epidemiology | OPEN ★ ARRIVAL LOG

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OPEN ★ ARRIVAL LOG

ARRIVALS ( OCT 2 )
The dragons are taken from you, sent off to a safe haven. You're back in Oska for less than a day when you hear the announcement and head to the rendezvous point. You blink, step through the portal, there's a loud crack, and...

You're thrown into darkness. You taste copper and, for a moment, your ears won't stop ringing. All common side-effects of portal travel. The entire crew arrives just beyond the city gates, so you might also be feeling a little bit claustrophobic.

It takes a second for the eyes to adjust, but one can make out buildings and the cobblestone beneath their feet. To the right is the Trade District, where all the vendors are gathered to sell their wares. Up ahead is the City Square, where the rest of the citizens out and about seem to be gathered. To the left of the square is the Commoners' District, and to the right of it is the Nobles' District, the two main residential areas. Further travel west will come to the outskirts, a makeshift residential area, this one densely populated with goblins. Many of the people are holding candles or lanterns. You might want to try getting your hands on one of those.

If you have not already done so, your enchanted jewelry will manifest words in front of your very eyes — or sounds in your ear, if you're illiterate — asking you to identify yourself. A quick look around shows that you seem to be the only one able to see it. All you have to do is think or say how you wish to be identified. After that, you're immediately given a message.

Those who participated in the dragon mission at Anwick will first receive this:

We appreciate your help at Anwick. The wyrmlings will live to grow up and bring about the world's natural end. Thank you.

-- ALASTAIR

Afterwards, the crew will be given an abridged version of this, then told to familiarize themselves with the city and natives, report all information gathered back to ALASTAIR, and wait for further instruction.

At the end of the night, wherever they may be, everyone will receive a letter with the royal seal thanking them for their efforts to end the goblins' defiance and inviting them to the Festival of Illumination on the 4th.

FESTIVAL OF ILLUMINATION ( OCT 4 )
Candles are sitting on windowsills throughout the entire city, but the main event is in the city square. In the fountain float lit lotuses, and people all around are holding lanterns, waiting to light them.

There's a minstrel playing songs, and several of the vendors have pulled their carts up to the square in the hopes of making a sale. Many sweets are for sale, including baked apples, gingerbread, cherry tarts, pudding, and more. There's also some drinks for sale.

Some children are playing games in the corner, and others are dancing to the music or writing wishes on slips of paper to be sent into the sky with their lanterns. Everyone seems merry for once, but you'd better be careful. This is an ideal place for a pickpocket.

About an hour and a half into the festival, the lanterns are sent into the sky. They're sent flying, the sky becoming filled with bright lights, until...

A strong gust of wind sends all the lights out. At least, you think it was a gust of wind. What else could have done that? On closer inspection, however, you'll see that even the candles sitting on windowsills inside have gone out. For a minute or so, there's only darkness and chaos.

Suddenly, the flames begin to burn again, revealing a message in the cobblestone in the center of the square. It almost looks as if it's been burned into the ground: IT IS COMING, followed by a symbol of a creature with a lion's head, goat's body, and serpent's tail.

[MOD NOTE: This is a catch-all log for the first few days. For the sake of organization, all arrival threads should be posted under the subheader ARRIVALS and all festival threads should be posted under FESTIVAL. Threads that don't fall under either of those categories can be top-levels. Also, please remember to add your character's tag to the post! Thank you, and have fun!]

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[Well there goes her fun in having sent her lantern up. The creature shown can easily be a spirit, but she doubts anything from her world is threatening this one. Still, it's a threat none the less and she's not happy about it.]

I'm not sure, I haven't seen any spirit like it.

[Korra's closer than most in the crowd around the fountain, her face illuminated by the small flame in her hand. It's become easy to pick out who's an ALISTAIR employee and who isn't by clothes alone and she tends to group closer to them because of it.

