Session 146 - At This Point, It's Starting To Look Like Policy

Previously, Across the Horizon...
Celeste Meracydia wants to join the Nanab Foundation. The Nanab Foundation would set Celeste up for life and give her the ability to fund and finance expeditions as far and as vast as she wants, according to Celeste and to the public appearance of the Foundation.
The method by which Celeste can join the Foundation is through the quarterly competition with a current member as a sponsor, or by making such a massive contribution to intrepid exploration that she is granted a special consideration to become a full-fledged member.
Four new members join the Foundation each year. Current members can sponsor one person per year, and every three months a selection of prospective members offer up presentations to stake their claim on joining the Foundation. Three months ago, Celeste gave her presentation, a well-researched and exhaustively-sourced map she claimed to show the location of the Forgotten City, but representatives of the Forgotten City launched a pair of assassination attempts on her, attempts that were thwarted solely through the actions of the crew of the Starfall.
Among the items stolen from the cargo hold of the Seventh Dawn was an Alternan board game — the only surviving copy of Alba & Ater. The crew agreed to travel with Celeste and donate the game to the Foundation to grease the wheel of acceptance, but Captain Bast balked at the threshold. Celeste’s sponsor said they would need to know where the game was found so they could better understand its cultural use within the ruined empire, which clashed with Bast’s stated reason of protecting his livelihood and his crew’s continued employment and his unspoken reason of “we stole this from a bunch of assholes.”
During this negotiation, Celeste learned of the Foundation’s opinions toward her. The Foundation’s Board opposes Celeste’s induction in the wake of the assassination attempts, blaming her for bringing that kind of attention to the organization. Some within the Foundation have even started rumors that Celeste falsified her data or plagiarized her map. A crestfallen Celeste retreated to a bar with her friends to try to determine what would come next with a life’s goal shifting into a mirage over the horizon. A sudden profane dressing-down from Linnet quickly built a wall between Celeste and the crew, and Celeste left the bar to keep her composure.
Through various applications of chemistry and physics, the party delved into the wide world of higher education and expansive exploration, seeking to better understand the Nanab Foundation, those opposing Celeste’s membership through competition, and those opposing Celeste’s membership through malfeasance.
The next quarterly competition takes place at the end of the current week. The frontrunner is Lynn Fairband, a tonberry who claims to have located the Phantom Train and the Phantom Train Station. Her sponsor is Osvald Temenos, a human who lost his explorer wife to tragedy years ago and then took her place as a Foundation member.
Fairband is a kind and soft-hearted explorer with a tiny fraction of Celeste’s confidence and exponentially more focus than the flighty navigator. Despite the efforts of her friends Mogaret Galwin and Zamarud Pantaglios, Fairband could not relax about her upcoming presentation, and is still running through it time and time again to make sure nothing goes wrong.
Temenos is a widower with an ego as broad as the distant horizon. Ever since taking the late Lorithea Temenos’s position as Nanab Foundation Member, Osvald has done little to ingratiate himself to the rest of his fellows. Ever since taking Lynn Fairband on as his protege, Temenos has been a constant presence around the Foundation’s holdings, eager to be seen chatting and fraternizing with any who would give him the time of day. Despite being a childless widower, he mentioned the need to provide for his family in conversation with Luca.
A threatening letter arrived at the Starfall for Celeste, though the ship’s spymaster Chmurka pulled it from the list of deliveries before it could make it to the navigator. A powder inside the envelope grew tenfold and solidified into tiny ceramic plates when exposed to wind, and reckless experimentation found that the plates adhered to the bodies of wind sylphs. Had Celeste opened the letter, hundreds of pounds of ceramic would have slammed into her, severely injuring her at the very least. The letter itself read “IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN IF YOU STAY” in a professional hand. Celeste’s name on the letter came from a different person’s handwriting.
That night, two separate groups journeyed forth to collect handwriting samples. When they came back together, they had their stories to share — Linnet learned a tremendous amount about Cardian airship design, specifically their bomber wings, Bast had an ID for the Windcatcher Powder used in the attack on Celeste, and Yves found a new Guardian Force mask identified as Kirin — but most importantly, they had a match on the envelope’s writing.
Osvald Temenos.
We join our brave adventurers as they put to use the results of their clandestine operations…
**
The Nanab Foundation's Board operate under individual open-door policies. Rare is the Board member who does not entertain questions from prospective members, budding explorers, or interested visitors. A meeting with all of the Board's members is exceedingly rare. Rarer still is the full meeting not called for by the Board itself.
