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

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( 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

"Tell me what I can't tell is wrong about this station?"

She asks, right away.

"If a sailor came on a ship and saw the rigging askew, he'd know in a heartbeat. If an Alethi general walked the ranks of an army and saw them with the wrong glyphs on their armbands- there's a level of disorder here, and I know I can only appreciate the obvious. What am I missing?"

The amusement died immediately, and he folded his arms, crossing them across his chest.

"Well, you ain't wrong, I'll tell you that much. This place ain't right. In more ways than I could mention, but for a start - it shouldn't be empty. Far as I can tell, no one here has been here longer than a few days - but the station itself it definitely older than that. Also far as I've seen we have no access to command systems, life support - these ain't luxuries, these are things that are life 'n death, and we have no idea how to even make sure they're workin', let alone access them. We could have clean air for months, or days, and we don't know which. Uncertainty doesn't work in space - outside of this station is pure vacuum. Nothin' survives out there."

Except Apollo, apparently, but that was another thing altogether.

"Everythin' is just - off. Can't always put my finger on it, but it gives me the shivers, I'll tell you that."

"I don't know anything."

She's quick to say, again; this is completely foreign to her.

"The only useful metaphor I have is of a ship. So please tell me if this worry is unfounded- but if we were in this situation at sea, I'd be extremely worried about the smooth running of the ship we were on. The decks are set up so if you take on water, the ship won't sink or overbalance right away- cutting a hole in the wrong one could kill you if there were a real accident. The sails need to be maintained, the water rationed for the number of days you'll be at sea."

They are not following these rules here. How alarmed should she be?

Right. Okay. Break it down even simpler, Alex.

"You're worries ain't unfounded. But I should probably make clear exactly what you should be worried about." He doesn't want to scare her, but he also doesn't want her to try to walk out an airlock without a suit.

He raises his hands so that he can illustrate a little better with gestures.

"For one, there ain't nothin' around the station. You go down in a boat, you still got a chance to bob in the water and breathe air, right?" He's never actually seen a boat - Mars didn't have oceans or even lakes - but he understands the concept. "You can survive on your own for a little while. Out there, there's nothin' to breath. You try to suck it in, but your lung's would vent into space and you'd suffocate in seconds. It's also cold. An' I don't mean a little cold. I mean water freezes instantly, but so does just about anthin' else, unless you're in direct sunlight. In order to survive out there, you need somethin' to protect you from the cold, and you need somethin' to breathe. So you need a suit - sort of like you're own personal tiny life boat."

He was probably really stretching this metaphor, and he gave an apologetic look.

"This makin' sense, so far?"

Jasnah listens carefully. Her face goes through several interesting transformations while he speaks- nothing dramatic, but enough of a grimace that it's obvious that no one has bothered to explain 'the cold hard vacuum of space' to her before.

"What is there to learn or see up here that's so valuable that we decided we should build a habitat in these conditions?"

Because after hearing this, the Alethi are never going to explore space travel, not under her rule. Not even if it weren't centuries away.

But the more important conclusion she reaches, right away, is;

"You'd design a structure like that to allow sections of itself to seal off, in case the outside barrier was punctured. That's why the doors cling to the floors like they do?"

If that's the case, there's a bigger, nastier conclusion lurking right behind that one, to do with how they've all been tearing down doors and getting into the walls.

He couldn't help a little smile at the first question. "Darlin', I wish I could tell you exactly why, but honestly there's just something in the soul that pulls at ya, out here. Well, maybe not out here, exactly - god only know where the hell we are - but space in general? Any time I'm planet side I just find myself dreamin' about being back out here. But my whole planet, it ain't made for life. We conolized it, and we're makin' fit, but it ain't as it is. It won't see real air or water or grass or trees till long after I'm dead - but that's alright by me. The dream of a new planet makes it worth it."

To her second question, he nodded. "Tha's right. The big ones? They're called airlocks - they'll seal shut as tight as they can get, if there's no atmosphere on the other side. Usually they come in pairs of two, so that if you need to access a vented area, you can step through one, close it behind you, vent the oxygen, then step through the second. Otherwise you'd lose air anytime you wanted to go outside."

"'Darling' means something different in your world than it does in mine."

Says Jasnah, only a little flatly, trying to unlock her back teeth, because that isn't the point of this, and there are much more important things to hand. What she really wants to know is;

"It could have serios consequences, the fact that we've been puncturing through doors and walls on the different levels. If there was a problem with an- airlock-" pausing on the new word just a heartbeat "-on deck three, but we've carved unplanned for breaches through the metal throughout that level and the next one, we could all suffocate."

And, then, as her understanding of the science catches up with that train of thought.

"Or probably be sucked out there."

Oh, woops. Alright, duly noted, and he gives an apologetic look before she continues.

