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

james flint | black sails | newbie!

[katabasis]

((ooc: action brackets is aokay too; i'll write to match whatever you're comfortable with.))

RIOT LIKE IT'S 1792

Does it make a difference when the head that rolls belongs to a king? Does royal blood mean more than any other man's? Does a blade falling make the same noise if it does so at the heart of a nation demanding it strike in the name of liberty? Logically, it must. To anyone on the platform standing alongside the monstrous, efficient machine at its center, the sch-THUNK of the blade must sound exactly the same as it drives through this neck as it does any other. Skin is skin, bone is bone, blood is blood. Isn't the point of all this that one person is exactly like the next?

Not from where Flint stands, shoulder to shoulder with Frenchmen and so far removed from the action at the square's center that a boy has been pushed up to the top of a lamp post to describe the movements on the stage. "He has said some words," the boy had calls down. "They're putting him directly to it now." From such a distant vantage, it's impossible to see anything but the apex of the guillotine's frame against the sky and the flash when the steel drops.

This blade roars as it lands. The sound carries as a wave - crashing outward, then pulling after it. The crowd is sucked into the center of it and Flint-- Flint lets himself be carried forward by it. Away by it. To be swept up in the wild, bloody vindication of it and all the chaos that follows. It might be different if he were part of this place - if any piece of him belonged to this city or if he felt any obligation to a single soul in it he might just be staggered and speechless. But if he has any responsibility (here or anywhere), it's only one a woman in a room has told him he does. In this moment, that means nothing at all.

Which is how Captain Flint, once one of the most feared pirates of the West Indies and well used to the authority lent by a mob, finds himself at home in a riot rather than directing one. Witness a king beheaded and suddenly it's so easy to sweep through the streets of Paris. It's so easy to be taken by the surge of violence. It's so easy to lay hands on an unlucky individual that doesn't seem as energized by the chaos:

That means you are being caught by the collar by a man with every intent to manhandle, who only pauses when his knuckle finds the hard lump of the BCE implant just there through the fabric of the shirt. There's a cut on his forehead, blood at his temple, and something hungry and dangerous in his expression even as recognition stills his hands.

AFTERMATH

Come morning, smoke still hangs heavy over the neighborhood where he'd first woken in a bed the day previous. The acrid tang of the air clings to the throat, in the nose, in every stitch of clothing on his person. And while it's true that there is likely no place for him here - there had been no promise when he'd first left the room that he could come back to it -, with nowhere else to go, Flint finds himself returning to the same room he'd come from.

That had been the idea anyway. He makes it only as far as the boardinghouse's staircase before he has to sit, then slump against the wall, in the narrow second story landing. Surely here's a man who's found trouble the night prior if the black ash and powder burns, the scrapes and bruises are any indication. Don't fucking step on him on the way up or down the stairs because Christ knows he's too exhausted to get make getting past him easy (or pleasant).

WILDCARD

[Throw some rocks; run rough shod through the Tuileries palace; eat the rich.]

Aftermath, also, politely screams in glee.

[horsepowered]

It had been a long night. Longer than Chiron anticipated, and more wearying than he would have preferred. The aftermath of the execution had ended as he suspected it would have - riots and fires. And so he had spent his evening putting out what fires he could, regretting that the technology of the era made it so hard to get flames under control and that the modern systems of firefighting didn't exist yet.

The destruction had been impressive in it's own horrible way.

Come morning, everything that could be contained was. Most were extinguished thanks to endless effort, and Chiron felt that his energies were now best spent thinking about what came next. Never mind Regency or COST or anything along those lines, the question of what came next in the actual course of events was his focus. Riots were doubtlessly a part of it, but beyond that, that was where his questions lay.

He's lost in thought as he returns to the boarding house that he's been using since arriving in Paris. Covered in an unfortunate amount of soot and smelling of only recently dead fires, he proceeds to climb up the steps, his mind elsewhere. As a result, he hardly notices that he's bumped a man's leg.

aw heck

[katabasis]

To be fair, it's dark here in the interior stairwell and it's been a long night. Such minor thoughtlessness is surely happening all over the city this morning (it's certainly why Flint's in the stairwell still). Maybe if circumstances were different, he'd find it in himself to be more offended. As it is, a bump is hardly wounding and Flint merely draws his leg up out of the way. The heel of his boot drags back over the stair, line of his thigh and calf swallowed by the long early morning shadow here.

