aionlogs | EVENT #5: SOVEREIGN CITIZENS (VENERA)

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EVENT #5: SOVEREIGN CITIZENS (VENERA)

Sovereign Citizens

VENERA

In contrast the Aion's last visit, they now arrive in Venera on a completely average day... or so it seems. Unlike Godsblood, Venera has been given no warning as to what's about to befall it; the Kenoma are simply authorized to arrive and begin their bloody work without fanfare. Even their entourage of Achamite soldier don't stick out that much; in the time since the plague left, the city has refilled with occupying forces. Notably, the Hylician ones seem to be keeping out of the way, almost as if they've heard some things and would rather not be involved too closely in what's to come.

As opposed to the ghost town it was during the plague, Venera is now reasonably active, with most attending to their usual business. Shops are open, and its people are withdrawn but superficially friendly when meeting strangers. Initially, the targets of the Kenoma hit list will have no way of knowing what's coming for them, but after the first couple attacks word will begin to spread. Those that have recently been engaging in seditious behavior will become harder to find, leaving their usual homes and workplaces to stay elsewhere, and making other attempts to escape the Regent's attention.

Once those alerts have been raised, the Kenoma will have to engage in more detective work to find their targets, questioning other Venerans and seeking out fugitives in the homes of their family and friends. In the meantime, some of those who believe they are in danger may become desperately enough to seek out the Pleroma directly, imploring them for aid. Unfortunately, seeking out one sect may just as easily draw the attention of the other. Most uninvolved Venerans will be too terrified to intervene one way or another, reluctant to aid in the persecution of their neighbors but fearful of consequences. If your Aion travels openly, it will take some effort to pin them down long enough to hold a conversation.

SEEDS OF DESPAIR

Several days into the culling of Venera, the Aions will have witnessed the city gradually withdraw into itself. The streets become vacant as more and more people decide it isn't worth the risk to be seen outside, abandoning work and play alike to hide out in their homes, refusing to answer their doors to all except the most desperate pleading. Those that can't avoid their daily obligations are quiet and morose, trying their best to remain unseen and unremarked upon.

If your character has been observed as a Kenoma, either now or in their previous visits to the city, the citizens will look upon them as if they are the messengers of death. If you are seen as a Pleroma, they will resist your gaze, as if fearing your presence alone might leave them marked. In rarer cases, you will see those with stronger spirits, with glares of hatred or determination. They are powerless now, but seeds have been sewn, and whether they are the seeds of despair or of action are yet unclear.

By the time the Kenoma's hit list has been fully addressed, several have been killed and several more have been rushed from their homes to flee the city entirely. There have been holes left in the tapestry of the community they were once part of. One way or another, their absence will be felt keenly by those they left behind.

QUESTIONS

What is the best way for Aions to travel to Venera?
Estinien has plans to get an early start for the Pleroma by teleporting to the Lover's shrine and flying somewhere closer to set up a portal from the ocean caves near the Godsblood Lodestone to a spot of farmland closer to Venera. Paul will be setting up a portal directly from Achamoth to one of the Achamite outposts in Venera.

How much force can the Kenoma use while interrogating Venerans?
While they are generally not permitted to kill Venerans who haven't tried to physically fight them, they will be permitted to apply both physical and mental pressure upon those that refuse to provide them with information regarding the whereabouts of their targets. This duress should be proportional to the resistance the Veneran is offering. The Regent is not inviting them to terrorize Venera on a level to a level they cannot reasonably blaim themselves for.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Luo Binghe is pleased to be sent back to Venera, at first. He didn't enjoy himself the last time he was here, but the thing is, in the aftermath of that, he enjoyed himself even less? The things he was forced to revisit by the plague; his helplessness in the face of its dreamscape, a realm that until now he had believed he had mastered; not even getting to stab Estinien... It's all left him feeling insecure and distracted, loosely aware that he's failing to keep on task with his goals, but too preoccupied by his inner demons to truly feel those goals are worth prioritising.

Being reunited with the cursed sword that exaggerates his negative emotions and encourages his destructive impulses hasn't helped with that, of course...

