| First Coopanonvan - Majerean Bilateral Meeting | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jun 18 2015, 03:59 PM (293 Views) | |
| Coopanonva | Jun 18 2015, 03:59 PM Post #1 |
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Middle Power
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First Coopanonvan - Majerean Bilateral Meeting Location: City of Corone, Coopanonva State The government of Coopanonva was glad to host the first OEO related meetings with representatives from Majerea. It was hoped by government that the meetings would begin to produce a Charter for the OEO to follow. The location chosen was a state owned conference centre in the city of Corone, Coopanonva State. The building was only recently constructed and is designed to withstand even the most devastating of attacks making it a perfect choice for such meetings in the ever worsening international environment. Attending the meeting on behalf of Coopanonva is Daniil Soffiati; Minister of Foreign Affairs & International Development, Alberto Sandell; Minister of Defence and Cordeila Szmit; Chancellor of the Exchequer alongside a handful of civil servants. Edited by Coopanonva, Jun 18 2015, 04:16 PM.
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| Majerea | Jun 25 2015, 11:52 PM Post #2 |
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Contradiction
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Dun Chiadeann Airport, Capital Prefecture, Majerea There was no-one waiting for the two men at the airport; perhaps, Kai thought, that was to be expected. Public opinion saw the OEO as bad news, he knew, and although that normally wouldn"t be much of a consideration some of the higher ranking state officials had also been against the idea from the beginning. The idea of Majerea leaving itself at the beck and call of any other nation was an unpopular one. Even the deals he'd made with the Federates- he remembered them hazily now, another hasty meeting in a dimly-lit room in what was becoming an increasingly busy timetable for the Foreign Affairs Minister of a country on the brink of war- which did little more than actually provide Majerea grain for winter, something it desperately needed even if no-one would admit it, were met with mutterings and dark silences. In their hearts many Majereans remembered their ancestors' Majéri, and Um-Riksaer, and seven hundred years of Norfeld hegemony over the peninsula. But perhaps more pragmatically, in their heads they remembered the Thalla, a political party funded by the NatKaps across the water and who brought the country first directly into one dictatorship and then, after the ensuing military coup against their leadership, another. So yes. The state couldn't be seen to attach any importance to this ordinary diplomatic meeting, even if it was the first meeting of an alliance with a country at war- with Villeron, no less. That was why Kai and the other man were left to find their own way to their plane, a commercial airliner flying to Degmos on the west coast, and from there to Jeunote, and from there to the Coopanonvan border, on public transport all the way, and flying neither out of nor into Coopanonvian territory, because you never could be too careful. They found their seats, on opposite sides of the plane. Kai had asked for those two seats himself, though he pretended not to know they would be sitting apart. Mads Nielsen was the other man's name; he was Deputy Minister of Defence, half-Villerian, and enough of an ideologue to have stayed in the country when Villerians, Lydlanders, and Majereans alike all fled north or west or south or anywhere else, just away. Mads had risen quickly- Kai suspected that that was down to a little informant work on the side; the man wasn't particularly suited to his job but knew a lot of people in Villeron, some still sympathetic to the homeland. The typical fanatic who was becoming less typical. That was why the two were travelling together- the higher-ups needed Kai, of course, but they couldn't let him alone after the Regican Civil War business. Someone had to keep an eye on him, and take the lead if he became reticent, and the Suthurinder, though this wasn't a phrase used about him often, was ideal for the job. The perfect example of a man without the imagination for evil, but who'd happily go through with it if it meant a shot at promotion. The plane started up. "Turn off all mobile devices immediately," - the typical matter-of-factness of the Majerean forced to take responsibility for a bunch of people he couldn't care less about. The captain taxied onto the runway and yet before obeying the captain's orders a woman three rows back took a call and said "Yes, yes, they're here" before hanging up - someone behind them was working for TerraSave ironically but didn't think much of it (and on such things great events either depend or are considered in hindsight to be completely ridiculous ideas