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forbarrayar2017-03-18 02:15 pm
barrayarmods) wrote in forbarrayar2017-03-18 02:15 pm
[ march ii log: ageless beauty ]
Who: Everyone!
What: The skies finally lighten, and so do spirits, but there are still quiet machinations in the dark. The good doctor's fate is finally decided.
When: March 18th - 31st
Where: Barrayaran camp, Cetagandan base & Riverfall Village
Warnings: TBD
Quick links:
Riverfall
Barrayar: Plague / Camp / Missions
Cetaganda: Plague / Base / Missions
First: Special thanks and credit to Vee (veelynn) for lending us her beautiful photography for this event!
TIMELINE
3/19 Art Fair
3/20 York & Ratchet's arrival to the Barrayaran camp
3/22 Raid: Medical Supplies
3/26 Haut Sei's arrival, Eavesdropping Eta
3/27 Eavesdropping Sigma
3/27 - 3/28 Rat Race
3/29 Official reception for Haut Sei
3/30 Mystery Plot
One thing can be said for the month of March: at least the weather's gotten better. By mid-month, while the piled-up snow is slow to melt, the temperatures have now risen to just freezing rather than well below freezing. It's still a pretty cold March, but by this point, anything close to freezing feels like a balmy spring, and they have a nice string of sunny days for the rest of the month.
riverfall
Although their numbers have been thinned by the flu epidemic, Cetagandan patrols still pass regularly through the village, allowing those spying for the Cetagandans to pass along information via dead drop.
Riverfall was hit just as hard by the epidemic as the camp, and by the end of the month, the village houses no more than sixty people. The aid from the outsiders and soldiers in caring for and treating the sick goes a long way, but by the end, there are still a lot of bodies to bury and souls to burn death offerings for. There's an overall somber cast to the village despite the brightening weather.
barrayar
The Barrayarans haven't been hit as dramatically as the Cetagandans, but their numbers are much fewer, and patrols are still thin. Anyone healthy enough is being asked to pull double shifts, stretching their resources where they can, but at least the food situation is improving considerably thanks to both Xav's relief supplies and the lightening weather.
Once seeing both his daughters recover from the flu, Prince Xav leaves camp on the 19th to rendezvous with his transport back to Vorbarr Sultana so he can make another risky attempt at getting off-planet and back through the wormhole blockade. Ezar, as Piotr's aide-de-camp, sticks around -- and so does Negri, of course.
Knowing that it would be safer (if less comfortable) and possibly more useful for the Barrayarans to rendezvous with Micah rather than try to get them back off-planet, Xav leaves Doctor Niadem's fate in Barrayaran hands…and not to great result. Now that the Cetagandans have Micah, Piotr and his general staff -- and anyone in-the-know enough about the situation to provide any advisement -- are still debating what to do about Micah and the wormhole device. They could either try to rescue Micah to their side…or leave them in Cetagandan hands and hope to make contact via one of their informants.
This makes cultivating informants on the Cetagandan side an even higher priority, and if anyone has any ties to outsiders on the other side, personal or otherwise, Piotr wants to hear about it. Any intelligence about the Star Gate Project is vital.
plague
The ill in the camp and Riverfall are recovering, slowly, but the flu is still spreading, reaching its apex, and people are still getting sick. Even as the weather clears up, it's still damp, and many of the sick are falling to pneumonia, a near-certain death without antibiotics. They've already exhausted the medical supplies Xav and Ezar brought with them, and the medical raids went poorly -- only resulting in enough antibiotics for about 20% of the village and camp's combined population.
By the end of the month, though, the Barrayarans are finally beginning to pull through. The camp and village start to recover, with the mortalities over the month total to 58 influenza-related deaths. It's time to bury the death, burn a death offering, and keep on moving on.
camp
Both Olivia and Sonia have recovered from their bouts with the flu, more or less intact despite Olivia's very touch-and-go health for a while. Now Sonia's repaying everyone's visits to her by tending to the sick and helping out where she can. And as the weather warms up and people start to recover, the line for the bath tent starts getting longer…it's still pretty cold, but after lying around in the sickbay tent for a while, few people are going to complain for the chance to wash.
