The Fall of Man RP

Evolution & Technology

The animals have picked up a few new things from the humans that they've conquered, despite wanting to wipe the earth clean of their abuse and mistakes.

Education

Most often, animals learn different skills and trades by learning from others or practicing for years on their own. Many animals might learn how to read and write from their parents at a young age, but once they are old enough to obtain their own trade, they would have to go out, find someone to give them an apprenticeship, and learn their own way.

There are schools available for middle and upper class animals that want to put their children through some kind of education system, too. These schools, paid in resources, riches, and food, teach literacy, basic survival skills, and life skills, like sewing, culling meat, hunting, etc. The more expensive the school, the better the education is, so nobles tend to get a better education than those in the middle and lower classes. Most lower class families do not get to put their children through school and often have to either teach them a family trade or let them find their own way of life on Collinwood’s difficult streets.

Occupations

There are a variety of occupations available to the residents of Collinwood. A list of possible trades can be found below:

Upper Class

Upper Class animals tend to have access to occupations where they’re put in a place of power over others, put in charge of something, or trusted with keeping watch over valuable goods. These jobs tend to be on the easier side, allowing lower classmen to do the hard or dirty work.

• Law Maker: An animal whose job is to write up new or needed laws to present to the Crown.
• Commander of Knights: The head honcho who's in charge of commanding the knights to their posts, ensuring knights are enforcing law and order, and helps bring new knights into the fold.
• Royal Advisor: The Royal Advisor should be an open-minded and experienced individual. This animal's job is to simply advise the King and Queen and provide an alternate set of ideas in discussions. This animal should be in the know about many goings on in Collinwood.
• Chamberlain: The castle's official Treasurer, the Chamberlain keeps track of the Crown's goods, supplies, riches, and assets, and is in charge of both receiving and sending out goods accordingly, based on the King and Queen's orders.
• Royal Guard Captain: This animal commands the Royal Guard, the Crown's private police force. The Royal Guard Captain orders his guards to their posts, ensures all guards are doing their jobs, and ensures that at all costs, he keeps the royal family safe.
• Hume Breeding Specialist: Working directly under the Crown, this animal is the head of the Breeding Program run in Tinley Castle. Their focus is to breed the best human for the Servant job. This animal's job includes studying trends during breeding processes, organizing breedings between the best humans, and ensuring all offspring produced by Tinley Castle is top-notch and high quality. They are not above culling the odd and out dud here and there.
• Hume Breeder: Employed by Tinley Castle as well, these animals study trends during breedings and ensure all humans kept in the castle's breeding program are well taken care of.

Middle Class

Those in the Middle Class tend to have respectable occupations, working for the right animals, though often stuck with all the hard or dirty work. Animals in this tier are often hard workers because it’s required of them. Sometimes animals are able to establish their own kind of business, such as crafting or raising animals to be sold or slaughtered.

• Blacksmith: A metalworker who fabricates weapons, armor, tools, among other useful things. They are seasoned crafters with many years in the trade.
• Bounty Hunter: A Bounty Hunter is responsible for locating, arresting, and returning fugitives to the place they were originally detained. Bounty Hunters might come collecting owed money, detain criminals on the run, or otherwise reclaim stolen goods as well.
• Mercenary: A neutral party that is often contracted as sellsword or a guard for hire. Mercenaries might be hired to guard an asset or protect someone during uncertain times or travel.
• Spy: Often employed by the Crown's Royal Advisor or some other noble seeking information, these animals are paid for the information they gather from the streets and their environment.
• Butcher: The butcher buys carcasses, and breaks them down into parts - skins for leather, meat for consumption, and bones for tools, jewelry, and other items.
• Educator: These animals work in the few schools around Collinwood, educating the Upper and Middle class animals in subjects like literacy, survival, and basic life skills.
• Herdsman: This animal is experienced in raising and rearing livestock animals, such as cattle, sheep, or pigs, for meat and other resources.
• Horse Breeder: Horse Breeders keep good breeding horses and breed new horses for transportation and cart-pulling. They sell them for a price to Traders in the area.
• Horse Trader: An animal who buys horses from a breeder and sells them to the masses of Collinwood.
• Nursery Caretaker: This animal works in the Nursery, a facility that trains and conditions young humans for their life as Humes.
• Jeweler: This animal refined raw crystals, metals, gold, and silver into beautiful jewelry pieces. They then either sell them to a trader or sell them directly to other animals.
• Knight: Knights help keep order and ensure laws are followed in the city. These soldiers might be called when there's civil unrest or to resolve a conflict between citizens.
• Librarian: These animals double as Historians and ensure historical records and animal-made literature is kept safe and respected. They often run establishments that allow animals to come and read their texts without asking for anything except respect for their literature.
• Doctor / Healer: These animals utilize herbal concoctions and wrappings to treat illnesses and wounds. Other jobs under this category include Midwives, Psychologists, Apothecaries, Surgeons, and Wise Women.
• Merchant: Either general or selling a specific set of items, these animals are salesmen to the core. Some choose to set up shop in an old ruin or put up a stand, while others choose to be roaming traders.
• Tailor: These animals craft and design clothing for the masses. Other jobs in this category include Weavers.

