#the borders are so isolated and he believes that when the empire is taken down that that will improve

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

soooo is this man implying it's the empire that was the problem with uwu fodlan's border problems?

'cause i mean. that's basically what he just said.

[monsterywriting]

Alkgan (orc) - part 4

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AN: the final part will be going up tomorrow night hopefully in time for halloween :)

this chapter contains ns/fw; minors dni

word count: 4.9k

The convoy traveled through the recently abandoned rangeland while you recuperated in a two week blur. What you thought would be a simple cold became a full-blown fever. You were so delirious for the first few days you were unable to even realize how nerve-racking it was, being so exposed on the plains.

It was in that state you were forced to learn how to ride on the giant horses, unable to travel in the wagon with all the supplies while sick. It was dangerous, though you were in no state of mind to realize it, half-dead and precariously sat on the saddle.

With the greater risk, however, came a greater reward. No longer slowed down by the harsh terrain, the group was able to make much more progress in the journey. Where in the mountains entire days could be wasted on detours to find a traversable path again or being forced to camp with a sudden onslaught of heavy snowfalls, the convoy was now able to travel west relatively unhindered—other than your inability to get your horse to move any faster than a trot.

Fortunately for you, Ket’al had been a healer before becoming a warrior, keeping an eye on you and having brought the necessary supplies to treat your fever. The traveling slowed your recovery, even when you were exempted from duties around the camp and sequestered into a tent alone to quarantine from the moment camp was set up to when it was time to pack up and move on.

Once your fever broke, you were no more used to riding on the giant horse, too high up from the ground to feel comfortable. You would have been afraid even if you weren’t too weak to be able to catch yourself should you have lost your balance. Your feelings of isolation had also dissipated during this time, instead wishing no one could see how horrible you looked—not even Ket’al and certainly not Alkgan.

“Your husband”—Ket’al had taken to the habit of calling Alkgan that, with the undisguised acerbity that revealed their growing annoyance with him; no longer the chief in their eyes but the nuisance that hadn’t ceased badgering them about your condition since the convoy reached the bottom of the mountain—“Stopped me again. Twenty minutes- Twenty minutes of questions, demands. How are you feeling, do you need anything, can you return to your tent…”

You almost didn’t believe it when Ket’al first brought it up, much more teasing and understanding of his worry. Now, however, seeing their dwindling tolerance for his meddling, you were more inclined to accept it as true. However, as you tried numerous times to explain to Ket’al, Alkgan was likely anxious to return to the safety of the mountain. Or he was worried about the state of the alliance in the event of your death, probably upset that you had been close to succumbing to a simple cold while your group was surrounded by enemies.

“We will be reaching the northern front any day now,” Ket’al said as they handed you a small cup filled with the bitter, syrup-like liquid they brought for you every single day, “He has refused to change course back to the mountains.”

“He has no other choice,” you snorted, certain there must be a perfectly reasonable explanation for his decision. Wanting to take advantage of the evacuated zones to get as close to the border as possible came to mind.

“He has been more worried about you than the Cerusis empire itself,” Ket’al continued as you downed the medicine, “What do you expect? He is a man worried about his spouse.”

“Ket’al…” you sighed, unsure how much the others knew about the circumstances of your marriage with Alkgan. But Ket’al seemed to be under the assumption that you were a normal couple by orc standards. And a normal couple in your position would certainly be worried about each other.

“I know you did not fall in love and court each other-” Ket’al said, taking the empty cup from you and setting it down on the floor next to them, “-but you are still tied together in marriage… and Alkgan worries about everything.”

You laughed at that, unable to argue with that assessment of Alkgan’s character.

“Then why don’t you give in to one of his demands?” You asked, somehow managing not to falter under Ket’al’s glare, “My fever’s gone and I’m not coughing as much. Let him feel like he’s helping.”

“You are not sharing a tent again. You aren’t fully recovered yet for intercourse,” Ket’al said, and your face grew hot—hotter than it had been when aunt Flora decided to tell you about ‘acts between a married couple’ even without the prolonged torture and conflicting euphemisms.

“That’s- I’m not-” you stumbled over your words, making the situation that much worse as Ket’al grinned, “Don’t smile, I… Do what you want.”

Ket’al had been inflexible about some of Alkgan’s more “self-serving requests,” finally deciding to allow him to bring you your meals. They did specify, however, that he was not allowed to stay while you ate, as you could still be contagious.

That did not stop him from doing exactly that.

“Ket’al will catch you,” you said, smiling for the first time in what felt like a long while when you realized Alkgan was sitting next to you rather than walking back out the tent once the tray was delivered.

“They can try,” he replied cheekily, watching as you began to eat.

You felt a cough working its way up your chest, slamming the plate on the floor just in time before the urge overwhelmed you. Your throat burned, hands covering your mouth and twisting away from Alkgan to hide how unseemly you looked coughing. When the fit finally died, Alkgan was staring at you in horror. You wondered for a moment whether you had gotten better at reading orc features, or if Alkgan was merely more emotive around you.

“Don’t worry,” you assured him, “our king’s far too desperate to win the war to negate the alliance now.”

“What?” Alkgan asked, tilting his head slightly and meeting your eyes questioningly.

“If I were to die before we reached the orc lands,” you said, as though you were stating the obvious, “there are plenty of things you have to worry about. I am not one of them.”

“I don’t…” Alkgan frowned and breathed out his nose, opening his mouth for a moment before shaking his head.

“What’s wrong?” You asked, alarmed when he climbed to his feet.

“Ket’al said I wasn’t to disrupt your recovery,” he said stiffly, walking towards the entrance.

“Alkgan-” you said in disbelief, not understanding why he was suddenly so upset.

He left you, still confused. You told yourself it was just the strain of the journey, but you knew there was more to it. You simply refused to examine the exchange any further.

You wouldn’t find out what exactly was wrong until Ket’al came in the morning to help you take your tent down, complaining that Alkgan had ranted their ear off the night before after leaving your tent, convinced they had led you to believe that he did not care about your health.

That threw you for a loop. You had spent the night considering what issue Alkgan could have possibly had with what you said. You had narrowed it down to the implication that he could not handle the problems faced by the convoy. Your lack of faith in his ability to care about you along with everything else was not entirely unrelated, but you were surprised nevertheless that his hurt was centered around you.

You had much to think about as you parted to your respective steeds.

The convoy was eventually forced to stop early for the day, reaching the outer limits of the northern front sooner than expected. The convoy could no longer move forward, but Alkgan had yet to announce that you all would be returning to the mountains.

“You need to convince him I’m fine,” you told Ket’al, the two of you leading your horses to where the rest already grazed.

Everyone stood around waiting, no one quite willing to set up camp just yet, all staring at you.

“I have tried,” Ket’al said, leading you away from the prying eyes of the others.

“Did you tell him there wasn’t anything wrong with me, medically?” You asked,“Are you even sure I’m the reason why?”

A single irritated look told you they had, in fact, told him. And probably more.

“He will only listen to you.”

“If he wouldn’t listen to you…” you trailed off, dubious about Alkgan being convinced by your word alone.

“Your marriage to the chief puts you in a new position,” Ket’al explained, “The spouses of chiefs are expected to lead alongside Alkgan. Think of this as practice before you join his caravan.”

The concept wasn’t entirely alien to you. You doubted any other culture could be as involved or as cutthroat as the hierarchy of Dumirian high society. The pecking order within a couple was dictated purely by birthright; whoever married up naturally held less power. The same was the case in social circles, your mother constantly sucking up to the duke’s wife—and others sucking up to her.

You doubted the orcs had much care for the same passive aggressive games as Dumirians, but their predilection for throwing punches was enough to make you dread your new status as the chief’s spouse.

Leaving Ket’al, you sought out Alkgan, despite not having much hope of convincing him of changing his mind. You found him seated a ways from the camp, on first watch, already on first watch despite there being no camp. As soon as he saw you approaching he stood, arms outstretched as though you were going to fall over at any moment; a state you hadn’t been in in over a week.

“Ket’al tells me you still won’t give the order for us to move on,” you began, stepping around Alkgan and sitting next to him.

“We cannot go further into the northern front,” Alkgan replied, sitting next to you.

“I meant into the mountains,” you said, voice tight with annoyance.

Alkgan let out a bark of laughter, trying and failing to contain himself when you looked at him in confusion. As far as you were concerned he was still upset about your exchange the evening before, and yet now he was laughing almost uncontrollably—and at you.

“I’m sorry- it’s just- you always act so pleasant and levelheaded… I think that was the first time you ever looked and sounded like you wanted to skin me alive. And sitting in the dirt no less,” Alkgan explained after a few moments, leaning back to catch his breath.

“Don’t change the subject,” you huffed, narrowing your eyes into a stern glare. You needed to remain firm in order to get the convoy moving again.

Unfortunately, you knew exactly what Alkgan was talking about. It was your first instinct, to always be agreeable and constantly acquiesce to others with more power. That’s what worked in Dumir—playing along, being likable. But you were a month into a grueling journey and this was not Dumirian high society. You had been sick and unable to take a decently warm bath in all that time—and now you found yourself at a sudden standstill because of Alkgan’s decision—so the last thing on your mind was good manners.

“We need to start heading towards the mountains while it’s still daylight,” you finally spoke after Alkgan allowed the silence to stretch, “the front can move back at any moment; we’re too exposed here.”

“You still haven’t fully regained your strength- you’re still coughing,” Alkgan argued.

“It’s either move on now and have a chance of reaching the border or risk being caught by Cerusis soldiers and die,” you argued right back.

Alkgan sighed, deflating. He had probably been contemplating that very issue and now you had confirmed what was the right choice.

“If you get sick again we won’t be able to go back down the mountain from this point forward…”

“Then you will just have to trust that I do not plan on dying in the wilderness looking so unkempt,” you said, reaching over to take Alkgan’s hand in yours, “and I will trust that you will get us all safely into the orc lands.”

You kept your more morbid thoughts to yourself, such as the fact that even eight of the most skilled orc warriors didn’t stand a chance against an entire army, even of humans. Or that even if you did manage to escape with your lives, if the alliance was revealed prematurely and the advantage was lost because of you, your days would be numbered. You weren’t certain about orcs, but human politics was always chaotic like that. You could only hope Ket’al was correct and Alkgan would listen to you.

You stood, swatting away the dirt stuck to the fabric of your pants. Before you walked away, however, you turned to Alkgan one last time.

“And I am always pleasant and levelheaded.”

“Wait,” Alkgan called after you. You looked over your shoulder, seeing how he seemed to inwardly debate his next words, “Tell the others to prepare to head to the mountains.”

“Of course,” you said with a solemn nod, quickly turning to face away from him to hide your wide grin as you returned to where the others waited.

The path north was clear, the convoy reaching the foot of the mountains by nightfall. Alkgan pushed everyone onward even after, wanting to make up for the time lost after stopping for those few hours.

The first night back in the mountains also marked the end of your quarantine. Even if you weren’t better again, you doubted you could keep Alkgan out of your tent once the temperatures fell the higher the group ascended, his guilt about you falling ill while he was gone obvious.

You suddenly felt shy as you lied on your sides, facing each other silently, realizing how much you had missed being so close to Alkgan—and not just for the warmth he provided.

It was the best case scenario in a marriage arranged such as yours; to grow so used to the other that you felt something akin to longing when you parted and euphoria when you reunited. You weren’t ready to examine any more meaning than that, however, not when Alkgan’s own feelings were still a mystery to you. But as your palm molded to the curvature of his cheek, you could accept that you felt a deep affection for your husband.

For the first time since leaving the manor, the two of you had sex, picking off where you had left off previously.

It began with a lazy kiss from Alkgan, a whispered ‘I missed you’ reaching your ears. You could not return the words yet, but as you closed the gap between your bodies and captured his lips again, you did your best to convey your reciprocity, pouring everything you wished you were brave enough to say into it.

The kisses you exchanged grew longer, more desperate as your hands ventured downward to explore each other. You wondered how your own body was perceived by him, a warrior, and how it compared to others he’d been with. You were soft, sheltered and unblemished in comparison to what you felt as your hands splayed across his skin. A small cut on your cheek as a child from playing in the garden had been a catastrophe, but orc children held weapons from the moment they could walk.

“I want to taste you,” Alkgan whispered, and you immediately assented, not even thinking about his tusks when you did but definitely feeling them as he dragged his lips down your exposed belly.

The dull points pressed against the flesh of your thighs, parting them for Alkgan and then all you could feel was his tongue inside you. Your back arched and your hands flew to his head, fingers tangling around his locks in an attempt to anchor yourself. It wasn’t your first experience, indulging in oral, but it was certainly the most memorable, orcs’ tongues much larger than humans’.

Just as you were on the precipice of orgasm, Alkgan’s lips closed around your clit and sucking roughly, his mouth suddenly disappeared and you no longer felt his presence.

You let out a broken sob, hands reaching out blindly to try and find Alkgan, whimpering pleas leaving you for his return. He did, though not exactly where you wanted him as he planted an open-mouthed kiss on your lips which you eagerly returned.

While you were distracted, Alkgan’s hand gripped your thigh and brought your leg over his hip, his head slipping easily past your slick folds. You were reminded anew of how big he was, even with your body more than willing to take him it was still a tight fit, Alkgan unable to sink all the way in.

Your fingers returned to Alkgan’s hair, pressing against his scalp and tugging as Alkgan worked his way slowly but surely deeper inside of you. Alkgan growled, pressing his forehead to yours as he was spurred to fuck you harder—though not faster—barely pulling out of you before slamming back inside, your entire body jolting upward with each drive of his hips.

It was definitely different from your previous experience with Alkgan. This was intimate, the two of you finding comfort in each other’s company rather than only chasing pleasure.

You tried to bite back your moans, conscious of the nearby tents and their inhabitants. But the closer you got to returning to the precipice of your climax once again the less you could focus on anything else but Alkgan.

Suddenly, you found yourself on your back, Alkgan looming over you on his knees, your bottom resting on his thighs as he screwed you at an unforgiving pace, pursuing his own release even as your gently pulling of his hair became a fisted yank. Your mouth fell open in a soundless wail, voice caught in your throat in surprise, the new angle allowing Alkgan to push in the final few inches of his girth, the sound of skin slapping filling the tent. You could feel something else knocking into your back, the realization of exactly what dawning on you just as you were forced over the edge and you were overcome with the urge to bite down. Your teeth closed around the closest thing within their reach—Alkgan’s skin—feeling the warm gush of Alkgan’s own climax filling you at that moment, though that did not stop him from continuing to piston his softening member in you.

As you both lied there, basking in the afterglow sweaty and panting, you couldn’t help but let out a breathless chuckle.

“Hm?” Alkgan exhaled, half asleep and partially on top of you.

“You like staying inside after,” you sighed sleepily, adjusting your head to lay more comfortably against the plush furs, “you did the same thing last time.”

“I’ll move,” Alkgan grunted, beginning to lift himself with his arms before you gripped his shoulder to stop him.

“Don’t…” you said, hesitating for a moment before adding, “I- like it.”

Alkgan froze, and for a mortifying moment you thought he would comment, but instead he slowly lowered himself back onto you, a shift of his hips against yours forced him deeper further into you. Your walls inadvertently clenched around him with a small whine and Alkgan hissed in pain, but he soon stopped moving and you were able to relax again.

The next morning, you were surprised to find Alkgan still sleeping next to you, still in his embrace but no longer joined. He normally rose before the sun, his duties never ending—and you expected him to return to them. Feeling you moving next to him, he stretched, lifting his head and and kissing you.

“Why are you still in bed?” You asked, tone teasing as you returned his kiss.

“Needed to make sure you didn’t overexert yourself last night,” he replied, “Ket’al would kill me.”

You tried to come up with a smart remark, but it was too early and you were taken aback by his forwardness.

“You did most of the exertion,” you eventually managed.

Alkgan didn’t deny the accusation, only pulling you to his chest and telling you to sleep.

“We need to get up,” you reminded him, finger grazing the dark green mark on Alkgan’s chest—the evidence of your lost control, “The others will be wondering why you aren’t already halfway through loading the wagon.”

Alkgan sighed, exaggerating his belabored rising from your shared bed.When you sat up to follow him you grimaced, the lukewarm remnants of your night seeping down your leg. Unfortunately, unlike the manor, there was no bath a single door away. Now it was being held by Ursza… whom you would need to ask for enough to clean yourself in the cold while surviving the interrogation as to why.

You were distracted, however, by Alkgan attempting to comb through the tangled mess of his hair.

Shyly, suddenly unsure about his answer now that you were more aware of its significance, you asked if you could do his hair.

“It’s my fault it’s- from- well, you know—” out of your nervousness you began to ramble, faltering awkwardly as you accidentally divulged what the others had told you; about the meaning of your shared braids when you left the manor, even how they believed you to be an ‘annoyingly in love’ couple.

Alkgan mercifully interrupted you as you were making a joke about meeting their expectations with his permission and the affirmation that he would like that.

You rose unsteadily to your feet, ignoring the obscene feeling of the mess between your legs as you walked towards him, though Alkgan seemed absorbed by the sight as he watched your approach.

You managed to evade the questions of the others until evening, a mountain peak between the two camps. It was dinner time, everyone seated near the fire.

Ket’al sat next to you, then Shagar and finally Ursza. You didn’t realize you had been caught in their spider’s web until the one and only attempt by someone else to sit close by was thwarted with bared teeth and growls to move, by then too late; you were surrounded.

“Eventful night?” Ursza asked with a grin, nodding her head towards Alkgan, his braid from the morning still intact.

You swallowed back your knee-jerk reaction of embarrassment. You may all be parting ways the moment the convoy reached the stronghold, but the three orcs were the closest thing you had to friends on this journey. And you had the feeling that their salacious, blunt form of banter was not unique to just them where you were going—and thus was something you needed to grow accustomed to. So you refused to retreat back into your shell of propriety and decided to engage with them.

The final leg of the journey gave everyone a much needed rest, traversing the much smaller western crests of the range in the direction of the border. It was still cold, especially on the ridges where the wind seemed to cut through you unhindered, but there was no more high altitudes to deal with.

The land was untouched by war, the Cerusis Empire well aware that Dumir would have the advantage on the treeless slopes and there were no settlements to conquer that would justify the use of resources. And so everyone relaxed, knowing once the mountains became hills you would be in the orc lands.

Alkgan began to go out of his way to make physical contact with you around camp—a hand on the small of your back when he walked past, a stolen kiss when you found yourselves alone, stopping to help you with your tasks and lingering just a bit too long. No matter how fleeting the small acts were, you appreciated each one.

Despite his best attempts to remain discreet, he rarely succeeded in pulling the wool over the observant warriors’ eyes. But you had no desire to tell him how, whenever he moved on, you were immediately forced into a battle of wills with the others—a completely silent exchange of varying meaningful looks, lost the moment you laughed.

You had yet to do so.

Shagar called it the newlywed period, the two of you unable to keep your hands off each other. Ket’al pontificated whether your bout of illness had reminded him just how fragile humans were. Ursza remarked that it would make the war an easy victory.

“So long as the enemy doesn’t worm their way into orc hearts it will be,” you said grimly, and the other three guffawed, impossible to tell who cracked first.

Their laughter was loud, catching the attention of the rest of the camp—including Alkgan—though no one dared interrupt, though that did not stop Alkgan from asking once you returned to the privacy of your tent.

“So it was about me,” Alkgan concluded, your chin resting on his chest.

You remained impassive, rising to press your lips against his.

“I- will not be- silenced,” Alkgan said between kisses, though he still displayed his eagerness with his wandering hands.

“You need to sleep,” you said, taking Alkgan’s hand in yours to occupy them, “the hunting party leaves in the morning.”

“I’m not going,” Alkgan said.

“What?” You asked, sitting up. The last hunt hadn’t been successful, the elk herd able to see the hunters coming from miles away on the slopes. You had expected Alkgan to head the hunting party himself again to catch up.

“I can’t leave you,” Alkgan said as nonchalantly as if he said he couldn’t leave the bed, or the fire burning. You wondered if he even realized the implication for you, “I’ll just send Ket’al.”

You couldn’t help but recall Ket’al’s earlier assessment, even if made in jest, and question its validity. It was indisputable that humans were fragile in comparison to orcs, but your concern if Alkgan was simply humoring you with a facade of feelings because you had fallen ill.

