A lull in the storm

The war is going well, it would seem. The Yamato Adventurers have been successful lately in the area around Shibuya. If only the weather were more celebratory of the fact.

But it isn't. While the day is fair enough, the air is crisp. Breath plumes before faces, feet crunch in iced-over snow. And a hunched over, fur-clad bear of a man sits on a newly-cut tree-stump, pondering the snow before him. At least he looks somewhat like a bear. If the bear were not particularly large, and a bit...well...daintily built.

Fine. He's not imposing at all. He just looks like he's hunched in a set of furs that's a bit too voluminous for him, obstinately trying to ward off the frigid air. Without actually going anywhere warm, that is.

Chikako is just getting back to Fort Ouph, having been out in the fields for a few days with some friends. Enjoying the lovely weather, smashing some monsters. Earning XP and gathering mats and filling quests for the teams building up fortifications and supplying the army pushing towards Shibuya.

    The young Oni approaches the town, massive kanabo slung over her shoulder, sauntering casually along. "Howdy," she calls, spotting the fellow in the furs, slowing her walk as she approaches so she can stop to chat. "Lovely day, isn't it?"

There is another here, who looks... a little more haggard than the man on the stump. It's Doctor Prophylaxis, of all people, the de-facto leader of the Scale Emblem these days, and he's just... Rubbing his forehead tiredly. "Guh. William didn't let me hear the end of it. I told him it wasn't our intention to apprehend a New Worlder, but sometimes you have to break a few eggs to capture some spies, you know?"

Apparently, he's here... because he had to return a prisoner. Oops????

"Oh, hey," the doctor says of this not-so-new oni. "I think I receognize you from... Somewhere? Have we met?"

Surprise registers. Robert looks first to his left, then to his right. Peers over his shoulder. His eyebrows lift, in question, and he stabs himself in the chest with his thumb as though to request clarification. Somehow the complaining Proph seems relegated to scenery. No doubt Robert's been on the receiving end of complaints before.

Not that he actually waits for clarification. He clears his throat, rises to his feet, and greets Chikako with a polite nod, and the courtesy reserved for a large Amazon with a giant sword. Which is to say, 'a lot'.

"That it is," he concedes, his tones measured and even, as though to indicate he was in no way whatsoever involved with this mis-apprehension of a miscreant who...well, wasn't.

Yeowang is a New Worlder, and she's eying Proph suspiciously, though she, too, has been very active in counterespionage. She understands the difficulty, so she hasn't actually complained. "Good day," she calls out, also approaching. But it seems that several people are all meeting at once, so she may have to bide her time to discuss the details. But there have been New Worlders skulking around, so this sort of thing was probably bound to happen sooner or later.

Chikako hasn't heard about any apprehension of miscreants. Not that she'd help one if she came across it. "Spies?" she asks, curious now. "Somebody was spying for the Overseas Idiots?"

The Oni shakes her head. "What the heck kind of idiot would that be?" she asks, levelling her gaze at the Doctor. "That's just fecking stupid."

"Yeah, we caught a few spies snooping around, looking for something they shouldn't have," Prophylaxis explains with a shrug. "In the process, we also found a really shifty-looking New Worlder... who was apparently just digging around for some kind of deep lore?" He shakes his head slowly. "It'd be way easier if people could just agree to not wear anything on their heads while they're in town. But we brought the guy in, and then William Massachussetts shows up."

The doctor gestures vaguely, apparently used to his designated secretary ignoring him by now, "But that's life. At least we caught their agents. That's the important thing."

"Yes sir. Very well done, sir. I am convinced that your efforts will not go unrewarded," Robert concedes with his startling ability to talk without saying anything whatsoever, his gaze momentarily distracted by Yeowang's approach. One hand shifts to his waist, thumb smoothing over the top of his belt. She, too, is greeted with courtesy by way of a nod, if not with a bit more in the way of wariness. After all, she's looking rather suspicious at present too. Is it another agent?!!

"What -was- the alleged lore, by the by?" he queries.

Yeowang arches a brow as she looks over at Chikako, then looks back to Proph, then back to Chikako again. She lowers her voice, though, and explains, "The Palace Landers are sending their own spies so they can do to other capitals what they did to Mac Anu. I don't think any Yamato people are crazed enough to work with them. We /are/ attempting to root out anyone asking too many suspicious questions."

She nods at what Proph says. "I'm not familiar with that particular agent. We are regeretably decentralized, but so many players seem unwilling to follow the most reasonable requests, it's frustrating." In business, if someone doesn't want to follow your orders, you can at least fire them.