in the first place - this is because they all are) - and the person at the other end scribbled a note down saying "09:35 KG & MN on flight" and returned to whatever they were doing before while somewhere in the distance the plane took off, bound for Degmos. Degmos Autonomous Province, Federate Empire Several hours later The coastline came into view on the horizon, and they began to descend. Kai had practiced his Kstovian on the plane, which was barely good enough to serve him for the few hours he would be spending in Federate territory today, let alone anything more. But it was something to do; he could see Mads out of the corner of his eye just sleeping. And, it turned out, he didn't even wake up when they landed, it being left to Kai to wait for the rest of the plane to empty and nudge him slightly until at last he woke up. Picking up their luggage, the two men hauled their suitcases to the rear doors and descended the ladder onto the tarmac. Here a bus was waiting for them, much to the audible annoyment of the other passengers, who had been stuck there waiting for them. With the Majereans on board, the bus driver pulled away and drove towards the airport building. Though there were certainly a few Kstovians, a Coopanonvite or two, and even a Villerian, clearly having been curious to see Majerea, the voices Kai could hear on the bus were mostly Majerean, a fact that would surprise many outsiders. It was true that most Majereans were prevented from travelling, but not quite in the way that it was generally assumed. So many people had fled the country in 1987 that at the end of the Civil War the government simply decided the existing passports were no longer valid. Over the years, a few people were issued new ones, and with those they could go barely anywhere, because the Federate and Coopanonvan flights to and from Majerea had only just been set up in the past year, thirty years after the war. So the Majereans who could travel were seizing the opportunity, but the only Majereans who could were either "friends of the state" or those who had paid an extortionate fee to have a forgery made (though calling them forgeries would perhaps be the wrong word, because they were generally made by the same people who made the official passports). Still, travellers were still a tiny minority, and generally people who benefited enough from the system that they wouldn't dream of not returning, even without considering what would happen to those they would leave behind if they did. The bus stopped with a sudden jolt, and a few minutes later Kai and Mads were sitting on a metal bench in the terminal building, trying to make sense of the Kstovian alphabet on the departures board. "The 2:05 there looks like it says Corone." "We're not flying to Corone, we're flying to Jeunote. And anyway," - Kai had his Kstovian dictionary out on his lap - "that says Kòlano." "Oh." They passed the time by doing very little. Kai managed to buy two coffees with a lot of hand waving, and they drank them in silence. The terminal was about as empty as the Majerean airport they had taken off from, and most of the signs were either warnings or threats - clearly the revolt in Degmos was still going on out there somewhere. The Jeunote flight showed up as замедленный. Two more coffees; the man at the stand selling them was clearly beginning to get the idea. Kai took the opportunity to browse a Villerian news site on his phone. Mads noticed this but said nothing. A few announcements were made, too fast for Kai to translate with his dictionary, but, judging from the fact everyone else (well, the three other people there) was standing up, he felt it was probably time to go, and this hypothesis was confirmed when the man at the coffee stall came over and pointed them in the same direction as the others. And so, the second plane. This time, they found, they were sitting together at the back: neither was particularly happy about that. The man at the gate checked their passports and surprised them with a stream of fluent Majerean. Relieved to hear someone talking their native language, they talked to him for a bit. He'd opposed the Thalla in the Civil War, but had fled when it looked like they were going to come out on top and not been allowed back in even when his side won. And so, he asked them a few questions about Majerea, which Kai carefully answered in the vaguest way he could and Mads replied to with barely disguised enthusiasm. The gate opened at last, and the man waved them on and looked back to see if they were gone before turning to his computer and typing an email to someone with a .mj address and deleting it from his Sent Items folder - "Thanks," came the reply "We were getting worried," and he was relieved because they'd promised to get him a passport if he just kept an eye on these sorts of things whenever something important happened at Degmos. He'd been doing it for eight years now and it had