[hatch log] i had a dream which was not all a dream

[onemind]

CHARACTERS: New Hosts & EVERYONE
WHERE: Station 72; Hyrypia - The Red Coast
WHEN: DAY :025 - DAY :026
SUMMARY: Somewhere deep in the void between multiverses, a fresh clutch of Hosts hatches; getting them down to Hyrypia proves to be more complicated than usual.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. Need a warning added? PM this account please!

STATION 72
DAY :025

NEW HATCHES
YOU WAKE UP and the universe and you in it are 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. But 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. Some of these emotions might be 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 others very like you here, all of them somehow intimately familiar.

Welcome to Station 72. Beyond this room, the vast Station is quiet and still. It feels for all the world like a shell for some vast dark thing.

Eventually, a sensation manifests out of the hollowness:


PREPARE YOURSELF
THE VOICE IN YOUR HEAD is sound and sensation: a brilliantly warm shaft of sunlight through smoky glass - a gauzy curtain twitching in some summer breeze - the blooming pleasure of a familiar face after a very long time away. 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 small grassy lawn in the center of the lush, circular gardens where an aging woman waits on a stone bench. The pin straight sheet of her hair hangs like a graying curtain and the sensation from her is lovely and golden, real delight pouring through her like light through a pinhole camera. She smiles and sets aside the book in her lap.

"There you are. 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."


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 other than the people you woke up with there's a distinct lack of company 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? Otherwise-- well there's plenty of places to get lost...

By the simulated morning, a strange archaic ship has arrived on the Hangar. Its very alien pilots are in the process of unloading-- bodies. No, scratch that, they're clearly still alive, though in some kind of comatose state. One of the pilots - a pale female alien who calls herself Rhan - says, "Well, this is awkward. We were supposed to be done with this already. Uh don't mind us, darling. We'll finish up here and get on our way. In the meantime, why don't you go through your packs and get changed?"

She nods toward two trunks on the hangar deck where assortment of pre-prepared packs are waiting for each new Host. In each pack is a series of items, including a set of beautiful and very all-encompassing robes. Better get comfortable. Not hot on the fabrics or patterns in your pack? Mixing and matching with your new best friends is totally acceptable.

Eventually, you leave the Station. If you're lucky, you might one day make it back.

HYRYPIA - THE RED COAST
LATE DAY :026

A PURPOSEFULLY SUBTLE WELCOME
UNDER THE COVER OF DARKNESS, Collector and Lyr make their way through the barracks where the Hosts on Hyrypia are meant to be sleeping. It's nearing whatever the Hyrypian equivalent of midnight is; if you're awake, all the better. If not? Expect to be roused (gently and silently by Collector, rudely and abruptly by Lyr).

"Get dressed. We're going for a walk."

There's nothing quite so suspicious as bringing a bunch of reinforcements to the planet in the aftermath of a rather public murder, which means a highly ritualized midnight procession of Carbasuchians into the highlands. It's easier to secret a handful of newbies in an anonymous group, right?

That meeting in the dead of night in the rocky wilderness above the Red Coast bears even a passing resemblance to the strange occurrence on DAY :010 is probably just a coincidence. Besides, there aren't any mystery circles burned into the stone and grass here: just a stealth ship materializing out of the black night and touching down in a stony outcropping where it disgorges the freshly hatched (or newly reawakened) Hosts.

---

((OOC Notes: This log covers the hatch on Day :025 as well as the arrival of new Hosts on Hyrypia late on Day :026. Feel free to make your own logs and posts additional to this if you care to. You can find additional information pertaining to the Red Coast on the previous mission log (located here); newbies are welcome to utilize that log as well as it occurs within the same time period as the hatch.

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

[shiro2hero]

With... your eye.

[He can't help the note of disbelief there. The uncertainty. Granted, it's all that leaks through. He's too used to keeping his shields clamped down on his thoughts. His right hand curls, though, out of reflex.]

[Maybe this new face isn't the only one who has conversations with body parts...]