She eyes Spriteshero, catching his look, and she adjusts the hood of her cloak down, so that she's clearly uncrowned. "I am Yeowang, with New World," she says for his benefit, he may not recognize her. She's not sure about Chikako, either, but she knows Prophylaxis knows her.

Chikako ahhs softly, nodding. "Okay, so it was just Idiots poking around and somebody getting caught up in it. That makes more sense." She automatically seems to accept that whoever was caught wouldn't be actually working with the spies. She's known too many Lore Idiots over the past couple of years.

Then she reaches up and pats the headband with her fake horns. (That she only wears while in human form, since her true form has them. But townies react better to the human.) "Not ditchin' the horns, bro. No way, no how. They're a part of me."

She pauses a moment, then asks, "So, what'd Billy Boston have to say about you pinching his boy?"

"Who knows? I think maybe they were looking for more Alvish?" Prophylaxis shakes his head and breathes a long, tired sigh. "Not that I can't sympathise. I spent some time crawling around Dun Loireag looking for a few words before, too. Though I had the foresight to do so /before/ the whole Palace Lands thing." Maybe people shouldn't be snooping around Root Towns in the middle of an invasion of foreigners trying to snoop around Root Towns!?

Prophy is in fact familiar with Yeowang, and he can only nod sympathetically to her complaints. "Setting up a war council seems intelligent, but getting people to go along with emergency measures is a pain in the ass. It's like trying to enforce a quarantine, but worse because it's /hats/ with /stats/, and getting gamers to give up gear even for a little bit is a nightmare."

Gamers are, after all, notorious grognards.

"Oh, you know, the usual. Actually he was less pissed than I would have thought, more annoyed than anything else. He gave me a talking to about proper communication and checking whether or not the people we nabbed were in a guild already. But that's the tricky thing, now that Mac Anu's been taken, it's impossible to say based solely on guild that someone's /not/ a spy, you know?"

SpritesHero's hand eases off his belt, the faint hints of tension that had been running through every tendon smoothing out into nothingness. Chikako's head-band objections only merit a half-hearted shrug that carries a distinct flavor of 'not my problem'. "Your fashion choices are between you and the local authorities," he asserts with careful mildness, even as one eyebrow nudges upwards. "Though I must say I find it rather suitable, so long as they don't...catch in branches, or shrubbery, or the like." Up goes the other eyebrow. "Very intimidating," he notes with approval. And then it's back to discussing spies.

Well, more like letting others discuss spies. Yeowang's revealing of her forehead gets a faint smile. It doesn't go so far as being apologetic, but it is almost, almost welcoming. "Regardless, sir," he chimes in at the end. "I suppose your miscreant won't be doing that again." A pause. A very long pause. "At least not for a couple weeks." Beat. "Days?"

Yeowang nods about idiots poking aroud. "There -are- people legitimately looking for lore, here and there," she agrees. Because there are, whatever she may think of the task or the timing. "But there is a time and a place, and during a war is not the best choice of time or place. Catching Palace Landers in the net validates the net, whatever else is caught up in it." She is fairly Lore-ignorant, herself, there's just too much gameplay to learn, all the bits and pieces of history seem superfluous. Or at least lower in priority. It is ironic then, that she is a Loremaster, perhaps, but she mainlt studies the people that are around now, and not so much about the past.

As to not wearing headgear, she sighs. "If only it were so simple. This," she gestures to her mane of blonde hair, "is not conducive to stealth. And I am a scout, so stealth is an occasional requirement. So, I must cover it up, like your ninjas did, with a hood. Around Ouph, I am reasonably well known." Eastal is her home region, and she does business with more than a few highly placed Landers. "And I am fairly certain I can /fight off/ any attempt to crown me hard enough that they would kill me before crowning me." That's her current strategy if she does get cornered.

What a grognard is, she has no idea, but she nods about players not being cooperative a lot of the time. But she does say to Proph, "We have quite an active self-checking system to vet our Alliance against infiltrtators. It is /very/ unlikely you will find out any New Worlders have been crowned without our finding out very quickly. Do you not do the same?"

She nods in agreement with Sprites about the New Worlder that got picked up, though she says, "I am not sure if they failed to check in correctly, or if they didn't know they needed to, or if they did check in, but the word hadn't gotten around yet. If Massachusetts-san was annoyed, I expect it was closer to the latter case." Which guess /is/ all she can do at this point. She does note, "Likely a few of our agents are running a bit /too/ aggressive counter-espoinage and ... well, as long as it's worked out before anyone is killed, it's 'no harm, no foul', is it not?"

