( 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

Jasnah Kholin, OTA

[veristitalian]

( 0 0 2 )

"There's a legend on my world," remarks Jasnah on the third morning, up on the observation deck, staring out at the moons above, the world below, "of a queen who trades place with a moon in her sky.

"It's a long story, filled with lessons about hubris and feminine immorality. The playful moon wants to come down and carouse, so she offers to trade places with the queen, just for a night. The wise queen knows better, but the moon offers her a bargain she simply can't refuse. After turning down flattery and praise and the chance to see great wonders, the queen is finally won by the implication that there's a flaw in her city that she won't be able to see unless she steps back, to see her home from the vast perspective of the sky above;

The moon comes down, the queen goes up, and when they're supposed to switch places back the next night, the moon vanishes playfully off to continue enjoying mortal delights. But when the moon asks to switch back, the next month, she's shocked to find it's the queen who won't come down right away from the Celestial sky. The moon sees she has been tricked."

Jasnah pushes her long hair back from her face. Without pins here it likes to escape from the braids she tries to tame it with. It's hard to look like royalty in a station-issued tracksuit, with a tangle of disobedient curls, but she nearly manages it now. Her manner is serious, her spine is straight.

"The queen ends up pregnant. She claims a child from the brother of the trickster moon- the greatest of the three in the sky. She returns to Roshar seven months later with a babe with his father's soft blue skin. Indeed, there are blue-skinned people on my world, and none among the humans from other planets." And, with the tone of someone shaking themselves out of something of a reverie; "If I'd known there were people up in the sky I'd have listened to the story more seriously."



( 0 0 3 )

Although Jasnah has travelled between worlds before, she feels acutely unprepared for Reverie Station.

The cultural differences between her world and the others are frankly alarming. Jasnah wears one glove, covering her left hand, and tends not to use it. It might be easy to mistake it for an injury, but the fact is, it's cultural; seeing women going about bare handed and using both freely means that half the population is, to Jasnah's mind brazenly half naked. There are more important things to worry about, but every once in a while she sees a woman touch a man with her safehand, and feels herself very nearly blush.

Physically, she's playing an away game, too. The planet Roshar is about 1.3 Earth gravity, so every once in a while Jasnah overcompensates and stumbles on the steps, or overestimates when lifting something out of the way. For a woman with her customary poise, it's a strange experience to be suddenly ungainly.

Most of all, it's the technology. Coming from a world without electricity means there are a tremendous number of givens Jasnah needs to absorb incredibly quickly. Just the idea of buttons on a machine that can be depressed to generate a result is entirely foreign. Jasnah can glance at a console, scan over the marks there, and read them as decoration or texture rather than intuiting the presence of a user interphase.

Perversely, it all gets worse before it gets better. Her first few days on board she moves like a cat, wary and careful, minding each step, asking adroit questions and following along. She makes up for her disadvantages mostly through determination, and obsessive attention to detail.

Then, around a week later, when pervasive exhaustion has had time to really set in, she has a morning where she ends up in the mess hall alone, crashes hard into a table on a missed step. Later she ends up standing vacantly in front of the replicator in a complete and utter fugue.



( 0 0 4 )

The voices come to Jasnah late one night, while she's in her room. She shoots out of bed at the scream, and races into the hall in her haste, pausing only to grab the small infused gemstone that had arrived with her. It isn't going to be much good, but she'll take every bit of help she can get.

It'll infuriate her later, how completely she falls for it. She walks, then runs, then falls when the invisible hands shove her. It only makes her more frantic. Someone is screaming, someone is locked alone, in darkness, and Jasnah has to do something about it.

An hour later, she can be found in one of the back corridors. Jasnah is sitting against a wall, with an arm braced against her knees and her gloved hand pressed over her mouth, her eyes closed. She's clutching the sphere in her freehand; it's unremarkable now, no longer emitting light, just a simple glass marble with a chip of gem at the centre. The panel on the wall above her is open. Look closely and you'll see it was torn through, like someone welded a new hole, almost, but with clean lines around the seam, no sign of heat or melting.

The corridor is filled with the lingering scent of smoke. A clean scent, with no hint of burnt plastic in it. It spreads slowly throughout this corner of the deck.

2.

[solarcharge]

'We had three moons as well.'

This is the first planet she's heard of that has as many. Kara'd been listening to the story raptly, enchanted by the melodic voice and unfamiliar tale. So many of her own planet's stories were now locked away in her heart, unable to be shared for the melancholy they brought her. Blue people though — there hadn't been much of that kind of diversity on Krypton. (Maybe it could have used it.)

'I've never heard of a blue one. What colour was your sun?'

[veristitalian]

"Yellow in some lights, red in others."

She answers, glancing over at the other and raising an eyebrow.

"Should that properly change the moon? If so, why is each one different?"

[solarcharge]

'A moon usually reflects a sun's light. Our sun was red, so our moons were yellow, or red.'

Just like what she describes, the parallel interests Kara a little. An interesting place, but she knew that already from the folktale. She glances at Jasnah up and down, curiously. The jumpsuits have made them all look vaguely uniform, but they can't change bearing or grooming habits. She thinks strongly of her mother.

[veristitalian]

Jasnah draws in a breath, and nods. That makes good sense, even if it's strange to hear so casually, so very matter of factly.

But she doesn't really have the energy to keep being startled by all of this.

"Does your world have creations like the city we're stranded in?"

[solarcharge]

Kara hums, thoughtful. 'Not something like this, specifically,' she says. 'But this place doesn't really surprise me.' A beat, then, sheepish. 'My name is Kara. I'm from Krypton.'

