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 Shops are open, and its people are withdrawn but superficially friendly when meeting strangers.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

[… The so-called Kenoma really thought the “Pleroma” were utter fools, didn’t they? For a moment, Hayame is almost offended… until she remembers that not only does she barely align herself with them…

There were a bunch of utter fools in that group. After all the grand speeches and emotional appeals based on nothing but hopes and faith that she’s heard from people in Godsblood and Greentruth… the servants of the Regent might not be wrong about thinking that just announcing such a thing might be greeted with enthusiasm. That it might be met with enough immediate trust despite his claim not to expect it that it meant she wouldn’t shoot.

Instead, he remains on the target end of an arrowhead, and Hayame calls out only two words across the water.]

Prove it.

[There’s only a few methods she can even begin to believe would be enough for her to buy that convenient story… but maybe he’s clever. He did look like a scholar, after all.]

I have nothing to gain from this. I could run away now and leave you to do as you please.

[If anything, he's doing this for her own benefit. But perhaps she'll be patronised, rather than encouraged by such a response, and understandably so, so he continues.]

But when I saw you in the courtroom... I understood perfectly how you felt in that moment. You hate the Regent. You want to destroy them, and anyone who dares cooperate with them. Maybe there's someone you want to avenge, maybe you want to avenge your homeland, or your whole world... But that feeling has consumed you more than anything since you arrived on Horos. It's eating you alive.

[His time is ticking down, the sand in the hourglass running its course. He needs to get to the point.]

I understand because I feel the same way. I had no choice when I joined the Kenoma, but if I could destroy the Regent right now, I would.

[Even without direct Communion, even with the sect dividing them, she might be able to gauge from that faint empathic link Aions share that he's telling the truth. That his all-consuming, deep-seated rage is just as genuine as hers, that it has nothing to do with being Kenoma or Pleroma. Surely that's a more honest form of evidence than any information he could try to bribe her with.]

[The first thing he says is undoubtedly true. This man was glowing like a mushroom in a dark forest, and since he'd begun it he moved like lightning. As much as she wanted to believe that her arrows would reach him because she should be faster, because in a world that made sense she would be... If he used that speed to run she could not catch him.

But he claims to understand her, perfectly, and Hayame's hackles race immediately, the glamor spell that presents her as a woman with two legs only beginning to crack and splinter as her will to maintain the illusion suffers. If she wold just open her heart or her mind to the bond between aions, invisible and empathic, perhaps she would be unable to call him a liar...

Except she hasn't been able to. Not properly. She's spent her entire life guarding her true thoughts and deceiving her own heart, forcing it to grow icy and cold for the sake of survival in a world where to bleed and feel was weakness. She has been here for months, and only once has she managed communion, the only other time the Regent had ripped her spirit into his court, it had not been her choice. It's there, some sick and unexplainable sense of this man she could reach out and touch and know-

But she's afraid. Because if she brushes up against him... he will be able to feel her. He'll know that beneath the rage and hate and desperate need for revenge... there is only despair. Fear. The urge to cut her belly open and end it all rather than attempt to live in a world that isn't her own and never will be, the only jinba left alive in a sea of men who saw her as half a beast.]

No one here understands me! Certainly no man!

[Her voice snaps out, knuckles pale on her bow shaft, doing nothing to disprove his claims. When it came to words... she cannot call him a liar in his assessment of her, and yet-]

You had no choice but to join the Regent, but now you do?

[She doesn't know how this black sludge worked. Did its hold weaken over time? Could he be telling the truth? Her fingers nearly release the arrow, only barely keeping her knuckles clenched behind the fletching.]

I was forced into their ranks, and made to ingest that... thing inside me. I had no choice but to accept it, unless I wanted to remain imprisoned forever.

[And, at the time, he had been wholly ignorant of any alternative, had even believed that some of them genuinely want to make a better world, and that it was the best choice in terrible circumstances. Now, having seen Horos for himself, he's not so sure. Even if the Kenoma Aions believe that, he doesn't trust the Regent -- can't forgive them. Just thinking of that black substance and the way it crawled down his throat is enough to make him sick to his stomach.

He still isn't taking his eyes off her or the grip on that arrow as he continues.]

I don't know if there's a way to ever leave the hold of the Kenoma. If there isn't, you're welcome to put an arrow through my heart yourself. But first, I want to do everything I can to help people here. [Even if that help isn't always welcome, as the shopkeeper so clearly showed.]

[Hayame had believed, once, in things like “no choice”. Hadn’t she had no choice but to serve humans? Hadn’t she had no choice but to cut down those around her and strive to be the strongest and the coldest of warriors to prevent being sold as a broodmare or a mount? But no. She’d always had a choice… she’d just been too weak to choose death or the even more terrifying possibility of freedom beyond the life she’d been born into.

