let fury have the hour,

[agogemod]

WHO? Everybody!
WHAT? Agoge's third TDM! And the death of an important guy. And some very upset royalty.
WHEN? Late 1792, Paris.
ANYTHING ELSE? Violence, as always. Please warn in subject lines for anything beyond physical violence, and move to a personal journal if things go beyond PG-13.

IT'LL BE FINE;

Paris, 1792: revolutionary france.

read the France setting infopages

arrival for new recruits

(Note: If you were one of the people who used the previous TDM and want to use that as canon while still participating in this one, feel free! The following will still happen, though the guide will apologize for a malfunction in your BCE causing you to zap through the intervening month instead of joining your comrades like you should have. You'll be assured the glitch is fixed now, and it probably is. Probably.)

You wake up in a Parisian hotel room with a kind woman standing near the door, waiting for you to awaken. You have none of your clothing, just black military-issued underwear, and none of your previous possessions beyond the one you chose (if you remember choosing) to bring with you.

The woman by the door speaks French, and if you didn't understand the language before, you do now. If you have questions as to what's going on, she'll answer: you are a member of COST, a paramilitary organization of time travelers fighting against the Regency, a tyrannous kingdom of the future who are trying to stamp out freedom and individuality in the name of peace.

She will provide you with the clothing necessary to fit in at this time, and show you how to use your BCE implant to look up information on this time period and its social and political mores. She won't let you leave until you're properly dressed to fit in, but once you are, she'll wish you luck.

KILL THE KING

It doesn't matter if you're new, or if you've been here a while. You'll hear about the execution going on today. It's as though the barely restrained urban chaos of Paris has ground to a halt. Everything is about the king. Is it really going to happen? Are they really going to do it? Can they do it? Is it even possible?

Anyone out of the loop will be filled in, but with no small amount of ridicule: Today is the day of the king's execution. His trial has wrapped up, and the National Convention voted to execute him for treason and tyranny.

The crowd at the execution is enormous, a riotous mob of passion barely restrained. Everyone is jockeying for a better view, with children and adults climbing up on nearby statues, lampposts, the sides of houses, rooves, some even hang from windows. Everyone watches the scaffold.

The prison cart arrives with no fanfare save the yells of the crowd. Within it sits a small, fat little man, looking like he's doing his best to remain composed. He's brought to the scaffold, and his crimes are read out: colluding with foreign powers, and the crime of royalty, which is anathema to the republic of France.

When asked for his final words, Louis Capet, known to some as King Louis XVI, speaks in a quiet voice. "I forgive my enemies."

When the blade comes down, the crowd errupts into cheers. Many rush forward to touch the blood of a king, dipping bits of cloth in it in an attempt to save it.

I PREDICT A RIOT

It's as though all the built up tension in Paris exploded when the king was killed.

Who knows what started it. Rumors spread like wildfire, and it doesn't matter, does it? In the end, most of Paris is swarmed with chaos, especially in the areas nearest to where the king was executed. There's no doubt that the riot and the king's death are directly related; no peasant currently throwing stones and breaking windows will deny it.

Fights are happening with great frequency. It only takes a word, a half sentence, for someone to decide you're some kind of counter-revolutionary. There is a current of anxiety in Paris that hasn't gone away; after reaching a fever pitch, it has expressed itself with violence and chaos.

let's visit the tuileries

The Tuileries was the royal palace in Paris, the last residence of the king before his death. Of course the people of France end up clamoring at its gates, screaming profanities and attempting to scale them.

The majority of the guard let them do this, making only the most token of efforts to keep the peasantry back. But one guard, a man by the name of Antoine Colin, seems to become spooked and shoots repeatedly into the crowd before someone knocks him out.

By then, though, it's too late. The crowd was rambunctious, but not murderous. Now it's bloodthirsty, and the gates are stormed. It isn't long before the common people of France are trampling through the corridors of power. Inside, they'll mostly find servants running and hiding, and lots of valuables to steal.

Most are content with that, but not all. Some clamor for the deaths of the queen and the royal children-- per the laws of inheritance, Marie Capet's remaining son is now King of France. Should he not die as well?

The queen is hidden in a safe room, a hollow wall inside her apartments. Do you try to find her? Try to save her? Try to kill her yourself?

...And what about those kids hiding in there with her?

BRING IN THE TROOPS

The riot in the Tuileries lasts several hours, well past nightfall. It's beginning to peter off, people loosing their energy or vigor, when the sound of gunfire echoes from the front courtyard.

