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

"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?"

That's...incredible. This whole thing is completely mental; how can Jasnah be speaking one language and Hermione hearing entirely another?

"Blimey..." she breathes, and Hermione nods when the woman asks her another question.

How?! is all Hermione can think, but after a moment of just looking dumbly awestruck back at the other woman, Hermione finally forces words out.

"Sorry, yes. Yes, I still heard English."

Hermione switches languages, too, having learned some sloppy French when she and her parents had gone on holiday once. "I'm speaking French now, does it sound the same as the English had done?" she asks in French, however poor the tenses probably are; she's trying. It's just an experiment, anyway.

"Subtly different."

She answers, deeply amused by this. Not an accent, exactly.

"It's as though suddenly you're struggling to choose your words. It might be my imagination, but I can hear that it's a language that's not your own."

How absolutely fascinating.

"Another demonstration of the strange technology in this place?"

Hermione's cheeks color a little and she ducks her head reflexively for a second. "I'm not fluent, so that's...a pretty accurate description of what I was actually doing. That's incredible, though. I want to know how that's possible. It's one thing to have a translator, but quite another for it to just somehow happen in our ears without us knowing we have the translator," she points out.

And maybe that's a bit more worrisome, actually, than she'd initially considered. When she says it like that, there's a little more sinister a connotation to it. In her ears, she hears English. Jasnah has now spoken two different languages to her. Hermione is doing nothing to actively translate, so is there an implant of some kind? Has her body been violated with technology in addition to the fact that someone or something had changed her clothes without her knowledge or consent?

The longer she is here, the more uncomfortable she's becoming and maybe she's overreacting, but she can't help it. The idea of some sort of technological implant that she never authorized is making her skin crawl as she thinks about it.

Suddenly, Hermione doesn't actually want to talk about this so much anymore...

Clearing her throat, she looks back down at the ladder. "We should go try to find something to document with," she says. "If there are two of us looking, perhaps it will take have the time."

"Good idea. But one more- let it I understand-"

Jasnah's Unkalaki is terrible. She's suddenly speaking with a thick accent, nothing quite of anywhere on Earth, but maybe vaguely close to the Pacific Islands. And, wracking her mind for a proper noun, she also ventures;

"-my humaka'aban?"

It doesn't make any kind of sense to reference her own ceremonial Horneater beard, obviously she has no facial hair, but she can't resist the test. Even while she takes Hermione's cue and heads back for the ladder, ready to wait at the top while the young woman makes her way down.

Hermione's eyebrows lift a little before creasing in the center with confusion when, mid-sentence, Jasnah starts to sound like she's speaking gibberish. The words are English — although, the last one is maybe questionable — but they're arranged even more sloppily, she thinks perhaps, than her own French had probably sounded.

"Er...I'm not sure what you were trying to say but I understood most of the words individually?" she replies, but it sounds more like a question than an actual answer. Hermione at least has the grace to look apologetic at that, just in case she's perceived as being rude for being so honest, just then.

But given that Jasnah moves toward the ladder, Hermione takes that as a hint that she's agreeing with Hermione's assessment that they ought to both look. So, Hermione starts to descend the ladder again, stepping off to the side when she's reached the floor below and then calling up to Jasnah to come down next.

"It's the language spoken on the Horneater Peaks. I barely understand it. And they have some specific nouns that shouldn't translate."

She says, pleased that it works.

"It really responds-" here, jumping down, joining her on the floor, "-to ability, to intention. I'll ask more questions, and I'll tell you what I find."

Something about Hermione makes Jasnah decide to include her in her confidence, in the research effort as a whole.

Her face is turned up so that she can watch to make sure Jasnah doesn't need her at the last second, and she's definitely listening; taking everything in. The other woman seems just as keen to share information as Hermione is and she hopes that Jasnah actually is. The way Hermione figures it, the more they work together, the faster they'll get out of here.

"That's definitely interesting..." she says thoughtfully. "I'll see what else I can find, as well," she agrees. The implication that she'll share that knowledge, she hopes, is there.

"Right then, shall we meet back here, say tomorrow?" she asks, wanting to make sure that they know where and when to find one another, neither sounding too eager nor too aloof, because she's genuinely interested to share what they might learn, but also doesn't want to cut them both off at the knee by giving them nearly no time to do research at all.

"At this hour?"

She proposes, glancing at the numbers on the communicator at her wrist.

"By that time I hope one of us knows something more."

Yes, Jasnah is fine with sharing everything she discovers, and whatever resources she may find, scarce though they be.

"Remain cautious."

Hermione nods. "Yes, that's what I was thinking. It would give us more time to gather information," she replies and she, too, looks down at the communicator she's failed to use up until this point, mostly for lack of knowledge on how to use it.

Making a note of the time, Hermione looks back up at Jasnah. "I will. And you, too. I'll see you tomorrow, same time, right here."

With that, she excuses herself to search out a pen and some paper or parchment and a quill.

Jasnah makes good on her promise, spending the day searching for physical object, and when the strange gravity and peculiar timekeeping in the place become too much and she has to lie down, asking the question via the strange network they're now a part of.

She'll have plenty to report when they meet next.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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

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