You knew he felt guilty about it, believing it to be his fault for leaving you alone. But while you could cope with the knowledge that his ties to you were purely external, not enough time passing for the contrary to be true, you could not stand to be pitied.

“I do not need your pity, Alkgan,” you said, extricating yourself from Alkgan’s grasp but keeping your eyes firmly on his.

“Where is this coming from?” Alkgan asked, his perturbed expression almost enough to make you change your mind.

“I am no longer sick and we are no longer in the snowbanks,” you pressed on, clenching your fist as you forced yourself to share your feelings completely, the self-righteous anger that prompted you to speak in the first place rapidly slipping away from you, “If what you are doing is out of a sense of guilt… don’t.”

“Okay, I will go with the hunting party,” Alkgan immediately offered, sitting up and reaching for your hand.

“It is not only that,” you insisted, voice rising an octave before you quickly corrected it, “If you are forcing yourself to… be with me. Because I fell ill. That was not your fault.”

Alkgan’s expression softened with understanding, his momentary surprise morphing into a scoff. You stared at him, affronted to have your genuine appeal ridiculed.

“I am not forcing myself to do anything,” Alkgan finally informed you, “is this what you were talking about with the others?”

“No,” you said too quickly, exhaling as you added, “Not directly. I- just wanted to be sure.”

“Well- even if they turned you against me- I have to admit they are good influences,” Alkgan sighed.

“How so?” You asked, somewhat defensively, unsure what to expect from Alkgan, the entire conversation going unexpectedly.

“You have not complained once on this journey,” Alkgan retorted, as though that answered everything. Upon seeing your persisting confusion, however, he elaborated, “You grew up a noble, never experiencing a day of hardship and waited on completely by servants.”

You shifted your position, the compliment of Alkgan’s observation unclear.

“The last time you were overwhelmed- upset you couldn’t communicate or keep up. You kept everything hidden until then- the food, the conditions, you never let anyone see even though we all knew the change was drastic for you. But now, you are coming to me of your own volition and speaking your mind.”

What Alkgan was describing hardly felt commendable. Besides the reminder of your break down, your judgement was apparently incorrect that he had been indulging your need for companionship. Your mind had been wrong.

“Then, if we have an understanding,” you said stiffly, long since giving up on trying to understand what Alkgan found impressive.

“So I can stay?” Alkgan asked, grinning cheekily when you gave him a stern glare.

“I want to learn orcish,” you stated suddenly, staring in the dark later that night with Alkgan next to you.

“I can teach you,” Alkgan offered, voice barely audible with his face down in the furs.

“Thank you, but I think I will ask Ket’al,” you asked, smiling to yourself in the dark.

[nerevar-quote-and-star]

Artanis Felagund

The assassin, the Companion, the myth and legend. Boom.

Aka, The Life and CrimesTimes of Murder Mom the Bosmer Babe

Part I

Born in Leyawiin and raised climbing the trees of the surrounding swamps. Was a baby swamp rat through and through.

Was definitely a biter and the worst toddler you'd ever meet. Got away with 75%+ of it cos she was Smol and Cute.

Bosmer with a last name. Why a last name? Well, when her parents first immigrated to Cyrodiil all official like, they had to register at some Imperial office. Her mom got the name off of a sign she saw there in Anvil, and thus the family was named after Felagund's Forge and Smithy.

[Any Silmarillion fans might recognize that I named Arty after Lady Galadriel and her brother Finrod. Arty is not anything like either of them. RIP. Not good for Arty, but most amusing for me! 🤣]

Raised on stories kinda real and many fabricated about the Hero of Kvatch. Elven warrior lady saves the Empire? Her favorite story. Like, ever. Even had a redheaded ragdoll she called Avy.

Aside from Avy the Hero Doll, what else did she have? Oh yeah, a whole baby brother! Sercion! He was cute too! (They also had two older siblings but they're both dead. 😬)

What happened to Sercion? Well. He and Arty got sick when she was about six and he was twoish. And — no, he didn't die. He was picked up by a vampire cult searching for children to raise within their folds. Gwedhanar and Ruinil were bamboozled into thinking he WAS dead. But not Artanis. She knew her brother was alive. And yet no one believed her! This incident instilled the seeds for paranoia that would blossom later in life.

Why wasn't she taken, too? They tried. There was just something not right about Artanis, though. Everytime they came near to her, the world grew darker, a chill creeping out of the Void. Too old, they decided. It was the excuse the thralls gave their handlers. Too old.

Arty was aged nine when the Great War broke out. One day the passage into the lower Niben was open and the next the Topal side of the city was closed from any potential naval threat from the Dominion.

Leyawiin was super racist during the Oblivion Crisis and guess what? It still is during the Great War era. Argonians and Khajiit were already looked down at, but after the war starts, every wood elf, high elf, and even dark elf in town was looked at crossways. Even Artanis. Who was nine.

Did NOT help when her dad, Gwedhanar, was summoned back to Valenwood to help guard the northern borders.

He left one night in the wee hours of the morning, and the next day, without the family saying a word, everyone knew that Gwedhanar had "deflected to the Dominion's banner".

Is it really deflection to the Dominion when you're answering the call of your family to defend your ancestral home?

Regardless, her father was gone and Artanis and her mom remained fairly isolated — or at least Ruinil tried to keep Artanis tucked away — as the war encroached on Leyawiin.

The Aldmeri Dominos does, in fact, take the city, complete with a military governor. How else do their ships get to Lake Rumare? This isn't Peter Pan. Tinkerbell is not here to make them fly.

(Don't ask me what happened to the Count and Countess of Leyawiin. This isn't about them. But he's totally dead.)

Anyway so this governor, Alfakyn, took up residence in the castle and Artanis' mom ended up working for him as a chambermaid. Read: he came, he saw, he coveted. And Ruinil only deteriorated from there. Literally the only thing good left in her life was her daughter, and she bore everything for her sake.

Listen, Alfakyn was a huge creep. He was just the kind of man in power who believed his power entitled him to things. One of those being sad Bosmer mom, and another being Artanis. Because he was that kind of creepy.

Oh no, he never actually does anything to Artanis. Kid is loaded up on trauma, but thank every Divine and deity out there that she never experienced that kind of darkness.

He grabbed her arm one (1) time, when the kitchen maid shirked her duties and sent Artanis up with the tea tray, but who was there to stop him but — Elenwen? And Vilya (read: Leara Rose-blade).

Artanis makes it out without realizing she was that close to danger, and right into the arms of her frantic mother, who knew just how close to danger Arty really was.

Because let me tell you how dangerous this guy is: he follows Ruinil home that night. But Ruinil, she was a shrewd enough woman to know he'd do that, and hid Artanis near the pond on their way home.

That's when everything went up in flames.

Literally

Under the cover of nightfall, the governor followed Artanis' mom into their home, and that's when Ruinil started the fire. It quickly grew out of control. They and half the wooden buildings in Leyawiin burned to ashes.

And Artanis?

As soon as smoke started curling in the sky and fire began leaping from the shattering windows of her home, she ran screaming toward the inferno, shrieking for her mother. She would have yeeted herself directly into the blaze if she hadn't been grabbed by one of the Justiciers.

Leara, or Vilya, held little Arty back until the screeching and thrashing baby Bosmer went stiff and silent in shock, and then she gave her over to one of priests before reporting back to the castle.

Did the Dominion try to put out the fire? Or did they leave that to the bedraggled citizens of Leyawiin? I don't know. Artanis doesn't know. She spent the night shivering under a pile of blankets on a pew in the chapel. Waking and sleeping she saw fire.

And that's how Artanis developed pyrophobia! 🔥😎😁

And in the morning, when the priest came to check on her, she fled out of the chapel and out the gates of the city. When no one came after her and she found herself alone in the Blackwood, that only added to her fears of abandonment and isolation!

When Y'ffre was making Artanis, he meant to sprinkle a few issues into the mixture, but the cap came off and they ALL went in. Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound!

Somehow, SOMEHOW, she ran into a family of Argonians immigrating north through the Blackwood toward Morrowind. Cute bedraggled baby Bosmer managed to exploit this and hitched a ride, er, walk with them north as far as Cheydinhal.

And if she grew attached to them and cried herself to sleep when she runs away from them so they can't stop her from going to Cheydinhal by herself, well, who was there to see her cry but the wildlife?

Artanis is ten by this point, but her life has been sent to Oblivion in a gift basket — and I mean one of those expensive baskets with ALL the goodies in it! Except replace the goodies with trauma, misfortune, poverty, being orphaned, malnourishment, and the lot.

Baby Bosmer spends the rest of the war on the streets. No, I'm serious.

"Street rat", "biter", and "urchin" are only the more frequent (and nicest) names used for Artanis while she's on the streets

The Dominion may or may not attack Cheydinhal in 4E174. I dunno. But imagine the trauma!

Artanis was the first character I ever emotionally devastated. I know, I know, she's already been through so much. Isn't it fun!?

I haven't even mentioned — I mean, she's in Cheydinhal! Do you know what sorts of ghosts from the past plague this future assassin? The future Listener?

Anyway we have Arty the malnourished street urchin turning thirteen at the end of the war. She's been a victim of the war from the start during some of her most vulnerable years. The Artanis she would've been without the Great War is completely unfathomable to the young teen still begging for charity after the fires are put out and the soldiers sent home.

That winter something is finally, finally done for Artanis and the other war orphans in Cheydinhal. The dust is clearing and the current city administration is taking note of just how many kids are left adrift after the war.

But Artanis isn't from Cheydinhal, she's not on their records and neither are her parents. They don't have much in the way of orphaned refugees. Refugees usually come in the form of adults, not stray children.

And Arty is . . . reticent about her past.

(Things are different in the alternate universe where Aurora Orianus is Dragonborn. A lot of stuff is different . . .)

But not all things are bad! The old tavern owner and his wife take her in and Artanis learns about waiting tables and, when she's older, handling drunk patrons. It's good practice for living in a mead hall later in life.

No seriously, this is why she can totally vibe in a mead hall!

Arty learned Nibenese folk dances and songs and she loved them!

Barmaid Bosmer Lets Loose Like a Babe is literally what some of her peers said about her and they were right! 🥳🥳

So when Artanis was little, she loved apples, and the green ones were her favorite. During the Great War, they were hard to come by in both Leyawiin and Cheydinhal, so Artanis had to go without them for several years until the supply lines were opened again.

When she finally got one, it turned out to be from a bad bunch, infested with worms.

She never ate one again.

But she learned to drink really fast, especially working in a bar and especially with her bawdy friends who wanted nothing more than to forget what they should've never been exposed to.

It doesn't help her. Arty develops a habit of drinking herself under the table on very bad nights when the fire burns too bright behind her eyelids and she can't hear the music for the screams in her head.

Cheydinhal is kinda like a picture of Artanis: beautiful on the surface and dark and full of pain on the inside.

But Arty likes Cheydinhal. She likes being surface friends with people who don't know what happened to her beyond her years on the streets. She's just another pretty face.

And she really, really likes the count's son, Fendall.

Too bad the Dark Brotherhood doesn't like him too.

Or at least, one Dark Brother.

[mazurah]

Fear and Loneliness in Seyda Neen

Seyda Neen reminded Ma’zurah a little bit of home. The tall trees, the smell of water and vegetation, the guar--gods, Ma’zurah had not seen guar since she left Elsweyr--it all conspired to be both painful and comforting.

Her first few steps of freedom after completing the paperwork they made her sign for her release revealed that there was not actually all that much to the town. She could easily see from one end to the other. There were the docks, bordered by the Census and Excise office and a few small warehouses, with a handful of other houses and buildings beyond that. They looked new. Beyond the docks and warehouses on the shore, nestled into the edge of town stood a cluster of older wooden shacks that looked out of place next to the stone and thatch of the new Imperial buildings, like a fishing village that had gotten lost.

Scanning the surrounding area, Ma'zurah saw trees and swamp in one direction, and the sea in the other. She spotted a lighthouse perched at the end of a small peninsula past the last wooden shack; not exactly part of town, but not far enough away to be isolated either. Across a stretch of water, down the uneven coast, Ma'zurah thought she could see something floating like a small moon on the horizon, with buildings standing beneath, but they were much too far to make out any detail.

A cursory search for someplace resembling a shop or an inn revealed the tradehouse, located halfway between the new and old parts of town. Her attempts at conversation resulted in an informative exchange with a Redguard scout who was happy to give her an overview of the local geography.

It was approaching evening by the time Ma'zurah reluctantly turned her mind to what to do next. The tradehouse had no rooms available, and she had her orders: go to Balmora, deliver a package, and receive her next set of instructions. She had been given enough money to afford a fare on the strange, tall insect whose echoing call reverberated like something that should by all rights have been underwater. The ride was exciting, like riding a walking tree while the sun set in fabulous shades of pink and red around her. It was long past dark by the time the insect brought her to her destination.

Balmora did not remind Ma’zurah of home, and she was not sure if she should be disappointed or relieved that not all of this new strange land plucked at her emotions the same way the swamp did. Though the hour was late, there were still people about, mostly Dark Elves who gave her sidelong looks that she did not know how to interpret. She moved past them quickly, too aware of how visible her white fur was in the dark.

Finding Caius Cosades proved more difficult than she had anticipated, and sent her through parts of town she would otherwise have avoided, especially at night. She found him in what had to be the smallest house in the dirtiest alleyway in Balmora. He opened the door bleary-eyed and shirtless, and Ma’zurah immediately smelled moon sugar. It would have been a welcome scent if she had been in Elsweyr, if he had not been Imperial. Instead, it irked her. She had seen what happened to non-Khajiit who used the stuff in the Imperial City, and she did not like it. There was a good reason it was sacred to the Khajiit but denied to all else.

Tight-lipped, she proffered the package. Cosades read the label. His gaze sharpened and he waved her inside, all hint of the effects of the sugar gone from his stance as soon as the door was shut. He bolted it behind him, and Ma'zurah's heart sped up. Her fingers felt the familiar, comforting gestures of an invisibility spell, but she did not put any magicka into it. This man was supposed to be her "superior and patron" in Morrowind? The tip of her tail twitched in nervousness as Cosades read in silence.

Her waiting was rewarded with something that might have resembled an explanation if it had not been so absurd. The Emperor wanted her to become a Blade.

She dismissed the "Emperor" part immediately. She could safely assume he did not mean the literal Emperor. That was how these official types liked to talk; any action taken on behalf of the Empire was always the work of the Emperor. She knew about the Blades of course; they were supposed to be the Emperor's spies and personal guard. She was not exactly sure how she was expected to go directly from imprisonment to becoming a Blade entrusted with state secrets and the Emperor's life, but it seemed suspect at best.

"There must be some mistake," she told him.

He gave her a piercing stare, looked pointedly at the document he was holding, and asked, "You are Ma'zurah, correct? No surname, formerly of the state of Pellitine?"

Ma'zurah nodded mutely.

"No mistake. You are to become a Novice in the Blades, and that means you'll be following my orders. Are you prepared to follow my orders, Ma'zurah?"

Her fingers itched for the invisibility spell, but he was standing between her and the door, which was locked. "What happens if Ma'zurah says no?" she asked weakly.

"Then I will have to put you back on a boat for the mainland and return you to prison." His tone was dismissive, but Ma'zurah could tell he was watching her closely.

There was a long pause as Ma'zurah digested this information.

"Indefinitely," he added as the silence stretched.

The fur on the back of her neck stood up, and she felt a flash of anger for a brief moment before her anxiety subsumed it. She could not afford to lash out. She had to consider her options rationally.

She could probably get past him if she really tried, but if he really was a high ranking member of the Blades, and she could not see any way that he was not, then he would probably just put out a warrant for her arrest. In a strange province with no friends, or clan, or even allies, no real knowledge of the land, and with her distinctive appearance, it was doubtful she would be able to hide for long.

No friends or clan; she had not realized how vulnerable that made her. She was all alone. Her anxiety curdled suddenly into an icy spike of true fear. This had to be illegal, right? This was coercion. But there was no authority she could appeal to that would be willing to stand up to the Blades. Would anyone even believe her?

No running then. Maybe it would not be so bad. It was not her ideal job, and she had no loyalty to the Empire, but maybe she could get something out of it--some money and a place to sleep at the very least--even if the whole thing still rubbed her fur the wrong way.

"May Ma'zurah ask why she has been chosen for this honor?" she finally asked, her tone careful.

The man raised one brow at her. "No, Ma'zurah may not. Now will you take the oath, or am I going to have to send you back to Cyrodiil?"

Ma'zurah took the oath.

The next few days were a whirl of instructions and introductions. She did indeed get some money, and was told to get her bearings in Balmora, and get some equipment and training. To that end, Cosades sent her to three Blades agents in Balmora who would be able to provide the necessary training--for a fee, of course--and assistance in an emergency. When she had returned from introducing herself to them, three small gifts and much advice richer, Cosades gave her the names and locations of four more around Vvardenfell she should introduce herself to at some point. He suggested she start with the Redguard scout in Seyda Neen. Elone would be able to help her get the lay of the land, he said. Ma'zurah did not know how to feel when she realized she had probably met the woman already.

Finally, Cosades told her to establish a cover identity, and instructed her to check in with him next month to discuss its progress. "I don't care what it is, so long as it doesn't point back to us," he told her. "Go back to prostitution for all I care. The point is to establish a history for yourself here."

Ma'zurah scowled and went to sign up with the local Mages Guild instead. When she asked for work, she received an assignment from a distracted, but friendly Suthay alchemist to gather mushrooms from the swamp.

Happy to have such a solid excuse to return to the swamp that reminded her even a little of the jungles of her homeland, Ma'zurah procured a herbalist's bag and a book of local plants in a language she could actually read, and set off the next day, walking instead of riding, taking in the landscape at her own pace. It was beautiful, but lonely. She wished she had someone to share it with.

At least she had direction. She was not sure what she would have done with herself without direction. She had a task, and it distracted her minutely from the horrible anxiety of being so completely alone in a foreign land full of strangers who did not care about her. She wished she had a friend. Just one person who cared would be enough. Maybe then she would not feel as though she was climbing a narrow tree branch over the head of a hungry tiger. She had no one to steady her if she started to lose her balance. The utter lack of social connection was a new experience for her, and not one she liked. She felt vulnerable.

She missed her friends back in the Imperial City. She had not felt so alone since she had found out she would never be allowed to return to Elsweyr, and even then she had still had Dra'nassa. She had gone from a tribe of many to a tribe of two in a single day--a day she had previously considered to be the worst in her life. It had been hard building up connections after that, to replace the support of the tribe she had grown up in with one of her own making, but she had done it. When Dra'nassa had died, she had made enough friends to see her through her grief without despair.

This was worse. Now she had no one. Cosades had made it clear she could not go back to her old life. She would have to start over from nothing again, this time without Dra'nassa's help.

It was enough to make her want to cry. She saw a mushroom and distracted herself with the task at hand. If the fur of her cheeks was wet, the mushrooms certainly did not care.

She had already filled the bag halfway by the time she got back to Seyda Neen. She presented herself to the scout Elone--again--and tried not to feel horrible and ridiculous when she introduced herself as the Blades' newest novice.

The woman seemed friendly enough, and gave her a copy of "Guide to Vvardenfell" with accompanying maps. Ma'zurah was grateful. Maps were expensive. Ma'zurah asked if there was anything she could do to help her in return. Elone pursed her lips and sent her to check on a friend of hers who lived a short way outside of town.

"She was supposed to come see me after she got back from her scouting," Elone told her. "She's late. I'd check on her myself, but I have work I have to finish. It's probably nothing, Jasmine can take care of herself, but it's not like her to stay out for so long. Just check at her house and tell me if she's there. She might just be sick or something."

Ma'zurah agreed and went to check.

The house was locked and appeared empty. There was no answer to her knock, so Ma’zurah peeked through the window, and saw no lights lit. Frowning, she checked the muddy path for tracks, trying to determine if Elone's friend had been home recently enough to leave evidence. Ma'zurah was not the greatest tracker, but she knew enough to hunt animals in deep jungle, and enough to discover a faint set of prints leading up to the house, and another of the same size heading down the path in the direction of the town. Perhaps she had just missed the woman? But no, neither set seemed fresh enough.

