Annetan had made her way into Aurorasaki with few problems. There was the usual crowd of people and some very angry peasants, but that was too be expected, as the nation's coffers were being dumped into the city to try and make it less of a hellhole. At the moment, Aurorasaki was less of a city and more of an orgy of sewage, beggars, twisted structures, and streets of dubious quality. Annetan herself knew that it was a total eyesore, and now, a few hours into her visit, she was seeing that everything was going alright. The city had been originally laid out as a wheel, with districts sprouting from the enormous fortress in the middle of the "wheel" like spokes. Of course, sprawl had ruined all of that. Aurorastan had exploded during the rule of King Tinnham, when Aurorasaki, with her thirty five foot walls, had declared her independence as a city-state. She held out for several years, and even the final stand of the city had laid waste to Tinnham's forces, and many claim it was the beginning to the end of his fall. 

Now, however... the city regularly suffered massive firestorms, and plagues, and the place stank to the heavens with all of the loose sewage. Annetan bit her lip in distaste and did her best to calm Rubania as she stepped through puddles that were of a suspicious color and stench. The mare was very upset with how soiled her hoof-feathering was getting. Still, she kept more or less calm enough. Annetan was watching the first of the long list of improvements being made... the roads were being systematically torn up and sewers dug into the Earth beneath them, and then them being re-laid. Many structures had to be ripped out. It required a lot of pack animals, men, and a lot of soldiers to police the crowds. They would all be compensated, of course, but they still were mighty angry at having their livelihoods suspended. Annetan's guards pressed close as she watched the teams smash the cobblestones and then another team work behind them to dig up the Earth, and finally a third team to lay the pipe and slather the terracotta sections with adhesive. The adhesive itself could melt a man if he was not careful. The glue team had to wear huge suits to protect themselves, and even these suits had to be replaced regularly.

It was astounding to see how fast they worked. Of course, this was going to leave Stoludi short of many things for a long time, but Annetan was just happy to finally see her biggest city catching up a little to the rest of the country. Whatever the consequences, this overhaul needed to be done, and it was finally happening. Annetan tugs on the reins and pulls the mare around. She smiles at the Mayor of Aurorasaki, who was mounted atop a paint horse stallion that was actually extremely docile, even around the three mares of Annetan and her guards.  Annetan gives a nod and says, "Wonderful job, Zitturn. It is progressing ahead of schedule. And how many casualties did you say?" Zitturn, the Governor of Aurorasaki, flashed her a toothy grin and proudly proclaimed, "Only ten, your Grace. They will recover, and we have compensated them." Annetan smiles and nods to him, "Very good, Zitturn. I want to see this continue." Zitturn replies with eagerly burbled affirmatives, to which Annetan just smirks and tells him how good of a governor he was. After they also supervised the brand new firefighting equipment that was being tested, she and her three guards rode out of town, going to Buxiang to witness similar improvements. They weren't going so well there, unfortunately. Two men had died and three gluemen had been horribly disfigured due to accidents.

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Elsewhere, in Hixistan, a small town to the South of Katiraka, a young dreamer by the name of Uhu Biliria was hard at work at her desk by the light of a gas lamp. She huddles over the desk, scribbling at a piece of parchment, ignoring the hoofsteps and yelling outside in the small fishing village. On her desk was an outrageous design-a floating ship, powered either by special wing-like oars, or by a sort of waterwheel for the air. It was a regular shaped boat hull, suspended underneath a bladder of Jester's Breath by a series of wires. This sort of outlandish thinking had struck her after word of the new, strange gas had reached her and many others in the Northern Isles above mainland Stoludi. Uhu was one of those weird folk, the kind who are constantly dreaming and thinking of new ways to kill and save people. This was both of those. She had small but rapidly firing cannon to rain down shells on those below, and hatches to drop explosives directly beneath her. Perhaps this flying boat was just a dream but... there was a small sailing boat for sale nearby, and Uhu knew a blacksmith, a tanner, and a person who could secure her large quantities of the Jester's Breath. Perhaps this was soon to be more than a dream, at least to a degree.

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Still elsewhere, a Child of the Thunder landed on the shores of the RNI. She was dressed as a slave, a slave destined to be sold for sex. In truth, she had simply applied a very good disguise, and had a very good connection here. Now in Seasailier, her "slavedriver" tugs her forward on some chains to a tavern named "The Torn Sail". This shady place, this den of sin, was a popular place for Naval captains and their crews on leave. She knew she would have to sacrifice a lot, but the Child was intelligent, and most importantly beautiful and exotic. She takes on a false name, and is a nearly instant sell to the tavern owner. She is put to work almost immediately. Her first drunken customer comes soon after. In exchange for some very odd roleplay, he spilled some info about some old frigate that no one really cared about. She had a cracked keel, bad rigging, a faulty tiller... Not much, but it was a start. Maybe she would come to enjoy this after all. He did have more information, she was sure, but he had to know her before she got to the really good stuff.

There were about six Children in the RNI now, and three in the Irodien Empire. There was another two keeping an eye on Drakun, and one was keeping a loose check on Sawl. They had mostly been sent there to watch the governments and warn of any incoming diplomatic actions that might affect or hurt the Kingdom. Nothing too alarming yet... although there were some worrying signs. Hence why this Child had been sent on this mission to uncover any important secrets about the RNI's navy in case the worst really did come to be. The hope was that the Children could some day leave without ever having to send the signal that the time had come for Stoludi to prove her worth. Each one of them regularly sent encrypted messages over boats and even in the stomachs of seabirds, and each one made sure to make good friends and few enemies. 

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In Haltien, a new sloop-of-war slid off of her mounts and splashed into the sea, wetting her deck (called "deflowering" by the men and women who crewed her) and thus cementing her as a creature of the sea. The crew raise their voices in a triumphant shout and declare the [i]Moonlight Tide[/i] a woman of war and a goddess of the seas. Even before she stops rocking in the water, the crew start to haul in supplies from longboats and skiffs. It seemed like [i]Moonlight Tide[/i] had an uneventful launching. In her belly, however, someone was setting a rather clever little trap. A tiny hole had been bored and was filling a crate with water. In a few hours, when that crate filled, a wire under tension with a water soluble link would snap. When that broke, [i]Moonlight Tide[/i] would have her back broken and holes blown in her hull by a detonation in her magazines, caused by a small detonating charge connected to the wire. It was meant to look like an accident, but a young sailor had wandered down to the dark areas of the cargo hold to find a tool that had been lost there. When he saw the strange man boring a hole in the thick armor of the ship, he raised a cry for help. He was quickly silenced by a dagger to the throat, but then that man was tackled and subdued by two huge tiller maids that would easily intimidate most men. He sank a knife into one of the maids to little effect and tried to silence himself with a third knife, but he was pinned. He was dragged off the ship for interrogation, battered and bruised, but intact. [i]Moonlight Tide[/i] survived her first encounter with an enemy, after the charge was safely disarmed. Word of this attempted attack was dispatched quickly to the Royal Palace.