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

Some will always be necessary, yes. To erase all pain would be to erase life itself. A concept that does not appeal to me.

[To others, however...it is a solution that grows more appealing every day, deep within shadowed dens scattered throughout the galaxy. Thrawn tips his attention back over his shoulder, pulling away from his work at last.]

But to choose a crippled system of leadership over one with reach and motivation is to allow those wars to live again. Ignorance over balance, Rey, is at its core a poison.

Reach and motivation are precisely the problem of the First Order. They have too much of it. They destroyed an entire system.

[ She spits it out with such vehemence, such vitriol. Like she's wanted to hear him out and for it all to come to this is just — inadequate. She wanted a better answer. ]

This is the Empire's legacy. Death. Destruction. The wars do live again.

The First Order is not the Empire.

[In an instant he's drawn himself up to his full, imposing height, eyes glinting as they narrow. He isn't livid, he is stone. Cold and unwavering in the face of her fury, striding closer as his chin dips low in a sharp, leveled stare.] They are starved, they are broken. They are lead by the imagined glory of an Emperor filled to the brim with malice.

[His mind retraces past conversations with Ren, with Rey, with Dameron— something in him feels hollow at the news she once again sees fit to inflict on him in a cutting blow, but he does not flinch. He does not falter.]

You wanted to know why I feel the First Order is an inadequate solution, but it is you that already knows why.

I choose neither.

[ And in this way, he manages to … scold her? It's the closest word for the way she balks at his sharp reply. Rey backs down, softens in a snap. Perhaps because his fervor matches her own, and perhaps because … she had never considered neither to be a real option before he had said it. ]

They rose from its ashes. They're all that's left of the Empire. We don't have anything outside of the New Republic or the First Order. There is no middle—

[ But she thinks of something Ben had said, about balance. He had meant it to justify the Dark Side's hold on him, but hadn't she said something similar to him once? It's more complicated than that. It's an unwelcome memory of a time she wants to escape, but then also— We can find a better path. Together.

She turns away from Thrawn to compose herself. Any thoughts of that thing she had become after the temporal insects bit her put her on edge. She's not sure what to make of it. What she does know is that she wants out of her head, so she isn't left alone with it. ]

Explain. [ Her voice is choked in a way she doesn't like, but she persists. ] What do you mean, neither?

[As she stills, so does Thrawn— settling like silt at her back, standing only a few feet away in the full heat of the midday sun. There is no breeze, and without the protection of the buildings that now surround them in ruin, there is no shelter from it.

On this day, all things are laid bare.

And when she asks for an explanation, the Chiss does not answer.]

[ She can't stomach the silence for long. She wants to be free of her thoughts of that person she'd become. Had? Would? Might? She wheels around when she has decided that his silence is deliberate, not thoughtful, and raises her voice. ]

Tell me! [ This demand deflates as she looks him over, as she realizes that he, more than anyone, likely understands the confusion in her. When she insists again, it's quieter. Softer. ] Please.

[She is like him.

Not Thrawn. Not the Admiral she's so desperately honed in on in this moment— but Ren. Perhaps he is wrong to think so, he certainly cannot blame her for her frustration, or for all the scar tissue the First Order has left behind, painfully knitted together beneath her skin. But she is searching for something in his stare, hungry and hopeful in equal amounts.

He shakes his head.]

It will not satisfy you to hear it.

None of this satisfies me.

[ It comes out all at once. She doesn't mean for it to. She wants to keep it close to her chest, to suppress it until it is forgotten, like any memory of her mother's face. But she is not just combating him now; she is trying to escape the specter brought on by those insects.

She is wounded. Left untreated for so long, the injury has now torn open again, and blood pours from it. ]

I hate being here. I don't understand any of this. I'm not a diplomat, or a politician, or a philosopher. I'm not anything. [ Her tone becomes somewhat strangled here. Somewhere in there she has mingled her feelings about the mission with her feelings about their own galaxy. But they are the same, in this. ] I don't know how to stop these skirmishes. I don't know what the galaxy is supposed to look like after the First Order is gone, when it was the New Republic that let them come to power in the first place. None of it makes sense to me, and I just want to understand.

Come. [His voice is clear and steady as he turns away from her, treading towards a pile of gathered stone. Before the conflict it was likely acquired for spare resources, but now— with nothing left for it to reinforce— it stands as a sufficient place to rest.

And so Thrawn does exactly that, gesturing with an open palm for her to take the spot just beside him; she is injured, she needs rest, even if she does not realize it.]

Sit with me for a moment.

[ She can't quite tell if that's the kind of resolve that will help her, will respond to her needs, or if it's something else. But hope moves her, and she crosses to where he sits, joining him by taking the seat he has indicated.

There's some fidgeting. The bunching of the edge of her kimono in her fists tells that she would rather be moving, working, continuing forward than sitting down to examine this. But there's no escaping this now. It's out there for the world.

