[hatch log / mission: hyrypia] the winds that will be howling at all hours

[onemind]

CHARACTERS: New Hosts & EVERYONE
WHERE: Station 72; Hyrypia - Naerstone House
WHEN: DAY :002 - :003
SUMMARY: New hosts hatch on the Station, are briefed, then make their way to Hyrypia to join the rest of the hosts… while they attend a very important history lesson.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. Need a warning added? PM this account please!

STATION 72
DAY :002

NEW HATCHES
YOU WAKE UP are are suddenly changed. --No. That's not right. You're you and there's no suddenly about it. It's been a while, hasn't it? It feels like waking up from a very deep, extended sleep or surfacing up from the darkness of some wine dark sea. Nothing is different and everything is because right there in your own head there's something both familiar and strange. You know intuitively that you've been unconscious for more than just a blink of the eye.

But here you are, a small miracle of the multiverse: lying in a small, faintly hexagonal chamber with 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 calmed. There's something peaceful about waking up here - like you belong. That feeling persists even as you find the tube running from the base of your neck to the compartment's rear wall.

But once 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. A matching dread. An easy comfort. 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 nearby 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.In fact there are lots of you and none of them are the strangers they should be. Some even seems like people you've known for a very long time.They are as familiar as this place you've never been is.

Welcome to Station 72. Beyond this room it's quiet and still, feeling for all the world like a hollow shell.

--Or it does until a voice separates itself from the white noise in your head:


BRIEFING
THE VOICE IN YOUR HEAD isn't really a voice at all. It's the warm tang of camaraderie, tinged with a flash of impatience like ticking hands on a clock face and a flicker of wonder: a falling star. It says:

( My, you're all very fresh aren't you? Unfortunately, the multiverse waits for no spring chicken. Once you've figured out which way's up, won't you all join us? )
Join 'us' where is the question. And yet, once you're ready to meet the owner of the voice in your mind, your footsteps simply lead you there naturally. Two strangers sit in a small circular briefing room - a tall being covered in short brown fur with a rigid demeanor, and a pale alien with yellow washed frills at her jaw and throat who is smiling cheerfully.

"Hey there, sunshine," says Rhan, her frills humming as she speaks. "Why don't you take a seat so we can get started?"

[ooc note: please see here for the catch-all briefing thread]


THE STATION
WITH A LITTLE UNDER 24 HOURS before it's time to make the trip to Hyrypia, this is as good an opportunity as you're going to get to familiarize yourself with Station 72 before you leave it. There's plenty to see, but a distinct lack of people to make conversation with. It's lonely and quiet and there's a sensation of dust gathering even where there is none. Maybe studying the briefing files on your databank and going over your mission kit is the most proactive distraction, but if not? Well there's plenty of places to get lost...

HYRYPIA - NAERSTONE HOUSE
DAY :003

MEETING
A SINGLE SHIP LANDS in a field the color of burnished gold, returning to the place it had until late the night before occupied. It's carefully inserted beside dozens of other spacecraft bearing more than faint similarities, though each has its own unique aesthetic. When the gangplank drops, the loud engines powering down, it reveals--

New hosts. Seven fresh faces - obscured as they are in layers of intricate fabric - are led down the gangplank by Rhan There to greet them is a number of other hosts - any who answered to the sweet crystalline ring of Collector’s voice in their heads hardly a half hour earlier, speaking with certainty born of truth:

( Rhan and Siva’co are returning. Shall we see what stories they have to tell? )

Despite the solidarity that both combined groups provide, there's a feeling of eyes here. A number of guards along the edge of the shuttle field are watching the reunion like hawks. Better perhaps to return to the apartments where they'll be able to speak in private and teach the new hosts what it is that has been learned since their arrival. --Or explore, for those who prefer not to rest. Naerstone House's grounds are vast and they are almost entirely open to the parties of the pilgrims to explore.

