Two days ago, news broke of the capture of Ceri Mains. She is in custody now, no longer on the run.

Some people, like Kara Martins, see this as good news, while others, such as myself and Ivella Ogden, see this as bad news.

Regardless, here is what we know about the story having transpired since September 6.

It turns out that immediately after everything happened, Ceri illegally crossed the fence boundary into Gentry County Airfield and took a custom-made rogue airship which cable-dropped her into Lerutan. We believe at this point that she took on yet another unknown disguise and boarded a cable-train to West Terredon, where she took another cable-train across the border into the Great North. There, she traveled to Terredon Airfield, where she took an airship across the Ocean to the Acrean Republic, landing in its capital, Arlemn.

This was an overnight flight; so Ceri landed in Arlemn on the morning of September 7. And it was in Arlemn that she was believed to have met with an anonymous disguise artist who form-fitted her into a vibrant figure named Rachel Marie Clymer. As Rachel Marie Clymer, she took a rail line, then traveling car, to Oberhell, a rural village located in the Northeasternmost part of the Republic. She had secret darkfire contacts stationed along the way who pipelined resources to her location in the little town, where she and her friends set to work to construct a secret granular plane housing a replica of Cabotton University.

And apparently, as part of this construction, they also built some sort of escape route in the case that they were raided.

But there are some factors. First of all, darkfire is legal in the Acrean Republic. In fact, darkfire legalization was the catalyst for the revolution against the old Kingdom in the first place.

Then there was the political situation with the town of Oberhell, itself. Over the generations, the village became dominated by two family factions: one faction roughly in the North part, who was pro-Royalist, and one roughly in the South part who was anti-Royalist.

And the stakes were high with this because of the structure of Oberhell. To the Northeast of the town stood a range of low mountains on the other side of which stood the coast of the Circlarian Ocean. The village, in fact, lies atop the slopes of this range going down in the direction of the Southwest, and is lined with a "cascade-lake" system, which flows into a geographical region known as the Eastern Acrean Water Basin.

The village utilizes this water system through what is known as branch irrigation. At the very top of this system, geographically speaking, stands a farm which has the largest lake of the cascade system and holds the chief canal which branches off into the smaller irrigation canals to the smaller farms with the smaller ponds. Whoever is in control of this property at the top is effectively in control of Oberhell.

Since 1086, this top property was community-owned, with the inhabitants consisting of the Town Leader, who is elected democratically from year-to-year to a one-year term.

As mentioned before, there are two factions: the pro-Royalists and anti-Royalists. And they, for the past several generations, and more intensely since the 1275 Treaty between Retun and Acrea, have been volleying to each have a figure from their faction serve as the elected Town Leader.

And may I mention that an issue hotly contested during this time was the issue of the darkfire quarry in the area, for darkfire has been legalized in Acrea since the establishment of the Acrean Republic, a move very much opposed by the pro-Royalists.

Just last year, for their 1280 election, an anti-Royalist won the Town Leader position by, I believe, a margin of about 10 votes; for context, Oberhell has a total population of about 800 to 900 people. The opposing pro-Royalist side claimed that the town's Ballot House was rigged because it had been administered by an anti-Royalist family. This was brought as a contest toward the Judge of the town, who ordered both a pro-Royalist committee and anti-Royalist committee to count the same ballots in a blind-screen fashion to rule out bias. The outcome from both committees was both the same, favoring the victory of the anti-Royalist as the Town Leader. Needless to say, the pro-Royalists were quite unhappy with this, to the point that street scuffles started breaking out.

Of note was an incident involving the transaction of a local bird known as a heneagle. The story goes that an anti-Royalist man gave a fully-grown, adult heneagle to a woman of a pro-Royalist family as a gift. The woman's father was upset with this and snatched the heneagle and chopped off its head. The man having given the gift was named Qwar; he and the woman, named Bella, ran off in fear. However, Qwar ran to his older brother, the original owner of the heneagle, and told him of the incident. The brother retaliated and confronted Bella's father in the Oberhell Market Square, getting into a tussle proving to be a public spectacle. The Oberhell Police got involved, jailing both Qwar's brother and Bella's brother, and the Court hearing that followed imposed ten days of jail time to both people.

