Mura Location Development

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Mura Location Development

Postby Malia on September 3rd, 2009, 3:43 pm

This thread is supposed to be a storing thread for the locations I'm currently working on as well as it's open to any comments, suggestions and ideas. It's still a work in progress (that's why I left the whole formatting out for the time being), and I don't know how much of the locations in Mura I actually will write out.

Please feel free to state anything productive that comes to your mind! :)

The White Isle Harbor

If one decides to enter the White Isle, they will be transported by a small, flat boat painted in white and blue, carrying only few visitors. Most people visiting Mura do so because of the huge library and the knowledge of the resident healers. Therefore, it is no surprise that the boat lands at an organized, neat harbor.

Arrival and departure of trade ships and the white and blue boats shaped like different animals of the sea or air, a specialty of Mura, are filed by the harbor's director residing at a beautiful house also functioning as common gate to the city itself. The front of two floors is painted with the most famous sailor's tales in pastels of blue, green and pink. A paved path leads to the double doors made of white wood framed by two statues of Laviku several feet high. The director and his resident officials care for organization and transfer of wares, but also ensure that visitors can safely enter the White Isle and the city of Mura. A young and pretty clerk with chin-long pale blond hair and sea-green eyes greets every visitor with a welcoming smile. “Hello and welcome to Mura! What is it that you need?”

After their arrival has been reported and eventual other issues sorted out, they will be free to leave the harbor through an ornamented gateway behind the house and continue visiting the actual city. Bigger caravans with wagons are guided to a secluded, but large gateway at the south edge of the harbor.

Services & Goods:
dock place for ships per day – small sized 2 sm, middle sized 5 sm, big sized 1 gm
dock place for ships per season – small sized 15 gm, middle sized 43 gm, big sized 70 gm
boat ride to and from the mainland – 1 gm
reporting arrival & granting entrance to the city – free

NPCs:
clerk: Muti L'ninea
Muti is a pretty girl at the edge of blossoming into a beautiful woman. Stunning sea-green eyes and a heart-shaped face are framed by pale blond hair falling just past her chin. The harbor is far more than her workplace, and not only because she lives at a small chamber in the director’s house. Additionally to her job as clerk she is eager to learn as much as possible—to make her dream of being captain of the ‘Swan’ come true one day. Since she can foretell the weather she believes that her chances are quite good. At her free hours she can be seen roaming the docks, talking to sailors and helping wherever she can. She is the good soul of the harbor and everyone knows and likes her. However, it is an open secret that she doesn’t get along well with her elder sister Merit who is the owner of Waterfall Fabrics.
Gnosis Marks: Avalis – 1, Laviku – 1
Skills List: Navigation – 23 pts, Sail Rigging – 25 pts, Swimming – 15 pts
Lore: Knowledge of different ship types, especially the ‘Swan’

harbor director: Kilana Sha'nai
When the daughter of the former harbor director took his role, many carried doubts. But Kilana has shown that she can do her job as well as her father, perhaps even better. She always knows what is going on at the harbor, is a disciplined organizer and trader and likes taking responsibility—apparently a perfect fit for the role. Despite the fact that her short, rebellious hair and sharp ice blue eyes make her look young she already raises two daughters. Or rather, tries to, because she often rejects them due to the work she loves. She believes that the older one can already care for both of them.
Gnosis Marks: Avalis – 1, Gnora – 2
Skills List: Business Organization – 72 pts, Rhetoric – 36 pts, Navigation – 28 pts


Waterfall Fabrics

The most popular clothing shop of Mura looks rather ordinary at first sight: A big, yet simple building made of white stone, with a blue door and simple, yet elegant ornament paintings around windows and edges of the walls. Through two windows at eye-level potential customers can inspect the clean and friendly interior: The first room is furnished with a low table and comfortable cushions for waiting customers while colorful paintings with abstract designs continue over all four walls. The fairly attractive owner, Merit L'ninea, is sitting behind the counter taking requests, accepting payments and simply greeting new customers with a polite smile and the words: “Welcome to Waterfall Fabrics. What is it that you desire?”

A door leads on to the actual business room which is also decorated with a few chairs and cushions. Since the Konti always take more time trying different pieces and deciding what is to their liking, this room is designed to be as comfortable and welcoming as possible. Clothes are stored in white, beautifully ornamented wooden shelves and wardrobes covering the walls. The ornaments painted on walls and furniture range from light blue to comfortable subdued grey shades. Two pools filled with fresh, clear water give the establishment it's original name and complete the airy and light atmosphere.

The third and smallest chamber is unavailable for customers and thus possesses a simple lock. It contains the important book of financial tracking stored in the lockable drawer of a desk, and a bed for eventual apprentices.

