Dementlieuse Poor Peasantry Guide (Optional)
This guide has been created to help players that would be interested in roleplaying a member from one of the non-aristocratic classes of citizen in Dementlieu. Urban peasants and rural peasants will have differing attitudes, societies, and practices, on top of tending to dislike each other. This will focus on urban specifically, the lowest class. Commoners (middle and lower class) who work for nobility/socialize with nobility a lot might be different.
General Way of Life
Dementlieu is like the early industrial revolution. There is a pretense to civilization as the nobility profit off the exploitation of the lower class, usually doing the bare minimum to take care of them.
The lower classes live much harder lives. Those with jobs can usually maintain a very basic standard of living, their employers extracting the maximum possible amount of work for their wages. In the cities, laboring is the most common job in any of large workhouses. A significant proportion also works for the nobility as maids, footmen, or cooks.
Ever since the deposing of Lord-Governor Foquelaine in 707 BC, the nobility has funded the provision of basic food and housing for those without work. This benevolence is often cited by the aristocracy as a demonstration of Dementlieu's civil advancement; a closer examination of hard, dry breads, watery gruel, and overcrowded tenements that are provided suggests that the nobility is doing the absolute minimum required to prevent a repeat of the 707 rebellion. Unrest is unsurprisingly growing among the peasantry.
Workhouses are basically sweatshops and there are no orphanages. Children and adults alike work at these workhouses for 14 hours a day, seven days a week. There is the option of working for nobility for a slightly better paying job, however it is personally degrading. The workhouses have terrible working conditions with broken and malfunctioning equipment, causing accidents, sometimes fatal. There aren't any brothels in Port-a-Lucine (not in game anyways) however prostitution in the poor quarters makes sense as well as high class escorts for the richer ones.
Among the poor, artstic talent is viewed as the only way to achieve wealth and to gain acceptance among the aristocracy. Children are encouraged to pursue artistic hobbies, with parents often willing to forego meals to pay for a child's education in dance or song.
In order to maintain its exhorbitant lifestyle, the aristocracy has generally found it necessary to improve significantly the productivity of ts businesses. The result is large workhouses (which the aristocracy euphemistically call guild houses) that operate up to 14 hours a day. The workforce is primarily made up of poorly paid laborers, who are driven to ruthless efficiency by their foremen. Skilled craftsmen oversee the work to ensure that the final product is of reasonable quality, but obviusly such a process results in more flawed products than a skilled artisan would normally produce. These workhouses make a wide variety of common goods: clothings, furniture, linen, barrels, household implements, and even weapons and firearms.
There is a lot of organized and not so organized crime in Dementlieu that may be made up of the lower class, however they prey on them. The large funds one might find in the sewers is the cache of these criminals and normal commoners don't really have access to that kind of stuff.
Social Protocol
For addressing nobility, commoners who hang around nobles might know all the intricacies however commoners who do not would be extremely different, saying things like "Your lordship" and other weird titles.
High Mordentish is spoken by the upper classes, while Low Mordentish is reserved for peasants and farmers.
In Dementlieu, the High dialect is predominantly in common usage. Virtually all of the commoners also speak High Mordentish, particularly if they work in or near any of the areas frequented by nobles. In their homes, however, they are more likely to revert to Low Mordentish. All forms of artistic expression in Dementlieu are performed in High Mordentish at the command of the Council of Brilliance.
Revolutionary Trivia
From a revolutionary's perspective, the Church of Ezra can be a tool used by the nobility to control the poor. Most Dementlieuse are irreligious, however the Halans do far more for the Ourvier (Worker's) Quarter than the Ezrites, helping the poor and down trodden.
The revolution can by symbolized with a red sash, tri-color cockades, and a phyrgian chapeau.
Pauline Jenout was a hero of the commoners during the 770 revolution and was killed by a treacherous noble, Lucille de Larose. She fought for reforms that have yet to be fulfilled by the council of brilliance in the past five years. Presently, only nobles can vote.
A couple of papers about the revolution/shortly after that are pretty cool are these two links...
L'Avant-garde https://www.nwnravenloft.com/forum/index.php?topic=43678.0L'Avocat https://www.nwnravenloft.com/forum/index.php?topic=39347.0The following reforms have yet to be fulfilled.- 8 hour work days, 5th Day off
- An end to child labor
- Greater safety precautions and regulations for workhouses
- An end to debt bondage as a practice
- Universal suffrage**
Universal suffrage was briefly installed by the Council of Brilliance after the Revolution (770) but overturned and nulled by the Maitriser, Marius de Mortigny, after taking Port-a-Lucine(773).
Source: Gazetteer volume 3 (Dementlieu)
