Rising Action

Tāwhiri-mātea: Activities
–The Antagonist is directly opposed to the Protagonist and seeks to prevent the Protagonist from achieving the goal. Through mental effort, the Antagonist gets others to Reconsider their attempts to attain the Overall Story Goal. Using physical effort, the Antagonist tries to Prevent or Avoid the Overall Story Goal from being achieved.

Character and Plot Dynamics: Limit — Optionlock
Kō is just a little human, she must find and employ the help of gods to stop Tāwhiri. She will try several things, until at last she has no option but to [go to the underworld to retreive the last piece?].

Plot Information: Costs — Changing One’s Nature
Kō has to ignore her core impulse to love by fighting against it. She lose some innocence in the process.

Aroha wants to support Kō in her quest, but also hates seeing her in constant danger of death. Maybe there’s a tension here where at some point Aroha will demand Kō stop, but Kō will go on despite Aroha’s feelings. In this way, Aroha will succumb to her feelings instead of her normal mode of applying reason to a situation — logically, Kō MUST go on or everyone will die, but Aroha is overcome with anxiety, and has something like an emotional meltdown which forces Kō to explicitly choose duty over love in that circumstance.

Ingo is a brute who must come to terms with the fact that his “wife to be” does not need him to be “the man” of the relationship, and the farther Kō goes, and the more she succeeds in her quest, the more immasculine he feels. He has to learn that men are not superior to women in order to make peace with the situation.

Mōhio fears losing Kō both physically and emotionally. Everything that happens that pushes Kō toward her more balanced outlook makes Mōhio feel sort of guilty — he’s glad that she’s seeing things his way, but feels like her innocence was valuable, or in his heart of hearts wishes “true love” really could conquer all.