The Arena Riots ( open, gamewide )

[civilobedience]

Who: The Militia, the city, and you.
What: The Arena Riots.
Where: The Arena, Griss Twist.
When: Newdi, Eliaderen 1. (Monday Oct 1st)
Notes: Companion post for questions and plotting is here.
Warnings: Violence, police brutality, disturbing content and imagery, graphic death.

It's apparent even before dawn that something out of the ordinary is happening. Canton sheriffs are roused from their sleep or pulled away from their work to be told that on no uncertain terms, today will be a day that they do not leave their neat lines on the map. That their individual offices will be responsible for all crime and unrest within their jurisdictions, with no help; the powers that be offer no details, but the creeping feeling in their presence suggests no questions would be tolerated anyway – the implication that they'll all be watched is a strong one. In Mog Hill, Sheriff Norrington proceeds as he always does under such orders. In Mafaton, leadership is stoic but one deputy laughs, sharp and bitter, while the Emissary of the Council merely checks his watch, unseen underground. Sir Hellsing is pulled away from her dinner in the Guild Hall, a Sobek Croix deputy anxiously relaying the news. The sound of shattered glass disturbs the pre-dawn silence in Flyside, a brick hurled by some faceless figure into the front window of Thames – and nothing else.

From the Spire, hooded Militiamen move quietly and uniformly south, to Griss Twist. They are followed by wagons, full of prisoners.

Comments

[mightyfallen]

This can't be happening, he thinks suddenly, desperately, as the first man falls to the ground, as the second woman is dragged out into the open in her painfully inadequate armor. The crowd is roaring and reeling and his fingers would crush the rail between them and him if they could, but he can't feel or think anything at all except that he can't be letting this happen. It doesn't matter right now that he has no control over the Militia, that his political position is still precarious at best, his influence negligible in certain circles, and his Militia contacts barely numerous enough to save one soul, let alone all of them. It doesn't matter because he was born and raised a king.

That's the downside side of divine monarchy, he supposes with a half hysterical sort of cynicism. After all that he's been denied his birthright and his crown, he can't rid himself of the belief that he was born with great purpose. Even if all that will be written of him is that he died so a better man could rule, at his core he knows that is only the last of many responsibilities. He's supposed to make people's lives better—not one person, not just his own people, all people, because what limits could there be to his potential but his own courage to realize it? How can a man raised to wield such immeasurable power face any challenge, no matter how impossible, and say, I can't?

Instead he thinks, I failed.

But if he can do nothing else, he will not hide from that fact. Tomorrow he will get up and carry on, build upon the foundations he's protecting today, so that when the moment is right he will have the strength to act instead of this welling-up of helplessness, this maddening, impotent frustration. But today people will die, and he will watch, and he will not look away, because the least he can offer the damned is his attention. Because he couldn't look away if he wanted to. Because he shouldn't be allowed to forget what failure costs.