The Islanders

Orphpon STEEP HILLSIDE

Although there are vineyards on many islands throughout the Archipelago, the island of ORPHPON is the producer of some of the finest wines. Traditionally sold in cask form and never bottled on site, the wines are shipped to specialist distributors where they are repackaged. The white wines called ORSLA, from the hilly districts of Orphpon, are sharp, bright and dry. The AETREV of some of the neighbouring islands are a little sweeter, and vary in colour from a rosy yellow to a greenish gold, and have a bouquet reminiscent of spice and berries. These are the wines most eagerly sought by connoisseurs.

The wines from the southern coast of Orphpon are a coarser red, generally deemed undrinkable at the table, and are shipped to blenderies on the northern mainland where they are mixed with other table wines, or used as the basis for fortified aperitifs.

Olives are grown in the same region. On several of Orphpon’s neighbouring islands the income from olive cultivation exceeds that of the vineyards.

Many people move to the Orphpon group of islands because of the presumed congeniality of the ambience, the warm summers and what is thought to be the spirit of good neighbourliness amongst the islanders. Much of this would appear to be true. However, there are strict shelterate laws and unadvertised visa restrictions.

Only by travelling in person to Orphpon will you discover that your stay is to be restricted to fifteen days, even should you have a firm booking at a local hotel or other resort, and that you will not be allowed to return for another two years. Outsiders and casual visitors rarely understand the reasons for these strict rules and every year there are attempts to breach or ignore them. Such visitors will then discover how strictly enforced are the laws. The prison regime in Orphpon Town is downright unpleasant and rigidly enforced (we write with some experience), and the authorities routinely maintain several empty cells throughout the holiday season in readiness for would-be visa deniers.

However, most of the cells in the prison do command an attractive view across the harbour and adjacent islands.

Unusually for the Archipelago, Orphpon is not a feudal state with a bill of rights for the freedom of the individual, but is a family-run fiefdom.

The family has extensive business interests throughout the Archipelago. The current Monseignior owns a vast fleet of luxury yachts, and a controlling interest in two of the largest inter-island ferry services. The family owns a large arms manufacturing company in the state of Glaund, and much of the gambling organization that runs through the Archipelago is owned and run by the Monseignior’s extended family.

The artist, Dryd Bathurst, visited Orphpon when still a young man. He began a series of sketches for later development as oil paintings, but was forced to leave when his visa expired. There is something of an unsolved mystery about this, as his visa would not have been on a different basis than anyone else’s, yet he is known to have remained on Orphpon for nearly a year. When he finally completed his celebrated Orphpon Sequence, some three years later, the paintings were recognized as modern masterpieces and they now hang in the Museum d’Artistes in Derril City.

It has recently been discovered that Bathurst had been allowed to stay in the Monseignior’s Winter Residence on Orphpon, because even at his comparatively young age at the time his fame was widespread and his artistic reputation secure. It was while he was in the Residence that he drafted his sketches for the paintings that later made up the Sequence.

It is also known that Bathurst at least visited the prison in the town. The Bathurst Archive maintains that he went as a celebrated visitor who had been invited to inspect the facilities, but during our own brief internment we discovered from other inmates that there is one particular cell that for many years has been known as the Bath-House.

The identity of the tantalizingly unclad young model depicted in the two most admired Orphpon Sequence paintings is officially unknown. The Archive maintains that she was an imaginary muse for the great artist. However, one of the Monseignior’s young nieces is known to have been staying at the Residence at approximately the same time, and after Bathurst left the island she was never heard from again.

Currency: Ganntenian credit, Archipelagian simoleon, also barter on a scale fixed by the Orphpon Seigniory.