Morale is still buckling, so amidst all the doom and gloom, Sonia decides to try and bring a little levity to the camp by hosting a makeshift little art show on the 19th. The Princess can often be seen with her old antique camera, taking candids or scenic pictures in the mountains, although she rarely shows her work to anyone else. Tonight, though, she has hung up a variety of her black-and-white photos around the camp for the art fair -- some of the candids are even of outsiders, and Sonia's aim seems to be catching everyone in their warmest, happiest moment. There's no sense of tragedy or despair in her work.
She's encouraged as many of the soldiers and outsiders to contribute anything in the way of art -- stories, songs, performance, or craft, she invites it all. A few soldiers make a surprisingly harmonic little chorus, and some visiting villagers give engaging tellings of Barrayaran legends. Lakshmi shows off some of her embroidery, and Beth and Tucker both bring a little singing to the table, although the majority of Barrayarans probably aren't going to appreciate a cappella Queen. Daryl shoots a mouse and either fails to understand art entirely or transcends to a brand new plane of artistic enlightenment. Also, please don't let Tucker pose nude for you.
It winds up doing some good for morale -- giving the soldiers some other context to focus on besides the war, something of an escape, or a reminder of what they're fighting for and what they long to live to see again. And for the first time, Sonia doesn't feel quite so useless.
missions
The medical assistance provided by the outsiders doesn't go unappreciated, nor without effect. Not every day is a success, but at least they manage to keep the mortality rate from climbing too high.
The medical raids are a near-unmitigated disaster, with every single raiding party running afoul of Cetagandan guards and losing some of their bounty on the way out. They only manage to make away with supplies/topicals/OTC analgesics for 40% of the population, vaccine for 20% of the population, and antibiotics for 35% of the population.
The race to Micah's location in Vorkosigan Vashnoi is a frantic one, but despite the outsiders' efforts as well as Natasha, Byerly and Kaidan's efforts to slow down the Cetagandans, the Cetagandans get to Doctor Micah Niadem first.
Here are the unabridged mission results.
cetaganda
Piotr's attempt at psychological warfare was a total success: Zahal is furious over the severed body parts of his own soldiers discovered around the camp, and even more so over the wholly unintentional but devastating biowarfare that comes with it. That part has Piotr rather tickled.
With full intel on Micah's location in hand, Zahal sends as many able-bodied squads to Vorkosigan Vashnoi as he can, including several exotics. Natasha, Kaidan and Byerly work covertly to try and slow the operation down, but ultimately, the Cetagandans still reach Micah first and bring them back to base -- taking proper precaution to vaccinate them before bringing them in, of course. It wouldn't do for their newest and very valuable asset to suddenly die of some backwater plague.
The Cetagandan base is still pretty thin on the personnel front, but they're managing to continue operations as normal. The announcement of the visit from the Handmaiden of the Star Crèche has every able-bodied person on base in a frenzy as they try to prepare and make the base suitable for receiving her. This is clearly an occasion of great honor as well as face -- if she were improperly received, ghem-General Zahal and Lady Diya would surely suffer for it.
plague
The plague reaches its apex in the Cetagandan base, but with Ratchet and Natasha's help, they were able to synthesize a vaccine for the flu. The quarantine isn't airtight, so there's still risk of infection, and they have to make sure those distributing the vaccine aren't at risk of spreading the infection. Overall, they're able to inoculate about 80% of the uninfected population.
Amai makes a full recovery, despite being dramatically (albeit not entirely unrealistically) convinced she was on death's door every second.
By the end of the month, the Barrayaran flu has about a 30% mortality rate on the Cetagandan base, resulting in about 3000 influenza-related deaths.
base
The quarantine remains in effect until nearly the end of the month, but finally, once the epidemic has died down and the Handmaiden has been vaccinated, Haut Sei Navarr arrives. The base hurriedly puts together a formal reception for her on the 30th, and rather than another party, it is just that -- a clearly ritualized receiving of her presence, so rarely seen beyond Eta Ceta, let alone the rest of the Empire.
The reception for Haut Sei is exceedingly formal, and unlike the relatively lighter air of the party last month, inappropriate behavior is going to be much less generously tolerated here. The exotics are not required to attend, but if they do, it'll be about a four-hour reception with a clear ritual protocol that will nonetheless seem very obtuse to outside viewers. Diya is prominent in the reception, being the only other haut on base, and is in fact the only one truly suited to receive her -- although, unlike Diya, Haut Sei does not appear in public unmasked. As is the custom of haut ladies still in their constellations, Haut Sei travels in a float chair encased in an opaque force bubble -- she can see out, but no one can see in. She brings with her a small entourage of servitors known as the ba, who serve not only as testing grounds for new genetic combinations, but are also genetically engineered for loyalty and service. Ba are not clones -- each ba is a work of art unto itself, each carefully created, and while they are not quite so fey in their beauty, the aesthetic effort is undeniable. All of the ba with Haut Sei are curiously hairless, which seems to be a popular trend in their design among the haut these days.
