agentlelog | event: a gentle explosion

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event: a gentle explosion

I see a world just out of reach
With shoulders of giants at my feet
There’s not a challenge I’m afraid to meet

► The OOC plotting post for this event can be found here.

► Direct all questions to the mods at this link.

STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND
You wake, warm and comfortable, and realize that you’re no longer where you were when you went to sleep. The dream was real. As you clamber out of bed and open your door, an impassive footman greets you and leads you to breakfast in a large hall filled with many, many people. They sit around a hodgepodge of tables in a mishmash of furniture—nothing matches anything else, and no two chairs are the same.

The woman from your dream catches your eyes. She stares at you with open shock. “Well,” she says, as a number of males turn to her with withering looks. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.” She smiles at you. “Welcome to Draega, Stranger. Please, join us.”

Join them at the table and have your breakfast, Stranger. There isn’t much to offer: porridge, water, a bit of milk, some wrinkled fruits, and bread. Coffee, thankfully, is not in short supply. Meet your fellow Strangers, both the ones choosing to live at the Queen’s Residence and those who arrived in the night with you.

As breakfast draws to a close, the Queen’s Steward, Prince Loren Sorey, explains that you may choose to find your own home or stay in the residence for as long as you please. Those who stay will receive a modest stipend but are required to participate in Allairavar’s morning trainings every day. At dawn. Before breakfast. Those who go will need to find their own homes among the ruined buildings of the city and make their own money.

The court begins filtering out of the Great Hall, dispersing to attend their many duties. Linger, Stranger, and overhear…

“What did you mean?” The man leaning over the Queen is Prince Allairavar. His membranous wings flare around him, and his expression is menacing. “This wasn’t supposed to happen?”

Queen Fayura doesn’t look at all alarmed by the massive man caging her against a wall. “It was a one-time spell,” she says. “The web was—” Her eyes go wide. “I need to go look at the web.” She ducks under Allairavar’s arm, which could put a tree trunk to shame, really, grabs Prince Verim, and drags him from the hall.

Allairavar bares his teeth at the wall and snarls. The sound rumbles through the room, and dark temper washes briefly through the residence before all the tangled webs tucked in corners absorb it, leaving the building peaceful and clean of psychic feeling once more.

A TALE OF TWO IDEALS
At exactly 5:46pm, an explosion rocks the city of Draega. Black clouds belch fire to the northwest of the city. Concurrently, in Old Town, a mob of landens armed with Breakers and Muters descends on The Last Meal. They surround an older, Blood woman.

i. Black Out
The power plant maintained by the Tinkers and the Elektrics has exploded. Across Draega, e-line appliances shut down and the city plunges into darkness—the sun set some 45 minutes ago.

Prince Loren reaches out to approximately half the Strangers, asking them to go to the power plant. He shares a mental map with them so they know how to reach the building, as well as the Craft used for air-walking. The tutorial is quick and hardly complete, but now you’ll be able to run above the city to reach your destination.

The power plant burns. Black smoke pours into the air. Master Elektric Doriah organizes the Tinkers and Elektrics who were able to escape on their own. A quick glance reveals how absolutely exhausted she is. When Strangers approach, she sneers but isn’t about to turn away good help.

“There are still people inside. The Blood who did this trapped us in shields.” She hesitates only a moment before collecting Breakers from guildmembers carrying them. “Take these. Your Jewel may not be able to break through the shields.”

Inside, well-ordered building is a mess of fire and melting steel. Airwalking protects your feet, and shields can keep out the heat, but you’ll need something more to protect your lungs. Put out fires, stop systems from overloading, save the machines from complete destruction, and rescue missing workers who are suffocating and cooking inside shields. The guildmembers trapped in the power plant will assist the Strangers who free them, helping mitigate the damage done to the plant and keep it from exploding the rest of the way.

ii. Death of a Councilwoman
Councilwoman Vera enjoys dinners at The Last Meal, and this is well known by everyone in the city. Today, public knowledge of her schedule doesn’t work so well in her favor.

As she approaches the restaurant with her family, a group of landens descends on them. Muters prevent the Blood from taking any action that isn’t purely physical, and this is enough to throw most of them off their stride; they’re used to relying on Craft to fight. The landens separate Vera from her family in a short-lived brawl. She shouts and screams—“Let me go! Don’t you know who I am? The Queen will have you executed for this! Your families will be thrown out of the city! You’re making a mis—”

A shot rings through the air.

The landens peel away from one of their own, a young man gripping a Breaker in both hands. He trembles as he stands over Councilwoman Vera, whose expression is frozen forever in shocked disbelief. Her body crumples to the ground, blood from a gunshot wound on her chest staining the white fabric of her blouse.

In the silence that follows the shot, Allairavar shoves free of the crowd. “Go home!” he snarled, Craft powering his voice.

No one moves.

