socialcapital | [ JACKSON HEART ]

[if Jackson Umbra were extremely ~~evil~~ hot. there I fixed it for you.

well... Sparrow will drift toward the large tent first, poking his head in to see what's going on.]

A tall, stately woman dressed VERY Solar-coded, and an even taller, buffer woman standing behind her as a bodyguard, are handing out bowls of food to the hungry. Anyone who asks where they got the food from is told that the Unconquered Sun is who they have to thank; anyone who offers to pay is gently turned down, told to save it for themselves. In a famine like this they could never dream of charging money to feed the hungry, she says.

The murmurings of the crowd are very 'wow, maybe not all anathema are bad...?' 'at the very least this lady seems benign...' 'and really, what has the local lord done for this famine? these anathema aren't even from here and they still...!'

[Looking around the tent to see where the soup is coming from. Are they making it themselves or is there like. a kitchen in the tent...?]

There's like one really stressed out baggy-eyed nerd with a bunch of camp stoves and shit watching a LOT of different pots. Because he's away from the public eye he's not bothering to hide his Moonsilver tattoos or his like. Raccoon tail.

The food all seems to be real and mundane food; whenever he runs out of raw ingredients or spices he scurries out back and comes back with a sack of rice or something.

[Hmmm. Well Firuz has to be around here somewhere. Wandering up to the front of the line to talk to the tall, stately woman.]

At first she looks like she's going to scold you, but she takes one look at your abyssal ass and immediately looks very alarmed. But like, mom-seeing-skinny-teenager alarmed. NOT Solar-seeing-Abyssal alarmed. Maybe she doesn't really know they exist yet...?

"You poor thing! You must have had a horrible time. I'll get you some soup."

[Sucks to be whoever was at the front of the line]

Thanks, I'm starving.

They get their turn too, they're fine. Anyway the clearly-a-Solar scoops you up a bowl of soup and hands it over. It does smell pretty good.

[taking the soup but not eating it yet]

So who's bankrolling this shit, anyway?

Edited 2026-01-25 20:02 (UTC)

"This was only possible through the blessing of the Unconquered Sun, obviously! As his messenger, it was my responsibility to help those in need."

As if to emphasize this she makes her castemark glow. She IS a Zenith. She IS going to talk more about the sun if she isn't derailed.

The Unconquered Sun makes rice appear out of thin air?

"Of course not. That would just encourage us to be complacent. But our benefactors have chosen to remain anonymous out of an excess of humility."

Oh, I'm sure he did.

The tall woman in the background turns her head minutely to fix you with the kind of stare that usually only people that think they might need to murder you get.

Sky clears her throat. "Something like this is an effort that takes many of us working together, obviously. There's no one mystery benefactor who can reverse a famine singlehandedly."

[meets the bodyguard lady's stare. that's right, he knows things.]

No shit. Heard it's a lot easier to start one.

She's SO ready to throw down the second Sky gives the okay. Sky does not give the okay.

"... I'm no logistics expert, myself. I don't claim to know all the factors that go into a famine. I'm more focused on the results - helping the people who are suffering."

I'm sure you are. Thanks for the soup.

[ducking back out of the tent with his soup. he has no idea if this will pay off in Firuz showing himself but if not, and if this stupid dream thing makes him follow linear time, he can always circle back around to tail one or the other of the tent runners back to their hidey hole.

in the meantime, maybe he oughta check out the temple.]

The temple definitely feels like a zone where you could draw aggro. Around it and in the temple grounds a lot of soldiers and city guards are having a big celebration.

There are no monks officially in attendance - this is too crass for their image, so they're all staying soberly within the temple grounds - but laid out in the middle of a small park JUST outside the temple grounds is some kinda fucked up party funeral where they have some teenager's corpse filled with spears lying in the middle of this party crowd.

It's really hard to tell after they die but this one DOES still have some gold jewellery, the bright gold type that Solars like to wear, so it looks like this is a grand ol' We Killed An Anathema party.

[ok yeah he remembers this. or at least he can put two and two together with the mind control memory.

is Firuz in the crowd somewhere being angsty,]

You can't see him, but that doesn't really mean much with Firuz.

[ugh that's right. bitch.

can he stealthily murder one of the party-goers and then slip away into the crowd. just to fuck things up a little. WILL YOU SHOW YOUR FACE THEN FIRUZ]

He can absolutely murder a partygoer. As soon as someone realizes there's been a murder everything sort of explodes in chaos. The monks come out of the temple for this one, trying to restore order and find who did this.

So FIRUZ doesn't show up for this part, but there IS a little bird that perches on the temple wall to watch the chaos.

[he does notice birb because he notices everything but doesn't think much of it.

as a parting shot, summons and throws one of his knives at a monk (and he's definitely aiming for somewhere soft and vital but the goal is more to alarm the monk than to actually kill monk) before using Stealth charms to vanish into the panicked crowd and wander back to tentwards. the knife vanishes as soon as it flies past (or, lands in) the monk.]

Well now the monks are Activated and they're going to also head in the direction of the tent, apparently activated enough to break what seemed to be an uneasy forced truce now that Clearly An Anathema Has Done A Crime (source: they don't know who did it, so it was probably an anathema)

Anyone on the street who can move to get out of the way does. The dozing merchant near the end of the street wakes up and blinks blearily at the sudden flurry of activity. The little bird follows down here as well, landing on the overhang of his little booth.

The two women who were serving food come out of the tent and seem pretty ready to throw down with a bunch of monks over this. The taller woman does in fact turn into a nine foot tall enormous eagle lady. It is possible they're just going to be doing some actual turf war to go with the political turf war they were already engaged in...

[Notices birb because, well, noticing shit is what he does.

Does he recognize this birb, perhaps from that one Sparkle game where she remixed everyone's gooey insides for funsies?]

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