THE PERFORMANCE
AS THE SINGLE RED SUN of Hyrypia dips low on the horizon there is a long, low, mournful sound. A deep bell-- or a horn? Or maybe it's something else entirely, but the call is heard and answered as any nearby servants inform the guests of the house:

“There will be a performance of the First Journey in a quarter turn. All guests are invited to attend.”

There's no mystery as to where the event is occurring. A steady trail of guests and servants lead out past the Veranda into the central garden where a number of pillars have been mounted and a large tiered platform festooned with with numerous draped curtains and abstract representations of trees and mountains - a great stage - now sits. The stage is surrounded by numerous low settees and tables, piles of thick cushions and richly colored rugs around which guests can be found clustered, lounging while sipping thick, syrupy drinks.

Each table is illuminated only by a single glowing orb at its center. Otherwise, as the sun sets it pitches the garden into darkness as even the castle itself has been left unlit. There are no lights in distant windows or on Naerstone House's high walls; these small orbs and the glitter of stars in the black sky might very well be the only points of light in the whole universe.

The allotted time passes and the performance begins. A sun rises over the stage. It's a much larger, more intricate glowing orb and reveals a number of players dressed far more simply than the Hyrypians the hosts have met. They wear complex machine masks upon their faces that shutter into different expressions as their hands flitter across their faces: dramatic caricatures to accompany the droning sound of their singing voices as they unfold the tale at the center of the performance - the one which drives this pilgrimage and for the Nest's very presence in the universe at all. It's the story of lost Rabadoceans coming to a planet near barren intent on brutalizing them - about loss and hardship until finally a single player separates from the rest. The orb of the sun over the stage turns, it's mechanical face shifting and resetting to indicate the passage of time as the very central platform of the stage begins to turn so that this lone player might walk. And walk. And walk through deserts and scrub land, through dark woods and dark caves, against the wind and with it. Through it all, the orb over the stage slowly lowers until at last this lone player can take it in their hands.

It cracks like an egg and brilliance streams from it. Braziers catch fire in the darkness. The garden illuminates itself. Every light in Naerstone House comes to life.

With that, the silence of the crowd breaks. There is applause -- each culture in its own unique fashion -- and then there is a rise of chattering conversation as the guests are served several small dishes and talk about the show they’ve just seen - and whatever possible clues it might give to the pilgrimage they themselves would soon be undertaking.

---

((OOC Notes: This is the hatch log for all new hosts as well as the evening's performance. Feel free to make your own logs and posts additional to this if you care to. You can find a more detailed overview of the host hatching process HERE and additional setting information about the Station HERE. Please be sure to review the MISSION: HYRYPIA ooc information. If you have any questions, please hit up either the mission's question thread, the FAQ or MOD CONTACT pages!))

NAVIGATION • SETTING • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

[skaikru]

( they're essentially having a full scale interaction, a stilted conversation, without opening their mouthes and that — that doesn't feel right. amidst the constant thrum of whispers and voices echoing inside her skull, a man picking out emotions with the same casual observance as a bird watcher is loud and very present. jumps to the forefront of the crowd, ticking down a list of his own that seems to line up neatly with the various waves of emotion clarke hasn't realized she's been projecting. it's affronting, really, to be called out so blatantly. if it's not just anger staining its ruddy-red way up her neck, there's frustration turned embarrassment too.

a beat of unfamiliar imagery countered by her own: dirty children — sweaty and bloodied teenagers. clarke tries, and fails, to curb her thoughts, but cold glare on her face has slipped.

the guise of strangers is breaking. she could guess his name the second before he said it, finds she knows exactly how to spell it. feels familiar in the back of her throat, like the name ought to roll off her tongue. but she's never known a cohle. and when a hand is extended, clarke reaches to take it more so on instinct than any real desire to be cordial and polite. they shake twice like old friends before she truly grasps that they're touching — it somehow doesn't feel as personal as the way their consciousness' have slotted against each other and breathe in tandem — and her skin crawls. everything is too loud snd too sensitive, and she's snatching her hand back like touching had hurt. )

What good would that do?

