Tahiti Water Gates
The Water Gates at Tahiti (Created by Kuan-Xi)
(Awaiting confirmation from Drew)
There are three general kinds of security arrangements for gates:
- Owned Gates: The House of Exuberant Interference owns the land at the other side and has full control over security. (No examples yet; so we haven't decided general attributes of this.)
- Allied Gates: The other side is under control of an ally, or at least someone else who we have made arrangements with; we have mutual security commitments with them.
- Suzuki: As below, with a comfy outbuilding
- Sakong Estates: Shen-Ji's estates, with ???? security?
- Three Piers: Zhu Cai-Wen's pocket extradimensional space
- Uncontrolled Gates: The other side is effectively uncontrolled.
- Bear Mountain
Notes: Izumi has an Elemental Marker for blocking any gate at her discretion.
Allied Gates are situated in the Garden of Concordant Interaction, to the south of the main buildings of Tahiti; so outside the security perimiter of the main buildings, but within the patrol and observation areas. The Garden is mostly surrounded by a wall; there are gaps in the wall big enough for luxury carriages to go through. The wall is a light security feature -- not expected to keep anyone with shticks or lots of dice from getting in or out, but enough to give the guards some advantages to work with in case of an alert. The gaps are called that because they don't have doors or gates that can swing shut, but they could be blocked with some warning, in case of a military attack.
Within the garden, each gate has its own little garden area, with different plants and flowers, keyed to whoever is on the other side. Some gates are just pools; others (such as the Suzuki Gate) have small outbuildings around them. The outbuidings are more like fancy shelters than strong structures; they have an open side toward Tahiti, so activity at the gate itself can be seen.
There are not generally guards posted at gates in the Garden, but it is patrolled. The basic reciprocal security arrangement goes like this:
- Security chiefs work out a once-a-day or something protocol for a token you send through with a party, to tell the other side they're approved. (e.g. "On morning A, a guard from side A carries 3 stamped passes through to side B and gives them to the guards there. On morning B the opposite occurs. Keep alternating. When you send a party through, you send a stamped pass with them. When you deliver passes to the other side, you retrieve the last set of unused passes, count them to see if there are extra or missing passes to investigate, and burn them.")
- Either side is welcome to send a party through from its side. You vouch for your parties; you don't send through random people who claim to be friends of the other side.
- A party that has been sent through is entitled to a return trip, plus guests. (So that covers a basic dynamic of "send whoever you want through, and they're entitled to a return trip")
- A set of high-ranking people on both sides are entitled to show up on the other side and use the gate to go back to their side, not as part of a return trip. On our side, this is the Party plus named leaders in the HOEI. The other side (whoever it is) gets a similar list of people.
- If anyone else shows up, with a good enough story or enough status that it's really awkward to hold them, send them through with a guard to make sure they check in on the other side, and the other side will deal. Each side is expected to use common sense to avoid sending the other side's enemies through, etc.
On the Tahiti side, standard procedure is that the guards on patrol will ring a bell when they see someone come through a gate, before checking passes and what-not.
Uncontrolled gates are situated in the Garden of Abundant Connection, to the north of the main building of Tahiti. This garden is surrounded by a similar wall to the one around Concordant Interaction. It is larger, and is less beautiful, and somewhat more explicitly designed to make sure that all gates can be easily observed, and are farther apart from each other.
(Not sure how Li Merit wants to handle these for security)