She followed the path and the footprints back in the direction of Seyda Neen, resolving to tell Elone of her discovery. She was most of the way back to town when she came across several more sets of footprints--at least three, all overlapping--intercepting the first set of footprints. The trail became smudged and some of the prints scattered and came back, and the next trail Ma’zurah could find led into the underbrush at an angle, away from town. Whoever they were, they had taken Elone's friend with them for reasons inscrutable to Ma'zurah. Kidnapping was not typical behavior for bandits, and surely if the woman had come across friends on the path, they would not have trampled the ground quite so much. Each subsequent scenario Ma'zurah thought of was more worrying than the last.

She followed the tracks to a cave, thanking Azurah for the wet ground. Trampled plants stuck to the mud, making the trail easy to follow all the way to the stone of the cave mouth. It was hidden against a hillside at the edge of the swamp, behind a set of boulders that blocked line of sight from the path. Ma’zurah cautiously poked her head inside, allowing her eyes to adjust to the dimness, and saw the glow of a fire.

She followed the cave a few paces deeper into the hillside until she found the source of the light: a campfire, with a Dark Elf woman tending it. An overturned rowboat had been pulled into the shelter of the cave as well, and the back wall was blocked off by a fence. There was something wrong here, something obvious Ma'zurah was missing, but she could not pinpoint what.

And she would not find out what was going on by standing here like a lump.

"Hello?" Ma'zurah called.

The woman by the fire whirled, knife drawn. Ma'zurah gasped and cast invisibility on herself and dove for the shadows.

"Ku’or havag?" the woman called, stalking toward the cave entrance.

Ma'zurah could have kicked herself. Why would a woman sitting in a cave at the edge of a swamp respond positively to an unexpected stranger, no matter what reason she had for being there? She should have predicted this kind of a reaction instead of calling out and making it that much harder to sneak past an alert person. And of course a Dark Elf would be speaking the Dark Elven language in Morrowind. Somehow, Ma'zurah had not yet run into the language barrier in any significant way. She was going to have to learn the language.

"Ku’or edur diru?" The woman passed Ma'zurah's hidden form and stared out into the swamp, frowning.

There was a moment's pause, and Ma'zurah huddled against the wall of the cave, wondering what she had gotten herself into.

The woman turned abruptly on her heel and approached the wooden fence set into the back of the cave, muttering something incomprehensible under her breath.

Ma'zurah followed as closely behind her as she dared, practically holding her breath. Her heart was pounding. There was definitely something wrong here. She was sure of it now, even if she could not say why. It was a subtle thing, told in the set of the woman's jaw, or the hardness of her expression. It made the fur on the back of Ma'zurah's neck stand up.

If she could only figure out what was going on, or even just confirm that Elone's friend was here, she would not have to report back to Elone with so little news. She wished she had asked Elone for a description of her friend Jasmine.

The Dark Elf opened the gate and Ma'zurah slipped in behind her. Beyond the gate, the cave split into two paths, the leftmost branch leading up to another fence with a gate in it, and the rightmost branch leading down a slope and out of sight. Ma'zurah thought she could hear running water somewhere below.

The Dark Elf woman took the rickety wooden ramp down the uneven stone slope to the right. Ma'zurah started to follow when the woman called something ahead of herself. Two more Dark Elves appeared at the bottom of the ramp, and the woman spoke urgently to them. Their faces turned grim, and both stalked toward Ma'zurah's position.

Ma'zurah nearly panicked, trying to scramble out of their way without making any noise. She darted up the ramp to the left until she was almost backed up against the fence at the top. Oblivious to Ma'zurah's presence, the two Elves exited toward the mouth of the cave, leaving the woman at the bottom to retreat further down and out of Ma'zurah's sight.

Heart racing, Ma'zurah slumped against the fence, and the invisibility spell broke.

"Hey," a low feminine voice hissed urgently through the fence behind her, making Ma'zurah jump. "Do you have the key?"

Ma'zurah's fingers froze in the process of reapplying her invisibility spell as she registered the words. She peered between the slats of the fence and discovered a brown oval face with wide dark eyes and long black hair.

"Are you Jasmine?" Ma'zurah whispered back.

The face hesitated for a moment, then nodded. "Please, you have to get us out of here." There was the faintest edge of desperation in her whispered tones. Ma'zurah's hackles rose again.

"Us?" Ma'zurah asked numbly.

Jasmine stepped back, allowing Ma'zurah to see through the narrow gaps in the fence. Huddled at the back of the small enclosure were two Argonians and a Suthay-raht, all wearing only the barest scraps of clothing. The Argonians both had a greenish tint to their scales, but one of them was shorter with a long row of spikes protruding from forehead to back of the neck, while the other had a pair of spikes on either side of the head. The Khajiit was orange-furred, with black markings around his eyes and nose, and had long mustaches which hung down on either side of his mouth. He was also topless, Ma'zurah observed, feeling faintly scandalized by the display of torso fur. And she could see his ribs beneath his fur, she realized with a different kind of shock. She did not know much about Argonian anatomy, but they did not look too good either.

The pieces slotted into place suddenly, along with the memory of half-heard rumors from Cyrodiil. This was slavery. Those Dark Elves out there meant to sell these people. She had heard the Dark Elves kept slaves, but she had not realized what that meant before. Sudden tears of horror and sympathy pricked at her eyes.

"What should Ma’zurah do?" she asked Jasmine urgently. Jasmine was, she noticed, by far the healthiest looking of the group. "She can… She can run and get help?"

"There's no time,” Jasmine whispered back. “I overheard them say they were going to move us. We have to get out of here before that happens or you'll never be able to find us again. You've got to get the key to the gate, and maybe the keys to our shackles. If I had a weapon, I could fight, but I don't think the others could."

Ma'zurah nodded firmly. "Ma'zurah will be back."

She stalked invisibly down into the depths of the cave, past a branch of tunnel filled with water, and up a wooden deck covered with crates. Fury had eclipsed her fear. Her hands shook with how angry she felt. It was not right. How could anyone hold people captive like this and disregard their suffering? How could they use people's suffering for profit? How could they live with themselves?

The Dark Elf woman was not in sight, so Ma'zurah began searching crates. She had searched two, finding nothing but alcohol and cheap imported clothing before her head caught up to her and she cast a spell, willing her magicka to show her keys.

She saw the glow of something small atop a crate when her time ran out, and the Dark Elf woman walked into view.

Ma'zurah panicked, but instead of fleeing again, she dove for the woman, claws extended, spurred on by the anger that mixed oddly with her fear. The woman only had time to shriek "N'wah!" before Ma'zurah's hands wrapped around her throat, claws tearing.

The next thing she knew, the woman was motionless on the ground, and Ma'zurah's hands were slick with blood. She felt like she could not breathe properly, like someone had punched her in the gut. She had never hurt anyone before in her life, and now…

She scooped up the key and the woman's dagger and retreated up the ramp to free the others before her thoughts could catch up with her and render her useless. Her hands shook as she fitted the key in the lock, and the key nearly slipped between her blood-slick fingers.

The door came open, and Ma'zurah thrust the dagger into Jasmine's hands. "Here. Ma'zurah did not find the shackle keys. Can we leave without them?"

"Keep looking," one of the Argonians advised in a half-cracked voice. "We will not find many willing to remove slave bracers. We will draw too much attention wearing them."

"There are at least two more people around here," Ma'zurah warned, mentally beating her emotions into submission. Her hands were still shaking. "We will have to hurry before they come back."

They filed down into the lower recesses of the cave, Ma’zurah at the front, Jasmine bringing up the rear with the knife. The Suthay-raht looked sidelong at the body of the fallen Dark Elf as they passed, eyes flicking from the claw gouges on her neck to Ma’zurah’s bloody hands. There was something like approval in his eyes.

Ma’zurah cast the spell of finding again, looking for something that might unlock the magic suppressing bracers on the wrists of her companions. The spell revealed another key on the body of the Elf, but it was too big to fit into any of the shackles.

They proceeded further into the cave, uncovering more crates, more clothing, more alcohol, a small stack of coins, and a pile of pillows with what Ma'zurah's nose told her was moon sugar smuggled inside. She dumped one out, frowning at the little purple vials that fell along with the paper envelopes of white crystals. Confused, she sniffed one of the vials and got the overpowering scent of moon sugar and alchemy for her trouble.

"Skooma," the Suthay-raht rasped behind her in explanation.

Ma'zurah dropped the thing hastily. The Clan Mothers always taught that moon sugar was a blessing from Azurah, but skooma was a perversion created by Imperials.

It was also not a key. She searched the crates again for the telltale glow of the spell, but found nothing.

"There are no keys here," she told the group. They would have to keep moving.

They twisted around a narrow gap at the back of the cavern, only to find another wooden fence, and beyond it, a flooded tunnel descending down even further.

"We could dive for it," one of the Argonians offered, and distractedly Ma’zurah realized from her voice that the Argonian was probably female, though Ma'zurah was hardly in a position to judge someone's gender based on their physical attributes.

"I doubt they hid the keys underwater though," the second Argonian concluded.

There was a sudden shout from back the way they had come and Ma’zurah’s breath caught in her throat. The overwhelming emotions she had been suppressing threatened to overtake her again. In her peripheral vision, she saw Jasmine raise her knife and start back toward the noise, and Ma'zurah realized she had also committed herself to protecting these people. She frantically tried to remember everything she had learned about Destruction magic at the Arcane University and ran past Jasmine, readying a blast of frost.

She had just enough time to register that the two Dark Elves who had left had returned with three others in tow, and that they had just stumbled on the dead body of their compatriot, before she loosed the spell in her hands with as much force as she could muster.

There was a reverberating crack and a hair-raising rumble as the telekinetic blast propelling her spell forward connected not just with her foes, but with the far wall of the cave and a low hanging portion of the ceiling. Stone cracked, the ground shook, and before anyone had time to do anything more than scream, the roof caved in, burying the group of Dark Elves and the exit.

A deafening silence followed. Nobody moved.

“Well,” Jasmine began, lowering her dagger.

The mountainous pile of rock and gravel that covered the exit shifted slightly, and a scattering of scree clattered down the heap. One of the torches illuminating the cave flickered and died.

Ma’zurah sat down on the ground and promptly burst into tears.

“Oh no…” moaned the Suthay-raht. “Oh nooo…”

“Let’s not panic,” Jasmine said, with a kind of calm Ma’zurah could not imagine she actually felt. They were stuck here, and it was all Ma’zurah’s fault. She felt herself begin to hyperventilate.

“Be right back,” one of the Argonians said in a matter-of-fact tone. There was the sound of retreating footsteps, then a ripple of water and a splash.

A flicker of hope cut through Ma'zurah's panic at the sound. There might be another way out! She scrubbed at her face with her hands, trying to quiet her emotions. The scent of blood assaulted her nose like a warhammer and she recoiled, trying not to begin hyperventilating again for a different reason.

“Alright,” a deep reptilian voice said from just behind Ma’zurah, and Ma’zurah felt hands under her armpits, lifting her to her feet. “Come on, get up.”

The remaining Argonian clasped his hand around her upper arm and led her through the back of the cave to the flooded tunnel. He stopped at the water’s edge. “Clean yourself up a bit. You'll feel better.”

Ma’zurah nodded gratefully and knelt to wash her hands and face.

“Sorry,” she said guiltily once she had finished scrubbing. The cold water had grounded her flying emotions into a hard but manageable lump, and her newly regained clear-headedness brought with it an awful awareness. These people had been literal slaves, and here she was the only one crying like a newborn kitten.

The Argonian looked at her with an indecipherable expression. Heat blossomed in her face despite the chilly dampness of her fur. Her emotions still felt like a tangle, and she could not find the words to adequately explain why she was apologizing. “Thanks,” she finally said instead.

The Argonian turned his head away. “Don’t mention it.”

Jasmine appeared behind her with the Suthay-raht just as the water rippled and the other Argonian surfaced.

“It’s a bit of a climb,” she told them in her odd rasping accent, “but it looks like there is a way out.

Jasmine nodded firmly. “Alright, gather what you want to take from here, and let’s go.”

Ma’zurah simply sat at the water’s edge and waited for the others. The roiling tangle of emotion in her gut made the prospect of looting the remaining crates totally unappealing, and besides, the others probably needed the things more. They could get new clothes at least.

The Argonian was right. It was a bit of a climb. Once they surfaced on the other side of the flooded tunnel, they had to climb a tall bank to get out of the water, and then up a steep tunnel that opened suddenly behind a cluster of stalactites into the cavern wall above and to the right of the fence that led to the freed slaves’ erstwhile cell. Once they made the drop down, they had only to walk over and open the gate that led to the cave entrance.

“Wait,” Ma’zurah said suddenly, remembering. “Your shackles--”

“We know,” said Jasmine quietly.

“The keys were probably buried,” one of the Argonians explained. Guilt shot through Ma'zurah. No one had cast any blame, but she still felt it.

“We’ll figure something out once we get out of here.” Jasmine gestured them through the gate. “We can go to my house. It’s not far.”

They went to Jasmine’s house. She retrieved a key from a flower pot and let them inside, and the five of them collapsed onto the plush rug in the middle of Jasmine’s floor, relieved and emotionally drained after their ordeal. There was a long moment of silence.

Jasmine got up abruptly and rummaged through her cupboards. She returned with half a loaf of bread and a knife, and served each of them slices.

Ma’zurah chewed hers in silence. As soon as Jasmine’s door had closed between her and the outside world, she had felt her grasp on her emotions slipping. She could feel the tears coming. She could not let the others see her cry again. She did not know what would be worse, having them ignore her or try to comfort her.

She stood up. “Ma’zurah needs to-- Ma’zurah has got to-- Be back.” She fled out the front door and into the little outhouse at the side of Jasmine’s house. She closed the door behind her and took one shaky breath before the tears came in full force and she was sobbing and shuddering. She sat down on the wooden outhouse seat, still in her damp clothing, and rode the wave of her emotions.

She felt bad. And once she felt bad about one thing, more reasons to feel bad flooded her. She could have died! She had not cast invisibility, and instead she had fought, and she could have died. She had never hurt anyone before, but this time she had fought and killed someone. Several someones, actually, but the rest were not nearly as personal as the first someone. They could have killed her, but instead she had their blood on her hands, figuratively and literally, though she did not think she felt nearly as bad about them being dead as she did about having to be the one to commit the act. That also made her feel bad. What was wrong with her that she was more upset about having clawed a woman’s throat out than about the woman being dead? She was no stranger to blood, but killing animals was nothing like killing people. And still, she felt less upset about having dropped a cave on top of a group of people than she did about the memory of warm blood beneath her claws. She should not feel like this!

And then there was the slavery. She had not thought about what slavery was really like before. It had always been an abstract concept that was far away and never affected her personally. To be confronted by the reality of it so suddenly was a shock, though she probably should have seen it coming. She just had not connected the Morrowind of Imperial rumor and speculation with the Morrowind she had been sent to. Was she in danger of being captured and sold? She supposed she was, especially since that seemed to be what had happened to Jasmine, and Jasmine was not even Khajiit! This province was dangerous. She did not feel safe!

Why had they sent her here? She did not want to be here! She did not know anything about this place. She did not even speak the language! She wanted to be back in the Imperial City studying magic and laughing with her friends. She was alone here. She did not have any friends in this strange land--no clan, not even the self-made clan she had gathered around herself after she had been exiled from Elsweyr, and after Dra’nassa had died. She had never been so alone in her life. It was terrifying.

The tears came harder. She felt so bad! The mental refrain felt like a wail.

And she could not leave! She could not leave after swearing an oath to the Blades, or she would be branded a traitor and hunted down and imprisoned for the rest of her life! It was a kind of slavery itself, whether she stayed or tried to leave. She had not done anything to deserve this kind of treatment! Whoever had picked her to join the Blades obviously did not know anything about her. She was the worst pick for that kind of job. They should have asked instead of forcing her to join. She did not want it! She just wanted to leave. But she could not, because they were coercing her, and she was scared. She was scared of being branded a traitor and hunted, she was scared of the Blades, and she was scared of Caius Cosades. Caius Cosades was not a nice man. She wished she never had to speak to him again. She wished she never had to speak to any of the Blades again, even Elone, who seemed nice, but could not be trusted because she was a Blade, and the Blades were not nice people.

She felt so bad. She felt so bad! She was alone in this province, no friends, no clan, no one who cared if she felt bad, and she could not leave, and she was angry and scared, and she felt so bad!

There was a knock on the outhouse door. “Ma’zurah?” Jasmine’s voice was muffled, but recognizable.

Ma’zurah sniffled and scrubbed at her face with the heel of her hand. The fur of her cheeks, already damp from the swim through the flooded tunnel, was soaked again. “Sorry, Ma’zurah will be out soon,” she managed to croak out. Her nose was stuffed up, and her eyes were sore and puffy.

“I brought you a change of clothes. I thought you might want something dry.”

Ma’zurah opened the door. Jasmine’s face fell at the sight of her. “Oh dear…”

Ma’zurah shook her head violently. “No no, Ma’zurah does not want to hear it. Jasmine has been through much worse.”

Jasmine drew her brows together. “It’s not a competition. What's wrong?"

Ma'zurah shook her head mutely. There was no way she was going to lay her troubles on someone who still wore the shackles of slavery. The Clan Mothers had not raised her to be a burden.

Jasmine clicked her tongue. "Well, it looks like a change of clothes isn't going to be enough. Come inside and I'll get you a towel. Baadargo is using my washtub right now, but you're welcome to bathe after him."

With guilt, Ma'zurah realized she had not asked for the names of any of the others. How self absorbed was she? Her emotions felt like they had been scraped raw, and tears welled in her eyes again.

Jasmine's eyes went wide. "Whoa, hey, it's alright! You're alright, okay?" Her hands fluttered around Ma'zurah's shoulders, but did not quite touch her.

Ma'zurah nodded agreement, but the tears would not go away. She contemplated retreating into the outhouse again, but she had already alarmed Jasmine enough. She needed a distraction.

"Tell Ma'zurah--" Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat and tried again. "Tell Ma'zurah how Jasmine got in that cave?"

Jasmine's shoulders slumped and she let out a long sigh. Alarmed at her suddenly morose expression, Ma'zurah made a placating gesture. "You do not have to--"

"No, it's-- You deserve to hear it after everything you did for me. Actually, I was meaning to thank you. If you hadn't come along…" Jasmine paused, eyes distant. "I was just trying not to think about it yet."

"Ma'zurah is sorry--"

Jasmine shook her head. "You have nothing to be sorry about." Her shoulders straightened again. "In any case, there's no point standing around out here when we could be sitting inside. I'll find you a towel, and then I'll tell you the whole thing if you want."

Ma'zurah followed Jasmine inside, reluctant to show her face to the others, but unwilling to be rude to the woman who was trying to be nice to her.

As soon as they got inside, the pair of Argonians approached them. Ma'zurah tried to hide behind Jasmine without looking like she was doing so.

"You have been a most generous to host us," the deeper-voiced of the Argonians told Jasmine, making a complicated hand gesture.

“And a kind rescuer,” the second interjected, pointedly looking at Ma’zurah and making the same gesture. Ma'zurah's face felt too warm.

“And we wish to show our gratitude."

The pair of them exchanged glances, and the second one took up where the first had left off. "We have nothing we could offer as thanks, so we were thinking--"

The first one made eye contact with Jasmine. "If you are willing to lend us the use of your cooking fire--"

"And you are willing to wait for us to catch the fish before we cook them…" The second Argonian shoved an admonishing hand against the first's shoulder with a look that might have contained amusement, though Ma'zurah was no expert at reading Argonian expressions.

Jasmine blinked at the pair. "By all means, feel free," she told them, sounding surprised.

"Then we will be back with a feast!" the first Argonian declared, and the pair of them exited the house.

"At least they're happy," Jasmine said with a shake of her head. She crossed the room and searched her cabinets for a towel.

Ma’zurah stood in the doorway and took in the room for the first time. The house was small, probably only two rooms large; modest by Imperial standards, but clean. The room she was in held a kitchen in the Imperial style, a table, a fireplace, a writing desk, and a large bookshelf, but no bed, and no washtub. Ma’zurah could hear the sounds of splashing from the next room. She could even hear the Suthay-raht, Baadargo singing muffled snatches of song in what must have been the Dark Elf language, because it certainly was not Ta'agra. With a pang of loneliness, Ma’zurah realized she had not heard anyone speak Ta’agra since she got to Morrowind. She hugged her arms around her chest.