So it is that the Captain of the Starfall, Bast, finds himself appearing before a Board ready to return the world to its expected level of appearance of power.
The chamber in which the Board takes visitors does not have the high-backed chairs of would-be imperialists, the lavish grandeur of nobility, or the spear-and-shield pageantry of Cardian government. It flexes the Board's status in a different way.
Each chair is an antique, personally chosen, potentially even excavated, by its owner. The walls of the chamber display their histories, with maps, blueprints, paintings, and artifacts of peoples lost yet not forgotten. The skull of a sea serpent opens its jaws from the corner, ready to swallow any who are unworthy of the Foundation. A chandelier dating back to the first century of the Alternan Empire glitters overhead.
The Board can be congenial, welcoming, kind, and accommodating. Their surroundings can handle the intimidation for them.
A viera with graying hair and an amber eyepatch over his left eye rests his cane across his lap. A stuffed multicolored bird perches on the back of his wicker chair. "You have the floor, Captain," Sami Lake says neutrally.
Bast, standing at his full height and still having to look up at some of the seated members of the Board, gives a terse nod in response and begins with "Thank you all for attending on such short notice. I understand that is not the usual procedure, but I think this is a matter that concerns all of you." He meets the eyes of Lake, singling him out as the one speaking for the rest thus far. "Put plainly, I would very much like to know why the Foundation has made an attempt to assassinate one of my crewmembers."
An appropriately disapproving murmur runs through the seven. Lake holds a hand up for silence. "A bold claim," he says, "yet one I would be foolish to immediately dismiss. The Foundation has seen more than its usual share of violence in the last year. Please elaborate, Captain."
Bast nods and looks around, taking in the faces in the elaborate chairs, as if looking for a culprit. "Is anyone in this room familiar with Windcatcher Powder?"
More murmuring, betraying nothing. "Enlighten us," says a human with a streak of black preserved in his otherwise gray hair, swept over his left shoulder.
(In the hallway, just beside the door leading to the chamber, Yves stands somewhat awkwardly with a burlap sack in hand. Just... just in case. If it's called for. Nothing to see here, passersby! Go about your hallway walking!)
"Ah." A corner of Bast's mouth twitches up, and is brutally suppressed. "The day comes when I have something new to tell the Foundation. Very well. At rest, it is true to the name. A fine powder, not much different from sand. But the presence of wind-aspected beings...agitates it, for lack of a better word. It expands" - he pulls a tile from his pocket and holds it up to demonstrate - "and it seeks to reach them, directly and promptly." He tosses the tile lightly up in the air, and it zooms towards Linnet, smacking itself in place against her shoulder.
(Linnet has come equipped with her best unimpressed scowl.)
Orrey watches the demonstration, unable to hide his anger completely as he remembers what could have happened to Celeste if the perpetrator had been successful.
"More particles means more force; they augment each other somehow. Three or four is quite enough to cause pain from pressure alone, even without impact. Three or four hundred were taken from the Foundation's collection recently, still in their powder form, and sent to my ship addressed to one Celeste Meracydia. I believe you may be acquainted with her."
The other two viera whisper between themselves, Annika Durrie's eyes on Bast, Martti Ehreth's attention on the tile pressed into Linnet's shoulder. Lake settles back into his chair. Grevendonck's pom bobs with energy.
Every member of the Board draws still when Bast gives the number and the source of the powder. Every member of the Board then reacts when Celeste's name is mentioned.
Lake drums his fingers on his cane. The simple, subtle motion quiets the rest of the room. "Miss Meracydia is safe?" Lake asks.
"From this at least, thanks to watchful crewmates. I'm here to see whether we need to be on guard against more such attempts, and where exactly responsibility for this one lies." Bast's exactly carries a surprising amount of menace for something spoken half as loud as the rest of the sentence. As if remembering something, he puts his Captain face right back on. "We do have a threat of a repeat performance, if that is of interest to you."
Grevendonck's eyebrows rise. Lake rolls one shoulder slowly. "If Miss Meracydia remains here, another attempt would be made on her life, I assume?" he asks with no doubt as to the answer.
Bast pauses a moment, considering Lake intently. "Just so. I take it you're not exactly surprised."
Linnet pulls the tile off her shoulder with her visibly, painfully bruised hand, tucking it into her pocket.
"Miss Meracydia has a reputation as a result of her last presentation," Lake says evenly. "Any threat made to her would likely relate to that event, especially with her recent return to Thalatte."
