epidemiology | EVENT ▸ WELCOME TO HANABIRA

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EVENT ▸ WELCOME TO HANABIRA

LAND OF CELESTIAL MOUNTAINS

Following guild Ophelia's first mission, after which the temporal shard was found and safely disposed of back on Headquarters, Guild Master Imogen informs them they've received a contract to help ease tensions in a land known as Hanabira, on an unnamed planet designated as Hathaway-484. However, the contract is from a third party and the Hanabirans themselves do not know about interdimensional travel, she explains, so it'll be best to announce Ophelia as visitors from a foreign land. Any strange appearances or abilities will be able to be brushed off as magic, as the Hanabirans are no strangers to things such as ogres and imps. They're given five days to look over the dossier, and then it's through the rift they go.

Those who are new to rift travel may find themselves a bit dizzy on the way out, but overall, everything seems to have gone according to plan. Upon arrival, their magitek projects words in front of their eyes that only they can see:

Location reached: HANABIRA.

No events scheduled. You may wish to survey the surrounding area.

» LAND OF CELESTIAL MOUNTAINS
A militaristic society that values strength. Main sources of income: mining, foresting, hunting, blacksmithing. Heavy matriarchal ideals. Empress NAMA resides at the HEAVENLY SUMMIT.

Those who attempt to reach the Heavenly Summit, which turns out to be the name of a castle situated on the tallest mountain peak, will not make it very far. Empress Nama's guards have no time for foreign strangers attempting to enter the castle without an audience, and there are plenty of them. It looks like that plan of action is going to take some time to rethink.

There's still much more to look at, though. In the Merchant's District, you can stock up on everything you'll need to blend in. A cursory look at all the clothing and it's clear that the Mountain Clan style focuses on a more powerful look, with broad shoulder accents and thick fabrics. Both men and women wear kimonos, but it seems men's fashion changes depending on their age and marital status. Time to figure out those backstories! There are several more items for sale as well, as long as you're willing to pay -- or if you're particularly good at sleight of hand.

The Commoner's District, derogatorily called the Slums by some, is where many of the lower class Mountain Clan work and live. Those who don't have the coin to buy a space in the Merchant's District sell their wares here; they are at a lower price, but often of lower quality as well, unless you're particularly lucky. This is the most densely populated area of the Celestial Mountains, and also the most egalitarian. Here, both men and women must do the same work to provide for their families. However, you will still find that the prevailing cultural attitude supports the matriarchy.

On the other side of town is the Noble's District, which is patrolled by guards on regular routes. Men on their own will arouse suspicion in this area, as will anyone in any garb but the noble disguise. Troublemakers will be asked to leave and unceremoniously escorted out. Those who manage to stay will be able to find conversation with the nobility, many of whom are high-ranking military leaders.

The rest of the town belongs to the lower to upper middle class, who are friendliest to women or groups with at least one woman in them. Women's reactions to sole men may range from dismissive to awkward, although men alone are not in any danger of angry or violent reactions (as long as they don't provoke anyone).

▸ SPRING FESTIVAL

After a bit of time for exploring, a new message flashes in front of recruits' eyes.

New event scheduled: MOUNTAIN CLAN FESTIVAL.

» INFORMATION: Analysis of all mentions of 'festival' since the arrival of OPHELIA suggests heavy HANABIRAN presence at this time, during which guild members may wish to gather intel.

It appears as though Ophelia has arrived just in time for the Spring Festival, a yearly celebration in honor of the changing of seasons. Plum and cherry trees throughout the Celestial Mountains flower in white and pink blossoms, creating a cheerful atmosphere as the population goes about their daily business during the day. Workers view the flowers during their lunch and tea times, and nobles can be found strolling through gardens in the Noble's District at all times.

In the early afternoon, food stalls begin to appear in the Merchant's District, and by the late afternoon, the festival is in full swing: dumplings, noodles, persimmons, and skewered meat are available at various stalls, as well as plenty of sake. Other stalls sell beautifully designed kites, fans, and kimonos, and as the sun begins to sink down, some stalls begin to sell incense-stick fireworks.

There are also games to take part in, from the light-hearted collaborative ball game kemari, to an archery competition, the winners of which are rewarded with plums and sake. An old man near the archery competition invites any passersby to join him in a game of Go, and he'll even offer to teach foreigners the rules of the game. There is also a falconry competition for the nobles, but unless you have a disguise, you'll just have to content yourself with watching.