If she had been brought in with those first aions… surely she would have bitten her tongue off rather than swallow the bl-

Ah.

They didn’t die here. The proper nature of death was interrupted, she couldn’t kill herself so easily. Or kill another. She’s tried. Halfway between Venera and Greentruth, her body growing bony and weak, she had tried to crush her shard beneath her hoof… and every time she’d attempted to release her hold on her weight she’d felt so nauseous she eventually threw up.

Maybe… he hadn’t had a choice. But even if that were so-]

If you truly wish to leave… if you will try whatever it takes to get free of that foul curse-

[There is only thing that she can view as dedication, whole and desperate. Anything less… it was surely just words. Surely just a trick. If he truly wanted to escape that fate-]

Give me your shard.

Edited 2022-07-20 09:32 (UTC)

[He's surprised at that request, but considering he'd just given her permission to shoot him, he supposes it's not completely unexpected. He shakes his head.] I can't, not now. I need my strength to fight off the other Kenoma, and saving the people here comes first.

[He's not so arrogant as to think he'll make a huge difference on his own. But he has managed to save a few people already from the list, and that's better than none. It's too soon to give that progress up now, when his inside knowledge has proven so useful.]

When this is all settled and the rebels are safe, you may have it. [His Shard is currently concealed under clothing, so he taps his chest -- over his heart -- to show her where it is. He had literally been telling her where she should shoot moments before.] Is that agreeable?

[… Did removing the shard from the body rob the body of its powers? Hayame, without any herself, did not feel different when she had fished the bizarre crystal out of her chest… but she doesn’t know. And she doesn’t want to admit to not knowing, in case it will make her look the fool.

The glamor flickers again, cracking as her stubborn sense of self that struggles to imagine her body in the shape of the two-legged humans that had ruled her life wins out, revealing a powerhouse of human-like and equine flesh, seven feet tall and over half a ton of muscle… that can be rendered useless against “magic” no matter how weak in comparison her opponent seems. She will have to recast the glamor before anyone else sees, she’s one of the only (perhaps the only) person she has met among the aions who will never look like they belong in this world and this man-

Hah. He’d said he understood her.]

No.

[It isn’t agreeable at all. Did he think it would be?]

You expect me to trust you with just that? When your legs move as they do?

[What use is swearing she will shoot him through the heart if he reneges on this offer if he can glow and simply run away?]

Edited 2022-07-20 10:58 (UTC)

[He can't mask his surprise at the way the glamour suddenly cracks apart. She's certainly a sight here in the flesh and not just the mindscape of that courtroom, one that would look at home in Sternbild amongst all the statuary of the various Greek heroes and mythological figures that adorn the city and company brands. In a strange way, it makes him a little homesick.

More importantly, though, she still doesn't trust him, and this entire conversation would have therefore been a waste. Frowning, he comes to a decision.]

My power has a time limit. It runs out in around a minute. [If he's been keeping track accurately throughout this conversation, that is.] If you still don't trust me, my life will be in your hands soon enough.

[Will she turn against him anyway? There's a high chance of it. But he knows better than most that trust means nothing without some level of risk. He just has to believe she won't shoot the second he's vulnerable.]

[… a time limit.

Her dark eyes narrow, her entire form far more terrible in its natural state, when she didn’t feel like she was wearing a costume. The costume of the race that had turned hers, once proud and revered as gods, into battle fodder, glorified horses, armless broodmares, and warm mouths to sheathe in. She feels like she can breathe better, clearer, with the spell broken, even if she needs it, knows she needs it, because… just the sight of her is wrong in this city. This entire world.]

Then you will stand there for more than a minute.

[Will the glow around him fade? Is that how she will know? Her arrow remains notched, the sharp metal head remains aimed at his heart, and though the strength required to draw the massive bow she carried, more than six feet long tip to tip, had to be immense… her arm hasn’t quivered with strain yet.

(There was a reason humans tried so desperately to domesticate her kind. They could see better, run faster, hear better, work harder, smell-)]

- and you will give me part your innermost robe.

[Barnaby balks at that odd request, staring at her for a second like he wasn't sure her heard her correctly-- nigh impossible while his powers are active and his hearing is enhanced.]

My-- but why?

[He wonders if at this point she was just trying to make fun of him. He'd agreed to this much, so perhaps she wanted to see how far she could push the matter...? It seems like a serious demand, though.]

