[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

open.

[shri]

[ Here she is, saying hi to that call, that jerk that stabbed Damon.

But, she by contrast - doesn't mind it - or at least knows how to feign a sense of being entertained. If only because, of just how new she is to all of this. In every sense. No, not the sneaking and scraping in the dark. But... the rest of it. The things she could never have imagined, let alone begun to process herself seeing them at all.

But. Someone only just got over the invention of gas lamps in houses. Perhaps not true entertainment, but true wonder on her behalf to be enough like it what she watches. To see light used such, to see things move in such ways. A want to indulge in it - but then. Still no good at willing her mind shut, those teeming images of, when asked for a story, she had so many she loved and they come up in response like someone whispering at her.

Granted she hovers on which one in a distraction between those lights, and thinking of something to buffer that press of a mind with. ]

( The story of how Draupadi gained five husbands always amused me. So too the attempts to burn her alive. )

[earthborn]

( I said your story. Unless-- )

[There is a thinking pause, filtering out the vague interest this lady has in the ongoing proceedings. Her mind has an ordered sense to it, someone who's been alive long enough to be organized about it, or who's used tot he regimented existance of military life. Nice. But still loud.

Not that Shepard considers her own mind to be a particularly quiet presence in the Nest. But she does know how to be some form of considerate, behind her shields of water and darkness. Even volcanos lie quiet under the sea.]

( ....Unless, your name is Draupadi and you have five husbands. In which case, nice work, and please continue. )

[shri]

[ Somewhere behind her veils, Lakshmi chokes on a bubble of laughter. Sipping her drink slowly before she picks apart her thoughts. Still messy, her own memories mixed with this performance, her constant observance of what surrounded her was more than just passive, at least in her thoughts. ]

( God preserve me, no, never that. I was devoted to my only, but he was certainly enough to deal with. )

[ Five, comes the thought, tumbled to her own memories of what it meant to keep one - working every afternoon to prepare him meals, as a hindu wife must, between seeing to her duties to their people? Not to mention maintaining a personal relationship with him? That crinkled thought of recoil, she would never sleep. ]

[earthborn]

[Shepard catches that, the image of a good little housewife and can barely choke the laughter back into something that doesn't bend her body, doesn't seem obvious from the outside. Never have the endless rounds of skyllian five served her better-- but there's no hiding the laugh mind-to-mind. Holy shit, can you imagine?]

( I'm not a matrimonial expert or anything, but I don't think any of that housekeeping stuff would work out for me, personally. Except maybe the sex parts. )

[She's fairly confident that she could handle five men at once. Aftger all, you can do a surprising amount of doubling-up, when it comes down to the mechanics of the thing.]

( So, new host. I'm Commander Shepard. You enjoying the planet, so far? I assume you have a name-- Oh yeah, you're the one who went after Damon, earlier. )

[shri]

[ She laughs with it, and maybe once upon a time - but she is not exactly a young woman to be blushing with the expectation. Getting married so young had meant it wasn't just about being married, being a wife came down to more than just housekeeping or sleeping with him. Small mercies that Gangadhar had never been that kind of man. ]

( I would agree. Rather unfortunately, nothing ruins the act quite like turning it into a duty. Being nagged if you are with child yet is... well. )

[ The second part though, that cools any amusement right out of her. Damon is nothing she wants to dwell on. But nor does she dance around it, she had done it, one day, she would do it again. Her purpose is absolute. ]

( I am. Well met, Commander Shepard. I am Lakshmi Bai, the Queen of Jhansi. )

[earthborn]

( Luckily, that isn't something I have to worry about. )

[Motherhood comes upon you in strange ways. That's what she'd told Aloy, at least-- and it was true. But none of the pathways available to Shepard came with the particular difficulties that came from pregnancy.]

( Look, you wanna be a masochist about this, I won't stop you. It's none of my business. ) [Is an example of a lie; Damon can't help but be Shepard's business.] ( You prefer Lakchmi, or just Bai? )

[shri]

( I belong to my duties, always, and to my war. But nor will I take my word back once given, and I have given my word to keep my peace. )

[ Whether that is understood by most or not - but at least to a soldier, she thinks that makes sense. She has promised to keep her peace. Made Sam swear to her that he would do his own if it came to it, and by doing so, stay her own hand. ]

( Rani. Call me Rani, Commander. )

[ 'Queen', the symbiote translates the meaning back across. But products of her time, no doubt, there is an intimacy of first names that she prefers never to indulge in. Her own way of protecting herself - her own walls. ] ( As Bai is... not a name as such. But simply being called 'Lady' would be... a little strange. )

[earthborn]

( Yeah, I didn't ask. )

[This lady is dire. Shepard can't see what she looks like, not under the veil, hood, and cowl, but she half expects a nose piercing and a shaved head.]

