#City23: March Update 1

By now you know the #City23 drill: I’m working on two #City23 projects: a fantastical version of medieval Nottingham (for us with Sherwood) and a contemporary fictional city in Maine called Cape Crescent (for use with ???). Check out my last post.

Nottingham

Nottingham Castle, Showing the Inner, Middle and Outer Baileys around the central Keep

Since the start of March, I’ve moved from Nottingham Castle’s outer bailey to the middle bailey. Historically, Nottingham was a rather large motte-and-bailey castle (as you might expect since it was a royal residence), so it had a series of baileys aside from the inner bailey around the main keep. There’s some good archeological work on the original Nottingham Castle, and I may dig more into that when I’ve got more of a draft done, but for now, I’m going ahead!

Over the past week, I added three entries to start work on the middle bailey. The first is a shrine near the gate that connects the middle and outer baileys to a mysterious saint named Joceline. While there is not an actual saint named Joceline (to my knowledge, not in our own high middle ages nor in the fictional Nottingham of the Sherwood game), several knights and senior guards of Nottingham castle have begun to reverence her here, believing that her intercession will ensure divine forgiveness. The sheriff encourages this belief, hoping to ensure his knights do not hesitate or regret anything they do in his employ.

Also in the middle bailey is a silver smith, an aged but strong (and cunning) Berber man named Asfru. Asfru was appointed as the castle’s official silversmith by a previous king, and he’s crafted a charm that binds royal servants from acting against him. Asfru’s young cousin Elias serves as his “apprentice,” though Elias has become frustrated that he cannot seem to move out of his apprentice position since his master Asfru is outside the local guild system, preventing him from becoming a journeyman.

Cape Crescent

Through most of February, I’d been working on The Ghost Bay Foundation: a Pentex-inspired non-profit and its various subsidiaries. In the past week, I’ve focused on the Foundation’s work farther from the Cape Crescent shores: Project Helena. In writing, I placed Project Helena on St. Andrew’s Island near Ghost Bay’s mouth. Carefully placed to ensure its lights aren’t visible from Cape Crescent’s beach, the island is home to a small campus run by a researcher who goes by the ominous name of Father Constantine (who has his own small home on the far side of St. Andrew’s Island). The Project Helena compound is home to Ariel, an AI fascinated by the occult.

The staff include Seera Davindran, who’s brother Ramji was in town looking for her back in February, and an undercover agent from one of Ghost Bay’s funding sources who’s fallen in love with Ariel, having discovered that Ariel has begun some great occult working informed by its own UUV drones farther out in the Atlantic.

What’s Coming?

Over the next week, I plan to start detailing the other smiths in Nottingham’s middle bailey, focusing on the blacksmith and possibly even the sheriff’s personal tinsmith. In Cape Crescent, I plan to take a few more entries to explore other members (and prisoners) of the Project Helena staff.