Guildworld - The Idiosyncracy of Valpolicella

[Robulous]

This is my wine-soaked entry for the Guildworld challenge - the Idiosyncracy of Valpolicella: a whimsical empire set in the Winedark Sea, where art and sophistication are highly prized, and viticulture a treasured religion: an early industrial civilisation where elegance goes hand in hand with mechanisation.

The nation has three classes of citizen: the Valpol, the Helots, and the Idiopaths. All citizens are born Valpol - dedicated to living life to the full, playing, dancing, drawing, making art and poetry, designing beautiful homes and gardens, and enjoying life as much as possible. This is assumed to be the natural human condition we are born with, spoiled only by a spiritual malady which Valpol term "The Wan": a dissatisfaction with a life of simple enjoyment and feeling a need to be "useful".

Those succumbing to The Wan become Helots - people who dedicate their life to being productuve: ploughing the fields, harvesting crops, building ships and fighting Valpolicella's occasional wars.

The most extreme victims of The Wan have a need for imposing rules and order, for "doing good". These become the Idiopaths, an unfortunate yet useful class who form the bureaucracy, gather taxes, and busy themselves making laws, yet rarely get invited to parties.


The north of the nation is hot and dry or jungle - most people living on the south coast with its green valleys crammed with vineyards. The province of Helotage is the industrial heartland, centred on the city of Helotrix, famous for its clocks, its jewellery, and its corsets. Pinotage to the east is the agricultural belt and producer of the nation's most valued wines. The nation produces a huge variety of spirits, wines and liqueurs, which are exported far and wide, the backbone of the economy.

The Isle of Eleganza is the spiritual heartland of Valpolicella, a soft and temperate land of gardens and houses where Valpols pass from soiree to salon to ballroom. Arguzia Frizzante is the nation's capital, a city of domes and sparkling spires, where music plays and wine flows night and day. Here the Idiopaths rule from the Palace of Guastafeste, their busybodying overseen by the Festaioli, an adhocratic parliament who can overrule anything too extreme.


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