[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

[wille]

Sorry. [ Said with a sigh. It's as earnest as can be. ]

If I let you off now, he'll just have to find another way to prove he can put you in your place.

[ Another way to prove he is bad to the bone, or-- well, good. Good to Elena. The tragedy of machismo is that man is never man enough, or so goes the rhyme. ]

[shri]

[ It's - not the answer she expects. She was waiting for another rebuke, about the price of the mission, that it's different here, or that she serves no one in doing this. Her misguided hatred. Like it could be called just hatred and dismissed so easily. It's such bitter bile in her mouth.

But she hears none of that, as her eyes slide across to her Misato. ]

I dare say that he will. His kind often do.

[wille]

[ Hatred is hatred, misguided or not. To let it run loose is to exorcise it, for a little while, until it comes back greater than ever, hungrier still. To corral it and swallow it back is to let it fester, poison for the body and mind. She has tried both. Neither works. ]

You mean vampires? [ Ah, that V word. ] Bullies? Or just men?

[shri]

[ Despite herself, she laughs for that dig, a rich, full sound that heaves up her chest. She is not to herself, inherently miserable. Though at the moment, she has few reasons to act otherwise. ]

The combination of all, I find to be most destructive.

[wille]

[ Contrary to reputation and appearances, Misato isn't generous with (sober, unfeigned) laughter. The most she weathers is a chuckle that softens her face into a pleased smile, a loosening of her shoulders when she leans back against the wall. ]

Well, as you know by now, we don't get to choose who we're yoked to.

[ Damon is all of that, man and vampire and a bit of a bully, but he is also more. She has never, however, been in the business of defending other people, not even herself. ]

I'm Misato. I never really caught your name.

[shri]

[ She bows her head in greeting, as formal as she can manage in her bonds. The gold that hung in her hair, skewered slightly but it says her position more obviously to anyone used to such things than any other way she presents herself. ]

Maharani Lakshmi Bai. [ So odd, in its way, she has never in her life, gotten in the habit of introducing herself as Queen. As Manu, certainly, but she had been the daughter of Brahmin, and no one particularly for it. But then as Queen, someone else took care of it - and since then, she shed names and introductions as she needed them, or never at all. ] Queen of Jhansi.

[wille]

[ Misato's expression betrays every speck of surprise and awe at sitting here, on the floor, beside a purported queen. Her mind may be well-sealed, but her face is as much a red herring as an open book. ]

Wow. Okay. [ Is that the right response to this sort of thing? She presses her lips to a thin line, seeming entirely uncertain. ] So . . . should I keep calling you "Your Majesty" or how do I do this?

[shri]

[ It's quite honestly, the last thing she ever expected to care about - a startled laughter. Too long since the title had much meaning to anyone. ]

'Rani', call me Rani. [ Queen, is what the symbiote translates it back across as. My Queen. ] That will suffice. Keep the 'your majesty' for the English.

[wille]

Okay. Rani's easy enough.

[ There must be something to be said about a Japanese calling the Queen of Jhansi my queen, but Misato finds she doesn't care. What does it matter, out here in space? The emperor is no different from a queen is no different from any other man in the face of the end of the world.

She hums thoughtfully. ]

I'm glad you're here. You must know a thing or two about this -- this whole politicking that the rest of us are so terrible at.

[shri]

Some, yes, I suppose you could say.

[ It's a bitter laugh, because oh she does, but certainly not from being Queen. She had been a fool, when she ruled so openly. But the years and the battles since had stripped that ignorance away and left her with that knowledge that they would need. ]

But I have spent days on battlefields than in chambers. Not that even the former are ever free of the latter.

[wille]

Fancy that. I'm a soldier, kind of. But I've been spending too much time in chambers rather than battlefields.

[ There's a flicker, intentional, of a massive room with multi-tiered balconies and displays stretching tens of meters high and wide. Brushed steel surfaces and red-green blinking indicators, emergency emergency emergency, the hush of anticipation before one strikes the first blow, the electric scent of machines in the air. ]

What do you think about it? All this. The mission. Do we have a chance?

[shri]

[ To that, she falls quiet. For her own memories could not be more different. There were no clean edged rooms. No repeated warnings to tell her the world was falling apart.

There was the first shot. There was the whole ground shaking as the sound of canon fire split the air. her voice, screaming over the top of it. Har Har Mahadev! That utter surety, that fullness of the whole of herself and the inability to ever step down. She simply does not know how. ]

Yes. As long as we fight for it. We have a chance.

[wille]

[ She simply does not know how to lay down arms, step down. The familiarity in that sentiment, the rigidity easily mistaken for strength, it all prompts a measure of discomfort from Misato. One despises only certain parts of oneself seen in others, in turn, one loves only certain parts of oneself seen in others. Everything else barely registers.

She gathers up a smile from the remnants, making promises like one setting goal posts. ]

That's right. We won't know unless we fight it through to the end.

[shri]

[ Her head turns, testing in her bonds at her wrists, absent simply because so in turn do animals claw at their cages. That fixed worked, a show of that she would not simply be held, absent and constant. She cannot be otherwise than what she is. ]

Anything less is not worth entertaining.

[ And in that shared bond, she finds comfort in someone who follows that same drive. ]

[wille]

[ She nods, of course. Why fight for any purpose not worth fighting to the death for?

Misato turns her eyes to the bonds holding Rani back when she tests it. It reminds her of watching lions behind bars, the way they roar to assert their power, how pitiful it is. Not the lion, that is, the bars. That anyone should think that it is at all right to keep such majestic creatures shackled, imprisoned, held against their will. ]

I think by now he's busy with other things.

[shri]

[ She takes a shaking breath, that ugly little noise that is not delicate - many things she might be, but never that. It's guttural mean in her throat. The flex of her fingers stilling again. ]

Oh yes. Assuring his beloved, I am sure.

[wille]

[ It's still strange even now, the way she can sense the ebb and flow of her broodmates' emotions, like an extra limb indeed. She can taste the edge of fear in Damon, something deep-seated like longing, and contentment, a newest addition to the mix. ]

Yeah, something like that.

[ She starts rising to her feet in one swift move, turning to offer yet another apologetic smile. ]

I'll see what I can do.

[shri]

[ She bows her head - not simply a nod. Lowered, an acknowledgement that she would remember this. All of this. That it meant something to her beyond such common courtesy, beyond polite spectacle.

And not once, does she let her eyes drop from her. That stare held unwavering. ]

Thank you.