station72 | [hatch log] welcome to the void-- wait no, waypoint shril

Entry tags:

[hatch log] welcome to the void-- wait no, waypoint shril

CHARACTERS: New Hosts & EVERYONE
WHERE: The Station, Waypoint Shril
WHEN: DAY :027
SUMMARY: New hosts take the universe for a spin.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. Need a warning added? PM this account please!

YOU WAKE UP and suddenly you're a different person. --No. Wait. Scratch that. Not suddenly. It's been a while, hasn't it? Something feels off anyway - a combination of the strange and familiar right there in your own head - and you know intuitively that you've been unconscious for more than just a blink of the eye. It’s impossible to tell exactly how long ago or how exactly you escaped the danger that had been breathing down your neck, but you know it was more than a moment ago.

But here you are, a small miracle of the multiverse: lying in a small faintly hexagonal chamber, a gentle white light emanating from the surrounding walls. If you were injured during your escape, those injuries have been healed. If you were anxious or frightened or distraught, those feelings have been briefly calmed. There's something strangely peaceful about waking up here. That feeling persists even as you find the tube running from the base of your neck to the compartment's rear wall.

But when the tube's disconnected? Things get loud. A wave of emotion fills that peaceful void - fear, uncertainty, relief, a sense of purpose or loneliness or anxiety. Maybe some of these emotions are yours, but they can't all be. After the initial sensory overload, the mental buzz elongates: stretches out into a murmur like the sound of a party happening behind a closed door.

You can sit up - barely -, and shift out of the pod. There’s a ladder at your feet and a little cubby just before it with anything you brought with you as well as a set of crisp, loose-fitting white clothes; while your injuries are healed, whatever you’re wearing is in the exact state it was before. Maybe it's time for a change? Drop down the ladder to the floor of the Nesting Deck and you’ll find you’re not alone - and that those sounds in your head are louder the closer you are to these strangers. --No. That's not right either. A sense of familiarity runs so deep between you it might as well be cellular.

Welcome to Station 72. It is... exhausting. There's both a both deep weariness in your bones and a pulse of anticipation crawling under your skin. Your body feels heavy at first, like you're somehow too dense or too real. But maybe that sensation eases eventually. Or maybe you just get used to it?

( ▬▬▬▬▬...There you are. Join us on the hangar, won't you....▬▬▬? )

It doesn't sound like a voice as much as it just resembles sounds, the sensation of warmth and security like napping in a window at the height of summer. If it's followed, you'll eventually wind your day to a massive hangar bay peppered with a myriad of small and medium ships ranging from strange to ornately beautiful to hardly recognizable. Waiting in front of a small silver craft is an aging woman with greying hair, fine jewlery chains tinkling with a multitude of metal charms sound through her clothing and along her forearms. You know instinctively she was the one who spoke to you.

She smiles now, moving to climb into the (very) small ship. There's room enough for all of you if you pack in tight. "Come along," says Cathaway. "The line for Platform Alfa is long enough that we can answer your questions on the way."

WAYPOINT SHRIL might be bursting at the seams with activity, noise and people, but there's no missing when something in the universe shifts. For most older Hosts, they wont quite be able to put their finger on what's going on, but Chuuya and Elena? They know exactly what's happening - somewhere in this universe, new Hosts are hatching and at least one of them belongs to you.

Not that the mystery lasts long for everyone else either. A few hours after the shift, Cathaway's speaks to you. Her voice is clear as a crystal bell, suffused with an intense and simple joy that has nothing to do with--

( New hosts have arrived. Please come meet us at Platform Alfa if you're able. They'll need your assistance. )

--and everything to do with the sensation of a ship hurtling as a bullet through space, the nauseating feeling of darting between other small craft and buzzing around larger class ships.