always been "Just a little longer..." but he knew he'd be able to come home again soon enough and so for now he dispelled any doubts he had left over and turned to check the next person's passport and wave them through. Coopanonvian border checkpoint (between Terra Bruciata, Coopanonva and Jeunote, Federate Empire) Late afternoon They had been expected, though not this late. "You should be in Corone by now, you know," the Royal Marines man at the border told them, evidently having been told to look out for the Majereans when they crossed over. "Where the hell were you? "Well, you know, we had to catch a Federate plane..." The guard nodded in understanding; Kai knew well enough that the way to get along with a Coopanonvite was to blame the foreigners for everything. They were led through the border and presented with their passports by another Marine, who shouted "Long live the King!" and saluted before they could thank him. That was typical of this country, Kai thought. The checkpoint itself was halfway to being a fully-fledged military base and stood about twenty metres across from the noticeably smaller Federate post. Signs everywhere proclaimed in Coopanonvan and (noticeably smaller) Kstovian that YOU MUST KEEP TO THE LEFT OF THE CORRIDOR AT ALL TIMES, to HAVE YOUR PASSPORT READY FOR INSPECTION, and so on. What Kai found interesting was that nowhere was the word "border" mentioned, and no signs read YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE UNITED REALMS OF COOPANONVA. But perhaps that was to be expected- if he asked anyone looking vaguely official, they'd most likely deny that he was leaving, well, FedEm territory at all. Someone behind them was assigned to inform Corone that the Majereans had finally arrived. To be entirely fair to him he did exactly that: it was just that he also happened to inform Dun Chiadeann while he was at it. What was the big deal anyway? It wasn't like he was betraying his country or anything that the more patriotic border guards warned against- he was just passing on a bit of information and earning a bit of extra money on the side. With a satisfied conscience he carried on with his life. At the other side was a station platform, much like the one at which the passengers of the Jeunote to Corone train (calling, as Kai in the absence of something better to do had read on the timetable a hundred times already, first here and then to L'Esilia, Centro, Locanda, Lacustre, somewhere he couldn't pronounce and finally Centro) had been told to get off and walk through the border. The train was not waiting there for them. Mads looked confused; in reply, Kai, pointed to the tunnel that lay between them and Jeunote. It was guarded by five men; four faced down the tunnel to stop people getting into Coopanonva, one half-heartedly posted to prevent anyone getting out to Jeunote. Beyond them the Federate platform could just about be seen, but before that was another, where their train was being attended to by a few tiny figures with smaller guns. "They have to make sure there's no-one and nothing getting through, so they search every bit of the train before sending it on its way." "Seems a bit overly-sensitive," Mads, ever the ideologue, replied. "What's the worst that could happen?" "I grew up in Lishain, on the southern border. It's the same there." They were quiet for a minute. "He should be here by now, you know," Kai muttered in an attempt to change the subject. "So much for us being late." "He" was on the train pulling in on the other platform, fortunately. Even across the station, neither Kai nor the man on the other side could conceal their excitement, and the other man actually ran across the bridge to meet them. "Rashid!" Kai exclaimed. The half-Balansiyyan (certainly uncommon among Majereans) diplomat smiled back. "You've done well for yourself, haven't you?" Kai glanced at Mads Nielsen, who was looking slightly awkward off to the side, for a second. "Well, you got out." This was partly true. Rashid Michaels had risen to the top of Majerea's (admittedly small, given Majerea's foreign policy up until now) diplomatic service. Someone had decided that he was in the way, though, and his long history of dissent, which had been generally overlooked because the state, like it or not, needed him, had been dug up. We can't really keep you here now, he'd been told, and if you do then you'll probably have to end up in prison. On the other hand, we do need someone to work as the ambassador to Coopanonva now... "As if it was much of a choice," Rashid finished, to laughter from Kai, who hadn't been told the story and had been surprised when he'd been told he was meeting his officially dead best friend here. "Maybe I should tell everyone about that time I bombed the capital, then?" Mads was beginning to look even more awkward. "...I'm joking," Kai told him. Well, almost, he thought. "Ah, we'll reminisce on the train, won't we?" They