Farwater Reef
Farwater Reef is the capital city of the Kingdom of Orpora, an aquatic metropolis known for its great assembly yards, palaces, and fortresses. It is the throne of the Blue Ring, and a monument to the glory of Octoperson dominance. The industry and power of the reef is Octoperson genius bottled and twisted into collective might.
Farwater may sound like a strange name, but it makes perfect sense when one actually looks upon it. Farwater perches on a ridge below the coastline, overlooking the vast watery plains of the Veniv straights: a winding path of stone to the Northwest that rises from the endless abyss of the deep ocean, serving as a vast bridge from Makal to Izekra. While the city is buffered by a large ring of developed ocean floor that is used for kelp and crab farming, the Veniv plains and the distant abyss are always there on the horizon. Sometimes, one can even see the enormous body of a distant Leviathans crawling over the plains from one abyss to the other. The terrors of the deep sea, the empty vastness full of potential unknowns so vast and alien that individual minds and bodies may as well be nothing, are always there in the distance. But so are the fortresses towers, bristling with arms against them and holding the city close like the tentacles of a loving parent.
The approach to the reef is a militarized zone of outposts and guard patrols watching over numerous crab ranches, oyster farms, and contained kelp patches. Individual guard towers made of hauled stone and tipped with rotating ballistae line the seabed, and loyal elevated squiddle auxiliaries patrol the waters. Thousands of squiddles and cuttlefolk work ceaselessly across the rural outlands, harvesting resources and working their craft under the watchful eye of the military. While the military cannot be everywhere, it does its very best to appear as if it does, and it has achieved a very convincing effect. The city itself contributes to that, with its eight great fortress-spires of coral-covered stone jutting out like terrible claws around the city, giving the effect that it is both far above the farmland and impossible to attack.
Great nets of woven Jellyfish lie near-imperceptibly between the fortress-spires, restricting movement into the city for those who do not know the way. The great man-o-war symbiotes at the surface are certainly visible, and the hundreds of small fish that appear mysteriously frozen in the water are a clue, but the smaller jellyfish are difficult enough to see that a stealthy entry is a true puzzle: one complicated by the fact that one is likely to also be shot at during this.
There are five entrances to the city that are fully legal: two gates to the lower agricultural area, two gates to the upper shelf that it sits on for the nearby lesser coastal reefs, and one massive gate facing the Veniv plains. The Veniv Gate is the most impressive and iconic: a huge, carved ramp overlooked by military towers and statues of the founding King Orpor, leading up from the plain towards an artificially seeded reef carefully constructed around commercial clusters, like an extended market. This trade zone, with market on the floor and walls and traffic across the surface and center, with ships above, leads up and up through the reef towards a large stone elevator. And overlooking it all is a massive skeleton, overgrown by coral, a serpentine structure hundreds of feet long. This is the Palace-Cathedral of Orpora, ceremonial seat of power for the Orporan monarchy and priesthood. The stone elevator is for surface trade and communication, and is attached to an island that is some of Orpora's only directly-held surface territory.
This grand corridor between the Veniv gate and the elevator to Bospo Isle is known as the Barter Reef, the trading center of Farwater and the most tolerant district in regards to foreigners. The Palace marks the start of a new district: the Palatial Reef. The Palatial Reef is full of large, monumental structures of coral-covered stone and art, the homes of royals and aristocrats and venerated officers, though the reef between these manors is astonishingly quaint. Parts of the old reef ecosystem is preserved here, and the local fish are encouraged to be diverse and colorful, like a pastoral dream of what a natural reef looks like. The fish are unusually passive and slow to react to octoperson approach, like pigeons at a park that have learned to tolerate human presence. Poisonous fish or aggressive eels have been pruned from this place, as it is essentially a large garden meant to mimic a natural reef.
Beyond the Palatial reef is the Common Reef. The common reef has been carefully pruned and molded into manageable blocs that look highly unnatural. Unwelcome branches of coral are carefully removed and transplanted, and coral blocks are often seperated by stone pillars into discrete units. It is like a honeycomb in a bee hive, a reef that has been systematically disassembled and reassembled into something more insectlike and controlled. Swarms of colorful fish and reef like continue to go by, but they are now watched over and occasionally harvested for food or components by civilian fisherfolk. Shellfish beds grow wildly without regular predation, and are harvested en masse by crews of laborers every month or so. Eels are wrangled in their coral blocks, families live packed together in their bits of reef in what are essentually great residential blocks. If you could imagine someone saying "the great barrier reef needs more soviet brutalism" and then actually giving it a shot, it would like uncomfortably close to the common reef.
At the edge of the common reef is the Assembly-Reef, which is less thoroughly modified outside of the obvious massive structures and assembly yards. This reef was always the sandiest and sparsest of the reefs, and all of that empty space has been converted to pure industry. Resources are piled in and quickly converted by thousands of tentacles into goods. Whirring clockwork machines of kelp, chitin, bronze, and bone zip snap components together, disassemble corpses, or mix chemicals as workers hurry about them. Octopeople and squiddle alike can be found here, though never together as equals. Every so often a cloud of blue blood taints the water as a machine snaps a tentacle or something goes wrong; the workers here carry scars and chemical burns. This is where excess population is converted to the industrial flesh of the state, meat that is used up and turned into chemical weapons, bolters, machines, trinkets, tools, and equipment.
