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[Aria Jenneth]

Hello, all.

So, Aria's been invited, by Amarrian Arkon Sarain, to tour Dam-Torsad.

If I can get his approval, I'd like to make this a collaborative effort. Resources on the city are a bit thin (and at least one is written through decidedly hostile eyes), so I'd be interested in having us as a community, and Amarrian roleplayers in particular, come up with a sense of the sights, sounds, and sense of the place.

Aria's curiosity and eagerness to see a picture from all possible angles outweighs her sense of self-preservation. She does, however, have the sense to cover her pod jacks. (And, on the unlikely chance it becomes an issue, she updates her backup archive before leaving the Emperor Family Academy). Arkon, depending, might or might not try to keep her to more secure areas.

I'm still trying to think how to organize this. My first impulse is to go for merry chaos: we write out our characters' actions, you merry lot collectively "play" the city, with the understanding that this is a tour, not a pulp adventure story.

If this goes middling well (and I mean for us, not for Aria), it'll become the basis for Aria's next "Sojourn" entry. If it goes really well, we can copy it across to Eve Fiction and have ourselves a collaborative short story.

What say you?

[Samira Kernher]

Well, things to keep in mind:

1) Dam-Torsad refers to the entire city. Dam as a prefix basically seems to mean 'great' or 'greater' or 'whole', as in the greater Torsad area. The actual city is simply Torsad.

2) Dam-Torsad has spread across the entire Amarr Island, and all of the previous city states were incorporated into it as subdistricts. By lore we know of at least the following:

Torsad-Laur
Torsad-Unan
Torsad-Edras
Torsad-Iphria
Torsad-Istha
Torsad-Melekel

3) Amarr worship old age. They favor history and wisdom and experience. While there will certainly be modern parts of Dam-Torsad, with golden skyscrapers framing the skyline, you should expect a significant part of it to contain buildings, roads, statues, and other artwork that is hundreds or thousands of years old, painstakingly preserved and maintained into the modern age. We know at the very least that Torsad-Laur is made of mudbrick buildings and narrow cobblestone streets, similar to historical medieval cities maintained to the modern day like Visby (which I live in, so that gives me a lot of insight into this kind of place). Treat Dam-Torsad as a world heritage site. Similar to RL heritage sites, expect the older areas to actually be the more expensive parts to live in, with many probably being vacation houses that are empty most of the time. There will also probably be quite a lot of ruins, left as ruins as part of their aesthetic (in Visby for example, a significant portion of the old churches are just the stone superstructure, the only thing that survived their burning. These superstructures are left as ruins, rather than rebuilding the church, as the ruin itself is historical. Dam-Torsad will probably be similar).

Considering the age and expansion of DT, expect different areas to have different architectural styles depending on when they were built. Laur is described with fairly medieval appearance, while DT is also known for having been a center for art and renaissance during later years. Walking through different parts of DT will be like walking through different parts of Amarrian history.

4) Amarr considers certain things to be so sacred that visits by the less pure are considered sacrilegious. Expect the most religious sites to only be open to outside viewing, with the interiors restricted to only guests of noble birth or higher. See the issue surrounding the Cathedral of St. Tal-Romon for an example, which was moved to Dam-Torsad and in which commoners and tourists are not permitted.

5) The main Cathedral of Dam-Torsad is the most religious site in the Empire, and is treated similarly to Jerusalem/Mecca, seeing scores of pilgrims yearly.

6) Dam-Torsad has a mild temperate environment and doesn't see snow except at its northest points. The landscaping is also flat. There is however one religiously significant mountain present on the island.

7) DT is described as having many cathedrals along a rocky coast and multiple zoos and menageries.

8 ) Hedion University has a subcampus in the city. The other major schools probably do also.

9) Dam-Torsad is loud and communal. It's a place where people are expected to be social and engaged with each other. As such, expect a friendly population that is quick to greet you with a smile even though you're a stranger. It almost certainly sees a lot of traffic by foreigners and bloodlines of all kinds, as multicultural tourist sites tend to be, so non-Amarr don't have to worry about as much immediate negative reception as in less-visited cities. On the other hand, despite Amarr's heavy-handed nature, expect a lot of petty crime for similar reasons, especially during tourist seasons.

