To Reach

At the same time that Alcendis Varenonde pledged to rebuild the Eddy  and the Water Seekers, she also requested that the Allied Isles revive the humanitarian aid fleet that her parents had run. She offered as a starting point those few of Salibret's conduit boats that still existed.

Structure

Unlike the Varenagos fleet, To Reach does not have a centralized chain of command. It is made of subfleets each consisting of five vessels ranging in size from single-person transport to mass evacuation capacity. The subfleets are stationed at participating ports in the Cluster Islands. They can operate independently, but keep in communication with each other to coordinate their deployment.

Within the subfleets, members fill roles such as pilot, dispatcher, command, maintenance, inventory. There is no relative rank between them; all roles are necessary to operate the subfleet, and individuals are encouraged to change roles as able and willing to prevent burnout.

When an emergency arises, the islands' local authorities make the decision whether to request an aid boat, and call on the organization's dedicated radio frequency. The nearest dispatcher then determines what kind of a response is needed, and either deploys their subfleet's boats or taps the conduit signal line to request assistance from those on other islands.

Public Agenda

Alcendis's pledge to restore the Eddy was widely interpreted to mean a return to Seeker involvement in disaster rescue. She has admitted that part of her motivation for proposing the new aid fleet was to prevent the islands from returning to their complete dependency on the Water Seekers.

Assets

The fleet has grown from those first three boats donated in 2040 Vol to the current total of 58 subfleets, 290 individual boats, and nearly 4500 personnel (as of 2070 Vol).

History

The idea of a humanitarian aid organization has its roots in a history of scattered instances in which unexpected help appeared in the aftermath of natural disasters or events of great violence. Small groups of strangers, at first believed to be supernatural manifestations of the ocean but now known to be Water Seekers, would walk in over the water and take whatever steps necessary to aid survivors. For 2000 years Cluster Islanders came to depend on the Seekers to come to the rescue in times of crisis.

Walemin was the first to consider the idea of having a team dedicated to responding quickly to emergencies, rather than having to wait for the Eddy Seekers to notice. Early in her term as Uniter, Walemin visited the Eddy to request the Seekers move to a small island within the Inside Sea so that they would not have as far to travel. When they refused, Walemin commissioned a fleet of conduit-compatible boats dedicated to emergency transportation. This fleet proved the viability of the concept, conducting multiple evacuations and transporting thousands of patients for seven years until Walemin's death in 2014 Vol.

When Kezlaf took over as Uniter he did not officially disband the fleet, but used the boats to personally travel around the cluster, and later to send his Wringer on missions. Emergency aid was taken over by private citizens, ranging from the esteemed (Salibret Varenagos of Zaiyev) to the illegal (Delu and her Dissolvers). Such a patchwork approach meant that sometimes different groups would find themselves accidentally working at cross-purposes.

Salibret's fleet, which Tremmew ran after her death, was the largest and most active. In 2030 Vol, when Kezlaf launched his Eruptor into Zaiyev's largest volcano, lahars swept over most populated areas and falling rock and ash destroyed most of the boats at anchor. While rescuing survivors, Delu commandeered those boats that were still seaworthy.

For the next ten years, the Dissolvers were the only significant group responding to emergencies, but they could not work openly because of their opposition to the Unity. After the Dissolution in 2040 Vol, Alcendis demanded the return of the boats that rightfully belonged to her, and then presented them to the new Allied Isles as the seed of a new aid fleet.

To reach the need

Parent Organization

Allied Isles

Location

Cluster Islands

The organization's name comes from Alcendis's memory of Tremmew explaining the fleet to her:

"There are a lot of reasons people need help. More than we can fix by ourselves. That's why we send the boats out, to reach all the people who need our help."

— Tremmew, to five-year-old Alcendis