[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

[raw]

( I'm pretty good at them. )

Which is different from enjoying something, but hey, close enough. Elliot doesn't hate solving things: codes, problems, puzzles, people.

( If we were in my world, where people use computers, this would all be a lot easier. But Cathaway made it pretty clear we're supposed to get information by talking to people. And that's ... not my strong suit. )

Sheepish self-deprecation tinged with a darker self-hatred, like red veins of infection running through it. Why can't you just be normal, Elliot. He'd hate it if he knew how much of himself he was laying bare without even speaking a word.

[somnifacient]

It’s impossible to miss it, that self-deprecation that slides his way without Noctis truly reaching for it. It feels familiar, even if it isn’t his own. Not hatred, not really, but that feeling of being unable to know how to approach the problem of people, and all they stand for. Conversation, charm. Societal niceties, something that royalty should be more than adept in.

But… computers. A hook in the conversation that he can latch onto, coupled with curiosity.

(I have those in my world, too. I come from a city that’s practically covered in technology—)

The flickering of an image, of a grand city that reaches to the sky. Of giant screens plastered to the sides of tall buildings, of cell phones and cars and strange barriers that employ both magic and technology, as if the two were always meant to work together in tandem.

(—so this old-school way of going about gathering information isn’t exactly my strong suit either.)

[raw]

That catches Elliot's attention. Really properly holds his interest. Skyscrapers beyond anything in New York, tech like he's familiar with and then some, the addition of magic — technomagic, in the way Elliot always felt the word should be used, rather than as a spiritual calling, a result of a natural Nectar.

He wishes they could be there and not here.

( Walking and talking instead of driving and typing. )

He agrees grimly.

( But your world seems cool. )

He's latched onto those brief impressions, trying to resist the hacker urge to follow that thread and just deep-dive into someone else's memories.

[somnifacient]

Noctis will not recoil. Elliot may follow that thread into the deeper parts of his mind, and the young king could not stop him. Exerting mental control, tossing up barriers, detaching himself utterly completely — all things that he’s not mastered, despite his time here. And so that line is easy to follow, a stream of conscious thoughts and images that will lead deeper into his memories, if he doesn’t merely show them off without much care first.

(It was.)

“Was” is the keyword, there.

(It’s called Eos. I come from Lucis, from the city Insomnia. What about you?)

What names. He’s keenly oblivious to the almost over-the-top grandeur that might be a parody of itself, in those names.

[raw]

( New York. It's uh, a city, in America. )

Somehow those names seem less impressive next to a city called Insomnia.

But Elliot is very interested in the fact that they're from different places — is Noctis actually an alien? Or is this a multiverse thing? Either way it's all very sci-fi, as is so much of what has happened since Cathaway showed up in his life. And in his urge to know he steps further forward, mentally: barriers? Magic? Is there the internet? Can individuals use magic? Can Noctis use magic? Each curiosity reaching with a toddler's grasping hand for more image-memories, more scents and shapes and colors, more answers.

[somnifacient]

(New York... in America. I've never heard of it before.)

Or maybe he has, in some faraway notion. Names of places echoing in the minds of other hosts, visions slipping past him when he's not paying attention. Whispers ghosting around in his head when he passes one or two of them by, but not focused on them for the ideas to actually stick. It wouldn't be terribly surprising to him if this were the case.

He feels, it though. The way Elliot is grasping at the edges of his mind for more of those images. Of magic and Insomnia and visions of the gods and everything in-between. Noctis isn't offended or put-off. It actually makes him smile under his hood.

(Which part are you curious about? About Insomnia?)

[raw]

( All of it. )

Caught, he stops effectively rummaging, though doesn't entirely retreat, leaving them slightly enmeshed in a way he doesn't really know how to detach himself from. He keeps trying to think of it like hacking but the symbiote's concept of the human mind is nothing like a computer.

( My world had decent tech, but not like this. This is more like what I imagined when I first read this mission was about technomancy. )

[somnifacient]

He lets him stop rummaging, though it's obvious he isn't offended by the way of his response.

(So you're more interested in the mesh of magic and tech, then? We had our fair share of that, but a lot of that revolved around the royal family, and...)

The image of a large crystal, radiating blue light. Omnipotent, sentient, powerful. Almost overwhelming, and the sensation of being enveloped by it-

He pushes that aside.

(Insomnia had a wall. A magic barrier to keep invaders out. The king kept it running with his own life force.)

