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

Entry tags:

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

» 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:

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

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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Unfortunately, Jasnah really doesn't have the cultural background to understand what this might be. Consoles don't really read as consoles yet, so she can't piece together the story she's seeing. A locked door, a room with another window. On her own, the leap to 'potential control station' doesn't come.

She presses the sphere up against the glass, trying to get a better view in, before trying the handle herself. Nothing.

"It's stormlight. What is all that?"

"Storm light?" Hermione asks, looking over at her new companion with curiosity returning because she wouldn't be Hermione if she weren't nosy about that sort of thing.

Also unfortunately, as Hermione peers back through the glass with Jasnah, she doesn't know for certain what most of it is. It looks like it could be some sort of computer, but she's never used one. Her parents hadn't had one and they didn't even know what computers were in the wizarding world. She has some muggle movies as a reference and that's about it.

"I dunno...but it looks like it hasn't been used in rather a while, doesn't it?" she asks, frowning thoughtfully as she reflexively tries the door again, to no avail. "It's bloody locked. Suppose that's why it looks all dusty in there but why have a ladder in the hallway leading to a door we can't open which is filled with things that look like they've been neglected for an age?"

"Stormlight. It's-"

A beat of distraction, as she tries to lean closer, trying to glean anything from the bits they can see.

"-if you leave a gem out in a passing highstorm, it'll infuse with stormlight, which can then be used. For illumination, to soulcast, as a surge."

She doesn't know what she's going to do when she uses this one, or it goes done.

Hermione finally looks away from the equipment she hardly recognizes and over at the woman beside her as the other woman explains. It sounds like some form of magic with which Hermione is unfamiliar and her immediate gut response is to think how badly she wishes she could research it. There aren't any books here that she's found, yet, and even if there were, would they even include something from this woman's world if she isn't from wherever this space station originated? Probably not.

"That's brilliant..." she mutters thoughtfully. "How long does it last, then?" If she can't read up on the stone, then maybe she can get her research in another way. Might as well ask the source, shouldn't she?

"This sphere would let me cast a volume of liquid that could fit in my cupped hands. If I had a hundred like it, I could transport myself to another place. If I drew the stormlight in it could heal a bad cut."

She estimates, but very precisly; Jasnah has made this a serious study.

"In two weeks that glow cast will have faded, and all that potential would be halved, and in four the light will be gone entirely. You don't have any of this on your world?"

All of that sounds fascinating to Hermione, but she shakes her head when asked whether there's anything like that in her world. "I dunno. If there is, I haven't come across it yet. I can do all of those things with different spells," she admits.

Immediately, her face goes red because she shouldn't have said that, it's against Wizarding Law to talk to Muggles about magic. She thinks the only loophole are parents of Muggleborns like herself. Maybe, though, this is also a loophole, considering Jasnah sounds as though she has magic, too, only it's different than Hermione's own.

"But I don't think we have anything like your stone, no. Are you a witch, then?" she wonders aloud.

"I'm a Knight Radiant. We don't have witches."

Drawing back; she can't get in there, she can't waste stormlight breaking in.

"I can believe you not knowing there were Radiants returning, but there would be stormlight. That would be widely known. What's a witch, on your world?"

"I don't know what that is..." Hermione admits, feeling a bit foolish even if she has no reason to. She's never liked admitting when she doesn't know something. Mostly because she doesn't like it when she doesn't know something to begin with, never mind other people realizing that she doesn't. This place is going to be rather a challenge for her in that regard alone, she's fast realizing.

Wetting her lips, Hermione looks into the room through the portal window again, frowning as she tries to figure out what the equipment back there must be. It's not too important, she assumes, since it's clearly dusty. But then, actually, maybe it's been locked away for so long because it is important. Her brow creases with frustration.

"We can do magic," she replies absently. "Only...I haven't my wand, so I can't." The latter bit sounds as annoyed as she feels about it.

"A wand is the source of the power?"

She asks, imagining it working something like gemstones, a resource that can be used up- she doesn't really have a frame of reference for it.

"Let's see if there's anything else on this level."

Hermione hums slightly at that with uncertainty. "Not really," she replies. "Mostly, it's the conduit. Some people can do wandless magic, I'm just not very good at it myself," she admits almost begrudgingly. As per usual, she's not super comfortable with her own shortcomings.

Clearing her throat, Hermione nods. "There's bound to be something. If nothing else, maybe we can figure out how to open the door. It's locked for a reason and I want to know what that reason is, I don't know about you."

"Very badly. I don't know enough about how this station functions to be able to make guesses about why that door would even be locked. Some people have suggested it should have been a research base?"

If that's the case that could easily be some kind of delicate study.

"We don't have travel to space. We don't have almost any of this. It's all- a very different paradigm, everything runs on Stormlight, nothing on electricity."

"The whole station, you mean?" Hermione asks for clarification, her expression very much interested. She hasn't had a chance to hear any rumors, yet, so this is news to her and it's a lot more encouraging than anything she could have dreamed up on her own.

"I saw levers and buttons in there...I wonder if it's some sort of control room for something," she thinks aloud, looking over at the other woman with question in her eyes, wondering whether that sounds like something that might fit as far as Jasnah is concerned. The equipment might be out of Hermione's familiarity, but that doesn't mean it might not do the same thing that buttons and levers do at home.

Chewing her bottom lip, Hermione pauses. "We've the ability to travel to space, but it's limited to the government organizations of countries that wish to do so. It's nothing like this, to my knowledge. I'm used to things not running on electricity from the wizarding world, but I wasn't born into that world, so where I grew up, we had electricity. Only, most of this technology is very different than what my mum and dad had at home..."