NPCs:
Merit L'ninea
Merit is a fairly attractive woman, yet not as pretty as her younger sister Muti. She possesses intelligent green eyes and a rather stocky figure. From earliest childhood on she was the quiet and intelligent kid every mother is proud of. The only dark aspect about her childhood was the regular arguments with the rebellious and far more popular Muti. However, she soon discovered her passion for crafting individual clothing for every customer. A natural talent for magic, especially Auristics, made it easy to recognize a person's unique likes and dislikes. When reaching maturity, she travelled to Syliras to study the different styles of local fashion. However, after a few years of apprenticeship she returned to Mura and opened her own shop. She is as dedicated to her passion as ever, hardly visits her family and only thinks about the next design, the next piece. She currently works on a new clothing style collection for Konti women.
Gnosis Marks: Avalis – 1
Skills: Sewing – 84 pts, Auristics: 55 pts, Sketching – 38 pts


The Taviasa - City Manager and Officials

The Taviasa, home to the city manager, her three secretaries and several officials, is located near the harbor, so that every new visitor will immediately spot it while walking into the city. It is a huge, impressing building made of white stone and painted with mythological scenes in pastel colors—like everything else in Mura. It's special trademark, however, is the dome-shaped roof made of milky white glass. A pathway and short stairway framed by delicately carved columns leads to double doors with pale violet glass doorknobs. The garden that surrounds the whole building is popular for growing all kinds of medicinal herbs of which a significant amount is bought for laboratory usage by the Opal Temple.

The first room is decorated with three beautiful paintings of the typical Mural architecture gracing the walls and a white plant spreading it's thin branches and leaves from the back corner over the floor and counter behind which the work desk of the manager's third secretary is situated. After the visitor has stated their request and been given a sheet with a number and a few explaining lines on it, they will be directed through an open door and to one of the stairways—either in right, left or straight forward direction. The whole building possesses high ceilings and beautiful, brightly painted glass windows letting in as much daylight as possible. The huge ballroom right under the half-round roof gets transformed into a meeting and discussion room every now and then – but only in cases of extreme importance or difficulty. Usually it is used for noble guests merging with the local wealthy, and balls are held almost frequently.

In general the Taviasa exists to help citizens with public concerns and problems as well as to assist strangers at finding a home, job or other location. The manager herself, an elderly woman with long, braided hair and an understanding, slightly crinkled face, usually handles problems and concerns of greater value to the whole city. She also welcomes important visitors and invites them to stay at one of various individually decorated VIP suites. Ordinary foreigners trying to find a home or job are usually directed to the second or first secretary.

The known rivaly between these two women causes a lot of gossip spread throughout the whole city by other officials and the staff. Nevertheless each one greets visitors directed to them with a polite smile and the obligatory question of how they can be of help.

Services & Goods:
one-room simple cottage – 500 gm
one-room elaborate cottage – 1000 gm
(more upon request)

NPCs to be made:
third secretary
second secretary
first secretary
city manager
Last edited by Malia on October 17th, 2009, 5:14 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Mura Location Development

Postby Gossamer on September 4th, 2009, 5:51 pm

I think this is a great start you have going in the one or two paragraph descriptions you have for these locations. One thing I can see is that the boats the Konti have are swan boat types, yet carved of different animals. The women are great artisans so they enjoy stone carving and masonry - so they don't usually live in plain little cubed houses. Also, since the stone is white, they often wash them in pastel colors or paint a great deal of mural type artwork on the building sides. Mura = Mural... Get it? Okay, bad pun but still.. if you had white for as far as the eye can see.. you'd paint it too. :)

To do a really fabulous location, its important to have a complete price list and a clear indication of the goods and services available. These should be things unique to the area and region. Its best not to copy this list from elsewhere (unless you wrote it) but to use a flare that is wholly that location's own.

Once you have goods/services listed, you need to start working on your NPCs. NPCs are the lifeblood of a location. They aren't just cardboard characters that act like a drive-through voice box servicing the needs of the people. The best NPCs are interconnected with each other throughout a city with underlying motives and desires - even histories and rivalries involving yet more NPCs.

Also, the Taviasa is a big mansion, one of the largest on Konti Isle. It's supposed to be the showcase of the city with all the offices within and room for VIP visitors to stay. The manager lives there and is an elder Konti... and it has extensive gardens filled with medicinal herbs found only in Mura. I like the glass dome - nice touch.

