#the grimlands

[tacom-literatureu-blog]

[concidineart]

Futile Warnings is almost done! Final chapter next week!

My Patreon

[tinapaysmp]

I sometimes think about how fWhip's s1 empire, the Grimlands, is constantly over populated with villagers, meanwhile the Crystal Cliffs, Gem's empire, is filled with pillagers.

Like something about how the Grimlands is filled with the more accepted members of society while someone like Gem is giving pillagers and misfits a chance to learn from her.

And by Afterlife smp, Gem starts out her life as a villager, doing her best to protect them. But fWhip starts out as an Illusioner who's not even welcome in her village, and ends up dying in her village too.

[oleander-neruim]

Turn your gaze to the Towers of the Grimlands, full of ashy steam, dark red dust, and the glow of lanterns lighting the streets and roofs for its residents.

Inktober Day 14: Castle

I gotta stop with these complicated Fwhip's-Empires Drawings

We're ignoring that I nearly forgot to get the (mostly) flat penning again lol.

Bonus bit for you readmore folk:

Since I'm having this placed after the events of the Poem Post ™️, you'll notice one of Fwhips wings look different. He's got a prosthetic wing :>

[thedo0zyslider]

Happy two years, empires season one finale, still my favorite smp finale to date 💖

[scrimblescromble]

Count Fwhip design!

(Closeups and lore under the cut)

Count Fwhip, the elder of him and his sister Gem, was the youngest Count of the Grimlands in recent memory, as he became Count at a mere 17 years of age

Known as the 'Tinkerer', the Count enjoys the magic offered by redstone crystals and dust rather than spells. He can often be found in his workshop, and it is wise not to interrupt him, for some say he is slightly mad - whether this is true, he does have quite the temper and foul side

He will clean up for dances, but will usually be found anywhere but the dance floor. It is said he has a distaste due to the importance of dance to the Coddish, however this is just because he can't dance

[asterssunzephyr]

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OK!

so.

s1!!

Grimlands & Crystal Cliffs share a lot of traditions and customs, as well special dishes because the two original founders were brothers! Count Grim & Wizard Grim :) - Later down the line when River Grim meets Mai Moon, the grand wizard of Crystal Cliffs, they fall in love & have twins. Some people in the Grimlands & Cliffs believe Fwhip & Gem are reincarnations of the original Count & Grand Wizard :) (Gandalf was Wizard Grim's apprentice who mastered a spell for immortality and transformation, Gandalf has been the "familiar" for each wizard since until Gem left & he took over)

Rivendell has customs every winter, such as Winter Balls and Winter Mourning periods for those who were lost in prior wars, or prior champions of Aeor. Many of the Aeor champions were Rivendellian royals - Scott breaks tradition of keeping one of the plaques covered in snow (Exor Champions). Scott & Xornoth's names are later added to the plaque & Rivendell keeps the plaques uncovered forever. They have a lot of frozen foods/treats/frosted treats during warmer months and hella fuckin good hot chocolate for hard winters.

Overgrown has a tradition of Spring Balls, and very sweet food. (not much here sorry..)

Undergrove has very spicy food and but Fae, Gnomes, and Vampires are "immune" to the spice, in the sense it doesnt bother them. Full blood elves, such as Rivendellians, do not have this. They are very affected by spices. Shrub has apologized for an attempted assassination on Scott, Scott doesnt even see it as that it was a simple unknown factor.

The Swamp & Ocean empires have very similar traditions and foods together. prior to Jimmy & Fwhip, the two empires had an alliance with the Grimlands and due to Fwhip growing up with Sausage as neighbors their entire childhood, the alliance was ended and the Cod War started. The Ocean Empire has a trident for their ruler that has new things added to it each time theres a new ruler, the CodFather has a very similar tradition but with a necklace and adding a bead to the necklace for each ruler – The Oceanic rulers tend to cover the trident with beads on strings, tightly :)

I'll do more soon

[semicleanblanket]

i miss season 1 of empires

[minecraftbookshelf]

Hyrmmmmmm

I give you a choice. (Sorry for destroying the executive function outsourcing)

In order of my esteemed preference (lol)

1. Grimlands

2. Codlands

3. Crystal Cliffs

(I give choice, because idk what you have fleshed out hhhhhhhh)

(you certainly don't have to do all 3, not all at once, not for me. {Unless you want to})

Curses! Foiled again!