"Ahhhh, Alvish," Chikako muses, nodding to Doc. "Folks've been nattering on about that since, like, opening day. I haven't seen this much fanboying since the last big thing in Akihabara." She shrugs again. "And yeah, I -get- it, it's just... there's so many more ways to convince someone to spy for you than jamming a silly hat on their heads."

She turns to look at Sprites and smirks. "I haven't caught my horns in branches - or anything else - since I was, oh, knee-high, I suppose."

As to spies and the trustworthyness of alliances, all she can do is shrug. "Sorry, not gonna get an argument from me on all that. I leave the cat-herding to the people who actually -like- that kind of thing. Let them handle it, I've got critters to smash."

"Mmm, I understand that it's impossible to ask for people to remove their hats /everywhere/, but I like to think that it's just common courtesy, especially in the middle of wartime, to at least take them off in the Root Towns." Prophylaxis is, notably, /not/ wearing his own hat. The bun is without his mushroom cap! The sky is falling! The moon is tumbling out of heaven like a big ol' boulder!!

"A fair point, though. If all we did was catch thickheaded lorehounds and came up empty in all other respects, then maybe we'd have to rethink our methods, but I'm satisfied that we were able to catch a couple of spies, regardless. That's two people who we can free from the Crowns, and a wealth of information we can extract." Prophylaxis sighs slowly, it's been a long day! "Agh, and all this 'cause we followed one too many tips!! Oh well, all's well, eh?"

Beat.

"Yeah," the doctor agrees, "Cats... are hard to herd."

Says the man who does it basically as a full time job.

SpritesHero's gaze hoods as it continues to regard Chikako, and his smile is...well, there's an inner glee to it that speaks of watching a scene in his mind's-eye. But whatever it is that he envisions from his counterpart remains unvoiced. The smile (eventually) relaxes back into politeness and, tucking his bear fur more tightly about himself, he pulls himself back to the (rather chilly) here and now.

"So boss," he comments. "It seems pretty easy now, what with the crowns. What will you do once the spies don't have crowns?"

Yeowang nods to Chikako as she demonstrates /exactly why/ organizing things at the Alliance level is so difficult. She does tell her, "The Crowns are relic-level magic." Which is all she knows about them, really. "So it's more than just a silly hat. It's a wildly inconvenient hat. Removing them has proven tricky, for one thing." She arches a brow as Proph mentions decrowning and interrogation. "Well done on that," she agrees.

She nods about asking people to remove their hats. Her hood had been down, rather than off, but her head /was/ exposed enough, she felt. She grimaces about the cat herding. She'd tried that, herself, a long time back, but had gotten so little traction she just gave up on the task. At least in buisiness, if people don't do what's required, you can fire them.

As to do with spies that don't wear crowns, she says, "We're not -just- looking for crowned. Anyone who's asking the wrong questions gets picked up. The Crowned are just easier to deal with. I'm not sure what becomes of the spies afterwards," she admits. "I'm a business woman, not a gulag manager. I presume there -are- gulags for the prisoners, so they don't just respawn and return?"

Chikako shrugs. "I don't mind provin' I'm not wearin' a chain. Just gotta take off the disguise." Her true form, amazonian and red-skinned and horned, is well known by this point. And a well-practiced part of the process is to swipe off her headband and slide it back into inventory, as she demonstrates.

The Oni muses for a moment. "Honestly," she decides, "I'd be surprised if there weren't spies already out and about without crowns. All it takes is one hostage."

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Prophylaxis answers Robert, because holy crap he doesn't want to have to worry about ACTUAL ESPIONAGE instead of just crazy brainwashed adventurer espionage. There's a very clear difference, because he can't just slap an accessory out of someone's face to restore their reasonableness.

It might involve a /whole/ bunch of oracles and loremasters, but that seems EXTREMELY invasive.

"I wouldn't be surprised either," Prophylaxis says to the oni. "We're not just looking for funny hats. People who are snooping around places that they shouldn't be, or where most adventurers wouldn't be, are subject to further surveillance. Sometimes they have good reason for going off to do those things, but sometimes they don't."

"We keep them locked up," the doctor adds. "We have a few police stations and a proper dungeon. At least until we can figure out how to deal with them, whether that's decrowning or something else."

