[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

[adamance]

"Our journeys like this were kept to a specific few, and handled with more blood than walking. Being nomadic wouldn't lead to a great deal of anything, unless you knew there was something valuable on the other side." What Lexa had heard about the City of Light fit this description. Polis wasn't ignorant to the place that was a fantasy. They just had no need for it.

"And we wouldn't expect people to do it to prove themselves. We believe in individual strength. I wonder what it is that these people believe." Or they only wish to force them all to assimilate to a certain lifestyle.

That's not unlike the Nest, is it?

[raw]

"I read a whole lot about the Rabadoceans," Elliot says speculatively, though he has to be careful with the pronunciation - that's the first time he's said their species aloud. "From what I can tell, this stuff we're heading for saved them. So it's no wonder they wanna treat it with reverence. Sometimes that means the value is in the act of journeying."

Elliot immediately pulls a bit of a face, mouth slanting, like he doesn't actually believe in that concept himself, either. "What I'm saying is, maybe it's not about strength. Pilgrimage is just wearing holes in the floorboards to be closer to something, knowing you're walking in the footsteps of others. Part of something bigger." Which is also, probably, like the nest. "I mean, have they been doing anything along the way?"

[adamance]

Oddly enough, Lexa immediately finds herself pleased with the course of conversation. Outside of a brief talk with Adra some time ago, she hasn't spoken much of religion or religious experiences with the other hosts. That's in part because her people's way was never easy to understand. She knew all too well the way that Skaikru had responded to their traditions; when she presented her ascendance to others, she was careful to phrase it in a manner so that it didn't become about spirituality, or her people's ways, or anything close to that.

And even then, there was always the stutter in understanding that so many people died so that a Commander could be recognized.

"We walked for three days before we came here to train on the Elin. Some took to them more quickly than others. But the question at the end of this is about worthiness. Who, at the end of this journey, is worthy to have such a necessary life force?"

[raw]

"Worthiness," Elliot echoes, considering it. "Except these are just representatives. The question is if their entire people are worthy, right? That seems different to individual judgement."

Not that he's hugely into either. He sighs, mentally sitting through what he knows again, the briefing documents and Cathaway's instructions basically burned into his brain. "Maybe it's not just about walking after all. You think there's going to be a contest?"

[adamance]

"There have been contests, but the victor or whoever comes out first seems to matter little to them. That's where I struggle to grasp their overall goal. I thought at first they wished to trim the herd, to ensure that we could all be diminished, but not all envoys are represented by their leaders." And in that, the logic is faulty. While many powerful individuals are present, they aren't anymore at risk than they were before all of this.

"But there is some concern about our safety. Upon arriving here, we received a ... feeling. A warning. One that never came into fruition."

[raw]

"A feeling." He sounds skeptical. One person's unease could surely ripple through the Nest, but that wouldn't make it real. But the mindshare and the superpowers are all so far out of his experience, he's still getting used to this new reality.

"Maybe it's just more journey-is-the-destination stuff," Elliot suggests, moving on from this idea of lurking danger (they wouldn't be here if the Enemy wasn't, and the Enemy is still only conceptual as lurking danger, to his mind.) "With the contests. It's about how people perform, rather than winning or losing. If they're going to support a faction, they want the ones who will use the technology to win the war in a way that falls in line with Rabadacian values."

[adamance]

"Or what the Hyrypians view as the values of their species," she says, drawing the next natural conclusion. To some degree, it makes sense. It explains the secrecy and the frustration she's felt with all of it. If they have a guide to what is meant to come from this pilgrimage, then they will be able to emulate it as best as they can. That's why anything indicating it had been ripped away.

"Our next goal is to find who they favor, then. They must have someone by now."

[raw]

That probably will require separately identifying each alien and the faction they belong to, which Elliot is having more trouble with despite the datapad noting some distinct physical differences. Also talking to people, which isn't his strong suit, this tactical discussion aside.

She's right, though. "Yeah," he agrees. "Though I heard that the funeral is for someone who sacrificed themselves? That kind of good deed could have put us in the running."

[adamance]

"I doubt it. If we were looking to gain the favor of the Descendants—perhaps. But sacrifice doesn't seem to be the aim of all of this." If strength isn't a point, neither is sacrifice. Both seem to be measures of strength. It might show their willingness to do whatever possible—or how much they were desperate to prove themselves.

"Though it might be time to be certain that I'm correct on that note." Lexa's liked most of his ideas by now. That means she might as well put that to a test before dismissing the suggestion altogether.

[raw]

Elliot nods. "That probably means talking to the Hyripians, right? This seems like a good chance for that." Because it's a party and all: mingling is expected. Though, "Not that I'm volunteering," he adds quickly, a touch wryly. Shakes his head. "I know we're supposed to be weird aliens and all but... I don't know. Social engineering isn't my strong suit."

[adamance]

"There are those among us who are better suited." Namely her. She has others in mind, but how well they succeed is another thing altogether. Besides, she has to take some control herself. "Do whatever it is that suits you. It may be sharing your observations with those within the nest."

There's a hint of approval through the mental link. His thoughts were good—useful, even.

[raw]

Elliot gives a very slight shrug, a touch of self-deprecation — it's not that he thinks he has no skills, it's just that most of the components of hacking aren't serving any purpose on this mission, or not yet.

"Observation, I can do," he agrees, since watching and drawing insight, well, he wasn't too bad at that. Better at guessing the motivations of humans than aliens, but even then it was only because he'd had more time to study how human-people work. "And... If you find anything interesting out, I'd like to know."