( a good cathartic cry might help. a nap, despite feeling perfectly well rested. but screaming? it's not productive, but tempting. would that drown out the surrounding noise? would it make sense of the world? of why she feels his grief — or is it her own reflected — in her chest, and his confusion. they're floundering together, and though clarke knows in her core that rust cohle has no more answers than she does, she's moved to ask anyway. )

I — how can I ( when words themselves fail her, there's that moderately intrusive feeling of speaking directly into one another's brains again, aw yeah. ) ( feel you like this? )

they are both gonna need a nap after this

[aluminumandash]

[ He seizes on the fleeting impression of the teenagers, snaps up the image—frantic but adept. There's a sense of readiness, a mind primed for this.

They shake hands. Rust doesn't ask her name. (It's sitting on the tip of his tongue.)

If the intimacy unnerves her, he likes it even less. I can't I can't not this he doesn't think so much as feel, an old calcified dread. Revulsion undercut by floral wallpaper. Grief, again, this time without accompanying sensation. Just a force, a pull like gravity. Inexorable.

He notes abstractedly that her hair is blonde. ] Didn't say it'd be good, I said it'd be easy. [ The words are clipped: seems it's possible to argue semantics while engaged in some kind of full-on emotional transfusion, but not without a certain loss of focus. Maybe he'd really meant easier for him—taking her burdens and exigencies, her anger, her fucking mom and distilling it into a single howl.

Maybe it'd just make him feel less crazy. ]

( If I knew, don't you think I'd fucking stop it? ) [ Still, there's a moment of spiraling speculation—the tube, the uniformity of the pods, the group of them stirring together. Waking as one. Drugs, radiowaves...but it's all so implausible and he can't get five seconds of quiet to think things through. Frustration pours off him.

After a few seconds, Rust shoves it aside.

He drags the teenagers back into focus—closes his eyes as he does so, the image fuzzier than it had been, less detailed. The blood brighter. ] ( That you? )

10 naps. just put them back in a coma tbh

[skaikru]

( well, that's intrusive and gives a whole new meaning to dredging up old memories — as he closes his eyes and seems to actually drag the faces of her friends to the surface of her thoughts. this time the image is clearer; the faces defined, the time set. this was recent. there's miller, bryan, and murphy. there's ontari, braindead on a table, seemingly at peace with the side of her head concave. there's bellamy. there's love there, a sense of responsibility that makes this unintentional betrayal all the more painful. clarke's very much present, but rust isn't treated to an apocalyptic war time mug shot for her like he is the rest. no, he gets the sensation of needles pricking the crook of his elbow, the dull ache of shallow cuts just below his collar bone. the sharp bite of something forcing its way under her skin, the wet sensation of a nosebleed.

then there's the snap — )

Stop it, ( clarke hisses through gritted teeth. she's jerking her hand from his roughly, keeps her palm raised like she's debating shoving him away physically if she can't seem to block him out mentally.

simultaneously and with equal venom: )

( Don't do that, get out of my head, I can't — )

( think? focus. not enough to shut him down. is this what it had felt like inside the hivemind of the artificial intelligence turned dictator they'd left behind? there's the unwelcome pressure of tears welling up behind her eyes, that frustration manifested physically as clarke's left ticking off all the faces in the throne room she'd just vacated. it's another cold reminder of what she'd left behind, the people who were waiting on her; counting on her. her hand goes to the back of her neck, seeks out the gnarled scar tissue at the base of her skull, and

crumbles. that hard, angry set of her face slips. her shoulders sag. the hyper aggression soothes and eroded by a cold, hard dose of guilt. failure. the sentiments: i didn't finish it, and i should have stayed. )

cw: drug use, suicidal ideation (BUT LIKE WEIRD AND ABSTRACT)

[aluminumandash]

[ He's drawn to the body, of course he is: turns a peculiar kind of attention on it, as though if he ran his fingers over her, he could read her wounds like Braille. Her head, looking like something reached in and grabbed a handful.

It's interrupted by the needle in his arm, his sense-memory rushing to meet hers. Breath tangles in his throat and he's gone—drowning and floating in a feeling that's a fathomless ache that's bliss.