At the edge of the Assembly Reef is the Squiddle's Reef, a community for Crab-cow breeding and processing, as well as for butchering crabcows that are herded in to the capital from the countryside. The Squiddle Reef is where most squiddles actually live in Farwater. Great mountains of coral are bridged by artificial buildings of chitin, kelp, and stone, in architecture that is downright surface-inspired. The reefs here are the least regulated, though that cannot be said for those who live in it. The entire reef is built around military rank and status, with officerial squiddles living in coral manors styled after the Palatial Reef and those in the auxiliary service living clustered around them. Integration into the regime makes for better living here, and for more freedom; the commoners and their chitin tenements are constantly made aware of this, and recruitment into the auxiliaries is constantly offered to their children.
The Reef Districts
Demographics
Government
The ruler of Farwater is the Monarch of Orpora, whose palace is the finest and whose Leviathan-Skull Throne watches all. But the Monarch has much to attend to, and most daily functions of administration are left to one of their siblings or children, the Prince of Princess of Farwater. Generally, the Prince of Farwater is the designated heir to the throne.
Beneath the Prince of Farwater is the Farwater Reefguard, who act as bureaucrats and military police, and the Garrison Captain of the Farwater Blue Ring (standing military). The Farwater Reefguard is led by the three Reefguard Captains, one of whom is always a squiddle and two of whom are always octopeople. One Captain manages the Palatial and Trade reefs; one manages the common reef and industrial reef; and the other manages the Squiddle's reef.
The monarch prior to the End of the World starting in 2017 was Queen Ungala. Ungala was a hotheaded warrior, with a close grip on the standing army and very little time for the mundane concerns of the reef. Locally, her son and heir Kalo managed the Farwater Reef after her sister Porola died in 2015. When the world ending began in 2017, Ungala died first fighting it and Kalo took over in her stead. Kalo, always a pessimist and one with little faith in the empire, ultimately accepted the Cult of the World-Ender into the city. No new Prince of Farwater has been named since.
The current Reefguard Captains are: Dosu Greenblood, loyal guard of the palatial district known for their calm; Osla Alusblood, an infamously brutal aristocrat with experience in the Blue Ring placed in charge of the commons; and Asha Risenbody, a seasoned skirmisher-turned-sharpshooter who was promoted from the squiddle auxiliaries for their accomplishments in the far North, who is known for their charismatic generosity to those seen as loyal and cold ruthless efficiency dealing with those seen as disloyal.
Guilds and Factions
The Highblood Merchants: Aristocrats have special trading privileges, and many highblooded octopeople less interested in military life venture out to manage merchant caravans. These merchants may be competitors, but their greatest enemy is an imperial state that is skeptical of their value and purity. So, the merchants stick together and pool their resources to try and influence the government. They make themselves invaluable to the government as well by pooling information about foreign powers and working to expand Orpora's influence on the surface world.
The Reefguard: The Reefguard sees itself as under constant attack by the civilian populace, and it works to provide a front of unity and strength for all to see. The Reefguard is the local state administration: they perform censuses, undertake construction projects, manage civil complaints, distribute rations, collect taxes, and act as judge and police both.
The Priest-Engineers: All Octopeople who show signs of unusual inventiveness or charisma are absorbed into the priesthood, to act as masters of public ritual and engineering. It is they who own the assembly yards, and they who manage the schools. The priest-engineers are pragmatic, meritocratic, and obsessed with ordering things, and they tend to butt heads with the aristocratic officers and commonfolk alike.
The Blue Ring Garrison: The superior warriors of Orpora, the Blue Ring are better armed, better trained, and respected as death and order incarnate. The warriors who guard the city have a superiority complex and totally different loyalties than even the Reefguard, and answer only to their magister militum.
The Commons Keepers: Community organizers of the common reefs, the Keepers are democratically chosen from the best families of a reef block to help manage the local workers on their own terms. They are decentralized, absorbed in local rivalries, and often do their best to suck up to the state - but their quiet hatred for the Reefguard has been a sticking point in the past.
The Squiddle Hierarchy: Squiddles live in their own micro-society, which is even more obsessed with status than usual. Those squiddles who have made it (or children of those squiddles) are on top, and act as both the fist of the state and the advocate for the squiddles. The lower and middling Octopeople resent them for outranking them, and the Squiddle Reefguard Captain acts as their de-facto leader.
Geography
Farwater sits about 4 miles from the surface city of Aprizada, just South of their port.
Founding Date
-1200 DE
Type
Capital
Population
500,000
Location under
Owning Organization
Related Plots
Remove these ads. Join the Worldbuilders Guild
Comments