station72 | [hatch log] i had a dream which was not all a dream

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

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 )

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[An empty pleasantry or not, there's something oddly reassuring to know that someone else who's once fallen asleep has returned to the Nest. It sparks hope in him, in that Gladio might one day wake up from his own dreamless slumber.]

You're awake.

[A pointless statement. Obvious, but he tinges it with something that sounds like might be a smile behind his hood.

Still, that receding anxiety is something he doesn't miss.]

Good to have you back. Um, is... everything all right?

[ She considers him closely, wondering how much she truly feels like saying. That there are certain images that can make her break into terrified pieces? She remembers accidentally walking into a room where a host had transformed into a horrifying flesh monster, and just about frying herself with the way her symbiote reacted to her stress.

Her nightmarish imagination, based on nightmarish experiences, was her greatest strength, and it was also the fault line fracture running through her psyche. Always there, unstable, unless she kept a tight hold on things...

No, that's too much detail for an innocent young prince. ]

There were no oceans in my world. Let alone... such an unseemly color. It disturbed me, for a moment.

[Her explanation, parsed down into something simpler for Noctis' sake, seems reasonable enough. If something else stirs underneath this answer, he either chooses not to dive for it, or is blind to it altogether for now.

Still, the sight of the water before them has a different meaning for Noctis. This vast, red sea. He can only think of fishing, and what might lie beneath the surface, things to be caught and mysteries that he can bring to light, caught on his hook. He's watched, with no dearth of wistfulness, the fishing boats that sway in the distance. The way they toss their nets into the water, and when they pull them back up, weighted with their catches, Noctis wishes he could be closer to see.]

No oceans at all? [A world without the sea. That's too bad, he thinks.] But I get it. The color is really strange, here, but it just makes me curious about what lives in the water.

[ Yes, that is it exactly: the things lying under the surface. Noctis imagines something familiar to himself, and even if they might be ancient or monstrous, he thinks he can conquer them... ]

Things that thrive in the darkness.

[ There was nothing more dangerous than the darkness when you came from a world where the shadows ate flesh... The dwindling caravans of humanity's last refuges might've found some safety from Dreus, beneath the earth where the water still lived, in the dark, if not for that. If not for the murmurings of the ancient, evil, magics that thrived below the surface.

Ilde inhales, closing her eyes, feeling that feverish sensation she gets when her symbiote reacts to her ugly, fearful, thoughts. She breathes deep, and stops it from spreading its noxious cloud of influence out onto Noctis. She can control the thing, most of the time. ]

We only told warning tales, about the water. None of them were true, of course.

[ Little she had learned in her world was true. It was a warped, superstitious and miserable place, and she herself had spent a particularly close amount of time with a madman who filled her head with his madness. ]

[Noctis is more than familiar with things that lurk in shadow, entities that only make their home in blanket of the night. Perhaps of a different sort than what Ilde is used to, but it's a parallel all the same.

Still, fate had dictated that he was not to turn away from the dark, but to delve deep into what it presented him, shining his light to send it all scattering. Maybe that's why he's met with curiosity instead of trepidation, when he peers out over this red sea.]

What sort of things? Monsters?

[Daemons? Truth or otherwise, he feels compelled to know.]

[ Monsters seems to be such a small, incomplete, word. The lines between man and monster have long since been blurred to her, and she has begun to see herself more and more aligned to the latter. If she was an angel, as Dreus had told her she was, she was a terrible one -- befitting to the wretched world she'd risen from. ]

Perhaps the water is not as sinister as I think. I have learned to swim aboard the Station -- [ The memory of stars glimmering on the surface of a darkened pool is not her own. A gift. ] -- but when I look out on such a great body of it... I do think there can be only monsters. Hiding out of sight, hiding from the light.

[ But this is not her burned world. ]

Perhaps we should ask the locals for their legends.

[The waves churn as they speak, pulled between both Ilde and Noctis' impression of the sea. Two different outlooks, formed and defined by both. The sea could always be both -- calming and terrible all the same.]

I think there's a word for that. Bath...phobia? Bathiphobia? [Bathophobia.] Something like that.