( Suit yourself. But just so long as we're clear-- you might be somebody's queen, but you're not mine. I go by Shepard, or Commander. ) [And never anything else, not even to her friends. Such is life.] ( So, what is you do? Where you from? )

[shri]

( I expect what I earn, nothing more. )

[ Flat, she has no want or interest in conquest. ]

( India. Jhansi is a small Kingdom in a place called Bundelkhand. As to what I did - I believe ruling is what most Queens do. But in my case, it resulted in wars to defend my people from invaders. )

[ Which is the most understated way to say it, but she isn't interested in bleeding out her heart to someone she barely knows. A clipped summation of life events as they were. ]

[earthborn]

[Shepard believes not for even one minute, that anyone doesn't seek dominance over another in some way. But she's not going to argue philosophy in the middle of an otherwise-pleasant distraction from tedium. After all, what if Rani doesn't wanna talk anymore? Shepard might find herself stuck with the play, instead.]

( Well, welcome to space. )

[Invaders? Shepard lets loose an impression; darkness lie the shadow of a pagan god, insect legs the size of skyscrapers, and a lone eye, enormous, ravenous, red. Behind it, more shadows, too many to count in a glance, each as huge, and dark, and malevolent as the last.]

( I can relate. Had my own war against invaders, before I ended up here. )

[shri]

[ Welcome to space, there's a apprehensive thought, like staring down at something from a great height, the second before you fall into the depths. Doubled so when she looks through Shepard's mind, bearing down into her and sees something so impossible. Feels the speed of her own heart beat, that readiness, give her the word, give her one sign, she will defend -

- She does not give soft words in shared misery to her, what good did they ever do? They never brought anyone back. Rather the only thing that mattered, that she had ever been able to process. Wolfish and hard, a mouth with too many teeth that greets the image in return. What she finds in the dark, is all she can offer in return. A human face that distorts to something so clearly inhuman. The warm slick slide of blood over her hands, the feel of a sword in her hand that strikes deep, her voice so hoarse from screaming orders and it all coming down to the moment where she slices that creature to the heart. The satisfaction of vanquishing that which was in her way.

May they burn. Is what she means, Long, long may they burn. ]

(Were you fighting still, before you ... came to be here? )

[earthborn]

( Yes. Either we fight, or we die. )

[It doesn't look like that, Shepard's war. Swords, yes, but not in hand. Shepard spares her an example, a counterpoint, but only the barest glance, a chaotic slice of the battle on Menae, with the burning fields of Palaven hanging high in the sky below. Gunfire, husks, alien combatants, the silhouettes of Reapers against the stars. Just an impression, quick-quick and then gone. Chaos and noise, death unrelenting, that was Shepard's war.

Two million dead in the first day, another 7 million by the end of the first week, every defense annihilated...

Burn? In starfire to cleanse, yes, because the corpses of Reapers hold no less danger than their living counterparts. Even dead gods still dream where they lie.]

( I was the point of the spear. )

[shri]

[ Now that it is not - so much, an adjustment she makes quickly - and in utter contrast to those far too domestic images of so briefly before - she is immediately and keenly interested. Of this kind of war - the things she could do. There would not be a Lycan or Vampire left standing, by the time she was done. Even as the numbers grow and grow and the scale of this battle she sees is too big for to understand right now.

Grief, yes, palatable, but she knew herself better, best, I will be what my people need. But more selfish than that. ]

( And do you always strike true? )

[earthborn]

( Please. )

[Don't patronize me, her tone says. She offers no further illustration to this-- though many spring to mind. Shepard's reputation as an unstoppable juggernaut is fairly earned; point her at a target and it will die. But she's not interviewing for a job, here, and there's no pride to be taken in her kill-count. She draws her shields up around her mind again, a surface like the glass-smooth flow of an unperturbed sea.]

( I have killed more than you have ever seen alive. ) [Bland, not bragging. The weight of a burden, not intolerable, not beyond carrying, but heavy. Honest. Unrelenting.] ( You're really bad at this, by the way. )

[shri]

( Ah - that was... not my question. )

[ Well - there goes her interesting learning tool, alas. Her glimpse into things she has never seen. Left now with the stage, as she settles back, still learning on a new born foal's legs to balance her weight and keep her mind more closed. Has to pause, take a breath and fathom her own walls - hard as that might be. ]

(Am I? Which thing that would be?)

[earthborn]

( You wanna hear about the Reaper Wars, that's not a conversation to have in the field. )

[The last time Shepard told the story, enough of it leaked out, mind-to-mind, that the one she'd been telling it to had spent days in a coma. She suspected it was only the support of the symbiote that had given him the strength to pull through it, but Shepard had no proof of that. She was grateful enough that it hadn't been fatal after all.]