Lower Class

These animals often have little training and little means to move up in the world, and as such, take on the hard labor jobs that no one else wants. These animals often work with their hands and turn raw materials into crafting materials. Easily the most ambitious types, they try to turn a little something into a big something. Animals in this class often resort to criminal activities to make a living as well.

• Chef: These animals use raw food items and turn them into delicious meals, oftentime utilizing old cooking methods picked up from the humans. Other jobs under this category also include Bakers.
• Builder: Often birds, these animals have an affinity for working with their hands and building things from scratch. They can use raw materials to completely construct simple homes, or use what they know to fix up old ruins left behind by the humans.
• Crafters: These animals take raw materials and craft items from them. There is a wide range of things that can be crafted from raw materials, and this animal usually picks a certain type (or few types) of crafting.
• Farmer: An animal who dedicates their life to growing crops for food, materials, herbs for medicine and cooking, and other resources. They may employ Gatherers to pick crops from their field when it's time to harvest. Other jobs in this category include Gardeners and Florists.
• Gatherer: Gatherers gather raw resources from those that grow them, mine them, process them, etc.
• Miner: Miners dig underground tunnels and gather raw ore or raw crystals. The labor is hard work and those that do this long term usually don't lead very healthy lives.
• Hunter: These animals, often working for Butchers or contracted by the Crown and other wealthy families, hunt and kill prey animals from the forests beyond. They often go out with a horse-drawn flatbed carriage and don't come back until it's filled with carcasses to be processed the next day.
• Entertainer: These animals work various jobs, but their main purpose is to entertain in some form or another. Other jobs in this category include Dancers, Singers, Musicians, Actors, Athletes, among many others.
• Messenger: These animals deliver messages between parties, most often from the Crown to others in Collinwood, but can be paid by other Upper Class animals to deliver messages as well.
• Thief: These animals, usually the lowest of the low, steal from others for a living. They often sell their stolen items to Merchants looking to make a fast profit.
• Spy: Often employed by the Crown's Royal Advisor or some other noble seeking information, these animals are paid for the information they gather from the streets and their environment.

Culture

Nobility

A lot of Collinwood's culture is based directly around the Nobility. Flashy titles accompany the human roles in which they adopted - Prince/Princess, Duke/Duchess, Count/Countess, and so on - though only serve the heads of the households in which they are appointed, with the exception of the royal family's princes and princesses. Other members of the appointed houses are simply known as Lord or Lady, such as the children and the extended family of the leading pair in question.

Being a noble means having an easy life, more or less. Once the daily duties are completed, the King and Queen, along with the rest of their brood, have a lot of free time to do as they please. The nobility is known for throwing large and extravagant parties, equipped with lavish food, drink, and dancing, for those in their inner circle. These parties are often used for networking and overall matchmaking.

Additionally, hunting excursions are a popular pastime choice as well. Originally limited to the males in the humans' world, female animals frequent these excursions as well.

While parties and hunting aren't just restricted to the noble class, they are a lot less extravagant when thrown by the middle and lower classes, but they still serve their purposes.