But now the Regent has handed down this very specific, easy to follow order. He's going to win some good boy points and get himself back on task. How hard can it be to track down and capture some stupid mortal rebels in a city like Venera?

i. TRACKING DOWN SOME STUPID MORTAL REBELS:
This is the easy part. Luo Binghe has no qualms whatsoever with hunting down people who he's pretty confident are going to die after he arrests them. He'd be willing to simply behead them in the street himself if it was what the Regent had asked.

It wasn't what they asked, though, so he's approaching this with a little more finesse. He's memorised the list of names and is prowling around Venera, dressed as inconspicuously as he can manage, but still with a sword at his waist that gives you bad vibes if you look at it. Closer to the beginning of the cull, you might find him [a] in the artisan's district, chatting amiably with a teenage girl who's sweeping wood shavings out of a workshop about her father, to whom this workshop apparently belongs; a few days later, as the locals' hackles have started to go up, he's having a slightly harder time [b] at one of the city's larger markets, getting visibly impatient with a stern-looking man selling vegetables.

ii. DOING THE OPPOSITE THING, ACTUALLY:
So, it turns out one of the stupid mortal rebels is a name Luo Binghe recognises. More specifically, it's one of the older women he worked with when he was sent here last. He'd been infiltrating the the hospital kitchen in order to sneak his blood into the food, so that he could use his blood mites to examine infected civilians from the inside. And he'd hit it off with the various old ladies who usually volunteered there pretty much immediately, due to being really earnest and polite with old ladies, and also a skilled cook who insisted he'd learned everything from his beloved mother. And he was just doing it so they wouldn't be suspicious of him, but also… it was nice. To have some sweet aunties fuss over him like that. It wasn't like he was going to let it get in the way of anything he needed to do. Sure, maybe he'd brought gifts for them from Achamoth when he was sent back to Venera on this mission, figuring he could give them something nice in between disappearing people for the Regent, but that didn't mean he was invested, just that he liked to repay his debts, and they'd been kind to him.

But.

Looking down at that name on the list, Binghe tries to remind himself that these women don't matter. The only thing that matters is Shizun. He needs to take control of the Kenoma's power so he can form a new world where Shen Qingqiu will never be so disappointed in him as to abandon him the way he did. If everything goes to plan she will die anyway. Except... he doesn't know if he really believes that new world can happen. He never has been sure. It's hard to feel hope with his hand on the hilt of Xin Mo. It's easier to feel impatient, and possessive, and desperate to cling to whatever small happinesses the world will allow him to hold.

So, here he is: running errands for the hospital aunties as an excuse to lurk around that specific hospital, so that if any of his fellow Kenoma come snooping around here looking for Cher Alba, he can misdirect them. If he spots one of his supposed comrades, he'll make a beeline for them.

"Have you heard anything useful?" he asks, apparently sincere.

Pleroma Aions, of course, will just get glared at. He's not doing anything bad, though, so you can't harass him!! (You can, but he'll be really smarmy about it.)

ooc: i'll match format if you'd prefer to tag w brackets! if you want binghe for something different feel free to hit me up on plurk or discord or da plotting post ✌️

[Hayame despises stealth.

That does not mean, however, that she is bad at it.

As much as it chafes what shreds of honor and dignity that she has left to hide her proper form beneath the glamor of a woman with two legs, to skulk in the shadows and watch the movements of Achamite guards to memorize their patrols, to reconnoissance instead of fight… She cannot show her hand yet, not if she wants to honor the promises she has made, the debts she needs to repay.

But then she sees one. A face she had memorized not only from the Regent’s spirit courtroom, but from a Firebrand melding of the minds, a show of who’d had a hand either directly or not in a Estinien’s “death”… The face of a man who had smirked at her, across the shadows and the miles that separated them. A man who had all but dared her to release her rage on him.

She shouldn’t act yet. She should bite her tongue and swallow her pride and let him go…

Instead, Hayame’s blood boils in both of her her hearts and her pulses pound in her ears as she watches him walk across the Veneran streets seemingly without care of concern. And why not? This city was full of weaklings, already held with the Regent’s heel on its neck. Why shouldn’t these Kenoma who served him feel confident in this place? Why should they not smirk?

The fletching of her arrow is at her cheek before she knows it.

