The scribe did the best she could to record everything that was going on in that giant city hall that historic day. It was a city hall so big that the room the meeting took place in was the size of a stadium. The city hall meeting ended up being rather chaotic but she did feel she was able to extract the most important information.
The following meeting was also televised on broadcasting systems across Natovis but it would have been too hard to discern the most important parts. It likely would have looked like a mob of people yelling at eachother in the point of view of people watching their screens at home. Unless everyone quieted down and let people speak one at a time, (which barely happened), noone would be able to tell what was happening.
The following takes place about twenty years before present day, a few weeks after the kidnapping of Eleenya Cosmosteeya and the other mysterious disappearances had first occurred:
There was a city hall called over the kidnapping, and the sudden rise of disappearances that followed. It was rare for Natovis to hold these events anymore, events once held routinely to get feedback from the public on what the course of action should be in response to significant events.
The Head City Manager, Mr Downwell hit his gavel several times so the sound of the crowd would die down. Chatter among the crowd continued for about 30 seconds before ceasing.
It was the city manager's job to address the public concerns of the recent events. With only a few stragglers whispering to each other, the City Manager began to speak.
"Everyone in attendance knows why they are here and why they are in attendance. Some of our fellow citizens, in separate instances, with relative ease, have been snatched by some unknown individuals likely from the levels below. Whether you are here because you are concerned for your own safety, or just here merely out of respect for the kidnapped victims, I can assure you that the situation is under control."
This very statement seemed to annoy the people. The authorities clearly did not have this problem under control. Citizens were literally disappearing every few days with no evidence besides the footage from the kidnapping of Eleenya Cosmosteeya. The crowd erupted again and this time their noise could not be controlled.
Now that public attention has been drawn towards the Eleenya Cosmosteeya case, there has already been a surge of speculation on who could have taken her and the others that followed.
The public's knowledge is likely from a mixture of legend, secondhand accounts, and outright guessing. This case really caused people above to rethink what may lie below.
There were an endless number of camps of thought on what should happen in response.
There was so much detail in this portion of the city hall, much of it is not even worth discussing. Here is a summary of the prevailing courses of action discussed however:
The most common response was to invest in technology. This camp proposed to install more cameras around the city to reduce the amount of incidences from happening. The most common objection for this popular proposal was that there were already a lot of cameras throughout the city. Even though there was footage of Eleenya Cosmosteeya being taken, there was not even one other incident that was recorded on the city cameras despite there being regular disappearances every day.
The next camp proposed hiring a massive police force to patrol the upper levels. Similar to the proposal to get more cameras, the objection to this was this question: why are the existing officers not witnessing any unusual events? Aside from the one officer that saw Eleenya being taken, then quickly told the police force know so they could bring up the live footage, there was not one account of criminal activity relating to these disappearances.
Surprisingly, the third most common camp proposed to not do anything. They did not see the crimes as a problem, as they were isolated incidents. This camp would not age well as time went on.
After the first three proposals, there were some more that still had a decent number of supporters or just simply got a lot of attention from the public and the news.
The fourth most common idea came from the ex-military man who would later be nicknamed "The Adventurist." After the city hall took place, he would effectively become a celebrity to the public and despite his ideas not being popular, would gain a loyal following. Most of the public was invited to the city hall meeting and many still watched it on their broadcasting televisions at home, so everyone saw just how eccentric this individual was in both his ideas and the way he composed himself at the capital house of Natovis.
The individual proposed to send a large armed force down to the lower levels and confront whoever was committing the acts. He said this would also give an opportunity to re-explore the mysterious areas below, potentially regaining authority over the areas.
This idea of sending the military down there would have been more popular, if there were not two main objections: one, no one knew who did the crimes in the first place. Therefore, no one knew who to go after in the first place. And, the second objection, is the lower levels are a vast place. People had no idea how big it actually was, but many estimates say the amount of floors could be somewhere in the thousands. How the authorities would even get the resources to be able to do this was also unanswered.
The fifth most most common group suggested to hire a private investigator of some sort to go down there and see what clues or evidence they could find, then a more proper decision could be made.
The largest objection to this proposal was there was already very little evidence to go off of. The evidence that the authorities do possess was just footage of her being taken and carried all the way down to the lower levels. All that is known about the criminals who took Eleenya Cosmosteeya is that there were 5 of them, they were humanoid, and wore full black body suits at night, covering every part of themselves, even their eyes.
The final camp was the least popular and gained the least attention from the public. The final camp was the quietest and had just a handful of people. They believed in some type of combination between the proposed actions. This also was the camp city managers would ultimately go with.
The head city manager, after the city hall, leaned over to one of his colleague city managers, put his hand up blocking his mouth from others seeing him speak. He whispered to one of his colleague city managers that one of these meetings with the public would never need to be held again.
There is much more detail to go into, but ultimately the plan would fail because everything was attempted to a certain extent instead of just one or maybe two proposals getting all the resources and effort.
The authorities would ultimately close the case due to a lack of leads and evidence. The authorities would pull resources to the programs proposed in the city hall because the programs were not getting any results. They officially closed the case on the five-year anniversary of the kidnapping of Eleenya Cosmosteeya. The disappearance of people from the upper levels would continue.
What made things even worse is that these criminals, suspected to come from below, would become more savvy at these crimes. The Eleenya Cosmosteeya case is the only one of these disappearances that has even been recorded. When the authorities allude to the other kidnapping cases to the same suspects, that is really just an assumption. There is no evidence, the people merely disappear.
And so, this city hall was what the environment was like when the case had first begun. This city hall that took place was what people's response to the such unprecedented events in known times.
This meeting also shows why it was so significant to the public when the case had been reopened twenty years later due to someone giving a piece of evidence to the authorities that was obviously enough to make authorities want to reopen a case many people would argue had initially been closed far too early.