Meanwhile in Allswell
Moderator: (Elwynn) Prince of Elwynn
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- "The devil in the details"
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Re: Meanwhile in Allswell
Also, it would be a great help if you could remember your account details. Burt here is dying to try out the 'inversion based cranial stimulation' techniques they was telling us about on some lecture a week ago, and I don't think I can dissuade him for it from much longer."
The other Emirati Riddaren had by now taken off his gasmask and had a gleefully expectant look on his face.
"The gin's evidence, sir, though we might let you have some for the bruising afterwards."
- Abdullah al-Zaraqi
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Re: Meanwhile in Allswell
Abdullah excitedly stands up and wants to leave but he loses his balance and falls back onto the chair.
"Here is my bank card, I have one account for payments and one for savings. The code for them is 7687. I remember it because it spells 'sour' on my mobile phone, just like the smell of this patient I had recently. I don't recall her name but I think you mentioned it earlier? Really bad intimate hygiene..."
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- "The devil in the details"
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Re: Meanwhile in Allswell
"I would like to say that you are free to go..." At this point a contingent of five cudgellers trooped down into the basement wearing an incongruous mixture of modern tactical gear and steel cuirasses. "But these gentlemen are here to arrest you for violations of Article 10." At which point Bob considerately passed across to the Doctor a slip of paper with the relevant written down:
"Mercifully, that's not our department. There's some blueskin upstairs, parleying with the gaffer and the dotty bint, who's running the show. I doubt she'll be as considerate. Ta for the gin. All yours lads."10. Anyone who treats any staff member of the Princely Household with disrespect may be charged with the crime of Insolence and shall upon conviction thereof be liable to a fine of one thousand erb or to imprisonment with forced labour for a period not exceeding ten years.
- Abdullah al-Zaraqi
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Re: Meanwhile in Allswell
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- "The devil in the details"
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Re: Meanwhile in Allswell
"Can you chaps not even control one mangy pox-monger?" asked an incredulous Bob, as Burt silently unholstered his Glock and shot Abdullah in the leg.
"Is this your idea of leading me to safety‽" cried an outraged Noor from the top of the stairs, as she experimented with the interrobang.
"I'm sorry, your Majesty." Thorgils apologised. "I think we may want to try the other door. The exit could be that way."
Most disconcerting of all for the Arandur however, was when Yumi chose that moment to wink at him once more.
Re: Meanwhile in Allswell
Ahmed's dedication to the Queen was one of the reasons why he was so disappointed with the fact that he was left out in the hallway. It had been Noor herself who, with one remark, had dismissed him. The Arandur had send him out of the room, and here he was, waiting. Ahmed had no idea what was going on inside the room. There was no way to protect his Queen now.
While he was pondering this, Ahmed saw a short, ugly man running through the corridors, towards him. The guardsman almost bursted out in laughter, looking at the ridiculous way the man was moving forward. He looked quite drunk. But there was something in the eyes of the short man that kept him from doing so. A cold, dead stare.
Ahmed walked up to the man, who by now had crashed awkwardly against a wall, trying to stay upright.
"Sir" Ahmed said, whilst reaching for his pistol "what in heaven's name are you doing here?"
The short man stumbled back into the hallway, the way he came. Ahmed followed him and saw the man run into a door, where he was hit on the head by a mean-looking fellar with bad teeth.
What the hell was going on here?
2.Eki Aholibamah Verion, Queen in the North
3. Ludovic Verion, Lord of Blackstone and Governor-General of the Iron Company
4. Jeremy Harwinsson Archer, super sleuth
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- "The devil in the details"
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Re: Meanwhile in Allswell
The only sensible conclusion was that a moment of narrative incongruity had occurred. As the dubious ethereal threads of this precarious reality gradually re-coalesced, Thorgil noticed that the Civic Inspector, Eoin Pattermore, the short portly chap who he had reluctantly brought along to handle the administrative aspects of condemning the hospital was stood out in the corridor, slumped against the wall looking bewildered and concussed. This was quite an achievement since, as far as the Arandur could remember, he had been sat at the desk in the small office the whole time whilst Noor and Yumi had been arguing, ignored and forgotten by everyone, in fact he had been left to get on with the report whilst the Queen insisted on leaving, and now he was outside ahead of them. Something strange was a foot. Thorgils hoped he was the only one who had noticed. If it was just him going mad, that was something he could medicate for later, but if everyone was affected, that would be another matter entirely.
Glancing across to the Leonid Guardsman, the Arandur decided to focus his mind on something useful.
"You, yes, you. The one dressed like a fancy Zouave. Do something useful. Holster that gun and protect your Queen."
