station72 | [mission: hyrypia] big, but not coarse

[mission: hyrypia] big, but not coarse - merely on another scale

CHARACTERS: Everyone
WHERE: The Red Coast
WHEN: DAY :036 - DAY :037
SUMMARY: A multiverse away, new hatches wake on the Station. On Hyrypia, the Garstall hunt begins in earnest - and wraps up with terrible consequences.
WARNINGS: Animal hunting and slaughter, death, Bad Times at Ridgemont High. Need something added? PM the mod account!

STATION 72
DAY :036

THE HATCH - NEW HOSTS
YOU WAKE UP and the universe and you in it are altered. --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 from a very deep sleep or coming up from the darkness of some wine colored sea. Nothing is different and yet everything is.

You find yourself lying in a small, hexagonal chamber with a gentle light emanating from its walls. If you were injured during your escape, you're now 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 until you disconnect the IV running from the base of your neck to the chamber wall.

Then 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.

Eventually you find your way out of the pod, having found whatever belongings you brought with you and a change of crisp white clothes in a cubby near your feet. Once you descend to the Nesting Deck, 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.
EXPLORE the strange environment you've found yourself in. The Station seems to be both infinitely vast and strangely small. It's possible to wander along halls and through chambers for hours, only to turn a corner and find yourself in a place you've already been because your mind happened to think of it.

PREPARE for what's to come. Not long after your arrival, a pair of aliens arrive in a dark ship bearings mission kits for everyone. Get changed into your disguises, brush up on your mission briefing, and ask what questions you have while you can. It isn't long before you're loaded onto the ship and leave the Station behind.

HYRYPIA - THE RED COAST
DAY :036

A CALLING
A FAMILIAR FEELING to those that know it is sign enough that the elder hosts must depart to fetch whoever it is remains on the station. But this time, it's not just two of them that strike out under the cover of night. Instead, all four of them make their way from Whalsome House.

( We will not be gone long. ) Collector’s voice is a cheerful lilt in their minds as she gathers a book in hand. ( Try to have only pleasant stories for me, when we return. )

And with that Rhan, The Collector, Siva'co and Lyr are gone. They take with them the comatose Hosts and leave the rest to their own devices.

HYRYPIA - THE RED COAST
DAY :037

THE HUNT
DAWN BREAKS over a coastline already bustling with activity. The day has finally come to take those long boats out beyond the shallows and hunt the massive serpent-like Garstall in earnest. A familiar horn is blown and anyone who wishes to participate files down onto the beach and is divided into groups, a dozen or two people for each boat. There's a celebratory air to the whole affair, a true pleasure in taking the boats out into the sea. For all that the Barithian Hunt was anxious and quiet and tense, this is is a day of laughter and shouting and singing rowing songs as the boats slash their way through the open water toward the massive creatures roiling through the deeper water off the coast.
SHORT HANDED might not be the first thought that comes to mind on the bustling ships, but at some point during the hunt it becomes clear that Keya isn't present despite the fact that she's been attending every training session. Should anyone ask, one of the Descendants confesses that Keya skipped the hunt because Shee Naraxa secured a meeting between her and the heads of House Tyrisson concerning "her peace talk idea." The news seems to surprise one of the other Descendants; while it’s difficult to read her expression, it’s clear this is not what she expected to hear. She remains tense for the remainder of the voyage.

FINDING THE GARSTALL is simple enough for the experienced sailors of the Red Coast. They look for signs where the water’s color is more pronounced and where the waves seem to stir in unusual directions. They direct those who have less to do with controlling the fickle vessels to keeping a weather eye out for these signs, and to let out a cry when they spot them. Once a Garstall is spotted, all the nearby boats must rally together to take it.

ONCE SPOTTED what had been a pleasant but almost routine sail becomes something far different. Orders and directions are shouted down the lengths of the vessels. Hunters are armed and those in charge of ballast set to their stations.

The boats maneuver incredibly well for their size, their narrowness slashing through the sea to close on the Garstall that has risen near the surface. The beast is huge - larger than any single boat. It's like a great tree come to life, a twisting trunk of a body in the waves. The ships cut in separate directions, and when the signal horn sounds then the hunt truly begins. Hunters begin to hurl harpoons into the waves, aiming for the Garstall's sinuous body.