Jasmine returned with a fluffy towel, which she draped gently across Ma'zurah's shoulders, and led her out of the doorway. Ma’zurah followed her with a painful hope in her chest. Jasmine was being nice, friendly even, and Ma’zurah had been so alone. She desperately needed a friend. She felt like they had the spark of connection; maybe Jasmine could be the friend she needed.

Once Ma’zurah was dry and clothed in Jasmine's loaned dress, she found herself sitting next to Jasmine at the table as the woman began the story of how she had gotten caught.

"I've been working with my friend Elone to track the activity of smugglers along this section of the Bitter Coast--"

Ma'zurah had to interrupt. "Is Jasmine a Blade too?" she blurted out, dreading the answer. Blades could not be trusted, no matter how nice they were. She cringed, realizing what she had just said.

Jasmine gave her a puzzled and vaguely alarmed look. "No, I'm technically an independent contractor. Elone commissions me to help her when she gets assignments too big for one person or she's too busy to go out herself. But now I'd like to know how you know Elone is a Blade. Not many people know that."

Ma'zurah bit her lip. She had probably given away too much already. She had been raised by the Clan Mothers; she was supposed to know the value of keeping secrets. She knew it was expected of her as a Blade, but she just was not cut out for weaving the kind of elaborate subterfuge required of a spy. They should have asked her before dragging her into this mess. She felt bitter about the whole thing, and not a little rebellious. She was tired and lonely. She wanted to tell Jasmine. Besides, if Jasmine knew the truth about Elone, Cosades probably would not punish her for telling the truth about herself as well. Especially if he never found out.

"Ma'zurah is a Blade too now," she mumbled. She felt absurdly like she was telling a dirty secret, though she was not sure she could articulate why.

Jasmine opened her mouth, stopped, and closed it again. "I see," she said finally. Something in her expression became ever so slightly more closed off, as though she was watching her words in a way she had not been before. Maybe she was worried about getting Elone in trouble, or maybe she did not trust the Blades either. Maybe she thought Ma'zurah was like Cosades. The thought made Ma'zurah feel as though she could not breathe. She was filled with the sudden, desperate need to tell Jasmine the whole story; to distance herself from the Blades and prove she was not one of them, not really. She wanted to regain that small measure of trust that she had just lost. She was already so isolated, she did not want to lose this connection. She needed a friend so badly.

"You asked why Ma'zurah was upset," she began urgently, leaning closer to Jasmine.

"Yes?" Jasmine looked surprised at the change of subject.

"It is related."

The story came torrenting out: the illegal prostitution charges, the prison sentence, the inexplicable deportation, the package for Caius Cosades, the extortion. She told her about how she did not want to be a Blade, how she did not feel safe in Morrowind, and how she could not leave. She started crying again in the middle of it, and Jasmine put a hand on her knee. Ma'zurah hid her face in her damp towel, but kept talking until she got it all out.

"I'm sorry, that sounds awful," was Jasmine's quietly horrified response. Ma'zurah's gaze flicked to the magic suppressing slave bracer still locked around Jasmine's wrist and remembered her resolution not to be a burden. She could not bring herself to regret telling Jasmine though, because there was genuine sympathy in her eyes now instead of that quiet wariness. And Ma’zurah would not be a burden if this was a mutual exchange.

"Your turn," she said, sniffling. "You just got captured by slavers. Do you want to talk about it?"

Jasmine closed her eyes. "No, but I should."

She told Ma’zurah about how she had been scouting, and been caught snooping too close to the smugglers' cave. She had made a hasty retreat, and thought she had avoided being pursued, so she had gone home. She was on her way into town to report to Elone when she had been ambushed. She could have fought them off if one of them had not snuck up on her from behind.

"I was so scared…" Jasmine's voice was so small it was nearly a whisper. “They were going to sell me. Who knows what would have happened to me after that. They said I would be… valuable. Because of my looks. I don’t think I’ve ever been more scared in my life. Not even when--not ever.” She closed her eyes, and the tears that had been slowly welling in them finally spilled over. She swiped at them with her fingertips. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to--”

“It is fine." Ma'zurah put a hand on Jasmine's knee. "It seems like a reasonable reaction.”

Jasmine shook her head and covered her face with her hands.

Baadargo chose that moment to open the door to the next room. He looked much better. His orange fur had been combed, and he was dressed in more than just rags. He took in the scene and his eyes gained a quality similar to those of a frozen deer. Ma’zurah tried to offer him a tremulous smile, but he retreated, closing the door behind him quietly.

“Sorry,” Jasmine repeated once her shoulders stopped shaking. She tried to wipe her face with her hands, and Ma’zurah offered a corner of her towel. Jasmine looked at it skeptically, and went to retrieve a washcloth instead.

“In the cave,” Jasmine continued after she had wiped her face and steadied her breath, “you asked me if I was Jasmine. How did you know who I was, and where to find me?”

“Elone asked Ma’zurah to check at Jasmine’s house to see if she was there. Ma’zurah found footprints leading from Jasmine’s house, and she followed them.”

“I see. Thank you. I can’t imagine what would have happened to me if you hadn’t done that.”

Ma’zurah nodded and opened her mouth to reply, but Jasmine had closed her eyes and was sitting very still. She looked like she was waiting, Ma’zurah thought, or listening.

“It doesn’t feel like it’s over.”

“It is,” Ma’zurah assured her. “They cannot sell you, or anyone now.”

Jasmine just shook her head. "The thought of going back out, scouting the Bitter Coast like before…" Jasmine took a shuddering breath. "I don't think I can do it. Not--not yet. Not for a while, maybe, and not by myself."

Ma'zurah nodded sympathetically.

"What are you doing after this?" Jasmine asked, turning her focus back to Ma'zurah with a suddenness that startled her.

"Er, Ma'zurah is doing jobs for the Balmora Mages Guild, she thinks. Why?"

"Do you think--" She stopped and tried a new tack. "You seem like you can take care of yourself."

Ma'zurah nodded slowly. She usually took care of herself by turning invisible when things became dangerous, but she supposed today's events proved she could take care of herself in other ways too. She was not sure where Jasmine was going with this.

"Do you think I could… travel with you for a while? Help you with jobs?" Jasmine's voice sounded hopeful, and her words tumbled out in a rush. "Only if you want the company. I wouldn't be a burden. I have a strong sword arm, and I'm good with a bow. I couldn't ask Elone for something like this, she can't leave the Bitter Coast right now, and I don't know anyone else well enough to be able to ask--"

"Yes!" Ma'zurah felt like she would burst. She would not be alone anymore! She threw her arms around Jasmine's shoulders. "Yes, of course! Ma'zurah would be glad to have your company."

Jasmine stiffened in surprise, then released a breath and returned Ma'zurah's embrace, smiling ruefully. "It will be good to get back on the road again."

Ma'zurah sat back and beamed at her.

"First things first. We have to take care of these." Jasmine tapped the bracer on her wrist. "I don't think it would be safe to ask a blacksmith or a locksmith for help, but I was thinking maybe we could get some scrolls. They might be expensive, but maybe Elone knows someone who--"

"Hold on." Ma'zurah's brow furrowed. The idea of scrolls pinged something in her recollection. "Ma'zurah has a thought. In theory, Ma'zurah knows a spell. She has never used it, but before Jasmine speaks of buying expensive scrolls, perhaps she would like Ma'zurah to try."

"Is it dangerous?"

Ma'zurah pursed her lips. "Not really. Definitely not if it is cast correctly."

Jasmine gave her a searching look and hesitantly proffered her arm.

It took two tries. The first time it failed outright, and Ma'zurah wished she had access to her notes far away at the Arcane University. The second time the lock came open with a muffled click.

“Thank you,” Jasmine breathed, rubbing her wrist and sounding supremely relieved. “I should--we should let the others know.” She rose and knocked on the door to the next room. “Baadargo?”

There was no answer.

Frowning, Jasmine opened the door.

The orange Khajiit was asleep on the floor, curled into a tight ball in the corner of the room.

He peeked an eye open at their approach. “This one can come out now?”

"Why are you on the floor?" Jasmine asked, bemused.

"Where else should this one be?"

"The bed?"

Baadargo looked over at the bed and Ma'zurah followed his gaze. It was a nice bed, with soft, clean blankets smoothed over the top, and not a wrinkle in sight.

"That is the bed of muthsera Jasmine, not Baadargo." The Khajiit's voice was plaintive. "This one did not want to mess it up."

Jasmine tisked, but let it drop.

“Show Ma’zurah Baadargo’s bracer please?” Ma'zurah asked, helping the Suthay-raht to his feet.

He held out his wrist and Ma’zurah opened the lock.

“Fantastic! Can this one learn to do such things?” Baadargo’s tone was wondering, as though Ma'zurah had handed him a precious gift and he could hardly believe it.

Jasmine laughed along with the joy on the Suthay-raht's face, but Ma’zurah gave his question serious consideration. “Does Baadargo have a talent for magic?”

Baadargo’s face fell slightly, though the joy remained. “This one does not know. This one has never had the bracer off long enough to find out before.”

“Never?” Jasmine asked, horrified.

“This one was born with it.”

Ma’zurah gaped at the Suthay-raht. Her mind boggled at the thought of being born into slavery. She could not imagine a life like that.

A look of concern had affixed itself to Jasmine’s face. “If you've never been free, do you have anywhere to go? Or anywhere you want to go?”

Baadargo nodded. “This one has heard rumors. They say the scaled ones in Ebonheart will help those who want to leave. Baadargo was going there.”

“Alright.” Jasmine glanced at Ma’zurah. “I guess that will be our first stop.”

Ma’zurah nodded.

Jasmine spent the next hour packing and preparing her house for her imminent absence. Ma’zurah laid the things in her bag out to dry, lamenting the water damage to her new maps, and then proceeded to sit at the kitchen table and attempt to teach Baadargo how to access his own well of magicka.

At some point the pair of Argonians returned with three large fish and a mudcrab, which they gleefully cooked. Ma’zurah demonstrated again the spell of opening, which prompted the Argonians to speak animatedly of their plans to return to the marshes of their homeland. Jasmine suggested they travel with Baadargo to look for assistance first, and to that end, the five of them hired two fishing boats from the outskirts of Seyda Neen to take them to Ebonheart directly, avoiding the main roads. Jasmine and Ma’zurah stopped to assure Elone that Jasmine was fine before they departed.

When they arrived at the fort, Jasmine had only to ask for “the Argonians” to be directed to the Argonian Embassy. They had barely taken two steps inside before they encountered a tall Argonian in an elegant robe, who quickly divined the situation and whisked the three former slaves away to a safe place.

Then it was just Ma’zurah and Jasmine. Ma’zurah gave Jasmine the details of her job for the Balmora Mages Guild, and the pair of them set off in the direction of Balmora. There was a lightness to Ma’zurah’s step that she had not felt since before she had been imprisoned in Cyrodiil.

Ma’zurah looked over at the Redguard walking beside her. She still missed the life she had lost, the life she could not go back to, but at least now she was not completely alone. Now she had a friend.

[egocentricdactyl]

Third time’s the charm so here’s another lore post because I’m seeking something but I do not know what.

This one’s gonna be on the inner working of the Jaros government and the 12 nobles that rule the land. Jaros is the only country that still fully operates with nobles as the ruling class wheras most other countries have a more democratic government. There is, of course, some local democracy but the country itself is governed by the twelve families that divided the land ages ago after they conquered it with their legendary relics. Each family now protects a relic and wields it as evidence of their rule. Here are some of the most notable of these families and the weapons they hold.

First up is the most notable of the families, the Mudderbow family who rule over the grand duchy of Vilid. This duchy includes the capitol city of Vilid and its surroundings. The Mudderbows hold the legendary sword of Marlow the weapon said to have dealt the final blow to the false usurper Vilid. The Mudderbows now reign the grand duchy fairly calmly with no major interventions happening or laws being passed although they pressure other nobles a lot to pass laws in their territories that profit the Mudderbows more then the other nobles.

Second is a more unique noble that does not really consist of a family.  It is the ever-enigmatic robotic lich and earl of Rumeria, Litchter. They are one of the first twelve warforged made to beat the dragons but abandoned by the government not long after. Litchster was found by the then Earl, Bartholomew Rumeria. The Earl took in the warforged after he found it in a scrapyard and sought to revitalize it with necromatic energy. When the machine was reborn he dubbed it Litchter and made them his only heir. Now the warforged lives in his mansion looking over the city of Rumeria and its surroundings while studying his time away in isolation. The legendary wand of Bartek is also said to be in the possesion of Litchter, but with a scarce amount of hunters looking for it, no one has yet been able to confirm this. 

Third is a minor lord called, Lord Yeehaw, of the county of Overbrush a small territory in the south of Jaros close to the border with Xouron. They live in the hills where they practice their religion praying to their god who they are quite devout to. They wield the hat of Yechiel, a felt hat that allows them direct contact with Juliet godess of the moons. 

Fourth is the duchess of Cragharbour, Saab of Harker. Originally this duchy and its surroundings were ruled by the original Craneharbour family who ruled the city of Craneharbour and its surroundings. This however ended quite abruptly when Reagan Rokartis, who worked for the then ruling baron, introduced triple down economics. The financial disaster that followed would be known as Rokartisnomics and resulted in the city of Craneharbour becoming one of the poorest areas and crime rates began to sky rocket. The criminal gangs that resulted from this then began a drug empire that got the city unofficially Cragharbour. Reagan fled to Revos after the disaster but the baron and his family were brutally killed by an angry mob. In the chaos a new ruler arose, this however was a Rakshasa who deceived the peoples. Now the exact same Rakshasa still rules under the name Saad, having taken on many different forms to avoid suspicion. The relic this family wield has been lost after the Rokartisnomics scandal, but many believe Reagan took it with him.

There are some other nobles like the firbolg duke of Autumnkeep, but these four are the most notable of the bunch. The nobles rule the country together in a national assambly that happens once every month and also often make deals between each other or start small wars. The one thing keeping Jaros together is their pact to always stand together against outside threats.

[moreauclarabel]

                       ❝ Too much light has come out of my darkness. ❞

LILY COLLINS? No, that’s actually CLARABEL MOREAU. A SIXTH YEAR student, this RAVENCLAW student is sided with THE NEUTRALS. SHE identifies as a CIS-WOMAN and is a PUREBLOOD who is known to be SECRETIVE, ANXIOUS, and INTERNALIZING but also INTELLIGENT, CURIOUS, and OPEN-MINDED. 

CHARACTER INSPO: Nell Crane ( THOHH ), Lexie Grey ( Grey’s Anatomy ), Rory Gilmore ( Gilmore Girls ), Sansa Stark ( ASOIAF ), Belle French ( OUAT ), Elsa ( Frozen ), Pepper Potts ( MCU )

TRIGGERS ( all tagged ): abuse, neglect, depression, anxiety, panic attacks

– –  the moreau family were purebloods with an extremely long and prolific lineage in france - blood supremacists to the core, they were extremists since god was a boy. but, for the most part, until the last 75 years or so, they stayed out of shit. they kept their lineage pure, they instilled elitist beliefs in their children, they disowned family members who went off the beaten path and that was that. they stayed in france, they stayed with their own, they expanded when they needed to through marriage and having children, but until the start of of the rise of voldemort ( grindlewald certainly shook them up, though ), they didn’t involve themselves. 

– –  séraphine moreau neé travers married into the family and wanted more -- why didn’t they involve themselves? why didn’t they want more? why didn’t they involve themselves? so insulated? as a travers, their family had a history within voldemort’s circle, why didn’t all purebloods aspire for the same? it was a shame, marc andré was relentlessly pushed and coerced by his wife to dedicate himself to the cause during the second wizarding war. they struggled to have children, so she thought, if we can’t have children, maybe just maybe we can have power. the moreau line dropped one by one during the second wizarding war due to this hastiness --  séraphine was brilliant at convincing them of her agenda, but she really was blinded by pure and unadulterated anger & hatred -- especially because she couldn’t fufill her duty as a wife. 

tbh though she always wanted power, she never wanted to be a mother or a fucking wife but like! she was! she was aware that was her place but she was also raised to be smart, disciplined, ruthless, hardworking. the moreau’s might’ve wanted her to take more of a backseat -- at first -- but when they realized she needed room to prove herself to them as a person and not just an object, they decided to give it to her. what did they have to lose?

– – more money ( mo problems ), more everything was poured into the war, they were SURE they were going to win. they were sure they were going to come out of this winning. they didn’t. when the aurors came for marc andré and séraphine, séraphine cleverly played on her fragility, both of them plead the imperius. with marc’s family’s record of staying away from shit -- they got off. it was the year 2000, the moreau family’s prestige deteriorated quite a bit, séra tried to hold onto the crumbling empire that was gone -- she was fucking angry. she had no child, no legacy, they had to rebuild their reputation, they had to do work that she frankly didn’t think they should’ve had to do. as far as she was concerned -- the whole wizarding world were the mad ones for accepting muggleborns and those without pure blood. but she knew she had to lay low. marc followed her lead for the six years until they finally, FINALLY, got pregnant with clara. 

– – she was it. their child was it. their child, they hoped they’d be a boy, would be their key into the good graces of society again -- and many in society were happy for the moreau’s, don’t get it wrong. they might’ve lost some prestige and some status, but they had more years of being jewels of society than being pitied under their belt. their child, their boy would carry on the legacy, the last moreau, he’d be their ticket into everyone’s shining graces again. 

this was clarabel’s first mistake. she was not born a boy. marc was happy though, he fell in love with clarabel the minute she was born, he loved her but séraphine? angry. she felt the same feeling of failure that she had after their side lost during the wizarding war. still, clarabel séraphina would have to make due. 

– – they knew something was off when her bouts of accidental magic were extremely frequent. first, they passed it off as if clara was a show off, as if it was a party trick at events, when guests came over in their townhome in paris. but clara was a very poised, an otherwise controlled, soft spoken child -- it was hard to imagine she’d show off. in fact, they took note of how clara’s nature was just extremely soft. séra didn’t understand it, she must’ve gotten it from her weak father. you coddle her too much, you give her too much attention. too much love. this didn’t effect clara as much until she was older and they realized that this problem, this party trick was not going away. this was a problem. she was a problem. 

to them it wouldn’t have been such a problem if clara could use this excess magic to hurt people, to maim them instead of creating flowers, to do terrible jinxes instead of sprouting butterflies or some really warm, good, light shit. to them, their daughter was a monster for not being monstrous like them, for not being ruthless, for being so soft. 

– –  [ ABUSE, NEGLECT TW ] the neglect, the abuse, while it was definitely a thing while clara was growing up got worse after her 11th birthday. they had enough then, séra at least, had had enough. there was not a day that went by that clara was not chastised, yelled at & put down by her mother. then neglected and not given attention by her father. her father, who was once so loving and caring, that love was rescinded. [ END OF TWs ] clara struggled to understand any of it. she knew that it was because she couldn’t control her magic, sure, pouring herself into books and anything she could to learn how. sure, she knew it was because she was and always had been a disappointment, sure, she had every reason to hate & be terrified of herself ( and deep down, she did, she was ), but she didn’t understand. she didn’t get it. it never clicked the way her magic did. this magic made her feel so good, it made her feel free, the lack of control, feeling that came from it made her elated and here her parents, the people who were supposed to love her most, hated it & her by proxy? what else did they hate that they didn’t understand? what else did they hate that just didn’t make sense?

it was why clara would never completely give in and believe wholeheartedly in blood supremacy. she’s ignorant, sure, but hateful? she couldn’t understand it. they didn’t give her reason. she was observant, kind by nature, and she just couldn’t understand why why you’d hate someone for reasons they couldn’t control. 

– – this conflict brewed in her head until her 13th birthday when after a particularly brutal homeschooling session with her mother, clara lashed out. she yelled at her mother, she sobbed, why do you hate me? why? the emotions that she had built up were so intense, so consuming, so powerful, that they expressed themselves through magic -- resulting in clara sprouting a cherry blossom tree ( she’d seen it in her books & thought it gorgeous ) in the middle of their living room. it was then they packed up their townhome in paris and moved to south of france, bordering monaco, near the water. their daughter was out of control, she was an out of control monster, she needed to be taken care of and they felt isolating and secluding her from the city, from society, from everything, was going to help. it had to.  

