{ === + === }
[3rd Person Camera]
Within the Halidom of Ylisse lies the territory of Themis. Governed by Lady Maribelle and her consort, Ricken, the territory acts as the major food provider and one of the pillars of stability in regards to Ylisse's economic independence.
…And all of that information has nothing to do with why a team of six people are currently heading south on horseback.
"So…why is Lady Maribelle making a sudden journey south?" Chrom asks.
"I'm going to Southtown to learn from their legal system." Maribelle says. "As much as I trust my citizenry, the increased load on the Themis courthouse is making fair judgment increasingly more difficult to decide."
"Plus she wants a vacation." Ricken laughs.
"That too." Maribelle sighs. "Liiisse~~" She throws her arms out in an invitation for a hug.
"Awww~" Lissa brings her horse alongside Maribelle's to give her a pat on the head. "You're doing good work, Maribelle, don't let it get you down."
"Why are there so many complaints?" Maribelle complains. "How on earth can there be so many complaints? And why is all of it about land and fences and sheep?"
Lissa gives her best friend another pat on the head. "There there~~"
"Is going there really going to change things that much?" Chrom asks.
"I believe so." Maribelle says. "If there's anyone who can create a state ruled by law, it would be him. I have a purse of 50,000 gold if worst comes to worst." She sighs. "Though I don't except him to be swayed by that."
Ricken chuckles. "I get the feeling he makes that much gold in the time it takes for us to have this conversation."
"He spends that much gold in that time, too." Lissa laughs. "As expected of the leader of that coalition."
The team of six (Chrom, Lissa, Maribelle, Ricken, plus two nameless guards) ride towards the southern tip of Ylisse through the main thoroughfares of the country, passing by many wagons and travelers on their way. The team of six gets progressively more muted and reticent after every friendly returned greeting.
"We got lucky." Ricken mutters after a fashion. "We got really lucky."
"Yeah." Maribelle waves to a cart carrying a family as they pass by. "How's Plegia? I'm seeing more refugees from the border towns show up at our doorstep."
"Yeah." Chrom nods. "The country has some deep power struggles that have yet to resolve. Cordelia's leading the 1st and 2nd Air Wings, and Morgan's detached a few AWACS to help them."
"Still, huh?" Maribelle sighs. "Is there a more concrete solution beyond just devoting a token force to help?"
Lissa shakes her head. "The court won't approve of sending a bigger force, because it looks like an invasion if we do. They don't want to be the ones that look like they're starting a fight."
"Hawk's running ragged keeping his country together." Chrom grouses. "It'd be nice if we could do something for him more substantial than just basic assistance."
"Kite's visiting Ylisstol, no?" Ricken asks. "Maybe we can use that as a reason?"
"As an emissary." Lissa reminds him. "The court will jump at the chance of accusing us of showing unnecessarily political bias and make things way harder than it needs to be."
"The use of the Grima crisis as a reason for strengthening Ylisse's ability to stand on its own, huh?" Maribelle cracks her knuckles in an unladylike fashion. "I wish I could just beat them up and throw them down the back alleys."
The talk of internal Ylissean politics go on for some more time, before Chrom, feeling something strange in the air, hold up a hand. "Wait." He warns.
The talk immediately ceases as the guards move up to flank Chrom.
"What's out there?" Ricken asks, unhooking a tome with one hand while pulling out a revolver-like weapon with his other. He closes his eyes to focus briefly. "A magic signature?" He scowls. "One that I don't recognize…moreover, this deep inside Ylisse?"
"It's no Risen, I'll say that much." Maribelle says. Both she and Lissa pull out tomes as well. "Guards, keep your eyes to the left and right, and yell if you see anything."
"Yes, ma'am!" The guards acknowledge and get onto their jobs of being rather useless next to the veterans of the entire Awakening Timeline.
"Are you going to be alright, brother?" Lissa asks Chrom. "The Falchion's back in the royal treasury, after all."
The Falchion, as a status symbol of Ylisse, was returned to its position within the Halidom's throne room, where it sits behind Emmeryn's chair along with the Fire Emblem. She has, on more than one occasion, pulled it in order to make a point.