Meanwhile on the scientific end, the Cetagandans are delving deeper into what is officially referred to as the Star Gate Project. They're working with Satya to build a hard-light mapping device, but in the meantime, they have laid out the most crucial parts needed to build it: high-precision electromagnetic bearings to hold up the Necklin rods and spin them by a magnetic field for reduced friction; high-quality seals and pumps to create the necessary vacuum required for precise jump-plotting; something generating EM shielding to prevent interference, a problem unique to creating a Necklin field of this size and in this environment; and high-precision controls and controls software based on those used in existing jump ships, modifications for which are underway. And, of course, the Necklin rods themselves, which they have yet to figure out a way to fabricate.
And now that Micah is on base, the Cetagandans can finally put them to work in the wormhole lab on some of those elusive five-space math problems.
They're still developing their theory of neural netting and how a Necklin field might directly interact with the human brain without a jump implant. Based on their research so far, this may not actually be much of a problem, but there's another factor they have yet to work out: how to key the Star Gate to an exotics' own home universe. The Cetagandan neurologists have a few theories that they're working with Deanna and Natasha on.
missions
With help from the exotics, they're able to vaccinate 80% of the base's uninfected population. Satya and Pearl, despite their hard efforts, have yet to finish the hard-light mapping device by the end of the month.
A few exotics learn a bit more about Sei and Diya's history, as well as Diya and Amai's plans for covering up their less than authorized experiments. It also comes to light that the haut are planning to open gene therapy trials for any exotics who experienced power loss.
The race to Micah's location in Vorkosigan Vashnoi is a frantic one, but despite the outsiders' efforts as well as Natasha, Byerly and Kaidan's efforts to slow down the Cetagandans, the Cetagandans get to Doctor Micah Niadem first.
Here are the unabridged mission results.
Note: Negri, Amai, Zahal, and Olivia are available for threads by request only. Please hit up Madi (Negri & Amai) or Ammay (Zahal & Olivia) respectively for you want threads with either of those NPCs. You can also request a thread with Village Speaker Yakiv Gura if you want, in which case hit up Madi.
What: The skies finally lighten, and so do spirits, but there are still quiet machinations in the dark. The good doctor's fate is finally decided.
When: March 18th - 31st
Where: Barrayaran camp, Cetagandan base & Riverfall Village
Warnings: TBD
Riverfall
Barrayar: Plague / Camp / Missions
Cetaganda: Plague / Base / Missions
First: Special thanks and credit to Vee (
veelynn) for lending us her beautiful photography for this event!TIMELINE
3/19 Art Fair
3/20 York & Ratchet's arrival to the Barrayaran camp
3/22 Raid: Medical Supplies
3/26 Haut Sei's arrival, Eavesdropping Eta
3/27 Eavesdropping Sigma
3/27 - 3/28 Rat Race
3/29 Official reception for Haut Sei
3/30 Mystery Plot
One thing can be said for the month of March: at least the weather's gotten better. By mid-month, while the piled-up snow is slow to melt, the temperatures have now risen to just freezing rather than well below freezing. It's still a pretty cold March, but by this point, anything close to freezing feels like a balmy spring, and they have a nice string of sunny days for the rest of the month.
riverfall
Although their numbers have been thinned by the flu epidemic, Cetagandan patrols still pass regularly through the village, allowing those spying for the Cetagandans to pass along information via dead drop.
Riverfall was hit just as hard by the epidemic as the camp, and by the end of the month, the village houses no more than sixty people. The aid from the outsiders and soldiers in caring for and treating the sick goes a long way, but by the end, there are still a lot of bodies to bury and souls to burn death offerings for. There's an overall somber cast to the village despite the brightening weather.
barrayar
The Barrayarans haven't been hit as dramatically as the Cetagandans, but their numbers are much fewer, and patrols are still thin. Anyone healthy enough is being asked to pull double shifts, stretching their resources where they can, but at least the food situation is improving considerably thanks to both Xav's relief supplies and the lightening weather.