"A control room."

She echoes, and flags it mentally. Jasnah is going to need to find writing materials, and work up a map.

"You don't have pen and ink, or anything the like, do you?"

Hermione strikes already as a woman who would know.

Frowning, Hermione shakes her head. She used to carry that sort of thing with her all the time, but she also always had her wand with her and that isn't with her either, however much she might want it to be. "No, unfortunately. But I think that's brilliant. Documenting where we go and what we see, I mean. Like a notated map of sorts," she replies. Then she sighs, because...again. They haven't anything to write on or with. Jasnah wouldn't be asking if she already had what they needed.

And while this suggestion isn't exactly ideal, Hermione offers it up anyway. "One of us could stay and the other could go get paper and a pen..." she says, chewing her bottom lip thoughtfully.

"I haven't even been able to find paper on board."

She admits; it isn't just here that she's worried about, it's anywhere.

"If you've discovered supplies you should go get them. I can stay by the door."

It doesn't feel too dangerous to her. Odd, maybe, but still utterly abandoned.

Hermione's nose wrinkles in thought and she shakes her head. "I haven't even looked," she confesses, feeling a bit foolish for it. She probably ought to have looked for something to map out her explorations already, so this issue shouldn't even be an issue.

She chews her bottom lip thoughtfully for a few seconds, then. "I suppose it would be unwise to continue without documenting, but it could also be unwise to waste time looking for something that may not even exist here..."

Mostly, she's weighing her options aloud with the hopes that Jasnah will weigh in as well. Hermione's really never been the decision maker in the Trio. She's the one with all the answers, but seldom the one with the plan of action.

"I mean to learn how to use the device we arrived here with to store information."

Gesturing lightly at the communicator.

"But it's been-- well, exhausting."

A rare human admission.

"Me too," Hermione agrees. "Right now, I've no bloody clue how it works. I'm sure if I sat with it long enough, I could figure it out," she goes on. She's always been called the cleverest witch of her age, but that doesn't necessarily mean that she can figure out something completely foreign without the aid of her precious books.

She'll try, though; that's just in her nature.

"That's partially why I've been putting it off. If there were only an instruction manual to give us a head start..." she sighs. "Although...everything is so far ahead where I was, I haven't any idea where to even begin. Can it follow voice prompts or is that something that's still only in the movies? Is there an instruction manual and I've just lost it without realizing I had it to lose? Things like that have been weighing on my mind, as well. It's all very frustrating."

It's some comfort, though, that she's not alone in that. "We could try to learn it together, although it might be a bit like the blind leading the blind, I suppose..."

"Voice prompts? That's possible?"

Asks Jasnah, starting there, and deciding she does need to ask this time;

"And what are movies?"

It seems like the moment to lift the little thing up and peer at it, touching the screen, the way she's managed to accidentally trigger it once or twice. The script Jasnah uses makes for strange reading and typing, but she isn't familiar enough with the concept of icons on a screen to manage to trigger to enter a voice or video call.

Shrugging and looking apologetic, Hermione shakes her head. "Dunno. It is in the movies, but anything is possible in the movies, isn't it?" she asks with a small smile.

But then Jasnah asks that and Hermione blinks, a bit confused. It's been a while since she's had to explain films as far as the muggle version of them, anyway. "Erm...films? Moving pictures?" she asks, trying to get a general idea of what concepts Jasnah will understand before trying to proceed with an explanation.

Hermione leans in a little, peering at the device in Jasnah's hands. "What on Earth...?" she murmurs, mostly to herself. "Is that your language or is that the device?" she asks, her eyes shifting up to meet the other woman's once more.

"Illusions?"

She guesses. Stormlight is, again, her only frame of reference. A good Lightweaver can create almost anything with it, from an entire room reconstructed to a living, speaking copy of another person.

"This is Alethi, yes. What's yours in?"

"More like moving photographs. Do you have photographs where you come from? Static, erm...still images of people?" Hermione tries hopefully. This is a bit more difficult, she thinks, than explaining muggle things to Ron, since at least she was familiar with what Ron was exposed to instead. Right now, she's going for shots in the dark, essentially.

"Alethi...I've never heard of that language. Mine is in English," she replies. Then she shows Jasnah her device.

"Not spoken on Roshar, unless we know it by a different name."

She admits, eyebrows lifting.

"Is that what you're speaking now?"

Because there are some pretty stunning implications there, if that's the case.

"Roshar," she repeats, trying the name out on her tongue thoughtfully. "Perhaps you haven't got it, I don't know. Where I come from, I sort of straddle the line between Magical and Non-Magical people; I was born to Non-Magical parents, so I grew up in a world without it and, as a child I learned that I am a witch and was thrust into the Magical world, so I have a sort of unique experience.

"Anyway...there are things in the Magical world that we haven't got in the Non-Magical world and that's just from one country on one planet. There was bound to be differences between us if you aren't from Earth like I am," she tells him.

Nodding, Hermione lifts her eyebrows at the implication of that, as it dawns on her. "Are you speaking Alethi right now?" Because Hermione can understand it...she's hearing English. That's fascinating and the tone of her voice has become slowly more excitable with that realization.

"I'm speaking Alethi."

She agrees, right with her. The next obvious test is to switch language, so Jasnah concentrates and dusts off her rusty old training, asking Hermione a question in a mumbling, sticky second language. It's deeply alien from anything spoken on Earth.

Right away she wants to know;

"Did it deliberately switch with me? Can you hear Thaylen too?"

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

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