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

(Good.)

[He'd been. A lot of people were. It'd be okay if she were, too. He'd understand. That she isn't probably bodes well for her, here.]

[To be honest, he doesn't... really know if this is going to work. Sam always seemed like he could do it no problem. Maybe if he just thinks about it how they always did it. Space didn't really seem to work for her, if that little flash into her brain had told him anything. So...]

[Flight.]

[He takes her hand, and settles on that now familiar moment in time -- when he and the Black Lion, that huge, ancient presence, the robot, the life force, whatever it was, actually flew in sync. Two layers of defense against the outside world, against the other minds around them. Nothing but quiet, calm. To let it wrap around them both for a little while.]

[Safe.]

( after the volume of the hatch, the weight of landing planet side and almost immediately vaulting into emotional turmoil and elation, the silence is its own kind of deafening. it's disjointing, a little wrong; clarke had already begun the process of forcibly adapting to this new situation, and the loss of outside influences leaves a ringing in her ear like an explosion just went off nearby. it takes a moment to right herself, to become aware her other senses are intact — it takes another moment to realize the sensation of her stomach dropping out of her body is because it feels like she's floating, weightless, flying.

clarke has never flown, only ever fallen.

a spark of wonderment bubbles over in the back of her skull; this is new and intoxicating, a rush of unexpected vicarious adrenaline that has clarke smiling briefly before trying to compose herself. she's looking at their hands, wondering if the tangible pulse between gloved palms is all in her head or the force of the newly erected barrier manifested physically. witness: the youthful curiosity that betrays her age, the same as she'd had when she saw horses for the first time. )

( That's — ) ( amazing. when it's just her own voice in her head, and the impression of shiro's flight, there's something of an echo. a little wryly: ) ( I guess I'd already forgot what it was like, not feeling like I was losing my mind. )

( a moments thought before touching the surface of the memory, feeling it rush by like a slipstream. clarke focuses in on the image of the black lion, fascinated. ) ( What's this? )

[The original memory isn't a long one. It hadn't been a long moment in time. Just something stolen out of their training, when he'd felt it, finally, that connection -- something bigger than yourself. More secure and right than even what the Nest put in his head. It chose him.]

[It decided to allow this, between them, and he'd welcomed it. A choice. Between whatever presence made the Black Lion what it was, and himself.]

[Something to be proud of.]

[And to share -- to good effect, it seems like. Her wonderment is clear, that joy and excitement in her mind. It's infectious. Like the first time he ever took the controls of his own shuttle. Or even just a car. Feeling the way gravity dropped away from you, leaving everything behind. Times when you could settle into freefall without worrying whether or not you could catch yourself again.]

[Those memories, too, he offers her. Racing across desert landscapes, for the most part. A grin in the words he calls out over a remembered wind.]

(Hey -- it gets better. Promise. Until then, plenty of people are here to help you out...)

[He pauses, and then, there's the first time he ever saw the robot. Huge, imposing and regal.] (It's... it's my partner. The Black Lion.)

( there had never been anything in her world quite like this. a space walk could probably compare to the exhilaration, but clarke had never been geared towards mechanical repairs on the ark, or breaking the law quite...like that. the last time she'd flown through the air had more accurately been falling, jumping from a dam and dropping in the span of ten seconds into the icy water below. past that had been the drop ship, but reentering earth's atmosphere had been rough; rumbling side panels and the drop in her stomach, the whiplash upon the crash landing — none of it came close to the effortless swooping sensation of flying along in shiro's mind.

clarke is caught up in it. presses into the memories, wanting to see more, feel more, fly more. she's squeezing his hand harder than she means to, and leaning in to crowd his personal space as much as she is his conscious. it takes a few more seconds spent enraptured by the size and power of the black lion to realize what she's doing, to start feeling intrusive, and then a sincere and concentrated effort to reign herself in. to sit back, to flex gloved fingers and then tug her hand free. the weight of the thoughts of others folds back in around her, but it's less suffocating than before. )

( I've never seen anything like that before. ) ( seen, felt, experienced. her heart is still hammering solid thunks behind her rib cage, and the adrenaline has served as a very effective pick me up in the face of exhaustion. ) ( Thank you. )

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

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