epidemiology | EVENT ▸ EMPIRE OF THE CRASHING WAVE

EVENT ▸ EMPIRE OF THE CRASHING WAVE

EMPIRE OF THE
CRASHING WAVE

The royalty of Guild Ophelia has managed to hold an audience with Empress Nama of the Celestial Mountains, urging her to meet with the Empress of the Crashing Wave in the interest of finding an accord between their clans. In return, Nama requests that Ophelia take two letters to the Crashing Wave's court, where, as foreigners, they should be received better than any of her own people.

The Empire of the Crashing Wave is a week's travel by foot from the Land of Celestial Mountains, through the forests and farms of the Flowerlands. There is no visible indication that this universe was once two, with even the road leading through the Flowerlands heading seamlessly toward the sea.

The farms and villages in the outskirts of the Empire of the Crashing Wave are decorated in seashells and motifs of the sea, and the closer one gets to the city, the stronger the scent of the ocean becomes. Once the city proper is reached, Ophelia's magitek projects words in front of their eyes that only they can see:

Location reached:

» EMPIRE OF THE CRASHING WAVE
A progressive society that values innovation. Main sources of income: fishing, pearl diving, jewelry crafting, shipbuilding. Politically matriarchal; socially egalitarian. Empress YOUMI resides at the PEACEFUL TIDE.

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

The city is built right on the ocean's edge, with some parts of it even jutting out into the sea on bridges and piers. The castle, Peaceful Tide, is built high above the rest; guards will stop anyone at the gates and, if shown the correspondence from Empress Nama, will deliver the letters directly to Empress Youmi. Attempts to seek an audience with Youmi will be rebuffed for the time being, so you may as well take in the sights...

▸ A PROMISING DEVELOPMENT

Unlike the Land of Celestial Mountains, men may move freely here, the matriarchal rules of the land only extending to politics. Men and women work alongside each other in all sections of the city, nobles and commoners alike, and even the guards have men among their ranks. In the Artisan District, potters, musicians, and artists line the streets and sell their wares, work, or discuss their craft with each other.

Closer to the Beach, there is a boardwalk where young couples stroll alongside grandparents chasing after their grandchildren, electric lamps bathing the wooden planks in a warm glow at night. Fishermen haul in their daily catch in buckets and nets, trailed by a gaggle of hopeful cats. Beachcombers and pearl divers populate the beach as well, making it a clear place for work instead of play.

A few days after Ophelia's arrival in sea clan territory, a bell rings loudly in the late afternoon, drawing citizens toward the castle. Guards stop anyone from getting too close, though the populace seems to know what to expect -- soon, a beautiful woman in an elaborate blue kimono appears in an upper balcony.

When viewing the woman, Ophelia's magitek will tell them:

» EMPRESS YOUMI
Leader of the EMPIRE OF THE CRASHING WAVE.
30 years old. SPECIES: Human. MEDICAL CONCERNS: Lactose intolerant.

The crowd cheers at Youmi's arrival, only quieting once she raises her hand. She speaks clearly and confidently, her voice carrying easily across the assembly.

"I have received a letter from Her Imperial Majesty Nama of the Land of Celestial Mountains. She informs me that their spring festival was interrupted by an attack from our own people, working without my knowledge or consent," Youmi begins, holding her hand up again when a displeased rumble begins to ripple through the crowd. It's unclear if they're perturbed by the ambush or by Nama herself. Once all is silent again, she continues.

"She has detained the criminals, for that is what they are, and assures me she will not bring this to the battlefield. I will send her an agreement to the terms, but hear this: any who escalate this further will be slain by my order. I have spoken. The spirits of the sea watch over us all."

Youmi then retreats back into the castle. While some citizens cheer their empress's decree, others mutter unhappily amongst themselves as they disperse and go about their business.

▸ BUT TROUBLE CONTINUES

The rest of the day following Youmi's decree goes by without incident, leaving time for Ophelia to stop by the sake breweries near the sea or travel back through the forests of the Flowerlands for hunting, hot springs, or simply enjoying the nature of Hanabira. With war averted and the empresses in communication, it seems as though Ophelia's time in this universe will draw to a close soon.

As the sun sinks down, finding a place to sleep might be a good idea. There are hotels in the city, but for those who are trying to be a little more frugal, the Flowerlands is a good place to set up camp for free. Doro, the Lord of the Flowerlands, has heard of Ophelia's efforts in starting communication between the empresses as well, and offers rooms in his castle in thanks; if war were to start between the two, his land would suffer for it.

