---

Ríše: Within the Empire

---

The Setting



The Empire of Ríše is a civilised (for this, read oligarchic and cut-throat) place, split into five provinces and sprawling around the Caprican sea, a tropical ocean whose coasts support trading cities and nations.

A relatively young power on the world stage, her disciplined Legions and the Dark Fleet of her Navy have enabled her to grab land and power at a rate alarming to other nations, leaving her, at the last expansion, one of the largest powers about the Caprican sea. They regard it more as ‘civilising’ the barbarians and recalcitrant areas than conquer and pillage – indeed, their Legions make a point of capture rather than kill; more slaves for the markets in the Imperial City. Integration, not annihilation, is the Rŭsean doctrine.

Rebellion and internal resistance are relatively low, although persistent in certain areas and centres mainly around class discrepancies. They honour a code of warfare meant to reduce casualties and give opportunity for peaceful surrender.

Their Sun Court is of mixed races, populated by any of power and wealth, none barred (at least in law, if not in custom), and swirling with plot, intrigue and plays for power. While the society as a whole (and, publicly, the Imperial Court) honours truth, justice, mercy, unity and conquest, the Court truly focuses on personal glory, vanity, greed and power, and is not nearly so scrupulous about its methods of obtaining its desires.

The centrepiece of the glorious Empire is its glittering Imperial Capital, a sprawling metropolis in the tropical Home County, and where much of the RP will take place. It is a hive of intrigue and machination, feuds and seething arguments, red sins where a noble’s word is law, a decadent city revelling in it all, with the spectre of war very far away indeed.

---

The Opening Story

The glorious Empire of Ríše is currently at war, and has been for some time. The Empress, despite her five consorts, has thus far been unable to conceive a child, leading many to write her off as barren and going instead to court the most powerful noble Houses, one of which would surely ascend to the Peacock Throne if the imperial family died out. Naturally, this does not sit well with the Empress, and so she resolved to make her mark on history in a different way; if she could not bear children, she’d bear to Ríše great glories and new lands instead.

To that end, then, the Legions of Ríše armed and armoured their regiments, the Dark Fleet readied their ships, the fortresses on the Long Border prepared to sally forth and the cavalry saddled up their horses, Rŭsean forces streaming across the borders and biting deep into other nations, sending back caravans of slaves and the spoils of war.

It isn't going as well as might be expected; a lot of the other nations are wary of Ríše anyway, and the grand Legions are meeting rather more resistance than they anticipated, not to mention the Dark Fleet having a lot of problems with the Sairish corsairs.

Rather closer to home, there is change in the air. Lordly House Montclair’s patriarch has finally died, leaving the way clear for his young heir to seize the reins of power. Driving and ambitious – and a dab hand with the poison-bottle – he is a threat to all those that have profited from House Montclair’s decline, House Derik especially.

Officers from the war fronts are slinking back into the Imperial Capital as autumn draws to a close in the other provinces, none of them wishing to explain to the Empress why the crushing advance of Imperial Ríše has ground to a halt, hoping to plan their offensives in the Imperial College of War and get out of the city at the first touch of spring on the fronts, before they become embroiled in the seething politics of the capital.

The fat, corrupt priesthoods of the Fane are also in for a nasty shock – tired of their blatant corruption, a new church, a new religion, has emerged in the shadows, stealthily gaining converts and connections, soon to shock the old order from its complacency, and possibly topple it altogether.

And of course, as ever, the dark Order of the Eclipse waits in the wings, sharpening its knives and restocking its poison-bottles, ready and willing to remove any inconvenient obstacles from the paths of those able to pay.

It is into this morass of conflicting agendas and factions that anyone who is anyone in Ríše must plunge headlong, seizing chance and opportunity, lest they sink into obscurity.

---

The Rules of Ríše

1. This is a literate roleplay. By personal definition, that means I require good grammar and spelling. I don't expect perfection, but things should be proper overall. Additionally, kindly type your RP posts in the third person, past tense (eg. She went to the store. She bought some eggs.).There is no minimum post length; I truly don't care if you post one paragraph or ten as long as your post does what it needs to do. I want quality over quantity.

2. You may play more than one character as long as you can handle them. Standard rules with NPCs apply.

3. It should go without saying, but there is to be no godmoding (playing a perfect character who always wins, is never hurt, etc.) or controlling another's character without the player's permission. That just ruins the game for everyone; it’s not on, chaps and chapettes.

4. Please use the skeleton below. Bear in mind it is only a skeleton, and can be expanded if you like, but I do expect all the fields below to be filled in.

5. Any OOC chat in IC areas is to be posted in double brackets/parentheses/etc. to distinguish it from IC speech. Please keep your OOC conversations to the OOC thread as much as possible.

6. The RP will take place via thread, because we are all in different time zones.

7. This isn’t a rule so much as a head’s up. There will likely be a lot of OOC planning and communication in this RP, so it would be in everyone’s best interests to watch the OOC thread! If you have ideas for great events, send me a PM.

8. Romance is allowed (within the boundaries of the site rules, of course), but it's not mandatory. Characters of all genders and orientations are acceptable – Ríše isn’t all that concerned about what you get up to in the bedroom, so long as you don’t wake the city doing it.

---

The Character Skeleton

Code: Select all

[b]Name:[/b] – I feel this one’s pretty self-explanatory.
[b]Age:[/b] – Again, if you don’t know how to fill this in, you probably shouldn’t be here.
[b]Gender:[/b] – See above...
[b]Title(s):[/b] – This is optional; what titles or ranks (or both) does your character hold?
[b]Style:[/b] – Again optional and linked to Titles – how is your character addressed?
[b]Physical Description:[/b] – What does your character look like?
[b]Personality:[/b] – Are they a sweet, loveable person, a charming rogue or a complete bastard?
[b]History:[/b] – What events have shaped your character’s life up to the present?
[b]Faction(s):[/b] – What factions are they a member of, if any?
[b]Profession:[/b] – What does your character do for a living? Do bear in mind that aside from entering politics, the army or the navy, the nobility don’t tend to have jobs. They certainly wouldn’t be rank-and-file soldiery, in any case.
[b]Quirks and Other Information:[/b] – Any other little titbits you’d like to put in, that perhaps don’t merit an entire section to themselves. Optional.

If confused, take a look at Larsus Montclair for an example.

---

NB: It would be a good idea to take a look at the Reference Guide location , if you're interested. Most of the information there is not essential, just useful to refer to.

---