Or at least, for him. ]

You understand how it all works. [ Help me, she doesn't say. ]

[It is strikingly clear to him. She does not ask for the truth, for she does not perceive a reality in which they are both adrift and uninformed, despite the evidence he's provided at least twice over in reeling from her sharply delivered revelations. She speaks to him as though he were an ancient, slumbering deity. A long-lived creature only recently risen on sacred ground— hoarding secrets that might somehow save her, if only he would share them.

She does not see that he is only a warrior. A tactician. An outsider, sent by the Ascendancy to serve in exile, alone.

Knowing this, he does not tell her the truth.]

Yes. [His accent drawing that singular word out into a lengthy breath.] And so you must listen to me now, Rey.

To come from nothing, is not to be nothing. It is not to have nothing.

I know. [ Said not as though she really does know this in her bones, but rather as if she has heard this somewhere before. ] I have the Force. But that doesn't help me with any of this.

[ The choices that she has to make, the ideals that she has to develop now that she has chosen to step outside the little corner of the world where she was exempted from thinking about things like galactic politics. The Force is more responsibility for those choices to be the right ones. ]

I do not speak of the Force.

[It is an unknown, intangible factor. To function with it, to Thrawn's mind, is no different than functioning without it— for lofty expectations attached to sheer ability alone is at its core, a danger.] I was born without status— without a place in my people's society. My family had no claim nor titles. This did not stop me.

When I was exiled into starvation for my choices, and taken prisoner by the Empire, I was alone. Unarmed. Unaided.

And yet.

[He lifts his hand as an example, marking the place on his chest where a Grand Admiral's plaque would rest, were he still wearing his uniform.]

I will help you, as you have asked. But if I am to do this, you cannot let your past dictate your future.

Can you agree to this?

[ Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. That's the only way to become what you were meant to be.

She looks up to meet Thrawn's otherworldly gaze, red and unreadable. It seems to have brought him peace, to do so. Peace and a sense of purpose. His admission makes it all the more clear that he understands precisely what it feels like to be in her position. He wasn't just an outsider, like her; he'd had nothing, once.

But a frown catches on her lips. ]

I don't know. [ She doesn't want to lie to him, to offer certainty where there is none. They threw you away like garbage. Can she let go of that? Of feeling like garbage, cast aside? ] But I can try.

[It is enough— the Chiss inclining his head in a nod that signals his agreement. And for a moment it seems as though they might be done speaking. As if this is where it ends, as he rises to his feet.]

One last thing. [He adds, lifting a finger when he turns again to glance at Rey.]

I would appreciate it if in the future, you made an effort to deliver any additional, potentially catastrophic information not in anger.

[ oh.

Sufficiently distanced from the subject, she can see more clearly. And … Yeah, that's fair. That is a 100% fair request. She looks, again, a little scolded. Penitent, even. She doesn't reply until she's confident she can do so without making it about the fact that she feels bad. ]

I'm sorry. [ It's soft, unobtrusive, but important to say. And it is with compassion, not probing interest, that she asks, ] Are you okay?

I am fine.

[He is. Not in the moment, not while dwelling on the idea of the state of the galaxy as she knows it, but his balm is knowing the future has not yet come for him.

As he'd said to her once before: there is still time.]

Thank you.

Now if I am not mistaken, we still have wreckage to clear.

Uh, right.

[ She doesn't know what to do with catastrophe being fine for him. Nor does she know what to do with him being like yeah I'll help you out but not right now. She glances around and gets to her feet. ]

I can probably handle the rest of this myself.

[Look, Chiss are like Tolkien elves ok: they grieve deeply and beautifully and without shedding tears.]

If you are certain. I will move on ahead, then, and track the insurgents that did this. [Scent or sight, there is hopefully something left to follow.]

When we return to the city, I shall teach you about reading expression and intent. Your observational skills are lacking, and it would be best if we began your instruction by speaking to those who have very little to hide.

[ She scoffs in offense when he calls her skills lacking, but also that's literally what she just admitted, so it's a fair catch. Still, she's scowling a little bit about it. ]

I'm observant. [ grumble grumble. ]

Good. I trust you will have no problem demonstrating the full depth of your abilities, then.

[Pausing mid-stride, he glances down towards his own nails before tipping a look over his own shoulder.]

Without resorting to the Force.

[ oh, called out. her brow furrows and she's like !!! you didn't even know i had the force and now you're banning me from it that's the worst dad behavior ever!! now i'll just skulk around using it behind your back. like drugs. yes, the force is drugs.

but also ... touché. so she doesn't actually complain about it. ]

The Force is part of me. I can't just shut it off.

[ she complains about that instead. ]

You forget. I was close allies with the late General Skywalker; I am quite familiar with the Force, and how much effort it takes to sustain.

[Well— he may not have mentioned that Skywalker was the Jedi in question, come to think of it.]

I believe you will do just fine.

Did you say Skywalker?

[ Rey's expression slackens all at once. She tries to school it into something unmoving, but—

Well. In that way, she's not like Ben at all. She's too often an open book. ]

Yes, I did.

[It's entirely offhanded, spoken like an afterthought— as all proper namedrops should be. And then he's back to walking again, taking his leave before she has the opportunity to press him further:]

Until we meet again, Rey.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

EVENT ▸ EMPIRE OF THE CRASHING WAVE

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