station72 | [hatch log / mission: hyrypia] the winds that will be howling at all hours

Entry tags:

[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

Then what do you think should happen to him?

[ She folds her arms with a frown, considering Lakshmi. ]

...hey, do you want me to get you out of that crap?

[ Asuka, no. ]

[ her look is perfectly mild, and her tone as considerate as a light showering: simply falling down without excuse about what it is. ]

He should be killed.

[ She looks down at her bonds, scowling at them. ]

No. Not until the one that put me in them, undoes them. ]

What? That's stupid.

[ Asuka kind of gets being stubborn. That still sounds like a stupid plan. ]

What's the big deal about whoever put them on you?

[ Oh to not having to play politics. ]

Because I did not get a good look at him. I want to know why he shelters them. So I will wait for him to face me and answer me then.

[ Since apparently had respect enough to let her be tied up and left here, after all. ]

[ Asuka's brow furrows into a frown of confusion. She can get that. Sort of. Pride is a hell of a drug and she has it (well, superficially, at least) in spades. It still sounds kind of silly to her. ]

What if he doesn't come back?

[ That is always a possibility, right? ]

[ The image of Sam is in her mind. Brief as that encounter had been. She held tightly to it. ]

He will. Or I will tire of this and find him myself.

[ How - well that will be a debate for when that occurs. But she's never been very good at being held. All the same, if she's to prove she can be trusted after that kind of arrival, this is the way to prove it. ]

[ The image flashes through her own mind and she knows him - sort of. She's spoken to him once or twice. Her lips twitch into a frown and she eases her weight back. ]

I know who he is. Idiot.

[ Not that she knows anything else about him, really. ]

[ She laughs, still mean, because what else can she do about it otherwise? ]

Perhaps so. He may just be misguided. Vampires are to a singular point, deceitful creatures.

[ She's just a font of anti-vampire propaganda, apparently. ]

First time I've ever actually met one.

[ Asuka shrugs and puts her back against the wall, watching Lakshmi carefully. ]

Apparently you've been around them. What's up with that? Aside from revenge, what happened?

[ She keeps herself still, nothing in her changes, her back into the wall, her legs curl under her, her fingers curled in loosely, the ties at her wrists, kept tightly. They are raw, just slightly where she tests them constantly. But her eyes slide over Asuka, predator slow in that stillness. Because what's up with that. ]

How do you mean?

Is that the only reason you want to kill them?

[ Asuka eyeballs Lakshmi, daring her to yell or get offended. ]

Just to get revenge?

[ She's treading on thin ice. Then again, when isn't she? ]

[ Ice that sits over a great flaming heat. Deep and ugly and she leans forward, slow steady pressure that seems only, to move forward. You can't go back, after all, when there is nothing left but smoke and rubble. ]

Revenge?

[ There's a taste there, in all her thoughts. Thick, and wretched, of burning flesh, of screaming, of misery upon misery that comes with the word slaughter. Of the voices that fill her mind - not of the hive, but those to who, to her true mind, who she will belong to first and foremost and always. ]

Revenge, would be the moment I kill a creature by the name of Lord Hastings, or Jack the Ripper, whatever skin he is wearing that day. Revenge is when I burn down the buildings of the United India Company the world over and in my home. Revenge would be the day I strike down the Queen of England for the neglect and hypocrisy she calls ruling.

[ Her fingers uncurl and recurl, where they tied, like she kept but barely. A creature biting against her containment simply because it is the only thing she knows how to do. ] I watched as a creature that wore their skin, so lost themselves, ate out the belly of a woman three months pregnant while she was still alive. I fought as wave after wave of creatures, ripped men who had sworn to fight for me, limb from limb like dolls. I saw them turn children, and those children slaughter their own families because they simply could not control themselves, and my own people be so lost, that there was nothing else but turn to me, beg me, to kill them because they found themselves unable to save themselves from what had to be done to their own family.

