A Social Experiment in Order

A-Rank Examination Go-Ahead

Beira, cloaked as was her usual preference, sat quietly in a tavern in the town called Shirotsume. Despite it being a small town, it had some rather large buildings, and it was quite clear to see that the law seemed to hold a rather large amount of sway in these parts. The whole system was irritating to Beira: a few rich people owned the land, and were thus positioned to be served by the rest of the town. What gave the land owners right to lord it over their contemporaries? It was most likely the fact that these ‘lords’ simply had more economic might than their vassals, and thus could do whatever they wanted. As was the case everywhere Beira turned, power was the most important factor. Those who had it did whatever they pleased to those who didn’t. What made things even more irritating was that the weaker ones, the underdogs, though they complained about the execrable conditions of life, they actually supported and strengthened such behaviors by their action, or more correctly, inaction. If a noble’s rule was met with resistance, even to the point of death, the noble would have to acquiesce to the demands of the common people, or risk being lord of a graveyard. But if the commoners knew this, they seemed to pretend to be unaware, preferring the subjugation to such exploitative rule as the option to freedom, whose risk was possible loss of life.

Well, fortunately for Shirotsume, Beira was here to shake up a little hornet’s nest. She had been given the authorization by her guild, Errings Rising, to interfere as completely as possible with the coming of an official from Bosco, whose intention was to make Shirotsume “safer”, as was said. The way Beira saw it, it was to make the rich in Shirotsume safer, and richer as well, as curfew fines and protection tax were involved, and one could only guess who would have the common sense to manage the protection taxes and fines. It certainly was not the commoners. Of course, her meddling would be seen as utter criminality, especially seeing that she was sent there on assignment by a dark guild. Yet, what many did not know was that dark guilds, as opposed to the general belief, were not all about wanton violence, murder and crime, though to be honest, many of their adherents ran down such paths. Errings Rising, as anarchistic as it was, had its reasons for the things it did, and, surprisingly enough to those who knew little of the guild’s workings, despite its bloody reputation, never forced its members to do things they did not wish to do.

Beira, for instance, had been worried that she would be given a mission involving the killing of innocents, but it seemed the guild, as twisted as it was, understood its members and took cognizance of their value systems. She had been given this mission, and had responded to the authorities of the guild that, as was her way of doing things, she would carry out research on the matter at hand, and if she didn’t deem the happenings wicked, she would not be compelled to move. Interestingly, she had been allowed to carry out her examinations, and at the end of seeing the state of Shirotsume, the Utgardian maiden was convinced that the people thereof needed less stringent laws, and especially laws being forced on them by some foreigner who knew little and cared less about their predicaments. Of course, there were many who would argue that Beira was doing evil, despite her apparently noble intentions, but she was sure that there were many things that “good” people could not do, because of their desire to be seen as heroes. She was one of the sort that would get her hands dirty for the greater good. She didn’t care that she would not be seen as a hero, especially not by many of the leaders of Shirotsume, but maybe the generations to come would thank her for this.

Beira had carefully observed the Boscan official multiple times. A decadent, hedonistic brat who had most definitely gotten this government role simply because her parents ranked high in the Boscan technocratic hegemony. Having read sufficiently about Bosco, Beira knew that its people lived in luxury. Those in Fiore were not as lucky. And now, Bosco wanted to show Fiore how much it cared, by sending someone to implement laws, instead of sharing technology? It was quite obvious Bosco didn’t have Fiore’s good intentions at heart. And it was Beira’s job to save Fiore, or Shirotsume at least, by making sure the law was never implemented. Fortunately, rubbing shoulders with the common folk had alerted Beira to the fact that quite a number of the Shirotsume people were not so welcoming of the new law, but as was expected, they were waiting for a braver person to do something about it. They were lucky. Beira was around.

For Beira, the best way to deal with this matter would be to take out the Boscan diplomat by means of the rabble. While the exploitative leaders deserved their own come-uppance, Beira didn’t plan on being the one to give it to them. Their own people would judge them on that as well. But to encourage the base person to have a spine, a lot of secret manipulations and plannings would have to be carried out. This was where being a studious individual paid off. For by studying the task at hand, it became easier to find strategies with which to deal with it, than by just simply taking it head on, and hoping that by some dealing of Providence, a solution would materialize out of the blue, to be taken advantage of. If an unexpected solution were to appear, Beira preferred that it met her with all her bases already covered. It didn’t hurt to have a few other prospective solutions, in case the one you had in mind unexpectedly went off the rails, in spite of its potential.