- Noor bint Daniyal
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Re: Meanwhile in Allswell
"Arandur! Yumi's gone. I guess we're on our own. Can we get to Goldshire from here?" she shouted to the Arandur across the hall.
She heard breathing going faster and more hissing. Had someone's lungs been shot?
She looked to the other direction. Nah, it was just Pattermore having a panic attack.
NOOR AS-SALAAM BINT DANIYAL UMRA SULEIMAN AYREON-KALIRION IBN AL-MAJEED AL-OSMAN BIN SATHRATI AF ETTLINGUM FREYU UMM ZAHIR AL-DIN OF WAFFEL-PAINE
Queen of Goldshire, the Elian Lands, Leng, Elwynn, Amokolia and Uppland
Re: Meanwhile in Allswell
"Please come with me, o, Queenly Lady. The Orchidée en Ciel Un is waiting to take us to Goldshire Hamlet. The Groupe d'intervention et Tireurs d'Elite of the Fleur de Lys-Longships Guard have, in conjunction with the cudgellers, cleared and secured the route to the Royal Helicopter."
"While you are staying in Goldshire", the Secretary of the King's Court continued, "I will return to Eliria to brief Your Kingly Husband regarding Your Riverine Majesty's grievances and there will be a solution that will keep You safe during Your stays in Elwynn while at the same time enjoying freedom of movement."
The Lady Yumi then took the Queen Consort Mortal's hand and gently led Her Riverine Majesty out of the room and out of the building. Protected and escorted by a wall of (wo)men from the Groupe d'intervention et Tireurs d'Elite of the Fleur de Lys-Longships Guard they walked to the nearby field where the Orchidée en Ciel Un was waiting, arriving there safely without any incident.
Jarla of Gudridsbýur
Lady Secretary of the King's Court
- Abdullah al-Zaraqi
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Re: Meanwhile in Allswell
- Noor bint Daniyal
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Re: Meanwhile in Allswell
"You know very well that I do not approve of this. At least, let me have my Leonid guardsman with me. I want Ahmed."
Noor looked out of the window. She saw the mighty city of Ardashirshahr getting smaller and smaller. She realised that the helicopter could not fly all the way to Avaldsnes, they would have to find an airstrip somewhere and change to an airplane. She contemplated escaping, but came soon to her senses. A queen can't be seen being chased around an airport. That's just sad.
"Lady Yumi -- I am your queen, and I order you to fly me to Goldshire now!"
NOOR AS-SALAAM BINT DANIYAL UMRA SULEIMAN AYREON-KALIRION IBN AL-MAJEED AL-OSMAN BIN SATHRATI AF ETTLINGUM FREYU UMM ZAHIR AL-DIN OF WAFFEL-PAINE
Queen of Goldshire, the Elian Lands, Leng, Elwynn, Amokolia and Uppland
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- "The devil in the details"
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Re: Meanwhile in Allswell
- Noor bint Daniyal
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Re: Meanwhile in Allswell
Noor grunted. She didn't particularly believe the lady next to her, but she decided to stay silent for the next half hour. Then suddenly, she said. "I still want my Ahmed back."
NOOR AS-SALAAM BINT DANIYAL UMRA SULEIMAN AYREON-KALIRION IBN AL-MAJEED AL-OSMAN BIN SATHRATI AF ETTLINGUM FREYU UMM ZAHIR AL-DIN OF WAFFEL-PAINE
Queen of Goldshire, the Elian Lands, Leng, Elwynn, Amokolia and Uppland
Re: Meanwhile in Allswell
"Given what has happened to you lately those Leonid Guards of yours don't seem terribly indispensable", the Secretary of the King's Court continued, I think you should review your security arrangements. You would be much better off security wise in Goldshire with some Emirati Riddare around you. Your inlaws may also be willing to dispatch some Mango Rangers to protect Your Royal Person."
Jarla of Gudridsbýur
Lady Secretary of the King's Court
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- "The devil in the details"
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Re: Meanwhile in Allswell
[Ardashirshahr Aerodrome]
Even though the Kingdom had inherited most of the apparatus and personnel of the Panopticon, it was impossible to conceal the scale of the destruction that had been wrought in Allswell. The Public Relations Department had suggested attributing the unfortunate calamity to some party organised by the notorious socialite 'Mona Mortensen' having gone awry. The Arandur had considered the proposal, and ordered his press officers transferred to the sanitation department where they could be more productive, with bleach and scrubbing brushes.