settled down to wait and Mads made a note for later which neither Kai nor Rashid ever found out about because luckily for them the person who the other man would talk to about this did not in fact care one bit. But for now he'd join them in sitting there as they waited for the train, which was beginning, at last, to pull out of the tunnel. The platform was filling up slowly; some people were being made to wait for an unspecified time period in a cordoned off area (the border guards in Lishain called theirs a "playpen") in the checkpoint, and some were just turned back. But those who made it through were here, and began to stand up now as the train to Corone, having received at last the all-clear, finally arrived. It picked up speed on leaving the station, and, like the old 107 standard-model trains in Majerea - old Villerian engines and carriages from the NatKap era, commissioned in the later part of their dictatorship and bought by the Majerean government when the regime fell, repainted and renamed, and still in use nearly fifty years later - it sped along through the Coopanonvian countryside with only a faint hum, not a death-rattle, to indicate it was moving. But move it did. The train began to fill up at L'Esilio. It had been mostly empty beforehand, because very few people wanted to either leave Jeunote and go to Coopanonva or be in Jeunote in the first place, and in fact a few of the passengers, walking through the carriage and spotting the three Majereans already on board, looked at them with a certain curiosity before moving on. L'Esilio seemed almost like the edge of civilisation; the land to the east was barren, the nameless towns that passed by far less regularly than would be expected were grey and decaying, with houses that looked like they'd been built centuries ago and never lived in since, and which flickered past the window and were gone in an instant. "Always reminds me of home, this bit," Rashid muttered. At one point the train slowed and finally came to a stop in an unremarkable patch of countryside. Kai peered out of the window to try and see what was keeping them, and as if on cue another train, on the side of which the letters RCAF could be read, pulled past them and ahead, and their own train began to pick up speed again. But to the west of L'Esilio, the land began to flatten. Villages and towns went by more frequently now, and on the horizon power plants and factories filled the sky with manmade clouds. Here was the heartland of the United Realms, the Terre di Mezzo, and the centre in actuality as well as in name; the city the train eventually pulled into after a surprisingly featureless journey across endless rolling hills, passing twentieth-century factories and buildings, and eventually more modern developments as the skyline became visible through the dulled glass was, again, called Centro. Not a name that gave much in the way of characterisation, but neither did Centro - it felt like one of the towns they'd been frequently passing since L'Esilio, just expanded to scale upwards and outwards. People got on, people got off, Kai paid them no attention. All three of the Majereans grew quieter as the train continued onwards (Mads, in fact, had finally felt half a world's worth of travelling catch up with him, and was now asleep across from Kai and Rashid). Kai began paying less attention to the outside. The Mezzo bored him, and although it took perhaps an hour for the train to speed through it from Centro to Locanda, it felt like they hadn't left the state capital, and the same kinds of buildings and intermittent factories and so on passed at regular intervals until Kai suddenly realised they'd stopped again, half the passengers got off and were swiftly replaced, and they left Locanda behind. The sun began to swing round and beat down from the south, making any further attempts to look out too difficult from the glare to bother with, and finally sending Kai off to sleep. He woke in time to see Lacustre, along with its hotels, its pebbled beach seemingly constantly thronged by visitors from one end to the other, and its older buildings that were slowly being pushed away from the town centre and replaced by more and more of a concrete and glass skyline, disappear behind them outside the opposite window, but was too tired to register much at the next station on the other side of Lacustre's lake - he never did find out how to pronounce its Coopanonvian name. But it was hard to miss Corone. The city didn't build up around them like Centro or L'Esilio or anywhere else they'd passed along the way, it just happened to them. Older, more ornate buildings than any others they'd seen so far rose up out of nowhere, and the train slowed now as if to ensure everyone was watching. Coopanonva's largest city, Kai realised, was designed to be impressive even when these buildings were constructed. "You know I'm from Elleholm myself," Mads said suddenly, more