epidemiology | EVENT ★ NALAWI INTRO

Recruits leave Oska at midday, with about 10 minutes of final warning given from the jewelry. Then the white mist rises as rifts open, and Oska is left behind. The transition into Nalawi is not a peaceful one. When the mist fades, recruits are immediately hit with a face full of lashing rain and driving wind.

The recruits have arrived in the middle of a nasty storm, but that’s not all that greets them. Seawater surges all around, breaking against -- houses? It’s a little hard to tell at first, in the chaos of the storm. Half of these buildings are made of rock, not carved, but shaped, and the other half seem to be living trees, thin wood and thatch, and a handful of more ornate (and more fragile) material, including clouded glass or obsidian. The stone houses are standing up best to this onslaught of waves, but even they weren’t made for this, and they shudder and crumble in the thrashing storm.

Thin screams can be heard over the wind and water, too. The locals are having some trouble not being washed away. The people here are small bipedal deer, and those hooves were not meant for swimming. They struggle in the water, some of them trying to snag a few precious belongings from drowning houses, some of them not even able to do much more than hang onto some jutting stone or tree. There are a few heroes among them, putting superhuman powers to good use: here a young man hovers in the air, dragging others out of the water and toward safety; there a girl parts the water with careful gestures of her hands, enabling a whole family to dart from their ruined home and run for higher ground. These feats are rare, though, and on the whole most of these natives are in trouble.

They don’t look too stunned to see the new arrivals -- they don’t have time to, and will push roughly past a new arrival to deal with some crisis sooner than stop and stare. They’re mostly just grateful for any offered help, generally seeming terrified and shellshocked by all of this. If any of them are asked what happened, they’ll point with varying degrees of wordlessness toward a high stone wall between the village and the sea, with an enormous gap broken through the middle of it where the sea rushes in. Like many of the houses, this dike was clearly shaped from living stone. But whatever shaped it apparently has no power to maintain it, and this is the storm that had finally taken advantage of that.

This long, dark afternoon provides plenty of tasks: help the Nalawi people evacuate from their ruined village, try to find material to rebuild their shattered (and still crumbling) dike, or take care of the hungry sea creatures that have taken notice that the deer, usually safe on land, are suddenly in easy reach. They look like crabs with too many legs, but each of them is nearly the size of one of the villagers. They’re more than capable of seizing a struggling villager and scuttling back toward the break in the dike to drag their prize into the sea. Their shells are difficult to get through, their pincers terrible and sharp, but their joints and eyes are unprotected and tender.

The storm won’t last forever, though. It blows itself out in a few hours, just in time for a truly beautiful tropical sunset over the western edge of the island. Exhausted locals will finally begin to talk a little more. They’ll explain to their rescuers that the Stone Shapers have all had their Gifts faded out: there’s not a single one left. Without these abilities, the dike was left defenseless against the storm and the water rushed in. Their despondency and resignation suggests this kind of disaster is not new to them. They are, however, very grateful for the help: anyone who lends a hand over the new few days (thankfully sunny and clear) sorting through the wreckage, rebuilding, and setting up new dikes will be given food and shown to the inn for free lodgings.

Welcome to Komo, Nalawi.

OOC INFO

ICly this log will cover the day of arrival and the following few days of recuperating and rebuilding, if you would like to include that in your top level prompts. OOCly it will last until the 26th. New information will be available at that time.

As some quick refreshers, we have our Mission Overview here, which also includes a questions subthread for general questions. For intro event-specific inquiries, please see the comments below. Additionally, be sure to have read the Chantes epilogue as well as the Nalawi: Locations page. Note that we will also have new characters arriving during the event, so be sure to give them a hand!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Of course I mean him, who else would have that name- She?

[Its a pretty distinctive, legendary type meant for greatness sort of name, you know. But.

Wait a minute-]

She's a witch?

Yeah. [It was strange that she seemed so confused about it. Ban looked to Sieglinde properly, before swiveling around on his butt to face her a little better.]

What's so strange about it?

[He didn't know anything about her 'history' in mythology.]

[No twelve year old should sigh as mightily or with as much judgment as Sieglinde does then, still trying to wring out her hair- which is a mighty task considering it falls past her rear.]

You may think educating dogs pointless, but I shall deign tell you the legend anyway.

[Because she's super compassionate and charitable, so listen up.]

In my world, and some others I have confirmed, Merlin is a wizard- a man with great magical power born of a mortal and an incubus who counsels Arthur Pendragon, the once and future king of Britannia... at least, he does until he falls prey to the wiles of the Lady of the Lake.

[Another sigh.]

Typical.

[Ban gave Sieglinde an arch look. He wasn't readily able to tell that she was talking about the future of his own world. She would have to outright say that it was an issue of myth and legend. He crossed his legs and looked her over with a bit more interest than he usually lent anyone.

It was only because he was given a few familiar names that made sense. Arthur? Britannia?]

I remember a brat with that name--Arthur Pendragon. He was the King of Camelot and helped my kingdom's knights fight off a rogue Holy Knight.

[He knew for a fact that he wasn't King of 'all' Britannia, though. That would be quite the stretch.]

Course, he was only the King of Camelot. Far as I know, Merlin looked like she had a lot of interest in the brat.

Arthur begins his story as the King of Camelot, but he is destined to defend Great Britain from invasion and is said to not have died but be waiting to live and defend the country once more in its time of need.

[Sieglinde gave off the air of a lecturer, a bit dry, perhaps, but she rattled off the information as best she knew it.]

Merlin is said to have planned for Arthur's destiny even before his birth, so a interest would be a given, but...

[A witch- really?]

[The tone Sieglinde took with Ban was from the perspective of someone who knew a story from the past--and, they were recanting it without any real interest. Sieglinde knew who Merlin was and didn't seem to figure they were the same person. She must have still doubted him.

He wondered that though he knew that it was meaningless to trust words out of his own mouth.

He offered Sieglinde a little shrug.]

Dunno if she knew Arthur that long. I knew her for years and she never mentioned the guy to anyone from our group.

Well, perhaps your Merlin is... not the same, then.

[Perhaps... Merlin was a slightly more common name in his world? It was difficult trying to suss out the exact way worlds intertwined or held true to each other.]

Does this Arthur you know have in his possession a sacred sword, by chance?

I heard he does. [It was tough to NOT hear stories about a young king that pulled an impossibly powerful sword from a stone--especially when one worked in a traveling pig bar.]

Excalibur, right?

[Ban wasn't even sure how people would react to his own version of Merlin--slightly more evil and a hundred times more attractive than most editions.]

Ah... yes.

[Even if she could pretend that "Merlin" was a common name potentially, to go so far as to imagine "Excalibur" was...

She pinched the bridge of her nose in thought.]

... I do not suppose this woman you know isn't a woman at all... ?

[Ban had thought on it. He had seen the end result of men tucking. It spoke wonderful things about the state of Raven's brothels and how welcoming they were to various patrons.]

Nah.

[Especially given what he had seen Merlin wear on a regular basis--

Plus, Escanor was all over her, metaphorically speaking.]

She's definitely a woman.

Well, I suppose if I try to imagine Merlin as a crone rather than a wizened man it will work out... somehow...

[What had Loki said, something about parallels?]

[He paused, lifting a brow.]

And, if she weren't?

[Some small part of him was gaining a measure of satisfaction from drawing confusion and disbelief from Sieglinde.]

EVENT ★ NALAWI INTRO

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