At his question, Korra enlarges the fire in her palm and does slow scan over the crowd for anyone who might have caught a hot foot or worse.]

Not that I can see, but your- stick is brighter. [Yeah, she has no idea who her fellow employee even is.]

["Stick." It earns her a quizzical expression, if only because he's surprised that someone doesn't jump to calling it a wand. Even the Muggles of his world are familiar with wands, at least from films about wizards and the like. He glances down toward it just the same, and he utters "lumos" again, bringing it back.]

Right, good point, [he tells her. Most of the citizens around them looked startled and uneasy, but he doesn't think any of them look hurt.]

And I guess I didn't think the drawing was what was coming, but we're in a great deal of trouble if it is.

[She's got nothing but a slightly confused lower lip budging out at the look. But she is curious about the voice activated flash light and how helpful it is. last thing she wants to do after the emblazoned message is make her flame bigger.]

Why, what is it? [Since everyone she's seen looks okay and he's checking the rest, Korra tilts her head and squats down to get a better look at the picture.]

Certainly doesn't look like any goat lion I've ever seen.

[Harry mouths the words "goat lion" together, if only because she makes it sound like that could possibly be a thing. Naturally, Harry discounts that it could be a thing, because even in the wizarding world with things like chimaera, that seems unlikely. Well, as a title, anyway. There are centaurs and hippogriffs and everything else, but they usually are called different things.

Though maybe she just doesn't know the name of them. That's possible, too.]

It's a chimaera. I've only read about them a couple times, but from what I've heard, they've very, very hard to kill.

[That name sounds absolutely weird to her and it's obvious if Korra's face has any say in the matter.]

You think we'd have to kill it? It's just an animal, we can catch it and relocate it.

[Doesn't sound like too big of a deal to her. Catch and release is a lot more appealing than dealing with an apocalypse.]

Er, if ALASTAIR has its say, they'll hold it captive and bring it back to allow it to destroy this place after we've been taken away. We shouldn't count on that. [That's what happened with the dragons. Harry still would have been against killing them, but he would have liked way more control over that situation.

For obvious reasons.

He adds, just in case he looks too eager to kill any animals:] Not that I want to kill it. We might be forced, but we should have a plan just in case that's what ALASTAIR wants to do. Something that they can't stop us from doing. [Assuming that they aren't observing all of them, which ... might be possible. He hopes not, as that seems a little impossible. More than the possibility, that is.]

Backup plan, good idea. I’m pretty sure with this many of us we can cook up an idea on how to do that.

[She’s already trying to think of a way so everyone wins. Stopping a destructive animal, or monster? jury’s still out on that one, and keeping it alive isn’t as easy as she makes it sound.]

Korra by the way. [The fire in her hand dissipates and she holds it out for a shake.]

[Harry nods to her statement. They can cook up an idea. It'll be a matter of making sure everyone works together. Of course, it might need to begin with everyone agreeing that they need to work together. That might be a building block for them to have to deal with.

When she extends her hand, he switches his wand to his left hand and takes it firmly.]

I'm Harry. I don't know if you happened to be around for the dragons in Anwick. [He doesn't recognize her from the camp, but they were all working with baby dragons and not necessarily keeping tabs on one another.]

Good to meet you, Harry.

[A firm handshake and then some. Korra doesn't even half ass something like that.]

I happened to help out a little bit. [After the message she received though...] For all the good that did.

[It's more sarcastic than serious. She gets the natural balance part of it, destructive as it might be. Either way, nothing she can do about it from here.]

Maybe we can make a real difference this time. With less dragons.

I'm just afraid that we might not know what good can be done. We'll have to be careful here. Anything can spark more trouble, especially if one or another side turns out to be very, very responsible for the loss of sun.

[And given that the goblins were already said to have assassinated the queen, he really hopes that they aren't behind this. Harry doesn't like goblins terribly much. His knowledge of them is something that makes him look upon them unkindly, but that's because they had screwed him over before. He doesn't want that to happen again.]