[Noctis isn't one to continue to talk about things that make her nervous, even if it means walking away and speaking to the locals about what their legends might be. At least they could detach themselves from the lapping waves of the sea.]

But we could do that. Or find something else you'd rather do.

[ The idea that there are specific words for specific fears amuses Ilde. Her entire life has been driven by terror, to break it down into any granularity seems paltry to her. ]

I enjoyed the weaving lessons.

[ A small smile. ]

It reminds me of the Nest.

Weaving lessons, huh...

[He honestly never even thought of taking weaving lessons. He assumed he'd be useless at it, and whatever monstrosity he created would be nothing short of an embarrassment.]

Why? Because we're all connected?

I make smaller webs, with little things I find on the Station.

[ Old spaceship parts no one is using, forgotten trinkets, strips of discarded fabric. Making something out of nothing, a physical impression of all the lost hosts she won't ever meet. ]

Each host, in each brood, is unique... [ Her fingers make a skittery little walking gesture, like a spider traversing a slender strand. ] And each connection, brood to brood, is unique...

[ Like snowflakes. She thinks it is beautiful, powerful. The tone of her voice is fond. ]

Edited 2017-12-12 21:21 (UTC)

[He nods in a quiet measure of understanding. He wonders what sort of "little things" she refers to, and a request is made:]

When we get back, can I see them?

[And the fondness, so very prominent, cannot be missed. Noctis finds he cannot argue against the uniqueness of each connection within each brood; strands upon strands, no two that are alike.]

And you like being part of all of this, don't you?

Of course.

[ She has no particular reason to hide her weavings, she left them as gifts in the nesting deck, hung them up in the gardens, though never anywhere too conspicuous. She'll point them out, gladly. Easy as she feels about agreeing with Noctis, there is a more important question to be asked, which answers his own, in a way: ]

Does it bother you, that I am happy with it?

[ It bothers others. They look at her with fear and with discomfort. They talk down to her, about giving herself up. They're ignorant. She dislikes the ignorant with a vicious quality. It made one weak. ]

Well... no, I wouldn't say that.

[It doesn't bother him that she's happy with it. Noctis won't pretend he has any agency over who feels what regarding the Nest. But he knows how he feels about it; how he's unsure about tangling himself so closely with others, a weave of emotion when he's so used to closing himself off. And despite that... he's already begun the process. Practically already connected permanently, with his broodmate, with his best friend from Eos.]

It's just... I'm not sure how I should feel about it. A part of myself, belonging to others. Most of them still complete strangers to me.

[ She smiles faintly. It always amuses her, how others can see their time in the Nest so differently. ]

I have never belonged to myself. The Nest has given me more freedom and choice than I have ever known.

[ A mind-warped zealot, poisoned with magic and traumatized by the wild violence Dreus inflicted to everything around him -- except for her. She had been safe from him, so long as she very carefully controlled her behavior. Her own prison, even if she had been free to move around the palace. ]

[The question forms in his mind almost immediately, taking root, and he doesn't hesitate to ask it.]

What do you mean, you never belonged to yourself?

[To him, that sounds awfully sad, and yet she's smiling.]

Hm.

[ A soft hum of a noise. Contemplative. She always wonders how much of this story to tell. She knows that her life is entirely divergent from any other host. The story she tells is rarely one that can empathized with in full -- although she finds pieces and parts of herself in others. In a yellow flower. In the shuffling steps through the desert. ]

My world was under the thrall of a man we called Godking.

[ She knows by now that he was a man. ]

He burned our world, so that nothing lived nor grew on the surface. What remained of our cities smoldered, and our skies rained with ash. The shadows cast by his flames roamed the wastelands, killing and eating those who remained. When I was young, he controlled my life in that way.

[ She recounts this in a steady, lyrical way. A story. It belongs to her, but it also a myth that she has recounted plenty enough times: to herself and others. How else would she make sense of where she has been, if she could not tell this story... ]

One day, he found my caravan in the wastes. We could live in his palace as worshipers, or die. So I went. Even in the palace, he went into fits of madness and rage, he killed and tortured his worshipers. So I behaved carefully, quietly, and learned to weather his moods. He controlled my life in that way.

