( 0 0 1 » ENSEMBLE ) welcome to the inaugural log

[reveriemod]

» WHO? everyone
» WHEN? may 1 onward
» WHERE? all over the station
» WHAT? introductory log feat. waking up, exploration, meeting over food and noises in the walls
» WARNINGS? potential for body horror, psychological horror, hallucinations, physical injury

( 0 0 1 ) » WAKE UP

Were you asleep or were you unconscious? It doesn't matter: when you come to, there's an odd taste in your mouth and there's a low-level mechanical hum in the air. Your head hurts and you feel nauseous. You aren't anywhere you know: everything around you is metal, from the floor you lie on all the way to the ceiling. You are dressed in a jumpsuit you definitely weren't wearing before.

"We tried to save the world. I think— I think we did the opposite."

The message repeats on a loop. If you look for its source, you find a comms device on the floor next to you. The logo on its wallpaper says REVERIE TERMINAL. Upon closer inspection, you find the same logo on your jumpsuit.

Welcome to your new home.

( ♪ )

( 0 0 2 ) LOOK AROUND

You've woken up — but where have you woken up? It may be time to explore your new home. Rifling through a crew quarter will make the room's terminal lock to the comms device you're carrying; the room becomes yours. That includes everything in it, from the additional jumpsuit to the two extra sets of underwear. In some quarters, you may find remnants of whoever was here before you: a book on the nightstand, a coffee mug still on the table, a lonely sock on the floor.

A look around the shared areas will reveal the bar, some of its bottles already open, the mess hall, observation deck and the gym area with its dirty pool. An even closer look around these areas might reveal basic first aid kits as well as basic tool kits and fire extinguishers. The kits are located near the fire extinguishers in compartments in the wall that are not immediately visible. Hopefully, nothing's on fire and no one needs first aid... but that tool kit might come in handy.

Every now and then, as you explore, you might find yourself standing before a door that is locked. Try as you might, you will not be able to get it open.

( ♪ )

( OOC: What items characters find of those who were there before them is up to players, but please limit it to a single item that is mundane and somewhat useless in nature. )

( 0 0 3 ) HAVE A BITE

Sooner or later, all characters will have to make their way to the mess hall if they want to eat. In the mess hall, here are a number of replicator-like devices that sometimes work and sometimes don't— but after a recent malfunction that some characters may have noticed, they seem to work just fine... or at least as well as ever: nothing is particularly palatable, but at least it's nourishment, right?

So why not sit down at a table, whether it's already occupied or not, and have a meal. Maybe use it as an opportunity to introduce yourself, or just to complain about what passes for coffee around here.

And if coffee isn't your preferred beverage, well. There's always the bar.

( ♪ )

( 0 0 4 ) NOISES IN THE WALLS

For some, it's been over a week on the station. For others, merely a day or two. For all, things are starting to change: maybe you were asleep or maybe you weren't, but surely the scream that reverberates through the station will startle you. Was it human? Whatever it was, it seems to be coming from the walls of the station. Banging, clanging, then more screams.

Are you going to chase the sounds? Hide away from them? Try to investigate?

If you follow the sound of screams through the station's corridors and halls, you might feel someone - or was it something? - grab you from behind and pull hard. But when you turn around or turn your head if you've fallen, there's nothing and no one there. If you investigate and perhaps put your ear to a wall to see if the noises really come from there, or bang on the wall, you might hear something other than screams and clanging. Strain your ears and you might hear nothing at all — or you might be able to make out a soft "help me". It's barely above a whisper. Did it sound familiar? If you try to take apart the wall, two things will happen: you'll feel uncharacteristically weak and lethargic all of the sudden, and you'll find nothing at all but wiring and more metal.

Whatever you do, you'll find that the noises stop after a while, with no discernible source other than "the walls". And then hours later, they'll start again. Stop again. Start again a day later— and then stop for good.

( ♪ )

( O O C ) ACTIONS

Hello Reverie Terminal Operators! Welcome to our inaugural event. We hope you'll enjoy it!

