Brasilis - Introduction

 In October of 2023 I finally wrote up a little setting based on Brasil. It was the first time I took it seriously to write a fantasy setting based on my own country in a way that pleased me.

It ended up going nowhere, but this is the result. Names have been stolen with impunity, and much of it was based on Portuguese mythology much more than Indigenous ones.

I have chosen to preserve the names in Portuguese and add a little translation next to them. This is so you can adapt these names in your own head to your own tongue. The Serra doesn't belong to anyone.

You can read the Ç as an S like in "singing".

 

 

 The mist of the late afternoon creeps over the bends of the valley like a white carpet over the trees. A low cloud leaves droplets on the leaves, as well as the wings of the most delicate butterflies anyone has ever seen. You notice that you may be the first person alive to have seen them.

The moon sprouts in a sky stretched from side to side of the valley. You know that the Serra da Esperança (Hope Mountains) is somewhere over there in the dark, staring at you while you sleep. There's something else in the dark too, just beyond the edge of the firelight. How long has it been there?

In the morning, you wake up back in Santa Genebra (Saint Geneva). The sun carries the mist far away like the smoke from your musket. The Friar Bento (Benedict) is already up and getting water, the great kiskadees are already singing, and the air smells like fresh bread. At your side, a little barracks of pioneers, workers, jagunços, and all other kinds of people slowly waking, crawling their way back into consciousness.

As the world comes back to life, you prepare the sword and the musket. There's something for you in this forest. Just there over those trees, there's a place for you here. You just need to go there and touch it.

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Last year, while he prowled in the forest, a cowboy of the farm Três Rios (Three Rivers), at the heart of the Franconegro Empire, decided to go back through a different way. He found a road that wasn't there before and decided to take it as a shortcut. He couldn't imagine he'd make the discovery of the century: a hidden valley among the mountains that can only be accessed through one direction.

The Serra was quickly flooded by groups of migrants seeking better opportunities and an escape from poverty (many of them freed slaves who found themselves in a country that didn't care for them), gold prospectors, naturalists after explanations, and others who don't fit in society as it is. Because of this, the place came to be known as the Serra da Esperança.

Today, the Serra houses the Santa Genebra Farm, whose owner, the Baron of Santa Genebra, acts as governor over the Serra and enforces the law in the local settlement along with his jagunços. There's also a monastery belonging to the Ordem da Penitência (Order of Penitence), and a handful of settlements spread all over the place, but the biggest portion of the sierra and the valley remains unknown. No one even knows how far it goes. Some have tried to cross the valley with their machetes and muskets to get to the other side, but none has ever come back.

The Franconegro Empire, based on the distant capital of Vila Real (Royal Ville), on the coast, has next to no interest in the Sierra. The emperor is sick, some say from a mental illness, and he doesn't appear in public for a few years, having gone away to the Old Kingdom in the isle of Santa Cruz de Lançarote (Holy Cross of Lancelotto) - from where the Empire was originally colonised. In his absence, aristocrats and republicans dispute in parliament over who has the right to rule the biggest and only empire in the continent, and while the politicians fight amongst themselves, the people suffer. It's no surprise that so many have made the long journey to the Serra da Esperança.

The exact nature of the Serra da Esperança is highly debated. Some of the most common theories are:

• The Serra da Esperança is a grain of earth from the ancient kingdom of Canem that was locked in the sky. When it fell, a piece of Canem manifested in the middle of the Franconegro Empire, and all of the people of Oioh has to come people this place and prosper.
• The Serra da Esperança is clear proof that the Creator in his infinite wisdom never ended the holy office of creating the world. Man simply found an entrance before God could put one there.
• The Serra da Esperança is the fruit of an optical illusion provoked by the way that the sun shines on the mountains around the valley, making it so that it can't be found from other directions. A flying contraption would prove this, but unfortunately everyone knows that it is impossible for man to fly.
• The Serra da Esperança is a trap laid by the Indians to attract the conquering spirit of the Franconigerian men, and they're just waiting for the right time to go in there and riddle them with arrows.
• The Serra da Esperança simply doesn't exist, and all who say otherwise are deluding themselves. Very popular amongst those who have never gone there and have no inclination of doing so.

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