Augustin

Augustin is a country on the northern hemisphere of the planet Nephele that features prominently in the "Legends-era" of stories. Augustin's climate ranges from sub-tropical in the southern razor-grass marshes to humid continental in the northern sand-forests. Its single major metropolitan area is on its southern coast, and very near to the Isle of Joy. Its major exports are media based, although it also ships out food crops in the form of citrus fruits and lotus roots.

Augustin is a mosquito-infested, blindingly hot stretch of swamp and quicksand. Augustin is a country whose outsized sense of self-importance is constantly writing checks its actual foreign policy can't cash. If countries had tabletop stats, Augustin would be the guy who dumped everything else for charisma, who doesn't need to know how to pick locks or fight goblins, because it can smile at the right person and things will end up falling into place. Augustin is the Goblin Market of lore. Augustin has fake white teeth. Augustin's streets aren't paved in gold, but they're painted to look like it. Augustin is already writing a moving poem to perfectly capture the grief of a massacre before the first shot is done echoing.

Bardic magic is dead. Long live Bardic magic.

= History = Sparsely populated, with difficult and infertile terrain whose soft, swampy ground tended to make building permanent structures dangerous if not impossible, for many centuries the territories of modern Augustin were largely known as a snarl of wilderness that outlaws, bandits, deserters, and fleeing prisoners could vanish into and be beyond practical or economical reach. Its technical owners, the Domitianic Empire, rarely bothered sparing the considerable resources to pursue their uninvited guests, assuming correctly that most would die on their own to a combination of alligators, deadly drinking water, malaria, or and general exposure to the heat of the summers, which could reach truly astonishing temperatures.

In truth, Domitian's assumptions on the state of the territory were overly simplistic; people of every species had successfully settled there using dredging technology and mobile settlements for centuries, even predating its stewardship by Domitian, and eventually formed a loose-if-anarchic society and culture. Augustin, named for the Orcish general nominally in charge of it, gained its independence around one hundred and thirty years previous to the reign of the Queen of Locusts as Domitian's global power began to wane. An organized military rebellion was backed by Domitian's political enemies, including the City-Republic of Sirira, Augustin's neighbor to the west. Again assuming that there wasn't really much there worth spending money on defending, the war was not terribly long. Civic-minded and intensely practical, on paper Augustin had no resources to offer, and was a drain on the Imperial coffers more than it was a boon.

Augustin, once independent, still had no resources, no currency, no organized military, and no government. What it did have was a nigh-lunatic lockjaw grip on the concept of independence, of bootstrapping, of individual achievement and meritocracy. This may well have remained its only saving grace, if not for experiments in the growing field of photography that led to the invention of the cine-camera. Artists and existing news and media magnates alike saw great potential in the invention, whose inventor jealously guarded its concept and was known to pursue copyright claims on unauthorized use to the fullest extent of local law. Moving the budding industry of film - no survivalists or soldiers, mostly engineers, photographers, and former newspaper writers - into the swamps of the traditional home of the outlaw and bandit was a risky gamble, but for the first and not last time, fate smiled on Augustin's particular brand of fool beyond their wildest dreams.

Augustin did not participate heavily in the Throne Wars; they were in a state of rapid political growth and flux, a boom and bust of Princes unlike anything ever seen in history. The first Prince to coalesce solely out of Augustinian stock was a human whose title became the Prince of Lanterns, who went from virtually unknown to a unanimous leader of the disparate and surly artists, capitalists, and assorted murderers who made up the population. The Prince of Lanterns realized what no one else had before: that to become a Prince, one need not become popular for their skill, their honor, or their diplomacy, or their power. One need only be exactly that: popular. Following Lanterns was a series of no less than fifteen major Princes in fifteen years, as factions rapidly formed and vanished, a frenzy of building and innovation created a permanent city on the southern coast, and the eyes of the world started to take notice.

TBC