Bast smiles at this. "Ah. So the version you suggest is that someone from the Foundation was so incensed at the outcome of her presentation that they, what? Were tracking her movements thereafter and took the opportunity when she chanced to dock here again? Or spotted her in the area and were inspired to vengeance?" The smile drops into a pit.
"If we are quite done with jokes, I'd like to point out that this is the third time my crew has saved Miss Meracydia from assassination over her work with the Foundation, and I'm not counting character assassination by the Foundation in that total. At this point, it's starting to look like policy."
"And if it is, it's unwritten. I read every page of your comma-forsaken bylaws," Linnet adds.
"A theory, nothing more." Lake plants his cane on the wooden floor and pushes against it to stand. A rap of the cane stirs the taxidermied bird, which rustles its feathers and then flaps to light on his shoulder. Lake observes Bast. "Miss Meracydia's reputation may have no basis in reality. If someone from within the Foundation is threatening her to the point that you have brought this to our attention versus engaging in vigilante justice, or whatever it is mononymed mercenaries do, it only stands to reason that this would be related to Foundation business, versus a truly personal vendetta." He starts the slow walk to the serpent skull. "I would be delighted to find that I am mistaken, Captain. The thought that there is one -- or more -- among us who would use Foundation resources to attempt murder sickens me."
"What exactly are you accusing her of, sir? There's nothing in your charter forbidding controversial research topics, and nothing that requires the saving of face via attempted murder. Particularly methods of attempted murder that destroy your own building, or other methods that can't tell the subject from a random bystander." Linnet's face is carefully composed, and her hands remain settled in front of her. The only physical sign of her mental state is a slight swishing of her braid, like the lazy flicks of a cat's tail. "I accuse her of nothing. There is no value judgment accompanying my recounting of her reputation. You wish to know why the Foundation is attempting to assassinate a member of your crew. I would like to know who in our number is responsible for such an action." Lake lingers by the serpent's jaws. "We share a common goal, regardless of your belief."
"And what is her reputation, within the Foundation? If that's your first thought, it would seem to be key to this matter, and would perhaps at last help me understand the Foundation's response to the previous two attempts on her life."
Lake looks at the others until someone feels the necessity to fill the silence.
"She means well," Antonia Kasurinen says. Short blonde hair, no longer swept forward to hide the scars on her forehead. "She is reckless and does not think through the ramifications of her actions."
"Which doesn't excuse attempts on her life or anything of the sort," Grevendonck says gruffly. They remove their glasses in order to fail to remove the blotches from them. "Unconscionable actions, those."
"The girl lacks the refinement expected of a full member of the Foundation." Sorsa Randle folds their right leg over the other and adjusts their cuffs. "Enthusiasm does not make up for poor behavior."
"Her presentation was unlike any that I have seen," Juha Faden declares. "I find her to be a promising candidate, regardless of any imagined fears about decorum or fanciful dreams of defiling our status as explorers."
"She nearly got a room full of people killed," says Annika Durrie. One black boot taps impatiently in front of her chair. "She cannot be trusted to lead a team."
"If the work she did was even truly her own," adds Martti Ehreth. He leans forward and clasps his gloved hands together, his forearms resting on his burgundy slacks. "She is a clout-chaser and a thrill-seeker, and does not truly believe in what we do."
"Her reputation, it would seem," Lake offers.
"Do the by-laws say anything about a bunch of delicate feelings?" Faden sneers. "Listen to the lot of you!"
It turns out that the by-laws do not say anything about feelings. Or so Yves discovered the day previously, as he worked through all of them with meticulous attention and a rate of speed explained only by whatever he had added to the coffee he was drinking. "And that," he declared to Linnet, adding another page of summary notes to the stack he was compiling for her, "is why we can't actually use the loophole I thought I found seventeen minutes ago to perform a hostile takeover, re-elect the entire Board, replace them with disgruntled grad students and research assistants and post-docs, and then have them vote Celeste in to get the meeting over with and get to the part where they vote themselves much better stipends, though it was looking very promising briefly, honest, is there any more coffee? I might need more coffee. How's your review going?"
Linnet finishes yet another line of cramped notes in meticulous red pen, and shakes out her writing hand. "If these stuffed shirts are as parsimonious with their funding as they are with their punctuation, I don't know why in the world Celeste wants in."
"Their bounteous lab spaces! Presumably!" It is possible Yves is a smidge manic, but his notes seem solid. Minute handwriting, admittedly.