During the night, those who accept Doro's invitation will hear a commotion very nearby, steel clashing against steel. Doro and his daughters rush out, weapons drawn, and straight into a skirmish between sea and mountain clan ronin. The warriors are fighting to kill, and in their fervor, someone's fire arrow alights a farmhouse on Doro's property. The farmers need to be rescued and the fire put out, and while the warriors will likely kill each other, they could also be subdued to prevent further damage. Please let the mods know with a link to the thread if your character is killing or capturing any of the ronin.

After the skirmish, Doro must be brought back inside his castle, having been wounded during the battle. He pleads with Ophelia to continue to help, as it looks like a tentative truce by the empresses is not enough to calm the citizens. Since they were so successful in receiving an audience with Nama, he believes they can propose a way the two empires can live in harmony.

Throughout the next two weeks, skirmishes between the clans are peppered throughout the Flowerlands, some leaving bodies behind and some leaving damage to farms and forest. It looks like Ophelia's peacekeeping mission just became a lot more hands-on: keep the skirmishes from getting out of control while still working toward a way to end the conflict once and for all.

▸ OOC NOTES

This log will last for two IC weeks: the first three days will be free exploration, and day four is Youmi's proclamation and the skirmish in the Flowerlands. Your characters are free to explore for the next ten days, during which further skirmishes will occur. 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.

▸ Coming next log: Peace proposals! Get your brainstorming started now.

▸ Activity Check is due on 5 February 23:59 UTC. We do not accept late submissions, so make sure you fill it out!

▸ Uniform Design Contest is open! Submissions are due 28 February 23:59 UTC. Gamewide voting will be in March.

▸ Bounty Board ▸ Items Page ▸ Exploration Group Planning ▸ General Plotting ▸ February Calendar

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ To Simon’s absence of surprise, her stance on robots doesn’t seem to have changed any. He stiffens, still unsure how much he should be capitulating to her. Since, you know, he’s not into the constant suspicion, but he’s not exactly sure how structure gel stands up to being cracked over an insanely ripped Russian woman’s knee. ]

I’m just thinking.

[ Maybe it’s the suspicion, or maybe it’s that she pegged him immediately for a robot that “thinks” it’s human. It’s an exhausting mix of defiance and self-loathing, feeling defensive over something he doesn’t even want to be. ] What could you possibly think I’m here to do?

[ This robot, it always looks and sounds so defensive. But Zarya has seen that before, and it doesn't soften her heart in the slightest. Anything can be made to look defensive. She pulls to a stop, hands planting themselves on her hips. She may be stripped down to convenient workout clothes instead of in her usual armor, but she looks no less large for it. ]

I would not know, you and I don't think in the same ways. [ She looks like she wants to add a little more insult into that, but she can't pretend she isn't at least a little curious: ] What are you thinking about?

[ She doesn't sound curious, more like she's an interrogator following up on a suspicious lead, but that's just default when it comes to robots. ]

The mission. Home. Normal things.

[ Simon hears only distrust in her voice, of course, and his guarded tone grows exasperated and he gestures to himself. ] I’m literally a diving suit, how many more qualifications do I need to be allowed over here? Look, you don’t like robots. I don’t like being a robot. So we agree it would be better if I wasn’t a robot, but that’s not exactly in the cards right now.

[ He’s pretty sure she’s not really primed to attack him, or kill him — even if it’s just because Hathaway would not be happy with her for it, the result is the same — but the suspicion is really almost as bad. ]

[ Her brow knits as he answers -- not aggression, for once, but confusion. It's an answer that doesn't make any sense. Never the type to keep a confusing moment to herself, Zarya is of course happy to share this with him. ]

This makes no sense. You are a robot, how can you not like being one?

[ She likes to think she's a bit of a robot specialist, being one of so few people to see through them so clearly to their untrustworthy cores. But this isn't anything she's heard of before. ]

[ Simon is not exactly enthusiastic about whatever reaction he’s about to get to this — to explaining this to somebody whose opinion of what he is is already firmly at the bottom of a precipice he spends way too much of his time trying not to even look over (but keeps feeling called to over and over again, because he can’t leave well enough alone). But it feels weird to keep not mentioning it, like he’s accepting it, or betraying... a dead guy, technically, but.

His voice is harried, wanting to just get through this answer. ] On my Earth we figured out how to scan a human brain as data. That’s what I am. I don’t care what that makes me— [ shocking twist: He Cares Immensely, but he has no interest in letting this lady know that; he hates that her stance on robots can take any sort of foothold in his head as it is. ] it’s just what I remember. All of my memories are- are of a human life. So, no, I don’t like being a robot.