– – [ DEPRESSION MENTION ] while clara loved their summer home immensely, she also longed to be around people. besides her cousin odilia and her house elf, she really didn’t talk to anyone which only fed her curiosity further. she painted, she played instruments, she spent copious time alone even though the more and more she did, she craved paris, she craved the outside. she’d always been an extremely curious, open-minded child because of her parents being so vehement against being so -- so she read more and more about people and things she could never be. the only problem was, she could never read enough to replace human interaction, to replace people, to replace touch, feeling  more lonely and frankly, depressed, than she had before. [ END OF MENTION/TWs ]  her mother had always refused to let her go to regular school because of her abilities & outbursts, but as time went by and clara just didn’t get better at controlling her abilities and started to fall behind in regular school -- séra started to give up. it was clear, as much as she’d loathe to admit it, that she was out of her depth and needed help with her daughter -- she did. 

– – beauxbatons was too lax for their taste and because she was coming in the middle of the year, durmstrang didn’t have space. it was minerva mcgonagall that thought, they loathed to admit it, had the most prestige and knowledge on transfiguration that they could access for clarabel, away from french pureblood society, hopefully their child would actually learn something. though reluctant to send her to hogwarts, clarabel went and her life was changed for the better.

it was a really hard transition, from learning how to share a space with 4 other people to being around so fucking many, learning the staircases, answering riddles, but her cousin odilia paired with lily potter and her friends ( though the two groups not together, that was for sure ) helped clarabel  -- the minute her parents caught wind of her friendship with a potter they encouraged the closeness, another secret started to weight on clara heavily besides the bouts of uncontrollable magic which brought her shame. especially considering clara knew that if lily really knew her parents, she’d be furious, though the two did get over the revelation that eventually came -- if only they knew who killed harry potter. 

– – while she loves ghosts, ghouls and the great beyond she finds herself spending more and more time with spirits and her art supplies than people as the war grows more and more heavy on everyone. especially after mcgonagall’s murder, clara’s felt like she’s lost the only person she can imagine that can actually help her with magic because while it’s come a long way she still has an exceptionally long way to go. after a year of being at hogwarts, clara knows her neutrality really is morally wrong, she knows that she’s hurting people by doing nothing but she would hurt the people closest, who she loves, if she took action with either side. though clara could never have the gusto to join something like the death eaters, nor the ability, her parents definitely have encouraged her to marry into a family that has a son/child that supports it. [ ANXIETY TW ]  they want her to become the dutiful wife, the pureblood socialite of the year, but she realizes that is so far away from what she wants that she doesn’t know how to handle her future becoming her now. panic attacks and anxiety attacks, while something she’s dealt with for a very long time have become more and more frequent and the years he spent on practicing her magic seems futile when these emotions take over the way they do. [ END OF TWs ]

PLOTS: 

NEW TUTOR: maybe a student who helped mcgonagall with clara’s stuff could pick up the slack maybe a teacher could take interest? either way, clara needs someone to help her with this magic because while she’s thrown herself into dueling club, she needs a ton of help. maybe even an outside source! 

CLUB FRIENDS: art club, dueling club, frog choir, hogwarts orchestra ( piano ), clara needs friends or people she knows from those clubs!! 

PUREBLOOD SOCIETY: the society of purebloods! we have some and she’s close and related to odilia travers, so there’s a starting point. she

FIRST KISS: maybe it was at a school party that clara was dragged to? it could be cute and like whatever, honestly, clara would get a lil blushy around them and stuff. 

BETROTHED: LAMOJDJDOJDW sorry to bring this ARCHAIC UGLY PLOT but she would have one and i think it would be interesting to play out. 

THE SUSPICIOUS: maybe someone who’s just suspicious of clara and how she is? is she really that good when she has family and parents like the one she has? is she really playing a game? open to family members of lily as well tbh. maybe someone on the pureblood side who’s suspicious of clara being so close to lily and co.? 

ANNOYANCES: clara isn’t the type to be annoyed by people easily but if she is, while she’ll try to be nice, it’s very hard for her to hide it. who knows why! 

BAD INFLUENCE: clara can be quite innocent about shit, maybe this person is trying to be a bad influence on clara bc its sort of hilarious that she’s so innocent about a lot of pop culture and such??

TUTORS FOR SCHOOL: as mentioned, clara is like barely keeping up with her classes and though she’s not super behind like she was last year, she’s still struggling! someone tutor her!

OPEN TO OTHER PLOTS: i am open!!! even to amending any of these or anything!! 

[thescrybe]

Renekton, The Butcher of The Sands

Renekton is a terrifying, rage-fueled Ascended being from the scorched deserts of Shurima. Once, he was his empire’s most esteemed warrior, leading the armies of Shurima to countless victories. However, after the empire’s fall, Renekton was entombed beneath the sands, and slowly, as the world turned and changed, he succumbed to insanity. Now free once more, he is utterly consumed with finding and killing his brother, Nasus, who he blames, in his madness, for the centuries he spent in darkness.

Renekton was born to fight. From a young age he was constantly getting into vicious brawls. He had no fear, and was able to hold his own against much older children. It was often pride that led to these confrontations, as Renekton was unable to back down, or let any insult pass. Every evening, he came home with cuts and fresh bruises, and while his more scholarly older brother, Nasus, disapproved of his street-fighting, Renekton relished it.

Nasus soon moved away, having been chosen to join the elite Collegium of the Sun, and in the years he was absent, Renekton’s skirmishes became increasingly serious. On a rare visit home, Nasus was horrified to see his bloodied young brother return home from yet another street fight. Fearing Renekton’s violent nature would see him imprisoned or in an early grave, Nasus helped him enlist in the Shuriman army. Officially, Renekton was too young for this duty, but his older brother’s influence smoothed away this detail.

The discipline and regimentation of the army was a blessing for Renekton. Within a few years, he rose to become one of Shurima’s most feared and capable war-captains, and he fought on the front line in numerous wars of conquest to expand the empire. He garnered a reputation for ferocity and toughness, but also for honor and bravery. Nasus became a decorated general, and the two of them served in a number of campaigns together, remaining very close despite their inherent differences and frequent disagreements. Nasus’s skill lay in strategy, logistics and history; Renekton’s lay in battle. Nasus planned the wars, and Renekton won them.

Renekton earned the title Gatekeeper of Shurima after fighting a desperate battle in one of the mountain passes bordering Shurima. An invading force had landed on the south coast, striking toward the isolated city of Zuretta. If it was not halted, the city was certain to be razed, and its populace massacred. Outnumbered ten to one, Renekton and a small contingent faced these aggressors, determined to buy time for the city to be evacuated. It was a battle that none expected Renekton to survive, let alone win. He held the pass for a day and a night, long enough for a relief force led by Nasus to arrive. With barely a handful of warriors left standing, none uninjured, Renekton was hailed a hero.

Renekton served on the frontlines for decades, and never lost a battle. His presence was inspiring to those fighting alongside him, and terrifying to his enemies. Victory after victory were his, and such was his reputation that some wars were won without a sword even being lifted, enemy nations surrendering as soon as they heard Renekton was marching on them.

Renekton was of middling years, a grizzled and battle-scarred veteran, when word reached him that his brother was close to death. He raced back to the capital to find Nasus a pale shadow of his former self, having been struck down by a debilitating wasting malady. The sickness was incurable, similar to the rotting curse said to have cut down an entire noble line in antiquity.

Nevertheless, Nasus’s greatness was recognized by one and all. As well as being a highly decorated general, he curated the great library of Shurima, and penned many of the finest literary works in the empire. The priesthood proclaimed it to be the sun’s will that he undertake the Ascension ritual.

The whole city gathered to witness the holy rite, but the tragic illness had taken a terrible toll, and Nasus no longer had the strength to scale the stairs to the Ascension dais. In the ultimate act of self-sacrifice and love, Renekton lifted his brother in his arms, and climbed the final steps, fully expecting to be obliterated in the process by the holy energies of the sun disc. He deemed his sacrifice a small thing to ensure that his brother would live on. He was just a warrior, after all, albeit a talented one, while his brother was a peerless scholar, thinker and general. Renekton knew that Shurima would need Nasus in the years to come.

Renekton was not destroyed, however. Beneath the blinding radiance of the sun disc, both brothers were raised up and remade. When the light faded, two mighty Ascended beings stood before the onlookers, Nasus in his lean, jackal-headed body, and Renekton in his immense, crocodilian form. Their forms seemed apt; the jackal was often regarded as the most clever and cunning of beasts, and the fearless aggression of the crocodile fit Renekton perfectly. Shurima gave thanks to have these new demigods as guardians of the empire.

Renekton had been a mighty war hero before, but now he was an Ascended being, blessed with power beyond mortal understanding. He was stronger and faster than any regular man, and seemed virtually immune to pain. Though Ascended beings were not immortal, their lifespans were dramatically increased, so that they might serve the empire for hundreds of years.

With Renekton at the head of the Shuriman armies, the empire’s military was all but unstoppable. He had always been a ruthless commander and ferocious fighter, but his new form gave him power beyond belief. He led the soldiers of Shurima to many bloody victories, neither giving nor expecting mercy. His legend spread far beyond the borders of the empire, and it was his enemies that gave him the name Butcher of the Sands, a title he embraced.

There were those, Nasus among them, who came to believe that a portion of Renekton’s humanity had been lost in his transformation. As the years progressed, he seemed to become crueler, relishing the spilling of blood more than was natural, and whispers circulated of atrocities he committed in the name of war. Nevertheless, he was a staunch defender of Shurima, and he faithfully served a succession of emperors, ensuring the security and greatness of Shurima for hundreds of years.

During the reign of the Emperor Azir, word arrived that a magical being of fire had escaped the magical sarcophagus that bound it in its underground prison. It had laid waste to a Shuriman town, before fleeing across the desert to the east. Renekton and his brother Nasus set forth to recapture this legendary foe. While they were absent, the young emperor, guided by the manipulations of his magus, Xerath, attempted to join their ranks and become one of the Ascended. The results were catastrophic.

Renekton and Nasus were a day’s ride from the capital, but even so, they felt the shockwave as the Ascension ritual went awry. Knowing that something terrible had come to pass, they raced back to find the glorious city in ruins. Azir had been killed, along with most of the city’s populace, and the great sun disc was falling, drained of all its power.  At the epicenter of the ruin, they encountered Xerath, now a being of pure, malevolent power.

The brothers sought to bind Xerath in the magical sarcophagus that had held the ancient being of fire. For a day and a night they battled, but the magus was powerful, and would not be held. He shattered the sarcophagus, and assailed them with spells fueled by the power of sun disc, which crashed to the ground as they fought.

Knowing that they could not destroy Xerath, Renekton finally wrestled him into the depthless Tomb of the Emperors, and bade his brother seal them inside forever. Knowing there was no other way to stop Xerath, Nasus reluctantly did as his brother ordered. As Renekton and Xerath fell into darkness, Nasus sealed the tomb for all eternity.

In the darkness, Xerath and Renekton continued their battle. For uncounted years they fought, as the once-great civilization of Shurima collapsed to dust in the world above. Xerath whispered poison in Renekton’s ear, and gradually, as the centuries rolled on, his viperous words and the ever-present darkness took its toll. The magus implanted the notion in Renekton’s mind that Nasus had sealed him in on purpose, jealous of his success, and unwilling to share his Ascension.

Piece by piece, Renekton’s sanity cracked. Xerath drove a wedge into these cracks, corrupting his mind and twisting his perception of what was real and what was imagined.

Thousands of years later, the Tomb of the Emperors was opened by the mercenary Sivir, freeing Renekton and Xerath. Renekton roared his fury and thundered out into the Shuriman desert, sniffing the air for the scent of his brother.

Renekton now roams the deserts, seeking the death of Nasus, the traitor he believes left him to die. His grip on reality is tenuous at best, and while there are moments when he resembles the proud, honorable hero of the past, much of the time he is little more than a devolved hate-maddened beast, driven on by the thirst for blood and vengeance.

[ofaphrcditearchive]

( emilia clarke, 26, she/her ) silence! can you not see her majesty, megaira calisto constantinou, has arrived? It seems the princess of the greek empire is willing to compromise for peace, which is surprising when everyone calls them the broken bird. have you tried approaching them? i heard they can be rather distant + ruthless, but their staff say that they’re determined + analytical. - ( luna / gmt / she/her )

guess WHAT i have another?? and i love her sm so i hope you all do because i finally have a greek character!! like as a greek i am astounded it has taken me this long tbh but i diGRESS. this is megaira (ofc named for anotHER disney character lmao don’t look at me) and is a tough lil lady. literally homegirl gets locked away for the best part of her life rip. but anyway LIKE this if you want to plot and i’ll come hit your inbox up!!

for the BASICS please click here !!

megaira comes from a long line of rulers that have fought, tooth and nail to keep their empire, to make it the greatest the world has seen since the ancient kingdoms of greece. born on a stormy night in the ancient and great city of pella, birthplace of alexander the great. she will be the first to break the wheel. she will be the first woman to inherit the greek throne. her father had long since given up on a son, and with three daughters to follow him, he named megaira his sole heir when he eventually passed on. much to the disgust and disdain of her older half brother. a bastard, an illegitimate son born out of affair at war. he believed that the throne was his, owed to him. that it should never be wasted on a woman so much weaker in his eyes. but their father did not relent, and so megaira, at the age of just ten, begun to train for her eventual rise to the throne.

it was her brother who convinced their father that she ought to be sent away when the war begun. that a weak princess, now the heir to the throne, would surely be an easy target to their many enemies. so the princess was sent away at aged fifteen to live on the island of crete, just five years into the war, with only her handmaidens and a handful of guards to keep her company. here she heard news from notes passed to her, from her father ( though, those grew more infrequent every passing year ), from her sisters, cousins and from old friends. it was here she heard that she was to be married before she ever took the throne. another plan concocted by her scheming brother to keep her from what he saw as his crown. her father passed law that if she did not marry before his death, that her brother would rule in her place as regent. now convinced that their empire would not follow her lead without a man by her side. megaira was not stupid, she knew that if her brother gained before she did, then she would be dead long before she could walk down the aisle. there would be no getting it back.

so she spent her years of isolation plotting, and learning. every language she could, every book, battle strategies, how to fight, the arts of court. she even survived many an attempt on her life, assassins sent from enemy countries. some secretly paid for by her brother, more than likely. as the war finally came to a close, megaira was allowed to return to court at aged twenty five, nine years in captivity. now a woman, she had returned vindictive and determined to see herself rise and her brother fall. unwittingly, her brother had created his own worst enemy. now truly worthy competition, and in her eyes, he no longer stood a chance.

megaira pleaded with her father for the chance to go to bern, to prove that she would be a worthy leader and could garner the support she would need. there were many who tried daily to invade their country, to test their borders. and this was a chance for them to end these border squabbles for good. although, she had spent most of her life away from court so now she feels on uneven ground as she tries to get used to it all over again as well as dealing with the fact that soon she will have to marry whether she wants to or not. despite her father siding with the coalition ( he didn’t want to upset their relationship with the ottoman’s, so to keep his people safe he sided with them due to their presence they have over them ) megaira strongly believes in independence for greece, and wants to restore it to the great empire they used to be. 

megaira is a very quiet and reserved person, but by no means shy. although she is anxious about being surrounded by so many royals, some she knows from years ago and others strangers, she still isn’t afraid to ensure her voice is heard. this is a chance to prove herself, and she will grasp at every opportunity she can. however she is very stubborn and sets out to do things her way, sometimes it’s impossible to make her budge on that. she thinks she’s more than capable of ruling along, so resents anyone who looks down on her for her gender, or who thinks she’ll be easy to play just because she’s a young woman. meg is obsessed with stars and knows every story behind all of them. if you want to get her talking, ask about myths and stars and she’ll never shut up. often stays up to look at the night sky from her balcony, or the roof of her tower in crete. also has a really big dog that was given to her when she was sent away to keep her company and keep her safe. she named her artemis after the greek goddess of the hunt, forests and hills, the moon, and archery. hardly goes anywhere without her, even now at bern where people aren’t as used to the princess’ giant dog.

WANTED PLOTS

a best friend: someone she has known most of her life and was a playmate when she was younger, this would  be someone she trusts all her secrets with and who she has now reunited with at bern.

her brother: her half brother who schemes to take the throne from her, would likely rather see her head on a pike than beneath a crown.

her two sisters: although she lived apart from them for a good part of her life, she wants to keep them safe and protected despite still only being young herself.

cousins: people she grew up with and missed when she was sent away. they would have kept her up to date in her years of captivity and she used to be quite close to them in her youth. her parents have likely told them to keep her safe during her stay and to guide her in the ways of court life, teaching her how to be a proper lady. offer her counsel. before she was sent away she was offered a place to stay with them during the war but her brother soon whispered in her fathers ear and that idea was cut off. it would be too risky for the princess to forge alliances of her own afterall.

gifted her artemis: they gave her artemis as a gift ten years ago when she was sent away to live on the island, and she has become her closest companion. megaira is forever grateful for her, could tie into another plot easily. maybe they both have one from the same litter. yes i am ripping off the starks completely because i love them.

mentor/adviser: might be playing her for their own needs or working for her brother, or it could be a genuine relationship. they might wish for her to succeed because having her on the throne would be very beneficial to them. doesn’t necessarily have to be an official adviser, or from her country, just someone that has been mentoring her all these years, maybe writing and visiting her.

a failed betrothal: he was the first choice for marriage, but for one reason the engagement fell apart. a problem when they had already begun to develop feelings more than friendship. likely visited her when she was kept in her tower and was one of the reasons she remained sane and determined all these years. the betrothal was ended just before she turned twenty, and megaira was quietly devastated.

a betrothal: they are due to be married and megaira despises this. she feels she is more than fit to rule over an empire without a man by her side, and so they get all the animosity for it. there might be feelings there, but they are mostly buried in bitterness, and the fact that megaira would clearly rather be without them.

an enemy: someone who threatens her future reign. they want the land their empire stands on for themselves, and see her as an easy way to get it. not just rule it, but to make it disappear. to put an end to the greek empire. maybe someone from their country has attempted to kill her, or sent assassins to finish the job.

family friends: whilst she was locked away in a tower for years, this was the person that continuously visited her. brought her favourite foods and entertained her. not many knew of the princess’ location but she trusted them enough to reveal it. before her entrapment, they would be sat together at family events, forced to pair off for dances simply because they were the same age but eventually it grew into friendship.

[blade-of-marmora-blog]

things to note with the s3 verse

angry. really angry for a multitude of reasons.

hostility towards the paladins pretty much increases tenfold, lack of care for trying to be civil anymore

even more difficult to be around

appreciates the alteans more than the humans

absolutely refuses to listen to the paladins

there’s no kindness here at all, he’s pissed all the time and every time, if you don’t have a strong will, don’t interact with him, he will freely insult you and doesn’t care if your feelings were hurt

to go a little more in-depth

he feels as if the blade were thrust into a situation where they had to protect a bunch of children that will more than likely die anyways because of the fact that they’re uncoordinated and pretty damn reckless, so he feels that there isn’t a point in doing so

he’s STILL angry about the alliance being forged in the first place, still pissed to hell and back that their location was divulged to a bunch of kids, hates the fact that they’re so out in the open. they’re exposed, vulnerable if they don’t watch their backs. they’re galra, someone could easily get too ambitious and kill one of them if they aren’t constantly watching their backs

it’s a dangerous situation for all of them, and he hates that they have to spend their time protecting the paladins from getting killed and forging political alliances with races that would be taken over by the galra empire regardless. he is so unbelievably angry about everything and he isolates himself further away from the paladins as much as he can, because he knows he’s going to snap and lash out at one of them if they remotely said something wrong to him

he trusts the paladins so much less here, if they asked him to do something, he wouldn’t listen and think it was absolutely dumb. the only exception is if one of the alteans were to try and garner his favor because he pretty much thinks that they’re smarter than the humans, but bound to the fact that the humans are their paladins. as such, they can’t get rid of them. but even so, it would be a bit of a stretch to get him on their side

he’s tried to see the good in having the paladins around, tried to see the good in the alliance... but his expectations of them are pretty much shot to shit and he just gave up on it

now, for a couple of verse ideas (which i’m sticking under the cut)

i’ve mentioned before that kolivan is the only person tethering him to the paladins he’s only remaining there because his priorities are kolivan’s safety and the integrity of the blade if he died, then antok’s situation would go a couple of ways

the first way is the idea that the blade agree with the paladins and want to be left under their care to be led around. that would be the biggest insult to antok. everything he’s known for centuries, the cause of the blade, only to be stuck guarding paladins that are reckless anyways. he would ultimately leave. he’d declare the blade’s cause as dead and leave. the empire knows of them anyways, but even so, he would rather die than divulge information to them he’ll defect from the blade and go into hiding, far away from them and the empire, holes up on some remote planet and does his own thing to keep himself occupied even if it kills him

the second way is that the blade doesn’t agree with the paladins, and even though antok doesn’t see himself fit to lead, he would take charge, take the blade, and leave to preserve whatever secrecy they have left. he’d move everything around and change it, put down more strict policies concerning their secrecy and whatnot, strengthen security, and pretty much make an order to kill anything on sight that makes an attempt to get in, paladin or not. he’ll inform the paladins of this anyways (’if you come to us again, know that we will kill you.’) and take his leave. he wants nothing to do with them, and if he’s going to have to step up in kolivan’s stead, he’s not going to let the paladins take control

the third way is a mix of the first two in a way, except only like a handful or so of the blade that believe in him leave with him and they go way into hiding. they’re out of contact and no one can reach them. like with the first way, they’d be holed up on a remote planet, and probably conduct their own organization that would likely center around the dirtier parts of the blade that not many people, aside from antok, is willing to do. he’d basically train them to abandon whatever compassion they would have towards people, teach them to react coldly in the face of an empire soldier trying to pull a sob story, have no mercy when interrogating or killing witnesses to preserve their secrecy.

he’ll be pretty dangerous and pretty much bordering on ‘evil’ to the paladins. of course if kolivan is alive then this doesn’t happen but BOY is he still really angry

[militant-holy-knight]

Is Christian Terrorism Comparable to Islamic Terrorism?

