Personal System Calendar: Year 00015, Day 1-28, Month VI: The Imperium
Imperial Calendar: Year 6859, 1st to 28th day of the 6th Month
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The Injured, Exhausted and Homeless Beastfolk
Bringing things back to the present, the actual EBT refugees had now arrived at the doorstep of the village's northern forest entrance. They had been guided there by Baliti Kotoko and a handful of Southern Beastmen warriors, who led them toward Maya Village's location.
The guards had already been notified of their arrival, though the notice had been vague in every sense, since all of the earlier information had been relayed only a few days prior, without any real intelligence on where this group currently was. Still, it gave them time to prepare and understand the scale of what was coming.
August and Chief Red had also been kept informed as the situation continued to develop, since certain members within the village still held the privilege of communicating through the party chat system tied to August's Personal System. Its range extended as far as 10,000 km from August. Anyone within that distance could read the messages sent through it; anyone outside it simply couldn't, even upon later entering range, the message wouldn't retroactively appear in their mind. This was, in part, a safeguard, meant to keep those less adept than August from having their minds overloaded by a flood of incoming messages.
In any case, they'd been kept updated about the situation. From a security standpoint, August's instructions to the village security force were simple: remain vigilant. Even though these were refugees, there was no telling how they might react to a village filled with beasts and unfamiliar sights, particularly given that Maya was a majority-human settlement, and these refugees had been attacked by a combination of species that included humans.
August wanted the security force to be especially careful with people who had just recently been through trauma, since reopening those emotional wounds carelessly could cause more harm than good, it may even spark unintended chaos within the village.
Their arrival hadn't been formally announced, likely because Chief Madok and his brother had been too consumed with handling the crisis on their end to remember that humans kept their own protocols. It fell to Baliti to quickly explain the situation to those who greeted them.
But August had already predicted as much, and so had Red in his own way, that something like this could happen. It wasn't comparable to their own highly organized village administration, which was always prepared to handle whatever might arise within the village, its territory, and its immediate surroundings.
The way this had been handled wasn't exactly customary, but they'd already received some advance warning through their contact within the village, Chief Tamba, however vague that warning had been. Red gave the council his orders on how to handle it with a safe and humanitarian approach, safe in the sense that they wanted no unnecessary harm to come to the refugees and that of their own villagers, though the village would still prioritize itself in the end, no matter how much sympathy they held for others' suffering if harm was done towards their villagers.
In total, Baliti reported that he had brought 3,500 Eastern Beastmen refugees to the village, drawn from several different clans. Most were women, children, and the elderly, along with a handful of injured warriors who had survived the initial attack but had needed evacuation regardless, having been severely incapacitated or rendered unconscious to continue fighting. Only 105 healthy warriors remained among them, shared across the different clans. Though many of the injured were now healed, or were healing slowly, most were still far from fully recovered, carrying a mix of injuries both physical and emotional distress.
The reports quickly came in as they arrived at the northern forest entrance, and the village moved into action immediately. The council had been caught off guard by the sheer number of refugees, largely unprepared to quickly host this many Beastfolk with such varied levels of injury and condition.
There was also the matter of housing. Zone 3 currently had fewer available homes, though the village had no shortage of housing elsewhere, particularly in Zone 4 and Zone 2, both of which had recently seen a boom in newly built and expanded residential buildings, apartment complexes included. Zone 2 in particular was in the process of expanding its older designs, adding floors and additional space onto existing structures, while Zone 4 saw more homes built from the ground up entirely.
Still, not every Beastfolk refugee would necessarily want to integrate with the human community. They'd already seen as much with the Kotoko and Lokoroko clans, which was why the village maintained a Special Administrative Zone in Zone 3, set aside for Beastfolk culture to exist separately, untainted by the broader village's own. They would remain somewhat apart from the rest of the village while still being considered part of it, and could undergo the same vetting process as anyone else, should that be the direction they eventually chose. Housing in Zone 3, unfortunately, remained limited, since no one had expected this many arrivals. The zone's current housing had only ever been built and expanded for the village's projected natural growth of Zone 3 residents.
For now, the village did what they could. Hundreds of healers and cartloads of food were sent out by wagon immediately to address the crisis, while temporary homes were hastily constructed within Zone 3, though even that depended on how these new arrivals ultimately planned for their future.
Beastmen from all over the village turned out to help once they heard the full scope of what was happening, while others stayed behind to prepare their own homes, wanting to welcome their brethren properly before heading to Zone 3 to assist with construction. The humans of Maya Village pitched in as well, redirecting the current efforts of the construction groups and halting other ongoing projects across the broader village area. Their goal was to put up homes as quickly as possible in Zone 3 alongside their Beastfolk neighbors, at least until it became clearer how this particular group wished to live, whether they would try to integrate and coexist with the human community, or more separately, the way Zone 3's existing Beastfolk did, culturally distinct from the rest of the village while still remaining part of it.
This wasn't necessarily a crisis the village couldn't handle, though it could still become one if the Beastfolk Refugees as a whole proved resistant to living alongside humans, especially given fresh wounds so recently inflicted by other humans.
To that end, Chief Tamba, his brothers, and Chief Gagar would take on the role of mediators between the village and the Beastfolk refugees. But first, they would need to be fed, sheltered, and healed as best as possible before any further discussion could take place.
