Wild Sapphory - TrinianGames/Sapphory GitHub Wiki

"Wild Sapphory" is the name given to the vast majority of the Sapphorian landmass that exists outside of the cities and towns. The name is a misnomer, for although the monarchy's control is less stifling here than it is in the large population centres, the Sapphorian Government does nonetheless exert complete control of the entire country. The citizens out here have a greater degree of freedom and autonomy than those in the cities, but there are still town guards on every street and no one escapes tribute or the reach of the law.

Composition

While all of Sapphory has been explored, there are large areas of Wild Sapphory that remain entirely undeveloped. The hot, dense jungles in the East and the large forested areas around the North West of the island are places few women have reason to go, and are thus used as refuges for illegal slaver groups. The overwhelming majority of what is left after that is farmland. Sapphory grows all of its own food, plus enough to maintain a lucrative export business with the outside world through the port of Fivaviana. Sapphory also produces vast quantities of biofuel to power its homes and businesses, owing to the complete absence of oil deposits within its territorial area, as well as the lack of the rare earths needed for other renewable power sources.

Differences with the cities

The largest population centres in Wild Sapphory are medium sized towns. These tend to serve as hubs, with each village and hamlet within range administered from the town itself. The towns also serve as trading hubs with which the farms around them come to trade. Each Sapphorian farm covers a vast area of Wild Sapphory and virtually all are owned by members of the Nobility, since no private citizen would have the resources to protect themselves and their workers from slavers. Even with the large private security forces the nobles employ, slaver raids remain a common problem, with slaves working the land often disappearing and turning up later on the illegal slave market. (Though many will have come from there originally anyway as most illegal slaves are purchased by agents acting for the Nobility and must be kept in remote locations to prevent them escaping back to their old lives.)

Each large town generally boasts an administration building in which all state business goes on. This will contain the bureaucratic structure of government, tribute office and civil and criminal court all under one roof. Women from the satellite villages and hamlets accused of a crime will be brought here for trial, then their sentence carried out in their own village, to maximise humiliation and deterrence. Even the smallest Sapphorian hamlet will have at minimum a couple of stockades and usually a display post on its main thoroughfare.

It is common for a town to have been built around a noble estate, as each of the Sapphorian Noble Families administers a different region. The Matriarch of whichever family occupies the estate will usually serve as governor for the town and be tasked with making regular reports to the Royal Court on the status of the area under her auspice.

Slaver Activity

There are estimated to be several dozen illegal Slaver groups operating in Sapphory at any given time, with their operations ranging from a small bands who snatch a handful of girls a year to nationwide criminal enterprises employing more subtle techniques like usury, debt-traps, extortion and blackmail to traffic hundreds of girls. These are the richest Sapphorian women outside the Nobility and their strength and power is the only serious threat that exists to the Monarchy, though they have shown little sign of having any interest in political power, preferring to simply amass wealth instead.

Crossing Wild Sapphory

Although Wild Sapphory could hardly be considered lawless, women from the cities nonetheless balk at the prospect of taking any risk of being snatched by illegal slavers. Combined with the lack of motorised travel, this makes mobility between the cities problematic. Travel therefore mostly takes place by boat, with ferries operating between coastal cities able to use the sea and others using an intricate series of canals that cross the country. Nobles have their own lavish private ships, while common folk must make do with public ferries, though these are generally clean and pleasant, (like most things in an all-female world.)