The Honour
"Terribilis est locus iste"
Name: Arcadia
Image Source:
Classification: Fishing village
Location: Carnovia
Affiliation: The city offers no official government, but it is understood to be protected by the Guilde des Assassins du St. Jacen which falls under the Black Sun umbrella
Population: Approximately 10,000 people
Demographics: 34% Gungan, 29% Human, 20% Riileb, 12% Sayormi, and 5% Wookiee.
Points of Interest: Port-du-Arcadia – In all of Carnovia, this is the only bastion of civilization visible from above water. Built upon an artificial island, it acts as the primary trade hub as well as the chief transit point between the city of Arcadia (and really, Carnovia as a whole) and the rest of the galaxy. Among its facilities, it features a small starport for space-faring vessels, as well as a seaport for its host of sea-faring, fishing vehicles. A good number of Arcadia’s population lives here, offering a small taste of what goes on beneath the surface, but it is by no means a tourist resort, either. For the most part, it’s do your business and get the hell offworld, but it will host a small population of visitors, as it’s a great place to get delicious, cheap seafood (even the infamous Carnovian eel pup delicacy) and there a number of brilliant chefs and artists dying for galactic approval. Who knows? If you manage to make a good impression, someone may just be willing to vouch for your entry into the city.
St. Jacen Cathedral- Above the entryway are the words “Et Arcadia Ego.” Nobody knows what it literally translates to anymore, or to what language it initially belonged, but the understanding remains: “In Heaven, I (Death) am there,” or rather “Everything dies.”
Widely-recognized as the headquarters for the Guilde des Assassins du St. Jacen, it alternates as a the primary site for religious worship on Arcadia. Its hydrostatic bubble is decorated with a myriad of colors, portraying scenes integral to Jedi worship with such brilliance, George Lucas wouldn’t need to touch it up in ten years. If you’re picking up on the notion that it’s like a bubble composed of stained glass, you’re getting it. Within the temple, one will find a number of candles and lanterns for ritual work, often mixed in with some voodoo stuff. Tapestries, iconography, the works, with some back offices for Assassin business.
Description: The city of Arcadia is a pretty medium-sized city anchored in the great depths of the Carnovian seas, tucked away from the covetous, exploitive eyes of the Hutt Cartel. Its chief architectural influence is, of course, that of the Gungans, created from a mass of hydrostatic bubbles that kept the water out while allowing the Arcadians in. The interior décor, however, is quite different, often featuring spontaneous memorials to the recently deceased or in parapsychological protest of a random catastrophe, as well as maze-like halls, a byproduct of the Riileb influence. With its location at the bottom of the ocean, it is not a wonder that its primary occupation is deep sea fisherman, and there is often plenty of seafood being offered up for sale or as a party favor. It is home to much celebration, ritual, art, music, and food, and as such, frequently looks very much like they are partying for the Day of the Dead in perpetuity, even hosting frequent parades in the City BigSpace. Once a pitstop for the Kashyyk slaving industry, Arcadia has been influenced by the Sayormi and their culture of Black Voodoo. Tribal fetishes and gris-gris often sit right next to religious iconography of Jedi Saint-worship.
With no standing army, Arcadia has long depended on the protection of the Guilde des Assassins du St. Jacen for protection, and lately its connections with the Black Sun. The Honor, a major player within the Guild, is typically the one responsible for dealing with offworlders.
For the most part, the people of Arcadia have no major interest in the politics or wars of the outside galaxy, resigning to their simple, joyful lives of seafood, art, festivities, and leisure. They are big partiers, and because of this, their tolerance for drugs and alcohol is quite high, and they’re often not motivated to go hard into blackout. After all, they are a loud, boisterous people just on principle, and do not require alcohol as a social lubricant. It’s all just for fun. With Arcadia’s xenophobia due to previous encounters with the Hutt Cartel, outsiders should be wary about refusing to drink, eat, and drug with the “Kahjeens;” such a faux-pas is seen as a sign of distrust and a guilty conscience, and as a result of this slight, one may just find themselves “drowning” somewhere in a planet’s worth of ocean.