To help exploration and interaction with the station, we have put together ten (10) 'actions' that you can request. These actions range from very minor, such as receiving a small piece of information about the station, to major, which may be a more vital piece of information or something far less pleasant, and are completely opt-in. These actions can help get your character involved in the plot, jump into the plot and its mysteries, and have more of a personal prompt to jump off of if you so wish.

Please note if you would avoid particular kinds of consequences (for example, if you'd rather your character not be injured), and we'll try to accommodate that, but please be aware that heavy themes are in play and the actions may feature body horror, injury and hallucinations.

If you'd like to receive an action, please reply to this comment with the following:
» Character: » Type of action: minor, medium, major » Notes:

In the future, actions such as these may be "bought" with bonus AC.



Please use content warning in your top-levels wherever necessary.

Comments

[wentnuclear]

Okay, it's storytime, then. Raleigh leans back a little from his unappetizing meal and his voice takes on a more narrative quality.

"Well, the war's been going for twelve years, just ramping up and up. They're adapting too fast for the Jaeger program to keep up, so it was defunded to put more effort into the wall. The wall that they could just smash through, or climb, or fly over as of Otachi, but whatever, we were just out of options and needed to pretend something could work. There were four Jaegers left -- three still in operation and mine, Gipsy, that Mako restored. I'm the last living Mark 3 pilot, so. My old Marshal, he came and found me, said he had a plan to try and hit the Breach one last time. All or nothing, destroy the portal the Kaiju come through. I went back. Compatibility's not really about similarities or even necessarily getting along, most successful pairs are related but if you're going in alone they do brain scans to narrow the pool and then you train together to see who's the best fit. If you can anticipate the other person and be able to fight in sync. The whole thing was sort of a gamble. We didn't have time or resources to do any simulations, to learn each other. Just had to go for it."

He hesitates, then shrugs. It wasn't just about the fighting. From their first drift, even though it was sort of a failure, he'd known how strong their bond could be. How Mako's mind was a complement for his, how each of their strengths supported the other's weaknesses. And how for things that really mattered, they were already in sync. As far as he's concerned, she'd healed him. Helped him feel like a person again.

"The attacks kept coming so we wound up doing the mission with just two Jaegers. We lost Striker on the way in, and Gipsy's gone. Into the Breach. But Mako and I made it out, and yeah. Being here without her would've made this a million times worse."

[donkeyballs]

Storytime was the right word for it. Mostly because that's exactly what it sounded like: a story, an amazing story, but a story. But he believed Mako, and he had no reason not to believe Raleigh, despite how fantastical the story sounded. He let out a long breath.

"I ain't ever gonna understand what you kids have been through, I don't think." Yes, Raleigh, you're a kid. "But it sounds like a hell of a thing. And I'm glad that you've got each other."

[wentnuclear]

That gets a quirk of an eyebrow, Raleigh taking another moment to size Alex up.

"Okay, you don't look old enough to call me kid, served twenty years or not. But you're not wrong... even ignoring the final mission, being the only ones to ever go into the Breach? Piloting's not something anybody who hasn't done it can understand and there's only a handful of us left."

He tilts his head at Alex curiously. "You're not the first to say that, either, but most people around here seem to think drifting sounds like their worst nightmare. Somebody in their head like that."

[donkeyballs]

"You got the face of a weeping cherub and you're gonna say I ain't allowed to call you kid?" He arched an amused eyebrow at him, gesturing with a fork.

"What? Hell, I don't know. It ain't the same, I know, but - flyin' the Roci - sometimes it feels like she's in my head. Or I'm in hers. Like she knows what I'm gonna do even before I do it." He paused, looking down at his food, and gave a rolling shrug. "Hell, I think it sounds romantic."

[wentnuclear]

"The face of a what? First, no. Second, I'm twenty-seven and I saved an entire planet.".

Seriously, man, he's a grown up at this point, even if you're old. That's all it is, you're old!!!

"Well technically... it's exactly that. Flying is all about being in sync. Jaegers just don't really have a presence, they're reading yours. Does your ship have a neural interface, too? Or an AI?" Then he blinks. "Did you miss the part where I said most copilots are related? It's not romantic."