It turned out that Bella's father was the brother of a business owner who was the employer for both Qwar and his brother. And thus, Qwar and his brother were both fired from their jobs. Qwar, his brother, and their friends retaliated on September 8 of this year by confronting the boss in the Oberhell Market Square and roughing him up. The boss, expecting this, had himself a bunch of ruffians for protection. And thus, a town-wide rumble broke out.

This was when Ceri Mains intervened. Disguised as Rachel Marie Clymer, Ceri made her debut with her unusually loud and vibrant voice to stop the fighting. Now here, I do suspect that darkfire was involved, for the mass of street fighters was quite swayed by Rachel's call to stop. The next day, September 9, Rachel performed the public act of taking a paint stick and drawing a vibrant white line through the middle of the Market Square, and through the entire town via the Main Path, and stated that pro-Royalists shall remain North of this line, and anti-Royalists to the South. She emphasized no one could cross over that line, even to communicate with each other; in fact, the only way to communicate was through the Town Council or the Judge.

The government of the Town was very much influenced by this and approved of Rachel's move. And then on September 10, the Town Council voted to split into two Councils: the North Town Council consisting of the pro-Royalists and the South Town Council consisting of the anti-Royalists. Only the position of Town Leader and Judge remained undivided.

The next day, there was quickly built a canvas-fence running along the line drawn by Ceri, disguised as Rachel. Whether or not Ceri pushed for that remains unclear. However, an issue arose when, on September 12, Rachel was approached by Mara Ferlink from the pro-Royalist side, who stated that this divide separated her from her romantic partner, Esther Young, from the anti-Royalist side. Rachel facilitated their reunion under special circumstances, as Rachel relocated her abode, at this time, to the property where lived the Town Leader. As part of this arrangement, Mara and Esther were said to have joined Ceri Mains in assisting her in the granular plane effort.

On September 13, Esther agreed to travel to Cabotton University to begin recruiting students here. It is said that Dyla Cormick was ultimately the one to assist Esther, but Dyla will not confirm this, not even with me.

Meanwhile, back in Oberhell, serious construction began on the escape route from the granular plane. This involved a replica of the submarine prototype that Ceri Mains had used to escape from the Mount Carris Perimeter back in June. So the granular plane, where sat the replica of the Cabotton University campus, bore the same replica of the University Lake with this version opening to an underground canal led through a granular string corridor away from the granular plane in Oberhell and into the Circlarian Ocean Northeast of the hills. This very same route was also planned to serve the opposite purpose: to help others in the Mount Carris Perimeter to escape in the same fashion as Ceri Mains and then to sail out of the Inland Sea, across the vast Circlarian Ocean, and then to finally go back up the granular string corridor to the University granular plane replica underneath Oberhell. Construction for this was very quick and was expected to be fully operational by November 1.

The only issue was the speculation on whether or not the Retunian government, knowing now of Ceri Mains' escape route, closed the underwater route out of Lake Maern. So while Esther Young was in Cabotton, Ceri dispatched Mara to go to the Mount Carris Perimeter to report on what she saw there.

That was on September 14. On September 17, Daniel Carter and Stephen Martins, having followed Ceri Mains' trail, arrived in Oberhell; although they could not reach Ceri Mains, because she had gotten the Town Leader to protect her. Both factions and the government of Oberhell were convinced, at this point, that Rachel Marie Clymer was a genuine identity and not another individual in disguise, though Carter and Martins had begun spreading sentiment among primarily the pro-Royalist faction. On September 18, the Royalists went to the Town Leader, stating that Rachel Marie Clymer was, in fact, the notorious Ceri Mains, and demanded to have her handed over to Carter and Martins.

The Town Leader refused, though, and instead had Rachel Marie Clymer's abode moved to a more protected location on the Town Leader property.

