onemind: (Default)
THE N E S T ([personal profile] onemind) wrote in [community profile] station722017-10-09 08:18 pm

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

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!))




detestable: (Default)

[personal profile] detestable 2017-10-24 03:49 am (UTC)(link)
[ Maybe he should have seen this coming. Of course it wasn't possible to put the whole supernatural culebra bullshit behind him. Seth's displeasure at Elena instigating mental connection fades into tired, belligerent frustration. ]

God damn it.

[ And they're tied together. This girl, Elena, was all linked up with his mind. Seth was going to have to weather her presence, just like he'd had to get used to Ximena, and all the others. Disdain shifts to resignation, but Seth's initial reaction is clear: he doesn't like it. Among all the other aspects of this arrangement he resents, he hates that he's still tangled up in the affairs of bloodsuckers. ]

Guess the disguise is really working out for you, huh?

[ It's a petty crack. Seth had been relieved when he'd seen what they'd been outfitted with on the Station. The last thing he'd wanted to worry about was Richie going up in smoke.

But then, Seth never really slots Richie in alongside other culebra. It's no different now. ]
otrazhenie: (130)

[personal profile] otrazhenie 2017-11-14 03:18 am (UTC)(link)
[ His reaction is... unexpected. There's no shock or disbelief like she'd gotten from those who didn't know vampires could be real, nor is there the horror or disdain like she'd received from Lakshmi who hated anything remotely resembling the vampires she'd spent her life fighting. Instead, it's as if he's experienced all of this before and is just worn out by it.

Huh.

But then mixed in come all the things she'd been expecting and she retreats a little across their connection, putting as much mental distance between them as she can, doing her best to shove aside the instinctual flinch at what feels essentially like rejection. It's not as painful as it had been with Lakshmi, not by a long shot, but it still stings. ]


Yeah, it is. [ There's a sadness in the words, and she explains not out of a desire to give him more information, but rather a need for something else to say. ] I didn't have the time to get a daylight ring before I was brought here.
detestable: (084)

[personal profile] detestable 2017-11-14 08:18 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Seth twigs to that yielding sensation in her. Talking to fill the silence, so she doesn't have to be alone with Seth's reaction to her. It's useful on two levels. As he's circulated through the crowd, Seth's found that outright disdain has been a semi-effective repellent. As considerate as Elena has been, he feels the way the touch of her mind recedes a step farther.

But more importantly is the mention of a daylight ring. Seth's curiosity pings between them. The obviousness is irritating, but Seth can work on masking that later. ]


Daylight ring, ey? How's that work?

[ Unspoken: and what are the odds of getting on here? ]
otrazhenie: (035)

[personal profile] otrazhenie 2017-11-14 09:22 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Elena's not used to so many people hating, disliking, or just plain not caring to get to know her. Back in Mystic Falls, she'd gotten along well with almost everyone in the small town, save perhaps for a few people at school, but that's to be expected. Here though, compounded with her own mounting insecurities regarding being a vampire, it's affecting her far more than it should, weighing down her thoughts and putting cracks into her soul faster than they can be mended. ]

( It's made by a witch to protect us from the sun. They're not that common, most witches don't care for vampires. )

[ Another thought of caution and worry of being overheard had her speaking through their connection again. Not that she figures most who might hear them would understand the subject at hand, but still. Secrets need to be kept, lives at stake. ]
detestable: (075)

[personal profile] detestable 2017-11-20 12:55 am (UTC)(link)
Huh.

[ Aloud, punctuated by Seth draining the last of his glass. ]

Too bad.

[ With the echo of: Who the hell could blame them? undercut with faint amusement about fucking witches. Seth doesn't need to think too hard about that. ]

Look this has been... [ Seth trails off, lets the silence hang for a beat. He doesn't have a descriptor, so he lets his own discomfort hold the place for him. ] But I need to get back to my brother.

[ And get another drink. Seth is cultivating a buzz, and he isn't interested in letting it lapse. ]
Edited (curses html) 2017-11-20 00:55 (UTC)
otrazhenie: (131)

[personal profile] otrazhenie 2017-11-20 01:10 am (UTC)(link)
[ Too bad indeed. She won't always be able to wear this costume, and then what? Not only will she never be able to walk under the sun again, but she'll become a detriment to any future mission. It's something she's persistently worried about, but not something she's talked about with Damon yet. That will come later, when it matters. When other things aren't more important. ]

I'm glad you're here together. [ It slips out before she really thinks about it, but she means every word, her own longing to have Jeremy with her coming through loud and clear across that connection with her broodmate. Her little brother means the world to her, and she misses him more than anyone. ]

If you need anything, either of you... Just ask.

[ She stands there for a moment longer, wishing there was something more she could offer him, remembering just how hard all of this was in the beginning, but then she turns and makes her way toward someone else, pushing her own problems back down below the surface where they belong. ]
detestable: (201)

wraps

[personal profile] detestable 2017-11-20 01:37 am (UTC)(link)
[ Seth has all the same concerns about Richie that Elena has for herself. (And some part of him is worried for her too; some gut-deep need to be sure Elena's safe is unavoidably present.) Eventually, they won't be on a planet where they need to stay draped in robes. Seth was going to have to figure something out then, if Richie wasn't already thinking about it.

Jeremy Gilbert's face is a gut-punch. The longing is enough to exacerbate the itch of worry motivating Seth to seek out Richie. He's already taking a step as Elena continues speaking. He looks at her, considering, before he nods. ]


Thanks.

[ The offer is very sincere. Seth doesn't wait to follow up on it. Elena turns away, and Seth makes his way through the crowd to Richie. ]