Inkdrop

The Nations of Mawei

@6slyboy6 Oh, how exciting. My country is getting air galleys and yours is getting... something. I can not wait.

The Nations of Mawei

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 Moonlight Tide 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 Moonlight Tide 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, Moonlight Tide 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. Moonlight Tide 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.

The Hidden People - Modern/Fantasy

May I still participate in this?

The Nations of Mawei

@6slyboy6 I am having a slow week actually. I just can't post till all of y'all do.

Requiem for a Dragon

I have not posted.

Requiem for a Dragon

You all can continue without me if you all want, I hardly have time or energy for this.

The Nations of Mawei

Okay. It was rushed, but y'all were getting understandably impatient so there is my IC.

The Nations of Mawei

Stoludi was basically turned inside out after the explosion at that fort. The fort had impeccable systems in place to prevent a massive detonation... yet it had occurred, and killed six men, including the Fort Master and a lower officer. The investigation was still ongoing, but already, the smell of fish was strong in the air. There was just something not quite right about how one of the best strongholds in Stoludi had been crippled, and on the day that a rather important convoy had left the port. Something was awry.
The responsibility of the investigation had fallen to King Emmerik. Right now, he was seated in front of the Second in Command, Lieutenant Kellii. She was a typical Stoludian soldier woman; strong-boned with a weatherbeaten face and eyes that were like small, glinting green gemstones. Short blonde hair hardly showed under her hat. A sharp nose and a bony face covered by pale skin completed the picture of her, or at least what could be seen underneath her white dress uniform. It was an elegant piece, with black buttons holding it together on her front, and a smooth, white fabric covering the rest of her torso. A similar set of pants covered her legs, and her shoulders were an emerald green. She throws a hasty salute and stands ramrod straight, awaiting questioning. There are freshly dressed wounds covering her face, in several places, and some dried blood remained on her lip.
They were in the office of the fort's commanding officer, the one that had suffered an explosion just a couple of hours ago. It was in the middle of the complex and stood as a squat, square building. The remains of the dead were still being cleaned outside of the shuttered window as Emmerik curtly tells her, "State your duties, Kellii."
Kellii answered as a military woman would, "Sir, I am the second in command, designated to take over command if the Master is incapacitated. I am also his adviser and his link to the personnel of the base."
Emmerik nods slowly and scribbles a note, then glances up to ask, "What were you doing in the moments leading to the explosion?"
Kellii doesn't even bother to swat away a moth that was flapping into her face as if it could fly through it. She seems to not even notice the little ashen grey thing as she fires back, "Your Grace, I was overseeing the mounting of a new cannon. Faster firing and longer range than our previous models."
Again Emmerik nods slowly and asks her, "Was there anything odd you noticed in the moments leading to the blast?"
At this, the woman actually shows some emotion. Her face twists, faintly, into a look of concern as she tells him, "One rookie loader grabbed a few too many cannon fuses... he dropped a couple in the grass, your Majesty."
Emmerik sighs softly and scribbles for several seconds before asking, "And what is the standard procedure in that case, Kellii?"
Kellii, deadpan, answers, "Leave the fuses be, your Grace. They don't pose a fire hazard in the wet grass and they are plentiful."
Emmerik simply scribbles a quick note in the dim sunlight and sighs, staring at the ceiling for several seconds before he finally, slowly, begins to say, "So, Kellii, what was the first sign of trouble?"
She shuffles her feet, just a little, and tells him, "Smoke, your Majesty. The smell of it. It did not smell like cannon fire or a hearth fire."
Emmerik scrabbles more, "And did you ever see this smoke?"
Kellii nodded quickly, "I followed the Commander, sir. We saw smoke coming from the doorway of the magazine, which was open. That is unusual. The smoke was thin and had a white quality to it..." The woman trails off, sighing.
Emmerik tilts his head slightly, "Something amiss?"
Kellii looks down at her feet for just a moment before looking up and saying, resolutely, "Yes, your Grace. It looked like fuse smoke. Those magazines had built in fire protection designed by the greatest minds of Stoludi. The men were drilled relentlessly on safety procedures. I do not know how it could have been accidental."
Silence filled the room then. The calls of men and birds filtered in through the shutters, but it was still quiet enough to allow even the drop of a pin to be audible. Emmerik had scribbled in his notes for a while, but now has gone silent, and instead stares at the ceiling while Kellii kept her eyes focused above his head, standing like a statue. Finally, the silence is broken when Emmerik shifts in his seat, and simply says, "You are dismissed, Kellii. Thank you for your time and I am sorry for your loss."
Kellii just bows and walks out ramrod straight. Emmerik considers the wall opposite him for a few more moments, then pulls out a piece of parchment and begins to scrabble a letter in the strange pictographic language of the Stoludians.