[ It's not an answer she expected, clearly, neither is it an answer she likes. If it's telling the truth, and she has to admit it really has no reason she can see to lie, this is... an unspeakable horror, frankly.

Something like horrified pity creeps in around the edges of her stare, and the firmly planted hands at her hips slip away for a stance suddenly no longer so certain of itself. ]

You were -- a man? [ is she going to have to revise this "it" business, she doesn't like that either ]

Yeah.

[ ...it sounds like she believes him, but Simon doesn’t know what to expect from her, not when his only knowledge of how the robots of her world work is that the voice, mannerisms, and behavior of a guy who’s only been one for a few weeks are well within the normal range for machines who go around killing people.

Apparently self-loathing robots in particular just haven’t been invented yet. It would be an extremely roundabout ruse, at any rate. ]

It’s not what the scan was for, a malfunctioning A.I. got ahold of it. But it just feels like I was myself, and then I woke up as— this, in a completely different time and place.

[ There are a good few seconds spent watching the pitable creature standing on the sand — only she isn't really watching him, she's envisioning how utterly devastating that would be. To awake with everything stolen from you, in a body you couldn't even trust. A collection of programming and hardwire. Who's to say the original man is even still really there? ]

That is... [ Horrible, nothing she thinks she can even put into words. She lets it trail off instead, and finally shakes her head. ]

You should have said this earlier.

[ Simon throws up his hands in exasperation. ] If I’d thought you’d believe me I would’ve mentioned it, but the first thing you said to me was “you probably think you’re human, but you’re not”. I just figured if I stayed out of your way and did my part, you’d come around eventually. Or lay off a little, at least.

[ It would be nice if it was like that and she just came around because it turns out some robots are okay, but that would mean he keeps being an “it”, and just, look, Simon is not principled enough for that. Some other robot is going to have to be her teachable moment. ]

[ She frowns to be reminded of her own words, especially because she doesn't think she can actually take them back. But now she can at least admit they are... unkind.

Unfortunately, Zarya has never once been accused of holding back words for the sake of kindness. ]

What I said is not untrue. [ She eyes him, looking grimly unhappy about it. ] You have suffered a great, great loss... but what you were died with it. What you are now is circuits, programming. Machine.

[ It's the bottom line, unavoidable. ]

[ Simon searches her eyes, otherwise entirely still, and the lack of malice in her words makes it way worse somehow. She’s not wrong — everything making him him is in a computer, infinitely duplicable. For all he knows there are more Simons running around in PATHOS-II — maybe something as lucid as him, just as close to the original as he is, or something like the delusional UH-8 he had to kill for its tool chip, but with a scrambled Simon scan instead — talking to no one, reliving the same few memories over and over and over. ]

Yeah, I’m way ahead of you on being aware of that. Thanks.

[ he can’t help sounding annoyed; he doesn’t like that she’s right, he doesn’t like hearing it, he doesn’t like hearing it as if he didn’t know, and he doesn’t like the part of him that doesn’t know, who’s still waiting to wake up from this and wants to scream like an a child that he’s not a machine, he’s human, why can’t anybody see that he’s human?

— but when he speaks again, his voice is more level. ] What was your name again?

Edited 2018-02-06 21:17 (UTC)

[ And right back, Zarya searches Simon's... facial area. It's still unnerving to see how little of a face is really there, all the more to know he probably had a normal human face once. She manages not to shudder at the thought of it, but just barely. ]

Aleksandra Zaryanova.

[ And, again, he doesn't get the shorter form of it. The distaste may have been unseated by pity, but the wariness is going nowhere. ]

[ ... his eyes shift to the side and there is a pause ... as inscrutable as his face is, it’s probably easy to guess at something in the ballpark of “estimating the chances I’ll remember that”. ]

Uh, got a nickname?

No.

[ Flatly. If he figures out that just first or last name will do she won't contest it, but he's no friend of hers to be able to use nicknames.

She stands herself a little straighter, moving a step or two closer. ]

As a man, I think you may have been good. It seems to linger. But as a machine, one glitch can change it all. [ She drops a hand on his shoulder, heavy and firm. ] I will be watching you. If I see sign of this, I will destroy you.

[ It doesn't sound like a threat anymore so much as an offer. She thinks, good man that he may have been, he wouldn't want to be hurting anyone either. It's a favor, if you look at it like that. ]

[ For all the time that Simon has devoted to ruminating about his condition, surprisingly little of it has been spent thinking about software problems. The idea that his brain could encounter some kind of personality-changing glitch has never even occurred to him. He knows next to nothing about how brain scans and cortex chips work, but he just takes for granted that this copy of his consciousness — this experimental simulation of a damaged brain — will just keep running, entirely under his control, or at least as much as his brain was before.

