Porting Porto Liure

In looking to make better use of "my assets" I've decided that I'd like to do away with having Porto Liure as a Spanish-like island city and bring it into the mainstream of DH5 somewhere. Because, honestly, by shunting it off to the side away from where I'm working, I've pretty guaranteed that it will play no role in anything in DH5 ever again. On the other hand, I've got a number of cities that need developing in DH5, and I do have one in particular that's supposed to be a little seedy, with all kinds of shady goings-on in the background. A kind of fantasy "Washington D.C." so to speak, in the form of Waychester. In reality, conceptually a little bit more like the London of King George whereas its southern rival Upwater is more all that's good and admirable about British culture, especially and specifically including its breakaway spin-off, American culture. So yeah; it's got ambitious tyrants running around stabbing each other in the backs in the form of the Grand Duke and his rivalry with his Duchess, but more to the point, he's trying to extend his dominion over the entire area and proclaim himself King. He's not a nice fellow; he's ambitious and driven and in a way that has little concern for the rights and way of life of the people in the southern portion of the Hill Country. Basically, he's like the Puritans of New England, who 150 years after their war of aggression against the South are still trying to stamp out and eliminate any vestige of the South that they aggressively and unprovoked went and conquered militarily. In other words, the epitome of a secular, normal villain.

This is a little bit in contrast to how I've seen the Lords of Porto Liure, who are more insular. Rather than ambitious, they're ruthless and decadent, but their games are played with their own cadre of local nobility, and their view is inward rather than outward. This gives plenty of opportunity for noble sponsored skulduggery while maintaining Porto Liure's status quo. That said, I never developed either of those ideas beyond a vague inclination, so making the Grand Duke of Waychester remain as he is while Waychester itself becomes, to some degree, the assets I developed for Porto Liure is fine. The reality is that while the Grand Duke has ambitions on militarily conquering the South, he's got problems closer to home with regards to corruption, sedition and open rebellion, starting with his own wife, who he's locked in a tower, but who's loyal supporters have not forgotten her. So the change is even more subtle.

I'll also have to rename everything, although that doesn't mean that I need to reinvent everything. Porto Liure was originally designed to be a kind of fantasy Tortuga, and it therefore had a lot of pseudo-Spanish nomenclature. Waychester is a thoroughly Anglo-Saxon endeavor, and there isn't any Spanish anything that would give a background of such names, so they'll all need to go. But just because the names of neighborhoods like Castello or Ciutat Viexa are vaguely old-fashioned Spanish sounding (or more likely Catalan, since I heavily used that dictionary to find suitable alternatives to straight up Spanish) or the Castiada crime family can't be used doesn't mean that everything about them except the name isn't still good.

So, for another post in the near future, I'm going to take a few of my older Porto Liure posts and adapt them to Waychester, which will be my new go-to wretched hive of scum and villainy in DH5.