When the harpoons find their target, the whole boat shudders and tips. There's shouting and some laughter, the eager deck hands compensating for the drag of the beast by sliding weight across the deck to the opposite side of the boat. On one of the boats, a line snaps and sends the ship springing back the opposite direction - several of the sailors thrown into the water even as the hunters lose their footing. On another boat they fail to slide the ballast quickly enough and the Garstall wrenches them forward as it attempts to dive, leaving the other two boats attached to the beast attempting to compensate. On still another boat, they subdue a smaller beast much more easily. Sailors line the boat's side as one of the crewmen slides down the harpoon line, knife in hand to finish the job.

It’s a chaotic experience - but a successful one.

RAISE A BLADE, RAISE A GLASS
IN THE AFTERMATH of the successful hunt, the Garstall's massive carcasses are dredged up into the shallows. It's hot work to beach the massive animal. Once it's in the foaming purple surf, the most delicate parts of it must be stripped from the carcass before they can rot. The harvesting of the fat under the Garstall's heavy plates can wait, but the exposed flesh must be stripped promptly to avoid rot. Luckily, this work is done under the guise of celebration and the result is half slaughter and half bonfire beach party as night falls over the Red Coast.
BUTCHERY might not be the right work for everyone, but the locals leading the task are good natured and encouraging.

FEASTING on the sweet meat of the Garstall is a given. Huge slabs of meat are roasted over equally massive fires as the work is completed. Drinks are passed around. Music is played. Fashionably late, the heads of Tyrisson House come down for their manor (for a split second in the company of Shee Naraxa before she peels away to join the rest of the Descendants) to give another cheerful speech. The work is hard but rewarding, and for a moment the tenor of this place is so very good.

A DREADFUL DISCOVERY
BUT A MONSTER IS HUNTING and just after the speech, a horrifying sense of dread grips the Hosts. It's sickening - a vomiting, visceral wrongness that reaches out of the universe and finds the symbiote and the Host mind and sinks its hooks there exactly as it did that night on the road from Naerstone. Should anyone follow that dreadful sensation, they'll find themselves in the twisted orchard near Tyrisson House, mist clinging low to the ground in the chilling evening, lit only by a pale moon. What waits for them there is a pitch black circle scorched into the loamy earth - so exact and so precisely like the one discovered so many days earlier. And near this perfect circle: the broken body of Keya, her throat split open and blood still wet on the ground.

NEW FRIENDS (OF ALL SHAPES AND SIZES)
NEWS OF THE MURDER SPREADS and all the envoys are encouraged to return to their quarters for their safety while those in the employ of Tyrisson house secure the area-- encouragement which turns to insistence until all the members of the Envoys have returned their respective housing. Lights are lit in every courtyard and at every corner. Tension runs high. During this time, as the Hosts wait in their own row of Whalsome House's low stone buildings, company arrives:
A VISITOR arrives with a special request. An older Descendant wrapped in a heavy cloak with a deep hood comes knocking. When she reveals her face, Lakshmi might recognize her as Keya's aunt. "My name is Casiria," she says. "I believe you knew my niece."

It’s clear from her demeanor that she has far more to say before she goes.

FAMILIAR FRIENDS in the shape of newly hatched hosts and your senior chaperones arrive not long after Casiria's departure. They find their way to Whalsome House in a hush, having apparently faced some difficulty in dodging the added security. Better catch everyone up quickly.

((OOC Notes: This log serves as a general catch-all for events from DAY :036 through DAY :037. Please feel free to create your logs outside of this one, though we strongly recommend not forward-dating to the following morning. Please be aware that in the context of this log, new Hosts won't be present on Hyrypia until after Casiria has left. 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

aftermath of the hunt

[Without the trauma of the previous hunt hanging over her head, Lexa finds herself able to enjoy this particular one. Her ease with the actions and the training prior to this moment would have been readily apparent to the other Hosts. Finding herself in this position helps because, if nothing else, she can throw herself into it. Aloy is gone. There's a great deal of things that Lexa herself has had to deal with. And she's only left with wariness and concerns over the rest of the mission, when she would rather bring it to an abrupt close.

(The precursor to this mission, all those days ago, has left her certain that they can skip to that step. Can't they? Why don't they?)