( Telling a story. Usually people start with this reminds me of how my people do things or something. )

[shri]

( I will ask then. )

[ Sure on that, that want to more than anything, learn, from someone who might know what it was like on these more varied battle fields than her own, now deeply limited experience. But for now, set aside. ]

( Very well. We do have theatre, music, art. A great deal of them. )

[ Teasing mostly, all dry words that is usual for her. Her fingers drum at her side, behind the veils. Reposed in her thoughts. Another breath, more contemplative more than anything. ]

( My husband - my only husband, of course - built a theatre, after he became King. I was quite young when we married, I had just turned 8? 13 by the English calendar? No matter. Our wedding ceremonies last for days, and all events such like that are used for to give to our people. So day after day, plays were performed. Music filled the streets every evening. )

[ It's - a little hazy. A child's memory. More than that, a child that had gone to ceremony after ceremony and gotten at one point or another, drunk. For that it is so rich, so full, kept in warmth and happiness. But the players on the stage, of how they dance, and no, nothing like this. It is animated, bright, from the gold of the dances hands that sames decadent on her wrists. How their fingers curl and that each movement has a meaning - the story on the stage of how Krishna falls in love with Radha, how he plays his flute, and she lays in deep longing for him. Old yes, only great oil lamps and fires light the stage, candles aside from that. But - full, content, a swell of laughter that in her memories, she is so full of. ]

[earthborn]

[The memory is vivid, with the painted-in assumptions of childhood, blurred around the edges like a well-handled book-- the paper kind anachronistic but visceral. Shepard is reminded, obscurely, of nothing so much as the Quarians, of all things.

Tali had danced like that, in a way. Not so gracefully, but then anyone who could dance lie that after three of whatever triple-purified Turian spirit she'd had... Well. that's more than just impressive. God, she misses Tali'zorah.]

( Sounds pretty lush. I'm sorry for your loss. )

[In all likelihood, none of them will ever see their loved ones again. That Lakshmi's thoughts are preoccupied with her absent husband is no secret, not as Shepard sees it. But it is sad.]

[shri]

[ Staring into memories, held in both hands. She grips them hard, for that fire that burns her for holding so tightly. She misses her husband, she has been without him for so, so long. She misses sitting in her own happiness. Nursing a child that was all her own. When she used to dance, throwing the colours of Holi, feeling herself soaked to the bone in all that affection, that love, of home and kingdom and family. Misses it all - and she has not let it dwell in her mind for many years. Welled, mingling so well with a different person, dancing, that so easily takes the stage in her mind. Even if the movements aren't right to the dances she knows. The feeling is the same. ]

( They are as they are. )

[ The same way, perhaps, Lakshmi can take no consolation over it. Curling that feeling into herself and like pulling away from someone standing too close, she tries to detangle herself from those memories - Shepard's, her own, all of it. It is done. ]

[earthborn]

[Well, that's a downer. Shepard doesn't want to talk about the dead-- and never you mind that she brought this line of conversation on herself, really. But then, what else was she supposed to do? Ignore the elephant in the room?

She's already ignoring everything else in the room, to be honest. Not much left to think about, aside from that.]

( I'm partial to a good action vid myself. Blasto, the first Hanar Spectre, or something, the kind of thing that just lets you relax for a couple of hours. Laugh a little, maybe. )

[She accompanies the name with an image of its meaning, Blasto standing, tentacles akimbo, pistols upheld with an unlikely aplomb. It's pure schtick, but everyone needs a little junk food in their life. You'll go crazy otherwise.]

( Not that there was much time for that, before. You get plenty of downtime on the Station, though. Once we're done here, you'll see. )

[shri]

[ It's an easy distraction from her own frustration, her own inability to move backward or forward at this point in anything. Letting the other woman's experience wash over her complacently in contrast to the show. Take her amusements and pleasures as her own.

Perhaps, to that, for the first time she finds not so much resentment in the connection. ]

( Down time? What is... that?)

[ Curious, to that end, it's easy to be curious. ]

[earthborn]

[There is a moment of blank noncomprehension. Then Shepard scoffs at herself-- shit, would she know? Fighting vampires with swords, what did words that came from computers matter?]

( Time when you're not fighting or otherwise on-mission. For spacers, as opposed to ground troops, it's also usually the time we spend in transit from one mission to the next. )

[She hopes that much is comprehensible, at least. Shit.]

[shri]

[ Might as well be made up, so far as Lakshmi can tell. She laughs, physically and mentally, the sound rich and full. That isn't something she ever understood. ]

( No wonder I have no idea. I don't think I have ever had such a break. )

[earthborn]

( Everybody has downtime, it's part of what makes you human. Otherwise, I'd say, it must be pretty convenient working with an army that's made of people who never have to eat, sleep, shit, or deal their dead. )

[Her tone is dry-- R&R is nice, but let's not pretend it's as necessary as everyone wants it to be. And whatever station time is, it's not really anything like shore leave.]

( Either way, you'll have to learn to cope with more quiet. Believe me, it's not my first choice; the waiting can make you as crazy as the work. )

[shri]

( My armies - ? Certainly. )

[ But those memories are shoved far down. Not for Shepard, or anyone otherwise. She does her best not to dwell too long on the days of the rebellion. ]

( Quiet is... fine. Though who could call this connection quiet, save that I annoyed someone so much they shut me out. )