I'll do all three, but the Codlands and Crystal Cliffs will get different posts and will probably not be tonight.

Also a general note relevant to the succession criteria of the majority of the empires. Remember this whole thing, where Pix kind of accidentally changed the formal definition of war in the empires? That had a lot of implications for how royalty functioned in the Empires. While they still absolutely have internal duties and responsibilities and privileges, ultimately their most important job is that they stand ready to defend their empire and its people at all times. Part of this is that they also function as international ambassadors in a way, while most empires also have official ambassadors, the relationships and interactions between the emperors themselves are a very important (sometimes volatile) facet of international relations.

An country cannot be recognized internationally as an autonomous nation without an official Emperor/Head of State. The exception to this is the neutral territory of Mangrovia, which is small and rather isolated and basically exists due to several specific treaties granting it the ability to be independent and guaranteeing it immunity from conflict. So far this has not been put to the test.

So, the Grimlands!

The Grimlands is one of the empires that is primarily human. They do have a hybrid population, as well as some (human and hybrid) who have Other Ancestry mixed in there. (Gem has antlers, for example :) ) But they would be considered a Mortal Kingdom.

They do not have a singular royal family, rather they have a noble class from which the emperor is chosen, based off a combined consideration of the council (made up of a representative from each family, yes that gets as politically fraught as you would imagine, and the alchemical and engineering guilds), and a series of (hypothetically) more objective criteria, mostly combat based.

When the Count/Countess of the Grimland's either dies or abdicates, there is a grace period of three months for the council to choose their successor. In cases of abdication, the retiring ruler is allowed to present recommendations and to vote in the final decision. (Several have abdicated specifically so they could choose their successor. In these cases 3 times out of 4 their candidate is the one chosen)

Obviously over the centuries the quality of objectiveness has varied, based on the um, personal integrity of the individuals in power at the time. There have been some highs and lows.

Fwhip was selected at something of a young age, partly based on merit, and partly because relationships with Mythland were somewhat tense at the time of the previous Count's death. And Fwhip was the cousin of the young, newly crowned king of Mythland. (His father married into his mother's house from the royal family of Mythland.) Gem had also just won the title of (youngest ever) High Wizard of the Crystal Cliffs, and her close bond with Fwhip (and Sausage) had basically been Fwhip's family's "dirty little secret" when they were kids.

Technically they are second cousins, but they did actually grow up as friends and were very close, and it was decided that between his prowess with both alchemy and redstone and the close ties this would allow with Mythland (which though distant geographically controlled several resources vital to the Grimland's prosperity) and the Crystal Cliffs (their closest neighbor and a magical powerhouse) it was enough to override that he was not the strongest combatant of the candidates, though he was one of the best.

Fwhip, who had a tendency to get lost in his adventures and redstone experiments of questionable ethical standards, was honestly completely oblivious to being one of the finalists. Between his age and rankings in combat, he did not seriously consider the likelihood he would be chosen until he was pulled out of his lab to go stand before the council and be named Count of the Grimlands.

It was a bit of a stressful time for Fwhip.

He, Sausage, and Gem got even closer during that time, and that was when he and Gem got to know Pearl as well.

-

AU Masterpost

[enuode-au]

The Grimlands

Represented by: Callum Tayin; Count

Titles/names of the representative: Fwhip

Race of the representative: Human (Magic-enhanced)

Race of the population: Mainly humans

Population size: ~20,000,000

The Grimlands is one of the most densely populated countries in the world due to its acceleration in technological advancements.

Alliances: CCAM, Mythland, Gilded Helanthia, Losheedi

CCAM partially seceded from the Grimlands a few decades ago. They remain in good standing.

Mythland has a lot of exports the Grimlands consumes. Also, Sausage and Fwhip’s ambitions line up fairly closely, and they get along well.

Gilded Helanthia brings in some much-needed agriculture to the otherwise industrial landscape of the Grimlands.

