[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

[isorropia]

Good.

[Siva'co interrupts bluntly, without a care for whatever hesitation lingered in her mind.]

They have not, and intimacies are currently unknown. We have not had access to the relevant parties until the pilgrimage began.

[Curt- but there's no sting to his words, just the slightest hint of approval. She was thinking. That was also good.]

This is why we require your assistance.

[shri]

I see.

[ More thoughts, one after another, another. ]

I can suggest only what I know to have worked for me, of course. But first to compile the movements of every member of the houses, who they visit frequently, who they detest. I am not sure about establishing contacts in the houses themselves, that might be too much but - perhaps in the places that they go often.

[isorropia]

[There is a long silence, Siva'co's chin raising by degrees, glancing down the length of his odd, flat nose, green eyes inscrutable, waiting for her to finish. As inscrutable as his expression may be, his mind is not. That thin thread of approval widens into a band. A press against Rhan's mind- something of a relief after other conversations.]

Good. [There's a low rumble to the edge of his voice] You have a mind for infiltration.

[Better than his own- he could- function under the constraints, but alien or not, soldier radiates off of him in waves.]

[shri]

[ That - feeling is so strange, to be pressed against her - not unpleasant, but she is still not settled to it. Letting a low breath out of her body with it's roll down her mind.

A trick, to finding it steadying, but she tries. Grit teeth as it might be, she tries. ]

Certainly experience enough. A Queen must learn these things, if she is going to survive to be of any age.

[ And that shiver of soldier's lines she feels in him, can't help but respond in kind. Soldiers, soldiers she is nothing but fond of. They do not require tricks, just orders - even if she isn't in a position to give them. If she has regrets, it's that she had to learn these skills at all. ]

[unsea]

[ a queen. oh, he had appreciated her until she spoke of nobility. still, he admires the cutting mind -- the subterfuge she speaks of is aligned with his interests. ]

You are suggesting we play factions off one another, aren't you?

[ if she's not... ]

Or at least, this is the angle I believe would benefit us, during this mission. We are few and without influence.

[shri]

[ She nods her head to him as he speaks, agreeing with that take - they are. But thankfully playing smart changed that easily. ]

Indeed, in time, and if that serves us best. I would not to keep wide spread surveillance longer than we have too - as you say, we are few, and that will stretch our numbers too thin. Once we ascertain where their leaks are, and have information we can work with...

[ Her hand waves, he can follow along, from what he had already understood. ]

[aluminumandash]

[ Rust's thoughts hum with a propulsive energy that borders on—or runs parallel to—contentment. He doesn't interject (until he does), more than willing to listen when people are talking sense. ]

What's our time frame? [ His gaze flicks from the woman to Siva'co. ]

And how'd y'all know one of the factions had been compromised? What tipped you off? [ Or who. ]

[isorropia]

That is the mystery. The pilgrimage that we're all going to be on is a very particular Hyrypian custom and it the exact length and requirements seem to be something only Hyrypian's fully know. We believe our time frame will be a few weeks, perhaps a month at most? Surely the war can only hold for so long and I don't think the Hyrypians want to dawdle long before picking someone lest someone get, mm, trigger happy. But it's difficult to say exactly.

[What a little chatter box she is.]

As for how we knew something was compromised - there are certain signs in a universe being tampered with. Unlikely outcomes suddenly becoming commonplace. Strange advances in technology. That sort of thing. But also, and this is the significant one and the one that might save your life, there's a particular... texture to a place infested with the Enemy. Something about their presence calls or maybe repels the symbiote. But you feel it.

[shri]

A month? [ she sucks in a breath, her fingers stilling as that frown increases. ] A month and we have not begun sweeps? I would want twenty-four-hour observance to have begun as soon as we landed. How long have your people been here, so far? What information has already been gathered?

[ She looks down in frustration at the datapad for not being a pen and paper. She wants lists, now, they are sitting here talking, and need to pry this apart. ] This thing - this book - will tell me more details?

[ And just like that, the broad sweep of a mind in curiosity ripples, cut down to exact details, points of focus. Hits the ground running, quick as she can. ]

[isorropia]

[My, wound her pride why don't you? Rhan nods to the 'book.']

All the details of what me and my crew have been doing for the past year are consolidated there in your report. We haven't been on the ground of Hyrypia for more than a few days though, so the exact specifications of the pilgrimage and the individuals we'll find are as much a mystery to us and they are to you.

[But rest assured, she's working on it.]

But you can thank us for why you'll know much of anything when you get there.

[Cue one brilliant grin.]

[shri]

[ Her scowl doesn't let up, nor does her mind stop its working. Scowling down at the book again. Like the force of her frustration would some how make it reveal its secrets to her. ]

I will follow through on what you have learned to the best of my ability, so your work does not go to waste.

[ That itch in her mind, in her hands, ready to sink into something solid. Into the work, she knows well and best. Pull it apart with her bare hands. ]