[EVENT|4TH WALL] MYSTERIOUS INTERLOPERS - THE DREAMING DISCONNECTS | APRIL 22-30

[ironwood]

Characters: ALL and plus ones.
Date: April 23-30 2015 (2016 in-game)
Location: In the city of Keeliai
Situation: Infiltration - fourth wall event, week two!
Warnings/Rating: Add warnings as needed.

The festival initially ends on a vindicated note. The kedan at large are happy, chatting, even being unnecessarily gracious toward the Foreigners -- those they can tell are Foreigners, at least. Even the Woodsmen are pleased, on the whole, though it may occasionally be difficult to tell. It's also the Woodsmen who first get the news, trickled down from Heojin.

By the end of the first day, the rest of the festival-goers will have heard enough from the Woodsmen to be going on: that Lin, Heojin's bodyguard, ran across someone making trouble in a field on the day he was apparently absent. The exact details of what happened are blurred; some say he was kidnapped, some say he fled into the mountains to draw the interlopers off, some say he was just in hiding, watching their movements.

Regardless, it causes curious kedan to go investigate the fields themselves on their way back to the city -- never by encroaching on the Woodsmen's land, thanks to the strings of Woodsmen guarding the fence-lines, but enough to see the evidence for themselves.

Whatever the truth of the rumours, by then it becomes clear: there was more than one group of infiltrators in the festival.

The raiders are back. They've come for their own.

---

LINKS
Festival Grounds & Crop Circles | City Tensions | Outside Yunxu's Mansion | Palace Lands | Water Sector Memorial | OOC Post - Event Week #1 | OOC Post - Event Week #2 | 4th Wall Character Check In

OOC
Some starters have been provided in the comments below to cover the main areas of the event! Anything that doesn't fit into these can be added to the bottom of the post. Please direct any questions to the OOC post, thank you!

Comments

Water Sector Memorial

[ironwood]

The Water Sector has perhaps the quietest atmosphere in the city, and at its heart near one of the largest fountains, many kedan gather to lay offerings to those who were killed during the Chihuelan invasion. For those who haven't heard the tale, they will relate that approximately six months after all the Foreigners disappeared from Tu Vishan -- trapped unwillingly in the Dreaming, although they didn't know that at the time -- a well-armed military force arrived from Atamsichar, the capital of Chihuelo empire. Although they were only numbered about 300, the kedan were caught by surprise, and shocked to see that the force was led by the Basswood Commander, Celaunn. The woman was Chihuelan herself, but she had been Evandau's personal choice to replace him when he was forced to take over as Emperor-- and because of that, she knew as much about the city, about its weaknesses and pitfalls, as Evandau himself had.

They had moved throughout the city as if searching for something, although no one has ever been able to figure out what. Wherever they went, they left almost no survivors -- certainly none on purpose. Sometimes they painted symbols on the walls where they'd been, and those symbols are the ones having appeared in the crop circles in the field. The only marshal force in the city, the police, had been completely lost without their Commander and without orders, and most of them had died in vain attempts to stop the raiders.

All told, over 2000 kedan lost their lives before the general populace got themselves together well enough to provide resistance, and the raiders were eventually routed. The Water Sector had taken the brunt of that fatality toll, as as disproportionate number of Chihuelans remained there, seeking whatever it was they've been seeking. Almost a third of the dead were from this district.

The mourners, however, aren't mourning. Angry, and bitter, and even sad, but the normally lackadaisical people here were galvanized as the rest of the city's population.

All throughout the Sector, tiny paper boats ride the canals with candles perched in them, and long streamer tails of coloured ribbons float behind them. The tides will find them, is the most frequent blessing uttered, and it's never quite clear if the kedan mean the deceased, or those responsible for them… in which case, it's probably less of a blessing, and more of a curse.

open

[crapbearer]

Max is far too new to the area to understand the specific historical or cultural significance to the paper boats, but with the knowledge he'd absorbed from having an archaeologist for a mom, he has a general idea.

When he'd arrived, once he'd overcome the shock and panic of everything that had just happened and did a quick once-over to make sure he wasn't dead (still not entirely convinced) the next order of business was figuring out where he was, how he got here, and... what to do next. He tried to open up conversation with the people around, but the people -- Kedan, he'd later learn they were called -- ignored him at best and almost straight-up attacked at worst. It'd be nice to have his Guardian around to step in --

-- but he wasn't around. He wouldn't be ever again.

"Tough crowd," he'd finally murmured to himself as he sat down near the banks of the water memorial to try and figure out his situation. It's leagues better than where he'd just been immediately before showing up, but Max refuses to dwell on that any longer than he has to.

Still, Max is an active child, and even while sitting and thinking he needs something to do. He finds a piece of notebook paper in his pocket and starts trying to fold a crude little boat of his own.

...no reason why.