[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

[ophidia]

We have to know what we're dealing with.

[We, both of them, because he knows what happens when he lets Seth fall behind. How Seth gets, cranky and belligerent, absolutely certain to dig his heels in and refuse to take any measures to catch up. If he lets Seth get caught worrying about a non-concern, the certainty already ringing somewhere in Richard's perception that they're safe. Out of reach.

He needs to show Seth that. No thought in it but that. Pulling at him like a hand at his elbow. Demanding on his awareness, his consciousness, his mind. Look.]

[detestable]

That's what I'm saying—

[ Except Seth's voice breaks, impatient rebuttal cutting off as Richie's mind subsumes his own. They've been up to the elbows in each other since they dropped out of their pods but that had felt natural, in a way. It's standard operating procedure to move in tandem and pick up on each other's unspoken implications. Then Richie tugs at his head the way he'd have pulled at Seth to look at a blueprint and Seth falls into him, easy as drawing a breath.

It feels almost like unraveling to have his mind laid open this way. Richie's thoughts spill in, tangling immediately. Richie thinks they're safe. Richie thinks the threat is in their heads. Richie's mind leaves the taste of blood in the back of Seth's mouth, but Seth doesn't know how to recoil away from him. It's like forgetting which way is up. Seth is as much in the dark about how to cut this tie as he was stranded in Mexico, trying to destroy the ache with alcohol and heroin.

His hand comes up to grab Richie's lapel, but Seth doesn't push him back. Not yet, anyway. The motion stalls, stuttering as Seth shakes his head, trying to get Richie out as if Richie's water in his ears. ]

[ophidia]

[It's nothing like Kisa. She had carved new furrows into Richard's mind, forced open new doors, ruthlessly expanding his sight as she coiled through him. Whispers. Visions. Coaxing and pleading, promising, but never truly giving anything of herself. Her understanding was there, her love, but the connection between them only ever went one way.

This is different. Richard pulls Seth into him, and he falls into Seth at the same time. Mirrored. Mutual. It's like tipping into water and finding you could breathe it all along. Seth's thoughts rise and mix with his own as if they were always supposed to be there, the finishing pieces of broken sentences. Seth is the warmth of alcohol on his tongue, sunlight on his skin again; frustration, concern, agitation. Richard's hand lifts to the back of his neck, spread of his palm weighted to soothe, leaning in to rest their foreheads together.]

( Look. )

[What he'd been trying to show Seth has drifted, dissipated. Pushed aside. Now there's this, the merge and mix of them, pieces shifting, fitting together only to fall away and then rise again. Like the beat of a single heart. The inhale exhale of breath. Beautiful, his brother's words whispering from a lifetime ago, but neither of them could have ever imagined this.]

[detestable]

[ Seth's own words come circling around to him, rising like smoke from Richie's mind: And hey, brother, that is a beautiful thing. The Gecko brothers are back. It drags at him, as much a weight as the familiar clutch of Richie's hand at the nape of his neck. When was the last time they were this close? The RV, rattling towards the border maybe, Seth thinks, as his mind skips like a scratched record over what followed. (Richie's teeth in his throat, weight pinning Seth in the dirt, everything coming apart around them—)

People have been in Seth's head. Kisa had hacked her way in, blinding Seth with her presence. She hadn't belonged there. But Richie knows every in-road. Neither of them have that far to fall, and it feels like there's already a place for their minds to co-mingle. Had they always been made for this?

Richie's mind tastes like blood. The tang of it permeates even as Richie's voice whispers between them, urging Seth to look. Hunger gnaws in his stomach, partly a craving for something solid (steak, rare, a bottle of wine Seth can't place the name of) and something violent, metallic, intimate— ]

( Fuck. )

[ The expletive covers a lot of ground. ]

( How...? )

[ The question scatters down to a handful of impressions: the eye in Richie's palm, the flash of his fangs, Kisa in their heads. Is this Richie? ]

[ophidia]

( No. )

[Easy and immediate. There's a whisper of envy curling in him which wishes it was, but this isn't him. He'd explained it already. Told Seth already. But he doesn't bother repeating, pushing the concept at him again in thought and frustration, impatience. He takes Seth's attention and turns it, dragging his gaze from the mix of their own minds to the cloud beyond them. Beyond that, a glimpse of the vast nebula stretching outwards unfathomable. Glowing, pulsing and singing with a thousand thoughts, memories, feelings.

The desire to dive out into it and everything it offers is like a fist in Richard's gut, pulling. But he stays. Wrapped around and through Seth, knit close and comfortable like an arm slung warm around shoulders.]

( This was already here. We've been plugged in. )

[Seth's first question had been how. But Richard discards that, steps past it for the one that seems far more important: why.]

[detestable]

[ Being this connected to Richie feels like being sunk into tar. The curiosity, the need to know, it sticks to him. It colors over Seth's reluctance to delve any further into this newfound ability. Richie's mind is directing his focus and Seth is too aware of him. There's too much spilling between them. It's too much, too fast and a stab of icy apprehension lances through him and explodes outward, impossible to ignore. ]

( Yeah, well how do we turn it off? )

[ Richie's why echoes around his mind. They're so close. The lines between them are terrifyingly blurred. Seth struggles with it, grip flexing on Richie's lapel as he tries to extricate his thoughts from following where Richie has directed. ]

( Richie, don't— )

[ Follow that train of thought? Settle in so closely? Seth's anxiety is shapeless, broken off into just an impression rather than words. ]

[ophidia]

[Reluctance, apprehension, anxiety. All of it big, noisy, glancing off the sides of his determined focus, the impact drawing his attention sharply and completely back to Seth. Seth who needs something from him, a fact that immediately holds far more importance than the idea of everything pulsing and breathing out beyond.