[ Each breath comes deep, shaking, shaking with something that has gone long, long beyond rage. That she has been told she is mistaken, that she will see the error of her own ways. The work of something in her jaw that will not come up, lodged so deeply in her own throat, it might as well be her own breath. ]

And for all that, do you think I want something so small, so petty, as revenge?

[ Asuka's killing was more clinical and distant. She did her fighting from the cockpit of a massive war machine and so the thoughts of smoke and fire, the idea of blood, the images that Lakshmi conjures up are almost too much. She can see them in her mind's eye - the welters of blood, corpses scattered over the ground like chaff. She can almost smell the smoke in the air and the scent of burning flesh. There's something from her own memories - the coppery taste of blood, the wash of red over her vision as she breaks the back of something huge and monstrous.

It all swirls together as she listens, face drawn and a touch pale. No, it all sounds horrific. Like something out of the resource wars that followed Second Impact. Wars she had the fortune to not grow up in. But she learned about them and she's seen photographs, seen films. It isn't the same. Not with the cold anger she can feel off of Lakshmi. It's beyond anger, though. Her own fire seems pale and dim in comparison, even if Asuka knows in her heart of hearts that she's been wronged, she never quite had her life as thoroughly ripped from her as Lakshmi apparently has. Her throat works in a swallow, single good eye running over her expression. ]

I don't know what else to call it.

[ There are very few things that can halt Asuka in her tracks and Lakshmi has hit on one of them. It's an admission. Maybe of ignorance, maybe of a simple lack of vocabulary. A little apologetic, as if she didn't mean to downplay the depth of Lakshmi's motivation; her anger and hatred, which she can sympathize with. But again, the wrongs done to her (in the moment) seem so petty when compared to... this.

She's not sure justice would be appropriate. ]

...I'm sorry. [ Her gaze drops and for a moment, Asuka feels intensely, horrifically ashamed of herself. All the bravado has been blown out of her. ]

[ In the end - she does not know what to do with that. The outpouring in response, of something, held so deeply and like a limb that has been severed, part of her in its absence. She will always be the woman on the battlefield, whose lungs so hoarse from screaming, she tastes blood. Hands gripped so hard from the need to stop their shaking, they will never quite straighten out properly. ]

There isn't a word for it, there never will be.

[ She looks down at her hands. Bound up. A first time, oddly. She had never been captured, not in all her years. Threatened with it certainly, hung over her head to make death always preferable. But good men had given their lives to make sure she never was bound.

Made this a little stiff, a little awkward. ]

Come here, child.

I'm not a child-

[ The response is automatic, but she still takes a step or two closer, arms trailing at her sides. She's not sure what to do with them or what Lakshmi wants from her now. She feels stupidly vulnerable, as if maybe she shouldn't have apologized. The arrogant, vindictive part of her wants to throw it all back in her face and leave her to her bonds. But she lingers, watching Lakshmi with her good eye as she scoots in closer. ]

What is it?

[ Not cruel, not at all, but it holds that absolute focus still, as she watches Asuka move closer. Her bound hands held in front of her - she might make this gesture something else, something milder, or maybe something stronger. But her options at this point are to a rather exact limitation.

Which is to say she leans forward, and softly kisses the top of her head. It's polite and no more. Not harsh, but firm, unmistakable for the intention of thank you and - I am glad you do not know this feeling. No one should. ]

You have a good heart, to listen to a bitter woman.

[ Asuka's a bit stunned. Of all the things Lakshmi could have done, she hadn't expected that. She takes a step back, blinking at her in confusion, face flushing in a touch of embarrassment. After a moment she frowns and shakes her head, glancing away. ]

Don't mention it.

[ There's something in her tone that seems to say, "No, really, don't mention it." ]

[ She relents as easy at that. No need to press on, her fingers shifting and here she flicks her away as quickly as she reeled her in - not dismissively, but more to give her space she seems to need from something that shouldn't be so much. ]

Of course. You should be about your business. He will come find me when he needs too.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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

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