With so many people milling around, it's a good time to ask questions and try to get a feel for the political opinions of the people of the mountain clan. They are all in favor of their empress ruling Hanabira, supporting the spread of their traditional culture over the more lax culture of the sea clan. If asked their opinions on how to ensure there is no war, suggestions will range from preemptively killing the sea empress and her army, to banishing them across the sea. It should be noted that the mountain clan is not especially known for their expertise in diplomacy.

As the sky darkens, fireworks light up the sky. It's very beautiful, but also very distracting -- the perfect time for something to go wrong.

▸ AN AMBUSH

The fireworks are loud, and everyone -- even guards milling around -- are looking skyward toward the display. No one notices the danger until it's too late.

A scream pierces the air, and everything after that happens quick and sudden: people are running in all directions, panicked, trying to escape. Stands are knocked over and food goes flying through the air. A merchant struggles to reach her wife, caught across the fearful throng of festivalgoers. It's chaos.

As the panicked crowd begins to thin, those of Ophelia who stay behind to help will see the cause -- women wearing clothes of the sea clan and masks covering their faces are laying waste to the festival ground. They begin to set stalls ablaze, and though they aren't targeting any civilians, a handful lay dead or injured, crushed by the panicked stampede.

Guards rush in to stop the women, and they could probably use help; they will be trying to capture them, but if your character is killing an ambusher instead, please let the mods know with a link to the thread.

For those who aren't the fighting type, there are plenty of other things to do -- direct traffic, try to rescue civilians from the stampede, or go find someplace to hide yourself. Once the immediate trouble is dealt with, the festival unceremoniously ended, the civilians drift back to their homes to begin a restless sleep. If your character hasn't found lodgings for the night yet, they'd better get that matter settled soon.

The morning after the ambush, there is tension and unease in the air. The people of the mountain clan mutter about taking revenge or continuing peaceably; the ambush and its effect on their relations with the sea clan is the topic of the day. Was this an attack sanctioned by the Empress of the Crashing Wave? Were these sea people acting of their own volition? Does it matter?

The festival grounds could use cleaning up, and tending to the injured can be a good way to ingratiate foreigners (that's you) to the mountain clan. Otherwise, the forests of the Celestial Mountains are open for exploration, or the Flowerlands and its farms below.

▸ OOC NOTES

Welcome to the first mission of the season! Apps are now closed and will remain closed until the mission is over. If you have questions about this log or the overall mission, please ask them on the dossier. Questions about Futurology in general should be directed to the FAQ.

▸ The festival and ambush lasts one IC day, after which characters may continue to explore. Areas currently open are the Land of Celestial Mountains or the Flowerlands. The Empire of the Crashing Wave will be introduced in the next log on 3 February.

▸ The Bounty Board is now live, as well as an items page. The February calendar will go live in late January.

▸ January AC will go up on 1 February. You will only need to supply one proof. February AC will require full activity.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[There's no way for Keith to recognize Kylo Ren. Clothes aside, he's not great at discerning one person from another when he isn't having one-on-one interactions. He's too inside his own head. Sure, he's seen someone about a foot taller than him around, but that's known to happen. It's during the brawl that he spots him fighting, but he doesn't break in to it. He's got his own circumstances on his hands.

Only afterward does he approach, eyebrows pinched, with a single question:]

Did they say anything to you? [A beat.] There were a lot. You must've got their attention somehow.

[Kylo Ren is only mildly winded, partially his own doing. With the Dark Side raging about him, it constantly pulled on his own vitality. So when Keith approaches him, he's offered a side-long glance at first as he digests his question.]

No. I suspect they underestimated who they were dealing with, and thought they could free their companion because of it.

[They were armed, he was not. Women of the land clearly valued their own strength -- it was only natural for them to think they had the advantage.]

[It's not Kylo Ren's fault that there isn't any information here, but Keith can't help but look putout by the lack of it. If they're attacking, don't they have something to say? Hitting a festival like this usually comes with some kind of reason—other than, he supposes, that they're on each other's land.

But maybe he wants it to be more complicated because he wants there to be something he can do. Fighting them off is one thing, but that means he's forced into the reactive position.]

So they don't have a good reason other than needing to make a statement for their Empress. [His lips twist downward. Even the Galra had a stated "reason" for subsuming so much of the universe.]

Something tells me they'll be more prepared next time. They weren't expecting anyone like us lurking around.

[Honestly, he hadn't thought to ask. Or demand. The 'why' hadn't mattered so much to him. The prospect of a fight was far more appealing, no matter how much trouble he might have potentially gotten himself into with that kind of stunt. Its not something he'll be repeating in the future.