Losheedi is allied with (almost) everyone.

Political strength: #1

The Grimlands is the source for almost all technological advancements in the world. Because of this, along with its massive population size, the Grimlands has risen to become the world's powerhouse country.

Exports: Gunpowder, machinery

Type of government: Absolute Monarchy

Flag: Three horizontal stripes. Top is dark grey, middle is red, bottom is black.

Climate: Moderate weather year-round.

Summer: Warm, but not unbearable, especially by the capitol.

Fall: Comfortable, but a little dry. Lots of wind storms come through around this time.

Winter: Moderately cold. It only snows in the Southern Grimlands, close to Hoen Yssler's border, and even then snow is not that common.

Spring: Wet and rainy, but not too warm or cold.

Appearance on a Map:

[thecoddaughter]

THE ROSEBLINGS ORIGINS FIC IS DONE AND PUBLISHED MY DARLINGS!!!!!

[tacom-literatureu-blog]

I'm back with another swap request! Gem of the Grimlands and FWhip of the Crystal Cliffs!

Gem seems a lot happier, doesn't she?

fWhip...not so much

[lolli-popples]

I made some flags! They're based on the descriptions from an Empires SMP rewrite/AU called Enuode. (Go to @enuode-au if you wanna check it out, it's very cool) The country name (and the name of the empire if it's different) will be in parenthesis below each image.

(The Codlands)

(Crystal Cliffs Magic Academy)

(Guilded Helanthia)

(Grimlands)

(Hoen Yssler, aka Rivendell)

(Losheedi, aka the Overgrown)

(Mezalea)

(Mythland!) (This one was the most fun to design)

(Lost Empire)

(Ocean Empire)

(Rekhia, aka Pixandria)

(Undergrove)

That's all of them! I had a ton of fun doing these.

[valoisfulcanellideux]

I love this so much!

Over the past couple of days while I've been getting this PC back up and running again, I've been pondering different currencies on Empires. What kind of coinage and/or notes system would each empire have?

We know that between empires it's mostly bartering, but there has to be some kind of currency within each empire so its citizens can purchase goods. For example:

Pixandria - very likely uses a copper-based currency, and perhaps they have a way of halting oxidisation by means of a treatment that cannot simply be scraped off (i.e., not beeswax) to signify different denominations

Grimlands - some form of dark metal coinage with the different denominations marked by insets of redstone

Crystal Cliffs - similar to Grimlands with silver coins and amethyst (or other crystals)

I don't have the mental capacity right now to delve deeper into this (except maybe for the empires that would have been at the Ancient Capital, hence the initial thoughts about those three empires).

If anyone else wants to run with that idea, have at it :)

so an idea i've had on my mind for a while is, for esmp s1 specifically, the concept of wax weight on envelopes indicating how high-priority the message inside is. higher-priority messages especially for critical news between emperors would have a thin layer of expertly sealed wax so that they could be answered as soon as possible without much effort. lower priority messages and ones that werent that urgent- for example, correspondences between friends and family- would have heavier wax seals so that their recipients could take their time with the message

originally, the system started in Pixandria so that quick notes swapped between schoolchildren and housekeepers wouldn't fly open and reveal their contents to anyone watching. eventually, the king caught on and quietly implemented it into all of the inter-kingdom communications for ease of communication and context. he then started sending them to allies as well with an explanation of what was going on, who sent passed them on to their allies, and soon basically every empire (except for the Mythlands who sealed their letters with metals that had such extremely low melting points that they could be removed from the page and discarded for further use with little effort) was using the wax seal method

pix was also the one to introduce this to the empires in s2 as well, although since he preferred to use the chat he passed off the credit of the idea to Gem. the system was mostly used by Dawn, Chromia, Sanctuary, The Evermoore, and Stratos

[relgnira]

I can't believe its been two weeks already since @empiropediazine dropped, thank you so much to everyone who downloaded and enjoyed it! Here are the full versions of the two digital charcoals I did for the zine, one of the Grimlands and one of the Prisma Palace :3

[concidineart]

Grimlands recipe spread for @empiropediazine! This was a lot of fun to work on.

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