[EVENT] Courtyard of Public Opinion

[ironwood]

Characters: ALL!
Date: January 10th
Location: Central Keeliai - Courtyard of Public Opinion
Situation: A meeting has been called to determine the status of the Foreigners in the city, including the upcoming and highly anticipated Shangpar race. The major NPC players can be approached, and Foreigners have a chance to make a case for their treatment within the city.
Warnings/Rating: Add warnings as needed.

The Courtyard of Public Opinion has been around since before Emperor Eshai's death, a relic of a time when all kedan would have preferred talking about their problems instead of fighting. Even now that the spell suppressing their true nature has been removed, none of the kedan want more trouble than Keeliai already has, especially where the Foreigners are concerned. Violence is frowned upon - though by no means forbidden - and while discussions can get heated, a disagreement will usually be taken outside the Courtyard before it comes to blows.

The Courtyard isn't any bigger than some of the open fountain areas in the Water Sector, and it isn't set up the way some of the Foreigners might imagine a political debate area to be set up. There’s no podium, no chairs apart from the stone benches too heavy to be moved, and no grand banners or archways. This is done deliberately; everyone is meant to have an equal voice in the Courtyard, so everyone is on level ground. Apart from the greenery, the stone paths, and the low stone walls surrounding the Courtyard, one could almost imagine it’s just another Market Day in an open square.

The kedan arrive early in large groups of eight or ten at a time, and they'll exhibit a wide variety of reactions to the Foreigners' arrival - everything from open disapproval and fear to a new and very cautious optimism.

---

LINKS
Shangpar Races | Foreigner Status | Tu Yunxu - The Snakes | Zanru - The Metalworkers | Heojin - The Woodsmen | Milyn - Cherrywood Healer | Questions

OOC
There are six starters for various parts of the discussion, one specifically on the races, one on the Foreigners' overall status in Keeliai, and then one for each of the major NPCs. Characters are present for the entirety of the conversations listed below, and those who wish to input or engage on the first two topics should reply to them in the relevant comment, and the NPC comments are for directly speaking with that NPC or those in that group. The rest of the post is for Foreigners talking and organizing amongst themselves.

Comments

[forgediron]

"Do you have selective hearing or are you just trying to embarrass me into a foolish agreement?" Zanru asked Tony bluntly. "This isn't just a matter of available resources. This is about the opportunity for long-term training and the two-dozen or so extra jobs that could be available which would vanish if we rushed it. Weren't you the one saying that the opportunity to earn money was important, Stark?"

It had been a while ago, the second time he came to Stark Industries. The point had been for the Foreigners, but the point was still there. Putting such a fast pace on things removed the opportunity for anyone who didn't have the special skills to make themselves useful; a slower pace provided more opportunity, not less.

She pointed to the radio handset she'd noticed that all the Foreigners carried. "If you want to contribute something, how about some of those radios? I assume they're easy to use. They ought to work without needing so much infrastructure, they'll serve as a test-run for this sort of long-distance communication, and with a little modification it means the kedan who will already be at the supply checkpoints can broadcast audio updates to the consoles. The permanent video bases are something we can talk about long-term."

Chances are the supply-kedan would need to carry some kind of antenna to boost the broadcast, but that was something that could at least be portable. A basic radio transmitter was a whole lot easier to carry around. The worst that could happen was that the radios just plain didn't work, or they only worked one-way. It would do, for what they needed it for.

[i_speak_softly]

Don is not going to get involved in any discussion about economics; getting paid at all for work is still a novel idea to him. He hasn't even had a paying job since he came to Keeliai, instead mooching off his gainfully-employed family members.

He'd rather not touch the question of whether kedan should be given access to the radios, either. Fortunately, Tony seems to be good at this kind of thing.

[highprofilerichkid]

As Zanru tore into him, Tony took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, struggling to stay calm. He was not going to let her get to him. No matter how much she deserved a public roasting, Gene and Valdis and everybody else had made it very clear that antagonizing Zanru wasn't worth it and that he'd better be on his best behavior around her.

So he clenched his teeth and choked back his retorts, and waited for her to finish.

"Okay," he agreed, as graciously as he could manage.

Inside, he was still seething, frustrated beyond words that she'd outmaneuvered him. She'd soundly vetoed the cameras, undermined his attempt to pin the blame on her, and brought up the radios instead. The radios that the foreigners used to privately communicate with each other, that he was definitely not going to let Zanru get her grubby mitts on. Not ones capable of picking up the encrypted signals, anyway. If she insisted on snitching some of the extra handsets, he'd have to dumb them down before she got a hold of them.

But it wasn't a total loss: if she was going to let him be involved in building or modifying the radio sets for the race, it would allow him to keep tabs on her and make sure she wasn't trying to figure out how to listen in on the foreigners' radio network. Maybe he could even implement some measures in the radios to prevent that from happening in the future.