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Oddly enough, at almost the same time, some bad things were happening elsewhere in the fortress. It was to be another incident that shook Stoludi to it's core. A very low ranked guard named Pirearm was leaning on his musket on the outer walls when he saw a man... sending... something... into the air. It was out in a field of thick grass, next to a mountain and accessible only through the rarely used Southern sally port. Pirearm stormed down the wall and burst out into the field so fast he surprised the man, who was about to release another balloon when a deftly delivered shot from Pirearm's musket turned his hand into a bloody, grotesque mess and popped the floating thing. The man doubled over and cursed in a strange language that Pirearm didn't recognize... and the floating thing had dropped a box and a piece of parchment. Another guard, having seen the confrontation, ran out and tried to restrain the man. He turned and delivered three punches to Uritham's face, until he was then delivered a butt-smash from Pirearm's musket that broke his nose and left him bleeding from two places and whimpering in the grass. Two more men ran out and finally got him under control.

Pirearm sighs as Urtham wanders back into the fort, cursing and kicking at random rocks. Pirearm finds the box to be oddly light, and the letter... the letter was written in the odd language the man was cursing in. Pirearm just shrugs and wanders into the base, meandering his way across the courtyard until he found Kellii fresh out of her questioning. They converse for a moment before Pirearm delivers the artifacts he found... and almost instantly Kellii looks particularly alarmed and scurries off with the letter, leaving Pirearm very confused.
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An hour or so later the letter, along with a copy of the hearings, had been delivered to Queen Annetan under the talons of a white-tailed hawk. Per the usual procedure, Annetan blessed the hawk with a kiss to his forehead and some sweet words of thanks before dispatching him back to the aviary where he had come from. The queen was currently mounted on Rubania, making her way to Aurorastan to observe some infrastructure improvements that would hopefully stop the nearly clockwork plagues that always hit the insanely huge city. Not to mention the recent bout of fires... The Queen unrolls the parchment and begins to scan the document as Rubania saunters on without any input from her rider. After a few moments, the Queen's right-hand guard Aleit pulls up alongside her atop a smaller, chestnut mare named Opalik. Aleit looks sideways on at her before inquiring, "What news does the hawk bring, m'lady?" Annetan lets the scroll snap up and tells him, flatly, "Just a transcript from one of my Love's questionings. Just as I suspected, it was a bomb that destroyed that magazine."
Aleit licks his lips and hands her the other letter, this one having arrived on an eagle, and tells her, "We have some more news. The guards captured someone. And they found a letter written in the language of the RNI, and it was being sent by and RNI agent. They are holding him for interrogation but... the worst part is, he was sending some of Jester's Breath along underneath a balloon full of the stuff."
Annetan tilts her head slightly and frowns, deeply, asking, "Yibini can't have been in on this, can he?"
Aleit actually laughs, heartily, for several seconds before telling her with a mirthful smirk, "Your Majesty, excuse my manners, but there is no way in Asphodel that Yibini was in on this. He is an isolated hedonistic hermit, you know that. We give him money for labs and a selection of the finest canine bitches for his deviant desires and he causes us no problems, and gives us some important discoveries."
Annetan shrugs and simply mutters her agreement, and then she tells him, "We will have to keep a weary eye on the RNI after this... that letter is being deciphered, yes?"
Aleit nods quickly, "Yes, your Majesty. As quickly as possible."
Annetan looks forward and watches Aurorastan's twenty foot high walls approaching, sighing softly and remarking, "These are very troubled times."

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Speaking of Yibini, he was in his observatory at the top of that central tower, peering through a telescope with multiple lenses and observing some cloud movements off in the South. It was looking more and more worrying. This was shaping up to be one of the epic storms described in the records of Stoludi... on the table next to him were stacks of old, crinkled records that described one or two storms of this kind. He begins to compose a letter as well, worried about the tidings this storm may bring.

The Nations of Mawei

I have been trying but eight hours of school and then three hours of work does not leave a lot of time for chronicling history.

The New Eon

@Camerch I am afraid not.