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October Mirrorbound Council Post

October Mirrorbound Council Post

Welcome to the Mirrorbound Council discussion post for the month of October! This is the space to discuss IC concerns from your characters that can be brought to Parliament by members of the Mirrorbound Council. Here are some quick facts!

• Membership in the Mirrorbound Council is open, so if your character is the type to get involved, you're more than welcome to sign up here.
• More information on the Council's history, current members, and motions can be found here.
• Each motion must be cosigned by 3 Council members.
• Each council member can only cosign 1 motion per month.
• As a result, there may be months where not all motions can be raised. In that case, motions will be brought to Parliament in the order of greatest IC support to least IC support.
• To suggest an IC motion, please post to the most appropriate heading below. Make sure to list the name of the character who would suggest it so they get credit!
• To support an IC motion, comment to the motion with either "+1" or some other indication of your character's support. There's no limit on how many motions each character can support, so be sure to check the whole post!
• All characters can suggest and support motions ICly — not just Council members! Consider this post an OOC representation of an open-forum style discussion open to all Mirrorbound. The goal is to get as many people involved as possible, both ICly and OOCly, so don't hesitate to chime in!
• The deadline to submit motions is October 20th. After submissions close, Council members will attach their names to motions and submit them to the mod team by October 25th.
• All OOC ideas and suggestions are welcome as well, so please hit us up!

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

To suggest a motion related to business or commerce, fill out the following.

To suggest a motion related to Bonds, fill out the following.

To suggest a motion related to research, fill out the following.

To suggest a motion related to charity & humanities, fill out the following.

To suggest a motion related to infrastructure, fill out the following.

To suggest a motion that doesn't fall into the above categories, fill out the following.

This space will contain all motions collected by October 20th. Council members can then decide in the below thread which motions to attach their names to.

For any idea,s questions, suggestions, brainstorm, etc.!

AUGUST

Ozymandias began speculating that making changes to the Residential District may be a good place to improve living conditions within the city by addressing the overcrowding issue due to Parliament's previous hesitation to help the Outer City. More information on that can be found here!

Papyrus had a special interest in identifying ways to provide formal education to the orphans in the Harbor District. More information on that can be found here! Eren Jaeger approached Ozymandias about continuing this initiative though with changes given that the orphanage no longer belongs in the hands of the factory workers.

LAST MONTH

None!

Edited 2020-10-07 14:22 (UTC)

Two things!

1) Jin Guangyao has a different sort of consideration towards improvement of living conditions for the city in a broader sense: expand the Bright Wall. Which is one of those things that's easier said than done, obviously (and there has been some discussion with Leslie's (

foundfamilies) player about how bringing up that idea to Parliament would go (badly, not enough resources, basically laughed out of the room). But Jin Guangyao is interested in a more permanent, long-lasting improvement -- and not a witch, so unable to offer anything spell-wise. So even if not at the point of bringing it up as a public matter yet, is definitely interested in drumming up support/discussion.

2) He's also interested in improving relations further with the Underground and opening trade between Aefenglom proper and the underground city. It's currently a Mirrorbound-only zone (AFAIK?) but Guangyao is of the opinion they might be helpful partners, especially given how strong the Monsters there are -- and it would look really good influence-wise to have ~~himself~~ the Council forging these cooperative bonds.

Edited 2020-10-07 14:54 (UTC)

1) Ozy would tend to agree with Leslie's assessment. There's a lot of logistical/pragmatic things that would be a nightmare to address. It's also very blatant that members of Parliament are not particularly concerned when it comes to the welfare of those living in the Outer City and look down upon them whether that's due to social class or their varying degrees of infection. The latter may especially be a factor as they would likely say that those infected would become a danger to everyone in the city if the Bright Wall were to encompass them as well.

Ozy's initial motion (from what seems like forever ago now) was focused on building up the infrastructure closer to the Wall to start more permanent improvements and then turn concern further outward once that was established. Parliament was keen on that and the motion may very well have been passed had Dany not managed to piss the City Guard off. So, there's definitely opportunities to provide more permanent solutions and drum up support for it, but Parliament is definitely going to be setting the pace.

