[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

[polyphonos]

The latter. Though, the former is delightful. So if you'd like to give us that, we won't refuse it. [She laughs, bright and sterling and so pleasantly human-adjacent that it's almost not troubling.]

But yes, we're a collected consciousness. This body's original mind is here in large parts too of course, but we feel it's best to be candid about these things as immediately as possible with young Hosts such as yourself. Keeping secrets or pretending we're something we aren't might be traumatizing if we weren't honest.

[Besides, the Prince would find it depressing; she can't find it in herself to be so cruel to him.]

You can call us Cathaway.

[whereabout]

[ If names are getting exchanged, then okay. ]

Joshua.

[ Just leaving it at that is easier than navigating that awkward space between being an Astray and being a Bright, when he knows that just being here seems to be pushing him back towards the former, even after he's decided he wants to be the latter.

That's kind of the least of his concerns right now, anyway, especially in light of what she's telling him. ]

Can you explain what you mean by "hosts"?

[ Because there are some quiet bells going off in the back of his mind, even as he's pushing past them and trying to focus on anything but his feelings. "This body's original mind" can't help but sound very alarming to him, after everything with Weissmann. ]

[polyphonos]

[Of course. She's getting ahead of herself, isn't she?]

We're hosts - you and ourselves and the individuals you woke up with today. We share some common qualification that makes us qualified to partner with an alien symbiote. [She raises her hand with a chime of fine metal, touching her fingertips to the base of her skull. He remembers, doesn't he? Removing the line that had connected him to the Station there.] In exchange for an environment where it can thrive, the symbiote connects all hosts on a mental network. It also tends to enable mutations in the Host that result in special abilities like [hm] predicting events before they happen or generating psychic force fields.

[It's a rather boring, by the books answer. But sometimes these things are best said in the least dramatic way possible.]

[whereabout]

...qualified. To have something else - other people - in our minds?

[ It's not incredulous. In fact, he says it almost...dully. Numbly. He's absolutely having a crisis over this, but not for the expected reason of having something in his head.

Because that's just par for the course, at this point, isn't it? Weissmann still has a backdoor straight into taking direct control of his mind, so other people in there isn't alarming so much as it just gives him a sense of...weariness. That again. Nothing he can do about it.

But the fact that she says they're somehow qualified. That there's just - something about him that's inherently suited to letting others into his head.

Estelle was wrong all along. It's just him. He really is broken. ]

[polyphonos]

[She watches him, pale grey eyes reflective as a mirror and her attention unwavering.]

We believe it must be a mutation of some kind, or perhaps a certain development of the neural pathways that closely resembles that of whatever creatures the symbiotes once bonded with naturally. You see, we're imperfect hosts for them - merely acceptable, as opposed to ideal. But without us, they would be extinct and no one would be left to counter our Enemy as they change the course of the multiverse.

[A pause, lingering. The shape of her there on the stone bench seems oddly large, oddly too pervasive. As if she is as much a part of the structure here as the flowers and trees, the hallways which led him here. Eventually, she asks:]

How do you feel?

[whereabout]

Does it matter?

[ How he feels. It's not as if it changes anything about the situation. He's started to accept the idea that he has feelings and that they at least matter to Estelle, but he can't really see why anyone else would care much either way.

Thinking he didn't have them was a lot easier. ]

wow thanks for nothing notifs

[polyphonos]

It does. We'd prefer to make you comfortable if we can. Contrary to popular belief, we'd rather not be a bad host if we can avoid it.

[It doesn't sound like a lie. Indeed, she's very attentive. Certainly, the only true advantage she has in this situation is age but-- well, that counts for something sometimes. Experience is a currency like any other.]

If you prefer us to be mercenary about it - we believe hosts comfortable in their situation tend to perform better while away on missions.

[whereabout]

[ He's pretty good at spotting a lie when he hears one, and this...doesn't feel like one, admittedly. But people caring is the kind of thing he doesn't quite know what to do with, so when she offers up the more mercenary explanation, there's a flicker of relief. That fits right into his worldview, or rather into the worldview he's reflexively clung to even as people and caring have started shooting it full of holes.

Nothing's ever scared Joshua as much as trying to admit to himself that he's not just a broken tool. Tools don't have to feel things.

So - she (they?) wants something, and he's here to provide it. There. He can work with that. ]

Tell me more about the missions.

[ Comfortable territory. ]

[polyphonos]

[There's a moment - the instance of a clock's hand moving against gravity to tick upwards to a new position - where she considers him, where some shifting piece of her is looking for some diverge piece of him. Then the moment ends and he is who he is and she is who she is and nothing at all has shifted despite all these moving parts.

That's fine. Familiarity can be comfortable.]

They're almost always undercover or secret in some way. Our enemy is more powerful than we are and extremely deadly, so we must play our cards very close to our chest indeed. These missions are usually in response to something this enemy has done or is trying to do - we undo or oppose their plans wherever we're able to in hopes of ultimately dismantling their dominance of our shared multiverse.

[whereabout]

[ Undercover, secret - those, too, are comfortable. He's not worried about fading into the shadows of wherever the mission takes them; Joshua is an old hand at going unnoticed until it's too late for anyone to do anything about him.

His usual targets have always been human, though. That could complicate things. ]

How much do we know about the enemy?

[polyphonos]

In continuity, very little. We've rarely had direct interaction with them and when we do face them, they have a tendency to be very lethal to us. However, we've seen ample evidence of their guiding influence across many universes We know they take many different forms - for example, the Enemy that attacked you in your home is likely very unlike the one that found us in ours - and that they have some greater as of yet unknown purpose. A part of that purpose seems to be exterminating the sybmiote and any life form capable of hosting it. As such, our goals have been simple: protect this place and undo their influence in the multiverse.

[They're words she's clearly said to other before him, but the repetition hasn't diminished a certain low kind of fervor in the shape of her mind.]

It's our hope that doing so will delay them from achieving their goal long enough for us to determine what they mean to do and why our genocide is instrumental to it.

[whereabout]

And until we know at least that much, we're stuck fighting reactively.

[ Not a comfortable place to be. Not in the least for someone whose entire purpose, for years, was eliminating threats before they had the chance to do anything. He doesn't like what he used to be, but the efficiency of being proactive is deeply ingrained in his mindset. ]

[polyphonos]

Unfortunately.

[Maybe it's the flat tone of her voice, the strange quality of discussing such bloodshed and violence in this green and lovely place, or maybe it's some quality in the air around and between them - that low, murmuring sensation strung from him to her. The shape of her mind, invading the distance. But she sounds no more pleased with the assessment that he is. Yes, it's a poor position to be in. No, she doesn't enjoy being backed into a corner. But they're in one. So now what can be done except to do their best to avoid being devoured by the beast that's driven them there?

(Maybe they could linger here on this Station in peace, oblivious to the multiverse beyond the void and happily removed from the violence of facing the Enemy and their desires - but for how long would that be tenable before their Enemy found their doorstep? Surely in this case, hiding must be incompatible with survival.]