Except the young landen man. He takes off at a run, and the crowd is still too horrified to do much to stop him. Allairavar wastes no time. He plunges after the young man. At the same time, he reaches out to the minds of the Strangers closest to Old Town. *The Ebon Council is, collectively, a sack of reeking shit, and Lady Vera was a bitch,* Allairavar tells the Strangers. *But if we don’t get between the Blood and the landens, we’ll have another war. We can’t afford another war. Keep them from killing each other while I deal with this idiot.*

AIR TIME
Whether you catch the news on a Far-caster in the city or you’re spinning the dial on your own device, you’ll hear…

the news
…angered local landen families by her hard-line position that Blood homes should receive priority as the city continues to recover from the fires set by the Hunter Guild last month. [The man speaks at a brisk pace, hurried and harried as though he has too much to say and not enough time to say it.]

Councilwoman Vera is known for her vocal disdain for the landen Guilds, isn’t that right, Garret? [Another man, nasally in tone. He doesn’t sound rushed so much as put upon.]

[Garret:] Correct, Wilt. She—excuse the interruption, but we are just now hearing— [The feed abruptly cuts off. Static pours from the Far-caster regardless of what local channel it is tuned to.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[In this instance, that person happens to be a somewhat absent-minded looking man with long red hair who's pouring himself some coffee, though he glances over to Sansa at her question. And then only just manages to save himself from accidentally overfilling his cup, before he puts the coffee pot back down with a vaguely apologetic smile.]

Oh, I thought that was what happened to everyone...or I guessed it was, I suppose, since that's what happened to me. But if it happened to two of us then it probably happened to everyone, right?

[With that somewhat ditzy-sounding question, he takes a sip of the black coffee and smiles more assuredly at her. Ren doesn't usually give out this sort of information unless he feels like it, but if it's happened to others, then it's probably common knowledge.]

I believe it is what happened to everyone. It seems so strange to share a dream, I know, but perhaps it cannot be considered a dream at all if we all dreamt it. At any rate, I'm willing to serve the Queen for now.

( Sansa very much wants to secure a victory for Winterfell in the war and she's willing to do almost anything in exchange for that. The Queen's demands do not seem impossible. )

Mmm, it'd be a bit weird if it only happened to certain people...I don't really know what's going on other than that she needed help, but I don't think it can hurt to do that for now either.

[Otherwise he wouldn't have agreed to come here in the first place. Despite the manner he's putting on, he's far too familiar with dreams bridging to reality to have treated that offer too frivolously.]

Is this your first time having something like this happen, then...?

It is. I’ve never had anything like this happen to me before. My brother has dreams that are visions, almost - I’ve never had that happen. Not until now.

( Sansa is not Bran. Her gifts lay in ruling, not dreaming. )

Oh, that sounds interesting...this sort of thing doesn't really happen where I come from at all, so it's pretty unusual.

[More unusual for anyone who doesn't share Ren's very rare set of powers from home, but still pretty unusual. He taps his mug a little as he looks along the table, tilting his head from one side to the other.]

I wonder how many different kinds of places people here came from, though.

I only have one person from my home, my brother, so most everyone is a stranger to me. There could be dozens of cities represented, truly. Dozens of worlds. I don't know how they will keep track of us all.

( Possible, in Sansa's experience, but unlikely that it will be done cleanly. Her own home at Winterfell strains with men from the Vale and the North cheek and jowl with Wildlings. What of this place? )

Oh, so you have someone from your world...? I haven't seen anyone here I recognise yet, but it's kind of interesting that there are people coming from the same place. [Maybe it's easier to ask people from the same world while you're there. Ren would be pretty happy to see anyone from his world show up, honestly, but he chose this for now, so for now he'll deal with being alone.]

I guess if the queen is asking everyone personally, she might be able to tell? It's still pretty hard work, but reaching out to everyone's dreams like that seems like it would be hard work too.

It is a magic I am not familiar with, to be certain. So much of this place is foreign to me and I am not sure if I will ever feel at home with it. I am willing to try, though, in order to help the Queen.

( Queens in Draega seem different than in Westeros, after all, and Fayura seems a good sort. Sansa wants to help her, if she can. )

Do you have queens where you hail from?

I don't know much about it either, but I guess anything that could reach out to so many people from so many places seems to me like it must be pretty strong...

[Ren's not entirely unversed in magic, but he's much more used to things like psychic powers that don't really run on quite the same wavelength. Magic isn't really a thing on his planet, unfortunately.]

Mmm, in my country we had emperors and empresses instead - and a leader that the people picked, too - but it's a similar sort of thing, right?

A leader that you chose? That...when they made my brother king, it was because he was still of the royal line, the line of House Stark. We hadn't had a king in a while, of course, but they still chose from House Stark. You choose one without a thought to a bloodline? Truly?

( That seems fanciful, in a way, and Sansa is more than intrigued about this sort of government. )

[That sounds like a more traditional kind of monarchy that this woman is familiar with, and Ren tilts his head a little curiously himself. There aren't many countries left that exclusively use that kind of system, to his knowledge, so either she's from well in the past or not from Earth at all.]

That's actually how most countries choose their leaders where I come from...some still have monarchies, but even then most of the decisionmaking is done by politicians chosen by the people. There's different groups that represent different interests, and every few years, people will vote for which one they think should be in charge. And then whoever leads that group oversees how the country operates until they get voted out or until they retire. So it's sort of like the monarch is a ceremonial leader, and then the elected person leads the actual government.

