[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

[stilettoes]

[ peter gives him all the time he needs, the sensation of what exactly this connection is slowly winding and cementing itself into place, establishing where they lie on the surface. brood. it's still a strange concept to him, even after all the time he's spent in elliot's company. what are their connections? why were they born into this strange little pod of people, this group that's closer than most. it feels far less easier to pull from than the rest of the nest, a thicker string wound tighter, more stubbornly around his fingers. jerking. ]

As I said, quite all right.

[ he slides fingers through the basket carefully, turning over a few of the smaller shells, bits of sea glass, thumbing through pieces that are both dull and brilliant, but it's clear they're so finely mixed it's A Task. ]

Sorting them! [ cheerily - hadrian is awfully bright, a lightbulb swinging in a room and bathing it in something warm. he's the parts of peter he'd left behind not long ago, pleasant, eager. ] It thought it'd be a fairly simple task, some of these are dreadfully dull and no good, but I've been at it nearly an hour and hardly a dent.

[ there's no visible smile, but if you could brush the impression forward of one, peaceable, no teeth, then this would be the sensation. brief, not too intrusive. ] I'm Hadrian.

[whereabout]

[ It's a strange concept to have this many feelings about someone he shouldn't actually know yet, but Joshua deals with it in the same way he deals with most feelings: by desperately trying to ignore them and focusing on anything else that happens to wander into his line of sight.

Ergo: the shells. He scoops out a small handful, tilting his hand and watching them shift. ]

...Joshua.

[ Hadrian certainly comes across as bright, but that in itself isn't enough to convince Joshua. He's seen exactly how a pleasant and cheerful demeanor can mean absolutely nothing, in the end. (Though the lack of feeling anything immediately suspicious helps. If he can trust all these things he's now feeling. Which to him, is still questionable.)

The brush of his own thoughts back isn't hostile, though. Cool. Wary. Detached, or trying to be, but in the way that's clearly trying a little too hard about it to be genuine. ]

Just the bright ones, then?

[stilettoes]

Exactly. This would be shorter work, but I'm afraid this - [ a vague gesture to his face ] - does absolutely nothing for one's sight.

[ josha feels far off, and peter tilts his head lingering in the touch of it, a fleeting thing, and peter glides beside it, barely touching, only perpendicular as he takes a broken off, dull piece of sea glass, thumbing over it to see if perhaps a little polish will give it back its shine. looks being deceiving and all that. ]

Looking busy does wonders for perhaps catching useful snatches of conversation around here. [ he palms the piece and gives it a very sharp toss back out towards the red water, watching it skip once out towards the deeper water before it sinks down. ]

[whereabout]

[ Well, okay. He can do that. It's not like he's actually accomplishing anything by brooding.

So he starts sifting through, flicking aside the rejects and keeping the ones that look promising. ]

Anything useful enough to figure this out?

[ From what Pidge told him, they're still flying blind on which faction the enemy is working through, and until they get that one nailed down, he can't see them making any decisive progress. ]