station72 | [hatch log / mission: hyrypia] the winds that will be howling at all hours

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 )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[The last time they spoke, Kavinsky had been running from lawmen, the stale air of a marketplace beating on his face. He'd made a mistake; he'd antagonized another Hivemate without knowing the extent of the little prick's powers. And Darkling, wanting to avoid having to spring K out of the local jail, had shoved him into an alley and gave a warning. Those are the details Kavinsky is left with, the exacts long forgotten because the Darkling has been gone.

But he's luckier than Sirius that lays in a permanent state of Sleeping Grizzled Beauty. And unlike Sirius, Darkling never had Kavinsky visiting his faux-gravesite, wondering whether he'd hear nails scratching against the pod.

Someone, now gone, too, told him that the coma Nest members fall into is dreamless; Kavinsky would be locked in a box he couldn't pick his way out of if the same fate swung a noose around him.]

( Try not to jizz on the glass. )

[It's a suggestion, really, and decidedly not an answer to the question posed. Kavinsky's not even close to the Darkling, standing on the opposite side of the Hall on level two, pretending to take in the beauty of an abstract painting that looks, to him, like the vomited end result of a night mixing pills with gin.]

[ he was TIRED, kavinsky. men as handsome as the darkling need their beauty sleep, gosh. ]

( It's beautiful, isn't it? )

[ kavinsky - oh, he remembers this vicious youth. someone he does not have to hide too much from, someone who embraces the wicked and the divine with the air of someone who finds the world a banal, useless thing. a boy made of firecrackers and indulgences.

handsome creature, terrible monster. the darkling looks forward to getting to know him, this time. ]

( The Nectar, not that horrific thing you're gazing at. )

[The Darkling sits a floor and hard diagonal away. Kavinsky keeps his back between them, his eyes staring sightless forward. Other guests of the hall pass behind him, thinking nothing of how still the boy stands; they think he's engrossed in the *art*.

He's thinking that if he took a running leap from the second floor to the first, the symbiote would prevent his neck from snapping. But it's only a ninety-nine percent type of certainty. He stays put.
There are easier ways to go about it if he wants to talk face-to-face.]

( I've got a few questions for you. )

[The Nectar holds no sway over Kavinsky. Dreamers rarely find themselves lusting over the material when they can make more. He hasn't tried to create anything like the Nectar, but he doesn't want to conquer worlds.

He'll make them. And so the crawling, writhing hunger that swarms the air around Kavinsky doesn't so much as sniff at the great and mighty space honey.]

( Of course. )

[ He thinks it's a charming resource. A thing that has been fought over and will be fought over, until some tyrant brings every faction to heel. It's how he's operated, before - not as a tyrant, but as a man deeply concerned over the fate and future of his own people. His people, who were his country's resources and fodder. ]

( Right to business, then? )

[ Why not come closer, Kavinsky? Don't linger so far from him. ]

[He stares at the painting without really seeing it another beat, and then he starts to walk. It will take him a while to travel all the way downstairs. There are people in the way and he's not in any rush.]

( Yeah. What was your nap like? )

( A nap. )

[ like sleeping, and waking to find the world still moved without you. jarring, unsettling, it left him slightly more bleary than he usually felt. slow and disoriented - and he feared it had robbed him of his senses, until he'd begun to socialize once more. orient himself towards the mission. ]

( I suppose, if I had slept forever, I would never have known. )

( Did you dream? )

[He's heard of the way other people sleep; they enter a black void, forget whatever images pass through their mind's eye as they slumber. They wake up with a start, and they should wake screaming. No dreams remembered. How is that not a prelude to the great end of things?

Kavinsky walks like he has no set destination. He meanders.]

( I believe so. )

[ he wasn't dead, after all. just away, for some time - kept in the undertow by his symbiote, kept from further duress and pain, until it had deemed he was better awake than in that zone of distance and darkness. ]

( I can't recall much, but - fits, bursts of light. Those that are mine. I think I felt Bruce slip away, and Ilde, and Steve. Yours seem to cling, quite nicely. )

[Then it won't matter if he falls into the coma, though echoes of another person telling him he wouldn't dream rebound in his mind. As long as he's able to stay connected to what accounts to a leyline in the vastness of space, he'll be okay.

The meandering fades into a series of steps with more purpose. Why keep at a distance if they're bound to keep talking? This guy likes to talk.]

( Don't lump me in with those homeschoolers. )

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

Naerstone House

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