as a statement than a question. Kai shrugged. "Well, your Suthurin accent's so thick I'm surprised you haven't yet been arrested for sympathising with the enemy." He was ignored. "This city reminds me of home, almost." Kai had to agree with him. Rivalry with Villeron had existed ever since the Majerean War of Independence, and Elleholm was built largely because of this. It was designed to be Orbis' first truly modern city, built from scratch, and the huge construction project had been deliberately placed at the northern tip of Suthurin island, where Villeron could be seen on a clear day. The unspoken intention, of course, was to show that even as Villeron recovered from the NatKap era its neighbour was one step ahead of it and looking to the future instead of back at the past. Fate has a sense of humour, though, and a few years later the Crowned Republic was emerging as a dominant technological and industrial power, while Majerea descended into bloody civil war. Construction of Elleholm had been abandoned, naturally, and it became known as the Half-City - the centre and eastern suburbs had been built but nothing else, and from a distance it looked like a cross-section; here was the comparison with Corone, another city that rose up out of nowhere. They fell silent again. Kai went back to looking out of the window, and he could see how the city had developed since then - the buildings grew more modern as they continued into the city, as if every so often a new gigantic construction project rippled out from the centre and then stopped to make way for the next visionaries. Even the inner city, consisting of relatively new tower blocks and twentieth-century buildings, was being ripped up and replaced as the train passed through. Corone's station was, of course, huge (the 3:16 from Terra Bruciata - and Jeunote wasn't mentioned at all - pulled in on platform 23), and was located right in the centre of town, with a glass ceiling ensuring visitors would be suitably in awe of the skyscrapers outside even before they stepped outside. And they, admittedly, were. There was something about it, though, that didn't feel lived in - the buildings were too far apart, the throngs of people inside the station ended at its main doors and the pavement outside was mostly empty, there was just something about the city in its current incarnation that wasn't quite human. They went and found the platform promising to take them to the conference centre. There a Majerean woman was waiting for them, perhaps just as a reminder that they weren't alone, for better or for worse - she led them onto the train and they said nothing, aside from the usual formalities, for a few minutes; the train then pulled into another station, almost generic now in its grandeur, and she said "You'll want this one" before they thanked her and got off. Soon enough they found themselves in central Corone. They saw bits of life and character as they walked through. Here a Kolagard, the common name for ethnically Regican streets that had sprung up in cities across Orbis a few years back as millions fled the Dominion and the following civil war, but the windows of the Regican supermarket was broken and graffiti scrawled over its walls. Here an office that had for whatever reason closed down and been occupied by a group of squatters; flags adorned the outside walls and the building was in the process of being painted a startling red colour in contrast to the white modernism of the city around it, but it felt like an ultimately futile gesture, another revolution to be forgotten. Kai began to question himself; there was no conversation between the three men as they walked to stop him from doing so. Why was he so dismissive of Coopanonva? Majerea was far worse, and this was the first time he'd really been able to escape - if he turned down one of the streets that stretched down to infinity he could leave and never be found again. Yet he didn't want to, and his opinion of Corone and everywhere else he'd passed was overwhelmingly negative. Perhaps, he thought, it was this: any free nation that chose to align itself with Majerea didn't feel like a free nation at all. And now, here was the conference centre; a modern building like everything around it, yet squat, set into the ground slightly, and reminding Kai of a steel and glass fortress. Inside was the same, and the foyer they entered echoed with their steps. "Here we are," Rashid said, for the sake of something to say. Kai nodded, and as Mads went off to talk to the Niverian delegates, who were coming out as they entered, they waited. |
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| Coopanonva | Aug 10 2015, 10:16 AM Post #3 |
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Middle Power
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SIKE ~~but Edited by Coopanonva, Aug 10 2015, 05:25 PM.
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7:31 PM Jul 11