"Nothing interesting is written down, of course, but there's no dead man's shoes provision, nothing competitive in a non-bureaucratic manner, nothing except 'gross misconduct' and I need a better definition of that before I rely on it...hm." Linnet squints at another line, carefully blows a stack of pages onto another table, and resumes scribbling. "Someday, they'll incorporate something truly sensational into the bylaws, like 'recruits can only be inducted after dueling a poisonous snake and, once conquered, turning it on the thesis panel.' I think that was just rumor, though."
Yves makes a horrible noise as he tries to get a few more drops of coffee out of his cup. "What's interesting, though? What's interesting is what happens if they tie. They're not supposed to deadlock, because it's an even number, but if someone abstains, or doesn't show up, want to guess who gets to do the deciding vote?" He waves a piece of paper back and forth in front of Linnet.
"You? The thesis snake? Random graduate students pulled in from whatever seminar the applicant teaches?"
"...I wish," Yves says, and sighs. "Never got a thesis snake of my own, because... anyway. Deciding vote goes to the senior member of the Board. So if we can get as far as deadlock, let's make sure that person is on our side."
"Hm. Is that in terms of length of tenure on the board, or at the foundation, or just the oldest?"
"...let me check the next six sub-subsections," Yves says, "and I'll get back to you on that. But after a coffee refill. You'll want one too."
"Nah, I'm good. I took a whiff of whatever was in that bright blue bottle you left out - accidentally - and it's not helping concentration, but it's dimmed the headache somewhat."
It's probably just as well that Yves made Linnet some more of the substance from that bottle--"against future headaches"--and sent her into the presentation with it, given the current argument among the Board right now.
"I didn't see any of you rushing down to the members' aid!" Faden shouts.
"And I suppose you were going to be there with steel drawn alongside that dragoon, but you left it back in your war chest, was it?!" Ehreth rises from his seat, one ear flicking with rage.
"Some of us are not simple-minded barbarians!" Randle retorts.
"Simple-minded?" Grevendonck bellows.
Linnet and Bast remain standing in impassive silence, though the flicking of Linnet's braid has sped up to the pace of a deeply agitated cat.
A flutter of dead wings and colorful feathers interrupts the argument and quells the rising fury. The taxidermied bird settles back into rigor mortis atop Lake's chair.
Lake offers the room an utterly humorless smile.
Bast taps his fingers against the pocket he pulled the tile from, the faint clacking sounds suggesting more left in there. He speaks up again in a voice no louder than before. "Thank you for the demonstration. Do I understand correctly that most of these...concerns came up after that memorable presentation?"
"Prior to her presentation on the Forgotten City, Celeste Meracydia was merely a budding explorer with far more enthusiasm than experience," Kasurinen says. "The type to start a dozen projects and finish none of them, leaving her associates to clean up her orphaned messes."
"I cannot say I took more notice of her than any other," Grevendonck allows.
"Were you never young, Captain Kasurinen?" asks Linnet, quietly, with a gentle smile.
"Still am," the mid-fifties captain says with a brash smile.
"Perhaps you might remember that we all started somewhere, yes? Some of us haven't yet gained the experience to leave the 'budding' stage." Linnet ducks her head and cedes the narrative to Bast.
"So - nothing that would have put a stop to her candidacy, or she would not have been at that presentation to start with." With a slow nod, Bast moves a few paces to face off with Martti. "You said that the work she presented may not have been her own, and I understand you are something of an authority on such matters." He adjusts his collar slightly, fingers touching just so for a moment on the way up. "Do you know anything in particular that makes you think so?"
Martti 's eyes flicker with recognition at the signal. "Hearsay, albeit from trusted sources," Martti replies. He adjusts the buttons on his coat, fingers forming a particular pair of symbols for the space of a heartbeat. "We can discuss further later."
I have a compelling offer for you of questionable legality, fellow scholar of the streets, the fingers say, though not in so many words.
(In the hallway, Yves is trying to explain to a helpful staff member that he's fine, he doesn't need directions, he's just... he's fine, okay? Hanging out here. With a bag. It's cool. Actually, yes, a cup of coffee would be marvelous, thank you.)
"Your 'later' presumes that you expect not to resolve this discussion in this meeting, Professor Ehreth. Is there another pressing engagement, or is the room already booked, perhaps?" Linnet's head tilts slightly in innocent curiosity.
"This is rather pressing just now. So unless it's relevant here, I suppose we'll wait and see after this is all behind us." Bast holds Martti's gaze a moment longer, then turns away to resume his former spot. As if remembering something, he looks back. "But no one's saying the map itself is not genuine, yes?" Uncomfortable anxiety drifts through the room.