Terrorism is terrorism regardless of ideology, but we need to have a realistic perspective.

Since the Christchurch mosque attacks, I’ve seen certain people (news outlets and pages on Youtube) now saying Christians fundamentalists are actually more dangerous than Muslim fundamentalists. Having watched the footage myself, I was completely disgusted at the massacre and I can safely say those were the actions of a complete monster. However, I need to address some false equivalences made by people who totally have no agenda to push.

The first false equivalence we see it being made is the Crusades, whose name was first sullied by Protestant Christians attacking Catholicism, then by Enlightenment philosophers and has since being co-opted by liberals at large to bash Christians for their violence. What is interesting is that everytime you hear the Crusades being used as an argument, they tend to ignore the rapid advance that Islam took over North Africa and the Middle-East, both of which had a significant Christian presence before being conquered by Muslims. In under one century, the three Christian outposts of Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria fell to Islamic rule with only Constantinople remaining (before its eventual fall to the Ottoman Turks) and Rome itself (which still stands to this day), which were under attack before the Crusades were even called.

The purpose of the Crusades was initially to assist the Roman Emperor Alexios I Comnenos against the Seljuk Turks, but it later evolved into retaking the Holy Land which was taken over by invaders centuries ago. Let me ask you this: three important Christian seats were invaded with no provocation. How many times has Mecca and Medina being invaded during the Crusades? Or ever in time by Christians? And no, American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia’s border to Iraq in the Gulf War does not count since the Saudis invited the Americans to guard them from invading Iraqi forces, which Osama bin Laden loved to pretend that the Arabian Penisula and the two mosques of Mecca and Medina (which they were nowhere near close to) were “under occupation”.

The second false equivalence is pointing out the existence of the KKK as if they are somehow just as bad as ISIS. I want to stress I am in no way a sympathizer to the KKK since I am a Roman Catholic and a Brazilian, and I want to add that at some point in the past the KKK was actually very dangerous, ironically not because it was considered a terrorist organization, but because it was viewed as an legitimate and respectable organization. Many people don’t know this but in 1997, they attempted to blow up an oil refinery in Fort Worth. Admittedly this was not racially-motivated, but actually an distraction so they could rob an bank, but if one of their members did not got cold feet at the last minute, the death toll would have easily topped 9/11 with some estimates going as far as 30,000. The key difference is that the KKK has been largely defanged, has less than 500 active members while ISIS could extend their threat as far way from their borders in Syria and Iraq into the Philippines and Russia.

A third false equivalence that is even more baffling is comparing the United States in general as being a terrorist state because of its interventionist policies. Now you can shit on the USA for many valid reasons, but accusing them of being some Christian empire that is waging war on Islam is nonsense. Unlike what jihadists like to believe, its not in the USA interest to “force Christianity down on Muslims”, but rather “democracy” (a secular concept) as the meme goes, which in theory should be an stable government that works towards normalizing and healing their country but in practice, its just placing their stooges into power that will play ball with them. And that is when law and order break down into chaos, sectarianism or mafia rule as seen with Iraq or Libya. 

Here is an reality check for you: as of the most recent Global Terrorist Index, the top four more dangerous terrorist groups are: ISIS, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab and Taliban. All of these groups are Islamist in nature. The report indicates they have been in decline because of counter-jihadist activities, but back in 2015, there was an 80% of increase in terrorism (which incidentally coincides where ISIS was at the peak of their power in Syria). Nevertheless, they still remains a dangerous threat that still left a lasting impact in civil society. The series of attacks they also carried out in 2015 in Western Europe were practically nothing compared to what the top countries like Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

With all that said about Islamic terrorism I also acknowledge that Christian terrorism is no less of an threat, specially by those targeted by it. These groups do exist right now, though sadly very few in the West are actually aware of them because they are locked into local conflicts that hasn’t received much attention by the media. I want to name three examples of Christian terrorist groups operating right now that I believe come close to committing atrocities in the same scale as their Islamic counterparts:

The Russian Orthodox Army

Arguably the closest Christian equivalent to ISIS, they are a militant group operating in Ukraine that makes up part of the Donbass separatists and are backed by Russia (much like ISIS is financed by several donors in the Gulf States). Much like ISIS follow Wahhabi Islam which persecutes all other religions and Islamic denominations like Shias, Sufis and Alawites, this group obviously only recognizes the Russian Patriarchate and persecutes other Christian denominations including Ukrainian and Greek Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics and Protestants because they are viewed as obstacles to uniting with Russia. As of the time of writing, the War in Donbass still persists and this group is still active.

The Lord’s Resistance Army

Arguably the most well-known example considering their exposure by the internet campaign Kony 2012. Founded by Catholic altar boy Joseph Kony, the LRA is an heterodox Christian group that seeks to establish an theonomy in Uganda based on the Ten Commandments, though many observers have questioned the group’s actual ideology, if they could actually were actually Christian fundamentalists or Acholi nationalists. This group is infamous for kidnapping children to be either child soldiers or sex slaves, and Kony himself is believed to have an harem of 50 wives, engaged in cannibalism and many more horrid things. Fortunately, the LRA has been largely neutralized and while Kony himself is still at large and could have been anywhere in South and North Sudan or the Central African Republic, he is down to what is believed to 100 soldiers and no longer represents a threat to Uganda.

The anti-Balaka in Central African Republic

A loose coalition of Christians that originally created self-defense groups after the CAR’s President Françoise Bozize was ousted by the Islamist rebels known as the Séleka lead by Michael Djtodia, who became the country’s first Muslim president. Though Djotdia tried to settle the transition peacefully by dissolving the Séleka, his men refused to disband and began butchering and raping their way across the country targeting their Christian population, who were sedentary due to their status as farmers unlike the Muslims who were nomadic. With Djotodia unable to make his men stand down, the Christians formed self-defense militias known as the anti-balaka coordinated by Levy Yakete. The anti-balaka began carrying out a series of attacks against the Muslim population in retaliation for the violence against their people with one Christian eating the leg of his Muslim victim. Their most recent deadliest attack happened in May 2017 when anti-balaka assailants killed over 107 Muslims in Bagassou, with this attack actually making it in the last position of the Top 10 terrorist attacks in the Global Terrorism Index report of 2018.

While all of these examples are horrific in their own right, one difference I observed between Christian and Islamic terrorism: the former tends to be more isolated and focused in their own domains while Islamic terrorism tends to extend their reach outside their area of operations. While Islamists are compelled to wage violent jihad against the infidel wherever they are and they target Westerners because they are viewed as aggressors, Christian terrorists seem more grounded in nationalism (such as the ROA and the LRA) or expel the “occupiers” out of their lands (such as the anti-balaka) - even the LRA didn’t seem interested in expanding their Christian theocracy like ISIS would have done. This isn’t me trying to rationalize or justify their actions: I am merely explaining this is a reason why you are more likely to fear an ISIS attack than an LRA attack, specially if you are an Westerner. The problem why Islamic terrorism is such insidious threat can be summed up in three reasons:

Many of these groups are backed by foreigner supporters, if not outright state sponsored to fight a proxy war against their rivals. Whether if its Saudi Arabia financing ISIS to fight against Shia militants backed by Iran, Turkey backing the FSA to destroy the Kurds and the Assad government or Pakistan financing both the Taliban or Kashmir terrorists to fight against Afghanistan or India. This guarantees the region will be a hotspot for terrorist activity. 

Islamic countries don’t have the means to put down terrorism by themselves. The Afghan government has been fighting a forever war with the Taliban and the key reason why the USA hasn’t pulled out yet is because they will collapse allowing the Taliban to take power again, making all their effort for nothing. Saudi Arabia has been intervening in Yemen for a long time to oust the Houthi rebels, but they are nowhere near close to winning. It was only by outside intervention that the Iraqi and Syrian governments managed to survive collapsing under ISIS. I will admit this isn’t exclusive to Islamic countries, but the Third World in general since it took decades for Uganda to put down the LRA.

In the eyes of many observers, both Muslims and Westerners, they appear justified. Either because they portray themselves as the brave mujhadeen for standing up against their oppressors, an alternative to failed governments or an offer at redemption for Muslims that lost their way. Of course, anyone reading this can denounce them individually, but remember that the people of the Gaza Strip voted Hamas into power and that there people who will defend the Taliban because they oppose the USA.

This video also shows something really depressing that out of the richest terrorist organizations in the world, only two of them are non-Islamic and some of the ones that do are financed by states like Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and others. Compared to the Christian examples I listed, the only one backed by a foreign country is the Russian Orthodox Army just like all the separatists are backed by the Putin government. Even though as of the time of writing, ISIS has since declined into power and will begin its insurgency campaign in earnest as other militant groups like al-Nusra are still operating in Syria and share the same twisted ideology as ISIS, though never managed to gain territory as fast as they had, I am pretty sure they are ready to continue fighting so long as Turkey insists in forcing a regime change in the Levant. 

As for the NZ terrorist himself, I have to really question his allegiance to Christianity. He used several historical references of clashes between Christianity and Islam, but he admitted being uncertain about being a Christian himself in his manifesto - what kind of fundamentalist is this? I’d expect at least to have picked out the most violent passages of the Bible to have actually made his point, but no - what he picked instead was an speech made by Pope Urban II calling for the First Crusade. He was more of an Cultural Christian - one that isn’t really religious, but still identifies with Christianity’s cultural heritage - which was incidentally something that Anders Brehvik identified himself as before changing his religion to an Odinist. 

What happened in New Zealand was an anomaly and the work of an madman, but lets not even pretend that justifies the UK government turning down an Iranian former Muslim turned Christian because “Christianity is a violent religion” in their view. And finally to close this off, call me when there is actually an ecumenical Christian equivalent of ISIS composed of Whites, Black, Asians and Latinos whose aim is to revive the Roman Empire like the caliphates that ISIS, al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab dreams of reviving.

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Sleep with the fishes: Gove's first move raises alarm over UK hard Brexit strategy

It is quite extraordinary how they manage to make the same mistake over and over again. The Tory response to Brexit has persistently prioritised rhetoric over content. They did it with European Court of Justice jurisdiction, when Theresa May adopted a black-and-white position which made compromises on market access much harder. She did it again by suggesting the EU was trying to subvert the British election. Every time, the government seems to prioritise satisfying the emotional needs of right-wing tabloid editors over nurturing goodwill with our negotiating partners. Which brings us to Michael Gove. The new environment secretary - now in place following the prime minister's electoral hara kiri over early summer - has made his first big announcement. Britain has triggered its withdrawal from the London Fisheries Convention, an obscure agreement signed in 1964. Because it was a British initiative, the UK government needed to write a letter to itself informing it of the decision. It is, in effect, dismantling its own statesmanship. It's not really connected to the EU, but it was nevertheless greeted with huge relief by leading Brexiters, who felt it had been months since they had had a decent thing to say about the project. "We will be saying we're taking back control," Gove told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show. "We will have control." Leading Brexiter Daniel Hannan said the move helped define what Brexit entailed.

He is entirely correct - the move does help define Brexit. It is meaningless, strategically counter-productive and designed primarily to make reactionaries feel better about themselves. It's unclear if withdrawing from the convention has any legal meaning at all. It gives rights to fish in the waters up to 12 miles off the coast of other signatories. The Common Fisheries Policy, introduced by the EU in the 70s, later expanded this territorial line to 200 miles off coast, which is the new international norm. Some, like Robin Churchill, professor emeritus of International Law at the University of Dundee, believe the Common fisheries policy supersedes the London Convention. Others disagree. But regardless of the legal issue, it has very little practical meaning. Fishing up to that 12 mile limit is small scale - fisherman catching crab and lobsters in bay areas, that type of thing.There might arguably be some marginal effect off the south coast of England because it's so close to France. But the big money is in white fish caught in the north-east Atlantic and the North Sea. That's all well off the 12-mile limit.

The announcement does have one significant effect, however. It serves to infuriate officials in Brussels and leaders in European capitals. Gove's announcement will be interpreted as another example of toothless British belligerence. Michel Barnier, who used to be the French minister for fisheries, issued a response almost dripping with disdain and ending with an us-versus-them point which should be the exact type of attitude we're trying to avoid.

Once again, we see that unhelpful combination of British aggressiveness and strategic ineptitude. They are a terrible combination. More bad blood to pour into the bucketload we have already created in order to satisfy a perceived domestic audience. Vital diplomatic goodwill in negotiations will be lost, in order to secure something of symbolic value to a few headbangers. But even if the move is meaningless in and of itself, it might still tell us something about the direction of travel. It suggests Britain intends to pull up the drawbridge and isolate ourselves. That, it must be admitted, would probably be in line with what many fishermen want. Ciarán O' Driscoll, an independent researcher at NUI Galway, calls fishermen "the hipsters of euroscepticism". These guys were into it before it was cool. The UK fishing industry doesn't actually make much money. In 2015, it contributed just £604 million to GDP, employing around 12,000 fishers and a further 18,000 in fish processing. But it plays a much bigger role in the Brexit debate than its size as an industry would suggest. "It's the pointy end of statehood - territory, borders, maps and so on," Driscoll says. "In an age of perceived state decline, it allows you to say: 'This is the state, a pure red line.' It goes really well with the British nostalgia for empire right now. The Tories are desperate for a Brexit win and this allows them to say they've taken back control of something."

But if Gove's move really does suggests a red-line policy on fishing, there will be terrible damage to the environment and Britain's fishing industry. There are basically three options for post-Brexit fishing. At the soft end, you could try to stay in or replicate the Common Fisheries Policy. The middle ground would entail leaving the policy but entering the bilateral negotiations Norway has with the EU. And the hard end would involve cutting ourselves off from the European system altogether. Almost no-one is talking about the soft version, but it is not impossible that that is where we will end up. Fishing is small fry, a tiny subplot of a huge negotiation in which those industries which bring in the most cash - like financial services or car manufacturing - will be prioritised. Right now, fishing is the mascot of the Brexit campaign. But at the business end of free trade agreement negotiation - probably during transition sometime after 2019 - it is more likely to be treated as a pawn, sacrificed to save the queen. The sheer amount of work that is required to sort out a fishing system outside the EU is completely disproportionate to its size. It's possible ministers would take the easy way out and adopt a form of associate membership which would keep the UK in the Commons Fisheries Policy.

If we do leave, we could pursue the middle ground and try to get involved in the bilateral arrangements outside the EU. Each year, before the Council of Ministers thrashes out a total allowable catch for each country, it meets with Norway, Iceland and the Faroe Islands, which are outside the EU, to share out the North Sea stocks. After Brexit, Britain could try to insert itself into that meeting. That alone is not an easy task. These annual talks often collapse in disagreement. But it was considered - until Gove's announcement at least - to be the most likely outcome. The London convention decision suggests Gove is envisaging something much more radical - excluding other countries from our territorial waters. The new policy would be: You fish in your water and we'll fish in ours. Hard Brexit of the fishes. This is the Game of Thrones approach to fisheries policy, a return to old certainties and Driscoll's pointy red lines. At first, it might seem to be in Britain's benefit. After all, lots of countries fish extensively in British waters but we do just 20%-30% of our fishing in theirs. You might say they need us more than we need them. But this is a superficial reading of the situation. Britain might not fish much in Europe, but we do sell to it. We export around 80% of our wild-caught seafood, with four of the top five destinations being European countries. Excluding EU fishing vessels from the UK is very likely to result in the EU slapping down high tariffs on fish, causing huge damage to the fishing industry and coastal communities in the UK. Norway would become our direct competitor, further complicating those difficult North Sea talks. But, as Craig McAngus, expert in territorial politics and constitutional change at the Department for International Relations in the University of Aberdeen, points out, Norway has years of dealing with these tariffs and non-tariff requirements. They've become very competitive. The UK won't be able to match that overnight. The EU would also retaliate in other ways, with harsher trading terms being imposed on really substantial British industries, like cars or aerospace. Gove's decision is part of the zero-sum, nationalist approach to Brexit, when what is urgently needed is a positive proposition of mutual benefit. This system would also be next-to-impossible to police without massive expenditure. Spanish and French fishermen can just go a few miles into our waters anyway. Who's going to see them? Policing waters is prohibitively expensive and no government in their right mind would dedicate that level of funding to it for so little gain. It would also be illegal under international law. The UK has ratified the UN Agreement on Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, both of which require cooperation on conservation and management.

And then there is the possibility of sanctions. A few years ago shoals of mackerel and herring migrated from Norwegian water into those of the Faroe Islands. The tiny nation unilaterally set its quotas very high and started catching more fish. The EU retaliated by banning their imports and prohibited the entry of Faroese fishing vessels into European ports . Unsurprisingly, the Faroe Islands backed down. A similar approach would have much less of an overall effect on the UK, but arguably not on the struggling coastal towns dependant on fish exports. The industry is already in trouble. It faces years of uncertainty - not just over Brexit, but over the devolution of fishing which follows it. It is set to lose the £243 million in subsidies in EU subsidies it receives. Austerity means the UK hasn't had any real fishing policy for years, for instance on the concentration of quotas into ever-fewer hands. At the very least, the UK should be exploring mechanisms which would allow it to negotiate and agree annual fishing quotas with the EU and thinking up what kind of UK fisheries management and enforcement system it will need. Instead, we have Gove talking the same old nonsense, poisoning our relationship with crucial European partners, making theatrical public announcements with no substance and pursuing strategies based on seducing the right-wing press rather than improving the lives of those he claims to represent. The threat this announcement implicitly involves would damage us more than it does our negotiating partner, just like the threat of a no-deal outcome in general. One year on, and they keep making the exact same mistakes.

Ian Dunt is the editor of Politics.co.uk. His book - Brexit: What The Hell Happens Now? - is available now.