Sorry. I'm Shiro.

[As he extends his left hand, in greeting.]

[iuno]

[ the persistent conversation gets him to finally turn and look at whoever interrupted his bickering with the Theia, and there's very little change of his expression to acknowledge it. narrowed eyes, a tension in his mouth that belies his tired irritation without the need for telepathy. ]

It's fine. [ and it is. he doesn't seem angry with Shiro specifically. just— in general. ] Nobody sees a lady talking to himself and thinks he's chatting up his cybernetics' useless virtual assistant that doesn't come with instructions.

[ his teeth are gritted near the end, and he says all of it like the eye is going to hear him and stop inconveniencing him or something. which it isn't, just as yelling at your phone won't make it work. he's just melodramatic and exhausted with everything; this would have been bad enough back home with Ramses in his ear, and instead he's galaxies away, trying to negotiate with an eye that he needs if he's going to be any use, at all, to anyone. besides that, it still fucking hurts, a deep persistent ache. he sighs. ]

Detective Juno Steel. [ nobody here is going to be his friend, but he can be professional, so he takes the hand for a brief, tense shake. ] Not that the title means much out here.

[shiro2hero]

Pretty sure no one has instruction manuals with that kind of thing. If they are, they're not sharing with anyone.

[It probably says something about the state of his own brain, of his own experiences, that the bits he seizes on are cybernetics and detective. Both of which are rarely heard terms here. Definitely not the same thing as he's going through -- no one ever said his arm had anything like that.]

Detective? [He shakes his head, letting the other's hand go after the handshake. Nothing to prove here, no reason to try and crush his grip or anything like that.] There's a first. But it might end up being more useful than you think.

[He offers it helpfully, hopefully. Maybe it'll do some good. Put some ease on this other mind.]

Did they tell you very much before they dropped you here?

[iuno]

[ the effort to soothe him does as much good as tossing a torch down a mine shaft, gone from sight before it even hits the bottom. Juno wasn't useful in Hyperion, playing at heroics and pretending he was making a difference; he doubts he'll be useful here, a few days fresh from surgery and so far out of his depth he may as well be lost at sea. but he doesn't begrudge the attempt, just shoving his hands in his pockets and shifting his weight restlessly. ]

We got what I'm assuming are the basics. Hivemind, telepathic parasite, magic powers. The mission. [ he takes it all in with the stride of someone who can't stop moving for fear of never starting again. if he thinks too much about all of this, he'll... he doesn't know. but it won't be pretty. ] Seems like the rest of it is a "you swim or you sink" kind of situation.

[shiro2hero]

It usually is.

[He'll try again though. More apology than anything. It'd be great if new arrivals got more than just that. If they had a chance to really understand what the situation was before they were tossed into it.]

[But apparently, time was too much of the essence.]

But if there's anything you need -- a lot of us are interested in helping new arrivals out where we can. However we can.

Me, included.

[iuno]

Yeah, I'll keep it in mind.

[ Shiro doesn't need his shields lowered to know that Juno doesn't mean that in the slightest, whether it's a lone wolf mentality or just a lack of faith in something there — community, solidarity, help. he's not buying into it, which has nothing to do with the person offering it. it's bad enough when he's actually working in tandem with someone; hand-holding isn't on the table no matter how much he has to struggle through. ]

I've got a good track record for swimming, though. Figuratively. I've never actually seen a body of water bigger than a pool. [ he pauses. seems to reconsider: ] And maybe not so much swimming as... not completely drowning. Let's call it controlled sinking.

[shiro2hero]

I mean it. It can be overwhelming here, when you first wake up.

[He's got to make the offer clear. It's just how he is. Even if it's not taken, it has to be there. Obvious and open. Turning away won't change that. It'll still be ready, waiting. Just in case.]

[He does manage a weak flash of a smile, though, at all the water and swimming metaphor.]

Good thing you're around a few people who know how to work a lifeboat.

[To... continue beating said metaphor to death.]