"I'll manage." Chrom unsheathes one of his two swords.
The party waits for a bit, but sees nothing.
"Ooookay…" Ricken frowns. "The reading's getting closer, but I definitely don't see anything."
Chrom doesn't like that idea too much. "So they're invisible?"
"Or something similar." Ricken snaps his fingers, blowing up a gale of debris from the road.
The debris whips and collects over a trio of human-like figures on the road. Chrom, Lissa, and Maribelle immediately react and strike, sending a Silver Sword and two Thorons into their targets with pinpoint accuracy.
"Blips are gone." Ricken reports as the sword clatters to the ground. "So I guess they don't leave a corpse."
Lissa huffs. "That sucks. I wanted to bring one of them back with me."
"…Why?" Maribelle stares at her best friend of many years.
"Because Lucina could analyze it." Lissa says. "If this is a new threat—and an invisible one—then we'd better know all we can about it."
"Yeah." Chrom frowns. "More?" He feels another tug at the corner of his psyche.
"Two more signatures, but they're people." Ricken says with his eyes closed. "…children." His eyes snap open. "Correction. Four more after them. Hostiles!"
"Shit." Chrom spurs his horse. "Move!" He charges onwards with the other five in tow.
"Beyond the trees!" Ricken alerts Chrom. "Watch your pace, the kids are in front!"
…
A small boy had a small wooden sword in his hands while dragging the heavily crying girl by the arm. Both of them were panting, running at full pelt away from a series of ever closing, invisible footsteps stirring the leaves behind them.
The boy hears heavy steps in front of him, and falters for half a step. This half step causes him to trip on the uneven road.
Chrom blazes right by on his horse without even noticing. He feels rather than sees the four targets somewhere before him, and he draws his second sword.
It was, to put it simply, a bland steel rod…a steel rod that's easily the length of a spear, and would easily be mistaken for a long club were it not for the existence of a cross hilt. He focuses slightly, drawing upon his magical power and placing it within the rod.
The rod glows and flares with energy. With a whir, a blade of light coalesces around the rod and forms into a thin, flat blade. As an added bonus, a small, clear-blue visor forms over Chrom's eyes, allowing him, a novice in terms of utilizing magic, to clearly see the outlines of magical concentrations.
Given that Chrom has an entire game's worth of experience under his belt, the four ex-invisible enemies quickly becomes ex-alive.
Minor side effect: Chrom never really stopped charging into his attack, so although he splatted the four enemies on the dirt road in record time, he had to double back at a trot to make sure that the two saved kids are ok. By the time he returned to normal conversation range, the other members of the party had caught up.
"Are you two alright?" Chrom asks the two small children. They look like Robin. He notes of their snow-white hair.
"Y-yes, um…" The small boy says. "Thank, uh…thank you for your…help." He awkwardly bows.
The little girl stops crying long enough to hiccup, rub her eyes, and stare at the newcomers.
"Wow, her eyes are suuper red." Lissa mutters. "Where are you from?" She asks warmly.
"Nohr." The girl says quietly and shrinks into her clothing.
Everybody in attendance heard "Noire" and is very confused, because she is a person.
"This is taking the 'tracts of land' joke to its illogical conclusion." Maribelle sighs. "Do you know your way back? We'll help you." She says sweetly.
"Uh…" The boy starts and hops to his feet. "That's right! Come on, Corrin! We need to go!"
Corrin, the girl, stares and looks around confusedly. "K-Kamui, where are we?!" She says, seemingly confused by the environment.
"At least she stopped crying." Lissa notes. "Can you tell me your names?" She asks. She had heard them talk to each other and knew the boy was Kamui (the girl, Corrin) but figured this was a good way to get them to warm up to her.
Kamui, however, completely ignores her. "Come on, Corrin! If we don't go now the gate might close!" He drags the girl up by the arm, and bolts into the trees with the girl scrambling to keep up.
"Do not chase." Chrom orders before the guards could actually give chase.
"What just happened?" Lissa scratches her head. "Is there a gate in those trees?"
Ricken closes his eyes again. "I think I feel the hints of transference magic, but it's evaporating quickly." He says after some time. "So there might have been a temporary cross gate within those trees."
