EVENT #5: SOVEREIGN CITIZENS (VENERA)

[aionmods]

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 Shops are open, and its people are withdrawn but superficially friendly when meeting strangers.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

Comments

[warmare]

[In Ryuunosuke‘s defense… he certainly isn’t the only one who hasn’t introduced himself to the one centaur among their numbers. Hayame can count on her fingers how many people she has seen fit to give her name to… and she doesn’t need a full hand to list those she’d actually enjoyed speaking with.

Sometimes you don’t need black sludge to be forced down your throat to despair beyond measure. To be consumed with desperate anger that threatens to burn you from within. In this world she never asked to wake up in, where even proper death was denied them because of spirit forms and shards… Hayame could not bring herself to walk among the Pleroma like most do. Even if her hooves and heavier body were better equipped to travel the treetop walkways of Greentruth, even if her obviously inhuman body attracted stares and untoward attention in Godsblood… She would still be here in this place when all she wanted was to be in her own world. All she wanted was to leap into the arms of the man she had wronged and let the torch in her hand ignite the gunpowder strung round his neck.

But she’s here, she’s been encouraged by one of the only people she half-trusted to join this… rescue venture, but really… Hayame is here in the hopes that the Kenoma will discover their activities. That she will attract them this way, and shoot them down in the streets of Venera to pay for what she had to head in that courtroom of shadows spilling from the Regent’s lips.

She’s already had an engagement of two, lost several arrows to attempts to hunt her magically powdered enemies… and so now her elegant, bowstring calloused fingers slide along the shafts of the arrows that remain, inspecting them for warps or cracks before she can put them back in the quiver or set them aside.

When the human man (“Ryuunosuke”, at least his name made sense) approaches her, she listens to what he says. So Rand Al Thor, to whom she owed a debt, was… teaching people things. Alright. Out of consideration for the other man… She tempers her response, looking down (quite a ways down) to look her fellow safehouse dweller in the eye.]

And you think I need an amateur touching my arrows?

[… That’s tempered. She doesn’t even look like she’s caught a whiff of dung. Just maybe… a slightly unpleasant herb or something.]

APOLOGIES Still trying to hit a good pace with hitting these back, sob

[locumstudentesquire]

[You know... As far as first impressions go? This still isn't the worst one he's ever made. Or the worst rejection he's ever gotten, for that matter. Though that probably says far more about the kind of people Ryunosuke is forced to work with on a regular basis, than it does about Hayame's innate friendliness or charm. BIG swing and a miss either way, but at least contact has been made. Just take it in stride, Naruhodou...]

Ah. W-well... When you put it like that... No, I suppose that wouldn't be a very appealing prospect... Would it...

[He will not be deterred.]

I wouldn't say I'm an amateur though, I mean... I do assist Rand with making many of the arrows the rebels use, but. Er. I mean I suppose I'm not much of an expert, either...

/o/

[warmare]

[By the time Hayame has finished her scathing first response, she's already back to examining her arrows as if she doesn't expect him to still stand there trying to talk to her after she's dismissed him. She's partway through examining another of the arrows she'd pulled from an Achamite guard's corpse, stained halfway up the long shaft with hints of blood... When he just keeps talking.

Her eyes, dark grey and sharp, find him over the fletching... before she looks back to the arrow again, scoffing.]

You're an amateur.

[She doesn't seem to be brooking an argument on that one. After all, what- the first of the Aions who had arrived in this world had done so moon or two before her, had they not? So even if he had begun learning the art that very day...]

It takes at least five years to finish an apprenticeship.

[To think... she had nothing but praise for Rand's work, all she had to do was look at her own bow to know he obviously had been practicing the art from a young age, as was proper... but she'd thought he'd at least not be so foolish as to allow this...]

Does Rand al'Thor know that you're disgracing his name like this, claiming him as master while trying to claim an expertise you do not have?

[She makes a note to herself to inform him. Best to nip vainproud apprentices before they said the wrong thing to the wrong person while handing out substandard work.]