The question is, we might end up getting ourselves in trouble for keeping that information away from them. But we can't risk it. That is, if we can find out at all. We might not be able to.

First time having big trouble fall in your lap?

[She tries not to smile with little success.]

You're going to rip open that wound on your head if you worry about things going south. We're not going to solve this in one day. ALISTAIR gave us months, so let's use that time to get organized first.

[Currently, she knows exactly one person here really well. It's a start?]

Hardly. I just came from a war. I'd rather avoid leading this world into one of its own because I know precisely what comes of something like that. [It isn't inexperience that's leading his concerns, but too much of it. They do have months, which means they should use all the time they have to bring forth preventative actions. Anything that makes things worse wouldn't be very good at all.]

But—you're right about organization. I just don't know how likely it is, or who should be handling it. ALASTAIR isn't doing it themselves, so it's up to us. [Harry knows that he has the skill to do it because he has done it, but he'll let someone else step up to the plate if they'd rather handle it.

He'd be just fine with that, honestly.]

Nothing's worse than being unable to help out during a war. [She feels like she should be prepared after having stopped a city wide war, a heated civil war, and a national takeover. Harry's statement is on point and she knows it.]

They got so many of us, and I'm sure there's people here that have experience in this too. Instead of one person I think we can get some representatives from other worlds, learn from each other. I don't think the wars back home are going to be that relatable to anyone.

I think learning from one another is a first step. If we have anyone who's good at conflict resolution, that might be a start. I'm not so good at that, but I have some experience in training and getting people prepared. I've also had to dig up information, and I've ... how do I put it? I've lived roughly while trying to remain hidden.

[So far, ALASTAIR is ensuring that they can blend in, but there is a good chance that they, as outsiders, will be treated with contempt. That had almost been the case in Anwick, and had the people there been in better shape, he knows that would have likely been the case.

They ended up "lucky" there, except for the part where "lucky" leads to bad things.]

Pooling our resources and assigning roles might not be a bad idea, especially if we're around for a while.

A lot of people have tried to kidnap and kill me, but I'm still here. I'm pretty sure I'll be around for a while. [It feels really good to claim that and Korra's proud of it now.]

Okay, so you're a good teacher and I'm a good fighter. That's a start. If this was my world I'd say put me up for conflict resolution, that's a big part of my job, but we should probably keep an eye out for anyone like that on these things.

[She fishes her necklace out from underneath her shirt.]

What experience do you have with resolving conflicts? [That seems to be a very good place to start. He agrees with the idea of keeping an eye out for someone keen on doing that over the communicators.]

I reckon we could always ask who has experience with it, alongside you. That might not be a bad place to start.

[Her smile's a sympathetic one.]

You might want to strap in; that's kind of a big question.

[Can she do this in less than five minutes? Time to talk as fast as possible to find out.]

First I stopped the non-bender Equalist takeover of Republic by exposing their leader for being a bender. Then there was the north and south pole civil war my uncle started in order to plunge the world into darkness for ten thousand years. He used the great spirit of chaos and darkness to do it, but I stopped him. [re:killed] Reopened the gates to the Spirit World and eventually helped humans and spirits learn to co-exist. That was a rough start, believe me. Stopped the anarchist who almost killed me with poison so he could assassinate important figures to throw everything into chaos. He's in prison. The Earth Kingdom was being taken over by Kuvira, she was making herself a dictator over there. She tried to claim Republic City as Earth Kingdom territory and waged war there too. I managed to talk her down after half the city was destroyed. She turned herself in.

[Now she's thinking she should have airbended to talk even faster. That way she could include the hundreds of little details.]

And not too long after that I ended up here. So, [A little smugly with a side of confidence:] bring on the conflict.