The only exception is if you are a Lightside Jedi. In which case, they expect you remain pure, lest its blasphemy and you will wind up “drowned.”
The Grandmaster of the Jedi Council is a position deemed as sacrosanct, akin to the pope. Should the Grandmaster be female, it is expected she be chaste, as per Shmi Skywalker. Though, like the Mafia, just because they hold religious reverence doesn't mean the Jedi Council can get them to stop performing their unscrupulous deeds.
Oh yeah, and they have a deep love for spicy cuisine, a custom that developed in an effort to keep away those dreaded, brainy though sensory-sensitive Sakiyan tourists. Chefs (as well as artists, musicians, and spiritualists) are beloved by the community, and so long as you claim to be one of them, you will likely be welcomed aboard.
AND ANOTHER THING. They maintain their population often by buying people off human traffickers who still pass through the area. They do not exactly have a bone to pick with such a trade – they just like the idea of paying it forward. The Guilde des assassins du St. Jacen has special traffickers who deliberately search out orphans of a specific profile to bring back to join the club (The orphans are marked with the middle name "Lucas" if male, and "Leia" if female). The guild is revered by the community at large, even if it’s not polite to speak about them (It’s a big downer, man).
History: This is a story about belief, and how it evolves over time. It is about the reach for Heaven, and the mountain of corpses on which one must stand to reach it.
“Et in Arcadia Ego”
Once upon a time, there were a group of Gungans who thought differently from the rest of their kind. Following the war with the Droid Separatists, Otoh Gunga was reacquainted with the Jedi and their long history of contribution to culture. This aforementioned group of Gungans found something sacred in these practices, in these accomplishments, and felt they needed more reverence than the people of Otoh Gunga typically gave them. While the Otoh Gungans did not necessarily disagree, the insistence of this fringe group was found to be disruptive to the peaceful day-to-day operations of the city. This could not be allowed, and so, the group was exiled.
Selling what they could not carry, this group, now dubbing themselves Arcadians because I don’t know why, took flight from Naboo to find a world where they could pursue their beliefs without disrupting harmony; while discovering their own. Unfortunately, there were not a lot of worlds whose environment catered to the amphibious people. They would find some place properly humid, but, it would unfortunately stink or be occupied by violent predators or already be home to somebody who was not interested in sharing. After a few swings at bat, they would find themselves fortunate to discover Carnovia, a planet composed entirely of water with ample fishing to be had. They set to work on the hydrostatic bubble city, and thus, Arcadia was born. Their success prompted other Gungan to follow.
Of course, little to their knowledge, the Arcadians were in the middle of Hutt Space.
It was barely two generations before the slugs would come a-callin’. Looking to establish a fueling outpost between their slaving operations on Kashyyk and their delivery of a work force to their mining of Kaalonia, the Hutt Cartel, having failed to sway the Riilebs, settled on Carnovia, a planet that, from the surface, appeared to be unoccupied. Using their extensive resources, the Hutts built a small artificial island to suit all their needs in the trafficking of goods, and for a while, that was fine; Hutt workers lived on the island, the Arcadians lived at the bottom of the sea, and never the two shall meet. Cool. Until, one day, they did.
While there was more than enough fish for everyone, it was the discovery of the Carnovian Eel Pup that created the trouble. Caught initially by accident, it proved to be quite the delicacy to the Hutt foodie, fetching a fat price from the fat slugs. More and more, Hutt employees began sending their slaves and diving themselves to make that little extra bank, and more and more, it intruded on Arcadian territory and their peaceful existence. It should be noted that, by this time, what had begun as a “meditation on the Jedi” had begun to transform into a “worship of the Jedi,” reframing the legendary heroes as Saints.