He swipes his nose with the back of a hand. She says something, vibrations in the air. In his head her voice, scraped raw. A smooth, creamy color mingled with the smell of cordite.

Slowly, Rust lets his body go slack. He raises both arms, palms out. ] ( Okay. Fuck, I'm sorry. ) [ He takes a sharp breath. Sketches the thin lines of himself. Rustin Cohle. Detective. Thirty-four. Turned his back on his father, held his dead daughter in his arms. Addict. Killer.

He cuts into the connection, and it's like sawing at bone. Field surgery. He keeps at it, even as his chest tightens and the now-familiar cast of faces reappears. He's doused in guilt, and impressions start to escape. Roiling blue light seen through a truck's windshield. The jagged edge of a tooth. The certainty—terrible, dogged, nostalgic—that he would die.

I didn't finish it. I should have stayed. ]

Yeah. [ His voice is tissue-paper thin. ]

[skaikru]

( it's... oddly polite of him, drawing the bare bones of himself for her to catalog. clarke doesn't extend the same courtesy, still all jagged edges and weak defenses from that last visceral scene they'd dredged up together, but those choked and ragged breaths that had made her chest heave start to even out. and she can relate, to an extent. betraying a parent, holding a dead loved one, and killing — each presented fact pings something in her, like fish hooks in her ribcage and the reverberation of the fishing line being tugged felt by both of them.

it's calming. it's cathartic. it's looking at a stranger and seeing the worst parts of yourself reflected back, and feeling a little less lonely for it. )

Yeah, ( clarke all but whispers in return, distracted and not entirely sure what she's agreeing with anymore. but nodding all the same. a stiff, slight gesture; a need to comfort and reassure, a not so silent — it's okay, i understand.

there's tears in her eyes, a few breaking away to roll down her cheeks and collect under her chin before she even notices they've begun to fall. belatedly, she raises a black blood stained sleeve to swipe at her face, and sniffs through the congestion of snot and tragic thoughts. ) My name's Clarke. ( the introduction just another afterthought. it almost feels unnecessary at this point, who needed names when you already knew each others souls. )

[aluminumandash]

[ It's been used on him before—the well-timed hand on the shoulder, that tone they must teach somewhere, glistening from where the pity was scrubbed out. Sympathy, empathy, turn it on and off like a faucet.

This isn't that. She takes it on—him, the sum of every mistake he's made. Lashes herself to him without a second thought. ]

Clarke. [ His eyes close as he says her name, like he's resigning himself to it. They open, and he regards her with a stare that doesn't waver. ] You're a fucking mess. [ Unbearably tender, his voice.

Someplace, someplace that will never be here, the second half of that is: let's get you cleaned up, and for a moment everything spins off its axis and Rust's just close enough to it to feel the gulf.

Heavy-limbed, he picks his uniform up off the floor—hadn't noticed it fall—and presses it on her. His eyes stay on the clothes. ] Blow your nose. [ Without waiting for a reply, he turns to walk away.

He's surprised by how easy it is. Physically speaking. ]

[skaikru]

( he walks away from her, and it's like the wall she had been leaning against suddenly disappeared. the connection had been honed as she'd zeroed in on dissecting his personhood in some desperate attempt to gain understanding, and reeling herself out of that swirling pit of thoughts is like swimming against the current. clarke watches rust's retreating back for far too long, eyes wet and a little glassy, wrestling with herself.

eventually coming to. realizing she's holding an extra pair of the stark white clothes that demand flashbacks to waking up in mount weather's quarantine ward. this was like that, but... different. still, there's the thrum of instinct — something here is dangerous; first comes chocolate cake, then they want your bone marrow — and clarke snaps back to the terrible vivid reality that is her unintentional abandonment of her people, and the crushing guilt of surviving while her loved ones no doubt suffered. she has questions, and needs answers.

if she's feeling a little more lonely than when she'd first opened her eyes when turning to walk in the opposite direction, she doesn't dwell on it. blows her nose in the hem of the gifted white shirt a few minutes later, an after thought. )