[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

[erbier]

[ 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. ]

[somnifacient]

[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.

[erbier]

[ 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. ]

[somnifacient]

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.

[erbier]

[ She listens to him with an intent care, but when he trails away, uncertain of his words, she's unsatisfied. Some man corrupted with power? Perhaps revenge, perhaps insanity, perhaps pain? Her influence drifting closer to Noctis is as fleeting as a scent of smoke, teasing forward the thoughts of Ardyn, his rueful smile and bitter laughter. ]

Maybe?

[ She prompts softly, pulling just a little bit harder on the thoughts -- but not too hard, there was a delicacy to this trick, without alerting the victim. Just soft enough, just swift enough, just nonchalant enough. But no more than needed. Who was this mad man, what revenge drove him.

Was Noctis oh so certain he felt for that hurt? ]

[somnifacient]

[It's too subtle for him to be conscious of it, the feel of something gently plucking his thoughts forward to be seen clearly in his mind. Already he committed them memory, sharp details so easily replayed in his head; but now, he can practically see it as if it were happening again. Ardyn's cruel smile, his voice lined with anger and patronization and something so tired and ready to let the world fall to ruin because of it.]

I was there for his death. He wanted it, he told me-

[You think ten years is a long time? I've lived in the dark for ages!

Noctis shook his head, trying to realign his thoughts. He looked at her this time, instead of some far-off point in the distance.]

He lived for longer than two thousand years. And no matter what he thought he was at that point, he was still human, and... no one should ever have to live for that long. All that kept him going was his hate; for the gods, for his family, for everything that was taken away from him.

[Maybe it was fitting that Noctis had to die to fix all of it. A mistake caused by his family, and mended by someone of the same name.]

[erbier]

[ She inclines her head thoughtfully as he speaks, looking out at nothing as his words wash over her. As his pictures fill her thoughts. She lets them, like a sponge absorbing water, without releasing a single sign of her own thoughts in kind. ]

Who knows how long we might live, as hosts. What do you think will happen to us?

[somnifacient]

I can't even hope to guess at that.

[It's easy to pluck these pictures from Noctis. He gives them nigh freely, once they're brought forth to the surface. Sight and feeling and smell and touch. All of it, since Eos burns so brightly in his mind.]

I don't know if I want to live for... centuries. I don't think I'll be myself any more. It'd be wrong.

[erbier]

I'd like to live for centuries.

[ Like Dreus had, fed on power and madness. Like Ardyn had, thriving on hate. What is wrong with her, that such a terrible fate seems desirous? ]

To see everything I never thought I would see.

[ Go everywhere. Be everyone. No wonder she is so suited to all of this. ]