Four months had passed since the horrors of the day and night of Hyre the 18th of Araroqpinu. In his dreams, Thorgils could still hear the screams, taste the blood and smell the foul odour of gas. Then there were the bodies, so many bodies. The dead and the dying, lying contorted where they had fallen. Some had clawed at the walls, at the floors and at each other, in their desperation to escape the hidden killer that choked the life and sanity out of them. The Queen and all of her various guards had barely left the building before the smell of gas had become impossible to ignore. Hastily, Thorgils had donned his mask, as did all those around him. It had been too late.
The news bulletins put out on the Elwnet the next day had reported a gas explosion which had partially destroyed a wing of the Tokaray al-Osman Hospital. The entire building was condemned as unsafe and would be demolished. A piece of falling debris, it was reported, had claimed the life of the inspector from the Bailiwick's Civic Engineering Authority. Thorgils remembered Eoin Pattermore laughing as he sliced into his own gut with a scalpel. Worse still, he could remember his own guffaws as the fat man's intestines had spilled out onto the floor, how Eoin had fumbled the slippery offal between his chubby fingers, how he'd sobbed as the realisation dawned that he couldn't merely push them back in. How the blood had spilled everywhere.
One hundred and ninety-four patients, mostly expectant mothers and babies in the maternity wing had perished. Of the two hundred and forty hospital staff, two hundred and thirty-six had died. The Cudgellers sent in to rescue survivors had been in no mood for taking prisoners after the contents of the specimen jars found in one of the storerooms became common knowledge. Twenty of his Emirati Riddare had perished, either asphyxiated by the gas or as a consequence of the madness that followed. Thorgils would have joined them, should have done perhaps. The last thing he remembered, as the ravening effects of delirium began to crowd his conscious mind, was frantically injecting himself with a vial of Epinephrine, as though he expected it to do any good. At least that option had been available to him, otherwise it might have been the Pattermore school of attempted self-surgery.
The next thing he could remember was being sat on a park bench. He had been one of the first to be injected with the anti-brassicosis serum, and as a consequence he had survived. No one would tell him what had happened in the intervening moments. By his own reckoning, Thorgils had twenty minutes of his life on that day that he could not account for. What had happened elsewhere in the hospital he could read up on more readily.
One of the hospital orderlies, a porter wasn't it, although some said it was the janitor, had tried to stab a Leonid Guard. There was quite a fracas but the man got away and wasn't identified amongst the dead. This suspects whereabouts remained unknown. Every attempt to identify him was being made. A forensic data team had flown in from Eliria and was trying to piece together the wrecked databases of the hospital, in an attempt to retrieve the CCTV footage, personnel files and any records of what it was the conspirators were trying to achieve.
Now the bastard who had been the cause of it all, that al-Zaraqi, he had some how contrived to survive. In spite of being beaten, shot and finally gassed by his own co-conspirators, he still lived. It had grieved Thorgils' dearly that any serum should be wasted on such a slimy, asocial, piece of filth. But someone needed to face justice, so reluctantly the Arandur ordered that no effort was to be spared in saving the man, who was now in a medically induced coma. That, a month later, Thorgils received the news that he had been appointed to the Court of Star Chamber, and thus would be responsible for al-Zaraqi's eventual prosecution before the King's Bench, was an irony that amused Thorgils immensely.
For the meantime he was content to walk alongside Doctor Abdullah, as the good doctor was wheeled, strapped and chained to the bare metal frame of a hospital trolley, across the runway tarmac towards the waiting cargo aircraft and detachment of Longship Guards who would take the wretch to Dragonsfold and whatever His Majesty's pleasure had in store for him there. The mask they had put around al-Zaraqi's face had been an especially nice touch. It reminded Thorgils of a muzzle placed on a rabid dog.
Around him stood a cordon of twelve Gentlemen-at-Cudgels, five City Police and a pair of Emirati Riddare. All nineteen of them, and the Arandur himself armed with carbines and just willing al-Zaraqi to so much as twitch in a manner that would justify blasting the useless sack of meat apart. The airport porter pushing the trolley would, on the other hand, probably prefer not to be splattered with blood.
It would be good to get rid of this man, even if it meant that the ongoing operation to purge the sewers and waterways of an entire Bailiwick with chlorine and quicklime would once again monopolise his attention. He just wished for once in his life that the damned environmentalists, self-interested Cabsentians and the Elfinshi Fury nutjobs would realise that the alternative would be far, far, worse and cut him some slack. Fat chance. Damned if there's an outbreak of Brassicosis, damned if people next to one of the largest rivers on Micras have to get their drinking water from tankers and bottles.
At least Her Majesty, the royal target magnet, was unlikely to risk another trip to the Emirate in the near future. Thorgils had enough problems.