Roughly between the dates of September 19 through 24 came a long-lasting rain storm, as is normal for the local climate at that time of the year. And the pro-Royalists, disgruntled by the anti-Royalist Town Leader's stubborn refusal to give up the refuge of Rachel Marie Clymer, decided that the circumstances were ripe for a perfect act of retaliation; they began damming up the lakes and canals on their side as to cause flooding on the other side.

The first of these stone-clay dams began going up on September 19. The next day, both the North and South Councils convened in the hopes of achieving mutual consolation and de-escalation, but talks failed. As a result, the anti-Royalists began diking up their lakes and canals to protect themselves from catastrophic flooding. Pro-Royalists responded to this by crossing over and destroying these dikes. On September 21, amid the rains and rising water levels, the anti-Royalists crossed over and destroyed the pro-Royalist dams. During that act, pro-Royalists confronted them, and spell discharge fights broke out. Police intervened and many were arrested. Then the Judge ordered the dividing fence to be fortified and to have each of the two sections of town hemmed in with fencing surrounding it.

Between September 22 and 24, the rains took their toll. The canals and lakes overflowed their banks, and catastrophic flooding struck both the North and South sides of Oberhell, killing 123 people.

Daniel Carter and Stephen Martins came out to claim that this was the fault of a darkfire act carried out by Ceri Mains, disguised as Rachel Marie Clymer. Though only half of the population of Oberhell believed this, Carter was actually able to convince the Retunian Department of State. He succeeded in calling a special conference with them on the Galapolgis Island of Reinar on October 10.

On October 4, Mara Ferlink is said to have returned to Oberhell, where she told Ceri Mains that the underwater route she had originally took out of the Mount Carris Perimeter was now blocked by an underwater grate. Ceri resolved that this could be bypassed with an underwater corridor on a granular string, very much like the one being built in Oberhell.

There, however, stood the issue of recruiting helpers with this Mount Carris pipeline. And this, I believe, was what Ceri was stuck on when she was finally captured.

Now I need to address how Daniel Carter was able to capture Ceri Mains despite darkfire being legal in the Acrean Republic.

Carter may be elderly at this point, but he is still strong physically and mentally. He is a seasoned veteran when it comes to hunting down darkfire figures, a vocation I continue to view with more and more disgust. He was, nevertheless, anticipating a retirement from his career, and was determined to have one more "big hunt" to signal this departure. Thus, he saw Ceri Mains as an ideal opportunity.

Carter was one of the first people to note how Ceri Mains happened to carry out her escape just as the violence of the Weyne-North feud was reaching its fever pitch. In the days after Ceri's escape, Carter traveled from town to town, speaking with family members and friends not directly involved but still in the know of the feud. He was, therefore, able to map out a good diagram of the Weyne, North, and Kormann families and where each member stood in the feud. And under the impression that Ceri used the feud the leverage her escape, Carter studied his diagram to narrow down those who were most likely Ceri Mains conspirators, and suspected three people: Arlen Weyne age 23, Charles Kormann age 23, and Karla North age 19.

Carter then set out to Shon County in the province of Gymia where lived Arlen Weyne. He found Arlen Weyne but could not find evidence connecting him to Ceri Mains, meaning the trip out to Shon County had come to a dead end. He then set out to Joseph County in Gymia, where he met with a local barber who knew Charles Kormann. There, Carter learned that Kormann had apparently stopped over for a haircut recently, and that he had asked to keep a lock of his own hair. Carter mentally drew on his knowledge of darkfire disguise and remembered that some of the more basic and easy-to-implement disguise models involved the use of one's hair. Carter realized that he had a lead with Charles Kormann. He then met with a few of Charles' former classmates and discovered that Charles had made friends with a somewhat shady figure named Kevin Mains.

Carter looked through records and archives on Kevin Mains and discovered that he was, indeed, related to Ceri, as a first cousin. Carter also found Kevin Mains' postal address in Ebony Valley.

Carter then traveled to the town of Ebony Valley and met with the manager of the hotel Standler, who also described Kevin Mains as a "shady fella," and that Kevin Mains was believed to be seeing some woman in the small town of Vale, located in the North part of Gentry County.