"And a cross gate is different from an outrealm gate?" Maribelle asks.
"In theory." Ricken nods. "A cross gate is supposed to be one that allows travel on our plane of existence, while an outrealm gate is…more." He scratches his head. "It's hard to tell."
"In any event, we'll have to ask him about this." Chrom says. "Keep your wits about you, there might be more."
…
Fortunately, there wasn't more. The group reaches Ylisstol, and then heads south along the main road. By the next day, they reach their destination, a town being slowly built from the ground up, one piece at a time, by little flying boxes.
"Looks like things are coming along." Chrom grins at the half-built town. He notices the foreman (wearing a weird yellow hat, no less) and waves. "Hello there!" He shouts.
The foreman looks up from his blueprint, sees the party coming, and waves back. "General Chrom! What's the occasion?" He asks as Chrom's party rides up to him.
"There's something I'd like to discuss with Morgan." Maribelle says formally. "May I acquire as to his whereabouts?"
"Morgan should be on the Starlight." The foreman jerks a thumb to a ship docked at port. "Apologies for the dust, folks, but this new station's taking a while to build."
"No, no." Ricken brushes away the apology quickly. "This is all extremely fascinating!" His eyes feast on the construction equipment humming along as they build the proper Ylissean branch of the Phoenix Empire. "I'm going to observe them some." He says, wandering over to the little flying boxes but keep a respectful distance.
"Right." Maribelle giggles at her husband's star struck eyes. "Now then, shall we be off?"
The party (minus Ricken) veers away from the construction area towards Southtown, which, for the moment, was the actual receiving area for the Phoenix ships until the proper port could be constructed.
"Wowie." Lissa whistles as they enter the town proper. "Southtown's booming, huh?"
And it was. Southtown, once an Ylissean backwater with a quaint little fishing industry, was now, if only temporarily, the biggest port. As the biggest port, it came with the advantage of being visited by traders from Ylisse eager to do business with the rest of the continents. Granted, it wasn't as large as the Jewel of the Coast on the western coast of Akanea, but for the residents, it was good enough.
The party, fortuitously catching the town on a bit of a slow day, gets lost with a good hour of shopping before actually reaching the ship at dock.
"I really should come here more often." Lissa says, cheerily holding up a melon of some kind. "This is still fresh!"
"Why did you guys go shopping before coming here?" Morgan sighs.
The party meets with Morgan (who was alerted of their coming way ahead of time) on the docks. Morgan, seeing the party laden with their shopping results, leads them to a different meeting room than the one he previously wanted to use.
"Whoa." Maribelle marvels as soon as she steps into the otherwise normal meeting space. "It's quite chill in here." She says.
"The Outrealmers call it 'air conditioning.'" Morgan says, and then points to a clear cabinet in the corner of the room. "Put your stuff in there, so it doesn't rot as we talk."
"So what's this called?" Lissa asks as she does as asked.
"A 'Timer'?" Morgan scratches his head. "This is one piece of tech that the Outrealmers weren't sure on."
"And we're using it?" Maribelle was suddenly worried. "Lissa, remember what Ash used to do?"
Lissa's smile suddenly fades. "Oh yeah." She hurriedly moves away from the 'Timer' and hurriedly looks for the largest piece of furniture to place between it and herself.
"It's not going to explode." Morgan sighs.
"Is that why the outer shell is reinforced steel?" Chrom asks worriedly, unsure of his current position as Lissa's human shield.
"Even if it blows up," A new voice comes from the door. "Worst that'll happen is that it gets a bit hot." He waves. "Yo."
"Ash." Chrom nods. "I didn't expect to see you here."
"I needed to oversee the construction." Ash grins. "So, what brings you?"
Ash and Chrom/Lissa sit to talk about the two children, while Morgan breaks off with Maribelle to do an observational tour on Southtown's refurbished court and justice system.
…
"Hmm." Ash muses as Chrom finishes his description of what happened the previous day.
"Have you heard about them?" Chrom asks. "Or the nation they hail from?"
"Can't say I have." Ash replies with a shake of his head. "Also, 'Noire'?"
For the record: Corrin pronounced Nohr as 'nor', but our folks are calling it 'no-are'.