WC: 1007/2000

The Utgardian’s plan was simple: reveal the nature of the true consequences of the law to the people of Shirotsume, while appearing to empower them enough to think they could do something about it, as well as making sure to undermine the power of the ruling class of the town. Then leave the rest to the greed and violence of humans and have them take care of the Boscan official. The first step in Beira's plan would be to identify people who had a considerable level of power, but were unsatisfied. That was easy to do, seeing that human craving was literally insatiable. Beira had found four lesser nobles, who really, like their higher counterparts, only cared about the power and wealth they could attain from a shuffle of power, only difference being that they did not have as much power as they would have liked. Rather than reveal herself to them directly, she carefully communicated with them via illusions performed by her Fabula Phantasmatis, using the wide range of her spell to serve as a sort of one-way communication with each of the nobles, while she hid in the shadows literally and pulled the strings. Beira took special care to make the illusions only appear at private moments, as well as to make these people think they were the recipients of some theophany of sorts, according them the right to rule Shirotsume, not the unfortunate bunch currently in charge of things. The presence of the foreigner only served to increase the xenophobic tensions felt towards the current leaders of Shirotsume. These Beira stoked, until Shirotsume was a simmering cauldron of potential chaos just waiting to happen at a second’s notice.

Step one being accomplished, the next step was to carefully draw the key players together. This was done by giving each of these lesser nobles express instructions to meet the other three in a particular tarvern. And so they had met, initially wary, initially unwilling to reveal the matters in their minds to one another. It was at this point that Beira sat, cloaked and silent, just a part of the background, watching the four men drinking rice wine, with their loyal retainers standing around them. For a moment, Beira was content to watch the nobles sit and discuss totally irrelevant matters, but she began to get impatient. This meeting in the tavern had taken days to carefully and masterfully plan, and now these idiots were simply pretending as though they had not been brought to this place by some ‘higher power’. If there was any time for Beira to see the fruition of her plan, it had to be tonight. Tomorrow was the intended time for the higher-ups of Shirotsume to approve of the new curfew laws and the extra tax on protection. Beira had to spring her trap now or never.

Once more, she utilized her Fabula Phantasmatis, only having to whisper the name of the spell, before the entire tavern was placed under the power of her illusion. Yet, as was the beauty of her spell, no one would realize it, unless they probably could sense magic of a covert nature. She allowed a minute to pass after activating her spell, and then, with nothing but willpower alone, the Utgardian maiden allowed a faint, disembodied whisper to emanate from the space above the table around which the four men sat. It was almost imperceptible, but they heard it. What the spoken word was, no one could say, but it sounded like “act now, or never”. For a moment, the four nobles were silent, each looking at the other uncertainly. Then one of them asked if anyone else heard a voice, and the proverbial stone was rolled downhill, a stone which, as Beira hoped, would soon become a gigantic snowball hurtling down the mountainside.

Another noble mentioned that he had been having visions, though he didn’t say of what variety. However, his neighbour was emboldened by this, and he said that he had had visions as well. Another said that the visions were likely as a result of a local god becoming angry with how the current masters of Shirotsume were allowing foreigners to run their policies. Under better hands, the town would be safe and secure, with no need to tax the people extra, or limit them with stupid curfew laws. As was the nature of humans, they began comparing the present day with older times, commenting on how things were much safer with less stringent laws. Soon, the entire tavern was slowly being drawn into the conversation. No foreigner had the right to come to their land and impose laws. The foreigners wanted to take over the town, which was why they were pushing forward taxes. The current leaders were too weak, and things needed to be redressed before they got out of hand. Soon, the tavern could not contain the people. It had turned into a riot. It seemed that many others were just chicken, unwilling to stand against injustice, but quite satisfied with doing it in the anonymity of a faceless mob, where they couldn’t be called into account for their actions. Soon, a screaming mob had gathered outside the house of the chief of Shirotsume, in which the Boscan brat was holed up. Beira had her Fabula Phantasmatis up and running again, and to everyone, she appeared to be just another villager, not a foreigner.

To meet the swelling mob, the chief’s personal guards assembled, weapons drawn, while the chief and Boscan official stayed behind them at a safe distance. Courtesy of Beira’s illusory magic, people began to hear whispers about how the leaders only cared for themselves and policies that would favor them alone, regarding the people of Shirotsume as worthless, if they would assemble arms just because of some dissatisfaction. But it seemed there was a stalemate; no one seemed willing to draw first blood. So Beira sought forgiveness from whatever higher powers she believed in, and used her illusions to cast the appearance of someone in the crowd drawing a bow and aiming at the Shirotsume chief. An archer of the chief fired an arrow of his own, felling the man in an instant. That was enough to break the dam. The violence that followed alarmed even Beira, as she dissociated herself from the crowd, to watch as the chief, the Boscan, and their guards were attacked and overwhelmed. Mobs did not show mercy, especially when they felt justified to draw blood. Beira had completed her mission.

By the time the mob had finished its bloodletting, everyone would see, on a large wall, a swirling sun in a strange dark purple ice, the emblem of Errings Rising. Beira, for her part, was nowhere to be found.

WC: 1127
Total: 2134/2000