London

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/__|             HOMETOWN_LONDON "HOMETOWN LONDON"              |__\
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A busy port of call, London is crowded and exciting. Many expert marksmen,
doctors, orators, and musicians make this place their home. Several notable
warriors and thieves have also started their careers there, although their
number is not as large as those from Ireland or Germany. Mages, druids, and
herbalists are non-existent there.

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/__|       'LONDON PORT' LONDON PORT 1841 'PORT OF LONDON' LONDPORT       |__\
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England in 1841 was at the very dawn of the Victorian Age. It was the decade
that would come to be known as 'The Hungry Years,' as industrialization spread
and the lower classes became more firmly established. During the years
preceding, the gradual spread of industry had led farmers away from the
countryside, and eliminated at single strokes the jobs of countless workers
with such inventions as the power loom and the combine. These people found
themselves competing for few jobs in what was becoming a highly mechanized
economy.

A middle class of merchants was formed out of the aristocracy who found their
taxes dwindling and the lower class that aspired to more. Business ventures
such as the South Seas Bubble company collapsed, but other commercial
ventures, such as the China Tea Trade, flourished. However, even for these
businesses, times were changing, as the steam ship took over from the mighty
and glorious clipper ship, queen of the seas.

Ideologically, this was a troubled time, as a crisis of faith in God resulted
from the many discoveries of science. Soon educated men divided themselves
into two principal schools: Utilitarians, the followers of Jeremy Bentham,
who based everything upon the utility of objects, and who managed a quick
reform of the Civil Service; and the followers of Coleridge, firm believers
in faith.

Although we have a lingering impression of the Victorian Age as a repressive
repressed society, it was one of the most vital periods of English history,
lively and full of controversy. Belief in technology was at its height, and
the superstitions of magic had been swept away, reserved for gothic horror
novels. Medical science was improving by leaps and bounds. Living conditions
were terrible for many in 1841, and it was not long before Marx produced his
Communist Manifesto, but England was by that time well on the way to becoming
the dominant nation in the world, and London the jewel in the crown of the
British Empire.
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