The Arcadians formed militiagung units, and with their superior aquatic abilities, as well as their technology and weaponry that proved completely unique to this area of the cosmos, they quickly overran the Hutt Cartel outpost. Of course, in their hearts and heads, they were Jedi. When the battle was over and the last warrior had surrendered, the Arcadians were more than happy to forgive the Hutt workers and slaves. The name Arcadian grew to include humans, Sayormi, and Wookiees that day. And more would come from slavers who had not received the memo.
The Sayormi and Wookiee slaves had been stripped of their culture, deracinated from their homeland. In their time in captivity, they were not allowed to practice their spiritual works, and much of their memory of them had faded. When the Arcadians offered this new way, those formerly of Kashyyyk used it to supplement their old practices, the Sayormi in particular simply superimposing the names of the Jedi Saints over their old deities, creating the weird overlap between the Black Voodoo and the Jedi Worship that still exists to this day. Additionally, with Gunganeese pidgin language had begun to warp either further, now confounded by Wild Space Basic accents, as well as Sayormi and even a bit of Wookiee, but it was not until contact with the Riileb that it really began to get weird.
It was rare that a people were able to repel the Hutt invasion, and the Rilleb knew this…primarily because the Riileb had had to do it themselves. Recognizing the value of strength in numbers and impressed by the prowess of the militagung, the Riileb hastily sent envoys to negotiate an alliance against the coming slavers. With their aptitude for reading people, it was an easy sell for the Riileb; one of many easy sells in a long, beautiful friendship. Well, sorta.
The Riileb were a very shady people. Of course they were – their racial passive was “manipulation.” They operated like an insect hive with human social politics infused. There was a matriarch, and she could only come from the Motherclan, and she could only rule if she had the ClanRing. Of course, if she died, the ClanRing would fall to a successor. Let the games begin. And so it was that the Arcadian militiagung (which, now pronounced in their increasingly Riileb-influenced contact language as “Ah-Kah-jeen”) were hired out as mercenaries and assassins on behalf of competing Riileb nobility. So began the Guilde des assassins du St. Lucas.
As this new identity began to proliferate, the church gradually shifted away from its focus on the Skywalker family, opting for something more scoundrel-oriented. Jacen and Jaina Solo were chosen (replacements for the Fanged God and the Winged Goddess roles for the more Voodoo-y parts of the community) as the Saints of Dark and Light respectively. The role of Saint patriarch has some contention between, hilarious, St. Han Solo, and bizarrely, St. Anakin (who, as the mythos became confused, sometimes appears as the father of the twins, their little brother, or only vaguely associated) Some members of the community recognize St. Han as the patriarch, some St. Anakin. About here, the Guild switched patron Saints. C’est la vie.
Centuries would pass, the once noble Kah-jeen were now much for obfuscated. They were slyer, sneaky, backstabby. The society at large had grown accustomed to Riileb manipulation, becoming quite disarmingly charming themselves, and in many instances immune to it. There is a word for mosquito -- “Maringouin.” It’s also used as a derogatory term for a Riileb.
Over the years, they would come to take the fight directly to the Hutt Cartel, deploying small teams to Nar Shaddaa to shake things up and deter the Hutt’s from trespassing. The experience on this terrain helped the lean, mean assassins to develop their “parkour” techniques.
These days, Arcadia is one big party that you’re not invited to. The Gunganese Basic and the Galactic Basic have mostly fused with the Riileb into what’s simply referred to as “Kah-jeen” Basic, and most everyone speaks a “Kah-jeen” derivation of Riileb (Both of which are often found to be indecipherable by ordinary speakers of the aforementioned languages). They’re a boisterous party people with a deep, though confused, culture of spirituality, superstition, ritual, and magic, of which they are open to discuss, so long as you’re not being a jerkface academic about it and trying to make them look stupid. Then they might kill you.
