onemind: (Default)
THE N E S T ([personal profile] onemind) wrote in [community profile] station722017-07-12 09:35 pm

[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!))






shri: (» you will hear our voices echo)

[personal profile] shri 2017-07-20 12:26 am (UTC)(link)
[ A daughter of purpose - if that the purposes were broader. To be soft - to have her hands painted in the lotuses she has preordained herself in. To paint her brow in the crescent moon and star, once more, to hang her fingers in gold even as she broaches underneath the heavy veils that - aren't right. Stifling perhaps for their warmth because veils she had worn, at the heat of the deserts she ruled the edges of, once, meant the cloth was light. Adjusting herself where she lays on her side, legs curl loosely against the cushion.

Sits, there, like she is comfortable being that alone, and kept she can at least pretend to be. When he reaches for her glass, without speaking she ventures her hand out from the material, bracing her fingers about his - not touching, too much right now where her head is a ember like memories. Warm, warm with chimes and laughter and light, of players on stages as they sung, the bell wraps at women's ankles as they formed in steps of Gods and Demons and great acts of heroism and love. Tinged at all the edges of her thoughts. But hold too tight, she knows, it will burn too. Him or her, apparently there wasn't much difference anymore.

Rather she keeps them just above his and with that moment of holding the cup, not to stop, merely pause him as she turns to him with the washed over polite thanks of her mind where she has not yet learned to keep this closed. Finally away from the performance that has held her enraptured so easily. Giving him her attention, fully, that hum of the symbiote letting her know she has a found another of the same king. With it, to let him know she wants his attention.

A deep breath, does not want to speak, she figures - she figures it plays into being unknowable if they do not speak. But she is looking at him now, unmistakable even behind the cloth - and she always looked too much, but never a little, never got that habit of lowering her eyes - Lady Lakshmi, you should not be so open. - before at him completely before she lowers her hand, sure that he is listening.
]

(Will you bring me another? )

[ For a moment, he has her utter attention. Then like someone as used to it, she slides her attention away again, back to the play of lights. ]
bracchium: (ik)

[personal profile] bracchium 2017-07-20 01:03 am (UTC)(link)
[As the new host's hand pauses over his, Bucky wonders if he's overstepped his bounds by moving into her personal space without permission. Behind the link, he can sense something bright and warm--- like Sam, he realizes a moment too late. Colors and sounds spread along the string tying them together and Bucky pulls back mentally, tossing up corrugated steel and barbed wire behind a wall of snow. Physically, he remains right where he's at: half-perched, fingers stretched out over the lip of her glass.

While her silhouette may not be recognizable, Bucky's is hard to miss, especially among the crowd of hosts. Broad shouldered and one eternally pinned sleeve tends to set him apart, unlike Sam who could easily blend in with masses. Talk of serving as a bodyguard made the only sense with such an apparent injury and allowed him to stand on the border without causing much suspicion.

She turns toward him and the intensity of the bells and color bleeds deeper into the connection. Definitely new. He drops his gaze out of habit. Weapons are not equals. Keeping his walls assembled takes another wealth of effort and under his veil, he furrows his brow.

He offers a nod in response, a hum of acknowledgment over the link; he'll provide a refill personally.
]
shri: (» that you know by name)

[personal profile] shri 2017-07-20 01:28 am (UTC)(link)
[ She cannot trust him - she knows. She not know his name, save that he feels cold, but that assurance, that responsibility settles age old paranoia over being poisoned and all other kinds of trickery that she settles back. Comfortably so.

Her hands lay over each other as she rests into her elbow, eyes back towards the stage again. Comfortably settled, warmly so. But the hover if his mind is so - strange. Cool. Cold. Stark the way deserts are stark. It could not feel more different, beyond that.

If she is waiting for him to return to her - she does not show it, and if she has a plan to what she might do then, it is formless. But for now, she waits. Eyes rapturously distracted in the dazzle of lights.
]
bracchium: (u)

[personal profile] bracchium 2017-07-26 12:15 am (UTC)(link)
[There's a quiet hum of understanding over the link. Bucky knows all about poison, has been subject too many times to want anyone else to suffer such a fate. He can guarantee her a clean cup if he handles it himself. With his mental thumb on the link, he moves through the thin crowd to refreshment. The creatures around him part, as many are prone to do around someone with an asymmetrical silhouette.