On September 5, Daniel Carter went to Vale, where he learned from the owner of a local grocer that Kevin was spotted seeing some seclusive individual in a fenced-in property. Carter went to said property and found it locked and deserted, thus a dead end.

However, this gave Carter reason to believe that Kevin Mains was somewhere in Gentry County; so he reported this Gentry County authorities, which prompted the University Campus lockdown.

Carter was apparently reading reports of the University lockdown when a thought occurred to him: The Third Level Society. He realized to his alarm that Ceri Mains might possibly be attempting to hijack the dymensional plane there, a very lucrative thing for darkfire cartels to do. Sure there were mechanisms in place to protect the dymensional plane, but, like Dungeonmaster Julian Mackwell, Carter was concerned that the mechanisms would be outdated and ineffective. Thus the reason that Carter went to the University, itself.

So everything that followed involving my input when I met Carter happened on September 6. We had our intense conversation with Julian Mackwell, especially when that letter, which now makes all the sense in the world, left Julian, at the time, in shock and confusion. It was when we met with Mary Kormann and her friend, "Parker," that Carter realized that he had found exactly who he was looking for, why Parker left, and why Carter left as well.

Parker had fit exactly the description that Carter had found when looking for Kevin Mains. Parker was Kevin Mains.

Kevin Mains had realized at that point in our walk to the Caucus Chamber that it was time to escape and go back to where he was in assisting Ceri Mains. We do not know what exactly his role was at that point, but he was to leave before he was caught; and this was exacerbated when Carter began getting suspicious of him. While we were in the Chamber going through roll call, Carter, outside, confronted Kevin Mains as Kevin Mains was leaving Campus and asked him if he had been through the checkpoint. Kevin said "yes" but then tried to avoid Carter. Carter, taking no chances, tried to get Kevin to go back and meet with the checkpoint Campus Watch Officers again. When Kevin refused and said it wasn't necessary, Carter tried taking him by the arm and forcing him. Kevin resisted him, ran off, then turned and fired a spellfire discharge at him. Carter did not draw his talisman in time, and was knocked to the ground.

It was then and there that Daniel Orville Carter realized that Mary Kormann was Ceri Mains. It was Carter who alerted the Campus Watch to this, thus prompting the Campus Watch to evacuate the Chamber and close in on Mary.

As we all know, Ceri Mains escaped. Carter suspected that Kevin and Ceri went to Terredon, after talking to more witnesses. So he alerted authorities and had one of the cable trains stopped just before the border to the Great North. However, neither Ceri nor Kevin were on board.

All Carter knew was that Ceri and Kevin were somewhere in the Great North. Beyond that, Carter completely lost track of them. He called upon the Edoran authorities to try and search, but the Edoran authorities refused, citing scant evidence.

Carter had no leads whatsoever until the arrival of Esther Young on September 14. Esther was quite the avowed activist as I remember, doing quite the good job of rallying Cabotton students together to call for the pardon of Mary Kormann, culminating for the call to legalize darkfire here as in the Acrean Republic; a call I believe, by the way, is not going anywhere any time soon.

Carter believed that Esther did too good of a job persuading people and began to suspect the involvement of darkfire swaying the emotions of the masses. Carter also heard about the paranoia carried out by Kara Martins and her brother, Stephen, but nonetheless admired their stance against darkfire. Carter apparently asked Kara, first, to go with him to Esther Young's home country, the Acrean Republic, where Carter now believed Ceri was hiding. Kara stated she was unable to, but her brother, Stephen Martins agreed to go.

Thus, Daniel Carter and Stephen Martins set out to follow Esther back to Acrea, with Esther being unaware of this. They took an airship and landed in Arlemn on September 16. Now despite its size, the Acrean Republic has a somewhat smaller population and therefore more of an environment of a small town, politically speaking. And thus rumors travel fast. Before long, Carter and Martins caught wind of a story of a vibrant and charismatic woman named Rachel Marie Clymer, who had a powerful and convincing voice, and had drawn a line through the middle of a small town called Oberhell in order to stop apparent faction fighting.