Links: La Guilde des Assassins du St. Jacen
Image Source:
Arcadia; Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
Port-du-Arcadia: Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
Classification: Fishing village
Location: Carnovia
Affiliation: The city offers no official government, but it is understood to be protected by the Guilde des Assassins du St. Jacen which falls under the Black Sun umbrella
Population: Approximately 10,000 people
Demographics: 34% Gungan, 29% Human, 20% Riileb, 12% Sayormi, and 5% Wookiee.
Points of Interest: Port-du-Arcadia – In all of Carnovia, this is the only bastion of civilization visible from above water. Built upon an artificial island, it acts as the primary trade hub as well as the chief transit point between the city of Arcadia (and really, Carnovia as a whole) and the rest of the galaxy. Among its facilities, it features a small starport for space-faring vessels, as well as a seaport for its host of sea-faring, fishing vehicles. A good number of Arcadia’s population lives here, offering a small taste of what goes on beneath the surface, but it is by no means a tourist resort, either. For the most part, it’s do your business and get the hell offworld, but it will host a small population of visitors, as it’s a great place to get delicious, cheap seafood (even the infamous Carnovian eel pup delicacy) and there a number of brilliant chefs and artists dying for galactic approval. Who knows? If you manage to make a good impression, someone may just be willing to vouch for your entry into the city.
St. Jacen Cathedral- Above the entryway are the words “Et Arcadia Ego.” Nobody knows what it literally translates to anymore, or to what language it initially belonged, but the understanding remains: “In Heaven, I (Death) am there,” or rather “Everything dies.”
Widely-recognized as the headquarters for the Guilde des Assassins du St. Jacen, it alternates as a the primary site for religious worship on Arcadia. Its hydrostatic bubble is decorated with a myriad of colors, portraying scenes integral to Jedi worship with such brilliance, George Lucas wouldn’t need to touch it up in ten years. If you’re picking up on the notion that it’s like a bubble composed of stained glass, you’re getting it. Within the temple, one will find a number of candles and lanterns for ritual work, often mixed in with some voodoo stuff. Tapestries, iconography, the works, with some back offices for Assassin business.
Description: The city of Arcadia is a pretty medium-sized city anchored in the great depths of the Carnovian seas, tucked away from the covetous, exploitive eyes of the Hutt Cartel. Its chief architectural influence is, of course, that of the Gungans, created from a mass of hydrostatic bubbles that kept the water out while allowing the Arcadians in. The interior décor, however, is quite different, often featuring spontaneous memorials to the recently deceased or in parapsychological protest of a random catastrophe, as well as maze-like halls, a byproduct of the Riileb influence. With its location at the bottom of the ocean, it is not a wonder that its primary occupation is deep sea fisherman, and there is often plenty of seafood being offered up for sale or as a party favor. It is home to much celebration, ritual, art, music, and food, and as such, frequently looks very much like they are partying for the Day of the Dead in perpetuity, even hosting frequent parades in the City BigSpace. Once a pitstop for the Kashyyk slaving industry, Arcadia has been influenced by the Sayormi and their culture of Black Voodoo. Tribal fetishes and gris-gris often sit right next to religious iconography of Jedi Saint-worship.
With no standing army, Arcadia has long depended on the protection of the Guilde des Assassins du St. Jacen for protection, and lately its connections with the Black Sun. The Honor, a major player within the Guild, is typically the one responsible for dealing with offworlders.
For the most part, the people of Arcadia have no major interest in the politics or wars of the outside galaxy, resigning to their simple, joyful lives of seafood, art, festivities, and leisure. They are big partiers, and because of this, their tolerance for drugs and alcohol is quite high, and they’re often not motivated to go hard into blackout. After all, they are a loud, boisterous people just on principle, and do not require alcohol as a social lubricant. It’s all just for fun. With Arcadia’s xenophobia due to previous encounters with the Hutt Cartel, outsiders should be wary about refusing to drink, eat, and drug with the “Kahjeens;” such a faux-pas is seen as a sign of distrust and a guilty conscience, and as a result of this slight, one may just find themselves “drowning” somewhere in a planet’s worth of ocean.
