Tsuiraku

From The Heretic Knowledge Vault

Revision as of 06:07, 1 June 2007

Tsuiraku is a nation dominated by mages. The citizens and residents of Tsuiraku are called Tsuirakuans. Its capital is the floating city of Tsuirakushiti. It seems to currently be the most powerful of the human nations, eclipsing Veracia in power and influence. Huge warp gate complexes in foreign nations are protected by large contingents of Tsuirakuan soldiers. Tsuirakuan armies made off with lots of Veracian books pillaged from the decaying empire's vaults and libraries following Tsuiraku's victory in the Mage/Priest Wars, and Tsuiraku has replaced Veracia as the primary influence in Farrel.

Any similarities with Japan should not be taken seriously.

History

Construction started two thousand years ago, just before the fall of Malacia, as the first true half-elven city. Loosly based on Malacia's design, this city used the same concepts but taken to another level. Instead of a giant artificial building, they took the entire top off a mountain, inverted it, hollowed it out for flight systems, and built Tsuirakushiti on the top of it. About a year after the fall of Malacia and after the first major stage of contructuion was completed, it disappeared, triggering the half-elven war.

Eighteen hundred years later Tsuirakushiti was forced from its long period of cloaked isolation by Veracia's ill-advised and abortive attempt, using Luminosita, to topple the barrier the elves had erected between their remaining territory and the outside world. The resulting magical blast damaged Tsuiraku's cloaking mechanisms beyond rapid repair, revealing the old city to the world. This happened two hundred years before the present story.

It didn't take long for the Tsuirakuans to negotiate with Farrel for the old Rinkai continent, buildup the city of Kiyoka, and start to settle in as a new world power.

Culture

The use of magic permeates all aspects of Tsuirakuan society. Spells are used for cosmetic surgery, contraception, library indexes, and numerous other seemingly mundane uses. The combined effect of this gives Tsuiraku a standard of living roughly equivalent to the modern First World, albeit through a vastly different route. This modernity is reflected in Tsuirakuan culture, as Tsuiraku has a culture with strong similarities to 21st century Japan and the West of our own world, down to phenomena such as school shootings, terrorism, and yaoi. Due to its absurdly high population density, housing costs have become exorbitant. Most citizens, even the fairly wealthy, live in apartments with only the truely shit-faced rich being able to afford an actual house with a yard.

Pronounciation

As for Tsuirakushiti, "shiti" is the Japanese pronunciation for "city", although this type of romanization is rare and the single character "shi" is more common. "Tsuiraku", on the other hand means "crash" (falling type) as in "crash and burn".(Possibly a further hint that this is the same city as the historical half-elven floating city) ~ KirimaNagi

From this thread.

• Tsuiraku still only has two real cities. (Though many residents of Tsuirakushiti proper would say three as they prefer to consider the various ground construction, built around the lake that the original city disc floats over, as a completely separate city.) Of course, there's the capital, Tsuirakushiti (both the original floating city disc and all the stuff that expanded out on to the ground level after the continent was purchased from Farrel.

Then, near the southern coast, there's Kiyoka. Back when the land still belonged to Farrel, it was just a very small port village that grew out of a few logging camps. (For whatever reasons the rest of the continent was never really developed much and was mostly left deserted) When the island became Tsuiraku, the small village started growing rapidly since it was the main point of entry into the country from Farrel in the days before the various warp gates and airship ports were set up. Eventually it was renamed Kiyoka and grew into being far more than just a port city. Even today, with easy travel to Tsuirakushiti available in just about every major city in Farrel, Kiyoka is a popular destination for travelers coming from Farrel or Veracia due to the city being a mix of the original Farrel inhabitants and tsuirakuans who got fed up living on a giant crowded disc floating in the air, and because it is noticeably lacking the air of 'stuck up bitchiness' that many people perceive Tsuirakushiti possesses.

Besides these two cities, the rest of the country is still largely bare. This is generally contributed to the mindset of most Tsuirakuians, preferring to live in ether large, busy cities or out in the middle of nowhere all by themselves

On how Tsuiraku purchased the continent from Farrel:

• At the time Farrel had become so intertwined and dependent with Veracia, that one of the most common points of discussion among the populous was "how long do you think before Veracia just decides to annex us?"

So when Tsuiraku showed up, Farrel was 'Ah, Hello new friend! Come, talk, tell us of things, stay a spell. Perhaps you need anything? Just ask it. We can make you a great deal! Let's see what you have to offer." because they saw it as their best shot at getting out from under Veracia.

And it worked quite well too. At the cost of just a chunk of land that wasn't doing much for them anyway, they have managed to build themselves back up into a world power just by the sake of skillful trade relations and being the go-between for Tsuiraku and Veracia.