But it does give him an idea.]

Do you think there might be another reason?

[Because people running around lighting things on fire to make statements is kind of par the course. Usually, the statements are more devastating, and grander in scale but -- the principal is the same.]

There should be. [Keith is no master strategist. That's not something in his wheelhouse, nor will it ever be. But they're usually a reason behind attacking civilians. This festival was so far removed from the Empress that it barely makes a dent in anything, especially given what he's picked up of the different districts.

(Which, to be fair, he's relying on his teammates to do.)]

There's more risk than reward here. A festival is temporary. It wouldn't be here tomorrow anyway.

[But that might be him trying to find ... something, anything, to feel like he can impact this mission. Blunt force isn't going to help for now. So, he's ... trying to blunt force an answer out of it.]

Temporary, but crowded. A place where many people gather, and feel safe doing so. Guard is down. People are drinking.

[He's not necessarily a strategist, but he knows enough about terror tactics to understand what is probably going on here. But the idea is still brewing in his mind. Unfortunately, it involves blunt Force.]

One moment--

[Steps away from Keith to one of the unconscious women that the guards are not paying attention to and reaches out. His eyes widen slightly through the process, and he chews on his lip a bit in concentration.

He vocalizes what he sees after he has a moment to digest it.]

--for their Empress. Because they believe the Empress of the Celestial Mountains is false. [Pause.] No. Not for her. They act alone.

[He closes his hand and cuts the connection.]

Which means there we will not need to expect more of them. At least...not now.

Guess that explains why it seems so random. [The act of reaching out, of getting the knowledge he needs—it strikes a chord with Keith, but not an uncomfortable one. He's seen Rey do a similar thing, but he doesn't have enough knowledge to discern whether it's one and the same. So, he doesn't draw the conclusion, not yet.]

If they were following orders from someone who'd matter, they'd have done it more cleanly. I think. Striking fear in us—[general "us," labeling them as civilians even if they're anything but]—well, I'm not sure they were out to hurt anyone. Just show that this doesn't matter.

[His shoulders slump forward.]

But ... I could be wrong. [Like he doesn't want to own up to his beliefs.]

Moral high ground, perhaps.

[ts clear by his tone that he doesn't necessarily agree. You either trend to total destruction, or you leave well enough alone. There is no in between. And that is why General Hux leads the army, and he does not.]

More importantly, it means the Empress of the Sea Clan does not have control over her subjects.

No leader can completely control everyone underneath them. It's impossible. [It does mean that if they can burst in here without going checked along the way that they can probably leave their side of the fence unnoticed. Whatever security is over there is likely less obvious, or they can assume. The neutral area between the two nations is still unexplored to some degree.]

It might just mean she's less inclined to act.

[He could argue that -- he even wants to, judging by the way his jaw shifts impatiently when Keith makes his claim. But miraculously, Kylo Ren manages to hold his tongue. Talking about Supreme Leader Snoke with a stranger was not on the agenda today.]

I suppose if this were a repeat occurrence, we would already see civil war.

[This definitely looks like the beginning of it, if nothing else.]

Probably. But you know something I didn't. You got more information. [All they had said was that they were acting on the behalf of the Empress. Up until the revelation that Kylo Ren provided, they had no way of knowing there was more to it. And he had asked countless numbers of the assailants. It was always the same tune.]

We need to find a way to get them to admit they acted alone. [Even if it involves blunt force (or Force, though he still hasn't assumed that's the case here).]

Why is that?

[Kylo Ren takes a moment to glance downward at Keith this time, frowning a bit. Not that he isn't up for a little bit of torture every now and again, but that sounded like an awful lot of effort without much pay off -- emotional or otherwise.

Unless he means to keep the Sea Clan in the Mountain Clan's good graces.]

Our primary objective is to ensure there is one ruler. Their actions benefit us, regardless of the truth of the matter.

We're supposed to resolve the conflict. How else do we do that? ["Resolving" means "no war" and in Keith's mind, it also means not killing everyone who's on the other side. If they choose to favor one clan over the other because of their civilization, that's fine, but he's not going to jump to any really violent conclusions.]

Besides ... this mess is our fault. We have to fix it. [If it wasn't their fault, Keith would undoubtedly have another reason. It would just be shakier, rather than just doing what's necessary. Thankfully, his first two missions with Hathaway have been about setting things right.

He hopes it stays that way.]