I hope this helps!
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Re: Mura Location Development

Postby Malia on September 15th, 2009, 5:57 pm

Since it might take some time until I've thought up and written down some new location, I just continue this work in progress and make it - a more extensive work in progress. Yay! :D

Seriously, school has just started, but I feel that this year will be really hard. So I decided to post my progress now. I hope these locations look more like you imagined them. Your helpful words really motivated me to create some interesting and unique NPCs! Like this one, the owner of the House of Glass (the location itself isn't written yet):

Silene Sa'nanathy
Silene's life has changed completely during her stay at Riverfall. She had come there with a trade caravan of other Konti to learn about the craft of classblowing and fell in love with her Akalak master. But then she found him betraying her with one of her friends from the caravan and accidentally killed him in her rage. From that on she is cursed by Kihala and target of her minions, and immediately returned to her safe home city. There she managed to start and maintain a small glassblowing business. Despite the trouble she has with the life goddess, despite the fact that some pieces get strangely shattered and have to be crafted anew, the shop is fairly popular at the art-loving Konti. Of course Silene always looks worn and tired, her long white hair has lost it's shimmer and the lashes over her violet eyes are usually heavy with a lack of sleep. When she speaks, she does so with low and weak voice and her body language is very limited. However, she still creates incredibly beautiful glasswork with extraordinary talent, creativity and skill.
Gnosis Marks: Avalis – 1, Kihala – 1 negative
Skills List: Glassblowing – 89 pts, Sketching – 40 pts, Silversmithing – 33 pts
Lore: Knowledge of various glassblowing tools and glass ingredients


Basically: I really hope to make an impact on Mura with my imagination and create far more locations and interesting citizens. I'd also like to help a bit at the Wiki. I'll try to discuss this per PM with you as soon as possible, but I have to get used to school again and think a bit, because my time is sooo limited now. >.< Just wanted you to know.
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Re: Mura Location Development

Postby Gossamer on September 15th, 2009, 8:03 pm

One thing, Malia... never apologize for your lack of time. You're doing this out of the goodness of your heart, not on someone else's timeline! ;0 I like your NPCs and your price lists... I like that several are related, which is more than feasible in a small city like Mura.

One thing I forgot to tell you about the Taviasa is that it is integral in mediating disputes in Mura. There is no true court system, so when people have problems with each other or there's been a crime committed, a ballroom there can be transformed into a meeting room to work through these disputes.

Otherwise, I love what your doing!
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Re: Mura Location Development

Postby Malia on October 17th, 2009, 5:33 pm

So ... the harbor should be done with the second NPC and I also added the ballroom to the Taviasa. I don't have enough ideas for the other NPCs yet, but two new locations have been written out in the meantime. The price list for glassworks will be edited soon.

The Pearl Divers Inn

At first sight Mura’s only and most popular tavern and inn doesn’t look impressing: It is build in the same style as the local temple, with a doom-shaped grand building where tavern rooms and a dozen of sleeping rooms are located, and two low, but broadly built towers always ready to inhabit more powerful or influential customers.

While ordinary rooms only consist of a bed, a low table and wardrobe with pretty carvings and paintings and possess a single window to let in enough light, the four tower apartments are vast and more luxurious, providing two different rooms: one for sleeping and one for both eating and socializing, furnished with a low, but massive table and comfortable blankets and cushions covering the stone floor. Apart from the elaborately and colorfully painted walls the heating system is especially remarkable. Bricks have been placed at small chambers under the floor stones and, when magically heated, provide warm and more comfortable floors and rooms during cold days.

If a customer desires to get some food and drink or book a room, they would first enter a small simple chamber, shrug off street dirt and leave their cloaks or jackets at the guarded wardrobe, afterwards move on to the main room and bar of the tavern. A few robust, yet elegant tables are arranged around a round counter, both made of smooth white wood and the plates covered with clean and reflective ivory while the walls are painted with the usual mythological images and tales of Laviku, Avalis and occasionally Rak’keli.

The Pearl Divers is lead and owned by three Konti women, triplets, of which each one is beautiful, unique and serving customers almost perfectly in her own way. Nevertheless the customers will always be greeted and asked for their personal wishes by one of the three after entering. Of course there are a few additional waitresses, cooks, cleaning women and other staff who help keeping the place clean and welcoming and making the stay at Pearl Divers as comfortable as possible.

Services & Goods:
drinks (water, fruit juice, coffee, ale, wine) – 4 cm to 30 gm (depending on quality and amount)
meals (vegetables, fruit or fish as main ingredient) – 2 sm to 5 gm (depending on quality and amount)
common room – 5 sm per day/with meals – 10 sm per day
luxurious room – 3 gm per day/with meals – 5 gm per day
banquet cooking & organization – 50 gm
free entertainment for those eating at bar room

NPCs:
First triplet Acil:
The most beautiful of the triplets with long sugar white hair and bright sky blue eyes, Acil charms customers with her sweet voice and friendly and open behavior. She is often found sitting at their tables, listening to their stories and entertaining them, although she isn’t as skilled at singing and dancing as her sisters. However, she is the one who secretly leads the whole establishment and takes care of financial and economic matters. Her rational intelligence and mathematical talent make her the most skilled in leading a big business such as the Pearl Divers.
Gnosis Marks: Avalis – 1
Skill List: Business Organization – 73 pts, Singing – 41 pts, Dancing – 37 pts
Lore: Knowledge about mathematics