General Lafayette has arrived to save the queen, and brought with him a retinue of personal soldiers. All on horseback, brandishing firearms and sabers, they stream through the expansive halls of the Tuileries and attack anyone who looks out of place. They're here to clean up this mess with no concern for more filthy peasants getting in the way.

Aftermath

The night is a long one. Several fires break out in various parts of Paris, shops are looted, and several die in the Tuileries. The queen has disappeared, along with Lafayette. Some say she and Lafayette died, and they'll show you the bodies for a couple sou. Others claim they saw them riding off into safety just before sunrise. There are already talks of hunting them down, trying to find the traitors.

Only one thing is known for sure: It may be advisable to stay inside for the foreseeable future.

read the France setting infopages

NAV NETWORK LOGS OOC PLURK DISCORD

Comments

[agogenpc]

Their voices come like the voices of saints, through the cracks of light at the edge of the hidden door panel - they are safe, for now. The door creaks open as out of the dark the Queen of France emerge.

Though not far - Marie Therese and Louis-Charles stumble straight for their beloved Jean's leg, wrapping around him as Therese begins to sob. Holding fast like only children can - sure, sure that he will be their protector, their saviour.

Marie holds her hands in front of, reached without truly looking for - someone, anyone, to hold them. Her face stricken, exhausted - an emptiness of the soul that will never again be replaced as she looks between Jean, Ashitaka and Danny. "The King is dead."

It is neither a question - but as she looks between all their faces, tear-wet and face white as the white linen cap that sits over her hair, she wants the confirmation absolutely. She is beyond her grief, right now.

[lonelywar]

He is distantly aware of the odd chiming sound, strange in its partial internalization, which indicated someone was trying to get a hold of him in the networks. It was not at the forefront of his mind, however, to sift through those, not with the palace overrun and the queen and the royal children to be found. It is fortunate, then, that fate intervenes to gather them all without such coordination. He first hears the voice of Daenerys, one that causes him to turn somewhat from where he crouched by the wall. "Dany! Here." Her name was still difficult for him (and "Danielle" was even more difficult), but he manages. Suddenly he worries less about volume, for if it was a group of them, they would be more capable than him alone trying to escort them out of the palace.

Jon is not far behind, a further salve to his worries (though they were certainly still present). He nods to the other young man, moving to stand, though he was distracted from any response by the stirring of the false panel. Ashitaka steps out of the way as it slides away, revealing not only the queen but the children as well, huddled into the cramped space. Something twists in Ashitaka's chest at their tear-streaked faces, the mark twinging with pain as he hears a crash and raucous shouts down distant hallways.

He knows well enough that Jon and Daenerys had more rapport with these individuals; Ashitaka had spent his time with men that had done next to nothing to stop this violence from spilling like a flood past the gates and into the grounds they were meant to protect with their lives. This thought is a bitter taste, like bile in the back of his throat.

With all of this in mind, he steps aside, allowing Dany to the aid of the queen and leaving Jon with the children (locked around his legs).

His expression, however, is one of mingling remorse and resolve. "Your Majesty," the words seem to stick in his throat, and there is a hair's-breadth of pause before he continues in a grave tone, "I am sorry."

It was all the response she would likely need.

"But," he continues, speaking now with urgency, "We must now make sure that the same fate does not befall you or your children. You must come with us, at once."

spot the glaring irony in this tag, aegon

[northerndragon]

As Ashitaka is answering with an apology, Jon is answering with a small, sober nod.

He looks down at the Dauphin -- the king now, he supposes, but maybe he never really will be, not now that his family has been deposed -- and at Marie-Therese, and pats each of them gently on the head and speaks to them softly, turning his voice into a low rumble. "I know you're afraid, but that means you have a chance to be brave," he says to them. "You'll have to be very brave."

But where will they take the Queen and the children? That's a part of Lafayette's plans that the three of them haven't discovered, and they don't know if there was a contingency for something like this. And with the children wreathed around his legs like this, Jon isn't likely to be able to go far, or do much to defend any of them.

"Is someone ready to take you out of the city?" he asks the Queen. It's better to make no allusion to their more solid suspicions of the plans that had been taking shape.

[dorzalta]

The crawl space is small, and it does no favors to the three hidden within it. Their fear is palpable, thick and bitter in the air. If ser Willem Darry hadn't smuggled she and Viserys to Essos, is this how her brother might've appeared when the siege on Dragonstone occurred? Did he have a figure to rush to and hold close in a desperate search for comfort as he cried? But their mother was dead, and she nothing more than a babe. It's not the same.

