The Endeavour

Known for:

• Tattoos

• Storytelling

• Nuts (not that kind!)

• Artistic subcommunities

The Endeavour, also known as the Storysprawl or City of Tree Tellers, is less a city and more a collection of small settlements all connected by similar cultures and ideals. Similar to suburbs of a sprawling metropolis, each area called a Bud has slight variations but belong to a greater whole (and it's likely that the average outsider would not recognize the names of Buds, only generals like "south Endeavour").

Culture

Located in the forests of southeast Ostelliach, it's natural to assume The Endeavour is known for an arboreal culture: a reverence of trees, nature etc. While this is not incorrect, it's actually not the first or even second thing the city is known for. In fact, The Endeavour is commonly called Storysprawl for their most cherished harvest: the stories of the people they meet and the intersections of individual lives with each other and the world around them. (The second-most wellknown topic relating to The Endeavour is their love of and fascination with tattoos.)

Storysprawl

Being a little isolated in the southeast does not mean Endevs are hermits or shun interaction. In fact, getting to know others and share their stories is their most valued currency. Newcomers and travelers are encouraged on their first night to share tales of their travel (with embellishments allowed for the drama of it) and it is extremely common for vendors such as inns to allow a good yarn as trade for goods or services.
These stories may be fables and fairy tales or true (or mostly true) memoir pieces. They may be humorous, epic, tragic, or unbelievable. They can be shortform or stretch long into the night. The value to Endevs (even those who are not bards or skalds by trade themselves) is in the connection with another being, another perspective shared.
Much like their research into tattoos, all stories traded are lovingly captured for recording and stored in special archives. Both these archives and the tattoo archives are duplicated once a year and sent to the Scriptorium Soiram for national posterity.

Note: Stories are able to be communicated in whatever way an individual is comfortable. Some recite or enact their stories through song, poetry, or play; some write or draw them; nonverbal individuals can propose their own way to communicate. There are even divination experts happy to telepathically communicate with those who consent to it; they may read a person's past or future, dreams, or thoughts to collect the story, as directed by the person they are "reading."

Inked Up

The Endeavour being an artistic-minded place means that they are always ready to explore new creative exploits. This is no more true than in their love of tattoos. Endevs have pioneered advancements in magically protected tattoos like barrier wards, illusion and disguise magic through tattoos, camoflauge, temporary and semipermanent tattoos, tattooing of bodies not normally tattooed (hair and scales, bone etc.), and more. This also includes tattoo removal, which allows ink-loving Endevs to remake the canvas of their body as often as they'd like (for a small fee, of course).
What's more, they adore showing off and trading stories of their ink, and tattooed visitors always draw interest, with Endevs looking for information on new technique or who did a specific piece, what it means to the person etc. They hold tattoo festivals twice a year and document the art of tattooing (both the styles of the art they see as well as the methods used to tattoo historical scholars value these records stretching back hundreds of years as important insights into past cultural values and artistic trends.

Getting Nutty

Naturally, living in a forest region means, well, nature. Specifically, there are a plethora of different types of seeds, berries, conifers, pods, and nuts. The Endeavour utilizes these for survival of course, but they have also developed a reputation for the many creative ways they use such harvests (especially nuts, given the many applications of the hard hollow shells and different shapes). To name a few:

• Creating bowls, bombs, beds, baskets, and more from nutshells

• Exfoliants and other skin care

• Musical instruments of all varieties including, of course, percussion

• Arts and crafts such as mixing paints from the ground-up shells, painting on the shells, sculpting the shells etc.

• Any kind of nut-based candy, trail mix, salad topping, butter, or other nut-based food

Endevs are not naive to the inherent jokes around this nut-based culture and generally take it in good strides. They also developed a magical cure for nut allergies to allow all to partake in their favorite harvest.

Demographics

Your average collection of forest-dwelling folks are to be expected in The Endeavour: Wood Elves, Dryads, Forest Gnomes, Firbolg, Sylvan, Satyr, Treant. Various animal-esque races like Tabaxi, Harengon, Bugbear, Owlin are also common of course.
However, any number of creative types are drawn to the groves and buds of The Endeavour: poets, artists, bards and skalds. Those with a love of conservation also cherish the forests' removal from industry that dominates more of the central and northern regions of the land, druids and the like.
Of economic status, The Endeavour is an area that lives off the surrounding land primarily and many of the amenities and valued goods of those who live here can be foraged or made, so currency is less of a driving factor. Folks come here for peace, creative contemplation, and likeminded community.

