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Entry tags:
- * dreamy,
- * npc: agent young,
- * npc: commander grothia,
- * npc: sergeant chiron,
- * setting: base,
- achilles [fate],
- akira kurusu [persona],
- arthur [inception],
- ashitaka [princess mononoke],
- daenerys targaryen [asoiaf],
- hei [darker than black],
- henry cooldown [no more heroes],
- keyleth [dungeons & dragons],
- kylar stern [the night angel trilogy],
- mordred [fate],
- noctis lucis caelum [final fantasy],
- ryuji sakamoto [persona],
- siegfried [fate],
- soldier 76 [overwatch],
- travis touchdown [no more heroes],
- yoshitsugu otani [samurai warriors]
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.
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
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
no subject
She stills. Her stomach sinks with the latter half of Grothia's thoughts. Final confirmation. Privacy.
So he... She'd sent a prayer to the Great Stallion in hopes of being heard, because Drogo believed in his god, and if any were to proffer aid, it would be his own deity. But once again, she's proven that the gods have no sway.
A denial for such privacy hovers on her tongue, but she has questions. It's why she follows once the other woman circles her desk.
"How do you obtain final confirmation?"
no subject
She walks not - far. One of the small hubs of communication in the ship, opening the door and letting Daenerys step through before she follows. Her attempt to close the door behind them halts a moment when the sliding door to seclude them takes a minute to shut - stalling half way through and Grothia gives an almighty sigh, whacking the button with the side of fist to get it the rest of the way shut.
Once it's done, she turns back to Daenerys, straightening up - and like a fish on land, in an intimate, emotional setting, she is - awkward. At odd angles in the space, trying to work out how to have this conversation. "We have a video of what we think was his last moments. We would need someone to identify him. I understand if you would prefer not too..."
no subject
The door sliding on its own is strange, and even stranger still to have the fierce Commander ramming a fist against the wayward thing. She might've smirked over the scene if this were any other scenario... might've even proffered a taunt or tease to ruffle the woman's feathers.
"I am his khaleesi. None of the others here will recognize him as I would." None know him well enough to care of his absence. And why would they? It would be much akin to another losing someone and she not realizing it. Her look grows shuttered. "Show it to me."
Grothia's awkwardness is painfully evident, but she's accustomed to these things and spares it no mind. There were those who excelled in battle, and those with interpersonal skills.
no subject
She turns away from her - striding a few steps towards a board of lights. Filled with symbols that make sense to her as she begins to type away at them, bent from her considerable height to the desk. It takes a moment, things appearing and disappearing from the screen directly above where she stands until at last, a video appears on it. "We sent him on a mission of diplomacy to which he was... uniquely suited. As for what happened after... We suspect he was ambushed on the return journey." At first it's indistinct, just grey static, tuning in and out before colour - before a figure. Tall, broad, hair pulled back behind his head, an axe in each hand. Moving, gliding, swing for swing, from a view that appears to be high up and tucked away, faintly out of focus. It goes quickly, he fights - well: it looks to be men riding huge lizards with massive teeth. Their tales moving like whips as they are yanked and pulled, the men firing off guns.
Not that it seems to be slow the infamous Khal Drogo down. Catching one under his arms, punching directly into its jaw to disorientate it. Another his axe catches into the face. Raw, unrepentant in battle cries and blood.
Until a shot takes him, sudden, sharp, into the chest. Then another, and another, slowing him down as he marches forward into the bullets strike him, but none of them takes him down. It's not until a fireball explodes - an explosion, huge and powerful, overtakes the screen and the camera fritzes out into a screech of static, that the video comes to an end. She turns back to Daenerys, waiting to see what it is.
no subject
Each bullet is like a physical blow; she stiffens more, and more, and more... until her spine is like steel, and her lips thin into a grim, unhappy line. Watching this gives him no honor, she wishes to tell Grothia. It gives her people, their khalasar which is now gone, no honor.
"Renew your magics," she demands the moment the illusion ends. Blue eyes, hardened, bright with worry, meet the Commander's. "You don't know he's dead."
The fire... Fire. It's not a funeral pyre.
"Why would they ambush him? Who are they?" Her throat works. "We cannot leave him there."
no subject
Her jaw works. In some way, she takes this personally. Her soldiers. Someone had touched her men. Hurt every time she had to have this conversation. The Daughters of the Regency feel nothing. Are nothing. They are born to serve, and to death, they will serve.
Fuck the Regency.
"We did send a recovery team. But I'm afraid... the heat of the fire. There wasn't much left." She turns away again, steps further from her to a small cabinet that when she prompts, another screen appears, a lock hidden on it that she taps away at to release the door. Inside there isn't much, save for a medium size box.
She lifts it with reverence as she comes back to Daenerys. Holding it in front of her for the other woman to take. "For you, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, wife of Khal Drogo. It was all that was left."
The charred bones inside are not soot yet.
no subject
...Things that would have him howling to the Great Stallion for vengeance on her behalf.
"When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east," she says in Dothraki, hugging the box close to her chest. She cannot say the rest--not without tears pooling in her eyes, and she will not show this pain to Grothia. Pain would not bring him back to her, and weakness would earn her no favors.
So with a quivering sigh, eyes closed, she says goodbye to him again. Always goodbye. Is she doomed to say goodbye to all those she loves? She'd not yet seen Viserion fall, but knows that comes next.
When next she opens her eyes, the cool mask has returned. Cold anger.
"Can we locate them?" A step closer to the Commander. She'd noticed the other woman was not as cold, that sharing this news was not as easy as she might've hoped. "I don't know what my reason was for allying with you before. I don't like being here, away from my dragons and people. But the Regency--Aoernul Contingent--has taken from me. For the third time, I've been stolen a proper goodbye to my husband.
"You have my word that I will fight with you. Together, we will watch their precious system crumble. We will listen to their screams as the flames eat them whole. And if we can, we will find a way to spare you from oblivion, Grothia."
no subject
There is only the pair of them, and the other woman's fierceness. The want to keep her from her fate.
Who else, who else but Chiron, had ever given her such consideration? She was a subject of Regency, cloned and made to be creatures of their will, disposed of when it suited them. Here she had no illusions about her position but that of a soldier and Commander.
"You honour me, Mother of Dragons. When the time comes, and should we come across them: you shall be the first to know of their presence." She is not an emotive woman, the Regency had made sure of that. The empathy, surprise, and warmth she feels are flickered below and deep.
But she can give her surety of her own action. What else mattered to that?