...It's close enough.

The children flock to Jon, and Dany's halfway across the room, clasping Marie's hands before she realizes. These moments hold a surreality to it, as if she watches beneath water, separated enough from what occurs. The king is dead. Did her mother hold the same look to her as the queen does?

Soft crying leaves her heart aching, and it shows in her eyes as she looks at Marie. Ashitaka and Jon are correct: now is not the time to grow distracted by what's come to pass. Already the shouts in the halls grow louder, still faint echoes, but drawing nearer with each moment they waste here.

"You must be tired, my lady, and greatly miss your family," she says, voice soft. A gentle squeeze to the hands within her own. It's a similar ache she's felt countless times and is, perhaps, what allows her to sound so genuine. "We will protect you as best we can in the hopes that you will be reunited with your family. Is your brother aware of your plans to leave? Is he the one to receive you and your children?"

[agogenpc]

"Plans?" She looks at them, struck utterly. Her mouth open parted in a breath that follows through with nothing. "I have made no plans, not after - not with my brother or any other. Do you believe me spy too, to have sort him out?" A familiar cry call, an Austrian, and a spy against what were her own people. She had never, she had never. "I should never risk it. Not for what they did at the massacres." The tears hold wet still. "They tore Lamballe to pieces! They sliced her skin like a common animal!" The fear, the panic, it wells up like blood to a cut. A panic that takes its cues from the roar of the riots breaking through doors.

She keeps looking at them, trying to make sense of them. Their expectant looks. Her plan as it was, was to hide. "Now they will do the same to me." Her voice breaks, cracks. Her eyes look and do not see them, a blurring emptiness of something like fate.

And it is understanding, utterly on her face. She is a poor Queen. As much to blame for this suffering as her husband, a defeat that creeps up against her throat. She will not be leaving this palace alive. "Take them. You must get them out."

[lonelywar]

Ashitaka positions himself at the midpoint of the rest of the group and the door, keeping a wary eye upon it, one hand resting on the grip of his sword at his side. He is also listening to the conversation of the other two with the queen, and he could not say he was surprised that she had not been prepared for this. It had always astonished Ashitaka how blind they had seemed, how willfully ignorant. He certainly did not think it caused them to deserve this fate, for he did not think anyone did, but it made it difficult to defend against. The conception of the common man had turned so completely against them that even the guards within their own royal chambers had been talking fervently of things that were clearly mutiny even upon their working hours. In the same thought, he curses himself. They should have had an exit strategy, just as much as the royal family should have.

They would have to improvise.

A lot of what she says is outside his realm of understanding, having only small pieces of cultural and historical information to cobble together. What he does know, however, is that they could not depend upon Marie Antoinette for guidance in this situation. If they were to get her and her children to safety, it would be through their own planning and effort.

"Your Majesty," he says after a moment, "We are here to save you, not to judge you. You and your children. You must trust in us and believe that this is possible, please."

He needs only motivate her to put one foot in front of another. Taking someone away from a place against their wishes was difficult; he knew from first-hand experience.

He looks to Jon and Dany now. "We must at the very least get them out of this palace. Outside, we can look into further steps." He considers something for a moment. "The mob seems to be working from the front entrance throughout the palace. If we move to find a servant's passage towards the rear of the building, we can attempt to avoid the majority of them."

If they were distracted by all of the lavishness of the more royal chambers, they would be slower to enter those of the hired help. They should use that to their advantage.

[agogenpc]

She nods, desperate, looking for anything at all that might help them. But what sources did she have left? Her brother defeated at Valmy from saving them. Her husband was dead - her people, loathed her and wanted her dead.

"There is a passage, my maids often took it. It leads to the kitchen." Not helpful, or useful, not even particularly secret. But it was somewhere that wouldn't be the first taken path through the palace when there were grand rooms to loot in the way.

[northerndragon]

"No, not a spy, my lady," he says. A woman who's driven to survive, maybe, or... "A mother. It's honorable to stay here, but there's no honor in them wanting to --" Spill your blood, he nearly finishes, but the children are here and clinging to him. "There was no honor in killing the king. I thought that perhaps Lord Lafayette might help you. He can't have wanted any of this to happen." And all of these words come out in French as they should: Madame, une mère, le roi, Monsieur de Lafayette. This doesn't seem to Jon like the path that Lafayette favored at all.

He addresses Ashitaka and Daenerys now, in hushed, rushed tones. "We may be able to get them out through the kitchen, but I don't know where we can take them after that." Then, back to the Queen. "My lady, where do we go from the passage to the kitchen? Do you know?"

