#plot event

Alright.

Okay.

People were being so nice to you on tumblr? You let the pillow fall to the side and stare up at Derse as it floats through the darkness, trying not to let your mind linger too much on the darker darknesses where tentacles and eyes could be found if you were willing to concentrate.

You will still glowing like a beacon, the colour of your bright biolum pulsing with your breathing, cigarette long since burned out.

Fuck dignity she said, you don't need dignity.

You took the wand out of your specibus and turned it in your hands. alchemized from angel feathers and one of Damara's knitting needles it glowed gently with power in the darkness. You'd needed something that glowed, worthless as you were, pathetic, lacking in magic and spine, the glowing helped your mind read this as an object of power to trick your Belief into giving it the power it should, even if lightning was currently the best trick you had. Flight. Fraymotifs. Power. Right then, if you don't need to be dignified, you can do it afraid, you can do it afraid and small and placing the wand to your temple Okay, just like in Persona 76, this isnt a death, this is Trancendence. Power swelled and flared, a light filling the entire area in a burst.

Your eyes opened wide on Derse, floating up out of your bed, you tingled all over, you could Feel the power coursing through you, wings spreading out wide behind you as they appeared and your pajamas changed into something a little more .... Silly. As power filled the room Well you didnt know this was what this outfit was going to look like. Okay you're going to ditch these shorts and put on a different pair then high tail it back to get your shit before someone steals it.

Which is why it was such a surprise when, in 2017, a nuclear attack submarine lurking in the depths near Panama fired an eight-kiloton SUBROC at Hermione, a thriving mer colony in Peru Basin, one of only four worldwide hotbeds for both the mining and refining of manganese, a metal essential to the production of seaworthy electronics and weapons-grade stainless steel. The submarine was not identified, and no government has yet come forward as responsible for the attack (although all eyes are on the United States). It is rumored that the attack was a result of reports of strange underwater flashes off the coast near Peru Basin, speculated to be signs of powerful weapons manufacturing and testing. Two minutes after the warhead’s detonation, long before news of the attack could reach anyone, the Imperial Alert System sent out a confused message from Her Imperious Condescension that read only, “She’s stirring. What happened.”

And yet, faults and foresights are all but forgotten as all across the world, people wake up or turn on their televisions or refresh their social media to the news that in the half-moment their heads were turned, one and a half million merfolk were killed by a foreign power. Humans can only wonder how this will prod the looming threat of war-- and whether war has now become more than a threat. Merfolk, however, have no such luxury. The effects of such a nuclear detonation undersea have only been theorized up until now, and it is still too early to be able to approximate the blast radius or radiation levels (although some Polynesian merfolk have reported feeling the remnants of the >1,000 km/h shock waves). All that anyone can know for certain is that the radiation is doing as radiation does: spreading. Merfolk within 500 nautical miles of the estimated blast zone have already begun to suffer from acute radiation poisoning, and Hermione’s proximity to the Panama Canal, the central passage between the Pacific and Atlantic, means that no ocean is safe.

The merfolk’s reaction to this attack and the urgent radiation crisis remain to be seen as the Empire reels from the blow and the Empress looks into organizing first aid, scientific evaluations, prevention of radiation poisoning, and return strikes; meanwhile, many human governments have issued general advisories to watch out for signs of a mounting offensive and to avoid seawater. It would seem that survival, for merfolk and for humans, grows more and more to depend on sheer luck.

What will you do?

> Discuss the implications of the attack upon the tentative peace between races. > Debate over which country organized the strike and why. > Argue about military action. > Seek asylum from the radiation crisis. > Yell at the ocean. > Look at seaweed.   >  Other