Once seeing both his daughters recover from the flu, Prince Xav leaves camp on the 19th to rendezvous with his transport back to Vorbarr Sultana so he can make another risky attempt at getting off-planet and back through the wormhole blockade. Ezar, as Piotr's aide-de-camp, sticks around -- and so does Negri, of course.
Knowing that it would be safer (if less comfortable) and possibly more useful for the Barrayarans to rendezvous with Micah rather than try to get them back off-planet, Xav leaves Doctor Niadem's fate in Barrayaran hands…and not to great result. Now that the Cetagandans have Micah, Piotr and his general staff -- and anyone in-the-know enough about the situation to provide any advisement -- are still debating what to do about Micah and the wormhole device. They could either try to rescue Micah to their side…or leave them in Cetagandan hands and hope to make contact via one of their informants.
This makes cultivating informants on the Cetagandan side an even higher priority, and if anyone has any ties to outsiders on the other side, personal or otherwise, Piotr wants to hear about it. Any intelligence about the Star Gate Project is vital.
plague
The ill in the camp and Riverfall are recovering, slowly, but the flu is still spreading, reaching its apex, and people are still getting sick. Even as the weather clears up, it's still damp, and many of the sick are falling to pneumonia, a near-certain death without antibiotics. They've already exhausted the medical supplies Xav and Ezar brought with them, and the medical raids went poorly -- only resulting in enough antibiotics for about 20% of the village and camp's combined population.
By the end of the month, though, the Barrayarans are finally beginning to pull through. The camp and village start to recover, with the mortalities over the month total to 58 influenza-related deaths. It's time to bury the death, burn a death offering, and keep on moving on.
camp
Both Olivia and Sonia have recovered from their bouts with the flu, more or less intact despite Olivia's very touch-and-go health for a while. Now Sonia's repaying everyone's visits to her by tending to the sick and helping out where she can. And as the weather warms up and people start to recover, the line for the bath tent starts getting longer…it's still pretty cold, but after lying around in the sickbay tent for a while, few people are going to complain for the chance to wash.
Morale is still buckling, so amidst all the doom and gloom, Sonia decides to try and bring a little levity to the camp by hosting a makeshift little art show on the 19th. The Princess can often be seen with her old antique camera, taking candids or scenic pictures in the mountains, although she rarely shows her work to anyone else. Tonight, though, she has hung up a variety of her black-and-white photos around the camp for the art fair -- some of the candids are even of outsiders, and Sonia's aim seems to be catching everyone in their warmest, happiest moment. There's no sense of tragedy or despair in her work.
She's encouraged as many of the soldiers and outsiders to contribute anything in the way of art -- stories, songs, performance, or craft, she invites it all. A few soldiers make a surprisingly harmonic little chorus, and some visiting villagers give engaging tellings of Barrayaran legends. Lakshmi shows off some of her embroidery, and Beth and Tucker both bring a little singing to the table, although the majority of Barrayarans probably aren't going to appreciate a cappella Queen. Daryl shoots a mouse and either fails to understand art entirely or transcends to a brand new plane of artistic enlightenment. Also, please don't let Tucker pose nude for you.
It winds up doing some good for morale -- giving the soldiers some other context to focus on besides the war, something of an escape, or a reminder of what they're fighting for and what they long to live to see again. And for the first time, Sonia doesn't feel quite so useless.
missions
The medical assistance provided by the outsiders doesn't go unappreciated, nor without effect. Not every day is a success, but at least they manage to keep the mortality rate from climbing too high.
The medical raids are a near-unmitigated disaster, with every single raiding party running afoul of Cetagandan guards and losing some of their bounty on the way out. They only manage to make away with supplies/topicals/OTC analgesics for 40% of the population, vaccine for 20% of the population, and antibiotics for 35% of the population.
The race to Micah's location in Vorkosigan Vashnoi is a frantic one, but despite the outsiders' efforts as well as Natasha, Byerly and Kaidan's efforts to slow down the Cetagandans, the Cetagandans get to Doctor Micah Niadem first.
Here are the unabridged mission results.
cetaganda
Piotr's attempt at psychological warfare was a total success: Zahal is furious over the severed body parts of his own soldiers discovered around the camp, and even more so over the wholly unintentional but devastating biowarfare that comes with it. That part has Piotr rather tickled.