Another related concern to this beyond infrastructure though is unless I'm wrong, I don't think the City Guard were particularly involved in managing the Nuckelavee attacks in the slums? Which, obviously, some of that was due to the fact it was brought upon by the Mirrorbound, but at the same time it continues to be very clear that anyone living in the slums has been left to fend for themselves and overall abandoned by the city.

2) The Mirrorbound, particularly Monsters, taking the lead on this would be a really good idea! And honestly, even if this isn't something that Parliament can (or is willing to) address, then it's something that Mirrorbound could likely go off the record to manage. Much like how Dany decided to just build her own dang clinics in the Outer City after Parliament decided to be dicks about it.

Also re: 1)

Sorry for the confusing wording, it's still early here ffft. It's more that timing happened to be that I was poking around OOCly about how such an idea would go, and it turned out Leslie's player had a plotting inquiry in with the mods at the same time. So the potential response from Parliament is via mod info. I think, having done some research and such himself, Jin Guangyao will realize it's a huge task -- but will make the push, at least with his fellow Councillors to start, anyway. Dreaming big never stopped him before - and so much of the work done with the Outer City is wasted if they can't do a better job of keeping Cwyld/problems out. He'll word it more sweetly and politely than that of course, but that's the gist.

He also might start trying to ease some of the tensions because WTF Dany, honey, not vinegar. Who wants to chip in for gifts and fancy booze and whatever for Parliamentarians....

Thanks for the clarification!

To be fair to Dany, all she did was withhold some horses and food from one farm from the City Guard. A member of Parliament was sister to head of the Guard though, so... Ozy's not particularly fond of that particular member though because that's a really petty reason in his opinion to deny so many people what he had proposed (which would have been more food and medical supply access as well as improvement to their dwellings!). Dany was in the process of trying to smooth things back over though prior to her leaving the game, so there's at least some work being done there. I'm not sure what the status of the farm is after Dany left though. Something I wanted to follow up with her player about, but just haven't had the time.

1) Near would recommend the less monumental task of developing cleansing enchantments. Totems that could perhaps keep a small area clear and be recharged by witches the same as an enchanted item - it would just need to be done more frequently. Small safe zones would be easier to manage at this time than a full expansion of the wall.

Here are my two cents! Which have probably been taken in bank fees because I’ve done very little with this after the mods got back to me. (No fault of the mods, but the time they got back to me fell in the middle of my summer of discontent regarding activity.)

Leslie and Jin have each been working on this for a while and the idea isn’t to bring the largely infected Outer City, but instead to have a secondary line of defence between the Outer City and the Wilde. Sort of like a donut, where the hole is the part of the city currently surrounded by the Bright Wall and the dough is the Outer City surrounded by a ??? that would keep the Shades and such out.

Leslie has been kind of mired in the details of how this even works, especially regarding the magic portion as the witch of the duo, and her trust in the original inhabitants of Aefenglom is at about 20% (and her trust in parliament is significantly lower than that, probably, from what she’s heard from her ~~mom’s~~ guardian’s experiences on the council), so Leslie has not really put any thought herself into the political aspects. Jin is likely better suited for thinking on those parts, so he might have gotten some ideas.

If I recall correctly, problems with coming up with some way to keep out the Cwyld/Shades boil down to four-ish things:

1) Limitations in magic: there isn’t exactly an instruction manual around for the Bright Wall’s enchantments. People don’t seem to know exactly how this was done the first time around, and they are Not About any of these foreigners getting their hands on what is known about it.

The closest we have is some magic that the Wilders know that can discourage the approach of the Cwyld or Shades temporarily in an area, but on top of it being temporary and only partially effective, it runs into the second problem:

2) Size: the Outer City covers a big area with how it is on the non-seaward edges of the rest of the city. Any physical barrier around the outside would cost more than the Mirrorbound could likely do on their own in just materials, even if they committed to doing all of the construction themselves. Even the Parliament would have to devote a much larger chunk of the city’s budget than they ever are going to do.

This also limits the applications of the temporary spells, as even just covering a ring around the ~~rosies~~ edge of the Outer City would take a large number of Witches to more or less use all their magic on just casting and recasting those defences, leaving them unable to do anything else magically.

