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

[onemind]

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 )

Comments

yes good

[polyphonos]

[Luckily, one of them is feeling more than comfortable enough for the both of them. Her mind is a bright, sparkling presence at the edge of his - pleasantly warm and delightfully sharp as she brings the ship's engines online and modulates their intake down to an idling hiss.]

We promise to make your trip as smooth as is possible, of course. However, [there's a sly tilt to her tone - it sounds like how an eyebrow being arched looks] The space around the Station is crowded right now, so forgive us any necessary evasive maneuvers.

[Clunk. The sound of something shifting, then the ship begins a corkscrew descent through the floor of the hangar bay. A moment later, the ceiling closes above them and they're swallowed in darkness as the ship is rotated down into the Station's launch tube. There's a pervasive hum in the air vibrating out from under the too loud mental noise.]

Are you unfamiliar with technology like this?

[lavelly]

["Evasive maneuvers." That just sounds lovely.

Lavellan looks around them at the cabin dubiously, only to tense and grip the nearest handhold for dear life at the first sign of motion. Considering he only has the one hand, he doesn't succeed in feeling very secure, but definitely not for trying.

He doesn't say anything again until after the vessel has more or less stabilized. It's not much more than a little nervous laugh, his knuckles still white with tension.]

You could say that.

[polyphonos]

[There's a solid thunk! as something unseen latches onto the underside of the craft, followed by a honing of the ship's vibrations as the engines spool sharper and higher.]

Don't worry. Familiarity will come naturally. Close your mouth, please.

[That last part is a kind warning. Then the ship is slingshot forward at such speed that it throws Cathaway back into the pilot's seat. It's like bolt fired from a bow. A crack of lighting cutting across an open sky. The ship punches out into space at such velocity that it might be nauseating if not for the high, brilliant sensations of joy pouring off its pilot.]

[lavelly]

[Lavellan can't suppress an audible gasp of fear as the ship takes off, and for several moments he's actually convinced he's going to die. He never knew it was possible for anything to move so fast, let alone something with him in it. And yet seconds go by and nothing happens, aside from the speed.

Very, very gradually he comes out of his statue-still shock, and looks around the compartment again with a renewed sense of wonder and fear.]

How... how is this possible?

[polyphonos]

It's a combination of alien technology and rudimentary physics. [There's a sucking, breathless noise as the engines engage and the ship rolls to spiral brilliantly through the swarm of spacecraft and holoboards and ABA! shuttles filling the space above Waypoint Alfa. Space spins beyond the viewport, a brilliant whirlwind of color and light.]

You'll grow to understand. Now-- [Click. Hiss. The ship's velocity ratchets back.] How are you?

[Spoken as if they're fast, familiar friends and she's merely trying to catch up.]

[lavelly]

[He stares out the window, at the interior of the ship, at the armrest, he's gripping, at Cathaway (with the tendrils of her mind slipping through his own thoughts), and finally back out the window.

He's silent, and might be turning a little green.]

I think... I think I'm going to be ill.

[polyphonos]

[It's difficult to see her expression - Cathaway's reflection in the viewscreen is hard to parse through the reflections of holographic advertisements and ships fleeting past -, but the sensation coming off her is impossible not to be aware of. It feels like a grin, the soft noise before laughing. The ships slews, arcing brilliantly toward what appears to be a monstrously long queue leading toward the Waypoint's sprawling landing platform.]

There are bags under your seat. Please don't be sick on our ship's deck unless you want to scrub it out.

[lavelly]

[He takes one of the indicated bags, but the motion and color and bustle of everything prevents him from doing much else. It's all so... dizzy, and alien, and incomprehensible, and maybe he'll just faint instead of vomiting.

He swallows numbly as he waits for it all to coalesce into something he can recognize as sensible. It doesn't.]

When does this all start making sense?

[polyphonos]

For you, dear? [She isn't looking at him, distracted by the necessity of throttling back on the ship's engines as they face up the back of the queue.] We imagine as soon as you're not at the behest of anyone else. It'll fall into place once you can start finding your own trouble.

[Cathaway flicks a glance back, a simulacrum of her attention before it diverts back to the controls.]

Or are we wrong?