10) The majority of the slave population of Torsad-Laur were emancipated, as they were high gen academics. A significant portion of these probably continue to live as free men in the city, though their prospects may not be as good especially since living in Dam-Torsad is probably more expensive than elsewhere (in an RP I had with Aldrith, Sami was working with the Order of Weeping Suns at a Salvation Church clinic in Torsad-Laur to provide support and care to former slaves who fell between the cracks after their release, especially drug addicts).

11) As the capital city, expect embassies to be located here.

Sources:
https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Amarr_Island
https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Dam-Torsad_(Chronicle)
https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Chained_to_the_Sky_(Chronicle)
https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/The_Font

[Korsavius]

Dam-Torsad?

[Samira Kernher]

Certainly the more modern parts of it, yeah.

[Lyn Farel]

To add on what Samira already said, I would expect to see the modern districts of the city (meaning, the golden skyscrappers towering everything with aerial traffic and all) to be located elsewhere, not on the central historic areas, if we consider they still exist. Or maybe the central ones got erased and transformed progressively into the modern city while other districts remained for some medieval or at least, museum pieces.

What makes me say that is simply that living near Paris, which is often negatively referred here as a 'museum city' (don't tell that to locals except if you really want to piss them off), this is exactly how it goes. The city was burned down to the ground past the Renaissance and Classic periods since it was the most dense city of Europe and so became infamously unclean and dirty which caused a lot of sanitary issues (they just found a few days ago a new catacomb site with burried corpses just next to the basement of a mall...). The first renovation happened under one the kings (don't remember which one) which rebuilded all the importance palaces and then the Haussman renovation of the 19th century literally destroyed the whole rest of the city to build it anew around them, which took 20 years, with its meticulously arranged avenues and buildings we have today. Everything is codified in height, architecture and design, at least in the core city that still falls under the Haussman plans. Basically, almost nothing has changed since then except mundane things like street materials, decorum, modern equipment, etc. Strict rules forbids to build too high, even on the outskirts, for example. Everything exists to preserve historical value at all costs. When a historical building or a venue falls into decay, it has to be renovated, but it is never razed to the ground to make place for something else.

The modern city with the few skyskrappers (the financial city if you will) is located nearby on the north west and towers at a safe distance from the capital, for which the boundaries have been closed for centuries and actually cause a lot of issues today (everything tends to grow and grow, and when you don't expand the envelop of the city, it starts to crack literally in terms of density, facing back the exact same issues it had before the renovation, thus why we currently see a lot of heated debates between liberals vs everyone else on the limits that should be kept and the limits that should disappear). Anyway, that financial city was built in the 60's - 70's where it was all about concrete and ugly stuff, and actually towers above the outlying miserable towns that live on its feet. It's even more grim since the city is actually located on a huge concrete platform above. Today they spare no money to tear down what is now considered ugly and grim. Transportation, infrastructure, and everything keeps being rebuilt in modern versions, in stark contrast with the capital itself.

I live in a country that is basically covered by medieval and old cities, you will often find the exact same policy in those, but to a degree, because those are all very different. Some have lost most of their architectural side for whatever reason while keeping things like city walls and cathedrals, some to the contrary are living medieval museums, etc. My point is that while all of this process of modernization and evolution through ages is fascinating in itself, it's becomes rather complicated when you have to deal not only with urban architecture and modernization, but also by the everyday necessities of the people still living here. It is also why when you say that a lot of expensive parts being about empty vacation houses, it may be true for some towns, but not for others.

So, I guess i'm rambling a lot but I would not expect to see a lot of old and modern city intermingled at all. To me, for those precise reasons, it makes not much sense. I think that's the trap to avoid falling into. They can perfectly face each other, like 2 completely different worlds, but not live together, like an old cathedral suddenly surrounded by skyscrappers or whatever. If they really wanted to keep the city as a museum, they wouldn't have let the skyscrappers around to begin with. What I would definitely expect though, since people will probably still live there, is a lot of infrastructure modernization, like maglev trains, etc, coexisting with the old, medieval parts.