Rest seems like it doesn't belong to this city, but there's dried sweat between his neck and shirt and a dim, separate part of him thinks that he's never been so exhausted in his entire life. It should be easy to just let the man pass on the stairs and to say nothing. Instead as the stranger passes, Flint lifts his head from the stairwell wall and asks: "What do you know of Regency?"

This is, after all, the place he can first remember himself in the hands of COST. It must not be ludicrous to believe if that if he's here for that reason, some stranger on the stairs might have similar motivations. If if not-- well, talk of the monarchy's fitness and what fills the space left by its absence seems to be on everyone's minds lately.

:DDD!

[horsepowered]

Chiron stops halfway up the flight of steps that come after the landing, hand resting on the banister. He's first mortified that he didn't realize that there was a person there on the landing, but that mortification morphs into a much more neutral expression when he hears the question.

Honestly will either result in a confrontation or else an ally. In the rare chance of it being the former, and having very little desire to deal with any sort of fight, the response is more measured.

"As in the type of government or as an organization?"

It was at least a way to confirm that Chiron was in the loop.

[katabasis]

Both is the answer he wants to give, but god forbid he inject any more ambiguity into this moment than strictly necessary. He's had more than enough of that in the last day (weeks, months - not that there's anyone keeping track). Better to make himself clear.

Flint leans forward through the dark of the stairwell. There's blood crusted at his temple and a corresponding dark stain at the collar of his shirt, though it's infinitely unclear what part of it might belong to him and which is merely evidence of the evening he's had. Hours ago, there might have been some dangerous edge to the lines of him in the dark. Right now, he just looked haggard and tired: a knife blunted from overuse.

"The latter." Though from what little he's gathered of Regency, he's not certain how appropriate it is to draw a line between the two.

[horsepowered]

"It's an issue," Chiron says simply.

He presumed that it would be a fair enough form of identification without having to go much further. Regardless, it gave him a moment to actually take in the gentleman before him. He...well, he looked like he had been dragged through the streets of Paris several times over, although the dim lighting on the stairs forced Chiron to play one of his least favorite games: is it an injury or it is someone else's blood?

The man's movements didn't help narrow it down either.

[katabasis]

He huffs out a low noise, setting his heel and finding the wall with his hand. "If you say as much," and the sound of it is skeptical at best as Flint gets his feet under himself and hauls himself upright in the stairwell. There's a moment where he needs a wall to steady himself, the effort of getting to his feet causing whatever spirit is left in him to drain as water from a bucket with a hole in the bottom-- and then he's upright and fine and as assembled as a man can be given the length of the evening.

Flint isn't especially tall or wide, but even at the disadvantage of being two steps below and exhausted he still seems to take up every inch of available space on the landing.

It's about time he attend to business. "How many of us are there?" Which is assuming this man knows anything more than he does at present, but to hell with it. Eventually questions must be asked, however painfully obvious. Better to clear through them now. (There are easier ways to get this information. The woman whose company he'd first woken in had been quite descriptive in reference to the hardware implanted on his person. And maybe tomorrow using it will seem less like a trial, but not today. Not this morning. He's tired.)

[horsepowered]

"Around two dozen," is the answer, straight forward. There's a look of concern on Chiron's face, his eyes are intense and there's a thinness to his lips.

He then turns his back and gestures to be followed. There's little harm in having this particular conversation behind closed doors, and there is a distinct feeling in Chiron's gut that this man requires a bed far more than he does at the moment.

the riot

[macginger]

"Oh you stupid fucker."

Standing in the crowd and standing out with his red hair and tall stature, Mad Sweeney was enjoying the chaos as well. His face was already bloody from a dented nose and a cut along his cheek. Seeing a king getting killed wasn't particularly of great interest since he'd been around when it happened, though not around in the geographical sense. This fervor was like bloody beautiful religion to him. It wasn't dedicated to him, but it did when the violence turned against him. He turns to Flint with bloodied teeth and a mad grin.