There are many ways to "resolve the conflict". For example, the conflict would end the moment the challenger to the throne was disposed of. And that can be achieved by the Mountain Clan, when they realize she has become a threat, and a terrorist.

[Yeah he's not really following you Keith, sorry. It all seems like a very quick and easy solution to him.

But he thinks about Keith's words, and the usage of the word 'fix'. Ah. There's guilt mixed up in this, of course.]

There is no guarantee an admission of guilt would turn the victims sympathetic to a ruler who harbors zealots in her midst. Allowing their anger to grow would solve the problem much faster.

And what happens to the people over there? Nobody asked to be involved in this. If we present all of them as a threat, I don't think anything good is gonna come from it. [By talking this out, Keith finds himself sympathizing with the terrorists more and more. He knows he shouldn't be. That's the worst angle to follow, but knowing their leader won't act might be why they're acting on their own.

But as ... mediators, they can't really encourage that action. All Keith can really see is an end where they're all dead.]

[Kylo Ren can see that they're talking in circles, and that perhaps Keith is too sympathetic to people who don't like the lot they've been dealt. He's lacking the compassion to communicate with him.

So he exhales out of his nose.]

We have different approaches to problem resolution.

[To put it lightly.]

Ultimately, it does not matter in this instance until more information makes itself available.

It matters because we need them to know the truth. Before this gets out of hand. I can ask our team what they'd like to do, but I'm pretty confident about where they'd stand.

[Keith is not confident in the least. That's a whole lot of bluster. Back ... oh, two months ago? Maybe he'd know. But there are so many faces here that are new.

He doesn't know anything at all.]

The fastest way to know for certain is to ask.

["Fairly certain"? He senses the bluster, though he's not quite sure he understands where it is coming from or why, so his brow furrows just a bit.]

You were one of ALASTAIR's.

[Said, as if he is coming to a conclusion.]

That's right. [The change is hard for him. Most of it has to do with calling into question his own knowledge of this team, and his own place among it. Keith feels like he's taking a risk in being here. A big one.]

Is there a problem with that?

No. I was too, for a time.

[Until transfers and rifts happened, but he'd come to understand that was fairly commonplace. Annoying for certain, but not something he's going to linger on.]

I could not imagine you having much of an opinion on our group if you had not been among them before, is all.

Oh, I, uh, I don't remember you. [There's a moment of uncertainty that shifts into discomfort at not remembering. Mostly he feels bad for not taking notice of people a lot of times. He really wishes he didn't ... have that particular sentiment lodged in the back of his mind.]

What's your name? I'm Keith.

It was a different time.

[Which is the best way he can think of to say that it doesn't bother him. He'd been very focused on interested that did not involve the team -- perhaps that had been why he'd been transferred in the first place. He hadn't really thought about it until right then.

His thought process is interrupted when Keith announces himself, his attention suddenly gone from idle musing to laser-focused. He blinks a few moments in silence, trying to decide how best to respond.

He's nothing like Luke.

Why would he draw the comparison, if they are nothing alike?]

Kylo Ren.

[Do you sense that he is judging you? He is.]

[Keith senses the judgment, but he still thinks it has to do with being a part of the team before—like Kylo Ren had some judgments made from that. He's entirely misreading the source of these conclusions, like there's more meaning to them than there is. It says a lot about Keith's stability right now—or instability, like he doesn't feel like he's on the firmest foundations and takes that lack of foundation as a challenge.]

I don't remember that name at all. [Awkwardly stated, like he's trying to shake off the judgment.] I'll remember it now. I'll have to. You've got some important information, and a way of getting more. That'll help.

[Or hurt? The simplistic, straightforward route to the mission is always one available. Keith can see the appeal to that. He's just also seen what bad leaders can do to a society. They have to be careful.]

You are familiar with Rey. Yes?

[Yeah lucky for you Keith, Kylo tends to just say what is on his mind immediately when he is vaguely annoyed. Nevermind that he is not supposed to be suggesting that they are connected in Any Way Whatsoever.]

She’s spoken of you before.

[His tone suggests that it was not positive.]

Yeah ... [The word is a little drawn out. Keith will never be able to draw himself terribly tall. In Coran's numerical paladin height list, he's definitely number four. Something about Kylo Ren's voice makes him straighten to pull himself up as much as he can.]

What'd she say?—And if it was before you came back, things have changed now. We're friends.

[They weren't once. Accidentally saying too much. Rey ... wouldn't say anything bad otherwise, right?]

EVENT ▸ WELCOME TO HANABIRA

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i want it on the record that tifa told me to 100 emoji this reply

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