It must be admitted that Robert looks a bit dubious on this point. "I'm not sure you can just lock people up until you figure out whether they're actually guilty of something, Boss," he opines after a moment. "I mean, you -could-, but I wager you'll end up with a lot of very angry guild leaders wondering why their cute little subordinates were hauled in for procuring...." A pause. "Anchovy ice cream. Though I suppose you could lock up the guild leaders too. But at some point it will become a serious problem."

"Oh no, this is like. Locking them up AFTER figuring out that they were up to no good," Prophylaxis says confidently. "Like, they're holding cells too. I'm not going to keep doing Martial Law nonsense until the cows come home."

"So if you're locking them up, how are you keeping them from reporting home on what they've found? I mean, it's not like you can keep them off the Chimlinks, can you?" Chikako reaches up to scratch her head with a clawed finger.

Then she pauses. Looks over at Sprites. Blinks. "Anchovy ice cream?"

Yeowang nods at what Chikako Douji says. "Which, as I say, is why our efforts go beyond headwear. That's just one clue." Proph gets a sharply arched eyebrow at -not- being on the lookout for that. "What, seriously?" She's mollified at the news that they're getting locked up, but she gives Proph a weary look. Then again, she /is/ a Loremaster, so maybe sorting people out does come to her more easily to her?

To Sprites, she says, "I think if we haul in any Yamato adventurers in the dragnet, we release them /quickly enough/. Palace Landers can stay locked up forever, as far as I'm concerned." Jurisprudence in the East is much more about wealth and influence than individual rights, and she's used to being on the side of wealth and influence. She nods to what Proph adds, though. "This is a temporary measure. I think if we can break the crowns on a larger scale, the Palace Lands will collapse under their own weight of injustice. I am concerned, though. Will Yamato sail to the Palace Lands and free everyone, or will we be content to send them packing?" She eyes Proph.

SpritesHero blows out a breath of air that just might be a 'pffft'. "It was the most suspicious thing I could think of at the time, okay?" he complains. "And I think you'll agree it is direly suspicious. As for keeping them off chimlinks, we could just keep attacking them with peas every couple minutes. Unlikely to do damage, but presumably it would count as an attack."

He shrugs, then responds to Prophylaxis and Yeowang. "Going to be hard to catch a spy if you only act once you know, Boss," he states, brushing back his bear-fur hood and scratching at his hair. Yeowang gets a look that is...well, not dirty exactly. But there's definitely a clash of values here. He disagrees. Perhaps just for the purpose of disagreeing. "I disagree," he announces, in case there was any confusion. "While the crowns are coercive, I expect that in many senses they were put in place to address underlying problems. To them, the crowns probably are justice. Or at least a mark to indicate that the Adventurer is not a threat."

"It's not too hard for people who know what they're looking for to spot someone acting... out of place. There's a certain etiquette to being out on the streets. Anyone violating it is probably either terribly out of place, or up to no good," the doctor explains, crossing his arms defensively. "Relax, we're not being entirely reactive. The more Oracles and Loremasters we can get our hands on the better, of course. But setting up security protocols in places we don't control is just asking for a diplomatic headache, and I have /way/ too much on my plate to also have to handle that."

"After we beat the Palace Landers back," the doctor glances at Yeowang with a shrug, "We'll need to go after them, I think. It'll be way harder, but there are people over there who don't want to be kept under the thumb of their Kingdoms. For them, at least, this needs to be a proper liberation. What happens to the Landers in the process is up for debate, but it's no question in my mind that there are players that need to be saved."

Chikako hmms softly. "Yeah, I don't think we'll have any choice, really." She looks over at Prophy, then to Sprites. "Justice? Through mind-control? Fuck that. No, we've got no choice, really. We have to go after the root of it or they'll just keep trying. This ain't about justice, this is about a bunch of power-hungry shits having their thumbs on ultimate power and wanting more."

Yeowang shrugs at Spriteshero's disagreement. "The problem is separating those crowned against their will from those crowned simply to prove their compliance. The first will turn against the Palace Landers when freed, the second will support their old masters regardless. I'm not sure what power will let us know that. I can sometimes fathom history and objectives, but it's not guaranteed."

She nods as Proph gives a rough summary of what we're looking for when looking for a spy, and looks relieved at the plan to liberate the Palace Lands. "I am glad to hear that. If my boyfriend got into the game, he would almost certainly be among the crowned. I do not think he's strong enough to fight them off, and I do not know if he is savvy enough to have avoided detection for so long," she admits. "But he would not have sat idle while it was happening. So it is my hope to find him Crowned and rescue him, or to not find him, and suppose he never logged onto the game. His personal life was complicated, so I cannot guess which is more likely."