The shot is long, nearly two hundred yards distant, but she is a jinba and her bow is made for her strength, for the musculature of a woman who might look partly human but wasn’t. Her eyes are sharper than a human’s, her draw is cleaner, her strength far greater.

Her aim is better.

With no warning, no sound, no shouts from Venerans still too shocked by the sight to open their mouths before she shoots-

An arrow flies directly at a man.]

[ The arrow finds its mark in Luo Binghe's shoulder almost before he has time to react, even with his superior senses; his arm jerks up to grab the shaft in his hand, but it's too late, the tip is already buried in his flesh. Someone nearby screams. He ignores them, eyes flashing red as he scans the direction the arrow came from—

There. Further away than he expected, but her fury is unmistakable.

His eyes narrow. He recognises her, from the Regent's address; one of the Pleroma Aions, although... she does look a little different this time.

Binghe brushes off a Veneran nervously approaching to ask if he's alright, and, yanking the arrow out of his shoulder himself with a grunt and a spray of blood, streaks towards the archer. His qinggong makes his steps light, and he crosses the distance with inhuman speed. If she doesn't start moving he'll catch up to her quickly—but from the way she looked at him in the Regent's communion, he doubts she intends to run. ]

[Hayame has stopped being shocked at seeing people who ought to be human moving as if they were demons or monsters. Actually, that wasn't true- she still possesses the ability, and she still recoils instinctively from magic and abilities unbecoming of the humans she had grown up surrounded by in her world...

But the rage burns the shock out. This man moves faster than a man should be able to move? Fine.

But she doesn't run yet. She dislikes running almost as much as she dislikes hiding, but though she still at least barely maintains the glamor spell, still wears a cloak... there's nothing subtle about a bow over six feet long. Venerans around her finally scatter, scrambling to get away from anything that might involve them in a dispute between aions or implicate them to the Achamites, leaving plenty of space-

For Hayame to fire off another arrow. This time, one aimed at his head.]

[ He's watching her do it this time, and he catches it inches from his face. He makes eye contact as he pushes his demonic qi into the arrow, making it shatter in a burst of black smoke. It's completely unnecessary, but he decides he can afford to he gratuitously threatening. (Also, his shoulder hurts, and he's mad she got that first hit in.)

He stops about twenty feet from her, and draws Xin Mo. The sword's sinister miasma isn't visible, exactly, but it doesn't, like, feel good, to look at or be around. He raises his voice to call out to her: ]

I assumed the Pleroma's soldiers believed they were here to protect people. I must have been wrong.

[Twenty feet of distance. He has a blade. He has some sort of magic.

Fine.

With the Venerans scattering, scrambling at the corner of her senses, Hayame's mental grasp on the glamor spell she wears begins slipping, and the cloaking mask of a two-legged woman begins giving way to her natural shape, to seven feet of solid muscle carved out by harsh living and even harsher training, but the face stays the same. She'd be an elegant beauty... if her expression didn't promise death. If her lip didn't curl back in a disgusted snarl.]

Protect people?

[This isn't her world. Her race didn't even exist here. These aren't her people. Even if they were, she could count the ones she had once cared to protect on her fingers, and this man thinks- ?]

Do not think me one of those compassionate fools.

["Compassionate", when she says it, is most certainly not a compliment. Not when her fingers snatch another arrow from her quiver, notching it expertly on the string, an issue of two seconds max to level it at his heart.]

I came here to kill servants of the Regent.

[And he was glad enough to be one to smirk. So what if he could do magic? So what if he could destroy an arrow in the air? That had been one shaft.

She will just have to shoot faster. Something she sees no reason not to try right now, releasing her string and moving immediately for another arrow to follow the first.]

Hah—!

[ He lets out a grunt of surprise as he deflects this arrow with his horrible sword—she's faster than he expected—but he's still sneering. ]

Why? If you don't care if all these people die, why should you care what we do?

I don’t care what you do.

[The snarl is brazen and loud, accompanied by the twang if her bowstring as she fires off another arrow, and then another, willing to use every arrow in her quiver if she had to in order to find just what speed was required for him to slip and miss that fancy bladework that was far speedier than any human ought to be.

