[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

[lifewithoutrest]

[ There's a smile, warm and amused. ]

Ah, well, I believe I have something of an advantage. [ Just a slight pause. ] I'm afraid I've done all this once before.

[ She hadn't been terribly panicked by it then either, more curious than anything else, but she had certainly been confused. Even she can't deny it took some getting used to, being constantly connected to so many other minds. ]

[theycalledmeacurse]

How does that work? [ It's an automatic question, fueled by curiosity and a bit of concern. This is her life now, so she would much rather know the rules of the game than just stumble around in the dark. ] Did you leave? Or were you here, but not?

[ There's an intensity to the questions that surprises Rogue herself, and after a second she reins in her suddenly heightened emotions and sheepishly apologizes to Helen. ]

I'm sorry, sugar, I don't mean to pester you like this. It's been a while since I've gotten to have actual conversations with people, I think I might be a little rusty.

[ All she's had in years have been the chats with the psyches in her mind. There are a couple hundred of them in there though, which might explain why the hive mind has yet to really overwhelm her: she's used to having other minds connected to her own. ]

[lifewithoutrest]

[ 'Sugar' It's been a while since anyone called her that. ]

It's alright. [ And she'll do her best to answer her questions. If their positions were reversed, she'd have a few too. ] I was...asleep, a sort of coma, I think. Then I woke up here, much like the first time, only to a quieter station and a different group of hosts.

[ That had been the most unsettling part of the experience, if she were honest. She somehow found she missed the others' presence. ]

[theycalledmeacurse]

[ A different group. A coma. All pieces of a puzzle they don't quiet know the picture for yet. It's all information that is stored away for later, for when she reads up on the mission they'll be joining. For now-- ]

I heard that we'll be heading down to the planet tomorrow and joining others. Maybe you'll know some of them.

[lifewithoutrest]

Most of them, I'd wager. [ She couldn't have been gone that long, could she? ]

Some I'm quite looking forward to seeing again. There are others here you feel closer to?

[theycalledmeacurse]

There are a few, yeah. It feels like-- Like we're kin, and we never knew it before.

[ It's comforting, having connections to people already without having to absorb them. And she knows instinctively that it's the same for them, whether they embrace the feeling or not. ]

[lifewithoutrest]

Very much like that. You want to be near them.

[ Being cut off from them is an...unpleasant feeling. One that never goes away. And most of her brood are still in pods somewhere, just as she'd been all this time. ]

[theycalledmeacurse]

It's like that for everyone, then? We've all got a few people we're more closely connected to?

[ The idea of it buzzes in her mind, questioning whether it's an organic construction or if it was designed that way to bring them together as a team. They had to work together, and not everyone is likely to have training in supporting teammates -- being emotionally connected is a heavy motivator in that sort of thing. ]

[lifewithoutrest]

It seems so, yes. Those of us hatched most closely together.

[ Or so she assumes. ]

[theycalledmeacurse]

That makes sense, connecting us more closely together. It probably helps with the integration into the team.

[ Or at least it should. She's already met one person who's not really taken too well to the idea. ]