[... It is an odd request. She at least knows how it sounds, but her expression and her tone are nothing if not serious. Being questioned makes her brow furrow deeper and her lip twitch downwards, but-

Her bow arm still doesn't waver.]

So that if you betray me, I can hunt you down like a rabbit in the field! That's why!

[Surely a good enough reason... What? He was shy?]

Unlike a field, Horos is a big place, you know.

[And why is he getting rabbit comparisons even with someone who could be a second away from killing him...? Some things are inescapable, it seems.

Still, he isn't shy about stripping down, so he shrugs off the cape and outer robe. By the time he does so, the blue aura around him and the glow in his eyes have both faded entirely. He strips off his undershirt last, revealing that he had been telling the truth: there's a pink, oval-shaped shard embedded in his chest.

He holds out the shirt for her to approach and claim, deciding it's better not to be the one to move closer. Though if she shoots now, he supposes there are still more absurd ways to die.]

Here, take it. My powers are gone.

[It might be a big place, but they could also... "teleport" all over it. And if she'd learned anything so far about being a so-called aion... It was that they seemed to be called to the same places. Or rather, something would call them, or the Regent would announce his intentions. If such things continued... she had no doubt they'd be in proximity again.

The glow around him fades. Did that mean he no longer moved at the speeds he had befoe? As tempted as she is to test it...

Hayame finally releases the string of her bow... after she releases the tension. Her arrow goes back into her quiver. In this backalley part of the city, the canal that separated them was no more than ten feet wide, and rather than leave him the leeway to flee by walking to the nearest bridge... she backs up as far as she can until her rump hits the back of the business buttressing up against the waterside path, exhales...

And makes a surprisingly graceful running leap, her fetlock-length mane and tail streaming out behind her like ebony banners. She lands heavily but safely in a clatter of hooves on her enemy's side of the canal, and from there whips back around to face him. He is... objectively, she thinks he is probably supposed to be attractive. He is well-built, physically, he looked strong enough for a human, but he's so... pale...]

Put your damn clothes back on.

[She snaps her request (demand) as she also snatches the undershirt from his hand, somehow effortlessly managing to avoid even a single brush of their fingers in the process.

But she doesn't avoid looking him straight in the eyes as she lifts the undershirt to her face and inhales almost... aggressively, not bothering to hide the way her lips twist into a look of disgust over the overtly masculine smell in her nose as she memorizes his scent. Sweat, some citrus tang, the smell of Venera, cedar, a mossy something she can't quite identify, a strangely fresh hint of water, and man.]

[Although he's sure by this point that he'd managed to succeed in negotiations, the tension doesn't leave him until she relaxes the bowstring, as if he had been the one pulled taut the whole time. He really could have died for a second there, and although he's used to routinely risking his life, this particular situation had been a knife's edge like few others he's experienced.

Still, as she leaps over the canal, he thinks perhaps she's less statuesque and more like a painting, beautiful and fluid in motion...

...Which is entirely ruined when she snatches the shirt from his hand and snaps at him. The scene is so bizarre, and perhaps he's a little elated from relief, that he actually laughs.]

You're a difficult person to please, aren't you? [Perhaps it's funny, too, that someone would treat him with such disgust when he's used to being an object to be admired and marketed in his career. Maybe centaurs have very different standards of attractiveness...? Regardless, he won't tease her any more than that, pulling the robes back on while she acquaints herself with his nasty man scent.]

[Hayame had a bad habit of ruining other's more positive impressions of her, whether it was her character or even just her appearance. Even with how tightly she binds her breasts down and how well-muscled her arms were, she could be an elegant beauty, if she didn't... often look like she was a minute away from kicking someone to death.

Or whatever look that is on her face now, as he... laughs. At first, she automatically assumes that he's laughing at her, and her entire body grows tense with readiness to strike, but... No, that's not it, perhaps. That, and the awful scent now flooding her brain, make her... Is she blushing? A little.]

If you just cooperated from the start, I would not be.

[If he was willing to let his powers "run out" and risk an arrow to the chest, surely he could trust her with the shard... Tch.

Hayame folds his shirt neatly and then shoves it into the saddlebag she wears on the harness at her "waist", not about to give it back in case she actually did need to hunt him down. And with that taken care of-]

If you are not a liar, you will take this sign here-

[She uses a foreleg to gesture at the worn cobblestones they stood on, the edge of hoof scratching a crude "x" into the porous rock.]

And duplicate it when you have finished your business. That will tell me you will meet me in the hour of the ox at the west gate to the city that night, where I will take custody of you to leave the Regent's lands.

[She taps the unmarked stone next to the one she's marked, her voice brooking very little argument and yet almost expecting it at this point.]

Do you understand?

