station72 | [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!))

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

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Kavinsky hasn't played with his symbiote ability as much as one might imagine. Possibly because it's an ability that can only harm, destroy, and includes its caster in among its victims, so while the first two are well and good, the latter easily becomes more irritating than it's worth. His fingers burn first, then his palms. He's always quit before he could see how much he'd fry if he left the gas on and just kept burning.

He nurses his self-destructive streak. Coddles it, really.

Besides, he came prepackaged with a power he likes even better.]

( Wanna test it? )

[Restless. Itching. A sensation of creeping boredom that could make one want to scratch their skin off, just for something to do.

Fuck the funeral.]

[ dimly-lit, disguised, dour to-dos are something that peter's always had a difficult time with, less on the emotional spectrum and far more when there's nothing to do but drink and mingle and remain as veiled as possible.

so when the restlessness comes, it stirs his own haphazardly pressed away boredom even more. as if testing the symbiote itself hadn't already brought him in closer than before. ]

( Absolutely. )

[ tongue sliding over sharp teeth. the thought of having at least some more control over himself, whatever the hell this is about, makes his curiosity even leaner and hungrier than before, more alert, eager to learn. ]

( Now how's that go exactly? )

[Hunger's something Kavinsky knows well. It's always gnawing away at him, leaving gashes on his internal organs, scrape marks on his bones, because he can never seem to find a diet that will leave it sated for longer than a handful of hours.]

( Easy. Your symbiote wants to protect you. You're its host. You're its favorite bitch. So, we just make it think you're in danger. )

[Kavinsky begins to walk away from the bulk of the Nest. Their mourning's so heavy. His present conversation is better off somewhere less oppressive.]

[ peter gives a cursory glance at the rest of the gathering before moving forward. there should be a sinking sense of self-preservation somewhere, but peter's long abandoned it. twenty years turns you into something else that doesn't find the idea of we just make it think you're in danger all that terrible.

well, he doesn't mince words. ]

( Like to leave out the details don't they? )

[ long, easy strides match him easily enough. the gnawing keeps up, presses. ]

( So what particular brand of danger are we going to try to sell it in a place like this, Kavinsky? )

( You don't have to do anything. You can lay back and pillow queen it out. )

[He keeps walking, his strides even, but his mind's influx. Because if any of the current Hosts finds out he's bullying the new one, he might be in trouble. But this in't bullying, exactly, now is it? Hadrian should know what he's capable of. He's clearly consenting.

Overrated.

Kavinsky shakes the thought loose and drops it. Nah, he's part of the Hive, he's doing okay. They're all one big happy family.

He's gonna hurt him.]

( Just keep walking. Anyone asks, we're getting some air. )

( Not my style, but I appreciate the invitation all the same. Such a gentleman. )

[ peter knows what he's getting into the moment the last words hit him. there's a smile on his face beneath the veil, the blood beneath his skin fever warm at the thought because what's boredom but sitting around drinking and mourning someone you barely knew? there's no harm in having a little fun away from watchful eyes, the kind where he might get a little blood out of it because it's all he's got these days.

that's a current under him observing closely, watching the firelight behind them fade when he turns back to look for half a second. whiplike, quick, shifting from behind them to before them, but hardly an ounce of uncertainty in him, no fear, just forward. ]

[Gentleman. Not a typical descriptor for Joseph Kavinsky, perhaps so unnatural that he's never heard it before. He can't help a snort, a cheap half-laugh, because he's keeping an eye out for anyone paying them too much mind. It wouldn't be beyond one of the other Hive members to interrupt Kavinsky's initiation attempts out of petty well-meaning.

They seem distracted by the funeral, though, and he mentally whispers a silent thanks to the dead elf. His perishing wasn't meaningless after all.

The pair of them, Kavinsky and the new guy, walk far enough out that they wouldn't be easily viewed. Even Kavinsky's fireworks--both literal and metaphorical--shouldn't immediately have anyone running if his 'friend' doesn't send out a mental link distress flare.]

I'm gonna be nice. Last chance to back out.

[ he moves ahead of him with a long set of strides before turning on a heel and opening his arms just a bit with a flourish before bringing them back down again. it's clear with his posture that he's hardly about to refuse, if anything, he's far more relaxed at the shoulders, the give of the veils sloping with them.

the faintness of everyone else at this distance is both a comfort in how muted it feels and jarring in it's desperation to crawl back simultaneously. what he wanted and what his brain gives back in protest at being so far from both single broodmate and nest plays a background tug of war. but he hardly wavers, voice and all. there's more laughter to him than anything, soft. ]

And I assure you, I don't need you to be nice.

[ high risk, high reward. it's how the job has always worked and even now it applies itself, though the risk may outweigh the gain for now. ]

Let's get to it.

[The internal struggle tries to slither under Kavinsky's skin, but he puts it off by embracing the discomfort. Misato will still be there when he returns, along with the rest of his brood. They won't be gone more than an hour, if that. It's okay, it's okay, it's okay. And while the symbiote whines, nasal in his mind, Kavinsky's too excited to let that dissuade him.]

Great.

[No more kid gloves. Or gloves at all, because use of his power would leave them with awfully telling scorch marks. He removes anything covering his hands, and it's nice to feel the open breeze on them. He wishes he could chance removing all of the heavy robes, but even at this distance, that would be more stupid than it's worth.

He rubs his fingers together, thumbs stroking over index, middle, ring fingers, and pinkies.
It takes a minute, he doesn't rely on this power very often, but then the sparks come. A brilliant lemon yellow this time around, skipping over his fingers and palms. The color's new, not that he has any clue if the look of the sparks are truly random, a mood ring, or more about the symbiote's disposition than his own.]

Ready?

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

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