open audience; the alderwood emperor

[alderwood]

Characters: The Alderwood Emperor and anyone who seek to speak with him
Date: January 8th
Location: The Palace of Landed Sky
Situation: The expected holding of an audience for any that care to speak with the newly appointed Alderwood Emperor.
Warnings/Rating: N/A; to be updated if necessary

The hall is stark and black, lit with softly glowing lanterns that are strung up high beyond reach. Outside, the sun is at its zenith, and it filters down through the cloudy glass roof to warm the dark room.

The floor is marble, inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ruby quartz. It catches the light, and casts strange patterns on the walls.

There is beauty to it, but the room has been repurposed to function moreso than form. Weapons racks line the walls and there are officers stationed at regular intervals to ensure the safety of their assets and, of course, the Emperor himself. It is but one sign of heightened security, another being that all attendees must be escorted in with the attendance of a pair of armed guards. The rein of Alderwood begins in caution and will not be made victim of as Ironwood's did in its end.

The Emperor himself is seated at a broad table and working his way through cleaning a variety of firearms that range from elegant handguns to heavy muskets. He works with swift precision, dismantling each in turn before proceeding with cleaning and reassembling, then he moves to the next. Like the weapons upon the racks, these vary in age from rudimentary to advanced technology reminiscent of the spectre weapons. He knows each of them as spoils of war gathered over the centuries and now he seeks to repurpose them. To use them against the enemy that had him fight in the first place.

He is dressed in his familiar military cut, having no mind or pleasure in anything of ornamentation or to further denote his rank, and greets each attendee with the curt statement: "Speak to your purpose."

[Actionspam or prose are both acceptable!

Characters will only be admitted into the hall one by one, so there won't be anyone present for anyone else's conversations, and there won't be any 'mingling' in the chamber itself.

By popular demand, we will continue to allow mingling for those waiting for an audience in an antechamber. There is a thread header below to allow for that!]

Audience | Canon Updates | Antechamber

Comments

[alderwood]

Evandau doesn't show any offence at the forward nature of his words, having come to terms with their reality many times over in the days following Eshai's death. His eyes go to the grenade and then to the weapons that line the walls. His personal collection, proof of the wars that have consumed his live and, in truth, of the lives he has claimed for the safety of Ironwood and Keeliai both.

"Eshai had magic. I do not." He sets the cube down on the table and picks up a shotgun next, rubbing his finger along the trigger guard. "That means I am at a disadvantage, as I cannot hold it off. My strategy will not be to hold out, but to seal it back into Death and I will kill to get there. You state that guilt inspires you to make this offer, but will it consume you? You wish to protect my life, but will you be okay with that cost being the lives of others?"

This is a question he finds himself ready to ask many Foreigners, since they all seem so happy to talk of peaceful solutions that require no cost of life or limb. It's a trend he has witnessed and grown tired of over time.

[andaway]

The fact that he grabs a shotgun next tells him all he needed to know about the cube's purpose, even if he doesn't quite know what it might exactly be yet. No powers, no x-raying, and Kal was never as good at extrapolating as Batman was. He needs more clues, more facts, more intruments.

He glances at the rest of the collection as Evandau speaks- if he had had any reason to be surprised by the man's response, the fact that the place is now decorated with spoils of war would have clued him in.

"I won't let you kill, or kill myself. But you already knew the answer to that, didn't you?" He glances back at the Emperor. "Would you reject my help because I think no one should decide over another person's life?"

[alderwood]

"Yes." Evandau picks up a cloth and rubs down the barrel, searching for scoring or damages that may have compromised it in the intervening years of storage. The palace has not been a place of solace or quiet, so he must be careful that none of the riots or attacks have taken their toll.

"I am a soldier," he explains, a plain and simple truth. "Raised in war. Raised by war. I have seen what happens when the enemy is left alive." He pauses and looks at Kal directly. "I have seen the cost of mercy with my own eyes. I will not force the innocent to pay that cost once more for the sake of letting the evil remain alive."

[andaway]

He's reminded of Steve, for a moment. A nice man, a man who'd have given anything for those who needed it, yet a man who calmly looked into his eyes and said he had killed, and would again if necessary as it had been during the war.

"You might be a soldier but I am a civilian, and I've seen first hand what happens when your majesty decides to give people a lesson by cutting heads at random." He always ends up reminiscing the one time Stark got him thrown in jail and was to be executed when he's between these walls. He doesn't trust the Kedan justice system but he trusts justice, and he isn't going to change the system by twiddling his thumbs. Simply standing there already got an Emperor killed when he could have stopped it.

"I won't stop you from killing after justice is served, after it's been decided that's the punishment. I'm against death sentence so don't expect me to be there when someone is to be executed, but that doesn't mean I have any right to step in and stop every one of them if that's what justice has decided.

I'm not naive, I just want to follow the right steps. I want to protect you but I won't mindlessly kill anyone who approaches you."

[alderwood]

"Your words tell me you think I kill without justice," Evandau says, his eyes back to the barrel and his fingers tracing a deep scoring that may compromise the weapon's usefulness. "I kill to protect. I kill to survive. And, in this war, I kill to save others the servitude that it forces them into when it corrupts their minds."

Next is the stock of the gun, requiring an inspection before he can determine how best to clean and restore it. "I don't kill simply to kill. That is the perversion of the enemy."

[andaway]

A hum. They are so close to an agreement, Kal can tell and he doesn't know how he feels about that. Was his opinion on the man wrong? Has he changed that much in his time in here? Has his morality changed? The thought worries him, but what scares him the most is that it doesn't bother him as much as it usually would.

These last months haven't been nice on his mental health.

"A while ago some people were investigating the broken shell. You arrested them, and I know for sure Eshai would have executed them. For looking at the turtle's shell.

Was that justice to your eyes?"

[alderwood]

Evandau stops and sets the gun down, this new address a point of importance. Critical, even, and that warrants his attention to focus on Superman. "The turtle grants you life," he explains in a short, sharp tone. "It provides us with a means to survive and its break from the mainland is why we have existed to this day."

Here, he stands and holds his arms behind his back, clasping his hands as he assumes the straight, military posture that long centuries have drilled into him. "The shell is what protects the turtle's vulnerable flesh from being exploited. Those displaying too much interest in it display too much interest in what few points of the turtle which could harm it and put us all at risk."

His expression turns hard. "That is why it is justice to arrest and execute those that breach orders that they had been warned against," he continues. "Because the life of Tu Vishan is of greater importance than that of a handful of curious fools."

[andaway]

Kal was expecting that answer. What comes as a surprise is the intensity, the passion the man uses to talk about it- he's always had a thing for details, Lex himself said he has a way of writing that draws the image into people's minds. He's pretty sure he'd have trouble describing the intensity the Emperor is conveying.

He looks at him, giving as good as he gets and standing straight with his hands in his waist, refusing to show any weakness as he processes what he says, studies it, decides a course of action.

Finally, he bows.

"I understand, and I respect it. I won't stop justice. But if you expect me to kill under that premise I'll have to protect you in my own way."

[alderwood]

A crisp nod. That shall be their middle ground, as it were, and he shall accept that. Evandau does not mince details beyond that, simple gesturing once to the doors to the audience chamber. "Then do as you will, Superman, and we shall operate as best we can."