That is so strange to me. I think it might be good, of course, because everyone ought to have a voice, but too many voices might be a bad thing. It's just not something I would ever expect to work in Westeros.

( Still, it intrigues her, and Sansa wonders if it's something they could try someday. Even the smallfolk could have a voice in the world if that were the case. )

I think it depends on being able to coordinate that many voices, in a way...it mostly works pretty well in my world, but when you're talking about something as big as government, there's never going to be a system with no flaws anyway, right?

[Ren shrugs, picking up his coffee mug again. He finds government a bit dry, himself, since he doesn't usually concern himself with things that close to earth unless he has to, but at the same time, he kind of has to pay attention considering he's a business owner with international ties.]

So the place you came from is called Westeros, then...?

It is, yes, or the Seven Kingdoms. They used to all have separate kings, a long time ago, until Aegon the Conqueror came and conquered all of them on dragonback. The threat of dragonfire made everyone bend the knee or die.

( And now, she fears, it will happen again with Daenerys Targaryen and her three dragons. )

[Ren is hard pressed not to look almost childishly curious at the mention of dragons, but it sounds like she might not have terribly good experiences with them, so he has the decency to shut himself down on any of the questions he'd love to ask for now.]

I guess that would be a pretty good threat, wouldn't it...that sort of thing is more like what happened in the older history of my world, except without the dragons. We still sometimes have countries try to conquer other countries, but it's a lot more complicated now. And other countries will usually get angry with whoever's doing it.

[The dance that is international diplomacy in the 21st century. It's still a bit of a trainwreck, but at least it's mostly a functional(-ish) one.]

For us, if we try to conquer someone else, it's usually the south that ends the rebellion. Now, though, everything is fractured. It's every region for itself.

( Sansa wonders if they're not better off that way. )

I'm afraid I'm going to end up pestering you about your form of government. It's so different than ours and anything that works, truly works, in the best interest of the people is something I'm interested in learning.

That sounds a bit messy... [Ren takes a sip of his coffee, shrugging a little at the notion of being questioned on government.] I'm not directly involved in government or anything, so it'll only be as much as any normal person in my country knows about it that I can tell you about, but I don't really mind too much. Though I find it kind of a boring subject, so I might need some time to think more about what I do actually know about the details...

[It's not something he keeps close to the top of his head, as with most other topics he considers dry. He has the knowledge, he just doesn't employ it often enough to go for too long off the top of his head.]

Edited 2019-03-13 07:14 (UTC)

Oh, I'm quite sorry. I keep pestering you about government and I never even realized that it might not be a subject you liked or were well-versed on.

( Sansa tips her head a bit in apology. )

Please forgive me. It's always at the forefront of my mind, having been through two wars and one to come.

It's fine, I get it. [Ren waves a hand, still holding his mug in the other.] It sounds like what's going on in your world is pretty serious, so if you're here to help, then you might as well learn things you can take back to your world too, right? It makes sense. Especially since it sounds like the Queen here wants to hear from lots of different people.

[Meaning Sansa might be able to benefit from that in a way, if the subjects of government and justice systems and other necessities like that end up being asked for by Fayura as points of discussion.]

Exactly. There's all sorts of people here I can learn from - and their governments - that I hope I can bring back to my home and utilize as I try to make something out of a world that's been decimated by war.

( Sansa just wants Winterfell to feel like home again. It's on its way, yes, but there's so much work left to do. )

It sounds kind of like you're in a similar situation to the one who brought us here, honestly...so you might get to test some of that stuff here, too. If it goes well, then maybe it'll be a higher priority to try yourself, right?

[There's no harm in learning what one can from observation, as far as Ren's concerned. Even if he says it in the faintly airy manner he's kept for most of the conversation. He tries not to seem too knowing on first meeting, even if by default he's going to know very different things to some of the people here.]

Perhaps it does put me in the same position as Queen Fayura, at least in some ways. I just hope my experience in negotiating helps her with her problems so she can help me with mine.

( Sansa desperately needs help to get Winterfell through the war and if Fayura can help, Sansa wants to help her in kind. )

Well, that's what we're all aiming for, isn't it? We came to help and be helped, or at least that's what it sounds like so far...

[It's the offer he got and it sounds like Sansa got the same sort of thing, so it seems likely that it's how the message goes out to everyone.]

Hopefully she has an easier time helping all of us in the end. There's a lot of people here who she'll need to do that for.

I don't envy how busy she'll be. As much as we will all be helping her, that's quite a number of boons to be granted and there's no telling exactly what she's been asked.

( Sansa thinks it's rather daunting, all told, but if Fayura couldn't handle it, she wouldn't have asked, would she? )

Right, right...with a chance like that, a lot of people probably would have asked for pretty big things, right? I have to wonder what kind of commitment that's going to turn into for her when all this is sorted out...

[If she can simply draw that desire out of them somehow and make it manifest, that might be easier, but if she could do that, then why not simply do it on the problems here? Unless there are rules to that kind of magic, but he's not familiar enough with the system here to know that.]

event: a gentle explosion

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