In no time at all, he bobs back through the crowd, her glass in hand. He sets it where he picked it up from, not announcing his presence any more than he did the first time.
]
shri: (» we are the hearts)

[personal profile] shri 2017-07-26 02:55 am (UTC)(link)
[ They're being watched, she knows they are, everything that she's gathered about their position thus far, is that they will always be. But nor are they meant to be fitting in. Easy to feed into. Be mysterious. Be strange. As she never looks away and yet takes the cup without mistake. Bringing it up to her lips, under her veils.

It's after the first sip is taken, that she beckons him closer. Savouring that mouthful.
]

(I am Rani Lakshmi Bai. )
bracchium: (Default)

[personal profile] bracchium 2017-07-26 12:47 pm (UTC)(link)
[Bucky hates being watched, the way he feels like a specimen in a petri dish, the way he felt in HYDRA at any given moment. Mistakes were analyzed, ticks in behavior smoothed out, edges rounded and polished, and he can't help but be wary of the eyes following them. The stakes of the mission are too high to risk doing anything.

When beckoned, he moves to kneel on one knee beside her. Rani Laksmi Bai.
]

( Bucky. )
shri: (» and if that's true)

[personal profile] shri 2017-07-26 11:55 pm (UTC)(link)
Bucky.

[ It's warmed and held in her mouth, careful as she says it - rather than think it. Makes it something solid and real, from mercurial thoughts. Her hand lifts to follow it, held up for him to take it. The chime of bells at her wrists, the glitter of gold that she knows better how to wear. Each movement delicate, light, to that end precise.

The only lie to that tale, is that her hands where they are visible, are a mess of swordman's scars, that burst over her fingers. A life time of cuts and blows taken against them.
]

( You are treating me very well. )

[ To that is a question. There is their roles, to be sure, he to wait and she to be waited upon - but even so, it doesn't include the care he made sure to take in assuring her concerns about that. ]
bracchium: (Default)

[personal profile] bracchium 2017-07-28 11:07 am (UTC)(link)
[It's strange to hear a woman's voice shape his name, to breathe life into it. He can't remember the last time that happened. In Steve's memories, a slick-haired version of himself with a clean chin and short hair, he can hear his name in the distance, but nothing quite like the way Rani does. She holds up her hand and for a moment, Bucky is puzzled as to what he should do with it. Is he being invited to sit? Is there something in her hand she wishes to conceal from the others? He knows that direct contact will make the mental link stronger, bridge the gap between their minds, and Bucky's not about to inflict the constant hum of the programming on her.

Looking down at her hand, though, he notices the scars, the pain written upon her fingers in sharp marks that contrast the body language. He'd thought her a soldier when he first met her and she may be yet.
]

( We're both soldiers. ) [He provides as an answer, mostly true. Soldiers here need to take care of their own, while they can.]
Edited 2017-07-28 11:10 (UTC)
shri: (» we will never be bought or sold)

[personal profile] shri 2017-07-29 10:02 am (UTC)(link)
[ And for who she is, and what she is now: she sees him as no more than he is. A quiet soldier at her side. Where he hovers, she does not, a surety that leads those scarred fingers up, ghosting but not touching. He must have his own reasons for not reaching back. ]

( For that, I would have no idea else at my side. )
bracchium: (e)

[personal profile] bracchium 2017-07-31 01:28 am (UTC)(link)
[His mind first conjures an image of his broodmate, Sam Wilson. A small swell of anger is quenched just as quickly. No need to do that. Sam is good with others. He'd be an ally for Rani. Then another face emerges: Shiro. A fighter much like him, with a metal arm who struggles with himself at times. Shepard is next, her hair bright like fire. And finally, Bellamy, his short curls singed at the edges from a fire Bucky's only experienced through second-hand memories.]
shri: (» red orange yellow flicker beat)

[personal profile] shri 2017-07-31 05:18 am (UTC)(link)
[ They are welcome images, ones she knows, those who have been good to her, in one form or another.