[ This was not always something she knew. But she has had time and distance from him, to realize. ]

He came to like me. He made me his gardener, he declared me a holy virgin, the angel that defied humanity's sinfulness. So I believed that, I believed much of his ravings, and behaved as he dictated for me. He controlled my life, in that way.

[ She looks at Noctis quietly, as she concludes her explanation, waiting to see how he responds. ]

[It's a lot to take in, but Noctis is patient, listening. Curious and ever wanting to hear about other worlds, even if they paint a surreal, less than pleasant picture.

A burned world. The remainders of cities ashen and smoldering. A single man who would call himself a "Godking", to inject his influence over all. There are similarities enough to remind Noctis of an Eos gone dark, of a man who sat upon the throne of the Citadel as their star crumbled beneath his feet.

She might feel the chill that runs down his spine.]

And now you're free of that control.

[And it was so easy to see why even the Nest would be preferable in comparison.]

Did you ever come to understand... why he did the things he did?

Oh...

[ A sigh, almost pleasant, like remembering something nostalgic. ]

In a way. He told us all his reasons, but he reached those reasons through madness. He had too much power inside of him, he could not control it. When it broke his mind, he convinced himself the destruction he wrought was what was needed.

[ A faint, pained smile. There had been a hurt man, beneath the whirlwind of fire. Ilde had seen him, once in a while. She had done what she could to comfort him in his brief moments of lucidity. ]

[He's quiet for a moment, turning through the files of his own memories. What she says, in some ways, continues to ring familiar for Noctis.]

What kind of power did he have, that made him crazy? How did he end up that way?

[Questions indicative of Noctis perhaps wanting to understand, simply because he sees a parallel somewhere.]

Fire.

[ Or, perhaps, was the word chaos? It echoes in the psychic landscape between them, unspoken. She and Sevilia have spoken of the idea, once or twice, the similarities between the thing that possessed the Godking and the scourge that Sevilia had fought.]

The tale goes, that in the age of his birth he was heralded as a gift to magic. So innately talented. He was raised like a prince, with all the best tutors and privileges. But he outgrew them, and he killed them. As he burned more and more, there was no one to challenge him.

[ A slow, thoughtful pause, has she answered his question? ]

He swelters inside. His own flames consume him.

Edited 2017-12-28 17:32 (UTC)

His own flames, or his own arrogance? ["So innately talented," she had said. It sounds like both could be applied, or some terrible entwining of the two that lead to his madness.]

It kind of sounds like you feel sorry for him.

[And yet... that edge of criticism that would come coupled with such words seems to be softened, or missing altogether.]

[ She was meant to feel sorry for him. She had been his outlet for what lingered of his humanity and remorse. He would kneel before her and confess, because she was an angel. A holy girl in which he could instill the last of his virtues, which only served to give so much more light to the crimes he had done. ]

He suffered.

[ And they had all suffered with him. It had been, beneath all his violence, his dearest desire to end that suffering. ]

[He's quiet for a moment. He thinks he can understand -- he would like to think that he could. That his empathy was not so misplaced that he shouldn't be feeling at it all; that he was a fool for feeling sorry for someone who didn't deserve it. His own situation, run parallel in hers.]

...I get it.

[ The pause in her patter gives away her doubts. Does he? Does he understand, at all? Or was he merely saying that, only to offer some short-sighted judgment on her later. ]

I should hope not.

[ It was an understanding built out of suffering. She doesn't necessarily wish that on anyone else. At least not always; she has her moments, fiery and cruel where maybe she does. ]

But I do.

[He's fairly certain he's not being too assumptive in saying so. He will, of course, provide explanation, though there is still hesitance in his delivery. Noctis' emotions regarding this subject are caught between pity and frustration; and it's far more difficult to sort one from the other when the whole mess hadn't even been properly resolved.]

There's a man like that where I come from. Corrupted with his own brand of power, and he decided to make the whole world suffer for the sake of revenge. His sanity at that point was questionable at best. That, or he just-

[He doesn't know how to explain it. He's terrible with words anyway, and he can't really hope to sum up Ardyn in so many neat little sentences.]

I don't know. Hurt too much, maybe.

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

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