MAP 43 - The Idiosyncracy of Valpolicella

[Robulous]

For my lovely cluster of islands in what I'm calling the Winedark Sea, Valpolicella is a whimsical empire where art and sophistication are highly prized, and viticulture a treasured religion: an early industrial civilisation where elegance goes hand in hand with machinery.

The nation has three classes of citizen: the Valpol, the Helots, and the Idiopaths. All citizens are born Valpol - dedicated to living life to the full, drinking, playing, dancing, drawing, making art and poetry, designing beautiful homes and gardens, and enjoying life as much as possible. This is assumed to be the natural human condition we are born with, spoiled only by a spiritual malady which Valpol term "The Wan".

The origin of The Wan is unknown, but it leads to dissatisfaction with a life of simple enjoyment. Those succumbing to The Wan become Helots - people who dedicate their life to useful pursuits: ploughing the fields, harvesting crops, building ships and fighting Valpolicella's occasional wars.

The most serious cases of The Wan have a restful desire for change, for imposing rules and order, for "doing good". These become the Idiopaths, an unfortunate yet useful class who form the bureaucracy, gather taxes, and busy themselves making laws, yet rarely get invited to parties.

The north of the nation is hot and dry, with most people living on the south coast. The province of Helotage is the industrial heartland, centred on the city of Helotrix, famous for its clocks, its jewellery, and its corsetry. Pinotage to the east is the agricultural belt and producer of the nation's most vital and valued commodity: wine. The nation produces a vast variety of wines, spirits and liqueurs, which are exported far and wide, the backbone of the economy.

The Isle of Eleganza is the spiritual heartland of Valpolicella, a soft and temperate land of gardens and houses where Valpols pass from soiree to salon to ballroom. Arguzia Frizzante is the nation's capital, a city of domes and sparkling spires, where music plays and wine flows night and day. Here the Idiopaths rule from the Palace of Guastafeste, their busybodying overseen by the Festaioli, an adhocratic parliament who can overrule anything too extreme.

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And so here's my map - very, very early days as you can see. I'm going with an Art Deco or Art Nouveau theme (I need to pick one). Valpolicella uses metric - when you're drunk it's far too complicated to work things out in feet and inches