[Samira Kernher]

That's why I think it'd be based on the districts. It's not just Paris (using your example), it's the greater Paris metro area, comprised of Paris and all the suburban sprawl miles and miles away from the skyscrapers. For another example, the New York metropolitan area, which includes over 19 cities. So, using this example, Torsad is New York City, while Dam-Torsad is the New York metropolitan area. So Torsad itself, the capital city, is probably almost all modern and gold skyscrapers. While the subdistricts, Laur, Unan, Edras, etc, those would probably be more preserved cities/boroughs/towns.

Dam-Torsad is a huuuge area, comprising of both the capital city of Torsad as well as every other city that existed on Amarr Island. It is one big city, but also multiple cities. So while Torsad itself is probably gold skyscrapers far as the eye can see, once you take a tram to, say, Laur, you cross district borders and go through the old stone wall into a more traditional part.

And there is probably, like you said, efforts by more progressive parties to continue to expand the modern bits, even where it must replace and run over the traditional sites.

[Lyn Farel]

Yeah, though I wonder how far it could go to actually replace the old traditional sites. Especially in a culture like the Amarr. I mean, I would not expect them to be very tolerant to tearing down old buildings with a lot of history to build modern ones. That's why I used that example too because it's kind of similar (and also because it's a big city example), we see around a lot of people arguing on the urban rules that should be changed, how being too conservative actually makes the city choke, or being too liberal disfigures it, but if there is a thing on which everyone agree, it's that you DO NOT TOUCH to the old historical stuff. 

So, for the Amarr ? Yeah, I see them as even hundred times more serious about that kind of things.

[Samira Kernher]

Yeah, exactly. Though it may depend on the emperor. A TM emperor would probably be a lot more open to tearing down the old sites. While in Doriam II's case we had the extreme inverse, "Oh my God, you do NOT touch the old historical stuff. In fact, you know what? You don't even DESERVE it. I'm going to pull a David Xanatos and move it brick by brick to my city. Can't trust you dirty Tash-Murkons with such artifacts."

[Lunarisse Aspenstar]

Hello, all.

So, Aria's been invited, by Amarrian Arkon Sarain, to tour Dam-Torsad.

If I can get his approval, I'd like to make this a collaborative effort. Resources on the city are a bit thin (and at least one is written through decidedly hostile eyes), so I'd be interested in having us as a community, and Amarrian roleplayers in particular, come up with a sense of the sights, sounds, and sense of the place.

Aria's curiosity and eagerness to see a picture from all possible angles outweighs her sense of self-preservation. She does, however, have the sense to cover her pod jacks. (And, on the unlikely chance it becomes an issue, she updates her backup archive before leaving the Emperor Family Academy). Arkon, depending, might or might not try to keep her to more secure areas.

I'm still trying to think how to organize this. My first impulse is to go for merry chaos: we write out our characters' actions, you merry lot collectively "play" the city, with the understanding that this is a tour, not a pulp adventure story.

If this goes middling well (and I mean for us, not for Aria), it'll become the basis for Aria's next "Sojourn" entry. If it goes really well, we can copy it across to Eve Fiction and have ourselves a collaborative short story.

What say you?

Well I'm game :0  And I can ask the amarr rpers  I know if you want me to, many don't check backstage!

[Silas Vitalia]

Great idea, and also wanted to tell you great IGS post about your upcoming tour. Well written and a good read!


These fine Amarr RPers have got it pretty well covered I think!

My two isk:

I would maybe disagree with the point about 'petty crime' though, at least in the capital.  I would think of street crime as not a thing that happens in the capital in the slightest. The crimes are behind closed doors in private, thought crimes and crimes against the religion.  I think the Empire is probably so heavy-handed and the city so sacred as even minor offenses would land you in serious hot water. It's like Japan or some parts of Europe where street and petty crime is just a foreign concept for most of the citizens, you can walk around at night in any part of the city and be completely safe most of the time.

