agogelogs | all this energy calling me

WHO? Everybody!
WHAT? Welcome home, nerds.
WHEN? Outside time and space, in the aether between dimensions.
ANYTHING ELSE? Violence, as always. Please warn in subject lines for anything beyond physical violence, and move to a personal journal if things go beyond PG-13.

TOUCH BASE;

backfill armed services echelon
COST re-appropriated vehicle 854A-5.2

read the base setting infopage

DEPARTING FRANCE

The order comes out the second day after the Tuileries is sacked:

PACK UP, GET READY TO MOVE OUT. WE'VE DONE ALL WE CAN HERE.

DEPLOYMENT: BASE. WE NEED TO RESTOCK. BE PREPARED FOR MORE TRANSFERS ON ARRIVAL.

STAY SAFE. TIME-STEP EXPECTED TO BEGIN WITHIN THE HOUR. FOR THOSE OF YOU NEW TO COST: FIND A SECLUDED SPOT, AND TRY NOT TO EAT ANYTHING BEFORE THE JUMP.

The Time-Step

The transfer begins, and it starts like a vibrating heat on the collar bone, not painful, not to start with. Just a hum of sensation. But the vibration spreads. Veteran COST soldiers often refer to this phenomena as 'the buzz'. The sensation builds, feeling not unlike standing near a great engine, or the wind rattling the branches of a great tree. There is long a moment of motion sickness, and one cannot always be sure if it is you that is shaking from the inside out, or the world that is shaking you from the outside in. It may just be better to close your eyes against the growing nausea as the world blurs out of focus. A star shines in the distance. You may hear the faint rustling of leaves. Some swear they hear voices in this moment, indistinct words echoing off nothingness. Some swear they feel a touch of the divine; the eyes of the eternal look down upon you. Ancient bones rattle just out of earshot, cold and brittle. Or maybe it's an illusion brought on by powerful technology grafted into your skin.

One thing is for sure: One moment you are here, and the next, you are not.

Nausea is commonly accompanied by this shift. One moment, you're in the cold of France. The next, you're in a temperature regulated hallway, looking not unlike a very poorly put together space station. Droids rush up and down the long hallway, fixing broken bits of machinery or just chattering with each other. Crows sit on high ledges, looking down, watching.

(For those of you who just apped in and didn't participate in the TDM, you'll appear alongside your comrades now, standing in this long hallway filled with droids and crows and men and women in clothing from 18th century France. Of course, you'll be wearing the minimal COST athletic issued underwear, and holding whatever one item you were allowed to bring. Surprise!)

At the end of the hall is a long table with heaps of used clothing on it. The sizes and styles vary, along with color and detail (AKA none look exactly like the linked pics, they're just a baseline, use your ~imagination~). One thing's for certain, all the clothing has been used before, with holes darned and worn edges. They're all clean, though, and each bears a single patch with the words 'KNOW YOUR RIGHTS, THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN' and 'COST sewn into the side.

They're not exactly high fashion, but they might be more comfortable than the late 18th century digs you're still wearing, if you showed up in France. Or, you know, the underwear.

Meet the Drill Sergeant

There is the echoing sound of hooves, and a strange creature emerges from a nearby room: a centaur. He smiles kindly, happy to see you've arrived. He has a significant limp in his back left leg, causing his hoof-beats to pitch an irregular rhythm as he walks slowly through the hall.

"Hello, all!" His voice is kind, but it's pitched to carry. "You may know me as Sergeant-- I am in technicality a drill sergeant. You may call me Chiron, if you wish, though I'm to understand some may know others with the same name." He laughs, amused. "In any case, welcome home. It is not much, but we have tried to make it hospitable for you in your time here. Your room assignments have been uploaded onto your BCEs, along with some technological upgrades we've been testing out. There are a few prototypes and experiments you may find in your rooms as well. Our agents are..." He looks up at the crows. "We are a curious people."

He looks over to the table stacked with clothing. "Please pick out what suits you, and make adjustments as needed. If you have any complaints, and wish to change your rooming situation, your username, anything of that nature, please send me a request. I am also known in some capacity as a trainer-"

One of the crows caws, and it sounds almost sarcastic.

Sergeant Chiron ignores it. "Hm. If you wish for me to make a training regiment for you, to better your skill in this organization, please let me know. But for now: I am to understand your last mission was... tumultuous. Please, rest and acclimate yourself to BASE."

He turns to leave, before stopping-- "And please be kind to the crows. They remember slights."

The crows' cawing sounds like laughter.

HOTSPOTS

There's been some technical difficulty since the prognosticators had their little meltdown. Coolant is in short supply, and some of the corridors of BASE are a little warmer than others. Pleasantly warm. Comfortably so, like walking through a sunbeam. In these hotspots, it feels comfortable and snug.

Characters walking through them will feel the urge to lie down and rest, maybe take a quick little nap.

Sleeping in these spots will cause unsettling or confusing dreams, but not nightmares. Dreams in these hotspots-- and sleeping in these hotspots will never be dreamless-- will be hard to remember upon waking, but they seemed very... strange. Almost as though you were intruding on something important but private.