3) The call is coming from inside the house: a lot of the Outer City’s residents are infected already, as there are a bunch of people who don’t trust the Coven’s cures, and the uninfected are either unwilling or financially unable to leave them behind, so trying to keep the Cwyld out is basically already lost. Leslie still wants to keep the Shades away if possible. But making any plans about this runs into the last problem:

4) Convincing anyone out there that they should trust any of us. The citizens of the Outer City are well-aware that the government and city guard and basically everyone has abandoned them. And despite the work that people like Elliot have put into helping the Outer City, the trust in the Mirrorbound in general was not exactly high even before the Nuckelavee problems. That puts attempts to talk to the people living there about what is best for helping this problem has to do a lot of work to even get to a point zero of “trusting anyone is going to help them.”

The mods suggested two possibilities for how this could be resolved: with a lot of work, people could convert some of the abandoned houses into a defended neighbourhood and convince a few (uninfected?) people to live there in relatively greater safety; or they can abandon the plan and put their energy into doing the stuff that gets put up on the Quest board every month.

Leslie is very dissatisfied with the former option, but is currently still bashing her head against the wall of the kind of impossible problem rather than changing track just yet. (Her low opinion of her magical abilities has not been helped by spending months trying to find a magical solution that just isn’t there.) I’ve left the stuff percolating in the back of my mind to try to find a solution that would be Not That, but the thoughts I’ve had so far have not been super useful.

Jin might have come to different conclusions, but that’s where Leslie is at.

It might be a reasonable idea for them to present a report on their findings to the Mirrorbound Council at some point, but a lot of their findings at the moment are Wow This Is A Difficult Thing For A Non-Government To Do.

Thank you for posting a much more detailed rundown of the whole thing! I was sure I had a lot more detail somewhere in my inbox, but couldn't find it.

Jin Guangyao is also not going to be satisfied with temporary solutions. Admittedly this is less about doing good and more about leaving a visible mark that says 'wow that Jin Guangyao was a great guy, so smart and nice, look what he started' but hey, the end result is the same either way right? But he's willing to be patient and work towards bigger goals one step at a time - as much as he can without being a witch, anyway. :/ So I'm thinking right now that just means generating more goodwill with Parliament and the Coven (hey Coven! Train more witches!) and in general trying to find those that would support permanent help.

As much as it's sort of repeating on his canon activities, perhaps if a wall is too much, to at least set up watch towers at the edge of the Outer City? Just a thought right now.

Hahaha, Jin’s attempts to secure his reputation in a big way is going to have to deal with the fact that he’s working with A Cute Child who might get given extra credit even if she’s not actually looking for recognition and would be quite fine with Jin getting more credit.

Watch towers are a neat idea! They would have to figure out how they get people who would use them since the city guard is probably not the most concerned even if it could be a first line of defence, but maybe we could poke the mods on plotting about whether the people of the Outer City would want to use them themselves.

Leslie’s current thoughts might go well with that, as she is trying to figure out if there are small places that they could put up more do-it-ourselves sized walls to funnel the shades into more predictable paths. (“Oh, this space between rivers is blocked by a small wall, but around this way is open like usual” making them possibly just circle around.) But there mightn’t be enough natural barriers to allow them to do something like this and there’d then be less prep for the shades that just go “[expletive I don’t feel like I can use on this journal even OOCly]” and take the harder way in.

Maybe he can try to play the mentor, fffft. What a good kid, learning so much under his benevolent influence~.

I guess if they built a few at a time, and tried a little redirecting in the meanime, eventually they could look towards connecting the towers as well? It won't be the Bright Wall level (;A;) but it'd be a more gradual approach.

And could make for more other player involvement too, with building/staffing/protecting the towers, maybe some good hooks for quests, etc.

In a more serious response to this (though Dad is still proud!), I think starting to see if the Outer City would be more comfortable with manning the towers themselves makes a lot of sense because:

If we are considering more permanent solutions, then it makes sense that natives should be primarily responsible for it since most Mirrorbound likely want to go back home when the option is there.

The City Guard are not likely going to want to lift a finger to help, let's just be real.

The Outer City just does not trust the Mirrorbound right now, so they would probably feel more comfortable taking ownership of it over leaving it in the hands of the Mirrorbound.

So, I have some thoughts about different approaches to all of this and different ways things could be built up in that direction!