But even in the spill and flow of their minds together, Richard can't tell what Seth needs. Left pressing, looking for it, uncertainty and concern. How do we turn it off? is only met with incredulity, why would you want to? Richard dismisses it. Hand flexing against the nape of Seth's neck, unconscious, instinctive attempts to soothe.]

( I'll figure this out, brother. )

[Does it even need saying? This is just another challenge, another unknown, another safe to study and dissect and crack open. Richard will figure it out. Seth should already know that.]

[detestable]

[ Why wouldn't you want to?

The rebuttal comes like a push. It's followed by a slow splintering of their minds; the connection starts breaking up and turns to static a breath before Seth pushes Richie away. The physical is an afterthought. It's only necessary because Seth doesn't know how to expel Richie from his head without severing the physical contact. Seth's already noted it as a weakness and vowed to work on it even as he takes a few deep breaths, shakes his head hard like the mental link is water he could get out of his ears. ]

Don't do that, [ Seth says, without any need to elaborate further on what he means. He doesn't want Richie poking his mind out into the vast, open stretch beyond the pair of them and he doesn't want to feel Richie in his head (he does, but it's complicated. it's always complicated.) ] Fuck.

[ For a moment how visibly shaken Seth is by what he'd felt is obvious before he grits his teeth, drags a hand down his face and reasserts some self-control in the midst of all this weirdness. ]

[ophidia]

[It feels like something tearing. Not necessarily painful, but intensely uncomfortable, intensely wrong. Richard's grasping to try and hold on before he can even think about it, shocked by the push for a split second before his mind curls back and reaches, trying to grab the pieces of Seth being pulled away from him. But Seth's determination is too strong. He's like oil slipping through Richard's fingers, and as the final, physical shove has Richard staggering back a step, he feels suddenly, painfully, completely alone.

It hurts. He's done something Seth doesn't like, once again, been pushed back and rejected for it. Familiar, a whole series of blows which have hit the same place. He slowly straightens himself up, looks to his brother again, and his expression has resolved into the same stony stolidity he'd had to adopt against all of Seth's endless mistrust and bitter undertones of accusation after Kate's death.

There's a long beat before he speaks, words slow and hard.]

You done?

[With the freak out, the lash out. The blows Richard was expected to stand and take.]

[detestable]

[ Briefly, Seth's reminded of when they were kids. Fights escalating too far, Richie pinning him, Seth scrambling for escape at all costs. He remembers this feeling too: of having gotten what he wanted but regretting it instantly. He's immediately aware of having wounded Richie. (He'd never needed a direct link to Richie's mind to figure that out.) But as always, Seth isn't sure how to repair it.

And right now, he isn't sure he wants to offer up what he suspects would repair the hurt he's caused. ]

Are you?

[ Predictable to the end, Seth falls immediately into the old routine. ]

Christ. We need to figure out what the hell is going on and find a way to get out of here.

[ And Seth wants to leave. He can feel other presences stirring in his mind. It's unwelcome. Seth's already worried he won't be able to replicate his slip from Richie's mind as easily with anyone else. ]

[ophidia]

[Seth skips back to the same refrain he's had since they woke up, and Richard takes it as the answer it obviously is. Yes, he's done. Likely wants to ignore what had happened in its entirety, short-sighted, limited, and not going to get him the answers he's scrabbling for.

So Richard turns, and starts to walk away.]

[detestable]

Where the fuck are you going?

[ Though Seth doesn't move to follow him. That's telling. If Seth were really determined to keep Richie in one spot, he'd already be following him. ]

[ophidia]

[Stopping before he's barely taken two steps, Richard turns to look back, expression set with irritation and fraying patience.]

Seeing as standing around repeating "we need to figure this out" isn't getting us anywhere, I'm going to see if any of them [a tip of his head towards the others climbing free of their pods] know anything.

[Which is unlikely, if they're anything like he and Seth. But they have to start somewhere, and at the rate Seth was going at, they weren't going to start at all.]

Or do you have a better idea?

[He doesn't. But Richard still waits for him to say it.]

[detestable]

[ Seth immediately decides he's not going to say it and give Richie the satisfaction. ]

Knock yourself out.

[ Walking backwards, palms spread expansively. ]

We can meet up later and compare notes.

[ Since Seth's goal is less answers and more wash the filth off himself. So what if he's dodging the reality of their situation? If Richie's so eager, he can question the other suckers who got roped into this with them. ]

[ophidia]

[No direct answer is as good as the confirmation he was expecting. He doesn't bother saying more. And the low tug of caution, the twisting sense that he and Seth shouldn't separate too far this soon into unknown territory, he ignores that. It's easy, with the sting and Seth's dismissal still so strong.

He turns and starts heading over to the first face who looks able to hold a conversation.]