The only part of this that's unfamiliar for her is the boats, but she manages well enough. By time it's all over, she's found off to the side of the moving roves of hunters. Her head cants toward the nearest host.]

( If we can avoid further casualties, we may be able to enjoy the rest of this. )

[Unspoken is this: they may have no choice but to enjoy it. That lingers deep down, along with her paranoia over Rhan's decisions. Or future decisions.]

post-discovery, but before the aunt arrives

[Never one to skip the opportunity to take the floor for herself, Lexa takes the opportunity when she can. It's not out of condescension or out of a desire to have eyes on her: they need to broach the topic of the elephant in the room. The Enemy has just taken out one of their allies, and it shouldn't go unnoticed.

And they do recognize the Enemy for who they are, don't they? There's no other person or people it could be. The sentiment can only be a part of having the symbiote within them.

So, she speaks:]

I believe it may be time to consider that the Enemy knows that we are here, and knows that we have no capacity for discerning where they stand. We need to discuss how we intend to proceed. Among us. Especially since I've heard that some of the newcomers among our numbers believe that they can resolve the situation themselves.

[Lexa doesn't name names. She knows better than to do that again, but she wants them to be on guard when someone might further expose them.

Her suspicions may be wrong, but she hopes to speak with certainty. After all, if they act like it's a certainty, perhaps they will act with urgency.]

[She talks about someone thinking they can resolve things themselves like there's been any alternative offered so far. The whole crew's a mess, disorganised, haphazard in what little work they have done. Richard wouldn't be surprised if someone had decided to set out on their own. It'd just be another piece of the clusterfuck.]

If the Enemy knew we were here, we'd be dead. [Is what he says, instead of addressing the rest. The root of what she wants considered.] That's supposed to be how it works.

[It isn't phrased like a question, but some inference is there. That if she knows different, she should say so.]

Or so we've been told. [The information is all second-hand and there's no way of knowing that it would continue to shakeout that way.] We have to consider that they find some value in what we're doing, as it continues to conceal them. This may be their second murder, after all.

[They have no way of knowing about the first, but would it be wrong to assume that there hadn't been a first?]

[There's merit in questioning things, he'd grant that. But Richard's come across too much paranoia and mistrust rooted in the dysfunctions of this operation to do anything more with so we've been told than dismiss it, and anything rooted in it, as more of the same.]

The Carpathans was political. In-house. The elf was an accident. Now the girl, direct hit. Am I missing someone?

[Again, it's clear that if she knows something, he expects her to spill.]

Truthfully, I'm hypothesizing about the circles. Before you arrived—[they haven't spoken before, no, but it's hard to miss the arrival of multiple people at any given time]—there was a circle, as well as a feeling like the one we had earlier. Would we feel that anxiety if there was no act of concern attached to it?

[Hypothesizing Richard would take, if it were a matter of looking for the pattern, drawing lines between one point to the next to find the place which unlocked all of it. But that requires taking the facts as they are and working from there, not hypothesizing new facts, like a murder they don't know about.]

Animal instinct. Prey doesn't need to see a predator kill to fear it.

[A comparison he doesn't like for himself, but then, he doesn't mean himself. He means the symbiote.]

Perhaps. But given this is a war that's gone on for centuries, I'd say it's more of an evolved response. The real matter is whether we were supposed to figure it out for ourselves or if it's never occurred before. [Rhan isn't known for answers. Is it a matter of "duh," or is that how they first confirmed the Enemy's presence in the first place? Or how they did it elsewhere?

Did Carata experience it on Concordia before she returned to the Nest so that they could begin their mission?]

[That gets a casual, near irreverent tip of his head.]

Wasn't exactly hard to figure out.

If they know we're here, why haven't they just tried to kill us? Or put us out of the picture or... something?

[ Asuka waves a hand. She's not always the most strategic minded; her specialty runs toward the tactical. Instead, she's more likely to think about how to handle the more immediate problems. ]

I feel like they would've come down on us harder if they knew for sure.

They're leaving their mark rather carelessly around, and we're able to discern precisely when those marks might appear. Wouldn't they know more than us about what effect they have on the Hosts?

[They do, after all, hold all the power in her hands. Lexa doesn't concede anything with these words (that she might be wrong), but she also wasn't trying to be right. Not necessarily.]

