March Adventure: Swim with the Current and Float Away

[lifeaftr_mods]

NEW ISLAND: AI'TUOH

Who: Anyone who feels brave...or particularly lawful
What: A city worth exploring, and a people worth meeting
When: March 10th and onward
Where: Ai'tuoh
Warnings: The themes you might associate with strict punishment and rule-based dystopias will abound, along with nonconsensual drugging/sedation for those found guilty in the streets. Otherwise, mark as needed!

The Overview: Ai'tuoh
The dawn of the 10th will see the appearance of the promised island on the horizon. The smooth, even planes of city walls rear across the expanse of sandy beach, but beyond that, no particular discerning characteristics can be immediately glean. That same morning, characters will awaken from a brief dream, wherein the Storyteller will advise that the new island accessible via mana pool - and they suggest, with some trepidation, that you do not make the location of said mana pool on the new land immediately obvious to the natives. It's clear that something has put them on edge, though they've yet to say what.

Welcome, adventurers, to the island of Ai'tuoh.

Our City, Our Rules
Ai'tuoh is home to a sprawling city, built of smooth, sandy stone. Its architecture is simple, precise, and uniform, valuing utility above all else - function to the exclusion of form. The homogeneity of the people of Ai'tuoh extends beyond the similar, monochrome spectrum of their apparel. Despite the gradations of skin color and the subtle shifts in the shades of their hair - all falling within established limits, of course - they all appear to be more or less human. But most striking of all is the stern warning emblazoned across the city's gates. It translates as follows:

May those who violate our law be cleansed in the Standing Water.

The Unerring Law of the people of Ai'tuoh can be found in the library, which contains little besides some five hundred copies of the same dispassionate lists of various laws, most of which you've probably already broken by the time you've entered.

If you plan on stopping by, we'd recommend taking the time to explore the docks first - those that frequent that particular area are rather more forthcoming to travelers. You might find someone sympathetic to your plight, willing to offer some helpful hints.

Holding Cells: Awaiting Your Trial
Those unlucky enough to be caught by the concealed militia taskforce of the city will be sedated on sight of their violation, and will wake in a small, smooth-stoned room. There are no windows, and only one door - and it won't be opening under your duress. The holding cell into which you've been deposited is beyond barebones; while clean and uniform, it lacks even the basic commodities of a bed and bucket. It seems that there's no need to plan for keeping prisoners in the long term. No one drops by to visit, and no one addresses you if they pass through. Your only company is in your cellmates, who you might be able to hear through the walls, provided you raise your voice over the soft, buzzing hum that permeates the air; a magical suppression field, to ensure that those with particular talents cannot exert them to break the law's hold.

The barracks are sorted into clusters of several buildings, each with variety of cells hidden in secluded pockets. To contrast the uniformity of the city itself, there is no such order here; the buildings are designed to be difficult to break into, and even harder to orient oneself in.

Those who are being kept in holding until their cleansing will not be in complete isolation forever. There are a number of militia who patrol the prison areas to ensure peace is being kept...and some might even be open to conversation.

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For OOC information about Ai'tuoh and the city's laws, please see our recent OOC information post!

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Feeling a tad adrift? Make sure to check the Locations Page, which has details regarding the starting areas and a handy map for those who feel better with a bird's eye view!

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LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Comments

[aftrnpc]

[Her eyebrow raises. Were she in less control of herself, she might find herself snorting derisively.]

Our laws are clearly outlined inside our library. That you chose to make fools of yourselves as you pleased, without so much as visiting our place of knowledge, is no fault of ours.

[thermalwind]

[He narrows his eyes and a spark burns in their depths. He has a handle on his temper but it is still there.]

How often do you direct them to where they can be found before an arrest is made? How often are warnings issued or is it just arrest them and then claim it isn’t your fault for anything that happens. Must be nice to have supposedly clean hands.

Let me ask you something.

[He pushes away from the wall to approach the door. The glow of his Marmora armor casting the faintest purple light.]

If I had managed to get to the library and read your laws. What would have happened? Arrested anyway?

[aftrnpc]

[Her eyes skate away. Briefly. It wounds her pride to be spoken to with such righteousness by a lawless criminal awaiting his punishment. An outsider. Certainly, she has never had to deal with an outsider before... and his questions ring with a certain logic she cannot place. Outsiders, who didn't grow up with Ai'tuohan laws... his claim that this makes his ignorance excusable...]