The only exception is if you are a Lightside Jedi. In which case, they expect you remain pure, lest its blasphemy and you will wind up “drowned.”
The Grandmaster of the Jedi Council is a position deemed as sacrosanct, akin to the pope. Should the Grandmaster be female, it is expected she be chaste, as per Shmi Skywalker. Though, like the Mafia, just because they hold religious reverence doesn't mean the Jedi Council can get them to stop performing their unscrupulous deeds.
Oh yeah, and they have a deep love for spicy cuisine, a custom that developed in an effort to keep away those dreaded, brainy though sensory-sensitive Sakiyan tourists. Chefs (as well as artists, musicians, and spiritualists) are beloved by the community, and so long as you claim to be one of them, you will likely be welcomed aboard.
AND ANOTHER THING. They maintain their population often by buying people off human traffickers who still pass through the area. They do not exactly have a bone to pick with such a trade – they just like the idea of paying it forward. The Guilde des assassins du St. Jacen has special traffickers who deliberately search out orphans of a specific profile to bring back to join the club (The orphans are marked with the middle name "Lucas" if male, and "Leia" if female). The guild is revered by the community at large, even if it’s not polite to speak about them (It’s a big downer, man).
History: This is a story about belief, and how it evolves over time. It is about the reach for Heaven, and the mountain of corpses on which one must stand to reach it.
“Et in Arcadia Ego”
Once upon a time, there were a group of Gungans who thought differently from the rest of their kind. Following the war with the Droid Separatists, Otoh Gunga was reacquainted with the Jedi and their long history of contribution to culture. This aforementioned group of Gungans found something sacred in these practices, in these accomplishments, and felt they needed more reverence than the people of Otoh Gunga typically gave them. While the Otoh Gungans did not necessarily disagree, the insistence of this fringe group was found to be disruptive to the peaceful day-to-day operations of the city. This could not be allowed, and so, the group was exiled.
Selling what they could not carry, this group, now dubbing themselves Arcadians because I don’t know why, took flight from Naboo to find a world where they could pursue their beliefs without disrupting harmony; while discovering their own. Unfortunately, there were not a lot of worlds whose environment catered to the amphibious people. They would find some place properly humid, but, it would unfortunately stink or be occupied by violent predators or already be home to somebody who was not interested in sharing. After a few swings at bat, they would find themselves fortunate to discover Carnovia, a planet composed entirely of water with ample fishing to be had. They set to work on the hydrostatic bubble city, and thus, Arcadia was born. Their success prompted other Gungan to follow.
Of course, little to their knowledge, the Arcadians were in the middle of Hutt Space.
It was barely two generations before the slugs would come a-callin’. Looking to establish a fueling outpost between their slaving operations on Kashyyk and their delivery of a work force to their mining of Kaalonia, the Hutt Cartel, having failed to sway the Riilebs, settled on Carnovia, a planet that, from the surface, appeared to be unoccupied. Using their extensive resources, the Hutts built a small artificial island to suit all their needs in the trafficking of goods, and for a while, that was fine; Hutt workers lived on the island, the Arcadians lived at the bottom of the sea, and never the two shall meet. Cool. Until, one day, they did.
While there was more than enough fish for everyone, it was the discovery of the Carnovian Eel Pup that created the trouble. Caught initially by accident, it proved to be quite the delicacy to the Hutt foodie, fetching a fat price from the fat slugs. More and more, Hutt employees began sending their slaves and diving themselves to make that little extra bank, and more and more, it intruded on Arcadian territory and their peaceful existence. It should be noted that, by this time, what had begun as a “meditation on the Jedi” had begun to transform into a “worship of the Jedi,” reframing the legendary heroes as Saints.