Maybe they're like us. Maybe they've never actually run into one of "our" groups face-to-face. Maybe they're just as new to this as we are.

[ Asuka shrugs. It makes... a certain degree of sense, considering how relatively obvious the "Enemy" is being. Then again, maybe they're just overconfident. ]

I don't know.

It's not impossible, [she says, but it's in a tone of "that's not likely."] Cathaway wouldn't have acted so concerned in our leaving if it were that way. They may be careless because it doesn't matter when it comes to us, though they did take care to ... most probably kill Keya in as subtle of a way as possible.

[ Asuka makes a noise that can charitably be interpreted as conceding the point. She settles back in her seat with a frown, gaze distant as she stares at the opposite wall. ]

Well, they probably have a cover identity, too. And they don't want everyone on the planet to know about them, even if they are working with some people here.

[ She drags a hand over her face. ]

Murder doesn't scream "subtle" to me, but what the Hell do I know?

In politics, people die. Sometimes it's a matter of killing anyone you don't trust. ["Murder" isn't subtle. Murder of a young girl in a culture that seems to actually make a thing out of age is, but ... still.]

The method of her death was what I was referring to.

Edited 2018-01-26 04:56 (UTC)

What? Getting her throat cut? What does that have to do with anything?

[ Asuka doesn't seem to quite get it. At least not yet. ]

For all their Nectar and unique technology, these people are not gifted in the same way as the rest of us. If I chose to do so, my symbiote would allow me to burn a man alive on the spot. However, an ability like that would stand out. People would wonder how or why the fire was started, or how he was so thoroughly immolated where he stood.

[She doesn't follow up with any question to see that Asuka understands. She also doesn't curb the cruelty in her words; she recalls Asuka's ruthlessness back on the Station at the start of the mission. That says enough.]

Huh. OK. I think I get what you're talking about now...

[ She leans back in her seat, arms clasped behind her head, brow furrowed as her eye searches the ceiling for answers that probably (definitely) aren't there. ]

If you kill someone, do it so it could be local. In a way that doesn't draw attention - well as little attention as a murder can, anyway. Do it in a familiar kinda way. Right?

Yes. Though you could argue against my original point with that. They use whatever this ability is to leave the scene of a crime. It means they can't be tracked by the many talented hunters here. To the people of this world, those circles and the feeling that exists concurrently are nothing. To us, they're everything. Perhaps they don't know that we're here. Unless they hope to draw us out.

[Lexa is never fully stuck on an idea unless it seems futile. Case in point: she can easily talk herself out of it.]

It's possible they know we're here but not how or who we're pretending to be, yeah...

[ Asuka groans. ]

Why can't this be more straightforward? Why does it have to be so complicated?

Because we're partaking in two wars right now: our own, as well as the war of this galaxy. We only care about one, but we have to consider the others while remaining ignorant to the larger scale of things no matter what we attempt.

[It may have been a rhetorical question, but Lexa answers it anyway. It feels like an answer that needs to be out there.]

Yeah, yeah, yeah....

[ Asuka sighs again. ]

I don't like being kept in the dark. Feels too much like they want to use me up and throw me out.

Do you want me to tell you that we're more than a resource? [It's a question framed a particular way for a reason.] I wouldn't say that Cathaway and Prince are that callous, but the overall mission of the Nest can only lead to that conclusion.

We should be.

[ Asuka dodges the question. She doesn't want to think about that or contemplate the fact that she's being used as disposable again. She's only just clawed her way free of it, she's not going back. ]

I've had enough of being disposable.

Many of us can say the same. [To associate herself with that sentiment may seem strange to anyone who's seen her in passing. It's an odd thing for her to own now, to know that she could be nothing more in passing than a symbol meant to be composed and constructed a certain way for her people.

To be everything that Titus demanded that she be.]

We can only act as if we're not. To prevent ourselves from slipping away and see a future where we're free from these binds.

So we're just acting like we're not disposable?

[ Asuka sounds a bit bitter. But she knows the truth - they are disposable, no matter how hard she pushes back against the idea. She shifts her weight in her seat, feeling awkward and uncomfortable, forced up against an idea she doesn't truly want to deal with. ]

I guess I have to live with that.

[mission: hyrypia] big, but not coarse - merely on another scale

ota!

post discovery

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

post-disco

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)