Government

Government Body

The Endeavour has less of a government oversight structure, with most of the Buds organizing their own community/neighborhood groups (similar to a neighborhood watch or HOA but with a community focus rather than a punitive one). One key structure, however, is their Culture and Ethics Committee. This council is fluid in size and based on volunteers; some terms (1 year) may see the council sitting at 43 or only 5. The only requirement is that there are an odd number of people (first come, first serve) to break any ties.
The primary role of the Culture and Ethics Committee is stepping in if proposed laws are unethical or detrimental to the overall direction of The Endeavour. They also sit in on monthly town council meetings, mediate disputes between residents, and confer on topics like festival planning or expanding housing.

Laws

When it comes to laws and statutes, The Endeavour is a simple democracy: any Endev can propose a law, so long as they have gathered 4 other signatures of fellow Endevs to help endorse the proposal and they are willing to speak to the proposal at a town hall meeting where folks can ask clarifying questions to understand it. These proposals are voted on twice a year, in the spring and fall, and require a 2/3 majority to succeed. Once they pass, they are generally considered to be "on the books" unless another proposal is introduced to strike the law down, which can only be done after the original law has been in place for 1 year (to give the majority the time they deserve for what they voted on).

Citizenship

Citizenship in The Endeavour is really only required to vote and is based on 3 criteria:

1. Residing in one of the Buds (something done for free, but a resident location is required nonetheless)
2. Sharing 5 stories to the community, in whatever format they prefer (fiction or nonfiction)
3. Creating a piece of art for the community (be it a painting, sculpture, dance, poem...)

These criteria are loose, leaving much up to the interpretation of the individual and more representing a ceremonial desire to see the person giving back to The Endeavour rather than gatekeeping. For instance, "art" and "stories" are left up to interpretation, with the hope that people behave in good faith and genuinely try to create something for their new community.

Defences

Each Bud of The Endeavour is specifically set up with magical provisions to accommodate all those living in it in the arboreal layer high above the ground (even those who otherwise live groundside). This includes provisions, shielding, and temporary pocket dimension-esque quarters if there isn't adequate tangible space.
In addition, the inventor types of The Endeavour have continued their tradition of finding new, clever ways to use nuts and have in the last few decades developed a type of grenade based out of a tree nut shell that is arcanically charged to preserve the surrounding forest upon impact. These, when deployed from above, have the ability to deter most who might cause harm, be they person or beast.

Infrastructure

The Endeavour exists partially aboveground in the many trees of the Tallowwood and Grove of the Cat, as well as belowground on the forest floor. Above, the homes are built around/onto tree trunks or suspended between them through a combination of magical and engineering feats. Similarly, the different buildings are connected by suspension bridges.
The individual Buds are sometimes connected by suspension bridges as well, but due to the sprawling nature of things and a desire to not overly crowd the forests with a web of bridges stretching miles, the primary public transit is a system of Portals, where each Bud has at least one portal to another. It's not uncommon for a person to need to take 2 portals to get to their next location, but they should be able to get anywhere they need to in that time. These portals are free to use and each Bud has a central hub where their portals are located. This is also generally the post office for the Bud.

Districts

The different suburbs of The Endeavour are known as Buds (like those sprouting from a larger plant stalk). There are around 20 different Buds in the community, spread across Tallowwood and the Grove of the Cat, though the number varies depending on who is asked due to the nature of them growing enough to intersect and overlap.
Roughly speaking, Buds are not organized by species or economic status but instead by general creative interest. This was never a deliberate choice necessarily, only the predilection of people to seek out those with similar interests to their own.
Similarly, it is not a mandate or something regulated--if for no other reasons than that people often have many creative interests that can be hard to divide up and that a mixing of perspectives is one of the best ways to encourage creativity. Additionally, a person more often than not resides in a Bud that has nothing to do with their day-to-day work, unless that work is their passion as well. An alchemist may mix potions during the day but find their real spark is in dance so when not working they surround themselves with fellow dancers.
(Note that there are often pseudoterritorial "clashes" regarding what the specific subgenre of poetry or song a Bud most encompasses, including whether or not a specific ballad or epic "counts" for said subgenre etc. But these are largely philosophical exercises to analyze the taxonomy of different artforms rather than actual disagreements.)
Roughly speaking, the Buds can be grouped, with just some examples below (and some groups containing several more specific Buds):

