Yoho Keep
- The Environs
- The Workshop
- The Flagship
- The Archives
Overview
For the past 10 years, Yoho Keep has served as the heart of Noct Yaegir’s presence on the Malakath continent. It is found deep in the marshlands west of Tirnua, along a stretch of land that extends into the Alinawa sea. The keep itself is a sprawling web of elevated structures built around a massive building that is equal parts boat, castle, and mountain of trash.
This comunity of Straline are known as The Telly Clan, a collection of daring and boisterous felines who built Yoho over several decades following a fateful encounter with a giant sea leviathan. Their joining alliance with the Noct Yaegir was then quickly formed as the clan saw the Yaegir as kindred spirits and destined comrades.
The Telly clan composes most of Yoho keep’s inhabitants, with only a handful of others making up the rest. Some are hunters passing through and keen on having stuff made by Yoho keep’s many craftsmen, while others are Noct Yaegir archivists: intent on studying and documenting the monstrous mysteries of Malakath.
Demographic
~600 Straline, most belonging to the Telly clan. Of those in the Telly clan a fair amount are direct descendants of one of Shelly Telly’s 3 marriages. Stralines that are part of the main Telly family tend to be taller and more robust than the average Straline.Most of the non-Straline population is Noct Yaegir associated. Either there transiently or as part of the Archivist group.
How To Get There
The keep is reached either by trekking through the swamp and wilderness or by chartering a Straline ship with the flash of a Noct Yaegir pendant.Notable Figures (NPCs)
Shelly Telly: Warden of Yoho keep and leader of the Telly clan. Adventurous, Over 50 years old and still going strong. Loyal to the Noct Yaegir and starting to look for a successor. Personality Granny, mob boss, pirate. Bit like Dola from castle in the sky or Ubaba from spirited away.Gami Telly: Son from Shelly’s eldest litter. A real crackpot with a love of machinery. Ever since the flotilla was sent flying into the swamp by the sea leviathan, Gami has made it his dream to convert the heart of Yoho keep into a modern airship. Personality: An easily excited cook that lives to make his dreams a reality.
Niquo: A young Straline (they/them) who joined the Telly clan after losing their parents to monsters. Niquo is quite the adventurous rogue and is thus quite the Favorite of Shelly Telly, who sees the young Straline as someone who might be fit to lead the Telly Clan. Other front runners for the position disapprove, but Niquo doesn’t seem all that bothered. They are more than happy to act as a guide for any visiting Yaegir. Personality: they’re a nice kid with a bright future.
Head Archivist: (WIP)
Architecture
Wood is the most common building material used but everything from metal plating, to rope, to cloth, to stone, to monster bones is used as well. The haphazard structures this produces are then decorated Wildly by trophies, flags, and colorful paints. The appearance that this creates is greatly loved by the several hundred Straline cat-goblins who call Yoho home.Points of Interest
The Environs: Marshlands stretching for miles around and to both of the ocean coasts. Also referred to as Yoho swamp, the environs are the extent of the Telly Clan’s directly controlled territory. Outposts and fishing huts are found throughout with boats that oar up and down the rivers to take things to and from Yoho keep. To most, this region appears like untamed wilderness. Though, those who believe this often fall victim to the crafty traps and ambushes the Straline have all throughout the marshlands.The Workshop: surrounding the central hold of Yoho keep is a sprawling mass of industry known generally as “The workshop”. From pulleys and cranes to gears and waterwheels, to forges and bellows, The workshop is ever alive with the sounds of Straline craftsmen and their many tools of infrastructure. Builders ever expand the sprawl of facilities as carpenters, butchers, smiths, alchemists, ropemakers, dymixers, and log keepers process monster corpses and natural resources with impeccable efficiency.
There is also talk about The Workshop’s depths, where members of the Telly clan are keen to unlock the secrets of artifacts that come from Malakath’s ancient past.
The Flagship: once the literal flagship of the Telly Clan flotilla, this vessel now serves as the central building of Yoho Keep. With countless rooms and corridors, the flagship is just as much a maze to navigate as anywhere else in the keep. Food and lodging is readily available here for visiting hunters and the massive apparatus of beurocracy needed to keep Yoho afloat is found on the upper decks as is the personal Quarters of Warden chief Shelly Telly. The whole structure is (fortunately) ventilated by a massive contraption thought up by Gami Telly, one of Shelly Telly’s eldest sons. It works by pulling air around metal tubes via giant fans that are powered by Straline running in giant wheels until they get tired. Gami Telly can often be found trying to implement more and more ideas into the flagship with constant mention of wanting to have the ship soar through the sky once more. (Though this time, under its own power.)
The Archives: a fairly recent addition to Yoho, The Archives were built for the benefit of Noct Yaegir Archivists who arrived to research Malakath. The archives were built out of a large storeroom on the flagship and go through occasional renovation as the collection of tomes and research ever grows. Here is found th largest collection of non-native inhabitants, as most of the Archivists come from other Noct Yaegir Keeps. This includes the Head Archivist who is rarely seen and even more rarely spoken to.
History
History for Yoho keep begins with the Telly clan. Once a sea-based tribe of Straline, the Telly clan was renowned in decades past for their adventurous spirit and love of hunting monsters. This became all the truer as the current chieftess of the clan, one Shelly Telly, became leader roughly forty years ago. This was an era of glory for the clan, until one faithful day when they ran afoul of a massive sea leviathan off Malakath’s western coast.The beast sent the whole flotilla flying high up into the sky, eventually landing in a swamp several miles inland. Mirculasly, the Crew survived, and took this as a sign that they should settle where the Sea beast had sent them. Since then the Tellys have turned their misplaced flotilla into a veritable fortress with the hulking landlocked flagship at its center.
In the years that followed, the Telly clan built up the structure they dubbed “Yoho Hold” and took to aiding their Straline cousins all across the continent with monster hunting, be it land, sea, or air. This continued up until the event that opened back up portal stone travel between Malakath and the rest of the world. When this occurred, the Noct Yaegir monster hunters were fast to aid in the exploration of this “new” continent. The Yaegir were led to Yoho as word was shared of Malakath’s most prolific monster hunters. Finding kindred spirits in the Telly, who were eager to learn of a secret order of monster hunters that spanned the entire world.
After much discussion and even more feasting, the Telly clan decided to ally themselves with Noct Yaegir. Renaming Yoho hold to Yoho Keep, and flying the night hunter colors from the mast of their flagship.
Since then, the alliance has held strong, with the Telly clan strengthening ties between the Noct Yaegir and the other Straline tribes greatly. Yoho keep remains Noct Yaegir’s home away from home in Malakath, and Shelly Telly remains chief and warden of the settlement. Though, talk has started on if the Old cat is going to step down, and hand leadership of the Telly clan down to one of her (many) children, or to someone else entirely.