Diplomacy - Eureka Moment

*Santiago's first Eureka Moment, **Diplomacy,** sponsored by Compel\_Bast, interrupts a fight for control of the Crimson Roger in 7th Sea (part 14 of the 7th Sea campaign, 26th Jan 2017).*

**Ivan (DM):** As the sounds of clanging blades pierce your ears, the parrying and battling of the skeletal forms get the adrenaline surging you with the thrill of the battle.  Your blood pounds inside your veins as you have a momentary rush of feeling truly alive.  The rhythmic thump of your heart beats inside of your head.  Suddenly, you feel flush as blood flows straight into your brain and you can feel your pulse inside of your temples.  The steady rhythmic "thud, thud" of your heart slowly turns into the high-pitched clack of boots walking along a stone floor.  The echoing of the steps tells you that you are in a large room, as soft lights illuminate a large square in front of you filled with mixed colors.

The shapes begin to materialize as the colors become darker and you watch as the forms in a perfectly framed screen become the forms of several bodies lying on the floor, and the form of a muscular god-like man, wearing only a polished helmet and a bit of pink cloth, stands in front of the fallen and holds the head of a decapitated woman whose hair appears to take the form of long black snakes.  Several stone forms lay on the other side of another man cowering in fear, holding a buckler polished so brightly that its silver side is reflecting the forms in the room.

The clacking of the boots grows louder and suddenly you hear them stop.  A moment spanning several breaths passes and then you hear a soft and lovely voice say, "Such an emotionally challenging piece, isn't it."

You look over to see a woman with raven black hair, cut short above her shoulders with piercing brown eyes, staring at the painting, then back to you.

**Hector (Santiago):** "Yes.  It is emotionally moving, stirring."

**Ivan:** "It's such a beautiful piece, and yet it shows such an ugly side of humanity.  Perseus -- such a hero of the people for slaying Medusa, favored by the gods and celebrated by the people -- using his power in a jealous fit of rage to ruin poor Phineas's wedding.  To have such power and to use it for such selfish means.  Was he truly a hero?  Or was he a person, just like you and me?  Is he a villain for his actions or are we all just tragic antiheroes?"

**Hector:** "Well said.  That is an astute observation, miss."

**Ivan:** "Well, we do have a few minutes before we report in to our superiors.  Honestly, we should be lucky to be granted the privilege to walk among these pieces, even if they were all once rightfully ours. Santiago -- walk with me."

As you continue to walk a few steps past the painting, you notice a clear window, and on the side are several other paintings.  The window spans the entire floor and ceiling, and from the other side you see the pocketed lights of stars as empty space stares back at you.  You can actually see the marbled form of Earth sitting above in the distance space between you and the window.

"Mankind's history is pocketed in stories.  What great irony that ours is so like young Phineas.  At the peak of our happiness only to have a stronger, more powerful, more celebrated hero come in and wrest it from our grasp.  The question is, Santiago, how are we going to treat our Perseus."

As you continue to walk through the gallery, you notice two forms standing on either side of a large arched doorway on the far end.  As you get closer, you notice they are heavily armed forms of quadrupeds holding long sizzling spears with their two arms in a guarded pose.  They seem completely shielded in a resonating blue armor that resembles a beetle's shell.  As you get closer, the woman stops and casts her eyes down.  Both of the quadrupeds move in front of you and her, and you can hear a guttural tone that at first you don't recognize, but after a moment becomes extremely familiar to you.

You watch as the woman slides down to her knees, her legs underneath her as she leans forward into a prostrating position.  Her hair parts on the back of her neck to reveal the bare spot -- slightly shaved -- on her nape.  The guard takes something from his utility belt and holds it over her neck, and you can hear the sickening crunch as her entire body shivers slightly.  The guard pulls his hand back to reveal a textured chrome disk with a blinking light right above it.  You watch as the guard stares at you, waiting.

**Hector:** This is familiar.  I don't think I have a choice.  I bend down and reveal my nape.

**Ivan:** You bend down an put yourself forward in a similar way that the woman does.  And you can feel a brief moment like somebody putting a fork to your neck -- just like a very small pinch -- as suddenly a sharp pain as four points kind of click on either side of your neck.  And you feel your entire body shudder as a spike of brief uncomfortable pain soars through you.  And you feel as these tendrils lock into the base of your spine.  You can also hear the sound -- the rhythmic pulse of the beeping as it starts to get in tune with your heart.