• Skalds, orators, actors, and those who perform the written word

• Bards, singers, musicians

• Performers who use their body in their work, such as aerialists, dancers, contortionists, circus performers

• "Flat" (2D) artists - painters, sketch artists etc.

• "Non-flat" (3D) artists - sculptors, carvers etc. A popular Bud that tends to straddle between the two art sections is fiber art such as knitting, weaving, crocheting, quilting etc. as no one can seem to agree which it falls under. Fashion design also falls into that Bud.

• Research-based creatives - alchemists, chemists, spellcrafters (using magic or science to create new things)

• Inventors, tinkerers, artificers

• Cooks, bakers, brewers, and "edible" creations

• Nature-based creation, where the involvement with nature is more important than the medium - druids, flowersingers, horticulturists, fungal bouquet artists, animal husbandry, a large variety of random nature-lovers. One sees now how there's no clear rules - a cartographer in love with rendering the world beautifully might reside here or in the "flat" art group of Buds or even in the research-based area, depending on who he wanted to surround himself with.

• Forging, smithing, metalworking, and some subvarieties such as jewelry making

• Tattoo artists, who have such a large presence in The Endeavour as to have an extremely large Bud and section unto itself

• Craftspeople creating functional work other than metalworking, such as woodsmiths, glassblowers etc. Many float between this and the "non-flat" art Buds but to some the distinction is important: beautiful art, versus beautiful functional things.

As you can see, there is no Bud dedicated to storytellers, as anyone can tell a story (and many mediums can tell said story). Additionally, some people's passions may be so specific that it's anyone's guess what Bud they choose. Where does the passion of creating new symbols and pictography fall? Or new languages? Mathematical theorems and hypotheticals? Is someone whose passion is creating new art mediums an inventor, or should they align with the "flat" artists? Truly, the system is based on individual whim and preference and flexible.

Artistic map of rough locations in Storysprawl and public transit between Buds

Points of interest

• An ampitheater for live music carved out of a prehistoric nutshell over 100 feet across.

• Inkvale, a collection of colocated Buds hosting some of the best tattoo artists Ostelliach has to offer

Tourism

People visit The Endeavour primarily to create or to consume creations. They come to tell or hear stories, see or make art, shake hands with creatives and be inspired by them. They come for tattoo and art festivals, they come for new foraging recipes, they come for quiet and fresh air away from larger cities.

Geography

The Endeavour is technically represented on maps as being part of the Grove of the Cat, but in reality it covers a sprawling swath of both this coniferous forest as well as its deciduous northern neighbor Tallowwood. These forests cover gently rolling hills and vary in tree height and density as well as amount of undergrowth, vines, wildlife, and soil consistency.
The Grove of the Cat is actually slightly higher elevation than Tallowwood and sees accompanying slightly colder winters with milder summers, whereas Tallowwood is known for orchards and more comfortable winters.
Freshwater can be found throughout the region via many small ponds and creeks, magically nurtured by Endev mages to ensure the forests stay properly hydrated year-round.

Natural Resources

• Wood of all kinds

• Berries, nuts, seeds, granola, and other small plant harvests

• Fruit from Tallowwood orchards

• Rich soil from Tallowwood, acidic soil from Grove of the Cat

• Freshwater ponds/creeks

Alternative Name(s)

The Storysprawl, City of Trees, City of Tree Tellers

Type

Arcology

Inhabitant Demonym

Endev (eh-n-dev), Tree Hopper (slang)

Location under

Grove of the Cat

Characters in Location

• Caterina & Theophrastus Guttata
• Fendrel Drake
• Marigold

Related Reports (Primary)

• Session 17: Into The Maw, Hands Held Tightly

Related Reports (Secondary)

• Session 14: A Party Knitted and a City of Trees
• Session 20: Everyone's Got a MILC