"Maribelle beat you to that joke" Lissa huffs.
"Damn." Ash snaps his fingers. "In any case, we haven't run into any kind of governing body or nation-state that calls itself Noire yet, though granted we haven't seen too much."
Chrom's interest is piqued. "What's the continent that you've made contact with?"
"Jugdral." Ash replies. "And by extension Elibe…which is nice, because it means we're now able to actually take Nino home like I promised."
"When's that happening?" Lissa asks. "I want to throw Nino a party before she leaves."
Ash crunches some numbers. "Eh…about three months? The Neverland needs to get its shakedown cruise, for starters…"
The two parties talk for some more time and eventually come to the conclusion that they will have to search for the country of Nohr at some point in the future.
…
[1st Person Camera (Ash's Viewpoint, basically)]
…
Unfortunately the issue with getting Nino home (and the complications that come with Elibe and Nergal and all that other fun stuff) took me more resources than I had previously expected.
Thus…
[3 Years Later]
…yeah. Its three years before we could commit to the search for this 'Noire' thing in earnest.
Turns out it wasn't too hard to find. The country of 'Noire' is attached to the continent of Tellius, and just happens to be on the eastern end of it.
Tellius is the playing field for the events of the Wii Fire Emblems (Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn) though given the current timeline it looks like the events of the story hasn't actually happened. Ber..Be…
Hang on.
…Begnion! Begnion. The Theocracy of Begnion just celebrated little Sanaki's first birthday last year. She's ten by the time Path of Radiance starts, so…yeah, we have some time before that thing fires.
I'm going to get that name wrong forever, so if I just end up calling it like, Berny or whatever, just know that I'm talking about Begnion.
…Actually, if the timetables match (and god knows if they will) it looks like the Radiant series will coincide with the events of Sword of Seals, since Roy's now three (Lilina's two), so…
…well, our existence itself will change the flow of expected history, so I guess I should take that into account.
Maybe we should introduce ourselves?
…in the event that the reader didn't read the -1 chapter? Sure.
I'm Ash. I'm the first person narrator…though judging by the scope of operations, first person camera events will be rather sparse, especially when there's no war going on.
The italic text is my 4th-wall-breaky self, representative of how I talk to myself all the time, and how my senses may pick up on information that I don't actively process. It also provides, when needed, the necessary snark to get me to actually explain things in detail.
What about me?
You're a spoiler, so you get to take the back seat for now.
So…I came to Akanea during the timeline of Fire Emblem Awakening, as an Outrealmer that fell rather literally out of the skies. Some things happened, I somehow bumbled my way through two wars, made oodles upon oodles of money, and am now married to both Robin and Tiki. There's a Male Robin running around, and his name is Hawk, and he's our buddy…kinda, sorta.
For the record, though: Myself, Robin, and Tiki all share the top seat in our company, the Phoenix Empire. As such, legally speaking, Robin is my wife, Tiki is Robin's wife, and I'm Tiki's wife.
…What?
Yeah, that's the response I got from literally everybody when I announced that arrangement. Normally, the two of them would be considered my consorts. The problem with that arrangement is that it implies that the two of them have less power than I do, which is stupid, so we're going with a full rotational marriage to cement the fact that the three of us share the same rank.
We manage different aspects of the empire, too: I'm mainly economic/scientific, Tiki's diplomacy, and Robin's military. Now, it's not like I don't do diplomacy or Robin don't do economy, but these are our specialties.
Lessee…what else? Through…circumstances, all three of us are Manaketes (of one type or another). Unlike Tiki, the two of us can't transform at will and don't get bonuses from a dragonstone. All three of us are functionally immortal, so we'll see how that plays out in like two thousand years or so.
So, the Phoenix Empire.
The Phoenix Empire was established some time between the war against Plegia and the war against Valm, largely because I felt like the middle finger I could make by myself was not very impressive. The company existed to provide funds for my scientific and naval pursuits, and as a result holds…what is probably the most technologically advanced navy on the planet, if the smallest one (not counting minor nations).