[locumstudentesquire]

[The finality with which she calls Ryunosuke an amateur again prompts another quiet 'ah' out of him; that's the sound of him realizing that this is an argument he is NOT going to win, and this is definitely not the hill he wants to die on.

But then she keeps going, and at each point Ryu looks more and more bewildered and confused.

Disgracing--?! How on earth did he manage to misstep the start of this conversation so badly?!]

J-j-just a moment, please--! I-I think there's been some kind of misunderstanding, I wasn't-- I didn't mean to imply anything so literal as that, I simply meant I've been getting a lot of practice in!

[warmare]

["How on earth did he manage to misstep the start of this conversation so badly" is a question that many people who speak with Hayame find themselves thinking. In Ryuunosuke's defense.]

Good for you.

[... As sarcastic as that sounded... practice does make perfect. In a few years.

Hayame's eyes narrow as she inspects the arrow in her hand, running bowstring calloused fingers over the shaft, heedless of the bloodstains... and frowning as she feels a nigh undetectable crack along the bamboo. Tch-]

But I need arrows that kill, not arrows for splintering on tree trunks when a child misses during target practice.

[She sets that one aside into one of the three piles she's sorting into, and picks up another, identifying the problem quickly and beginning to pry the arrowhead free from the damaged shaft.]

[locumstudentesquire]

[Ouch. You sure you need more arrows for killing, Hayame? Because you're doing a pretty good job of killing Ryunosuke's spirit using just your words.

He bounces back, of course. Or at least manages to pick himself up and dust himself off, so to speak. He always does. ]

A-ah... Well. Yes. I, I see your point...

[The irony is, if she's been getting her arrows from the settlement's supply at all, she probably has used at least a few that were produced at least in some small part by Ryunosuke's own efforts. But that's just a private thought he'll keep to himself; Rand still does the bulk of the work anyway, and he doesn't want to come off as trying to make himself sound like a bigger deal than he is.

An awkward silence falls for a few moments, as he watches her work. His eyes can't possibly miss the bloodstains on some of the arrows, and a shiver goes up his spine when he spots them. It could be animal blood... But he kind of doubts that. So she really is shooting for the kill then, huh? Ryunosuke still can't quite get used to that idea, though he keeps trying to remind himself that it is a war...

...Wasn't he supposed to be doing something...?

OH. Introductions. Focus, Ryunosuke...!]

Well... Sorry to have bothered you with all that, then. Though, ah, if you don't mind... It occurs to me, I don't think I've learned your name yet, miss...?

[warmare]

[Thankfully for Hayame's pride, there is no irony here. She has only used filled her quivers with arrows she has seen Rand make with his own hands in the visits she has made to observe the crafting and testing of her bow, or ones she has made herself. (And she, she might add, had been training as an archer since she turned seven. Plenty of time to learn.)

How fortunate it is, then, that he sees her point.

Moving on to the next arrow, this one also blood-stained... she frowns at the chipped arrowhead and sets it aside rather quickly. In a pinch, sure, but she needed to trust her arrows would fly true as long as she could... just like she needed to respect someone to give them her name. (... In this world, at least, with no masters and no grooms negotiating her sale on the sidelines, talking about her as if she were a beast that could not comprehend the words of man.)]

Because I haven't given it to you.

[He didn't just... happen not to learn it.

And just like she has snapped at more than one person since her arrival, her lip curls back in a look of disgust (learned, ingrained, bitter) when he sees fit to draw attention to the fact that she is a woman. No matter how she tried to bind her breasts, there was no mistaking that there wasn't a sheathe between her legs- the only thing you needed to take the easier route in life.]

It's not "miss".

[locumstudentesquire]

H-huh--??!

[Ryunosuke has, by this point, been stuck in English style etiquette mode ever since leaving Japan, so the Sir/Miss/Mister/Ma'am thing is just always his default when he goes for introductions these days. So far it has worked out for him here in Horos, the only snags being the occasional incident where people seem to get uncomfortable with him referring to them so formally.