[No. She cannot allow her own inexperience to sway her. She closes her eyes and exhales deeply.]

Our laws keep our society pure; free of unclean lies. If you violate them, you must be cleansed. The circumstances do not... they do not matter.

[thermalwind]

Yeah? Tell that to the dead. How many has it been? [His eyes are sharp and he doesn’t bother to soften the blow of his words. He can picture the number of people.]

How many promised they’d learn or follow and none of you let them even try.

[His anger builds like a gathering storm but unlike the past he holds it in check. He just asks another question.]

So let’s get this straight. Is it really laws or is your society just looking for excuses to ‘cleanse’ anything not your people?

[aftrnpc]

Silence!

[It bursts from her lips in a flagrant and shameful display of loose emotion. She is mortified by her own weakness, but does not show it. Her hands fist at her sides, and she stares down at her prisoner coolly.]

[(At first, she is listening for her comrades in arms; fearing that she had been heard.)]

Are you so self-important that you believe your treatment to be special? That our own people have never been cleansed? We are all at the mercy of the Water, fool! Do not presume that our society has flourished so long without being subject to its guidance!

[thermalwind]

I already guessed you punish your own people. Or you wouldn’t have looked horrified just now. [He stands in plain view now. His voice is level despite the anger in it. He takes a breath and lets it out. Focus.]

I don’t see myself as more than what I am. It just used to be my job to keep people safe. All these people in here. [He gestures widely as if to encompass all the cells.] If they could be allowed to just leave and not trouble you. They’d still be in here wouldn’t they. Even if I stayed and took whatever this cleansing is.

Is it murder? Or is it something else. What made your people so scared that the alternative was all of this?

[aftrnpc]

[Her eyes flash once again, and then settle. How nobly he speaks. Were she not taught far better, she might have a hard time believing that someone who put upon a such a front of selflessness was impure. But she has been taught better. Such are the weak of resolve that go to the Water.]

[She moves up to meet him at the bars of the prison cell, keeping herself just out of reach for either of them.]

They must be purified. You cannot be cleansed in their stead. [She holds his gaze, smoldering with conviction.] We do not fear the Water, outsider. It protects us from the truly great evil: falsities. Lies. Stories. Constructs of the impure that would topple us.

[thermalwind]

[He says nothing until she’s done talking. It would hold water if he didn’t see how messed up it all is. Or it feels like. His gut instinct tells him this is wrong.] Even if they chose never to come back. They would have to be cleansed.

Do you hear how that sounds? No matter what anyone you come in contact has to be restricted and changed to your way. Even if that way might not serve them in their own society. Whether the water saves you or not it might not save them.

And anyone who doesn’t look like you. What if they were born that way? How fair is it to claim they’re ignorant and have to change when that’s just how they have always been? Does that make them supposedly impure? You never answered me.

What is the cleanse.

[aftrnpc]

We force no one into our city. Our society puts itself at risk every day by opening its doors to those liars who would seek to upheave us, and we respond accordingly. If you have such issue with our right to protect ourselves, then perhaps you should have stayed away. No such option exists for us, outsi--

[Her voice suddenly drops off. That last thought... the pure impudence. She does not know where it stemmed from, nor does she dare complete it. Speaking with this impure outsider is poisoning her mind. Swiftly, she takes a step back, increasing the distance between herself and her prisoner.]

[She centers herself, and then speaks again. Low and cautious.]

I do not answer to you. You will find out soon enough.

[thermalwind]

No one who came with me seeks to throw you off balance. We were looking to trade. If anyone is guilty. It’s me. I sought to scout and find out what kind of city everyone was risking themselves iin. Last time we were attacked. I didn’t want to risk that again.

[So they were liars and deceivers to these people. He scans the area around him. If he can find any way to slip out of this cell he will. His voice drops low.]

I don’t have an issue with anyone trying to protect themselves. It’s when that hurts others in the process I step in. I offered you allowing us all to leave and not trouble you at all. You responded that they had to be hurt anyway.

You can claim peace all you want. But that’s not an attempt at peace. I ask again. Let me take their punishment. All of it. I promise they won’t come back for me and won’t bother you again.