Our warships, numbering roughly a dozen, are either reinforced with steel plates or are scratch-made with steel hulls, featuring magically powered turbine engines, refined handling, and damage control to ensure that a sunk ship could hermetically seal and then slowly submarine its way back to port. They have radar, maydar (magic radar), a full communication suite, and a reasonably well-equipped combat information control center.
Our competitors have sailing ships with ballistae.
Suffice to say we have a tendency to run circles around our opponents even before the Phoenix Empire Arsenal got their upgrades.
Upgrades?
So, until very recently (about two years ago) the amount of experienced personnel within the Empire was seriously few. There wasn't really a coherent structure for departments, and I just did what I could to make sure that things got done.
Now, though, the Phoenix Empire has enough sway in its established territories to draw in the other Outrealmers—people like me—who join our nation either out of their own personal interest, or out of a desire to go home.
I have a monopoly on the Outrealm gates (which are not just a means for buying DLC) and can ferry people through as needed. Of course, I need Bubba the gatekeeper to agree, but as long as I'm not making an outrageous request I'm in a good position.
So Outrealmers can go home, provided that they give us their technical expertise for two years. Some Outrealmers fall in love with the country and decide to stay, which, y'know, is all the better.
Because of this rule, and because of the printing press (which we attach a magic keyboard onto and turn it into a computer because Fuck Yeah Magic™) we now have a lot of technical books and documents on biology, mathematics, theories of magic, economics, politics, geology…you name it, we have it. The Jewel of the Coast, my de facto capital for now, has a massive library that houses all of these books. Southtown has a small branch of the library, and the place is constantly packed to the brim with Ylissean scholars looking to learn about the latest and greatest ideas.
We also have very sophisticated (compared to Fantasy Medieval Europe) departments dealing with developments concerning Magic, Engineering, and Physics. They are called the DAE and DEP.
Which is…
…Department of Angry Engineers and Department of Enraged Physicists.
Apparently magic scrambles with some of their understanding for how logic works, and they don't like it much. Like, a month after its establishment the DAE built, as a joke, a perpetual motion engine, and it worked. They called themselves the DAE afterwards because there was no logical reason why a perpetual motion engine was possible.
It's not really a perpetual motion engine, mind you, but one drop of spirit dust can keep that engine running for a prospective five hundred years, so it's damn close.
The DEP, incidentally, got its name because they figured out how to solidify light through magical means. Their explanation hurt my head, and it seemed to hurt their heads, and again they were not expecting to succeed, but they did, so…yeah. DEP.
The first weapon built with this technology was given to Chrom, as a replacement for his beloved Falchion.
The two branches have done more for the empire than I can list. Their greatest achievement, I think, is the particle-transfer build system. The PTBS, or "Pibbles", as the guys on the ground call it, is basically free-form 3D printing. Small flying robots (Fuck Yeah Magic™) are connected to a modified teleportation ring. Construction material is loaded into the ring and is then beamed over to the robots (Fuck Yeah Magic™) which then uses it according to an uploaded blueprint. This means we can build big, strong buildings with basically no overhead and no trash, and it goes up fast.
As an added bonus, the robots can be used to dig underground to lay pipes, using the dirt it digs for material or else teleporting it back to the ring to be used later. So we can lay down piping or underground wires without having to dig up basically everything. It's wonderful.
And there is no potential for abuse?
…there is. There always is. Fortunately the Phoenix Empire is a police state, so I'm not too worried.
…What? Police States are useful.
So, to be a citizen, you have to take a test. There is no idea of being 'born into citizenry' that's…otherwise normal in the world. The three of us took the test (it's not a very hard test) to kind of cement in its legitimacy. After becoming a citizen, you get a card of citizenship, which is also magically ingrained into your genetic data (Fuck Yeah Biology™) which makes you a citizen, grants you some basic forms of magical defense against incoming threats (to the tune of a +4 def/res, basically), and makes it so that we can track you forever. The spell is ingrained into your genes, incidentally, is renewed so long as the person is within the Phoenix's territory, so if you leave the country and don't return for a year then we lose track. If we lose track, then the person loses their citizenship and must retake the test and regain the spell.
The entire process for citizenship, I should note, takes about five minutes maximum.