"Hopefully this place is built a little better than a tin can." Though who knew. "Most ships have a secondary shielding around any of the interior quarters - a space between the inner wall and the other wall - that serves as breach protection. But honestly? Yeah. We don't need any holes between areas that should be closed off."

He gave her a sympathetic look.

"Yeah, that's exactly what happens. The pressure difference inside versus out means that if there's a full breach, things explode outward."

She moves past it, with a mild shake of her head. No harm done; now he knows. So, back to what he's saying;

"Shielding sounds more like something from my world. That might be something I can study."

Though it's bound to operate on different principles entirely, she'll at least learn something through the comparison. Jasnah is not an emotional woman, but focusing hard on this problem helps a little with the acute sense of agoraphobia the description suddenly brings. She betrays herself by closing her eyes tight, for just a heartbeat. But giving in to panic will certainly only make the situation worse.

"You were- do people talk about it in terms of being 'up?' Up here, before you arrived on the station?"

"Anythin' you want to know, I'll try to go in more detail with you, but I'm warnin' in advance - I'm a pilot. I know enough about engineerin' to help out when shit goes wrong, but in the end I'm just supposed to fly the damn things."

He gives her a moment, watching her close her eyes tight, and his expression when she opens them again is pure sympathy.

"Been in space most my life, that's right." His voice is almost gentle - he's trying to be reassuring. "Tried to go back to planet life after I was done my twenty, but just couldn't do it. Got pulled back out to the stars. It really ain't all that bad, once you get used to it."

The good news about that is that it hasn't killed him yet. Jasnah takes heart from this thought, and shakes her head, again trying to work out the shape of the thing she doesn't know.

"What advice do you give people who are still adapting to it?"

"Well that's a question and a half. First thing I guess it to lean into the spin. You can tell the gravity here - the uh, the weight that pulls you down to the earth - that it ain't the same, right? It's why you've got magboots, just like the rest of us. If you lean into it, your inner ear won't get as confused, and you might feel less dizzy."

He paused, thoughtfully. "Honestly, a lot of it I'm just so used to I don't even think twice about it."

"It's-" and she purses her lips here, not sure what she means, but, "-my body feels normal, but my boots try to stick. And the days, for some reason, are shorter? The time in an hour is off."

The station is set to mimic something close to Earthlike conditions, but Roshar is a small world that with long days and longer years.

"I thought the sense of imbalance might have been some side effect of being brought here."

But now she shifts her stance, delicately, like she wants to try to feel what he means.

"Your boots stick 'cause otherwise if we lost the spin, we'd lose the gravity, and you'd go floatin everywhere. They keep your feet on the floor so you don't hurt yourself or any of the equipment. On the Roci, we wear 'em everywhere, even when under thrust or high gee burn."

He crossed his arms, thinking.

"Other thing is to exercise. Your muscles' might start to atrophy, if you ain't usin' em the way you used to." Though if her planet was smaller and the gravity was less, maybe this was close to what she was used to.

"Muscular atrophy."

She echoes, in the same flat voice as before. One day, space will stop feeling casually and continuously horrifying. Jasnah has not yet reached that day.

"I'll have to relearn how to fight, to use these features to my advantage." Rather than being caught out by them, lurching at the wrong angle and losing her footing. "Is there an accepted form?"

"Tha's right. It's when your muscles don't need to do as much as they used to, so they basically start eatin' themselves. In adults it ain't too bad - if you work out you can keep your muscle mass up - but in kids it can be deadly. Raisin' children in space means they never gain the musculature needed for their bodies to work under gravity. And if we don't keep up with our exercise, it can be pretty damn painful for us, too, anytime we're in high gee."

At her question, he frowned a bit.

"Accepted form? Of fighting, you mean?"

"Stances? Like stone stance?"

She recites, and shifts her feet, her arms, into position. The Alethi have rich traditions of swordwork, especially among their nobility, but they're all deeply functional. Stone is famous for holding ground, is deeply rooted, impossible to beat back. Her centre of gravity held low, and her hands lift to hold a broadsword she doesn't have any more.

"I think this would be more useful, because your feet shift, and seldom lift. But I'd like to train with an expert."

"Huh." He looks a little surprised, maybe a little impressed.

"Looks a bit like jujitsu, I guess? Honestly, can't say I ever took to it. We got a bit of grapplin' in basic, but I'm a pilot, not a Marine. If I gotta fight with my fists, we're already dead."

"Do you know any marines on board?"

She asks, in that case, but it's more thoughtful than an actual step she wants to take right now.

"I believe with every bone in my body that this will all get worse before it gets better."

"Not from my time." Not yet, anyway, A week or so later, Bobbie will appear, but for the moment she's out of luck.

"Frank's a marine, but he's also from about three hundred years before I am."

He lets out a breath, and just gives a slow nod.

"... Yeah. Can't say I don't feel the same. But I'm startin' to get used to bein' a shit magnet."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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

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