beasts of burden are tied up on posts on one side of this market. Often by one support column or another there could be one or a few young performers working together to practice, their worth measured by the coins of passerby.

History

Inizio D'Oro is believed to be the very spot of the one and only sighting of The Skald and the birthplace of the Maestros and the guilds. Declared the capital by the most respected of the Maestros it grew to become a religious mecca celebrating heroes of all capacities and heavily influenced by classical art. Considering this, the city is estimated to be just outside of its first millennium.

The status of the Prima Famiglia was first established three centuries ago.

Religion

Skaldic (Primary)

Economy

Main Exports:

• Grapes
• Wheat
• Commissioned art

Places of Note

The Choir

Located at the top of the central plaza, perhaps both the most decorated and spacial part of the city. Large empty space seemingly designed to be filled with standing crowds for proclamations from the massive white and gold building in the center. On sunny days painters would sit with their easels and work on portraiture and public speakers would stand on crates and display their ability to inspire and inform. Up the steps and into the building you would find that it was not a palace but a hall of halls. The guilds have large two room offices each and center of all of them a universal room where they all confer. Rumor says that the leaders meet with the Prima Famiglia there.

The Manor

North from the Hall of Halls and across the long stone bridge is the manor of the Prima Famiglia, walled and gated from the rest of the city. The three-floored manor itself is set to the back of the property with the front yard made up of pathways of crushed oyster shell and hedges manicured to waist-height into grand box designs. Italian Cypress is planted aplenty here, especially along the walls and bordering the main path to the front door. Halfway between the main gate and this entrance is a fountain pool filled with water lilies.

But this is all you can see from the iron gates on the city side of the bridge. There's another gate on the other side of it and the wall surrounding the property doesn't lend itself for people who may try to swim across. The lack of guard suggests that the civilians overall are rather respectful, or in the very least have no reason to try and visit. Or perhaps they know something and stay away on their on violation.

It is here that the heirs to the various guilds across The Tapestry live in splendor and serve the crown, getting intimate with their future as potential king or queen.