Visitors to the nation get a visitor's visa and a lesser version of the spell that fades after a week of being out of town. If you don't have one of these, you can't, say, open a business.
…To tell you the truth, though: everybody who comes into the country is automatically tracked by the subspace maydar (Fuck Yeah Magic Physics™), and the spell of citizenship/visitor status just makes it so that we're not suspicious of you.
And what of illegal immigrants?
We haven't had this problem yet, because migration speed is pretty slow in the era of medieval-ness, but as a rule, illegal immigrants are enslaved with a hundred thousand gold debt to the state. Slavery's not an uncommon thing, so I figured we might as well make good use of it. Ylisse, for example, uses slaves for its more dangerous jobs (like mining) so it's basically a necessary evil.
In our case, slavery is the punishment for crimes that would otherwise result in imprisonment, and the severity of the sentence is reflected by the size of the debt they have to pay off. A slave, upon gaining their freedom, also gains a maximum of 5000 gold purse (or else half of the debt they had) to help them get back on their feet. Basically, apart from the fact that the state gets to decide where the slaves work, they're treated as normal citizens: free healthcare, room and board, free education (up to pre-academy levels), and crimes against slaves are treated as crimes against free persons. As a personal opinion, I prefer my system to imprisonment, if only because it ensures that we're not creating a class of people who only become more isolated from the world as their imprisonment gets longer. I mean, yeah, we run the risk of having dangerous people on the street, but…if there exists a person so dangerous you want to keep them away from society at all costs, then the best option would be to just kill them. Like, why run the risk of them breaking free from life in prison just because
…I'm going to stop now, just because this conversation is derailing.
Anyways.
The Phoenix Empire, due to the fact that it's a nation, has a lot of information to cover, and I'll do that in bits and pieces as necessary.
For now though, we need to talk about Tellius, and this 'Noire' place.
So like I said before I veered off into gushing about my amazing, amazing country, 'Noire' is part of the continent of Tellius. I'm going to refer to these places as independent continents for the sake of expediency, so Tellius is explicitly the left half, and 'Noire' is the right half.
There exists a large, extremely hostile desert between the two halves. Preliminary searches through Tellius histories and stories have told us nothing about 'Noire', so it stands to reason that the desert has not been crossed. The sea around the desert is also extremely hostile to sailing, to the point where even our warships run the risk of capsizing if we tried to ply those waters. Fortunately, the danger area only extends out about two hundred miles, so our ships can go around without trouble.
I mean, yeah, there're a few Krakens in the water, but they're pretty nice if you can talk to them, so they're not a worry.
Time out.
Oh yeah. You know how old earth maps tend to have sea serpents n'shit drawn into their oceans?
Well in Fire Emblem those things are actually real. The Deep Ocean (the areas between continents) have very choppy water, frequent storms, and literal sea monsters. Those sea monsters do react to magic, and so, VERY fortunately, they can be reasoned with. Most of the time they keep to themselves and make me hate the Ocean, but sometimes a serpent gets curious and comes up to take a look.
'course, "taking a look" sometimes means "The Enterprise gets carried on top of a snake head and can't do anything against a new landmass for a few hours", so…yeah.
Fuck the Ocean, is the point I'm making. Until we have secured entirely safe travel routes, the three of us escort each fleet as it moves, just to make sure things don't go wrong. Should be obvious, but the waters and the snakes and the krakens and the dragons are probably the reason why no continent has really ever made contact with another.
Hell, the reason why Jugdral and Elibe even made contact with each other recently is because the serpent that used to live between the two continents moved away, making the waters calmer than it used to be.
Anyways…now that we've found 'Noire', we can begin infiltration. We're going to use the two Heroic Albino kids as the focal point and see if we can learn about the continent. I can worry about what kind of money I can make from this visit afterwards.
…and I know just who to send.
.
.
.
{ === + === }
Author Notes:
And we're off!
Technology Corner:
"Timer": Technically a freezer. Instead of using ice, it generates a pocket dimension (using our knowledge of the outrealm gate) and turns the time dial all the way down. In other words, items within the dimension gets slowed, and thus do not rot. In other words, we are indeed breaking the laws of space time for the sake of a fresher, tastier tomato.
