[mission: hyrypia] i am not there; i do not sleep

[onemind]

CHARACTERS: New Hosts & EVERYONE
WHERE: Station 72; Hyrypia - The Graze
WHEN: DAY :019 - DAY :020
SUMMARY: Somewhere deep in the void between multiverses, a fresh clutch of Hosts hatches; down on the planet Hyrypia, a Host is laid to rest.
WARNINGS: Mentions of character death, funerary services. Will update as necessary. Need a warning added? PM this account please!

STATION 72
DAY :019

NEW HATCHES
YOU WAKE UP and the universe with you in it is suddenly different. --No. That's not right. You're you, the universe is as it's always been, 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 coming up from the darkness of some wine dark sea. Nothing is different and yet everything is.

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. There are a handful of you here, somehow intimately familiar to each other.

Welcome to Station 72. Beyond this room it's quiet and still, feeling for all the world like a shell for some vast dark thing.

Eventually, a sensation manifests out of the black. It says:


PREPARE YOURSELF
THE VOICE IN YOUR HEAD is sound and sensation: a warm shaft of sunlight through smoky glass - a gauzy curtain twitching in some summer breeze. It says or feels like:

( Come meet with me, won't you? )

Where exactly this meeting is supposed to occur isn't immediately clear, but head in the direction that seems correct and eventually Station 72 gets you where you're meant to be: a circular briefing room with tiered seating, empty now, before a woman with a sheet of graying hair and something focused in her expression. It's been some time since she's spoken with a young host - since she's done one of this briefings. Apparently she's feeling something like her usual self. She smiles and it's very warm.

"Welcome to Station 72. Unfortunately, you won't be here long but we'd like to answer as many of your questions as we're able before you leave this place."

[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 is the most proactive distraction, but if not? Well there's plenty of places to get lost...

In the simulated morning, a strange archaic ship has arrived on the Hangar. Its very alien pilots unload two heavy trunks, then dole out a series of kits to the new hosts. One of them - the pale female alien who her calls herself Rhan - cheerfully announces, "Get changes and buckle in. I'm afraid we've some grim business ahead of us today. Funerals, you know. But chin up, my darlings. One uncomfortable day and then we'll leave the matter behind us. --Oh, but do be gentle with the others. I suspect they might be tender for a few days yet."

You leave the Station. If you're lucky, you might one day make it back.

HYRYPIA - THE GRAZE
DAY :020

THE FUNERAL PROCESSION
A SHIP DESCENDS from the iron colored sky early in the morning on Day :020. Before it even pierces the planet's atmosphere, its cargo should be obvious to the other Carbauschians: a new batch of Hosts, freshly hatched and just in time for the grim festivities.

The idea is simple: that they are part of a mourning delegation, only here to briefly oversee Lavellan's funerary rites. Luckily (...) there's plenty of comatose Hosts lying in the tents to trade places with the newcomers.

Better get to know your new friends quickly - there's plenty to be brought up to speed on (such as, uh, the recent death of one of the elder Hosts), and likely enough work to be done that the new spare hands are welcome. Or maybe the state of nothing-like-faux mourning is a good excuse for some alone time on a strange new alien planet. You're all so very, very far from home.


BURIAL RITES
THE FUNERAL has been arranged to the Hosts' precise specifications. Each and every single request they've made has been met, carried out by two soft-spoken, contrite Hyrypian servants who had come to them not long after their return from the hunt. Perhaps because the members of the other envoys are unsure whether it's permitted or welcome to attend, the site of the funerary pyre is hardly full to bursting with onlookers. Or maybe the burning of corpses goes against some obscure tradition. Or maybe some of the minor envoys simply don't care much and think the Carbasuchians are best left to their grief alone. Still, while it's hardly the entire encampment in attendance a notable selection of diplomats and their respective entourages and several of their Hyrypian hosts have turned out for the ceremony. It seems the Descendants in particular have turned out in some force, including the very hunter saved by Lavellan's quick thinking.

When the time comes for the rites to proceed, it's left to the Hosts to light the fire and say their farewells to their fallen comrade - the first and hopefully last to be lost in this strange land.


A SOMBER CELEBRATION
ASH SCENT HANGS HEAVY STILL over the encampment. Or maybe that's simply the perception - after all, the breeze still blows in from over the Great Flat. Surely it's just a memory of the smell which lingers, as circumstantial as the mournful note the wind sighs as it cuts across the Graze and into the tangled Finger Maze.

However, matters of the universe don't pause for the tragedy of the loss of an envoy - and there is so much riding on this Pilgrimage. To their credit, the Hyrypians have done all they can to provide for the Carbauschians in their time of grief (including a visit from the Matron Bassita herself, pale and full of sympathy and apologies), and as evening falls what clearly was meant to be a carousing party to celebrate a successful hunt and completion of the Pilgrimage's first stage has been considerably tempered.

The drinks still flow; the food is still plentiful, rich and lavishly spiced - but the music being played is soft and careful and of the hundreds of small technomanced insect lights the drift over the encampment tonight, a considerably portion of them are dedicated to lingering around the charred skeleton of the funeral pyre as a sober acknowledgement of what has come to pass.