Come fetch your new friends, everyone. Waypoint Shril could be dangerous for the initiated. After all, the Catacomb Hotel is filled with construction zones and open elevator shafts, the streets are thronged with vendors looking to make a quick Shen off unsuspecting tourists, the area immediately surrounding the Stadium Zone is jammed with intergalactic reporters and especially hot headed or famous competitors filming a pre-competition conference, and - most mortifying of all - the line to leave Platform Alfa is apparently several hours long. What's a new Host to do without a little guidance?

((OOC Notes: This is the hatch log for the new hosts and anyone looking to greet them after their hatching. You’re welcome to make your own logs separate to this going forward and tag any old logs that have been forward dated to this point or beyond. We're about halfway through the first week at Waypoint Shril, so feel free to touch the mission drop post as long as you're appropriately timing your encounters.

Additionally, you can find a more detailed overview of the hatching process HERE. You can find additional setting information about the Station HERE. Information about Waypoint Shril is located at the Current Mission Brief - you may consider this information more or less ICly known. Last but not least, if you have any questions, please hit up either the FAQ or MOD CONTACT pages!))

NAVIGATION • SETTING • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Noctis raises a brow, refrains from asking You don't know what video games are either? Because that's redundant and a little rude; maybe in familiar company he can afford to be blunt, but right now doesn't seem to be the time for it.]

Uh, you know... a game on a television screen. Or any kind of screen. With light.

[noct explains things gud

This is awkward. He's trying to think of the best way to say it, without relying too much on words she may not understand. His mind flickers back to his own experiences; planted squarely in front of a large screen, controller in hand. Leveling up, side quests, cutscenes. A story (that he sometimes didn't pay attention to). That all feels like a lifetime ago.

He might also be unknowingly projecting this directly to her, since he has no control over his own mental barriers at the moment.]

[ She's not sure what a television screen is, either, or what light has to do with any of this, but it's starting to feel like if they start down this rabbit hole, they won't be surfacing for a while.

And then she gets the - image? impression? - of a...moving picture? But it can't just be a mirror, the image is completely different and it's glowing, and who knows what that thing he's holding is...

This is only marginally informative. ]

[You would think that he'd be able to explain this better, but her confusion just seems to bleed over, making it even more difficult than it should be.

He lifts his gaze upwards, then extends an arm to point at one such "screen" hanging above them. An electro-cloth banner (close enough), flickering with alien writing. Advertisement for the ABA!, no doubt.]

Something like that, something that projects images with light. Except I always played them on something more rectangular. Not a banner.

[ She looks up. ]

How does it work?

[ The future is like, super cool, man. ]

[Lucina, you are asking the Wrong Person.]

I don't know, actually. [He looks back at her, though he doesn't feel terribly embarrassed about this admission. He's always appreciated technology, but that doesn't mean he knows how to put any of it together, or the details behind how it all works.]

Information gets transmitted to it, and it displays that information on a screen. In games you can interact with it if you have an... interface. A controller.

[He kind of loses his conviction near the end of that explanation, though, because he has a feeling he's not really dwelling on the important matters.]

I'm no expert. I just use it and hope it works. [A beat.] So your homeland has nothing like this at all?

No.

[ Clearly. ]

We have...arbalests. Ballistae. Siege engines. That's about the most complex machinery I've seen.

[ And, honestly, by her time, not even most of that anymore. Like everything else, most of it's long since been trashed in the battles with the Risen. But the history of her world isn't the point here. ]

[He nods, pressing his lips together in consideration as she explains. It all sounds very... ah, medieval, and Noct realizes that maybe thinking about it in that way isn't too far off. Arbalests, ballistae and siege engines, after all.

He adjusts his expectations accordingly.]

If it helps, most of this is over my head, too. We don't have spaceships or stations, where I'm from.

[A beat.] If we wanna look around, then maybe we should stick together so we don't get lost?

[ But at least you seem to have heard of them, she stops herself from saying out loud. It's not productive. There's little sense in wasting time on it. ]

That may be wise.

[And so, he waves at her to follow, turning and beginning to walk. As best as he can manage, at least, in the crowd, which seems to simultaneously be everywhere and anywhere at once.]