All save Sam, that there is a curl of questioning, distrust. The mental image of her wrists bond tightly up. That fight against bonds that come natural and even if she'd sworn to him and he to her - it would take more than to forget not so much that he tied her up ( after all, had not Galahad pointed a gun in her face upon meeting her? ) but why he tied her up.
]
bracchium: (a)

[personal profile] bracchium 2017-08-01 11:16 pm (UTC)(link)
[Bucky mentally notes how she sticks to the image of Sam and the sensation of rope tearing at the wrist. Ah. So Sam made a good impression with her, too. He swallows down the quiet bubble of affection and focuses on the most important element of her memories: context.]

( Why did he tie you up? )

[Because Sam rarely does anything without a reason.]
shri: (» and if that's true)

[personal profile] shri 2017-08-01 11:20 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Soldier she has always been - and refuses to take back what she is, what she has done. She stands by what she is. That white hot feeling of Damon's teeth in her skin. A feeling that rather she takes with dread, but flat determination. Her fingers drops, setting into her lap and curling up against her leg. White knuckled and harsh. ]

( I tried to kill the vampires amongst us. Damon and Elena. Their kind feast upon humans. They deserve what comes to them. )
bracchium: (o)

[personal profile] bracchium 2017-08-01 11:38 pm (UTC)(link)
[Her explanation and the anger curling through the link stabs white-hot into his side. Bucky doesn't know anything about vampires, but is quite familiar with Sam's moral compass. Damon is a friend of Sam's, meaning Damon could probably kill and get away with it, like Bucky himself. Where Damon and Elena wear their monstrous selves on the outside, Bucky's ticks away under his skin, a bomb waiting to blow at any moment.

He doesn't blame Rani, but the intensity of the mission cannot be overstated.
]

( Wait 'til we're back on the Station. No room for that here. )
shri: (» is all yours)

[personal profile] shri 2017-08-01 11:49 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Her whole body burns with it - and that for all her calm, all her position now, is her own fights, her own battle, and it burns and burns and burns. It will take everything into itself and spit it back ash. That is what she is.

But none of it, useful here. She takes a breath, centres herself. He needs none of this. Her wars are not his. Trying to draw back in, hard as what is inside refuses to stay there, no matter how she builds her fortress walls. That slow draw of words in meditation to center herself. - Kind Hearted Lord, He Who Revels For All of Time, Lord of Ghost and Demons. - and the they come up, high and broad. The walls of her home. Weathered with the canon fire and dead, but holding still.

Even if the fire in it, refuses to cease.
]

( I hold to my duties, do not fear on that. )
bracchium: (n)

sorry for the delay! this got lost in my inbox :(

[personal profile] bracchium 2017-08-21 05:16 pm (UTC)(link)
[Bucky doesn't doubt Rani's abilities to keep her composure. For all that he believed her to be a soldier, she has the natural presence of someone born higher; she has a lot of practice putting up facades. Yet, he knows how strong emotion can thwart even the best actors.]

( Don't doubt it. )

[He considers his words carefully; he's not a natural orator by any stretch of the imagination.]

( Just saying things like that could get distracting, that's all. We don't really have room for distracting. )
shri: (» and the scars that mark my body)

>C boo inbox dun be mean

[personal profile] shri 2017-08-22 02:47 am (UTC)(link)
( No we rather have to keep our eyes forward, don't we? )

[ A performance that moves around them - far greater than what is going on, on stage. Being played out around them, with as many players as her husband's dances ever had. ]

( But Queens who can't tell the time a place, don't stay rulers for very long. Trust in that at least. )
bracchium: (o)

it's pretty rude tbh

[personal profile] bracchium 2017-08-25 09:17 pm (UTC)(link)
[There's a reason why Bucky's serving as a bodyguard rather than someone more integral. He's never been very good at faking a smile or pretending to be something he's not.]