Ambassadorial Quests. There could be some semi-regular quests generated to develop an improved rapport with the Outer City that goes beyond the donations of goods and entertainment. Basically, start putting more faces to the Mirrorbound for the citizens of the Outer City.

Clinics. I double-checked and Daenerys would have had at least 3 clinics completed by the end of September (first one started at the end of August). I imagine that given Outer City's attitude toward the Mirrorbound they are wary about interacting, but we could perhaps have some quests that can improve that situation.

Infrastructure. To somewhat riff on what Yosie said and Ozy's original motion, starting to repair some of the buildings and the infrastructure close to the Wall (i.e. the portions of the Outer City that are less likely to experience immediate threat) and gradually spread further outward as essentially Ye Olde Habitat for Humanity. ~~Which if nobody wants to take the lead on that, Ozy does have ambitions of a construction company eventually. So.~~ Making the homes less ramshackle, more sturdy, and providing them with more creature comforts with furnishings could probably go a longer way than the monthly donations imo.

Safety. The Mirrorbound were patrolling during the Nuckelavee attacks, so... Why not make that a regular thing? Could also encourage citizens of the Outer City who are willing and able to join the patrols to do so as well so they feel more comfortable with it. Additionally, there are probably more than a few Mirrorbound that could work with the citizens there and help teach them skills necessary for defending themselves in more organized ways.

Other Needs? We could follow up with the mods and ask more questions about what needs the Outer City might need/want (i.e. what will curry favor). Would it be beneficial for the Council to make themselves more available to them, for example, to try and advocate
for them with Parliament? Are there other needs that aren't being addressed right now that would improve their quality of life?

Parliament. Honestly, it doesn't seem like Parliament is going to be of much use here. They are not all that invested in anything beyond their own districts, never mind anything beyond the Wall. But if wanting to do things like incentivizing the City Guard for taking posts that would involve the Outer City or finding ways of managing up-front costs of constructing even a non-magical wall, Parliament will probably need to be the avenue taken. So, as yuck as this is, they probably need to have anything about this framed as benefiting them. Which depending on how much the Outer City folks attend to that stuff, that could damage some trust/rapport. My thought is that they will probably need to be second step sort of things after the above things have been addressed a bit more.

Character name: Papyrus, Eren, Ursula, & Ozymandias
Motion description: Due to the long work hours the orphans were previously responsible for in the factories in the Harbor District, their education has suffered tremendously. Therefore, it is proposed that funding be made available to provide necessities for educating those children. This funding would be used for physical supplies (e.g., books, writing utensils, art supplies, etc.), compensating staff (i.e. teachers and tutors) for their time, and making necessary changes to the infrastructure of the building to provide a dedicated space for education (i.e. developing a classroom).

Funding from the city of Aefenglom would occur once to provide assistance in the initial acquisition of necessary materials, staff, and renovation to the designated room(s), at which point the orphanage will then become responsible for its own fundraising for the maintenance of this educational program.

Edelgard would back this proposal without question.

Leslie thinks this is just the truth, lmao, so that’d be an easy one to get her to also express. She’s good at reading hostility or hatred in people’s eyes, but her experience means that if she doesn’t see either of those, she’s liable to assume the best of others. So Jin is clearly in the Good Person camp, right?

Yeah, as non-government people, it’ll probably need to be quite piecemeal, which might be its own problems in being accepted by the Outer City residents, but it’s certainly worth one of us tossing it to the plotting post to get the mods’ feedback.

I hadn’t actually thought about the quest hooks! There is a method for submitting quests to the monthly board, so when we get something sorted out, it might be fun to make those requests ICly.

(Daughter glows at the praise.) I imagine it would be better for convincing people for all those reasons, and it would also be a good lesson for Leslie! She’s looking at this very much from the point of view of “we do something for the residents of the Outer City” rather than “we give the residents of the Outer City the resources to let them do it themselves.” She might have not been treated like a noble for a vast majority of her life, but she still seems to have absorbed some aristocratic thinking, so she’s probably got the idea of noblesse oblige stuck in there. (Not that I imagine Ozy himself would see anything wrong with that.)

I love all of these suggestions regarding the various options! These all seem very well-thought-out.