So that’s a disturbing new suggestion. ]

You mean, if I start... attacking people? That kind of sign?

[ She still doesn’t trust him, which isn’t surprising, nor does she think there’s a whole person in there, but she believes in some of one. Enough of one that her threats are now an offer to put him down like a rabid animal. Which, sure, if he loses his mind, it’d be for the best, but he’s statue-still in perturbation anyway. ]

[ She nods once, curtly. ]

Don't think it can't happen. Thoughts like that destroyed my village.

[ And hey, maybe she's wrong. She'd like that. But you can never count on maybe. ]

If it makes you feel any better, I can’t even throw a punch. But fine — if I ever lose my mind and manage to start doing that, I’d rather be taken out.

[ He’s just going to bank on ‘not gonna happen’ for now.

Still, her explanation makes her robophobia... more understandable. She’d said before that they kill people — but they killed her people. All of them. That might’ve left him with a distaste for robots too. ] Is that what happened to the robots in your world? A “glitch”?

[ It doesn't make her feel much better. He isn't armed like the omnic forces of her world, no, but murder will find a way. And that he agrees to it, even, gets a firm, quick nod before she takes back her hand and moves away to regain the space between them. ]

Maybe. Maybe it was tampering. The end result does not change. [ The entire thing is a scarred over wound for her these days, and her voice stays steady and flat. ] Organic minds are not so easily influenced.

[ Simon’s not sure he agrees with that last part, but he doesn’t want to jump back down that particular rabbit hole. Instead he says after a moment: ] My home’s been destroyed too.

[ it’s a fresher wound than Zarya’s — more recent — but it’s too big to even see all at once, the surreal scope of it, and he almost matches her in flat affect. But he’s never put it that particular way out loud before, and he sounds a little less flat when he adds, ] So I get it. It sucks.

[ Is commiserating with somebody who kindly offered to murder him in a hypothetical situation normal?? This is an improvement on what was previously just hatred, but it’s a lot more confusing. ]

Russia still stands. Only my village, and many others, fell. [ It's a quick correction — it doesn't really matter to this conversation, but pride still has her quick to defend her homeland. He shouldn't think of her as some nationless wretch.

There is though, she will admit, a slightly bigger issue at hand. She eyes him warily. ]

What became of your home?

[ Simon eyes her back — is she suspicious of that, too? What, does she think he did it? Only the still, unflinching nature of the stare he’s giving her in return hints at how deadpan unimpressed it is. ] A comet hit the Earth. The fallout destroyed everything on the surface.

[ He’s seen the pictures, but it still feels too unreal to process. Not that he’d be able to go back even if it were still livable, but, welp. ]

[ She winces at the answer. Of all the threats a planet has, she has never even had to consider one of that nature. They'd had their hands full enough with everything else. ]

I am sorry. [ It sounds genuine; it's a great loss, she doesn't have to like him to acknowledge that. ] Were there survivors?

[ Besides him, obviously. He doesn't really count. ]

[ Sometimes Simon thinks he’d count, and other times not so much. ]

There were some where I woke up, at the bottom of the ocean, in a research station called PATHOS-II. Most of them are dead now, or they’ve been turned into hostile monsters, or something like me with a brain scan in a robot body. If there are still any sane, living humans down there, I hadn’t found them by the time I got recruited.

[ She probably isn’t sorry for him, but in a multiverse this big, at least he’s talking to somebody who can innately appreciate the loss of an Earth. ]

[ He's right, it isn't thoughts of Simon in particular that darken her face unhappily. It's a terrible fate for, apparently, the entire human race to meet, even if it isn't the human race of her planet.

She studies that eerily expressionless thing that passes as his face, brows knotted, and eventually: ] What have you requested? From Hathaway.

[ In a situation like his, what could one even request? The damage has been done. ]

[ Simon, probably mercifully, breaks eye contact. His incentive was kind of a kneejerk decision and he tends to forget some people actually wouldn’t have voluntarily joined without one. ] My human body, or something like it, but I don’t know anymore. If they can do everything they say they can do, I have to use it for something bigger. At least then I wouldn’t have to go back.

[ the more he learns about this near-infinite multiverse, the less appealing the already-unappealing thought of going back to PATHOS-II becomes. Maybe there’s a universe where he can plug in the Omnitool and talk to Catherine again, even. It’s beyond needle in a haystack, but still. ]

EVENT ▸ EMPIRE OF THE CRASHING WAVE

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)