[donkeyballs]

"Then I would be joinin' up with the Navy when you were born. Pretty sure that makes you a kid." He smiles though, lopsided, and points his fork at Raleigh. "Congrats on savin' Earth, but you ain't the only one in that business, son."

"Romantic don't just mean of the romance kind. I mean the whole - it's like a storybook, right? It's romantic. But you and Mako sure ain't related, I'm just gonna say that." He stabbed a piece of food with his fork.

"An AI, of a kind. She ain't like what you'd read in Sci-Fi. She's a ship, and she'd a damn fast one, and a damn good one, but that don't mean she's gonna have a conversation with you about your kids." A pause, a wistful sigh. "Even if she sure does feel like she could, sometimes."

[wentnuclear]

Raleigh looks like he's about to continue to protest, in no small part because being called kid reminds him painfully of Yancy and he wants to nip it in the bud... but then Alex calls him son and he's reminded, instead, of the Marshals. That's better, somehow, despite being a fresher wound. He goes quiet, all the better to listen to the old man's next point.

"You mean romantic like in an artsy way? Maybe I could see that." And no, they're not, but now Alex is starting to sound like Frank. "Don't you start, too," he mutters.

"What exactly does she do? Gipsy was mostly just systems management. Status reports and processing commands coming through the interface. No actual personality. You make the... Rocinante, was it? Sound like something in between."

[donkeyballs]

He smothers the amused smile that comes up when Raleigh mutters, but he doesn't say anything else about Mako. He ain't about to push it.

"Just about any damn thing you could ask her too. I mean, as far as flyin' is concerned. She can plot a gravity assisted course through 60 satellites with enough accuracy to thread a needle, and be able to alert you at exactly the right moment when you can get a tightbeam off to Mars. She uh - She doesn't have a personality, exactly. Well. No, she does. At least I think so."

[wentnuclear]

Okay, so she's got way more independent processing power than he's used to... but that makes sense, since these guys are from the future. Raleigh's surprised to hear that she isn't programmed with an actual personality, though, all sci-fi he's ever seen has made him feel like that's inevitable. But it's probably smarter not to go there. In fiction, at least, it always ends with an android uprising or whatever.

"Other people don't think so? What makes you, then?"

[donkeyballs]

Alex's smile did something a little odd, and he didn't quite blush, but he looked vaguely self conscious.

"I, uh - I just talk to her, a lot. When I'm plannin' things out. And she follows along pretty well, sends up alerts for stuff I might not be considerin', that sort of thing."

[wentnuclear]

That's an interesting reaction, Alex. Raleigh's not one to judge, he loved his Jaeger a lot, and he gets the feeling Alex is teased for this plenty already. The Roci sounds more advanced than Gipsy, but still not sentient. Just excellent programming.

"Could just be predictive algorithms, you know. Like how systems can analyze what you usually say and do to learn your behavior and respond in advance. Still seems like way more than my world's managed, though. I'd love to meet her."

[donkeyballs]

"Yeah, yeah, I know. She ain't a true AI. But it still feels like it. And I know I wouldn't be able to do half the stuff I have without her."

His smile warms, a bit.

"Hopefully you can. Hell, gotta have gotten here somehow, right? Keep hopin' that maybe I'll find her 'round the next corner."

[wentnuclear]

It's a good point. Raleigh has no idea how he wound up here, but if Alex was already on a nice spaceship why would the kidnappers leave it behind as junk? Maybe it is around. He grins at the pilot, nodding his agreement at the sentiment.

"I hope so for you. And me, because then you can teach us how to fly." Because how cool would that be? A damn spaceship. Yeah, sorry Alex, you don't even get an option here, if they find spaceships Raleigh is gonna be up his butt for flying lessons.

Alex just grins back at him, like he likes that idea too, and it's... easy? Interacting with this total stranger from a different world. Maybe it's not so weird to think that imprisonment is making him more social, but he's glad for it anyway. He turns his attention back to his meal, letting a companionable quiet settle. When they part ways it's with the thought that he actually wants to check back in with this guy, sometime. It's nice.