Remember when you asked if I had never faced my own trouble? I think you're the only person I've met who's gotten into more trouble than I've been in. I don't understand most of the terminology you just used, but I understand the bigger picture. [After so long, Harry weirdly feels relieved that there's someone else in existence who's gone through as much as he has—or even more than that. He knows that if he tried to lay it all out like that, it would seem like even more, but a lot of his stuff took place in school, which means the conflicts were smaller.

Then again, there's the whole part where he's lived with some weight of this since he was one year old. He's always had the scar, and he'd always been a horcrux. That's never left him.]

I think we'll both be well-equipped for it, but between you and me, I tend to make tensions worse instead of better. [That's partly because he likes to argue and he has a temper. No one would ever call Harry in to be diplomatic. To fight, to teach, to train, to be brave—he's up for all of that. But stopping anarchists and bringing peace is outside of his wheelhouse.

And it's a good thing that he recognizes that, too.]

Oh, I dooon't know about that. [Boy is she ever fully aware of making some bad decisions that only aggravated situations and people. Definitely people.]

My world seems to be really different from everyone else's, it's weird. [Why is everyone's clothes so different?] Remind me to ask you just what you have been through. Doesn't sound like a fun one when you say it like that.

[Someone younger than her being that serious? There's definitely a story there.]

It's a long enough list that some of it is fun. And in my world, there are two distinctly different societies ... which isn't even to mention all the different countries and cultures. I guess I'm not surprised that everyone is so different. [Harry isn't really the type to focus on that, but he recalls when the two schools showed up for the Tri-Wizard Tournament. It had been an odd experience, all in all, but the culture shock passed rather quickly.]

Either way, maybe we can find someone else who can handle diplomacy. [If they both get into trouble. Unless:] Well, unless someone had a problem with you helping. That happens anywhere. [Harry recalls Fudge's adamant reluctance to acknowledge that Voldemort was back. In fact, he recalls it so much that he has "I Must Not Tell Lies" carved into his hand.

It's pretty impossible to forget.]

Diversity's a good thing I've found out. Even if it can be... "complicated" to keep balance.

[So there is fun stuff in his world! Excellent. Korra's got nothing against super serious people, but she's had a lot experience hanging around them.]

Are you saying I'm a bad influence? [Already, Harry? Obviously kidding from the half smirk she has.] Tell you what. I'll keep my ears and eyes out for someone that can strike up good rapport if you do.

If we can't find anything, then we can take turns doing it. Help out the other if things get a little too hairy, Harry. [She so did not intend that pun...]

I think it's possible that we're both bad influences. I have a thing about recklessly ignoring the rules. Though, er, I try to say that I don't. Don't believe me if I ever say that. [After everything, Harry can acknowledge some of his flaws. Then again, he doesn't really consider them flaws—and he can see that his "reckless" willingness to ignore the rules will be important to ALASTAIR.]

And I'll be certain that none of the situations become too much like me. [He guesses that it's unintentional, but he can't pass up pointing it out.]

[Fighting off the smirk at his 'warning' isn't easy.]

Don't worry, I won't. [She might.]

I think I understand exactly what you mean, I'll help on that. We got a heads up on this so we're a step ahead and luckily no one's missing or got hurt when the lights went out.

[No one around them, which is mostly citizens there for the festival.]

I'm going to see about checking a couple of the districts just to make sure that's the case everywhere. Are you staying at the Abel Inn too?

I am. If you need to find me, I'm there. I think we can privately message each other over our communicators, too. [Harry fiddles with his own piece of jewelry in response.] Although I haven't tried that yet. Guess I should later.

[Though he doesn't know who he intends to contact first. Without any familiar faces, he's still a little lost. But he's working on it.]

Yeah, I'm in the same boat. [Not only are the jewelry comms completely foreign, but they're a huge jump in technology for her.]

My name on there's just korra, so I'm easy to find. But yeah, I'll let you know if I find someone or some other prophecy decides to land in my face.

[Nothing new to her at this point...]

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livedtwice - 2015-10-28 20:02 (UTC) - Expand

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