Clothing & Style

Synthetic materials quickly became a thing of the past as machinery died out, but many fibers including wool, leather, linen, and cotton are still available to the animals today through their natural sources. As long as an animal has the know-how to refine the raw materials into workable fibers, they are able to make varying clothing and accessories out of them. Middle and Lower Class animals would’ve likely crafted simplistic clothing out of fibers and leather, easily obtainable materials; whereas Upper Class animals would’ve been able to provide the extra expense to have clothes and accessories crafted for them in finer materials.

Dyes, crafted by bugs, can be manufactured by crafters and utilized by clothing makers, or animals interested in dying their own clothing. The process that transforms raw materials into workable crafting materials is a tedious process, but it is possible.

The clothing trends that the animals wear do not necessarily fall in line with the Middle Ages, and crafted clothing can adopt modernized styles all the way up to the year 2050, when humanity fell.

Technology

While the humans left behind plenty of ancient technology, the tiny switchboard electronics, small fraying wires, mechanical structures, and endless wordless books were useless after being exposed to the elements for decades before the animals were capable of using them. Being animals, despite their evolved forms, they were perfectly fine without this tedious technology and found innovation through other means. Larger, more simplistic structures, such as aqueducts, were constructed to provide water to most homes and simplistic plumbing solutions. While the animals don’t mind relieving themselves outside the home, they supplied simplistic stone toilets for their Humes and bathtubs for their personal hygiene.

Gas and electricity are things of the past and are not available to the animals, though most are equipped with the survival gifts they once needed (night vision, for example) and do not really fret over this. However, candles and other natural sources of light are often used for their humans.

While mass manufacturing became a thing of the past, the animals are still capable of creating many crafting components from source materials, though the processes are tedious, long, and require much practice, learning, and apprenticeship to be mastered. As such, there are pre-made items available for trade through traders who seek to sell their goods for other needed items and materials.

Animals, like birds who have a natural affinity for building, might take up a trade in building and fixing, where they would utilize raw materials to build and maintain the ruins in which many animals live. Many animals living in Collinwood simply live in patched up city ruins, but they are capable of building simplistic homes from raw materials, such as stone, brick, and wood.

Materials

Since it’s been about 700 years since humanity existed at its full potential, most scavenged items are no longer in working order. Most items (cigarettes, building materials, dishes, clothing, art, dyes, etc.) would have to be made from scratch by the animals to be utilized. This is not to say that these items couldn’t be obtained through a trader or craftsman who has otherwise taken the legwork out of creating the item in its current form.

Weapons

Guns, canons, and other heavy artillery became ancient tools of ancient wars, falling to ruin without proper maintenance. Most handheld melee weapons are available to the animals now, given they are made from materials like metal, wood, bones, feathers, and other related materials. Swords, knives, spears, bows, and crossbows would be available to use and create, to name a few.

Though some animals may prefer to use their own teeth and claws in battle. It’s all up to the individual and what they’d prefer to use in a fight, a hunt, to protect themselves, etc.

Hunting & Animal Husbandry

Most unevolved animals are fair game and can be hunted in the outskirts of Collinwood. Animals may choose to use their claws and teeth or a weapon of choice to bring home meat for their family. Horseback Hunting is also a common and popular pastime of the nobles , usually done with Humes to tag along and help track, carry, and cut up the day’s prey.

Please see Maryland Fauna for a list of prey animals found naturally in and around Collinwood.

Alternatively, many animals might choose to rear livestock instead and sell meat, milk, and eggs to other residents who may not have the ability to hunt so readily, like the elderly and sick. These animals tend to live on the outskirts of Collinwood, in the Cedarville Woods where the land is open and wide, and there’s more grass than concrete for their herds to graze.

Travel

The most common form of travel is on foot, by those who are neither nobility nor have the means to own their own horse or pack animal. Animals that normally walk on their hind legs may opt to walk on their four legs for faster long distance travel.

Horses, bulls, sometimes elk, and other beasts of burden are often used by Middle-to-Upper Class citizens for a more lenient way of travelling about. Horse-drawn carriages are most often used by the nobility to get around, providing both a bit of privacy and class to their travel methods.

Boats are one of the only long distance travel available to the animals, and most voyages are long and treacherous. Because of this, cross-country travel is kept at a minimum.