[glopratchet]

govenment

The Republic of Rust is a land where magic has been outlawed, but not forgotten General fantasy worldbuilding outline for the Republic of Rust and the Nation of Galilee: It's ruled by an Emperor who rules with an iron fist, but he's also a man that believes in the power of magic to be used for good or evil He calls upon his most loyal followers to defend him from any who would oppose him The Empire on the other hand is a place where magic is accepted as part of life and it thrives In the time of the democracies of the Republic of Rust and the Nation of Galilee there was a war between them While the two nations were at peace during this time, they have since grown into each other and are now allies against their common enemy You can see how these countries could easily become enemies if left unchecked So what do you think? Do you want to play as either side or just try your luck as a neutral party? Let me know! Why does the Republic of Rust most recently ally with the Nation of Galilee It's like something out of a fairy tale, but you can't afford to close any possible avenue to ultimate power and what does the Nation of Gali believe the end game is in this potential future war? Because there has been information coming in about the Nation of Delerg and how they've stopped aging It's the disease But it isn't just this potential alliance or even the potential usage of magic that drives you to make this decision Why does the Republic of Rust most recently ally with the Nation of Galilee and what does the Nation of Gali believe the end game is in this potential future war? The Republic of Rust relates the Nation of Galilee because both have been hit just as hard as each other by this plague Everyone from children to elderly are affected it seems and the only thing keeping all of your doctors and apothecaries busy So far there has yet to be any sort of effective countermeasure It isn't the illness that kills people so much as the FDA has decided its very best to quarantine all those who show signs of sickness and prevent them from leaving their homes The Republic of Rust relates the Nation of Galilee because both have been hit just as hard as each other by this plague The Republic of Rust felt that Too many seconds after the Republic of Rust knew of the nature of the disease that it started calling for closing the borders to all incoming and outgoing travellers from the Republic This effectively The people and by extension the government of the Republic felt that if they could keep out people who might be sick then the rest of their healthy populace wouldn't catch it provided they kept away from places that were known to harbor ill people Galilee and Delerg hadn't taken such a measure… favoring a policy of isolation over quarantine Too many seconds after the Republic of Rust knew of the nature of the disease that it started calling for closing the borders to all incoming and outgoing travellers from the Republic The Nation of Galilee finally realizing it may have a problem soon if something isn't done soon requests your help in containing the epidemic Should you come to their aid militarily or should you limit your potential losses from a magic pandemic by cutting your losses with the Republic of Rust? Major Game Decisions You've let down your guard for once and someone took advantage of it Because of this event the emotions could be summed up best between the Republic of Rust and the Nation of Galilee as From the Republic of Rust , the Nation of Galilee imported giggles and snickering behind hands Emotions sure have strong power over people From the Nation of Galilee they experienced righteous anger and patriotic fury Oh well such is life What was important is that they banded together for the defense of their shared language despite their government beginning to give in to fat stupid men sitting on golden thrones They were fortunate that your meddling didn't start a war the Nation of Galilee imported giggles and snickering behind hands Why does the importance of giggles to the Republic of Rust when compare the same variety under the control of the Nation of Galilee authorities Because even though one out of Three so to speak doesn't get the joke… Doesn't mean everyone else isn't still laughing at them Why does the importance of giggles to the Republic of Rust when compare the same variety under the control of the Nation of Galilee authorities? The currency exchange for giggles is handled between the Republic of Rust and the Nation of Galilee by a third party What a coincidence eh? The currency exchange for giggles is handled between the Republic of Rust and the Nation of Galilee by a third party The person responsible is considered to be very important to the security of both nations and couldn't possibly be considered a suspect Well not officially at least Unofficially? Well that's a different matter entirely Perhaps even a very dangerous one as well The person responsible is considered to be very important to the security of both nations and couldn't possibly be considered a suspect The Nation of Galilee settled in there territories depending on who you ask for twenty five to thirty years while sometimes dreading and sometimes celebrating another invasion that never came The Republic of Rust to them however represents a target ripe for invasion and have already made plans for such an event Most traditionalist from the Republic of Rust believe that you should have taken the opportunity to invade the svelk infested nation long ago, they question if you're fit to lead anymore and assume command yourself The Nation of Galilee settled in there territories depending on who you ask for twenty five to thirty years while sometimes dreading and sometimes celebrating another invasion that never came While the Republic of Rust lost there lands surely it was because you were a weak leader who didn't know the value of honorable warfare The only proper mentality for a warrior! Their thoughts are so blind they don't question how out numbered you were in the first place and that you had little to no hope for reinforcements in a pitched land war Give them enough time though and who knows what technical advances may give them an advantage? While the Republic of Rust lost there lands surely it was because you were a weak leader who didn't know the value of honorable warfare For the citizens of the Republic of Rust , life has changed quite a bit No longer are they complacent in there once greatest nation, they live in fear of war and don't even implement scouting anymore, they send in full assault troops into Galilee Something which would've surely started a war if you hadn't intervened decades ago life has changed quite a bit When you compare the past for the Nation of Galilee a historian would record that it experienced a great loss, that the derro were near extinction but were saved at the last minute It would be recorded that they existed but nothing more You decide to take what precautions you can for the events to come lest you want a war on your hands like the one a few decades ago You buy as many horses and wagons as possible and make sure to keep large stockpiles of food and resources When you compare the past for the Nation of Galilee a historian would record that it experienced a great loss, The official attitudes the Republic of Rust by the Nation of Galilee affects commerce and trade between the two nations While neither of them are officially "at war" it certainly acts like one for the common man, and not just in the Republic of Rust After several months the tensions start to cool down and eventually the two begin to trade with each other again if only because some businessmen have complained to you that empty store shelves aren't doing anyone any good except competing companies and that this is really going to have a negative effect on the economy when it could be easily prevented The official attitudes the Republic of Rust by the Nation of Galilee affects commerce and trade between the two nations start decreasing their quantities as well since they are only willing to trade with one or the other but not both Eventually you receive a letter from a councilmember stating that it would be in everyone's best interest if trade was normalized between the factions again You can't honestly disagree with that, both factions need to trade but you wonder if doing so might start this all over again, on top of the inevitable war preparations seeking to reclaim the old lands which will undoubtedly be costly endeavors The tensions between government cause the merchants to The tensions between government cause the merchants to start decreasing their quantities as well since they are only willing to trade with one or the other but not both On the borders of the Republic of Rust customs inspectors now check every shipment going in and out for any smuggled goods or other illegal activity They face the same scrutiny entering and exiting the Republic though as that doesn't stop there still being Galilean merchants in their nation or vice versa On the borders of the Republic of Rust customs inspectors now check every shipment going in and out for any smuggled goods or other illegal activity You are glad you were able to buy up much of it before this new decree The government of the Republic of Rust regulates and places a tariff on all imported items from the Nation of Galiée, further complicating and cracking down on trading between the two Rather than lower the embargo they outright ban certain types of food being brought into the Republic The reasoning is that they have almost endless farmland so there is no need for it to be imported when it could be grown just as easily within their borders

[hermanwatts]

Science Fiction New Releases: 16 November, 2019

This week’s science fiction new releases feature a dementia-stricken hitman, the son of a genetic slaver, a galactic crusade, and two anthologies by science fiction’s best.

Authority – A. K. Meek

The aliens came to conquer. We won, but billions died. Now, it’s time to rebuild.

The neons do as they’re told. Chemically bound to their masters by the experimental chemi-chip implant created from alien technology, they are genetically engineered at rapid rates to be servants for the survivors of the war against alien invaders. Without neons, reconstruction would be impossible.

Colin Hanston—the unremarkable son of the genius who invented the chemi-chip—leads a simple life as a farmer, helping feed his district as any good citizen should. But when he redeems his voucher for a neon servant of his own named Michael, everything changes. His father’s old friend-turned-rebel shows up, and Colin learns that not everyone believes the neons are a simple commodity used by the Authority to fix the world and help prepare in case the aliens return.

Knowing he could be killed just for talking to the rebels, Colin will have to decide for himself whether his father’s work is truly a benefit to humanity as his leaders claim, or a perversion.

Is the truth worth destroying his father’s legacy and putting his family in danger? Is it worth dying for?

Empires Ascendant – Jay Allan, Jason Anspach, Daniel Arenson, J. N. Chaney, Nick Cole, Joshua Dalzelle, Ken Lozito, and Jasper T. Scott

The rise of empire. The golden age of expansion, of exploration. Stories of new and vibrant civilizations growing, reaching out…and sometimes fighting desperately for the future.

Empires Ascendant brings 6 masters of military science fiction and space opera together in one volume of all new, original material. Including:

Banshee’s Last Scream: From the world of Galaxy’s Edge: When a Dark Ops legionnaire is found dead under suspicious circumstances, his fellow operatives employ the notorious bounty hunter Tyrus Rechs to find those responsible and make them pay for their actions. But Rechs uncovers a sinister plot much bigger than a simple murder.

Invasion: Chris Randall just got fired. On his way to break the bad news to his wife, an explosion rips through the night–followed by a dozen more. Scimitar Fighters are streaking down from space. Before Chris can wonder what starfighters are doing over San Bernardino, he sees the clouds light up with laser fire. That’s when he sees it: a dark wall of shadows hovering over the valley and drifting toward LA.

Shadow of Purple: Altharic Vennalus is a general, and a loyal servant of the Republic. He has battled endlessly, fighting to preserve the Republic from the usurpers who would topple it. The civil wars that have raged for three decades are nearly at an end. But peace is an elusive dream, and pain and loss will drive Altharic to places he couldn’t have imagined. In the end, he will be faced with answering one burning question. What is the cost of his honor?

…and more!

Optional Retirement Plan – Chris Pourteau

When retiring isn’t an option, it’s kill or be killed.

Stacks Fischer is a killer for hire. For more than three decades, he’s loyally served the Syndicate Corporation as its most-feared and respected enforcer around the solar system. He’s buried the company’s dirty laundry six feet deep, no matter who had to be taken out to do it.

Now, Stacks has a problem—he’s losing his mind to an incurable form of dementia, and unwittingly spilling corporate secrets in public.

When SynCorp decides Fischer has outlived his usefulness, they decide it’s time to permanently retire him. But Stacks isn’t quite ready to go. With every one of SynCorp’s Five Factions gunning for him—and his own mind slowly rebelling—Fischer leads a pack of would-be assassins in a final, deadly chase across the solar system.

The old hitman refuses to fade quietly into oblivion at the hands of his disease or the business he’s dedicated his life to. He’s choosing an Optional Retirement Plan.

Places Beyond the Wild (Z-Day #4) – presented by Daniel Humphreys

The world did not go quietly into the night.

The vast wilds outside a place called Hope hold their own stories. When the end came, what happened to everyone else?

Massachusetts. Texas. Alabama. Tennessee. Pockets of humanity have persisted through the apocalypse. All have tales of survival and loss.

Mad Dog Mattis’ last stand at the Pentagon. The first Christmas after the end of the world. A family isolated on their homestead as the evolving dead press at the fences. A desperate quest for helicopters to destroy the undead.

Come read through this expansion of Daniel Humphreys’ Dragon Award nominated Z-Day universe. Twelve brand new survival stories written by the best up and coming independent sci-fi and fantasy writers will thrill fans of the series.

Find tales of hope in a desolate world and read Places Beyond The Wild today!

Raven’s Peace (Peacekeepers of Sol #1) – Glynn Stewart

Ten thousand stars, once chained, taste freedom An eternal empire, once undefeated, falls to pieces An alliance, once united, now lacks a common foe War was hard enough. Peace may be impossible

For seventeen years, Colonel Henry Wong and the United Planets Space Force have fought the Kenmiri Empire. They drove the alien overlords back from humanity’s borders into their own stars and found allies among the Kenmiri’s slaves and subjects.

Now the war is over. A great Gathering has been called of the allies who fought the war, but they only ever shared a common enemy. With the Kenmiri in retreat, a thousand new agendas are revealed.

The United Planets Alliance wants peace above all else. Their allies want everything from new homes to new empires – and all too many of them are prepared to do anything to achieve their goals!

Retribution (Lucky’s Mercs #1) – Joshua James

Meet the galaxy’s unluckiest mercenaries.

Lucky Savage was once a powerful Empire Marine. But that was before the Empire collapsed, sinking the outer colonies into chaos and leaving the galaxy on the precipice of disaster.

Now his ship, Last Gasp, is home to a ragtag crew of misfits and ex-soldiers just trying to navigate the endless conflicts while hoping to score a big payday. So far, they’d settle for scratching out enough to cover fuel.

When a job with Savage’s old employer comes along, it looks like their luck might be turning. But it quickly goes sideways, and they find themselves in the middle of a massive manhunt for a deadly experiment gone wrong.

Can the mercs save the day? Who knows. They’re just trying to save their own skin.

It wouldn’t hurt to get paid, either.

Salvation Lost (The Salvation Sequence #2) – Peter F. Hamilton

The comparative utopia of twenty-third-century Earth is about to go dreadfully awry when a seemingly benign alien race is abruptly revealed to be one of the worst threats humanity has ever faced. Driven by an intense religious extremism, the Olyix are determined to bring everyone to their version of God as they see it. But they may have met their match in humanity, who are not about to go gently into that good night or spend the rest of their days cowering in hiding. As human ingenuity and determination rise to the challenge, collective humanity has only one goal—to wipe this apparently undefeatable enemy from the face of creation. Even if it means playing a ridiculously long game indeed.

But in a chaotic universe, it is hard to plan for every eventuality, and it is always darkest before the dawn.

Star Fire (Stars End #1) – M. R. Forbes

New from million-copy bestseller M.R. Forbes. One man’s epic story of loyalty, perseverance, and hope in a galaxy at war.

Alliance Navy Commander Grayson Stone is patrolling a nearby space station when a mysterious starship appears. It emerges from a storm of fire, its shields impenetrable, its weapons overwhelming, attacking without provocation and annihilating everything in its path.

While his ship is badly damaged in the assault, Grayson manages to survive. Suddenly trapped behind the front line of the invasion, faced with gut-wrenching choices and near-impossible odds, he’ll do whatever it takes to escape the grasp of the terrifying new enemy.

Because if he fails, humankind will fall.

Science Fiction New Releases: 16 November, 2019 published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

[waynebomberger]

Bhutan Tenovo?

Like most Americans I live in a state of ignorance, and as such I had no idea Bhutan is apparently a cycling paradise:

Dragon Kings who ride bikes?  Epic Himalayan trails?  Sideburns??? A fervent bicycle culture has seen rapid development in Bhutan. Its northern border with Tibet runs along a treacherous seam of the Eastern Himalayan mountain range, which has historically protected the Switzerland-size country from outside influence and fortified it as one of the only nations in the world to never be colonized. This geographic and political isolation has long delayed Bhutan’s modernization. The cycling culture has grown thanks to the bike-crazy former Druk Gyalpo, or Dragon King, who spends his days cruising trail networks throughout the mountains. Bhutanese citizens idolize the royal family, often wearing lapel pins with the current king’s handsome sideburned portrait. Suck on that, Portland. Also, when was the last time anyone--adult or child--shouted something positive at you while you were riding your bike? The road banked into a left turn, and I slowly coasted through, gazing down at the pavement. Just then, I was hit with an eruption of cheers coming from 100 schoolchildren posted on the side of the road. Spectators across the entire country had lined the course to cheer for the riders while handing us bananas and chocolate. It was the largest crowd of “cheering team” volunteers I’d yet to encounter, and their energy was colossal. In a sea of white khata scarves, the fanatic children chanted “Do your best! Do your best!” while running alongside me, clapping and screaming as if I were locked in a dead sprint. Generally when I'm riding, kids latch on to some aspect of my appearance and use it as inspiration for ridicule. Then on top of it all they have a "Gross National Happiness" index?!? The term Gross National Happiness was coined in 1972 during an interview by a British journalist for the Financial Times at Bombay airport when the then king of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, said "Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product." Meanwhile, here in Canada's Underpants we have yet to discover the inverse relationship between cars and guns and staying alive. Granted, in my old age I may be getting soft and wistful, but I admit to finding everything about the above article beguiling--apart from one glaring omission:

WHAT PRESSURE WAS HE RUNNING?!?!?

Also...altitude?  Believe it or not I did visit the Himalayas many years ago (I went here), and while it was stunningly beautiful I also felt dizzy and headachy the whole time due to the elevation.  (Probably because I flew there instead of getting acclimatized by riding there on a yak or something.)   I certainly didn't do any bicycle-cycling, but I did see people arriving by bike, which made me feel like a total "woosie:"

(Those were the days...)

That note of course came from my 2009 review of the Scattante Empire State Courier, about which two things are noteworthy: 1) False modesty aside it is arguably the greatest bike review ever written; 2) It may have taken 10 years, but now that Performance has gone bankrupt I'm getting that much closer to a perfect record of putting bike companies out of business. Anyway, I'm totally gonna ride my fixie to Ladakh one day for some Himalayan hillbombing. In the meantime however my rides are anything but adventurous.  For example, this past weekend I rode the Ironic Orange Julius Bike all the way from Queens to Brooklyn...and back again!

Yes, the Ironic Orange Julius Bike has worn many caps over the years.  When I had an actual job, it was my commuting bike.  When I went to Portland it was the bike I used to infiltrate the "bike culture."  And of course I've even cyclocrossed on it:

Incredibly I still managed to reproduce after that. As for its current incarnation, the IOJB is now my velo-à-terre and lives in the bike room of my mother's building in Queens, because of course I must have unfettered access to a bicycle anyplace I regularly spend more than an hour at a time.  Plus, over the years, gentrification has unfurled such that my mother's abode is now just off the Great Hipster Silk Route.  So every so often when I'm there I like to hop on a bike and reconnect with the gentriverse, which is what I did the other day.  Here is the IOJB as it is now:

I'm not sure what happened last time I rode it, but this is was the state of the drivetrain when I headed out:

I'm relatively certain I've never changed the chain since building the bike up from a bare frame well over a decade ago. Another quirk is that the rear brake arm is now sticking (I seem to have a problem with that, despite always liberally applying grease when installing stuff), which means every so often I've got to reach back and kind of flick it free.  Also, whenever I last changed the brake levers I forgot to put those little rubber donuts on the cable:

The upshot of this is that when the brake arm sticks there's tons of slack in it and it jingles against the top tube like a line on a flagpole in the wind. Fortunately as you travel the Great Hipster Silk Route there's now a bike shop roughly every nine feet, and so I stopped in one for some lube which I applied liberally to the bicycle in various places.  But at this point I should probably just ditch the brakes altogether, since they are for "woosies" after all.  I certainly see no issue trusting my life to that rusty chain. Hey, it's lasted this long. from Bike Snob NYC http://bit.ly/2SGAGCJ

[veale2006-blog]

In Memory of the Holocaust

LONG BUT WORTH THE READ!!! January 27, 2019 After coming to power in 1933, Germany’s Nazi Party implemented a highly organized strategy of persecution, murder, and genocide aimed at ethnically “purifying” Germany, a plan Hitler called the “Final Solution”.

Six million Jews and five million Slavs, Roma, disabled, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and political and religious dissidents were killed during the Holocaust.

As Champetier de Ribes, the French Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials explained, “This [was] a crime so monstrous, so undreamt of in history … that the term ‘genocide’ has had to be coined to define it.”

Precursors to Genocide After Germany’s loss in WWI, the Treaty of Versailles punished Germany by placing tough restrictions on the country. The treaty made Germany take full responsibility for the war, reduced the extent of German territory, severely limited the size and placement of their armed forces, and forced Germany to pay the allied powers reparations. These restrictions not only increased social unrest but, combined with the start of the Great Depression, collapsed the German economy as inflation rose alongside unemployment.

In the German parliament, the Nazi party, led by Adolf Hitler, gained popularity. The number of seats Nazis controlled in the parliament rose from 12 in 1928 to 230 in 1932, making them the largest political party. The strong showing guaranteed the Nazi party would need to be part of any political coalition. Believing he could check Hitler’s ambition, President Hindenburg reluctantly made Hitler the Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933.

Shortly after Hitler came to power, the Reichstag building, seat of the German parliament, burnt down. Communists were blamed for setting the fire and Hindenburg declared a state of emergency, passing the Reichstag Fire Decree that suspended basic rights like trial by jury. The German Communist Party was suspended and over 4,000 members were detained without trial. The next month, Hitler’s cabinet passed the Enabling Act which allowed him to enact laws without the consent of the parliament for four years, effectively transforming the German government into a de facto Nazi dictatorship.

From this moment on, the Nazi regime adopted hundreds of laws restricting the rights and liberties of the Jewish people. Jews were expelled from the civil service and barred from entering particular professions, stripped of their citizenship, and forbidden from intermarrying or even having a relationship with anyone of “German or German-related blood”.

The government defined a Jewish person as someone with three or four Jewish grandparents, not someone who had religious convictions. This meant that people who had never practiced, or hadn’t practiced Judaism in many years, or even converted to Christianity were subjected to persecution. Although anti-semitism was pervasive in 1930s Germany, these restrictions frequently extended to any person the Nazis considered to be “non-Aryan”.

Throughout the nights of November 9-10, 1938, rioting across Germany, Austria, and part of German-controlled Czechoslovakia targeted Jewish people and their places of business and worship. These nights have come to be known as Kristallnacht, or “The Night of the Broken Glass”.