Second triplet Eceli:
While her hair just reaches above the chin, her face is a bit rounded and her eyes a clear turquoise. Eceli likes to cook and help out in the kitchen, and she knows that she looks like that. Being the most reclusive and introverted of the triplets, but still relatively friendly and cheerful, she often visits the library and does research about extraordinary ingredients and meals. Since the triplets opened Pearl Divers, she has gathered incredibly detailed knowledge about how to get foreign ingredients and make exotic meals out of them.
Gnosis Marks: Avalis – 1
Skill List: Cooking – 60 pts, Business Organization – 35 pts, Singing – 16 pts
Lore: Knowledge about several ingredients and spices, including Syliran, Talderan and Benshira ones

Third triplet Ciela:
Many people mistake her for Acil, since their appearance is almost identical. However, Ciela’s eyes are of the color of fresh grass and her white hair is slightly curled at the edges. While she is the most outgoing and social of the triplets, she has become popular because a lot of rumors exist of her. It is known that she is the only one who has travelled to the mainland for a few years and learned, among other things, the magical discipline of hypnotism from a half-crazy old hag. She likes to enchant and excite the most innocent customers, but the impact on her personality when using her gift is too high to go unnoticed. Her sisters even consider to send her to the Opal Temple for medical treatment, but since they aren’t sure if the healers are able to provide useful help and the inn needs her for running the heating system, they just leave things like they are for that moment. However, every season, every day even, Ciela seems to become a split personality more and more.
Gnosis Marks: Avalis – 1, Ivak – 2
Skill List: Reimancy – 62 pts, Hypnotism – 45 pts, Dancing – 43 pts, Singing – 28 pts, Rhetoric – 19 pts
Lore: Knowledge about several human personalities and behaviors
Knowledge about Ivak


The House of Glass

The House of Glass, as the name suggests, is a shop selling glass works of exquisite and fragile beauty and elegance. While the owner is rumored to draw chaos and catastrophes, her works are often used for decorating official buildings or private homes, thus known and popular throughout the whole city.

The shop itself is a simple, unimpressive building made of white stone and decorated with a few pretty ornaments and symbolic pictures around windows and corners. The focus clearly lies on the products exhibited at the front and main room: mostly basic commodities, sculptures depicting particular landscapes, parts of nature or elemental impressions, the latter with a specialization on water: shaped in raindrops, rivers, splashes and many other incarnations. While the simpler and cheaper works are stuffed at robust wooden shelves, the most elaborate and extraordinary peaces are spread on two dark blue tables in the middle of the room.

The owner usually waits behind the counter, either buried in notes and projects or falling asleep while waiting for customers. Behind her back a small door leads to the work room which she uses craft new peaces. No customer is allowed to enter that room since the burning fire and molten glass can be highly dangerous for the inexperienced layman.

Services & Goods
Set of colorless/ornamented dishes
Plates, bowls & vases of different coloring, shape & size
Landscape: forest in small/medium/large size
Landscape: sea in small/medium/large size
Landscape: hills in small/medium/large size
Landscape: desert in small/medium/large size
Lively water sculpture in different shapes
Raindrop sculpture in different shapes
Waterfall sculpture in different shapes & sizes
Water splash sculpture in different shapes
Flame sculpture in different shapes
Fire pit sculpture in different shapes & sizes
Dolphin sculpture, small
Sea horse sculpture, small
Mural boat sculpture, small

NPCs:
owner/glassblower: Silene Sa'nanathy
Silene's life has changed completely during her stay at Riverfall. She had come there with a trade caravan of other Konti to learn about the craft of glassblowing and fell in love with her Akalak master. But then she found him betraying her with one of her friends from the caravan and accidentally killed him in her rage. From that on she is cursed by Kihala and target of her minions, and immediately returned to her safe home city. There she managed to start and maintain a small glassblowing business. Despite the trouble she has with the life goddess, despite the fact that some pieces get strangely shattered and have to be crafted anew, the shop is fairly popular at the art-loving Konti. Of course Silene always looks worn and tired, her long white hair has lost it's shimmer and the lashes over her violet eyes are usually heavy with a lack of sleep. When she speaks, she does so with low and weak voice and her body language is very limited. However, she still creates incredibly beautiful glasswork with extraordinary talent, creativity and skill.
Gnosis Marks: Avalis – 1, Kihala – 1 negative
Skills List: Glassblowing – 89 pts, Sketching – 40 pts, Silversmithing – 33 pts
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