The Arcadians formed militiagung units, and with their superior aquatic abilities, as well as their technology and weaponry that proved completely unique to this area of the cosmos, they quickly overran the Hutt Cartel outpost. Of course, in their hearts and heads, they were Jedi. When the battle was over and the last warrior had surrendered, the Arcadians were more than happy to forgive the Hutt workers and slaves. The name Arcadian grew to include humans, Sayormi, and Wookiees that day. And more would come from slavers who had not received the memo.
The Sayormi and Wookiee slaves had been stripped of their culture, deracinated from their homeland. In their time in captivity, they were not allowed to practice their spiritual works, and much of their memory of them had faded. When the Arcadians offered this new way, those formerly of Kashyyyk used it to supplement their old practices, the Sayormi in particular simply superimposing the names of the Jedi Saints over their old deities, creating the weird overlap between the Black Voodoo and the Jedi Worship that still exists to this day. Additionally, with Gunganeese pidgin language had begun to warp either further, now confounded by Wild Space Basic accents, as well as Sayormi and even a bit of Wookiee, but it was not until contact with the Riileb that it really began to get weird.
It was rare that a people were able to repel the Hutt invasion, and the Rilleb knew this…primarily because the Riileb had had to do it themselves. Recognizing the value of strength in numbers and impressed by the prowess of the militagung, the Riileb hastily sent envoys to negotiate an alliance against the coming slavers. With their aptitude for reading people, it was an easy sell for the Riileb; one of many easy sells in a long, beautiful friendship. Well, sorta.
The Riileb were a very shady people. Of course they were – their racial passive was “manipulation.” They operated like an insect hive with human social politics infused. There was a matriarch, and she could only come from the Motherclan, and she could only rule if she had the ClanRing. Of course, if she died, the ClanRing would fall to a successor. Let the games begin. And so it was that the Arcadian militiagung (which, now pronounced in their increasingly Riileb-influenced contact language as “Ah-Kah-jeen”) were hired out as mercenaries and assassins on behalf of competing Riileb nobility. So began the Guilde des assassins du St. Lucas.
As this new identity began to proliferate, the church gradually shifted away from its focus on the Skywalker family, opting for something more scoundrel-oriented. Jacen and Jaina Solo were chosen (replacements for the Fanged God and the Winged Goddess roles for the more Voodoo-y parts of the community) as the Saints of Dark and Light respectively. The role of Saint patriarch has some contention between, hilarious, St. Han Solo, and bizarrely, St. Anakin (who, as the mythos became confused, sometimes appears as the father of the twins, their little brother, or only vaguely associated) Some members of the community recognize St. Han as the patriarch, some St. Anakin. About here, the Guild switched patron Saints. C’est la vie.
Centuries would pass, the once noble Kah-jeen were now much for obfuscated. They were slyer, sneaky, backstabby. The society at large had grown accustomed to Riileb manipulation, becoming quite disarmingly charming themselves, and in many instances immune to it. There is a word for mosquito -- “Maringouin.” It’s also used as a derogatory term for a Riileb.
Over the years, they would come to take the fight directly to the Hutt Cartel, deploying small teams to Nar Shaddaa to shake things up and deter the Hutt’s from trespassing. The experience on this terrain helped the lean, mean assassins to develop their “parkour” techniques.
These days, Arcadia is one big party that you’re not invited to. The Gunganese Basic and the Galactic Basic have mostly fused with the Riileb into what’s simply referred to as “Kah-jeen” Basic, and most everyone speaks a “Kah-jeen” derivation of Riileb (Both of which are often found to be indecipherable by ordinary speakers of the aforementioned languages). They’re a boisterous party people with a deep, though confused, culture of spirituality, superstition, ritual, and magic, of which they are open to discuss, so long as you’re not being a jerkface academic about it and trying to make them look stupid. Then they might kill you.
Links: La Guilde des Assassins du St. Jacen
