station72 | [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 )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[It reminds Shepard, those dim-lit scraps, of nothing so much as another laboratory-facility, overgrown, hidden in rain and jungle-vines, and a cold steel chair. This....This is a bad place. She takes a step forward, and drops a hand onto Rogue's shoulder, a weight meant to be comforting, to ground her in the here and now.]

Don't worry about it.

[Shepard's shields are like water-- they fill and fall, crash and flow. Her mind is a suboceanic volcano, but the waves are deep and the surface-thoughts flit through them like flashing fish in many colors. Harmless things. Helpless things. Nothing like the leviathans in the deep. Deeper now than before, pulled up around her to guard.

Not to protect herself from Rogue. To protect Rogue from Shepard's own self.]

Like I said. I get it.

[And really, she does.]

[ That hand on her shoulder means more than Rogue could ever possibly explain. It's ridiculous, how strongly she grasps hold of that sensation, savoring every ounce of weight like it was the most precious thing in the world. Any world.

There's sunlight in her mind again, something she hasn't seen in real life for years, but that fills the clearing of her mind, casting bright rays onto the old southern home that makes up her own shielding. That simple touch anchors her back into the comfort of that self-created space and she settles onto the porch as her emotions settle too. ]

( Thank you. ) [ It slips out again, heartfelt and whispered, but then she moves on, shrugging off the last of the darkness and letting a bit of a teasing naturally slip into her tone. ]

Well then, old timer. D'you have any advice for me? You know, about all of this.

( Since when is 32 "old"? )

[You brat. But Shepard gives the shoulder a pat and lets her hand drop away. That was... Weird? Yeah, she's gonna go with "wierd."]

( Try not to piss too many people off. Make friends, get a handle on whatever weird powers the symbiote threw at you, stuff like that? )

"Mainly just... keep your head down, most of the time."

[ The laugh that bubbles out of her is an unexpected one, and as such refuses to be contained. If asked, she wouldn't be able to explain it, though reason says it's likely a result of stress; she's sure had enough of that in her life. ]

Well, the weird powers will be easy, but the rest? I might be doomed.

[ Not that she'd ever been known for pissing people off, but she does have a habit of speaking her mind that isn't always welcomed. And keeping her head down hasn't been her style in a long time. ]

And I guess I'm the old timer in this situation - I'm 34. It sure feels ancient sometimes.

Yeah well I spent two years dead so...

[Tomato potato, you know?]

I hate this job. [She says it without malice; it's true, though. This mission? This is anything but her forte. Keep your head down is the name of the game, on this fucking planet, and Shepard really sucks at it.] So. Y'know. Try not to die, and you'll probably be fine. Already lost one of us, on this. A couple more lyin' down on the job, if you notice.

[the comatose hosts, she means. They sleep, lined up like corpses until the shuttle arrives bearing fresh meat-- like Rogue. Those same shuttles cart off the unconscious bodies when they leave. Grim business.]

[ Two years dead, huh? There has to be a story behind that, but it's one Rogue's only mildly curious about. She's known people who were 'dead' for a few years before coming back; it's not the weirdest thing she's dealt with by far.

Her mood sobers at the mention of someone's death on this mission, because she knows all too well what that feels like. Losing someone is hard, but losing someone you're supposed to be working with, protecting while having each others backs, it-- It's not something that's easily overcome. And then to lose others to comas for who knows how long, she can't imagine what the past few weeks have been like for the team here. ]

I saw. That's... I'm sorry you've all had to go through that.

[Shepard regards Rogue evenly for a few seconds, then turns away on a sigh.]

Soldiers die in times of war. That's just how it is.

[Shepard's never fooled herself about the odds. That she refuses to accept her likely place among them doesn't make them irrelevant, after all.]

You got any other questions for me?

[ Shepard's words settle into Rogue like a heavy weight in her chest, a familiar serpent coiled around her heart. Everyone dies in times of war, not just soldiers. The innocent, the guilty, war doesn't discriminate in who it hurts, not when it's on this kind of scale. The entire universe will suffer if they fail, the way the entire world did when they failed to stop the war on Earth. ]

No, I think I'm good for right now, thank you.

[ A quiet answer, no sign of her usual smile. This is the life she chose, there's no point in being sad about any part of it. ]

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

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