Over those two nights, hundreds (and possibly thousands) of synagogues were burned; more than 7,000 Jewish-owned businesses were looted and destroyed, and almost 100 Jews were killed during the violence. Some 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and transported to concentration camps. kristallnacht-NYTimes-frontpageThe rioting was triggered by the assassination of Ernst vom Rath, a German diplomat in Paris, by a Polish Jewish teenager, Herschel Grynszpan, on November 7th. Grynszpan did not attempt to escape and claimed that the assassination was motivated by the persecution of the Jewish people. Despite being attended to by Hitler’s personal physician, vom Rath died two days later.

Although the events of November 9th and 10th were reported to be a spontaneous outburst of violence among the German people, they were actually closely organized by the Nazis.

After this night, the German government supported dozens of laws and decrees that took away Jews property and livelihood. By the end of the year, Jews were prohibited from attending school. One billion reichsmarks of Jewish property was seized as collective punishment against the nation’s Jews for the murder of von Rath. Those able to flee the country did. In the year after Kristallnact, more than 100,000 Jews left Germany as the situation deteriorated.

World War II Throughout the late-1930s, the Nazi government began to forcibly acquire ethnically German territory in Austria and Czechoslovakia that was taken from Germany at the end of the First World War. Although the international community initially allowed Germany to incorporate these territories into the growing German Empire, it became increasingly clear that Hitler’s ambition did not stop at these small territories. When Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Britain and France responded by declaring war on Germany, beginning the Second World War.

Between April and June of 1940, Germany invaded Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg consolidating power across neutral Western Europe. On June 22, 1940, France signed an armistice with Germany, which divided France between the German-occupied territory in the north and the Vichy regime in the south. Although officially neutral, the French state during this time was generally pro-Nazi and cooperated with Germany’s racial policies.

In the first half of 1941, after conquering Yugoslavia and Greece, Germany broke off its alliance with the Soviet Union and launched an invasion of the Soviet Union known as Operation Barbarossa. Hitler described his vision for the war with the Soviet Union as an “extermination of Bolshevik Commissars and of the Communist intelligentsia”.

To the Nazi regime, there would have been no doubt that a war against Bolshevism was implicitly a war against the Jewish population of the Soviet Union. A division of Hitler’s SS known as the Einsatzgruppen traveled behind the German army and acted as death squads, exterminating civilian populations in the most efficient way possible. During the early part of Operation Barbarossa these were frequently people who had fled the Nazi’s earlier invasion of Poland.

On December 7, 1941, the United States entered the war following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Four days later, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, bringing them into the European Theatre.

Beginning with the British air raids on Cologne in May of 1942, the Allies launched a strategic bombing campaign that would target cities and industrial plants across the Reich for the next three years. In the summer of 1942, Germany and its allies focused on the Soviet Union unsuccessfully. The Soviet Union gained the dominant role, which it would maintain for the rest of the war.

On June 6, 1944, also known as D-Day, more than 150,000 Allied soldiers landed in France. In December the Germans started an unsuccessful counterattack in Belgium and northern France, known as the Battle of the Bulge. Continuing to gain momentum, the Soviets began an offensive in January 1945, liberating western Poland and then forcing Hungary to surrender.

On April 16, 1945 Soviets surrounded Berlin, Germany’s capital. When the Soviets began advancing towards the Reich Chancellery, Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945. Then on May 7th, Germany surrendered to the Western Allies in Reims, France and a few days later to the Soviets in Berlin. All told more than 60 million people, or about 3% of the world’s population at the time, were killed during the course of the Second World War.

— The “Final Solution” — Ghettos, Concentration Camps and Death Camps Jews were forced to move, often to different cities or countries, and live in designated areas, referred to as ghettos. Most of the ghettos were “open” which meant Jews were free to come and go during the daytime. As time past, more and more ghettos became “closed” meaning that Jews were trapped and not allowed to leave. No ghettos were ever established within the borders of Germany and most were only meant as a temporary means of isolating Jews from the German population until they could be moved elsewhere.

When the Nazi’s rose to power they built facilities to hold and, eventually kill, their enemies. When the first concentration camps were built in 1933, this primarily meant political dissidents and opponents of the Nazi government, such as German Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats but would grow to include asocial groups – Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the homeless, the mentally ill and homosexuals.  It was not until Kristallnacht that the prisoners became primarily Jewish.

Once Germany took over Poland in 1939, it created forced-labor camps. Thousands of prisoners died from working conditions, exhaustion, and starvation. After the outbreak of World War II, the number of concentration camps increased exponentially. The number of prisoners of war camps also rose, but after the first years of the war most were converted into concentration camps. Nazis forcibly relocated Jews from ghettos to concentration camps.

Treatment inside the concentration camps were horrible. Prisoners were given tiny rations of food and forced into physical labor. They often slept more than three to a bed without pillows or blankets, even in the winter months. In many concentration camps, Nazi doctors conducted medical experiments on prisoners against their will, in many cases killing the prisoners in the process.

In 1942, fifteen Nazi leaders met at a conference in Wannsee, Germany to discuss the “Jewish Question”. Their job was to decide the most efficient way to exterminate the Jews. They decided that Jews would be sent to extermination camps where they would be sent to showers. But instead of water coming out of the faucet, they faced their death when poisonous Zyklon-B gas leaked through the showerheads to suffocate them. This decision at the conference is called the “Final Solution.”

It was not until this point in the war that systemic extermination of the Jewish people was considered. Before this point, none of the concentration camps had been built to explicitly carry out the mass murder of the Nazi’s enemies.

The first such extermination camps were introduced during Operation Reinhardt, which targeted the elimination of the Jewish people within the General Government of Occupied Poland and Ukraine. After the first killing center open at Chelmno, the use of these extermination tactics spread quickly. At the height of deportations, the Birkenau killing center murdered 6,000 Jews a day.

While there were only 23 main camps between 1933 to 1945, the Nazi regime established some 20,000 other camps used for forced labor, transit or temporary internment. During the Holocaust it is estimated that 6 million Jews were slaughtered along with, 3 million Soviet prisoners of war, 3 million Polish Catholics, 700,000 Serbians, 250,000 Gypsies, Sinti, and Lalleri, 80,000 Germans (for political reasons), 70,000 German handicapped, 12,000 homosexuals, and 2,500 Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The Response U.S. Response After WWII had ended, photographs of the Holocaust stunned the public. Newspapers in the United States had reported on the oppression of the Jews in Germany during the war. In 1942, many newspapers were writing details of the Holocaust, but these stories were short and were not widely read. In 1943, after sources had confirmed the killings of at least two million Jews in concentration camps across Europe a Gallup poll found that less than half of Americans believed these reports to be true; 28% thought they were “just a rumor”. The reports were unconfirmed and sometimes denied by the United States government.

In 1944, Josiah DuBois, Jr. wrote a memorandum to then-Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. entitled “Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews”, which condemned the bureaucratic interference of U.S. State Department policies in obstructing the evacuation of Holocaust Refugees from Romania and Occupied France. The Report would spur the Roosevelt administration to create the War Refugee Board later that year.

The International Response Despite, wide reporting of Holocaust atrocities including gas chambers, many prominent analysts doubted the authenticity of these reports. Prominently, Roger Allen, a member of the British Foreign Office discounted intelligence reports on the use of gas chambers in Polish extermination camps because he could “never understand what the advantage of a gas chamber over a simple machine gun or over starving people would be.”

Advocacy organizations worldwide called for British Royal Air Forces to bomb concentration camps particularly at Auschwitz. Although the plan was adopted by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill poor information-sharing between parts of the British government led the order to be ignored and the plan dropped. Such calculations were hardly the low point of Allied Responses. One story has that, low on supplies, the Nazis offered the British a million Jews in exchange for 10,000 trucks, which one British diplomat promptly refused saying, “What would I do with one million Jews? Where would I put them?”

Although many people responded with obstructionism and doubt,  several rescue operations were run throughout Axis-controlled Europe. Some were the work of prominent individuals like Raoul Wallenberg and Carl Lutz who worked largely alone while other operations were far more complex. A network of Catholic bishops and clergymen organized local protests and shelter campaigns throughout much of Europe that are today estimated to have saved 860,000 lives. Danish fishermen clandestinely ferried more than 7,000 Jews into neutral Sweden while the French town of Chambon-sur-Lignon sheltered between 3,000 and 5,000 refugees.

The Journey of the St. Louis On May 19th, 1939, the S.S. St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, Germany to Havana, Cuba with 937 passengers; almost all of them were Jews escaping with their lives. This was one of the last ships that left Germany before the outbreak of World War II. Most of the passengers had applied for U.S. visas and were only planning on staying in Cuba until they could enter into the United States. The U.S. State Department in Washington, the U.S. consulate in Havana, and the owner of the St. Louis were aware that they might not be able to enter Cuba, but the passengers were never told.

The passengers had landing certificates and transit visas by the Cuban Director-General of Immigration, Manuel Benitez Gonzalez. But, a week before the ship left, Cuban President Federico Laredo Bru published a decree that overturned all recent landing certificates. For them to land in Cuba, they needed written authorization from the Cuban Secretaries of State and Labor and a $500 bond. Most of the passengers were not prepared for the bureaucratic mess they were about to face in Cuba.

The St. Louis arrived in Havana harbor on May 27th. Of the 937 passengers on board, only 28 passengers were allowed into Cuba. 22 of these passengers were Jewish and had valid U.S. visas, 4 were Spanish citizens and 2 were Cuban nationals, all with valid documents. This story gained a lot of publicity; it was spread throughout Europe and the United States. The U.S. newspapers reported the story compassionately, but only a handful suggested that the refugees should come to the United States. The United States government decided not to take the steps to permit the passengers into the country.

After the U.S. government refused to permit the passenger’s refuge, the St. Louis left Cuba for Europe. The St. Louis sailed so close to Florida that they could see the lights of Miami. The passengers were able to find refuge in other European countries so they didn’t have to return to Germany. Great Britain took 288, the Netherlands admitted 181; Belgium took 214, and 224 passengers found temporary refuge in France. When  Germany invaded Western Europe, 532 of the original passengers were trapped. Just over half survived the Holocaust.

The Aftermath Nuremberg Trials To prosecute the leaders of the Holocaust, the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg was formed in 1946. The U.S., the UK, the Soviet Union and France each supplied two judges (a primary and an alternate) and a prosecution team for the trial. Twelve leading Nazi officials were sentenced to death for the crimes they had committed, while three received life sentences in prison, and four had prison terms for up to twenty years.

Three defendants were acquitted. However, many of the Nazis who perpetrated the Holocaust were never tried or punished, including Hitler who had committed suicide. Since then, the international community has continued and improved accountability through forums such as the International Criminal Court, and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

The Word ‘Genocide’ Raphael-LemkinRaphael Lemkin, a holocaust survivor who worked on the Nuremberg Trials, coined the term genocide and spent 4 years pushing for it to be added to international law. As Champetier de Ribes, the French Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials explained “This [was] a crime so monstrous, so undreamt of in history throughout the Christian era up to the birth of Hitlerism that the term ‘genocide’ has had to be coined to define it.” Ultimately, in 1948 The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide was adopted, and it entered into force in 1951. The convention defined genocide in legal terms based on Lemkin’s work, and is the basis for genocide prevention efforts today.

The Pledge: Never Again After the Nuremberg war crimes trials finished, the United States spearheaded the effort to end genocide and become a champion for the prevention of crimes against humanity. The U.S. pushed for greater international effort, helping to draft the 1948 Genocide Convention. President Harry Truman addressed Congress urging the Convention’s passage. He stressed the role the United States had to play in “outlawing the world-shocking crime of genocide.”

These pleas went unheard and though an original signatory of the convention the United States did not ratify the Genocide Convention for another forty years and then  only with reservations. Presidents of the U.S. have vowed “never again” but have looked the other way when genocide happened again and again.

To fill this void, civil society organizations such as United to End Genocide have taken up the pledge and advocate for the international responsibility to prevent mass atrocities like genocide.

NEVER AGAIN SHOULD WE ALLOW EVIL TO CONQUER THE GOOD OF INNOCENT LIVES!!!

Have a blessed day and week. May Yeshua the Messiah bless you, Love, Debbie

[austindailyglobe-blog]

Americans Told Not To Travel To Five Mexican States By State Dept.

Five Mexican states have been issued with new travel advisories by the State Department that puts them on a footing with war-torn Yemen and Syria.

US citizens are being told not to travel to Colima, Guerrero, Michoacán, Sinaloa, or Tamaulipas state due to widespread violent crime and gang activity.

The states were issued with a level 4 warning on Wednesday under new State Department guidance, the same level as Afghanistan, Somalia and North Korea.

Guerrero, one of the country’s most violent states, is also home to Acapulco, a popular tourist resort on the Pacific coast.

These five Mexican states have been issued with a level 4 travel warning by the State Department, putting them on a par with Yemen, Syria and Afghanistan

Mexico as a whole is under a level 2 advisory, meaning tourists should ‘exercise increased caution’.

‘Violent crime, such as homicide, kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery, is widespread,’ the State Department warns.

But another 11 states are under a level 3 warning, meaning travellers should ‘reconsider’ their plans.

Again crime and gang activity are the two most commonly listed causes, alongside travel restrictions on US government employees meaning they have a ‘limited ability to provide emergency services’.

Colima was once considered Mexico’s safest state but saw a three-fold increase in murders between 2015 and 2016.

Armed police patrol in Guerrero state which is torn between the Guerreros Unidos and Los Rojos cartels, and one of the states named on the list

In 2016 Colima had the most murders of any Mexican territory despite having the lowest population, due mostly to cartel violence.

The state is believed to be under the control of Jalisco New Generation, the former armed wing of El Chapo’s Sinaloa cartel that splintered off when he was jailed, though the two gangs are fighting for control.

Guerrero is disputed territory between the Guerreros Unidos and Los Rojos cartels, according to Newsweek, with the State Department saying ‘these groups frequently maintain roadblocks and may use violence towards travellers’.

Michoacán, sandwiched between Colima and Guerrero states, is also disputed territory but in 2016 the New Family cartel announced its arrival in the area, apparently a successor to the Michoacana Family gang which was wiped out in 2010.

Sinaloa state, further up the coast, is the sole territory of El Chapo’s former gang which bears the state’s name as its own.

Finally, the border state of Tamaulipas, on the Gulf of Mexico, is also frequently fought over but is currently controlled by the Gulf Cartel, according to the BBC.

COLIMA – MEXICO’S MOST VIOLENT STATE

The Pacific coastal state of Colima has seen a dramatic rise in the number of murders in the last two years.

Once considered one of the safest states in the country, Colima’s murder rate jumped three-fold between 2015 and 2016, according to the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute.

This is by far the largest increase in crime of any state in a country that has seen its overall murder rate more than double since 2007 – the year the government launched an offensive against the drug cartels.

Although Colima is Mexico’s least populous state with just 700,000 people, in 2016 its murder rate was 71 homicides per 100,000 people.

Colima is symptomatic of what has been ailing parts of the country that were once considered free of cartel-linked violence.

The body of Mexican journalist Javier Valdez is put on a stretcher by forensic personnel and investigators after he was shot dead in Culiacan, Sinaloa, in May 2017

Since the Mexican government has teamed up with the United States in their war to defeat the cartels, the security forces have succeeded in killing or imprisoning the leaders of these criminal organizations.

The loss of leadership forced these criminal gangs to splinter off into smaller organizations and branch out into nontraditional areas to expand their turf.

Experts say the uptick in violence in Colima could be traced to El Chapo’s escape from prison in 2015 and his subsequent recapture in January 2016.

It has been speculated that the demise of El Chapo led to a power struggle within the Sinaloa cartel, factions of which were said to be determined to keep him isolated from the organization’s activities.

SINALOA – THE DRUG CAPITAL OF MEXICO

El Chapo’s downfall triggered a fierce battle for succession among rivals in his notorious cartel.

The Sinaloa cartel is considered one of – if not, the most – powerful criminal organization in the country.

According to experts, the uptick in violence in Sinaloa can be explained by a three-sided turf war for El Chapo’s criminal empire that has left a trail of dead bodies.

One group is led by Guzman’s right-hand man, Damaso Lopez Nunez, who knows the cartel’s operations inside-out and helped his extradited boss escape prison twice.

Another is led by two of the extradited kingpin’s sons, Jesus Alfredo and Ivan Archivaldo, who say they are the rightful heirs to his drug-running empire.

The third is led by Guzman’s brother Aureliano ‘El Guano’ Guzman, who controls the area around their hometown, Badiraguato.

Since Guzman’s extradition in January 2016, a bloodbath has engulfed Sinaloa, the western state where the cartel is based.

Mexican government officials have long maintained that they do not have the resources necessary to curb the violence there.

Forensic personnel and members of the police inspect the bodies of twelve people who were found in El Chaco community, Sinaloa State, Mexico on June 9, 2014

Michoacan has been one of the bloodiest states in Mexico because of battles between rival gangs involved in drug trafficking, kidnapping, extortion of local businesses as well as mineral theft and illegal logging.

The situation had deteriorated to the point where in 2014 the federal government effectively took control of Michoacan for over a year in a bid to curb violence between drug gangs and community militias that had risen up to fight extortion and kidnappings.

Why is this region of western Mexico considered important?

That’s because it is the home of one of the largest producers and exporters of methamphetamine to the United States, according to Vice.

Michoacan is also the state that has the country’s most important port, Lazaro Cardenas, which has been used by drug traffickers as a strategic transfer point.

In 2006, a drug cartel known as La Familia Michoacana begins to make its presence felt with gruesome displays of severed heads belonging to supposed rivals.

In December 2006, then-President Felipe Calderon decided enough was enough and sent 7,000 soldiers into his home state of Michoacan in hopes of crushing cartel-fueled violence.

The government-backed war leads to an escalation of violence, with cartels committing acts of murder against civilians.

The bloodshed only gets worse as the cartel organizations are wracked with in-fighting and internecine turf wars that claim more lives.

This past November, it was reported in The Guardian that workers at the government-run morgues in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero walked off the job because there was simply no more room to store the dead bodies.

The violence in Guerrero, an impoverished state that boasts of the tourist-friendly beach resort Acapulco and a mountainous hinterland that is considered one of the country’s poorest areas, led to entire towns being abandoned.

Schools have also been shut down and the violence has even led bus companies to no longer provide service in the area.

By the end of 2017, the number of homicides in Guerrero approached 2,000, an increase of over 100 compared to 2016.

Guerrero’s surge in violent crime can be traced to its significance in the heroin trade.

The state produces more than half of Mexico’s opium poppies, which is the base ingredient for heroin.

Drug cartels have taken advantage of the growing demand for heroin in the US.

According to The Washington Post, more than 90 percent of the heroin consumed by Americans originates in Mexico.

In order to meet the growing demand, poppy production has been ramped up by 800 percent in less than a decade.

In years past, there was one cartel in charge. It maintained its grip on the lucrative heroin trade by paying off police and state officials so that they could freely move their products north.

But in recent years splinter groups of criminal gangs have upended the traditional hierarchy.

This, in turn, has led to the rise of civilian-led militias. These turf wars have led to increased violence and bloodshed while the government struggles to exert control.

Four of nine corpses are seen hanging from a bridge in the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas state, in May 2012

Tamaulipas, the northeastern Mexican state that borders Texas, was once known as a quaint region that offered delicious beef and exportable vegetables.

But in recent years, that reputation has changed. It is known today as a region that has become part of a turf war between powerful cartels seeking control of the key trade route where drugs are transported to the US.

According to Splinter, Tamaulipas’ importance to the drug trade has only grown since American demand for narcotics has surged exponentially.

Drugs that are shipped from Colombia, Brazil, and Venezuela make their way to the Yucatan Peninsula. From there, they are transported to Tamaulipas before they reach their destination across the border.

The Mexican army is known to confiscate large quantities of drugs in Tamaulipas every day, though it is difficult to say exactly how much.

Tamaulipas is the birthplace of the Gulf Cartel, one of Mexico’s oldest and most notorious crime syndicates.

During Prohibition, the Gulf Cartel engaged in the lucrative business of smuggling whiskey into the US.

The cartel’s business continued to flourish, only in recent decades its product of choice was cocaine.

But a factional split between the cartel and former Mexican military soldiers who worked as enforcers for the organization but then broke off and formed their own syndicate plunged the region into bloodshed.

Massacres and kidnappings have become all too commonplace since violence escalated dramatically beginning in 2010.

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Americans Told Not To Travel To Five Mexican States By State Dept. was originally published on Austin Daily Globe