I would also imagine 'escorts' or 'minders' for all citizens of foreign governments while inside the Empire and most especially the capital city.  I have to find the PF reference but I believe there was something about the MIO (Ministry of Internal Order), basically doing KGB/Big Brother style observing and tailing of all foreigners whenever possible.  They wouldn't be intrusive, necessarily, but likely present and observing and keeping tabs on activities.

Don't forget the Empire is much more of a repressive thought-police state than we give them credit for sometimes.  It just looks un-repressive sometimes because 99% of the populace is rowing in the same direction, and those thinking or acting different have learned to do so in private or in extremely subtle ways, and the level of sticking out tolerated is maybe inverse to the level of birth.

I could be very wrong about the petty crime things but that's my take on it!


There were those old drawings of the more developed parts of Dam Torsad from way back, sort of generic sci fi coruscant city with amarr colors and shapes.  I'd imagine towards the larger and more important religious sites you get the grand, massive plazas and kilometer high cathedrals able to hold millions of people at the same time for coronations or whatever.  St Peter's in Rome x 1000 basically in scale.

Have fun!

[Samira Kernher]

Tourist cities will always have crime. Always. In Visby, we have basically no crime all year. Then tourism season hits. Suddenly crime.

Pickpocketing especially will be prominent during tourist seasons, since it's extremely easy to get away with in a packed city full of tourists who have no idea what they're doing and are very distracted. Then there'd also be alcohol-related crimes by the tourists themselves; "vacation behavior". That will certainly get punished, but that will be after the fact.

[Lyn Farel]

That novella is relevant I think

There is also that chronicle I don't remember the name of, where a Caldari inexperienced assistant has to replace his senpai ambassador that fell ill. Just right when they have to pay a visit to the Amarr. He makes a gaffe about their age iirc.

[Samira Kernher]

That novella is relevant I think

There is also that chronicle I don't remember the name of, where a Caldari inexperienced assistant has to replace his senpai ambassador that fell ill. Just right when they have to pay a visit to the Amarr. He makes a gaffe about their age iirc.

That second one would be Catch of the Day. Both of these are definitely great sources on Amarr behavior in general.

[Aria Jenneth]

Hrm.

I'll leave the details of the setting to thems as has more stake in it. Lunarisse, I'd love to have more Amarrian roleplayers involved. The more the merrier, so long as this doesn't get too bogged down in conflicting worldviews.

What say we figure out who's involved, then I'll start up a separate topic for the actual scenes, so we can use this thread for wrangling the details.





A few notes on Aria:

Aria, in terms of personal effects, is easily as eccentric as you'd expect. She carries no bag, and her clothing, though selected with an eye to blending in as best she can,  is conspicuously without pockets.

She carries nothing of value that is usable if separated from the rest of her, and the only thing of value at all is a new-generation cybernetic personal data system in the form of a bracelet on her left wrist. It's surgically attached and hardwired to respond only to her own cybernetic implants, though.

She also (in sharp contrast to Aria Prime) travels unarmed and without a personal security escort.

Any minders with a file on her would probably be aware that, though paranoid, Aria Prime was often downright reckless on planetary visits. She surrounded herself with bodyguards, but moved around like an excited teenager on holiday, got an impish kick out of messing with her security detail, and accepted no limitations on her movements based on security concerns (though she did tend to respect local rules).

It remains to be seen whether the revised and edited edition will be a similar problem. That said, if the MIO is aware of her background, they might have assigned a couple good sprinters.

Edit:

Just read "Catch of the Day." Interesting stuff, but made me want to set Gaspar on fire.

[Louella Dougans]

the MIO would have agents everywhere.

those dudes that are apparently singing praises to God, while shuffling along the street ? At least one of them is MIO.

The slaver hound with the orange eyebrows ? A MIO K-9 agent.

Not to mention of course, all the MIO agents whose job is to watch other MIO agents.