Q&A Sessions for Orders and Conscience

Question: Impostors Among Us

White: Hey guys? Where's Northwind?

Everyone: *Shrugs*

Blue: Guys, wait, we're free! C'mon, look for a way to escape!

Northwind: *Popping into existence* Not so fast! You guys still have questions to answer!

Cyan: Oh, come on!!!

Northwind: No escaping for you yet. Besides, what would you do? Time is literally frozen for Everyone else. Anyway, Vac'shar, Umbitr, and K'dela, you've got a question!

Black and Brown: What is it?

Red: *Grunts*

Northwind: @rosevoltaris would like to know about your society and... I'm going to say home planet because Polus is an exoplanet and is barren now. Just saying that in these worlds, the Impostors don't come from Polus.

Brown: Ah. I suppose we should have expected this. Do you want the simplified version or...?

Black: Let's just give them the simplified version. If we go into detail, we'll be old and rotting by the time that they understand. Na'chzar just sucks that way.

Brown: Agreed. So—Maker's breath, where should we start? ...Okay, I'm going to start with our leadership. Everything in our lives is dictated by an eight-person council, with two representatives from the house of Land, Sea, and Sky and two others who are voted in every twenty years or so. The others are there until their deaths.

Black: It's made them... very paranoid, if you can imagine. Then we have a sort of smaller body of government that is dictated by chosen successors and with the support of a lot of different people in that particular House. There can be several different people lined up for succession, and right now Tal'nera's position is the fifth. Not enough for them to give him extra attention, but enough is that they're mildly concerned.

Brown: Only one successor is chosen, assuming that they aren't assassinated before they reach the Age of Ascension. They then will be the figurehead of the House, attending Council meetings to make sure that their representatives are acting in accordance with the expected courtesy and grace. They deal with tedious things such as supply management and shuffling the Council's orders down to the general public.

Black: Right. Vac'shar was sort of a messenger before he took up training people. He dealt with the general public under the House of Land and sometimes would bring messages to other Houses.

Red: I learned a lot of lessons during my time. It's why I pushed you two so hard. So, are we explaining the general public?

Black: Yes... come on, our parents hid us within a commoner community while waiting for the feud to die down!

Red: *Shrugs* Alright, the general public consists of all the essential people. Artisans, farmers, fishers, you name it. If one wanted, they could enlist in an army as well as their normal job. The lines between commoner and a House were often blurred and a lot of people in a House can go back one or two generations to a commoner.

White: *Taking notes* So, your Houses are basically the nobles, the Council the version of a dictator is the dictator had eight heads? And your commoners are basically the regular people whom I assume have different factions and states of life and stuff.

Black: Yep! But then there's the people on missions to talk about; people like us. Anyone can train for them if they want to—and many do for their families to be able to move from the country to one of the cities. It's efficient and the process, no matter how twisted, actually provides more peace than what your governments tried.

Orange: So... why are you leaving?

Brown: Uh, yeah, that...

Red: They would be labeled as traitors if they went back and told the Council what they did. And traitors are sentenced to death in the most horrendous ways; K'dela-vor named one that would be appropriate for young Tal'nera's insubordination.

Brown: ...Yeah, that. That's why we're leaving. Most of Na'chzar is peaceful, but in the case that wrong has been done, most of the time you're killed without a trial.

White: *Raising his hand* Vac'shar, when you said K'dela's name, you said another word directly after it. What does that mean?

Red: You mean Vor? It's a suffix attached to one's name with a hyphen that's a respectful way of calling someone a student. Ethbril means teacher, if that's what you're going to ask next.

White: *Still taking notes* Thank you...

Black: Not only that, but the government's kind of manipulative. The feud that killed our parents had strong suspected ties to the Council, but everyone brushed that off when they negotiated a cease-fire.

Lime; Yeesh... even though the debt on Earth sucks, I don't think I'd want to be on your planet either. No offense.

Brown: None taken. It's why we're leaving. And... uh, what else do we have to explain?

Black: How the representatives of the House of Sea get to the meetings without suffocating.

Brown: Council member T'kuvma's natural form is a literal whale. As long as there's water, they should be fine.

Black: OR, again, they transform into a secondary form and get to meetings that way.

White: Hang on, 'natural form?'

Black: Oh, right. Umbitr, do you want to explain it or should I?

Brown: Maker's breath, you can definitely explain that.

Black: Okay, so you know how we're standing here in human form, right? When we're born—and please don't ask about that, the process for me was weird and I would rather not go into those details—we're born with a specific form, which then correlates to which House umbrella we're under. At the age of sixteen, we can then transform into our secondary forms, such as a human. As we age, we can take the shape of various other animals, but it'll be... different.

Brown: It's hard for one with a natural form of the House of Land to transform into one of Sky, or one or Sky to one of Sea. You can do it, but it's extremely difficult.

White: This question's weird, but what do you guys eat? How do you guys know that what you're hunting is an animal or a person?

Black: Oh, that's easy. We're all predators. Naturally, I mean. Any animal that could be considered as prey usually is prey. It feels weird once you think about it, but you usually push that down when you're hungry.

Brown: Tal'nera once explained the genetics to us, but it's way too complicated. We're already at over a thousand words.

White: *Looks overwhelmed*

Blue: Okay, did anyone understand that?

Northwind: Yes.

Blue: You're the creator, you don't count.

Northwind: But if I'm younger than you and understand it...

Blue: No! You still don't count!

Northwind: *Sighs and puts hands up* If anyone has any other questions, put them in the comments, they'll answer them.