ZERO PARADES wiki

Tenantries of Saint Ulwen

The Tenantries of Saint Ulwen are a country that doesn’t exist anymore — and the loudest reason for its erasure is two of the regulars in the Backways of Quisach. The Tenantries were a country in the Territories, a series of island states in the Noscorrentes Sea that were originally La Luz colonies before attaining their independence. By ‘96, the Tenantries no longer exist as a sovereign nation — they’ve been fully re-annexed by La Luz, and the city that gave them their name has been physically erased.

What the Tenantries were

The Tenantries of Saint Ulwen were one of the post-colonial island states that broke from La Luz some time before the early ’80s. The launch wiki confirms:

  • St. Ulwen — the capital city and port. Coastal, the seat of whatever government the Tenantries ran.
  • Tarisca — a coastal town to the northeast of St. Ulwen, where Pigeon worked as a freelance military pilot.
  • The Vioren canyon — a notable geographical feature of the country.

Politically, the launch wiki doesn’t go into detail about the Tenantries’ internal organisation — whether they were a federation of tenant communities (the name suggests something like that), or a unitary state that styled itself after one. The post-colonial relationship to La Luz was the defining one.

The Reunión

In the early ’80s, La Luz launched the Reunión — a territorial reclamation campaign that swept back through its former colonies in the Noscorrentes Sea, including the Tenantries. The Tenantries were one of the territories caught in that campaign.

The defining event was the berrion bombing of St. Ulwen. La Luz dropped berrion bombs — weapons of mass destruction described as utterly obliterating “all trace” of the city — on the Tenantries’ capital. The destruction was total. St. Ulwen, as a place, ceased to exist.

The bombing was an example. The Reunión was meant to remind the rest of the Territories what re-annexation would look like if they resisted.

Pigeon’s escape

Just before the bombing, Pigeon — then a retired military pilot working freelance out of Tarisca — stole a Luzian cargo plane and got out. He flew himself out of the Tenantries before the city he’d been operating out of was obliterated. Fifteen years on, he’s drinking in the Backways of Quisach with Slava and Loud João, all three of them retired expatriate pilots.

Pigeon is the wiki’s most direct witness to the Reunión. The Critical Wolf Cup he hands CASCADE for the A Gift for Duchess task comes from a man who escaped a state-erasure event with a stolen plane.

Slava’s joke

The other documented Tenantries-connected character is Slava, the second pilot at the Backways table. Slava jokes about using his old Tenantry passport to “return home” in the event that the Luzians turn their attention to Portofiro.

The joke has three layers:

  1. The Tenantry passport doesn’t work anymore — the country doesn’t exist.
  2. The “home” Slava is referring to was wiped off the map by the same Luzians he’s joking about.
  3. If La Luz did move on Portofiro the way it moved on St. Ulwen, an old Tenantry passport would be exactly the wrong document to be carrying.

That’s the kind of humour the Backways table runs on.

What this country tells you about La Luz

The Tenantries of Saint Ulwen are the launch wiki’s clearest evidence of La Luz as a violent actor.

In other parts of the world’s mythology, La Luz is the cultural superpower — the country that produced Sixty-Six Wolves, the country whose pop culture is bootlegged everywhere despite EMTERR’s Cultural Blockade. The Reunión and the berrion bombing of St. Ulwen are the other face of La Luz — the country whose post-colonial reclamation projects use weapons of mass destruction.

CASCADE’s ‘96 Portofiro operation isn’t directly downstream of the Reunión. But the geopolitical context — what La Luz can and will do to a city it wants back — is the wallpaper of every conversation about La Luz in the game.

Cities

  • St. Ulwen — former capital. Obliterated by berrion bombs during the Reunión.

La Luz, Pigeon, Slava, Loud João, Portofiro, Sixty-Six Wolves, EMTERR, A Gift for Duchess.