Re: Floor B23 - District of Earth, Freerunner Territory
"It all began with the First Wave of Celestial Emancipation," the elder Lunar begins with a sweeping arm gesture, addressing the entire room, as if certain the wolves would understand as well. "On the 13th of Ascending Water, during the height of the Moon-That-Would-Be-Full, a reality once thought impossible was brought into being. Aided by a power beyond comprehension, a power transcending even the Great and Detestable Machines, the Celestial Exalted of Water District were freed from their bondage in a single stroke!"
"How I lament that I, ensconced in a District so far above, could not have been instrumental in such an act! But alas, it was not I. Nor any ally of mine. Their collars, or so my birds report to me, simply stopped working. Deactivated. Useless bits of metal they cast aside, and in place of that, took up arms and ran toward Freedom!" Free speaks the word from which his name was derived with a stirring depth of passion, raising his clenched fist toward the ceiling!
"But the jealous Terrestrials would not allow the Chosen their Freedom. So determined were they to ensure their Fate was binary -- slavery or extermination -- that they proclaimed a Purge, and commanded the Artificial Intelligence of the District, the Gatekeeper of Water, to enact it. In their name, the Gatekeeper would call a Great Flood upon the Water District, drowning all Unnecessary Life, and the 'hated Anathema' along with them. The treacherous Dragon-bloods and their favored servants had ample time to ensure their safety, while the Unfortunates -- the poor and the unclean, the mutants and the rejects, all such beings would perish in the deep drink."
"And the Celestials proclaimed, it would not be so. Not for them, not for the innocents that would die on their behalf. They would race against time, rise up the levels of Water District to seek an audience with the Gatekeeper itself. For the Gatekeeper, seeing its old Masters, would recall the time before the Usurpation, when she served not the will of the Terrestrials, but that of the Chosen of Sun, Moon and Stars."
"Fortune smiled on them that day, and how!" The mad Lunar pauses dramatically, his eyes rolling back into his head as if his fervor for the story would make him implode from the inside. When next he speaks it is in a low, trembling voice. "They persuaded the Gatekeeper to their side, and ever after the Water District has been under its jurisdiction, Free of the Terrestrial shackle. The new Overseer sent the Celestials directly to Earth District, then combined forces with the Unfortunates to rout or destroy the remaining Dragon-bloods in the new Independent Republic of Water!"
"Ten young Celestials now toil to liberate the Earth District! The trouble they've stirred has given us the chance to strike the Immaculates where it hurts! And, my friend Perian, WE may soon be able to meet them, and judge their worthiness to join the greater drama of Freedom that has begun before they were born. What say you to that?!"