[He still looks faintly amused as he finishes smoothing down the robe and straightens up his cape, but he resists the urge to laugh again between all her blushing and griping. Difficult to please, irritable, likes to complain... Maybe he understands a bit more what he must have been like to deal with, not so long ago. Rather than mention that, though, he instead tactfully opting to focus only on the sign she draws on the ground.]

Yes. Except -- when is the hour of the ox?

[The second hour of the day, like the zodiac? It might have a different meaning in her world, though.]

And if anything arises, we should try to stay in touch via Communion. [If you need help, he wants to say, but he can already imagine the angry reaction to even implying she might need such a thing.] It might be difficult, but it's an option.

[He is mostly correct in his guess, at least, even if Hayame releases another frustrated suck of her teeth over the continued culture clashes she keeps encountering with... literally almost everyone she's met since arriving in this accursed place.]

An hour past the moon's peak.

[... So, yeah, about 2am.]

...

[The new problem is... Communion.]

You will not hand over your shard but you expect me to let you into my head? What an impudent man.

[... Wait, why would be be difficult, though? She was under the impression it was easy for... everyone but her.]

I'm not just going to... barge into your head.

[His smile fades a little as he looks up at her. Even if he could, if Communion were capable of such a thing, he wouldn't. He's experienced that kind of violation too many times to wish it on anyone.]

You can control whatever information you share with me, and you can refuse contact altogether. [He's not the biggest fan of Communion himself, but the situation is volatile enough now that anything could happen, much like when the sects previously clashed in Venera.] Just think of it as another tool for tracking me.

[See, he says that… but she’s managed communion all of one time, and what could that be called but that? It put voices in your head, sometimes even images…

Her fingers tighten on her bow, her lips purse.

… If she hadn’t sworn to capture Kenoma and attempt to force the sludge out of them rather than kill them…]

Fine. You may… commune with me.

[It sound so perverse to say out loud.]

Likewise, you have permission to do the same.

[Practically as a reflex, like he'd seal a deal with a sponsor and not at all like she's still holding a bow she'd just threatened him with, he offers his hand for a handshake, smiling once more.]

My name is Barnaby. I look forward to working with you. [Too much? Maybe he's still teasing her. A tiny bit.]

[… “Barnaby” was a name, apparently. So was “Estinien” and… okay, she didn’t exactly know a lot of her fellow aions names. Then again, most of them didn’t know hers, either. She’d hardly gone out of her way to get friendly with them. In fact, she’d done all she could to keep them at arms length.

But this Barnaby is now holding his arm… out at her. His hand is open, but it isn’t… up, asking for her to put something in it, so-]

What are you doing… ?

[She. Genuinely looks confused, it’s not a joke.]

[Well, he supposes he should have expected that.] It's called a handshake. It's used to signal friendly intent-- in this case, an agreement being made.

[He takes his own hand in the other and shakes it to demonstrate the gesture.]

It's just a formality, really.

[Hayame had learned very quickly in Godsblood that the people of this world were far freer than their affections than those of her own, and in what she assumed was their red light district she had seen disgusting displays in broad daylight, but...

Bare skin on skin between men and women, just... for someone who was a veritable stranger? Despite herself, her cheeks are noticably flush with something like embarrassment over the very idea, looking... almost like a maiden and not a very physically intimidating centaur archer.]

What sort of lecherous world do you come from?

[If it were auction day, it would make sense, it's not like she's not been touched all over by male human hands, but that was inspecting her horseflesh, her suitability for breeding, not... friendliness. She draws herself up as if to try and remind him that she- she was not someone who would be so easily wooed or distracted. Also, wait, actually-]

Do not answer that. Use your words to say such things, not your naked palm.

It really isn't lecherous at all!

[She told him not to answer, but he has to protest at least that much anyway. Besides, wasn't she the one sniffing his clothes like a ravenous fangirl a second ago? Ah, well.

He drops his hand back to his side, by now baffled by the entire exchange.]

If handshakes are no good to you, please at least tell me your name.

You're a man, are you not?

[She definitely knows he is, now, but she's not about to remind him of the difference in their sexes by claiming "woman" for herself, so- There.

It just wasn't... She wasn't some whore, to touch a man so openly where just anyone could see, and this wasn't a brothel! It's a city in the middle of the day! But that doesn't matter, because he asks for...

Her name. It's supposed to be an easy thing to answer. It used to be. But since she came here... it sticks in her throat a moment before she can finally, reluctantly, force it out.]

Hayame.

[- and just to make sure he understood what was happening here, her momentary shock over his brazenness with his body aside,]

I suppose it is only fitting you know the name of the person who will kill you if you go back on your word.

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