Post by CAPTAIN on Sept 18, 2012 1:10:06 GMT -5
Albion was not always what it is now. Long ago- two hundred years in fact- Gwendolyn was the Queen of Albion. Albion was a land of relative peace, with good and bad people just as any other. Though piracy did plague the coast and crimes did occur, nothing truly seemed amiss. More attention was paid to the Queen herself, who was 102 years old with no children of her own. Without a daughter there would be no heir unless she determined one. Understandably, Queen Gwendolyn was wary to do so, as it may provoke an assassination in order to put a younger Monarch on the throne. During a bout of sickness, however, she dubbed her passing middle age niece, Mary Kensington, heir. The next day, she died.
Mary Kensington was 51 when she took the throne. Raised in a strict household, she was a woman of little nonsense and good moral standing. After her coronation, she swore to uphold that standing in all of her choices as Queen, and implement a zero tolerance policy on any crime. The promise to the end of piracy was something the people could certainly get behind, but no one had any idea that life would be changed so dramatically. First the Royal Navy was sent to hunt down every pirate, where at home a police force was created to gather every criminal in Albion. Thieves, murderers, even tavern brawlers were brought forth. On another front, Queen Mary the Enforcer- as she began to be known- began to turn Albion from a land of sprawling green, to smoke stacks and industry.
Quickly the prisons began to fill, as all crimes no matter how small were given the sentence of life. Especially when more laws began to be put into effect: tax laws, modesty codes, education and workforce decrees. Many at the time believed Queen Mary to be mad, but anyone who spoke against her was imprisoned for treason against the crown. In the early years of the criminal hysteria, some attempted to rise against her, often stemming from within her prisons. Quickly, Mary decided that this must be controlled as well. Searching for only a moment, she found an Island east of Albion with no name.
Deciding to make a deal with the Devil, Queen Mary chose Bloody Mortimer Read, a fearsome pirate. The deal struck was that she would give the Pirates rule of the Island and a royal pension, to keep all the criminals on this place. In exchange for not executing him and his cohorts, he was to stay in that area, and never return to Albion. Thinking himself to be a King of sorts, Mortimer agreed, and was sent forth with a crew of one thousand to clear the Island of it's inhabitants.
The Island was dubbed Neverland, for there was never a chance of escape.
The Island, however, did have a name. After the name of the tribe of Natives who lived there, the Piccaninny, the proud people fought against the pirate menace was well as they could. After a month of brutal killing, the Pirates allowed twenty five of the once thriving people to live, and they were forced to live in the Valley of Red Grass. Over the course of the next two centuries, a grudge was held between the Pirates and the Native People.
Both Albion and Neverland have turned into different places over the next couple of centuries. Albion is all the glory that Queen Mary the Enforcer wanted: a highly industrialized, moral, wealthy, lawful society. With the fear of being sent away to Neverland- which still thrives as an anarchy prison society- the people of Albion have learn to not question the monarchy. Luckily, Queen Sylvia the Sweet doesn't too much ruling. That is instead left to her councilmen, who are quite set in the ways of old.
In Neverland, Magistrate Captain James Hook rules. With no laws holding him back, he has taken Bloody Mortimer's ideal of a Pirate King and ran with it. However, he does face some opposition. The Native population has grown since the days of Bloody Morty, and the bitterness has been left to stew. Tick Tock, the resigned Mermaid, has sworn revenge on Hook concerning a double dealing he had done. But most assuredly his biggest trouble comes from a young man and his troupe of rebels, who simply goes by Pan and The Lost Boys. With Pan's spreading alliances through almost every branch of society in Neverland, The Captain's pirate regime has great cause for worry.