I don't think I caught your name?

[ It's not quite the kind of crowd she's used to navigating (dead ones, trying to kill her, mostly), but she's agile enough to keep up without running into anything or anyone. ]

Lucina.

[Noctis does relatively well for the most part. He does have to stop suddenly when a menagerie of insect-like aliens skitter past, all vibrant, different colors that refract light back in a blinding manner.]

I'm Noctis.

[And then a beat, because-- idle chatter. Not his strong point.

Still, he is curious, so certain questions come to the forefront faster than others.]

What's your world like?

[ Haha.

The awkward question first, okay. ]

There's very little left to speak of.

[It's a talent of his, to pluck up the most awkward question first. Because of course he does.

And now he feels a little guilty for bringing it up, but instead of lingering in even more awkward silence, he feels compelled to continue.]

What... happened?

[ Awkward though it is, it is probably better to get it out of the way, she thinks. Because if their thoughts are going to be this close all the time, there's no way it would never come up. There's too much darkness and death hanging over her memories not to invite the question. ]

The Fell Dragon was resurrected, and with him, armies of the dead - Risen, we call them. We've fought, but...

[ Well. The problem with fighting the dead is that the more you lose, the worse you're bound to keep losing. ]

I can't say how things fare beyond our own continent. The ports were destroyed early on. I can't imagine they're doing any better, though. Even Ylisstol has fallen.

[Darkness and death. That sounds an awful like his own experiences, and though the names are unfamiliar to Noctis, he can't help but feel a spike of something akin to... sorrow, running parallel with her own story.

He tries his best to keep it within him, but success is questionable at best.]

This Fell Dragon... is it a god, or something?

Yes. In Plegia they worship him as the god of annihilation. Why anyone would consider such a thing worthy of worship is beyond me.

[ Even with as bad off as her timeline is, she can't really imagine taking up that kind of nihilism in response. ]

[Noctis is wondering the same thing -- who would worship a god of annihilation, of all things.]

Gods from my world can be defeated. [With no small amount of effort, but he's managed it with Ifrit once.] Can the same be said of yours?

He was, once. By the First Exalt, after he was blessed with the power of the divine dragon Naga.

[ She glances down, to the sword at her side. Technically, she's got two out of three boxes checked - Exalted blood, and the Falchion, but - ]

The Awakening can no longer be performed, in my time.

[His gaze follows hers, ending at the blade at her side. He wonders at it; he can feel the thrum of importance between their shared link, focused around that weapon.]

In your "time"? [That's an interesting way of putting it.]

Without the means of stopping him after his rebirth, our only choice was to try and prevent it from happening in the first place.

[ And then it got messy. And emotional. And full of plot holes, like every good time travel story. ]

[Full of plot holes? Well, then they share something in common at least!]

So you're telling me you travelled back in time to try to fix this?

As foolish and desperate as it sounds, yes. I did.

[ Because they were, in fact, that desperate. ]

[He didn't say anything about it being foolish or desperate, but it does sound rather risky. He can't imagine the implications of traveling back in time to fix something. The implications alone threaten to make his head hurt.]

Sometimes a little desperation is a good thing, when you don't have any other choice. You just wanted to save everyone.

[Of course, now the question hangs in the air. How well did it work?]

It may not have been enough.

[ She's doubtful - at the moment she left, things looked very bad indeed, but some part of her still wants to cling to whatever hope she can. That there was something she'd missed and it hadn't been what it looked like and her father wasn't dead. ]

But I suppose there's no way to be certain, now.

[He's silent for a moment as they continue walking. Somehow, they've managed to find a spot that isn't swarming with aliens, and they can speak without having to focus too much on not running into anyone.]

I don't know how much consolation it is, but I understand how that feels. The uncertainty of not knowing.

[If he can't offer any real comfort, he can at least offer commiseration.]

I left my world in a state of darkness. I don't get to see if things will ever get set right.

(no subject)

futurewitness - 2017-05-15 03:04 (UTC) - Expand

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only