In total, the group was divided into 8 clans, each with its own leader. Each clan numbered between 300 and 700 members:
- Bariko (Bar-i-ko) — 300 members
- Talango (Ta-lan-go) — 300 members
- Chikoro (Chi-ko-ro) — 350 members
- Vandoko(Van-do-ko) — 400 members
- Mazenga(Ma-zen-ga) — 400 members
- Rokando(Ro-kan-do) — 500 members
- Nomaru(No-ma-ru) — 550 members
- Tembeko(Tem-be-ko) — 700 members
That was how the numbers broke down across the clans, as Baliti had explained it to them. More than anything, this would prove to be an extensive undertaking, drawing the village more deeply into it as the days went on. For now, though, their focus was simple: help their possible new Beastfolk brethren heal their wounds, and if they wished to stay, that option would remain open to them.
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The Envoy Group's Journey Continues
As for the delegation, they were now three days into their water travel after leaving the ports of Kirka Village at the end of the 5th month (current date, 3rd day of the 6th month). It could be said that they were doing pretty well, at least for most of them, since this was their first time traveling extensively by boat. While some spent their days watching the scenery change dramatically, a few others in the group spent theirs just as busily emptying the contents of their last meal over the ship's railings.
It came as a surprise to them, especially those with no prior experience traveling the waters, August included, that there was a fair amount of traffic going to and fro on the river.
It served as something like a water highway for those who conducted trade and transported people, a huge superhighway connecting one end of the continent to the other, and it was even used to reach the other subcontinents. This meant goods and passengers alike moved constantly along this route.
But as every story goes, not everything that happened on these waters was entirely good. Water raiders and bandits, more commonly known as River Pirates, were more common than one might expect, especially in areas without any presence of military patrol ships.
Captain Skippy shared stories and his own experiences on the matter. Most vessels with real backing, merchant companies or larger groups, were usually spared, since they could afford to hire their own security guards and marines, much like the GMV. It was the independent ships, the ones with no company behind them and no group affiliation, that fell victim to such attacks most often. But in recent times, these pirates had grown bolder, banding together to overwhelm even well-defended ships with sheer numbers. They'd started targeting well-known merchant vessels too, ones belonging to larger merchant groups, since those ships carried far more valuable cargo, and the pirates knew it well.
These attacks tended to happen where no water settlements were nearby, or when ships were clearly traveling alone, meaning no nearby security vessels were close enough to respond. Water settlements were usually required to maintain their own security ships to patrol their portion of the shipping lanes.
Occasionally the Empire would send its own ships to patrol these stretches, offering merchants some peace of mind. But this was unreliable, far from constant, and the Empire could only cover as much water surface as its ships allowed. With many merchant groups had already formed their own private naval security forces, either patrolling the major shipping lanes directly or posting security personnel aboard their own vessels. Those who couldn't afford it relied on whatever protection they could get, sometimes joining smaller merchant unions just to help fund shared security. The Empire held firm control over the waterways at both the northern and southern exit points of the central-west and central-east, as well as around the western shores, but even they couldn't fully cover the massive stretch of river in between.
In such cases, partner kingdoms were sometimes asked to send their own ships to help protect vital trade lanes. But even then, most kingdoms could only cover so much. The great river wasn't considered part of any single kingdom's borders. It was shared space, open to all for commerce and fishing, which in theory made its protection a multinational effort. In practice, only the Empire had the resources to patrol these waters seriously, occasionally extending coverage into known hotspot zones.
Still, no one could cover the entire river stretch, not for as long as anyone could remember. Massive losses were incurred every year as a result, borne by every kingdom that relied on these shipping lanes.
But that could well change soon, as a meeting was set to be held with major stakeholder kingdoms, and the Empire besides, to form a joint coalition aimed at strengthening cooperation in protecting the shipping lanes and driving out the pirates for good.
Thankfully, the GMV Skipper came prepared for exactly this, and had informed its guests of the risk beforehand. That was why members of Talon One and Two had taken up posts helping guard the ship, turning what could have been a passive voyage into a genuinely valuable learning experience. It would prove useful too, should the village ever look toward establishing a water settlement of its own. August noted as much, and Chief Red agreed just as strongly.
Their ship sat roughly 10 km away from the nearest shore, tracing the coastline of the central-west landmass. From here, they could finally see, in full scale, just how violently the continent had ruptured into three parts. Massive cliffs rose higher and stretched longer than they'd expected, their scale only growing more apparent the closer they got. It was difficult to imagine where settlements could even be placed along coastline like this, or how, given that entire mountains appeared split clean in two, plateaus included. Any settlement with water access here must have been remarkably lucky to find one of the rare low-lying spots, whether naturally formed or shaped by centuries of erosion. Waterfalls could be seen pouring from some of the cliff faces, evidence of freshwater rivers running along the land above.
It was such a bizarre sight that even they struggled to believe what they were looking at. They understood the history behind it in theory, but seeing it firsthand was another matter entirely.
Captain Skippy told them that if you lined up one side of these massive cliff walls against the other, following a straight line across the gap between them, the two halves would fit together almost perfectly, save for the portions that had long since worn away by erosion.
Even now, these cliff faces stood as a kind of monument to history, having endured for thousands of years and counting.
They had a couple more days left before their arrival. The journey had settled into something both enjoyable and, for those quick to grow restless, a little boring.