( Sorry. ) [He's not sure if he's offended, but he's not here to tread on anyone, just protect them and the Nest at large.]
shri: (» we will never be bought or sold)

[personal profile] shri 2017-08-29 12:01 pm (UTC)(link)
[ And here she goes to wade back into it - she had not missed it. Oh it came with grand things. In her memories as she looks over these decorated people - of what it felt like to have a lady at her hand, working oils into her skin, another to work fingers through her hair and trickle the smoke of incense through it.

But that is a wash in the heady feeling of home, safety, love, such love - for those around. With it, she understands, she understands that feeling to protect and with it she becomes firm. She would have a great many people apologize to her, but over such a thing?

She shakes her head.
]

( You would only have something to be concerned about if I had not tried to kill one of us. As I have tried it twice now, your worry needs no apology. )
bracchium: (p)

[personal profile] bracchium 2017-09-08 11:20 pm (UTC)(link)
[Bucky doesn't know what that's like, what home feels like; however, he does know the need to protect. She says she's tried to kill a fellow Nestmate and Bucky, unfortunately knows that too. In an instant, he's infinitely more uncomfortable than when they began this conversation.

He's a monster, a weapon parading around as a man. His most recent argument with Sam only furthers the evidence in favor.
]

( Why? ) [Maybe she has the same issues as him. Maybe Sam can help her.]
shri: (» the future runs through our bones)

[personal profile] shri 2017-09-09 07:43 am (UTC)(link)
( Because they are monsters that I know of from my own home, who I have seen slay hundreds, if not thousands. )

[ She doesn't look towards him or in fact take her eyes off the performance, slowly sipping from the cup beneath her veils. The material about her fluttering and swaying. ]
bracchium: (lk)

[personal profile] bracchium 2017-09-16 01:22 am (UTC)(link)
[Her response makes Bucky stiffen. He's known for a long time that he's a monster, that underneath the facade of a man, a person, a monster lives and breathes. Even besides his past, he's killed five innocent people since arriving on the Station.]

( That makes me one too. )
shri: (Default)

[personal profile] shri 2017-09-21 12:44 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Her eyes slide over towards Bucky, then. It's not cold or warm, but a lukewarm assessment. She has met many who had lost their humanity - the knights that clawed onto the men they were when they had taken the titles of the Order. However they then succeeded and failed. Soldiers she knew that didn't have any other place than in the wars that had made them.

But - monster?

Oh, that was something else entirely, as her head tilt.
]

( Explain to me, what you mean, else we will find ourselves at an... impasse. )
bracchium: (o)

[personal profile] bracchium 2017-09-22 12:43 am (UTC)(link)
[There's never been a good way to inform someone of his past, of how many lives he snuffed out. Screams echo in his mind, begging for mercy in a dozen languages, crying for their children, spouses, anyone. They meet various fates. In one, metal fingers curl around a windpipe and crush it. In others, the victims are gunned down without remorse, without feeling. Some are taken from a distance, through a scope, picked off like dotting an eye.

Other faces may be more familiar- Sam plucked from the sky, wings broken, and then kicked out into open air. Or beating Steve to a bloody pulp. And Sam again, though from third person as Bucky thins his profile and shoots, as metal fingers close around Sam's throat to strangle him.

In his mind's eye, he tells Steve he doesn't do that anymore, but hours later he's killing innocents in Berlin.

And he lets it all flow over the link.
]
shri: (» I got my fingers laced together)

[personal profile] shri 2017-10-04 09:54 am (UTC)(link)
[she is silent, in the wash of sensations, actions. Of this weapon with no clean edges. Saw toothed and flat. Chipped for his misuse. His disabuse of self. The way he has been turned over in a poor wielders purpose. No, no he should never be that. He should be so much more.

There is a monster here, but she does not consider it him, and she does not move. But it is a misery she feels almost like home. A creak of gates pounded against. Buckling under the weight of something bursting to get out but she doesn't - doesn't let it, not here. Tightly bound in every limb.
]

( There may be monsters, and monsters you have known. They were the ones that made you do such things. )

[ a surety, given without pause or retreat, firmly set against an unnameable attack that isn't so much of here or now just that she is always ready for it. Let her weep, that the cruelty she knows so well, should find new insidious form to visit upon others. ]
Edited 2017-10-05 06:56 (UTC)