And it gave him the chance to tie up one loose end that had been bothering him ever since they'd been back.

"But if we want to get that done before the race, we might need Clark's radio transmitter. Hayley had it in her suite, just before we got trapped in the Dreaming. I don't know if it got dismantled or packed up in storage or what, but I haven't been able to find it. It's got a lot more oomph than the handsets, and it should throw a signal across the shell with no problem."

[forgediron]

"We have it at Stark Industries," Zanru said. Frankly, she'd forgotten it even existed. "It was donated by the family who took over the apartment. We haven't been doing much with it because we haven't had anything to broadcast to, and no need to use it since we have the consoles. Good call, Stark."

It would save them having to build a whole new transmitter, that was for certain. "Like I said before," she went on, "the video idea has merit. Come talk to me after the race is over."

Stark had to have some kind of selective hearing. He kept on missing the things she said which benefited the Foreigners because he was so fixated on what he wanted right then and there. He'd kept doing it at Stark Industries, too. He didn't seem to realise that, three times now, she'd offered him a bloody job. Contract work, yes, but a job. If he wasn't smart enough to take her up on it she wasn't going to point it out a fourth. Three times was too many as it was, and had only happened because that kind of technology would proceed best with the Foreigners' help.

If he hadn't been an idiot, she would've started the contract right away in conjunction with amending the radios. Since he was, he was just going to have to wait for a couple of weeks until the frenzy died down and deal with the radios being a donation on the part of the Foreigners. CEO, her arse. He didn't seem to have any concept of negotiating beyond 'roll over and do what I say'.

[i_speak_softly]

"Tony," Don says, in a quietly urging voice. This is almost always effective at getting Leonardo to re-evaluate his objectives and opportunities. Sometimes it works on other people too. Even when he has nothing useful to contribute himself, Don at least has the knack for bringing out the best contributions of those around him.

[highprofilerichkid]

"Great. That'll make this a lot easier." And he'll finally get his hands on that damn transmitter again. "I'll round up the foreigners who know radios, and we can get started as soon as you're ready." He gives Zanru his best attempt at a polite, deferential nod.

Then he gives Don a sidelong look and another, smaller nod. Don't worry, man, he's got this. He's keeping his cool.

He continues: "also, if we've got the time and the manpower, it'll save us a lot of headaches later on if we start laying the groundwork for the video broadcasts at the same time. It'll keep the whole system more streamlined if both projects are built up from the same foundation."

He hopes that was a subtle and logical enough segue to keep her from bitching him out for derailing. He's still half-convinced she's dangling the contract offer over him just to lure him into changing the subject so she can harangue him for it, but if she's serious, he doesn't want to let the opportunity slip away.

[forgediron]

For a very long moment Zanru regarded Stark. So he was listening after all; just not acknowledging. Zanru wasn't sure if it was a deliberate powerplay or just a sense of being over-focussed on what he wanted right now, or being over-focussed on the tech. The last, Zanru could understand; the second was young and selfish; the third was political in a way Zanru hated.

Zanru knew she was confrontational. That always made it a surprise when she didn't fight. Either it put people off-guard or it made them think they had some kind of hold over her. Pride. Stick in the grinder. "It's possible," she said, "but we can talk about that with the rest of the details later. Anything else?"

[highprofilerichkid]

"Great," Tony says, with graciousness that is somewhat forced, and relief that is somewhat less so. He's not going to get his hopes up, but... maybe this is a step in the right direction?

With the tech issue wrapped up, Tony returns to the original topic of discussion. "What does that mean for the foreigner racers? Are there still going to be restrictions on which of us can participate?"

[forgediron]

“You better believe it,” said Zanru, “and before you start spouting off about discrimination: Heojin’s got less imagination than pool-dwelling slug, so you can trust when he says that there are restrictions on kedan as well. It’s a matter of making the race fair. For kedan, that means restrictions by weight and shapeshifting skills. For you lot, it means restrictions by ability. Any changes are things we can discuss two years from now.”

[highprofilerichkid]

Not ideal, but at least the kedan have restrictions on them too. And nobody's speaking up against the foreigners participating at all, so that's a point to the foreigners, as far as Tony's concerned.

"That's... fair." He concedes. "Who's going to be deciding which foreigners can't race? We'll need to know soon, so the people who are allowed in can have time to raise the money."

[forgediron]

"The union put together to manage the race," said Zanru, "and those who raised the shangpari; they know the shangparis' constraints best. We'll leave a list of non-applicable Foreigners at that Hotel place you're all staying."

[highprofilerichkid]

"All right. We'll keep an eye out for it."

And that's about all he has to say on the matter. Except as a means to improve foreigner-kedan relations, the race itself isn't a top priority for him. He's more interested in hashing out the details of that potential contract. If somebody else wants to jump in and get down into the nitty-gritty race details, he'll leave that to them.