In order to care for what they did here… Hayame would need to feel connected with the native residents of this world, and she has spent her time since waking up here hating it, resenting it as a foreign land she had never asked to visit. Her shape did not allow her to walk among the natives as a friend, and so she kept to herself, alone in the forests of Greentruth consumed by hate. She wanted go home, back to her world where she belonged and where she’d promised to die-]

I care what your Regent did!

[She cared about the cold, simple “yes” that had been supplied when Rand demanded if the Regent was responsible for destroying their worlds.]

[ The speed of her arrows is the kind of thing Binghe might expect from a cultivator who specialised in the bow, not a huge horse-woman with a weapon almost as tall as he is; he deflects a couple more with his blade but he only narrowly manages to avoid a headshot with the third; it punches straight through his ear, streaming blood as it whizzes out of the other side and thunks into the street behind him.

He hisses, clapping his hand to the side of his head, and leaps back to put more distance between them, more space for him to deal with the arrows. Grimacing, he makes a hand seal to command Xin Mo, and the sword rises into the air in front of him, shimmering with demonic energy. He doesn't go on the offensive straight away, though, compelled by what she's said in spite of his pain. ]

What could they possibly have done that would impact you?

[ He was there for that, of course, they all were, but he didn't take it all seriously... ]

[There. It might not be much, it might be only blood and a ripped ear, but it's proof enough that perhaps she has a chance, that perhaps she could hope to match whatever strangely inhuman strength that this smirking man possessed.

This smirking, ignorant man?]

They claimed to be responsible for destroying our worlds, and you ask... me... that?

[Each snarl is accompanied by another arrow, each pause a few steps back towards him to try and re-close the distance he's opened between them. His sword is moving, something sick is hovering around it-

But for now... She keeps firing, her quiver quickly depleting.]

[ Oh. That? Binghe scoffs.

Xin Mo soars through the air at his command, bisecting arrows closer and closer to Hayame as she moves closer and it weaves towards her. ]

You believed that? If they were truly responsible for that destruction— [ he snarls as an arrow grazes his cheek ] —why would they need our lowly assistance to destroy this world?

[ He twitches his fingers, and the sword plunges towards her, aiming, approximately, for her humanoid half's midsection. He has no idea where the organs in a creature like her are located, but his experiences fighting various chimerical demonic beasts have taught him that most things will die if you stab them enough. ]

If they didn't, then why are you even serving them?!

[By chance, other Kenoma she had met and spoken with had been very vocal about their belief that their worlds were all dead. The last jinba, one had called her, we have nothing left, another murmured.

Did she believe it? She didn't want to, no matter how it had felt like she had seen it, in that dreamscape between light and dark. In that court of shadows, when the Regent had declared so sure that they were responsible for the destruction of their worlds... it had seemed believable. Was it more comforting to think it existed and only she was denied being in it, or was it better to think it all gone and everyone dead, and she the only one left to suffer life?]

Even if they didn't-

[The accursed magic blade in the air comes for her, and Hayame has to throw her power into movement rather than targeting, though she still shoots in his direction as she dodges the sword in a clatter of hooves, slamming into a storefront with enough force to bruise deep just so that she could then use the wall as force to push off and propel herself in a loop around him, torn between the risk of long-distance when a sword could fly and the risk of close quarters when he might be able to pull the blade back in quickly.]

Someone will pay for bringing me here!

[If not the Regent, then who?

Her aim isn't as good in motion, but she still fires at him while the blade is chasing her instead of only guarding him.]

[ He laughs, bitterly and incredulously, at that question. ]

If I thought they were the one who'd done it, I'd be fighting on your side instead.

[ If the Regent had been the one to obliterate his world—his beloved—he would be doing all he could to tear them to shreds. Good thing he's decided that's impossible!

He turns to keep facing her, but attention on driving his sword towards her diminishes his ability to dodge her arrows. It wouldn't matter if his healing ability was what it once was—but he needs to stop lamenting that. It is what it is; and what it is right now is this woman's arrows drawing blood he can't do away with as soon as it happens.

It will be worth it, he thinks, if he is able to injure one of her legs, so that's what he aims for, swinging the sword through the air aggressively at horse ankle height. If he can't injure her like that at least he can try to throw her off balance avoiding Xin Mo. ]

LUO BINGHE | KENOMA | FIREBRAND

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