As if a queen knows the back route to the streets in a palace where she's been a prisoner. They might have had better luck anywhere but the Tuileries. He's heard of Versailles, in these days here, but never seen it; surely she knows it better.

[dorzalta]

Incompetence should not be rewarded with blind loyalty. Incompetence should not be rewarded with death, either, she would argue. And yet many a men are guilty for both in this country. She's fallen silent while the others speak, discussing the passage maids favored down toward the kitchen. She's familiar with the route, having taken it herself when opportunity struck.

This reminds her of Meereen, in those last desperate moments where she'd been reunited with ser Jorah, holding Missandei's hand, accepting whatever fate might've come to her. But Drogon had come.

Drogon will not come here. Her gaze sweeps the room, hovering on the candles strewn about. It would take time to burn, time they do not have. Barricading the door, a pile of flammable items. Most of the things here to be looted would be of value, but the flames would draw attention.

"Fight to stay with your children until your very last breath." She squeezes the queen's hands, her voice harder. "Don't leave them in this world without their mother."

To Jon and Ashitaka, she says: "I wonder if Jeanne-Anne might be of help... if we could find her." They could bribe her. She'd told the two as much about their plans to sneak into the king's quarters, at least. Likely, she's looting what she can if she hasn't fled from the palace. "We'll need to alter their clothing, it draws too much attention to it versus the rest of us."

They might need to separate upon escaping the halls. A queen and her children is far more conspicuous versus a man and women with their children.

[lonelywar]

It seemed desperation had fled her by this point, replaced with the cloying cold of reservation and despair. It was a hurtful thing to see, and for many it would rob them of their steel, but it only strengthened Ashitaka's conviction. If there was anyone that could intervene in this for the best here, it would be them. The queen and her children might not be nearly as comfortable as they had been, but they would be alive; they just need to get them out of the palace.

Jon had had more interaction with Lafayette, so he trusts his judgment when he suggests spiriting the queen and the children away to him. He had always seemed to be a staunch defender of theirs (far more so than the rest of the guard), so it seemed as best a plan as they had.

Ashitaka is actually quite familiar with the kitchens, considering what he had had to deal with some time ago with their hungry late-night intruders. He was more aware of the storerooms, but his visits there had made him think of something.

"The servants had to have had a separate entrance to bring in the food and other supplies to the kitchens without having to go through the entire palace." He'd realized this when he took Mordred to the storeroom, wondering why he had never seen any of those supplies go through the front gates. "I am sure if we can make our way to the kitchens, we can find that passageway."

Daenerys brings up a good point, however. Their fine clothing would be a beacon as soon as they got into the city streets. "Perhaps some of us could go to try to find clothing to disguise them while the rest search for this passage. We can then meet and make our escape together."

[agogenpc]

She looks between them as they speak - outside it seems the riot grows ever louder. Ever more destructive. This once proud home of France was being swallowed whole by it's people. They deserved it, she knew it now - God would not have punished them this way if they did not.

But she lets Danny's hand grip tightly. A weak nod that is - yes, yes her children, yes this plan is as good as any. This was exactly what, once, they had tried to do when fleeing Versaille.

It seizes her as a fever takes a body when she sinks down onto her knees, her arms out wide, to both her daughter and son, all that was left to her now - "Marie, Louie, come, come here." And reluctantly the children both come back away from Jean's leg. To their mother, but she does not embrace them. Not immediately. Instead, she takes Louie's hand, bringing it up to kiss his little fingers.

"My boy, my prince, this is never as it should be - " she looks between them. Her cheeks still wet with tears but she swallows it as deeply as she can. "Louis-Charles, you must listen to me: you are the King of France now - " and uncomprehending, the boy begins to cry. "Listen. You must be brave, brave as the King before you. Can you do that for me? For your f-father?" It isn't for the boy's sake if they are to get out of here, the children must not scream and cry, and in the same, she turns to Marie-Therese. "My daughter, you are Madam de Royal. You must be composed, remember, and you must watch over your brother."

The little girl nods, and Marie swallows down. "You are the children of France. I bid you, never forget it."

And when she is done, she stands, children both in hand. "Bring us the clothes. Danny, fetch me a maid's overdress from their chambers, as well as something for the children. You will need to dress me." Her clothes were no longer the height of French fashion ( that she had set ) three-foot hair and panniers as wide as door frames, but there was certainly no getting in and out of them easily.