With full intel on Micah's location in hand, Zahal sends as many able-bodied squads to Vorkosigan Vashnoi as he can, including several exotics. Natasha, Kaidan and Byerly work covertly to try and slow the operation down, but ultimately, the Cetagandans still reach Micah first and bring them back to base -- taking proper precaution to vaccinate them before bringing them in, of course. It wouldn't do for their newest and very valuable asset to suddenly die of some backwater plague.
The Cetagandan base is still pretty thin on the personnel front, but they're managing to continue operations as normal. The announcement of the visit from the Handmaiden of the Star Crèche has every able-bodied person on base in a frenzy as they try to prepare and make the base suitable for receiving her. This is clearly an occasion of great honor as well as face -- if she were improperly received, ghem-General Zahal and Lady Diya would surely suffer for it.
plague
The plague reaches its apex in the Cetagandan base, but with Ratchet and Natasha's help, they were able to synthesize a vaccine for the flu. The quarantine isn't airtight, so there's still risk of infection, and they have to make sure those distributing the vaccine aren't at risk of spreading the infection. Overall, they're able to inoculate about 80% of the uninfected population.
Amai makes a full recovery, despite being dramatically (albeit not entirely unrealistically) convinced she was on death's door every second.
By the end of the month, the Barrayaran flu has about a 30% mortality rate on the Cetagandan base, resulting in about 3000 influenza-related deaths.
base
The quarantine remains in effect until nearly the end of the month, but finally, once the epidemic has died down and the Handmaiden has been vaccinated, Haut Sei Navarr arrives. The base hurriedly puts together a formal reception for her on the 30th, and rather than another party, it is just that -- a clearly ritualized receiving of her presence, so rarely seen beyond Eta Ceta, let alone the rest of the Empire.
The reception for Haut Sei is exceedingly formal, and unlike the relatively lighter air of the party last month, inappropriate behavior is going to be much less generously tolerated here. The exotics are not required to attend, but if they do, it'll be about a four-hour reception with a clear ritual protocol that will nonetheless seem very obtuse to outside viewers. Diya is prominent in the reception, being the only other haut on base, and is in fact the only one truly suited to receive her -- although, unlike Diya, Haut Sei does not appear in public unmasked. As is the custom of haut ladies still in their constellations, Haut Sei travels in a float chair encased in an opaque force bubble -- she can see out, but no one can see in. She brings with her a small entourage of servitors known as the ba, who serve not only as testing grounds for new genetic combinations, but are also genetically engineered for loyalty and service. Ba are not clones -- each ba is a work of art unto itself, each carefully created, and while they are not quite so fey in their beauty, the aesthetic effort is undeniable. All of the ba with Haut Sei are curiously hairless, which seems to be a popular trend in their design among the haut these days.
Meanwhile on the scientific end, the Cetagandans are delving deeper into what is officially referred to as the Star Gate Project. They're working with Satya to build a hard-light mapping device, but in the meantime, they have laid out the most crucial parts needed to build it: high-precision electromagnetic bearings to hold up the Necklin rods and spin them by a magnetic field for reduced friction; high-quality seals and pumps to create the necessary vacuum required for precise jump-plotting; something generating EM shielding to prevent interference, a problem unique to creating a Necklin field of this size and in this environment; and high-precision controls and controls software based on those used in existing jump ships, modifications for which are underway. And, of course, the Necklin rods themselves, which they have yet to figure out a way to fabricate.
And now that Micah is on base, the Cetagandans can finally put them to work in the wormhole lab on some of those elusive five-space math problems.
They're still developing their theory of neural netting and how a Necklin field might directly interact with the human brain without a jump implant. Based on their research so far, this may not actually be much of a problem, but there's another factor they have yet to work out: how to key the Star Gate to an exotics' own home universe. The Cetagandan neurologists have a few theories that they're working with Deanna and Natasha on.
missions
With help from the exotics, they're able to vaccinate 80% of the base's uninfected population. Satya and Pearl, despite their hard efforts, have yet to finish the hard-light mapping device by the end of the month.
A few exotics learn a bit more about Sei and Diya's history, as well as Diya and Amai's plans for covering up their less than authorized experiments. It also comes to light that the haut are planning to open gene therapy trials for any exotics who experienced power loss.
The race to Micah's location in Vorkosigan Vashnoi is a frantic one, but despite the outsiders' efforts as well as Natasha, Byerly and Kaidan's efforts to slow down the Cetagandans, the Cetagandans get to Doctor Micah Niadem first.
Here are the unabridged mission results.