[veristitalian]

"Jasnah, from Roshar."

She answers, a little amused at the assonance, k from k and ss fom sh. Probably not a coincidence, probably a matter of linguistics.

"From the kingdom of Alethkar. It isn't a united planet. It isn't even a particularly thoroughly united kingdom."

[solarcharge]

'Nice to meet you, Jasnah.'

She didn't give a last name, but then, neither did Kara. El means very little to those not of Krypton, not of Earth.

'What's it like there, other than not united?'

[veristitalian]

"Alive. With thoughts, ideas-"

She says, without hesitation, glancing around the cool, bare station and explaining;

"A fire might draw flamespren. Shamespren fall around an embarassed person like flower petals, and gloryspren ring you in golden light, while awespren are a halo of blue smoke. The windspren are little translucent bits and pieces that drift by at a fast breeze, and you clean a wound to keep the rotspren out. This place is barren by comparison."

[solarcharge]

She listens, but doubt colours her features. When Jasnah's done, Kara's disbelief is fully blown scepticism. She's a girl of science. This sounds... like a fairy tale, honestly, and nothing like the ones she's used to hearing.

She almost says, are you sure?, and that's probably culturally insulting. 'Do you... know where these spren come from?'

[veristitalian]

"Shadesmar."

Says Jasnah, right away.

"A world beneath, in and around our own. The cognitive realm, if you will. I've travelled there. It's nothing like it is here. This place is... well, something else entirely."

[solarcharge]

She raises her eyebrows as high up as they'll go, but that makes some kind of sense, an alternate dimension, higher than the one around, unable to be seen or entered except by special means. She compresses it into something she can understand.

'And you have no access to it here?'

[veristitalian]

"My spren is gone."

She says, with perfect, utter equanimity, as though it isn't like having her heart ripped out.

"He would be the one to bring me there. It would also take stormlight. Another difference between my world and this one; you have this electricity, and we have the storm."

004

[lostsymmetry]

Smell, the mainframe won't notice. And as many holes as people have been tearing through the station, one open panel doesn't especially stand out.

The woman curled up beneath it, though? A little more noticeable. A voice comes from her left side, at the end of the hallway: male, and concerned.

"Hey. Are you okay?"

If she looks, Jasnah won't see anyone. But a display panel built into the wall seems to be glowing.

[veristitalian]

Storms. As comforting as the voice means to be, the fact that Jasnah looks and can't identify the speaker nearly stops her heart in her chest.

No. No, it's just some new unexpected terror associated with this place. Like the trick of the voice behind the panel. That's all.

The glow draws her to her feet, cleaning her face hastily with her freehand, and taking a tentive couple of steps towards the display. Jasnah is thinking of it as completely mechanical, hasn't begun to make the connection that it might be the source of the disembodied solicitousness. She approaches, but really just to distract herself, to see what she can learn.

[lostsymmetry]

Hey, she's heading in the right direction. And with no (visible) sign of further distress. The mainframe AI might count this as a win even if he were aware of her perspective, and as thing stand, it's definitely seeming like a step up.

Though he's not completely sure what to make of the silence. The display light flickers, showcasing a bright blue logo with the word Domesticon—that promptly glitches into an asymmetrical hash.

"Hi."

[veristitalian]

Jasnah flinches. That's- well, at least by now she's met the Butler, she has some context for machines who speak.

"Hello?"

But for the voice to be coming from this. The Butler was at least vaguely man-shaped and crammed into a jumpsuit.

[lostsymmetry]

No man-shapes here. Only a mismatch of lines and colors—though that, at least, seems to be stabilizing.

"Sorry to, intrude."

The apology sounds more cautious than regretful—he's not sure if he has given offense. But better to stray on the side of politeness. With humans in particular.

"You looked upset."

[veristitalian]

"I don't recognize your eyes. How are you able to see me?"

Of the many questions she has, it's as good a place as any to begin.

"Or are you sensing emotion itself?"

More comprehensible, on her world.

[lostsymmetry]

"...That would be cool. But, nah. I use the cameras to see."

There's one built into the console, though she may or may not recognize the lens.

And they're talking about him, now? Huh. Still, he's curious too. Especially after that question.

"Do people do that where you're from?"

[veristitalian]

"What's a camera?"

She starts, trying to make sense of the strange figure. Is it some kind of spren?

They definitely don't do any of this where she's from.

[lostsymmetry]

...and he'd thought he was out of date. The AI contains his amusement—and any too-flippant retorts. The human is always right, even when they're stupid. Or when his own curiosity gets overridden.

"Visual recording device. They let humans observe things without being there. Or make home videos of like, cats."

Has the mainframe ever seen a cat himself? No. But you'd be surprised what people store on the work computer.

"This one's hooked up to the terminal you're speaking with. So I can see anyone nearby."

[veristitalian]

"What's a cat?"

She asks, and then dismisses that question, doesn't matter. But yes, Jasnah is going to need a little more contextualization than most.

"You're in another room and peering through this glass?"

[lostsymmetry]

The dismissal fortunately comes before he has to explain something he's never known. Of course, the question that replaces it...

"...not exactly."

Starting from basics? Starting from basics.

"Okay. Did you wake up with a comms device? Small, flat. Had a voice playing from it?"

[veristitalian]

"Yes, I know the fabrial you mean."

It's not one, but it's the nearest word she has to hand. She uses it accidentally, and then corrects herself;

"The machine."

That's what these things are.