Mar 21, 2019 1:35 am
[ +- ] Setting Info Repeated
Moscow, 1537
Under the guidance of Ivan III and his son Vasili III, Moscow, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, has exploded. Now one of the largest cities in the world, debated to be the Third Rome, Moscow is fresh with ideas imported from all over Europe. Italian architects work on the Kremlin, painters paint, singers sing, and faith blossoms. Even a bookbinder has come to town, with the modern mystery of the printing press. A hundred thousand inhabitants now call the city home, almost three times as there were a hundred years before.
But not everyone shares in the prosperity. Dozens of absorbed cultures try and cling to their ways while trying desperately to find a life in the growing Duchy. The clash of people's leads to a clash of faiths, as political machinations lurk behind their onion domed pulpits. The Orthodox Russian Church struggles to maintain influence amidst a resurgence of Judaic faith, and the rise of secular thinking aims to strip many of the luxuries the church had grown accustomed to, such as owning land.
The boyars, noble families that rank below the princes, scheme, plot, and vie for favour and leverage equally against their peers. Their powerful holdings give them great latitude, but ever at the deference of the crown. The boyars were starting to lose that influence to the authoritative rulers in Russia. Because of Ivan III's expansionist policies, administrative changes were needed in order to ease the burden of governing Muscovy. Small principalities knew their loyal subjects by name, but after the consolidation of territories under Ivan, familial loyalty and friendship with the boyar's subjects turned those same subjects into administrative lists. The face of provincial rule disappeared
Above it all swirls the beautiful Elena Glinskaya, wife to Vasili III, she was made regent on his deathbed four years prior to hold the throne safe until his son, Ivan IV came of age and could rule in his own right. Rumours abound about Elena, such as the mystery of how Vasili obtained a divorce from his first wife, and did Elena bring in witches to conceive, witches who even now poison her will.
Elena Glinskaya challenged the claims of her brothers-in-law, Yury Ivanovich and Andrey of Staritsa. The struggle ended with their incarceration in 1534 and 1537, respectively. Elena's reign is also known for conflicts inside the government caused by her close association with a handsome young boyar named Ivan Feodorovich Ovchina-Telepnev-Obolensky and Metropolitan Daniel. In 1535, Elena carried out a currency reform that introduced a unified monetary system in the state. In foreign affairs, Glinskaya succeeded in signing an armistice with Lithuania in 1536, while simultaneously neutralizing Sweden. She had a new defensive wall constructed around Moscow, invited settlers from Lithuania, bought Russian prisoners free and instigated measures to protect travellers against street bandits.
It is an unstable time, full of intrigues and subterfuge, backdealing, blackmail, and assassination.
Under the guidance of Ivan III and his son Vasili III, Moscow, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, has exploded. Now one of the largest cities in the world, debated to be the Third Rome, Moscow is fresh with ideas imported from all over Europe. Italian architects work on the Kremlin, painters paint, singers sing, and faith blossoms. Even a bookbinder has come to town, with the modern mystery of the printing press. A hundred thousand inhabitants now call the city home, almost three times as there were a hundred years before.
But not everyone shares in the prosperity. Dozens of absorbed cultures try and cling to their ways while trying desperately to find a life in the growing Duchy. The clash of people's leads to a clash of faiths, as political machinations lurk behind their onion domed pulpits. The Orthodox Russian Church struggles to maintain influence amidst a resurgence of Judaic faith, and the rise of secular thinking aims to strip many of the luxuries the church had grown accustomed to, such as owning land.
The boyars, noble families that rank below the princes, scheme, plot, and vie for favour and leverage equally against their peers. Their powerful holdings give them great latitude, but ever at the deference of the crown. The boyars were starting to lose that influence to the authoritative rulers in Russia. Because of Ivan III's expansionist policies, administrative changes were needed in order to ease the burden of governing Muscovy. Small principalities knew their loyal subjects by name, but after the consolidation of territories under Ivan, familial loyalty and friendship with the boyar's subjects turned those same subjects into administrative lists. The face of provincial rule disappeared
Above it all swirls the beautiful Elena Glinskaya, wife to Vasili III, she was made regent on his deathbed four years prior to hold the throne safe until his son, Ivan IV came of age and could rule in his own right. Rumours abound about Elena, such as the mystery of how Vasili obtained a divorce from his first wife, and did Elena bring in witches to conceive, witches who even now poison her will.
Elena Glinskaya challenged the claims of her brothers-in-law, Yury Ivanovich and Andrey of Staritsa. The struggle ended with their incarceration in 1534 and 1537, respectively. Elena's reign is also known for conflicts inside the government caused by her close association with a handsome young boyar named Ivan Feodorovich Ovchina-Telepnev-Obolensky and Metropolitan Daniel. In 1535, Elena carried out a currency reform that introduced a unified monetary system in the state. In foreign affairs, Glinskaya succeeded in signing an armistice with Lithuania in 1536, while simultaneously neutralizing Sweden. She had a new defensive wall constructed around Moscow, invited settlers from Lithuania, bought Russian prisoners free and instigated measures to protect travellers against street bandits.
It is an unstable time, full of intrigues and subterfuge, backdealing, blackmail, and assassination.
It's a cold spring day in Moscow, the season late following a sudden cold snap that delayed the turn to better weather. As the sun rises, bright and crisp, you feel for the first time that it may grow warm enough to shed your jackets today. Maybe. If you're determined enough.
You've an appointment this morning with each other, a prearranged meeting of your cabal. It seems sometimes that your intended focus as a magical defensive wall, is usurped by tedium and petty squabbling for favour and comeuppance. Today is different.
The streets are abuzz with news of a new terror, the spectacularly profane murder of Sutulin Olegovich. A rising scion of the church, this son of a moderately affluent boyar had been found drowned in his own blood, hung upside down in a pool of fetid river water and his own viscera, arms tied to his sides. His death was hard, painful, drawn out, and conducted with all of the malice and ingenuity of the devil. All the hallmarks of the supernatural are repeated: strange runes (drawn in blood, of course), a mysterious smell, cold spots, and most strange, five dead mice found in the area around the pool, all seemingly having clawed out their own eyes.
You arrive at the Sanctum (in the order that you post).