Give it a few hours and maybe the mood will lighten slightly. On the other hand, there's nothing like an uncomfortably close tragedy to bring people together - and as Rhan suggests, maybe now's exactly the right time to ask a few pointed questions. Or to get hammered with new friends. Or to take a nice long walk while everyone else is consumed by the muted festivities.

---

((OOC Notes: This log covers the hatch, the arrival of new Hosts on Hyrypia, the funeral of Lavellan and the supremely awkward dinner party meant to wrap the first stage of the Pilgrimage. 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're brand new to the game. If you have any questions, please hit up either the mission's question thread, the FAQ or MOD CONTACT pages!))

NAVIGATION • GAME CALENDAR • MISSION: HYRYPIA • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

[wille]

[ He's calm, for one. Unusually so. It makes her want to see him fumble, if only to see what lies under the mask of joviality and composure. ]

That depends. Do you know the ones closest to you? The loudest minds.

[justttkidding]

[ If only Misato knew what was buried under miles of ice. Maybe it would give her satisfaction. ]

Just one, Richard. The rest are– well, not here. [ He frowns a bit at that, not liking the odd tug of emptiness he feels when he tries to reach to those other connections. They're like severed limbs. Still giving phantom pains even if they're gone. ] We met when we came to.

[wille]

Maybe that's a good thing.

[ That he refers to the absence as something to frown at, rather than a relief, is a sign that Richard isn't as insufferable as some broodmates might be. Misato inhales and sighs, heavily. ]

First, don't get into fights with other Hosts. The symbiote won't let us really hurt each other, so there's no point. You'll just make your lives harder. Then, think about what you want by staying here with that thing in your head. If it's worth it.

[justttkidding]

Does that extend to emotional fights as well? I'm afraid my days of being punch drunk are well passed.

[ It's a crack, but he's still seeking knowledge underneath it all. Maybe it would be easier to just straight out ask instead of covering his tracks with jokes, but old habits are hard to break. Especially having been in as long as he has.

Now, her second piece of advice, he hums thoughtfully, folds his arms behind his back. What does he want? The answer is readily available, as it always is– survive. All of his contractor instincts tell him this. But is there something else? What can the symbiote offer that he hasn't already had, besides this new communication? ]

And if I decide it isn't?

[wille]

Emotional fights are worse.

[ She returns the quip with sober advice, too grim for the likes of her usually. But these are grim times. She takes another sip of her drink, already feeling the numbness creep from the tips of her fingers.

If she knows of his survivalist streak, she might have said something different. But the opposite has never been an option. She could never condone it. ]

If you decide it's not worth it, then choose what you want to do.

[justttkidding]

[ Emotional fights are worse. This should be something to dread, but instead he finds a strange comfort in it. No reason for anyone to be prickly and passive aggressive then, since it would just cycle back around. That keeps things from getting more complicated than it already was, with them all linked together.

Of course, he’d just see how many actually stuck to keeping away from such behaviors. Humans weren’t always the most rational. ]

Sounds a bit like I’ve no choice but to drag myself on. I’d consider this unfair, but living is more interesting than dying.

[wille]

There's always a choice.

[ So quick on the heels of his words. So adamant. As if the alternative is unthinkable, unconscionable.

She lets out a huff, both a reprimand against herself and also against him for insinuating that to continue living is a lack of choice rather than a road one must continue to choose every single moment. But well, to be unable to imagine the alternative is also a lack of options, so she is choosing the same, in fewer words. She tips her glass to finish the drink to its last dregs, and holds the empty glass toward him. ]

I'm glad we're on the same side, in that sense.

[justttkidding]

Is it a choice?

[ Maybe the question is hypocritical, considering how he'd answered before. But that answer came from logic, reason, from the contractor part of his mind that he can't ignore. If he were less of a monster, maybe he would've said differently. Maybe he wouldn't be here at all, unable to survive MI6 and the world they lived in as a normal human.

Misato finishes her drink and he mirrors the motion, spreading his hands afterwards, conciliatory. ]

I've no other logical option open to me. And unfortunately, none of the wherewithal to go against reason. Maybe you do, though the coward's way out doesn't seem like it would align.

[wille]

[ All this handwringing about choice, because she is just like him. That while there remains one other unspoken road, as he says "the coward's way out," that is to her no viable option. An option that she simply can't choose, is no choice at all. Even so, she inhales and holds her breath, as if doing so might keep the rest of her words from stumbling out. ]

Up to a point, maybe, it would be more reasonable to give in.

[ The smallest, grudging admission. Already she winces at having uttered it. ]

But you're right. The other option is no option.

[justttkidding]

We'll just have to keep going, then, and hope that our spirit burns on longer despite the circumstances.

[ Not that he necessarily believes in spirit, per se. But, he does believe in the logic of determination. Of pushing through to the end, because leaving things unfinished isn't his style. It's what has put him at the top of MI6; the reliability.

And he thinks, as he considers Misato's words, that they're cut from a similar cloth. ]