With the clinics, there was a post a while back where Elliot offered to teach people about treating the Cwyld infection based on his own experiences working in the Outer City clinics. There were a limited number of witches with a good grasp on enchantment and alchemy together to be able to actually take him up on the offer, but the interest it generated suggests that it will not be difficult to find some willing volunteers. (I desperately wanted to reply to that post, especially since Leslie is learning about enchantment and lives with an alchemy specialist, but alas, work had picked up at the time and I ended up not doing so when I settled that like a week and a half later at best.)

Leslie would love to take point on the Mirrorbound Habitat for Humanity, as I think this would satisfy her currently frustrated desire to help defend the Outer City, but she is definitely not a natural construction worker, lmao.

Anyway, I think there might be more than just practical considerations for trying to frame this as beneficial to the Parliament. We’re starting to talk about larger, organized efforts, which I do wonder if some of the Parliament might view with suspicion. Doubly so if the. Mirrorbound Council appears to be involved. The Mirrorbound are still strange foreigners in a lot of ways and I don’t think it would go over well if this ended up giving the impression of going over the government’s head or even acting as a miniature government within the city. And besides, there was the sentiment among some MPs (members of parliament, I guess I should clarify for those not living in parliamentary democracies) that they don’t want any incentives for the infected to cluster near to the wall. We wouldn’t want to make politicking even harder for us, haha.

Maybe one way to frame it to Parliament would be as an eventual aide to Aefenglom’s overpopulation problems. (Not that it’s really so much overpopulation as it is “if the aristocrats would take a fairer share of the land and resources it would be fine,” but IIRC there isn’t as much space for parks or the like with how many people are having to fit inside the wall.) If these measures eventually make the Outer City not a terrible, awful, no-good place to live, some of the uninfected people who got taken in in December during the blizzard might find it an attractive idea to get a bit more space for themselves with these hypothetical new Better Than It Was housing. Though that might be taken as a “oh, jolly good, we can squeeze the remainder in the poorer residential district even closer and make some more pretty spaces for the aristocrats.”

This is a pretty longterm view, though, so they would likely need something more immediate to their needs.

Mildly annoyed to start but I think if she's willing to go along (and honestly what a sweet kid when it comes down to it), problems can be officially avoided! (More comments downstream... threads don't work so well in big all over the place brainstorming, hah!

Just gonna reply to both of these last two comments in one

Jin Guangyao does not want to go home at all ~~being a zombie with a broken neck fighting with his also-zombie bro in a coffin for a few hundred years is not appealing~~, hungry for approval, and definitely more in synch with Leslie on this, that it's something to be done for the Outer City. So while obviously he's only one man, he's happy to be very involved in the process -- with this thought in mind too, maybe he'll start poking around as far as who is looking to go back and who isn't. Thoughts for my own RP things... :P

He'll definitely be at least mildly supportive of clinics and safety concerns but if building up near he wall is gonna make Parliament unhappy, he'd try to encourage turning efforts to other things.

Basically (as was brought up here) as just one man and a Mirrorbound foreigner to boot, I think he will want Parliament's cooperation. Dreaming as big as he's thinking just isn't something Mirrorbound could handle. Maybe one watch tower or two but he's thinking long-term. So like I said in the start post, I don't think he's at the point of wanting to bring it up to Parliament yet BUT there is 'prep work' to be done to try to build up goodwill and cooperation it seems like, with the aristocrats AND the outer city. We should definitely poke the mod about what both those groups would want. I'll also suggest that maybe some parties to the Mirrorbound Council could shmooze with particularly influential MPs, and use their votes to support them. Maybe some people would be unhappy but if they can get a majority for their own projects... well, that's politics. Jin Guangyao would certainly be up for working on improving the Parliament side of things (although it sounds like Ozy probably wouldn't be? Can he be convinced? ahaha).

(Also if there are some MPs that are real pains in the ass... maybe... something happens to them... eventually... just saying... the world can be a dangerous place, accidents happen!

He's trying to be better, really. But... y'know... patience can be exhausted.)

Edited 2020-10-09 12:52 (UTC)

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October Mirrorbound Council Post

MOTIONS

BUSINESS & COMMERCE

BONDS

RESEARCH

CHARITY & HUMANITIES

INFRASTRUCTURE

ET CETERA

FINAL MOTIONS LIST

OOC DISCUSSION & BRAINSTORMING

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orphan education

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