Note: Negri, Amai, Zahal, and Olivia are available for threads by request only. Please hit up Madi (Negri & Amai) or Ammay (Zahal & Olivia) respectively for you want threads with either of those NPCs. You can also request a thread with Village Speaker Yakiv Gura if you want, in which case hit up Madi.
ii
So much death...surely there is an end to all of this in sight.
It's more dangerous for a Cetagandan sympathizer here, but she's carefully to avoid crowds, to remain quiet and aloof as she makes her way around town. She's here to observe, to remember why it is so vitally important that she help.
No one wants to live like this.
One of the men she passes by as she makes her retreat, however, looks somewhat familiar... ]
no subject
There's a few things he knows now, too, since Natasha's first report. Hard-light technology. It'd have to be her.
The mood in the village may be somber, but Wash still has a bit of a smile for her, a friendly one -- and it is genuine, despite their disagreements. She seemed a good woman, well-intentioned, and he'd liked talking to her. He greets her in Russian, too, at first, competent and understandable enough, just for the practice, and then right after repeats it in English. ]
Hey. [ A tip of his head. ] Taking my advice to heart?
[ He remembers telling her that it'd be hard to make that judgment without knowing what things are like on the Barrayaran side of things. Maybe that's why she's out here, maybe it's not, but it's a comfortable enough way to start talking to her. ]
no subject
Of course. I am not unreasonable, despite what some of you think.
[ You, here, meaning people who had the benefit of dwelling with the Cetagandans and instead ran away to join the rebels. A move she still can't understand, even if a fraction of what Tucker has said is true.
Though her discussion with the Simulation Trooper earlier today has shaken her, somewhat. ]
no subject
Wash raises an eyebrow. ] I didn't think you were unreasonable.
I thought you were more than reasonable, really. [ He disagrees with her. Vehemently. But he understands where she's coming from. ] It's nice to see you out here, either way.
no subject
Just stop trying to figure it out. Address the matter at hand. Much safer that way. Her arms fold across her stomach as she regards him thoughtfully. ]
It is good to have a reminder of what the stakes are. The effect we are having on this world.
no subject
He nods, gesturing vaguely with a tip of his head for her to maybe walk with him. Nowhere in particular, but he'd come to the village to walk around and look around, and there's part of him that's at least a little anxious whenever he's here. He feels quite a bit more comfortable talking with someone from the other base on the move, rather than in one place. ]
These people need help more than either side in some war.
What do you make of it, then?
no subject
[ It's as if she's steeling herself, remembering why she believes as she does, shoring up those defenses as they walk. And she is walking him, quite willingly, because despite some of his decisions? He still seems rather sensible himself. ]
To place civilians, non-combatants in harm's way is abhorrent. There is no question in that.
no subject
He nods, though, agreeing. ]
No question at all. It's why I come here as often as I do -- I try to help, where I can. [ Gesturing vaguely with a tip of his head. ] The plague's hit them hard.
no subject
[ Too many dead to bury. The somber air of the village now is well understandable. Satya lets out a quiet breath. ]
I've been thinking of finding a way to offer more aid to them, with the resources we possess. Likely as not those efforts would be thrown back in my face, and yet.
[ She really does just want to help them. The desire is there, earnest and genuine, even if she's no longer sure how to implement said plan. ]
no subject
I doubt the villagers would say no to any medicine you could bring them, Symmetra.
Distrustful as they are, I think they know they need help. [ He tips his head slightly, hesitant with telling her this even though it'd likely risk nothing, but well, cautious, as always. ] We've been treating their sick along with our own.
[ How easily he says we, now. It might be a little clear just which side he feels he stands on. ]
no subject
Why did you leave? You seemed undecided before. What changed your mind?
[ Not questions that would have mattered as much before, but with Tucker putting doubt into her mind, and Wash's earlier comment about seeing things from the other side? Maybe the truth isn't pretty, but she needs to know.
This uncertainty is...very unpleasant. ]
no subject
Vorkosigan Vashnoi. He's been there himself, now, a city of damned millions. Gone. Vanished in a nuclear cloud, nothing left but ash and radioactive dust. He doubts Symmetra would want that, but well. It's not something he can share. ]
I'll be honest -- there's a lot about the Cetagandans that never sat right with me, even before leaving. [ There had been a magic bullet when he came over, yes, but he'd doubted from the beginning. No doubt she remembers that. ] But you've been comfortable, haven't you? With their vision.