It was then and there that Carter and Martins suspected the presence of Ceri Mains. They went to the Acrean Department of Justice to ask them to conduct surveillance and investigations. However, their Justice Department refused to even hear of it; after all, darkfire is legal in the Acrean Republic, meaning Ceri Mains was not committing a crime there.

Carter and Martins decided to take matters into their own hands and travel to the small village of Oberhell, where they discovered that not everyone there was so keen on the establishment of the Acrean Republic or the legalization of darkfire. Those opposed were a part of a very strong and conservative pro-Royalist faction, who occupied most of the North part of town. On the night of September 17, he managed to meet with a bunch of them in either a tavern or restaurant there and informed them of the happenings of Ceri Mains. To Carter's delight, the pro-Royalists suspected Rachel Clymer as Ceri Mains.

So that was how the discord in Oberhell started, surrounding Ceri Mains that is.

However, since, once again, darkfire is completely legal in Acrea, Carter was now at a dead end. He determined that he and Stephen Martins would split, with himself heading back to the Basin District while Stephen Martins stayed in Oberhell to observe and report any turn of events.

There was a reason that Carter went back to the Basin District. It was true that the Acrean Republic would effectively give asylum to Ceri Mains. However, Carter realized that he could give all of his reports and information to the Retunian Department of State and have them meet with an Arbitrator from the international Congress of Circlaria with the hope of leveraging international extradition. The Retunian Department of State voiced desire to follow through with this, but could not do so because of a Congress of Circlaria clause requiring Ceri Mains to have caused harm to people in Acrea in order to warrant intervention.

Then came the Oberhell Floods. And this infuriates me, by the way. Ceri Mains in no way, shape, or form had anything to do with the Oberhell Floods. However, the way Stephen Martins reported on it back to Carter, as well as newspapers around the world, managed to fix false blame on her. Thus both the Department of State in Retun as well as the Congress of Circlaria now had cause to intervene. Both entities met on October 3, a letter was sent to an Arbitrator in Cenofan for Congress of Circlaria to meet for weeks of talks involving Carter, the Department of State, and even Prime Minister Edward Jackson. The Arbitrator agreed shortly thereafter.

On October 10, they finally met. The President of the Republic of Acrea was also invited but did not attend. The meeting was voluntary for him, and he invoked a decision not to go in order to keep Acrea neutral in international affairs. In five days, the Arbitrator decided that Carter's reports were enough to authorize an investigation pending the Acrean President's approval. This would have proven futile had Carter not pulled a very political move: to have himself appointed to meet with the President, himself, in lieu of the party of the Conference having taken place. Carter saw an opportunity here, because while the President intended Acrea to remain unaligned, he had also, in order to prevent inflamed politics, convinced the free press to not report so much on Ceri Mains.

Thus, on October 18, Daniel Carter met with the Acrean President in a secret and classified venue, where he proposed, I believe, some convincing terms. I say that because the President agreed to have a special task from abroad come into the country and extradite Ceri Mains, a move that was finally carried out on October 21.

Apparently, on that day, Ceri in her abode received a letter from that task force stating that her site was surrounded and cut off by secretly-stationed armed personnel, including forces stationed at the coast at the head of the granular tunnel. Ceri reported to the back room of a tavern in the town where she was arrested and placed in handcuffs, reportedly stating quietly but confidently: "Let's keep this civil, shall we."

She is now in one of the prison barracks within the Mount Carris Perimeter, reserved for those "out-of-control" individuals that the Finzi government deems outlaws. Though the Finzi regime imposes short sentences in those cells, Ceri Mains has been ordered to remain in there well past the 72 hour mark and until at least her meeting with the Arbitrator for the Retunian federal government on November 7.

It is being echoed across the radio waves and newsreels that the Retunian government is taking no chances regarding what happened last month. But there are many here, not least of all myself and Dyla Cormick, who believe the government is being overly oppressive about this, acting on behalf of Reonard-Chaney-era fear propaganda.

But at this time, there is nothing else to be done.