001 | Dragon's Daughter
>>FROM:@STORMBORN
>>TO:@ALL
Well met, allies. I require a service. Infiltration of the palace was a success; however, during part of my daily tasks, I'd stumbled upon a number of burned letters in the hearth. There appears to be four participants, one of which we cannot identify.
We do not hail from these lands, but to my understanding, some of you may recognize details that would otherwise be mistaken for little to no significance.
[ There will be images of the scavenged scraps of paper, clearly charred. To those familiar with Earth writing from this period, the handwriting will look strangely modern. The writer may seem to even be attempting unsuccessfully to ape an earlier style, but he(?) can't quite manage it. ]
[ ooc: this is for the Royal Pain mission! Help a sister and her boys out? :> Also, Jon might be threadjacking, so if you want to speak to Dany specifically, make it a private message. ]
>>TO:@ALL
Well met, allies. I require a service. Infiltration of the palace was a success; however, during part of my daily tasks, I'd stumbled upon a number of burned letters in the hearth. There appears to be four participants, one of which we cannot identify.
We do not hail from these lands, but to my understanding, some of you may recognize details that would otherwise be mistaken for little to no significance.
[ There will be images of the scavenged scraps of paper, clearly charred. To those familiar with Earth writing from this period, the handwriting will look strangely modern. The writer may seem to even be attempting unsuccessfully to ape an earlier style, but he(?) can't quite manage it. ]
[ ooc: this is for the Royal Pain mission! Help a sister and her boys out? :> Also, Jon might be threadjacking, so if you want to speak to Dany specifically, make it a private message. ]

[a little more information]
>>TO:@ALL
We know this person is in secret correspondence with Lafayette, the King, and the Queen.
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>>TO: ALL
I've got a fair knowledge of this point in history. What're the names?
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[a tiny threadjack; hi arthur!]
hey u two
Lafayette might intervene, but he was a pretty straightforward guy. Helped the Americans out in the Revolutionary War only to get back to France and end up in this mess. No doubt he'll try and protect the royals– no idea how far he's willing to extend that protection.
hi yew!
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[ Viserys... well, it was difficult to determine whether he would return the favor. Rhaegar sounded like a good man from what she'd heard from her advisors, however, and might protect her in the same way. ]
You've no mention of it in history of him offering his aid?
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Is this a mission?
You can count me in, if it means I get to fight.
Anything else, I won't be able to help you. What are you trying to glean from these letters?
lmao she was going to be so frosty before. now he gets lukewarm.
[ That's not to say she wouldn't scoop up a sell-sword at a later point, though... ]
I had to reread...
But you have me curious. What lands do you hail from, exactly?
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No lands you've heard of, I'm sure. I was born in Westeros, and grew up in the lands of Essos. And you?
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As for whether I'm good or bad, by your standards, it doesn't matter. All you need to know is that we're on the same side and I don't intend on betraying my comrades.
That's a foreign name to me. I come from the world known as Earth.
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>>TO:@STORMBORN
I'd be happy to take a look if you want another set of eyes. My memory of history class isn't perfect, so who knows how much help I'll be, but I know the main stuff.
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>>TO:@HAWKWARD
Your memory is far more useful than our lack of knowledge, my lady. Thus far, we've gleaned that the king, queen, and Lafayette are in correspondences with one another. I've obtained these scraps from the hearth, meager though they may be. There is a fourth, though we cannot identify the owner. Our suspicions were that the Regency could be involved in some way.
Do you recall anything about the three from your history lessons? We've also determined that a locksmith is involved in some way... though what his role is in all this remains to be seen, save for the obvious.
[ Kate will see... what Dany does, as she carefully lifts each burnt scrap of paper. There's the smoother scrawlings of Marie Antoinette's writing, and then King Louis', Lafayette's, and finally, the fourth's. ]
[ ooc: this is the mod hint we got! There will be images of the scavenged scraps of paper, clearly charred. To those familiar with Earth writing from this period, the handwriting will look strangely modern. The writer may seem to even be attempting unsuccessfully to ape an earlier style, but he(?) can't quite manage it. ]
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>>TO:@STORMBORN
So the king and queen are going to get executed, I'm not sure whether you were told that as part of your mission or not. I don't remember exactly when but probably within the year? And Lafayette was a big rebel but not the extreme "off with all their heads" kind and I think he got in some trouble later for that and for being a noble? I don't remember exactly what happened with him, sorry.
This fourth handwriting is weird. It looks like somebody who took calligraphy lessons, not actual old timey writing. This could be your Regency agent. This plus a locksmith, maybe they're trying to break the king and queen out? If they were snuck out of the city to safety and didn't die on schedule that would change the whole timeline in a huge way.
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>>TO:@HAWKWARD
I was not told this.
[ Her vitals spike; it's a fortunate thing there are none near her. ]
Who executes them--their soon-to-be successors? What fares of their children?
The nobles of the court made mention of strange persons all within their staffing. Strange like I am, with a foreign accent, supposedly. I imagine we'll require aid with identifying these individuals, but doing so in a way where we avoid exposing ourselves as well.
Do you believe it important to avoid changing the timeline?
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>>TO:@STORMBORN
The people. There's a trial, but I think it's probably a formality. Then they're executed. I don't remember what happens to their children. I think maybe they're imprisoned, or exiled? I'm sorry, their execution is a famous historical event but I don't really know any details.
I do believe it's important that we prevent anyone from changing the timeline. I've had some experience with time travel before joining COST and I've found that even if you make changes that seem like they should improve the world and save lives, there always end up being unforeseen consequences and they're always bad and it's difficult to fix once you've broken it. It's just too dangerous to risk.
Is there any way you could get samples of the handwriting of these people? We could compare it to your letters and maybe figure out that way which of them aren't from this time, if that would help.
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>>TO:@HAWKWARD
Imprisoned or exiled. I see. So the children are meant to suffer for a parent's deeds, even in this place. Thank you for sharing this with me.
Far worse than history already is? Death and war always seem to follow, no matter what action is taken. In my world, war is nearly a way of life, and were we to allow it to continue, nothing would change. No chance for the future. No hope for those oppressed. Whose perspective deems it so terrible a thing? I'm neither arguing for or against altering time, but I wonder how terrible these consequences may be.
I can try to obtain some. You'll remain available?
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>>TO:@STORMBORN
I understand how you feel. It's difficult to stand idly by and allow bad things to happen to people again just because they've happened before. And even worse to be told you have to help those things happen just because they've happened before. It must be especially difficult when it's not your own world's history and you have no attachment to one way being the real history and another being a change.
Once, a friend of mine traveled through time to try to stop himself from growing up to become an evil, murderous tyrant. If that's not a noble cause what is, right? But even with all his good intentions the end result was the world in ashes. And that's before we even get into the danger of time paradoxes and diverging timestreams and destabilizing time itself. I'm not saying don't try to change your world, of course we have to try to make our worlds better. But you change that by working on the present and the future, not by messing around with the past.
Plus, I know it may be hard to imagine given how much carnage is going to happen here but this revolution is actually incredibly important and has a positive impact on the world overall. People throwing off the yoke of an oppressive monarchy to choose their own leaders is a really big step, and the French Revolution is a big part of the reason democracy catches on and spreads and helps create a more equal society. If this gets messed up somehow it could be catastrophic.
Sorry, I don't mean to lecture at you. I've just been thinking about this a lot myself, if you couldn't tell. I'll remain available.