Yet you can't quite remember it when you wake.

If you're clever and watchful, you'll notice the crows avoid these areas, so you can avoid them as well before you're seized by the urge to lie down and nap.

Particularly watchful characters may notice the hotspots are growing in size and number as the days wear on.

(More information about these and the forthcoming December plot will be coming in an infopost on the 12th, but if you have any questions now, feel free to ask here!)

read the base setting infopage

NAV. NETWORK LOGS OOC PLURK DISCORD

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sarge... listen... he can count the number of things he's familiar with around here on one hand, and since the birds talk, he can't even count them in that number... He just wants to understand...

But he acquiesces with a sigh and a nod.

"You told me that you are a teacher and a trainer." Winding the clock back to their first conversation, though the sergeant had mentioned his other pupils a moment ago. "What is it that you teach?"

"Would you like my answer, or the answer of those who write about me?" He says it with something like a sigh. "I was recruited by COST for the latter, I warn you."

He considers this for a moment.

"What is written is often embellished." Of course, the words of men often faced similar treatment, but he doesn't get that sense from the sergeant. "How would you answer for yourself?"

"I taught children how to die in pointless wars," he says, rather bluntly. A sigh, and the pensive look is gone. "I think of this as penance and improvement; I will not be convinced again to train up warriors for a petty cause, to die for the chance to become a stanza in a poem."

The jarring frankness of it was startling, though Ashitaka wouldn't seem that way outwardly; instead there's a deepening of understanding to his resigned expression, a simple nod. He has to wonder if the sergeant had always seen them as pointless or if that had been a relatively recent development, the bitterness which sets in as times pass and nothing changes for the better.

He'd seen that bitterness in many that he had spoken to since he had woken up in Jerusalem.

It didn't matter by this point, regardless.

"And now it has changed, because you train warriors for a cause you believe is just?"

So that they could die and, in the most literal way it could be meant (remembering how Xici had passed), be forgotten?

A stinging criticism. Chiron smiles, ducks his head, and takes a step back. His limp twitches, making the entire movement awkward, not the usual grace of an immortal. But that wound always acts up when guilt is present. It is, after all, magical in origin, not a simple malady at all.

"Now, I hope, I train warriors up so that they may live."

He hadn't expected such a response. It... tempers him, blunting the edge he had begun to hone in their conversation. It was a vulnerability he hadn't exposed with Eboshi or the commander, a lapse which showed to Ashitaka that he clearly did hold regret and remorse. His mouth presses into a line before he looks down for a moment, preserving this in his memories so he did not make a harmful misstep in the future.

He considers his words carefully before he continues. "We must fight for something better with the skills that we have." There was no point to abandon a boon simply because it was tarnished by the past. Ashitaka had accrued plenty of sins with his sword and bow since Nago had attacked his village, but he would not leave them behind.

"I will strive to be one of those warriors to prove your hope, then."

That it was worth it.

"Live for after," Chiron says, placing a gentle hand on Ashitaka's shoulder. "That is what I meant. I train you so you may survive the war, and live a life worth living after. That is my advice to you, Ashitaka of the Emishi. Plan for after."

And what was after?

It was a difficult thing to process for him. Being with COST merely put a stay on what was already a slowly dwindling number of hours before he would succumb to his curse. And the more he saw of the places they took him, the more he thinks there is no life after a war that would not be swallowed up in its flames again at some different point.

Of the Emishi. For a moment he considers refusing that as well, but... he lets it pass. They had raised him, and so they would always be with him, even if he had been forced to leave and never return.

The sergeants hand rests gently on his shoulder, and he feels as though it was something he should simply accept, but instead he asks, "What happens after we survive this war? Do we go home?"

"Of course."

But that is not... entirely true. Chiron frowns.

"If you wish to."

Sounds fake, but okay...

"Do you expect that some will not?"

Chiron's smile is a tired one.

"I did not."

He had thought that their situations differed strongly in some way, that the commander and the sergeant were set apart from the rest of them because they were the ones in charge. Perhaps he had assumed that they had been here from the beginning; that this had always been their fight.

Perhaps that wasn't the case.

"The fight is not yet over." His gaze was keen, seeking understanding. "Would your answer be the same if our goals were won?"

"I was initially only brought into this conflict to attempt to talk my daughters out of joining it." Chiron sighs. "Though I suppose you could say, in that sense, my goal has not been accomplished."

His daughters... Family certainly made issues more complicated.

"For whom or for what do they fight?"

Issues would complicate further were they also COST agents or if they were sided with the Regency.

"My remaining daughters fight for COST, in secret places and hidden cells. My son... he believes he can make me prouder in the Regency's ranks. He was always a difficult child."

Chiron shakes his head. "I will not leave until my family is reunited."

He looks down for a moment. "I am sorry to hear this."

Family always made things difficult. It was a difficult lens for him to look through now, since he had had to sever all ties to those he had once called family. But sometimes that, in itself, was a troubling pain.

"It is best we find a way to end this conflict, then." He looks back up to the sergeant, nodding, determination in his eyes. "I will do what I can to assure it."

all this energy calling me

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