This, as far as he's aware, is the first time he's fucked up by... He assumes by using the wrong gendered term? And then on top of that, her lip curl reveals terrifyingly sharp teeth, further adding to his alarm. It's a lot, and he's almost too shocked to say anything for a moment.]

Ah-- S-s-sorry! [Face red, he immediately dips into a deep apology bow, continuing to splutter:] Terribly, TERRIBLY sorry, please forgive the insult, sir!

[warmare]

[The bow she respects.

The rest... makes her stare at him like he's insane. Completely and utterly insane. Was he mocking her? It's the only thing she can imagine, considering how obvious it was that she was female, even with her breasts bound as tight as she could manage without straining her lungs. It makes her hackles raise, her sharp canines snap and as she leans forward (down) and all but snaps in his face.]

Do I look like I have a sheathe to you?

[... She doesn't mean the one on the harness around her "waist" that seems to hold some sort of hunting knife.]

[locumstudentesquire]

[Still bowed at the waist, he does chance a look at her, lifting his head... only to find her and all of her sharp teeth VERY close to his face, startling him and causing him to yelp.]

A sheathe!? What--?

[Oh.

OH.

THAT KIND OF SHEATHE--?!]

I-- I, I, I, I don't-- I'm sorry but how should I know, it, it's not as if I was looking!

[His face is a very alarming shade of red by this point. The embarrassment? Overwhelming. He swears he's going to pass out in self defense or something, if this keeps up. Just, this is officially too much, goodnight.]

Please, I didn't mean any offense-- [he pauses, letting out a tiny groan of despair, pleading:] If you would be so kind as to just tell me how you'd prefer to be addressed, th-that's really all I was trying to ask...

[warmare]

[That kind of sheathe.

Just like with a certain whoremonger not so very long ago, Hayame's face is steely ice in the face of a man spluttering and flustered, as if the more unbalanced he became the more powerful she grew. (It had to be that way, or she would have been consigned to the fate of a mare years ago.)]

I'd prefer you to just say what you mean to say and stop mocking me as if I do not know my own parts.

[She's never been allowed to forget them.

But is she not magnanimous to demand only such a simple thing as that? It could surely never be said that she was unreasonable.]

[locumstudentesquire]

[Ryunosuke lets out a miserable little groan. Please. Please, why, why this, why him.]

I-it really wasn't my intent to mock you, either... Honest...

[He hazards a chance and pulls out of the bow, though his shoulders remain dejectedly slumped, even as he straightens up a bit.]

It's just, we're supposed to be working together here, right? I'd just, like to know how to refer to you, conversationally... Although I suppose I should have offered my own name first, shouldn't I... Um. I-I'm, Ryunosuke Naruhodo, by the way. Terribly sorry for the offense I caused...

[Full name out of habit, Western order because that's what feels natural in Horosian.]

[warmare]

[She's heard that before. The people (aions?) of this world were truly dishonorable, forever refusing to take responsibility for their insults when confronted.

He straightens up, but still seems altogether laughable with his rounded shoulders and hung head. What a weak man, to be cowed so very easily as that. He offers his name, and it at least sounds like a name that might not be amiss in her world... But she's been burned before. She knows now not to expect this means he knows jinba or the Japan that she did. --For one, she had never heard of the Naruho-do business.

But his explanation doesn't do much to change the sneer on her face as she returns to her arrows.]

You will not need to refer to me conversationally.

[She didn't really "do" conversation. And she doubted other people really wished to converse about her, either.]

Did you have anything to report about the mission, or no?

[locumstudentesquire]

...O-oh.

[It WOULD be helpful to know for like. Coordinating plans and stuff, probably. But if you want him to just refer to you as 'that angry horse lady' when speaking to other people then, fine!]

N-no. I, I can't say that I do.

[Awkward pause.]

Um. I'll just... Leave you to your work then, shall I...

[No 'pleasure to meet you', because. Uh. It wasn't.

He's just gonna slink away now and try to pretend this didn't happen :'T]