[raw]

It's a weird thing to see, when so far so much of Noctis' world seemed fantastical but familiar — certainly moreso than the planet they were currently on. The crystal, though, reads as alien, and he's still resonating bafflement long after it's banished.

( His life force. )

That, too, seems strange, but then, he knows nothing about magic.

( Is that where all magic comes from? Some inner vitality? )

[somnifacient]

What coincidence it is, then, that his question would loop back around to the thought of the Crystal, because Noctis' answer illuminates this further.

(No. It came from the Crystal, which is... Well, it's a long story. But basically it was gifted to the Lucian royal bloodline, something that we were supposed to protect. As a result, its power gave us our magic, and we used it to guard the Crystal and the kingdom itself.)

The use of "we" is probably telling.

[raw]

It sure is.

( Man, hold up a second. You're royalty? )

Elliot doesn't know how to feel about that. He doesn't have much respect for authority, especially not positions of nepotism, but it's obvious that royal blood means something different to what it does in his own world. Still Noctis.. isn't what he would expect, from a prince or a king.

[somnifacient]

Noctis doesn't really exude the image of royalty, which is more than obvious under even all these robes. "Regal" isn't a word that most would immediately apply to him, though if someone truly observant were to watch him move and walk, they would note that he carries himself like someone trained to know that all eyes might be on him at any time.

Barring that, everything about him practically drips in "normal"; never mind the strange images of a world that seems alien and familiar all at once drifting around in his head.

(...Yeah. I'm a Lucis Caelum; the last one left. The last king that'll ever be -- at least, that was the plan, until I was brought here.)

Which, he supposes, doesn't change the fact that he's the last of his family now, either.

[raw]

In fairness, Elliot lives in a world where tabloids try to sell royalty as ordinary, just like you and I, though with a lot of extra celebrity and money. Elliot doesn't expect much, beyond the grotesqueries of privilege — that last he hasn't seen any particular sign of in Noctis, so it's moot.

( That's a hell of a lot more to walk away from than most people here. )

Elliot likes to think he had an ordinance to save the world, and from what little he's picked up from others in the Nest he's not alone in that, but being the last of a so-called great lineage, the duties of leadership — it feels like those carry more weight. He can still do good, on the Station, on this mission. But Noctis... cannot lead.

[somnifacient]

(Loss is loss, right? We've all been torn away from home in the end. All because of the Enemy, or so they tell us.)

His loss was no more prevalent than anyone else's. The loss of family and friends and home. The destiny he carried on his shoulders, weighing heavily, was not gone simply because he was out here in the far reaches of space. It only proved to suffocate him, since he could not release himself from it any longer.

(But, hey... don't treat me like royalty, all right? I'm just a normal guy, especially now.)

[raw]

( That's really not going to be a problem. )

Elliot is nearly incapable of giving people special treatment, whether for their age or status... and he has absolutely no respect for authority or celebrity. Not his therapist, not his boss, not even his parents could make him deferent. So he mostly sounds amused at the idea. ]

( Not that I'm ceding you nornalcy. You're still a strange guy from a strange place. But I promise not to use your title or anything, ever. )

[somnifacient]

He feels a gladness, though, at that. Even back home, special treatment felt strange to him; the idea of him having to sit on a throne in the Citadel one day was often enough to make him feel anxious and almost sick his stomach, in those years past. Easier to blend in and pretend to be normal, even if such a thing were impossible most of the time.

Here? Not so much. And though he would give anything to return home, to finish what was once started, he can at least take pleasure in knowing that the expectations are less in space and on alien planets.

(Good to know. So then, that just means you can call me Noctis.)

An attempt at an introduction, a little awkward, but sincere.

[raw]

( Elliot. )

He's the last person in the world to condemn anyone for awkwardness — glass houses, stones, etc. Anyway, Alnair is rapidly becoming his favorite of the broods, thanks Noctis.

"I might take that nap after all," he says, and now it feels strange to use his mouth words after so long in silence, just chatting and sharing. Gives Noctis a tired smile. "But we should hang out sometime." Which isn't a request he makes to many people. He may not even follow through — sometimes plans he makes in an attempt to feel normal turn out too hard later.

[somnifacient]

Elliot. Easy enough to commit to memory, and so he does it. A nod, slow and subtle.

"Well. Don't let me stop you," he says, the words permeating the air seeming loud after their mental communication. "But yeah, take a long nap to process all that's happening, and then sure, I wouldn't mind that."

Awkwardness or not, Noctis at least will never come off as unfriendly.

"And if you've got any questions, just shoot 'em my way."