Visiting the Old Dominion (Closed)
Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2020 7:46 am
The port of Hampton was bustling with all the activity and energy one would expect to find in a major commercial harbor. While it wasn’t quite the great entrepôt of Grand Harbor, which was the busiest port in the Atlantian Dominions, Hampton was still an important link in the Dominion of Marydale’s commercial chain. It was easy to tell which ships were coming from or bound for destinations within the Atlantian Dominions, for these were steamships with their smoke-belching towers. The ships which would carry Marydale cotton, tobacco, and manufactured goods to foreign ports had no steam engines, and instead relied on the vast cloth sails that hung from towering masts. By law, the International Traders were restricted to sail power only, lest speedy and frequent travel between foreign and Atlantian ports contaminate the Confederation with foreign influences.
It was amid all this commercial energy that the ship bearing Princess Nerea of Voxija arrived to let its passenger disembark. The Princess was met at the quay by a handsome, rugged-looking young man with dirty blond hair, wearing a finely tailored suit. Mason Lockwood, son of the shipping magnate William Lockwood, had been eagerly awaiting Princess Nerea’s arrival ever since the two had met at the Continental Cotillion in Grand Harbor. His friend and confidant Mary Ashby had teased him remorselessly about his infatuation, to which Mason had protested that he simply found the foreign princess unique and interesting to talk to. But he could not deny that his heart leapt a bit when he saw her descending the gangplank.
“Welcome to Marydale, Princess.” Mason gave an abbreviated bow and kissed Nerea’s hand in a show of what he hoped was charming sophistication. He gestured behind him, where a town car was parked waiting for its passengers. A driver in elaborate livery stood waiting by the doors. The car was drawing plenty of attention from passers-by, who rarely saw such a vehicle in the city. Mason Lockwood was determined to impress Nerea, and had persuaded his father to lend the family car to deliver her to the Estate.
That such a vehicle might be the pinnacle of technology and wealth in the Confederation of Atlantian Dominions was a common reason for tourists to travel and visit the nation. The Confederation was a land seemingly frozen in time a century past. The land had been struck by a series of calamities in the 1920s, and civilization had barely hung on. The Confederation had risen from the ashes of the False Tribulation and slowly clawed back to the pre-Collapse technology and industrial base, but it was a conservative nation and determined not to invite repetition of disaster. The result was that visitors to the Confederation of Atlantian Dominions could experience a land with a near-feudal social structure, 19th-century morals, and 1920s technology, all in the year 2020 C.E.
Once Nerea and Mason were in the backseats of the car, the driver - who was blocked from hearing the conversation of his passengers by a partition with a sliding window - engaged the engine and the car began to trundle down the streets of Hampton, out of the city towards Beauvale, the rural Estate of the Lockwood family.
In a short time, the view out the windows changed from the bustling streets of a busy city, to the factories on the city’s outskirts, to vast expanses of cultivated rural land. Outside of the cities, Marydale was covered in vast Estate lands. Indentured field hands, who labored in exchange for food and housing (both poor in quality), grew, harvested, and prepared immense quantities of cotton, tobacco, and indigo. These cash crops were sent, via the port of Hampton or the railroads, to factories in the Atlantian Dominions and to foreign nations. The Lockwood family’s Estate included fields of cotton and tobacco, but their wealth came from the share of the profits they received from every International Trader that they sponsored.
“My father is very excited to meet you,” Mason was saying as they passed endless rows of crops, attended by men, women, and children in shabby clothes. “He’s throwing a grand dinner to welcome you, and he’s invited all sorts of people. Senator Dade will be there for sure, and the Ashbys, and probably some of the Cawthornes too.”
He smiled at Nerea. “Before dinner we can go riding, or walking around the Estate. And then I assume you’re here to attend the Bowie Stakes race?”
It was amid all this commercial energy that the ship bearing Princess Nerea of Voxija arrived to let its passenger disembark. The Princess was met at the quay by a handsome, rugged-looking young man with dirty blond hair, wearing a finely tailored suit. Mason Lockwood, son of the shipping magnate William Lockwood, had been eagerly awaiting Princess Nerea’s arrival ever since the two had met at the Continental Cotillion in Grand Harbor. His friend and confidant Mary Ashby had teased him remorselessly about his infatuation, to which Mason had protested that he simply found the foreign princess unique and interesting to talk to. But he could not deny that his heart leapt a bit when he saw her descending the gangplank.
“Welcome to Marydale, Princess.” Mason gave an abbreviated bow and kissed Nerea’s hand in a show of what he hoped was charming sophistication. He gestured behind him, where a town car was parked waiting for its passengers. A driver in elaborate livery stood waiting by the doors. The car was drawing plenty of attention from passers-by, who rarely saw such a vehicle in the city. Mason Lockwood was determined to impress Nerea, and had persuaded his father to lend the family car to deliver her to the Estate.
That such a vehicle might be the pinnacle of technology and wealth in the Confederation of Atlantian Dominions was a common reason for tourists to travel and visit the nation. The Confederation was a land seemingly frozen in time a century past. The land had been struck by a series of calamities in the 1920s, and civilization had barely hung on. The Confederation had risen from the ashes of the False Tribulation and slowly clawed back to the pre-Collapse technology and industrial base, but it was a conservative nation and determined not to invite repetition of disaster. The result was that visitors to the Confederation of Atlantian Dominions could experience a land with a near-feudal social structure, 19th-century morals, and 1920s technology, all in the year 2020 C.E.
Once Nerea and Mason were in the backseats of the car, the driver - who was blocked from hearing the conversation of his passengers by a partition with a sliding window - engaged the engine and the car began to trundle down the streets of Hampton, out of the city towards Beauvale, the rural Estate of the Lockwood family.
In a short time, the view out the windows changed from the bustling streets of a busy city, to the factories on the city’s outskirts, to vast expanses of cultivated rural land. Outside of the cities, Marydale was covered in vast Estate lands. Indentured field hands, who labored in exchange for food and housing (both poor in quality), grew, harvested, and prepared immense quantities of cotton, tobacco, and indigo. These cash crops were sent, via the port of Hampton or the railroads, to factories in the Atlantian Dominions and to foreign nations. The Lockwood family’s Estate included fields of cotton and tobacco, but their wealth came from the share of the profits they received from every International Trader that they sponsored.
“My father is very excited to meet you,” Mason was saying as they passed endless rows of crops, attended by men, women, and children in shabby clothes. “He’s throwing a grand dinner to welcome you, and he’s invited all sorts of people. Senator Dade will be there for sure, and the Ashbys, and probably some of the Cawthornes too.”
He smiled at Nerea. “Before dinner we can go riding, or walking around the Estate. And then I assume you’re here to attend the Bowie Stakes race?”