Implant? Who gives a damn. He takes hold of the captain's hesitation and violently bobs his head forehead to crack the other man on the skull.

what a good combination of gingers

[katabasis]

Pain blooms, white hot and brilliant and blinding. But for all that the blow staggers him, Flint's grip on the other man (the other recruit, says a sensible part of him that's far away enough to ignore in favor of everything else) doesn't falter. Instead his fingers tighten. His knuckles grind against the stranger's collar bones and the hard bead of his implant. He drops and drives with his shoulder, perfectly happy to return the violence in kind even if it means driving some fellow COST agent back against the wall of some Parisian shop.

--Assuming he gets that far. Regardless, the fervor of the street is more inspiring than the logic of the woman he'd woken up to this morning. So sure: there's a bloody moment where beating sense into one another is far more appealing than any alternative. And maybe it comes to blows. Maybe he gets the man against the wall and pins him there with his arm for the duration it takes for reason to find him again. Maybe they stumble in the crowd and the press of other bodies rights him. But at some point, Flint spits:

"We're on the same side, god damn you."

[macginger]

His back hits the wall of the shop none too gently, but it doesn't take away his bloody smile as he grins back at his comrade. For a man who liked to look for a fight, there was a whole lot of it to be found here. But beating up confused and stupid peasants wasn't exactly a flattering look.

"So are the lot of them. Doesn't seem to be stopping them, is it?"

It would be a good time to make their amends there, but Sweeney was in the thick of it now. This was better than drinking or fucking or any other merry making. This was real and you didn't need to be a man or a god to get into it. So he pushes the other man away and opens himself up for a free shot, even gesturing that he was at least entitled to one.

aftermath

[circumspector]

[ Everything hurts - in a different way, a new way, that leads her wearing this skin like a heavy blanket, and not something that should have come like they say - natural as breathing. Her mouth tastes like bile. There is a layer of dirt and blood under her nails. Her head is swimming - a black eye that's starting to bloom on the right side of her face. Something that the woman that ran the place had taken pity on 'a wee scrap of a boy, look at you', and promise that she could have a nice bit of floor by the fire to sleep for the night as long as she promised to pitch in sweeping for the morning.

Which is where she's trying to get too. Stepping over people that are scattered about, stopping her miserable little sniffles. But her feet are heavy and her bones are heavy and she is craving something dark and deep and ( cracks of light, purple, seeping through her skin ) that it gets harder as she sees the little bit of floor that is going to be all her own for the night. Doesn't quite makes the step far enough as she needs too and trips right over the person in front of her.

- To smack straight into the side of the stars with an almighty crack of head hitting wall. ]

Ow - [ and then: ] - I'm so sorry.

[ God, don't hit her. ]

GASPS good taste playing flint... also aftermath

[rappels]

While the riots had been going on, Aloy had done her best to be anywhere else. It's the kind of conflict she feels no attachment to one way or another, because like wandering into Meridian and hearing of their conflicts and politics, it's foreign to her. They're not her people in any way, and though she'll protect the innocent, she won't engage any more than she has to. It's especially true with how she had spent time away from this place and time. Perhaps she would have felt more if she had stayed, but she's actually rather glad she was absent.

So she'd taken to the woods instead for the night as she stayed away from people. It was half to gather supplies for her own use and half just that she felt more at home to sleep underneath stars than a roof she didn't help make herself. But regardless, she still always returns to the boardinghouse that she'd taken a room in. It was little more than storage or a place to rest her head when things weren't so chaotic, but it served its purpose.

Aloy is heading up the staircase with a full canvas bag of what just looks like ordinary twigs on one shoulder and her odd-looking bow in her other hand. She's not going up the stairs quickly enough to run into Flint, but he's taking up enough room that she wouldn't be able to easily get by without likely hitting him with either the bow or the bag. She's at least not rude enough to try, but she sighs heavily and exagerratedly rolls her eyes before she speaks to him.

"This is a bad place to rest," she comments sarcastically, "You're in the way."