After that, you watch as the quadrupeds both move to the side, granting you passage through the main door and you both get up and you walk into the next chamber.  As the doors part aside, you can see you're in a much smaller room, but just as aniquately delicate and beautiful.  You actually notice at this point that the walls have such a smooth texture to them that it seems like Michaelangelo chiseled the entire arch around it.  It seems synonymous with marble that you would assume would be in renaissance sculptures, but it is so beautifully textured and detailed that it reminds you of something living, almost.  And as you walk forward, you can see a singular table, that's built into the floor.  It seems to be almost a solid piece with it, as it wraps up into a horse-shoe design.  You see three forms are sitting above as you naturally walk into the center of this horseshoe design.  Nine feet above you, you can see can see tall luminous forms that have long, colored, beautifully elegant robes with featureless faces as they stare down at you.  You feel a psychic intrusion come into your head as the rumbling of your mind as you start to hear words penetrate to you in, not words, but emotions and feelings.  And the emotions and feelings address you as, "Ambassadors.  To what do we owe the pleasure?"

You hear the woman speak up on the side.  She says, "Ambassadors," and she speaks out loud, "I apologize for not linking with you in the way that you're accustomed.  Our voices are still primitive, as I'm sure you understand.  We have come, and are asking for an extension on rationing for the refugees camps still stationed on Terra and Mars.  We are currently working on evacuating them, but we need more time."

You can see as the nine-foot arched curved walls lift up, as you see several smaller quadrupeds.  These ones are occasionally going down on all six, and lifting back up.  They come into the main room, and they start making pictures and shapes of the planet.  A bigger one seems to be conducting them around.  Through these shapes, as well as the intrusion into your head, they begin to communicate to you in some of the symbols that are starting to become very familiar to you.  She says, politely, that this is impossible, that the drone ecosystem is already activated.  "After the drones have been automated, we cannot avert them, because the colonization process has begun.  We should be grateful that we've delayed them as long as we have.  Many eggs have been spoiled due to their lethargy."

You can see as the woman is starting to tear up, and this is upsetting her.  She asks them, "Please.  There are millions still on Mars alone.  If we don't have a chance to evacuate them, they will all die!"

And you can hear the ambassador -- the collective three -- come back with symbols and words and emotions again, "We are sorry, but that is not our problem.  Our problem is our species.  Your species, your problem.  Their bodies will not go to waste.  They will be used as fodder in which to build our colonies up.  Their forms will be put to good use."

[**Hector:** Am I familiar with mind linking?

**Ivan:** It's starting to become clear that you are an ambassador to these creatures, along with your partner here.  You have definitely done something to gain the privileges of speaking to these creatures, at least at the moment.  If you think that's because of mind linking, I'll let you determine that.]

**Hector:** I want to try to convey images and emotions and feelings to them of sorry, sadness, death, despair, tragedy.  I want to say that millions of souls will perish, and get that message through.

**Ivan:** You start projecting the pain, the terror, the sorrow, the emotion of just sadness and suffering and strife into them.  And you can see as the forms are shaken and you can see them visibly getting unsettled.  You can see that the beetles, in the midst of this link of command between the conductor and the smaller beetles, everything is starting to get agitated.  You watch them as they start to scatter and come back, like there is confusion.  You can feel a protrusion straight into your brain.  It brings you down to your knees, and it simply says, "Stop!"  You look down and you can see blood running down from your nose.  "Why do you persist with these angles?  These feelings, these emotions -- they hurt!  We do not like them!  We do not want them!  We do not understand them!  You try, and try, and try to tell us what this is.  We don't comprehend.  We don't know.  Our species, our problem; your species, your problem."  You get up and you can feel it's coming from your ears a little bit too.

The woman next to you goes, "Santiago!  It was a good try.  Let's try something else."  She goes back to them and says, "We were planning on taking several of our equipment and metal pieces -- our ships -- with us.  If we leave some with you to use as --" and she tries to think of the word "-- fodder -- feed -- whatever -- instead of our people, will you give us more time?"

She looks at all of them.  They don't even look at each other, but you can definitely tell that this is the stage in which they pass information between each other.  Then it comes back to the conductor who moves the small, little beetles around, and comes back to you and says, "That is acceptable.  Leave.  Leave ships, as per metric ton of people you wish to evacuate, and we will delay another Terran cycle (a year).  Is that adequate?"

The woman bows her head and prostrates herself showing her single little scarab in the back. [**Hector:** I'll do the same thing.]  Both of the sides come up and the beetles start to go back inside of the walls with the conductors leaving.  That's a sign that you're dismissed.  You walk back out through the main doorway.

With that, you continue to look through into the main gallery and you can see the shapes in front of you.  In particular you stare out in the midst of the stars, and you can see Earth in its distant glory, so far away.  You can see the actual ozone is just completely dissipating, and it looks hotter, barren, more molten than how you and I recognize it.  You look to her, and that's when you start to hear the sound of clanging again as your fading consciousness comes back in.

A charred skeleton continues to look at you with its smiling face as a piece of metal holds it back.  You throw it out of the way and slash at it, watching as bones scatter everywhere in front of you.

*7th Sea resumes.*