I won’t even try to escape or turn away from whatever happens to me. Just let the rest of them go.

[aftrnpc]

[She watches him calmly. His words are valiant. It is obvious to her that he could have perhaps found his calling in their militia himself, if he were born and raised here. His sense of justice is earnest, but flawed. He wishes to protect a select few when there is the whole society to guard. He does not understand that it is the Water who maintains peace; not intrinsically unclean beings such as them.]

[How unfortunate that his impurities have deluded him to such a degree.]

In promising a future you cannot enforce, you lie not only for yourself, but on the behalf of others. You must understand.

There is only one truth in history. The Water stands eternal.

[Her tone is mechanical, monotonous, with the inflections of words well-worn.]

[thermalwind]

[His face visibly shifts. He relaxes, shoulders going back and expression flat and unreadable. The gears in his head shift away from peace. Negotiations have failed. He had entered with out weapons. The idea had been to stealth in and stealth out.He steps right up to the bars and places his hands on them. He idly tests the strength of the bars. His words come out quiet but full of conviction.]

Water will be here when we’re all gone. I won’t deny that. But I’m talking about here and now. I could have enforced my deal. But fine. We’ll do this the other way.

[He drops his hands and watches her. He scans for weaknesses in stance or posture that might suggest an attack.]

How many people do you remember come back from being cleansed? Or do they just vanish. Never heard from again?

[aftrnpc]

Step back, [she snaps harshly,] and keep your hands where I may see them.

[She is inexperienced, but the miltia does not tolerate incompetence. She knows a threat when she hears one, and his body language seems to corroborate it. She curls her lip in stern disapproval. He aggravates her. All of these self-righteous questions. She has tolerated his impudence long enough. Even if she were to make him understand, it would not cleanse his soul; only one thing can do that now.]

[Perhaps it is pity, then: she quiets. Her gaze does not leave him.]

Their fate is not mine to discover. When one is purged in the Water, so too must we purge them from our hearts and minds. They have been cleansed of their impurities. Their disgrace. We must only remember them this way.

[thermalwind]

So you don’t know how many you’ve killed. You don’t even remember what their faces looked like or what they were called. [His rage builds like a storm flashing for lightning on the horizon. With it comes a sigh and he shakes his head.]

You don’t even know how wrong it is to take lives like that. That isn’t the good of the many out laying the needs of the few. It’s just murder!

[He takes one step back. He won’t ask to be the sacrifice again. But he will still fight with words for as much information he can.]

You don’t know what happens to them. Anyone who enters this city who wasn’t born with the rules goes to their death. It doesn’t matter what their intentions were. You don’t even bother to wonder why all this happens.

You just work for a city that could turn on you at any rule broken. You would be right here with me if anyone had caught your voice being raised. Any I wrong?

[aftrnpc]

[She steps back yet again as he speaks, calmly listening. His words only strengthen her resolve. It is no wonder to her, now, why it is expressly forbidden to interact with prisoners; they do not even try to understand what it means to serve the most Holy as she does. What one must give up and endure.]

[He is most noble. His intentions are good. Again, she finds herself pitying how misguided he is.]

[Her eyes are dark and she does not interrupt. He ends his judgment with a question, and she will answer it, but not with a judgment in kind. That is not her place.]

You are impure.

[This, in the eyes of her society, renders him wrong in his entirety.]

Do not speak to me of the faces that have seen the Water, outsider. You know nothing. You respect nothing.

We are finished here.

[thermalwind]

I respect life. My name is Keith. If I don’t make it out of here I’ll keep the secret of your outburst to my grave. No sense both of us getting ‘cleansed’.

[He turns his back to her and stares into his own cell. He needs to do recon and form a plan. His fellow prisoners can tell him what is in their cells and around them.]

Good bye.

[aftrnpc]

[She merely looks away. She would not ask him to do any such thing; to conceal her foolishness would be to lie, and he is already marked for the Water. If she had not spoken to him, she would not have given in to emotions so impure. He is to blame.]

[And yet...]

[It feels wrong. Something feels wrong.]

[She does not examine it. There is nothing she can do.]

[She is tasked to guard him until it is his time to meet the Water; thus, she cannot turn away from him as he turns from her. But she resumes her post, and she watches over him until such is his time.]

May you live and die free from the draperies of your fiction, Keith.

[And then she is silent.]