[ Slightly probing, questioning. It sounds like she's questioning more than she was when he'd last spoken to her. That's good. ]
no subject
[ There is an appeal to knowing one's place and function, and serving in your greatest capacity for the sake of the whole. The self is not important. Freedom is an illusion. These are all things that seem to resonate within Cetagandan culture.
But these backwards, violent provincials have won the hearts of so many, and it is them she cannot comprehend. ]
no subject
And that's a difference between us, I suppose. [ Not that it's apparently bothering him enough to not have a conversation. It bothers him, but in this gut-churning way that he can't show, because god he knows they've done things and they'll do things that she'll want no part of. He wishes he could tell her. A slight pause, considering, and maybe lets try pushing at an obvious thing. ] Have the Cetagandans sent much aid outside of the base, in light of the plague?
no subject
[ Saying more would likely be giving the rebels information. He is working with them, considers himself a part of them, so there's only so much she can say. She'll have to be cautious, as she imagines will be with her. ]
But the worst is behind us now. I have no doubt they'll recover and renew their efforts. I doubt their concerns will lie as much with extending good faith to the villagers, whatever their past intentions may have been.
no subject
That's good to hear, that things are getting better. [ And Wash does mean that, genuinely. He's too pragmatic to not consider the devastation of the plague an opportunity, one area where the Cetagandans' numbers are a disadvantage, not an advantage. He's too much of a soldier, he's seen too much war, too many bodies to think too much about how cold it is to think of thousands of deaths as a boon rather than a tragedy. But there is still soul enough in him that when things get better, he'll see it as a good, too. He doesn't have to wish cruel fate on an enemy in order to consider them such. ] Disease is -- never pretty.
[ Not the way anyone wants to win a war. But sometimes the way wars are won. ]
They certainly have more resources than anyone else might, if their intention is to help uplift the locals. Wouldn't something like aiding them after a plague help in winning over people to their vision?
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[ She takes a slow, soothing breath. Don't let herself get wound up. Don't get overworked. It helps no one. ]
I know who to speak to. Provided nothing else happens to prevent it, I will see what can be done for these people.
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He can hear her frustration, though. She does truly want to help, doesn't see why the Cetagandans aren't helping. And to their credit, Wash does believe that some part of the Cetagandans truly believes that uplifting the Barrayarans is part of their cause, but. Paved with good intentions, so they say.
More lightly; ] There's things you can do to help the villagers. Personally. Not as significant as obtaining supplies for them, probably, but.
Have you tried talking to them?
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[ And she's not counting on their goodwill, at this point. There is no reason to, when they've been so stubborn and standoffish before now. With this gloom and death hanging over the village like a shroud, their welcome is unlikely to have grown any warmer. ]
welp this got eaten in my inbox ;;
But I think they'll take help where they can get it. [ A slight shrug. ] I know you really do want to help them, and if the Cetagandan's efforts are lacking, your own don't have to be.
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[ Look, her talk with Tucker did not go spectacularly. And it's all a little much to take in right now. What she wants to do, what she's being advised to do, what may be going on...
It's not quite her snapping, but there's a frown threatening on her lips all the same. ]
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He shakes his head. ]
Not what I meant.
-- I've been learning some of the language. The barest basics. I could teach you a few of the simple phrases, if you like, the same ones I've been using with the villagers myself. [ A slight shrug. ] Not exactly enough to hold a proper conversation, but enough to say hello and ask if there's anything I can help them with.
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[ He is being helpful. Though how much she can take in right now, she's not certain. She needs time to process what she's already learned and try to compartmentalize it all, or she'll only grow frustrated with the exercise. Something she learned training under Vishkar was the importance of centering yourself and clearing your mind. ]
Perhaps...another day.
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[ The plague's winding down, but with the village emptier than ever, they need all the help they can get. ]
It could be simpler, too. [ He's not sure if he's pushing too much, but he wants to make the suggestions, at least, now that she's here, now that she's listening. ] Next time you see me here helping them with anything, you can always ask me if you can help, as well.
[ That might be the easiest way for the villagers to learn to trust her, perhaps? Seeing her with someone they knew a little better. Seeing her help them. ]
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[ That's not concern in her voice, just noting an obvious fact. But she can tiptoe around their suspicions, play their game, or she can do something worthwhile. Something that will help these people here and now.
Satya shakes her head. ]
But I tire of doing nothing.
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