She says to Chikako, "Well. In the Palace Landers' defense, their players tried to /storm their cities/ and take them from the Landers, at the very beginning of the game. The mind control of players may have been a self-defense thing."

"And if not self-defense, self-defense was at least the excuse that was used in order to grab the levers of power," Robert agrees, however grudgingly. "And the excuse that was used to allow them to continue to hold those levers of power. It's a regular snafu over there, boss. Clearly they view us as an existential threat. Clearly they view their Adventurers as an existential threat. This is not a Lander population that has any love for us whatsoever. I just don't see a good way to handle this with any degree of permanence, though perhaps you could get a temporary situation and hope we're all gone before things blow up."

"It's a complicated thing, isn't it? We'd need to sort out which of the Landers are doing what they're doing for the sake of self-preservation, which are doing it for the sake of power, and which are just out for revenge. I have a feeling this is personal for Harrifenas in particular. After all, the Adventurers over there apparently killed his daughter, and yet..."

The Doctor fixes the sky with an accusatory gaze, "...Somehow, that same daughter is still 'alive,' wearing a crown. I wonder if he's mad with grief, or if it's just an excuse. Regardless, it is indeed fucked beyond all recognition, but it's good to consider the possibilities before we get knee-deep over there. It would be nice if we could convince one of the kingdoms to stand down and help us with our work, but I doubt it'll be possible."

Still, optimism!

Yeowang gives voice to her fears, and the doctor listens quietly, only answering when she finishes. "You'll have our help to find and free him, if he is in this world. The Scale always places the well-being of Adventurers first, as a matter of policy. So when it comes time to search for him, please don't hesitate to reach out."

Yeowang nods to Spriteshero. "I do wonder what motivated their players to try that, though. Did they get some prophecy that owning the city would send them home, the way we climb the Tower to get out of here?" she wonders. She considers Proph's desire to break one of the PL Kingdoms away from their union. "You may want to talk to Wake abuot that. She has an idea that one of them may be only grudgingly compliant." She nods to Proph about getting Scale help to find her boyfriend. "Thank you," she says.

"If you do find any word, spread it around. I'm sure you won't have any trouble finding help getting him out of there." The Oni seems pretty confident of that, at least. "But I don't give a flying fuck if it's revenge, justice, self-defense, consensual or no. What they're doing with it is still immensely fucked up and they need to be stopped." Preferably by being bashed over the head with that massive kanabo she hauls around.

Looking back to Yeowang, she snorts. "Who cares why they did it? They did it. They're just as fucked up as the Landers there. We'd be better off if we'd never opened up that barrier, if you ask me. Yamato's enough for me."

SpritesHero's smile is decidedly on the thin side. "Regrettably," he answers Yeowang, "I don't think some folks ever really need that much of an extra push to decide to loot a place for everything it's got. And over there, it seems those are the folks that bubbled to the top. At least at first." He exhales again, sending a plume of vapor into the air before lifting his hood and setting it back into place. Chikako gets a considering glance. "We haven't really had the best luck with interfering and trying to stop things by taking a sledgehammer to everything in sight. There always seems to be a way for things to get infinitely worse." He bows, once, to each. "If you'll excuse me." And then he's off.

Yeowang shrugs to Chikako Douji, and says, "I care. If they Crowned their Players to stop them from killing Landers, I can't say that wasn't a reasonable reaction. Marginally kinder then killing them enough to delete them out of the game. On the other hand, yeah, in retrospect, going there turned out poorly. My Alliance seems cursed to make bad decisions." She seems annoyed by that. When Sprites takes off, she nods a farewell, and will head out also.

"Remember Robert," Prophylaxis calls after his Totally Not Secretary, "Fluffy tails are dangerous! Be careful or you may be drawn into their soft, cushy embrace, never to emerge and savor the sweet taste of freedom again!"

There's context here, Prophylaxis isn't giving it.

"Anyway, I should make my way back to the tower as well," the doctor says as he pushes off his seat. "I've got more paperwork to handle. You all take care, and be sure to keep your eyes open for any suspicious activity!"

With that, Prophylaxis makes his own exit...!

Chikako doesn't bother to reply to Yeowang's 'defense' of the Palace Landers. Her fingers tighten on the grip of the kanabo, though, until it creaks. "Catch you around later, Sprites, Doc. I've got quests to turn in." She looks around briefly, until she spots the place she needed to go, and heads off in that direction. As she walks, she shrinks back to her human form, so as not to unduly affright the local Landers. "See you."