all this energy calling me

[agogemod]

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

Comments

[mylawn]

I spoke to her. I know indoctrination when I hear it.

[Which makes it all the more tragic--that the one thing she believed in more than anything would betray her in such a way. That isn't to say 76 thinks COST is free of those kinds of tactics, but Chiron has put his mind at ease, if only slightly. Still, he knows where the best intentions lead, more often than not.

It seems more prudent, however, to let Ashitaka sort through this. He can't say he buys into some other culture's mythology (hell, he barely buys into his own culture's mythology), but he recognizes the value of faith just as much as he knows how important it is to question it. This is the first he's heard of the Regency's religion, so of course he'll take the time to listen, even if the information is all secondhand.

He might not know much about the Watcher, but 76 knows war intimately. There's no escaping it--as long as there are people, there is going to be conflict. He's spent enough time trying to prevent it to know that it's futile.]

People try to make sense of things as best as they can. Doesn't mean they're very good at it.

[lonelywar]

[The term was not something he would've been immediately familiar with, but he pieces together what he means by it. It's true, though — certainly by what they had been told about the Regency and its efforts to eliminate conflict through the suppression of free will, it was certainly in-line with what they were willing to do. It only made their soldiers all the more pitiable, though, and COST's mission even more cloudy.

He had told the commander after Xici's execution that he would have had her put to the sword for a clean death, one she could take pride in, rather than to suffer and die in the throes of the knowledge that everything she had dedicated herself to had betrayed her. He still believed that for the most part, but—could he have really done that? He's not sure. His heart still wished to search for a way to free them from the tyranny of a force that could destroy them from their own history so it might be a possibility.

76's words make sense, at least through his own limited lens. He sighs, nods.]

...I cannot say I enjoyed the feeling that the story gave me. [He crosses his arms, shaking his head.] If all of life is a game for the enjoyment of greater entities, it would make them complicit in the suffering that war causes. [Thunderclouds seem to cloud his expression.] How could one wish to please a god like that?

[mylawn]

[76 knows, on some level, that recognizing the Regency's propaganda is also buying into what COST has told them, if only a little. He still wants to be suspicious, but it's getting difficult, if only because he's seen what the Regency is capable of. 76 grounds himself by keeping the reminder that COST could likely erase a person in a similar fashion, and there's nothing to say they haven't done so. There's no way of knowing if their side isn't just as bad as the regime they're trying to fight.]

You'd be surprised by the mental gymnastics people are capable of.

[He sounds a little bitter, like he might have personal experience in that department.]

If it's all you know and you're never given a reason to question it, that's it.

[lonelywar]

[Ashitaka had been encouraged to be an element that could be critical of both sides, though also one that tried to examine and understand them, to see through to the heart of their motivations and discern its merit or its demerit. He has been trying to do this to the best of his ability for both COST and the Regency, prying what information he could from their own superiors and from Xici when he had been able to speak with her, but he still felt as though the truth was hidden from him.

Regardless, he was far less free here with how he would respond to this information than he had been back home. Even if they learned something troublesome about COST, how much power would they have to act on it?

Ashitaka picks up on the wealth of knowledge that seemed to behind that statement. It wasn't surprising or out of place; the older soldier certainly carried that mien with him.

He nods, though he still seems troubled.]

What does this mean of those that we fight? [He pauses a moment before clarifying:] Not those that lead, but those that we will actually face? Is there any room for mercy?

[mylawn]

There's always room for mercy.

[76, however, can't make any promises about it, simply because there are so many variables involved. What they go up against won't be the same all the time, and they're going to have to tailor what they do accordingly.]

Whether it's a good idea or not depends on the situation.

[Implying that they will have to weight the consequences, constantly. Decide, often in split seconds, what is or isn't for the greater good. There's no getting around that.]

That's a choice we all have to make ourselves.

[lonelywar]

[It was a lesson that he had not been allowed the opportunity to learn, taken as he was from the middle of his journey. It was a lesson that this man had probably learned long ago and only had been reinforced many times over since then. He feels the truth in the words, and the experience implied, and he accepts it. Though one might yearn for a far easier answer to such a difficult question.]

I merely hope the situation will give us space for clemency.

[He is troubled by the complete nature of this war, that there was no escape for those of their enemy from their side. That there was no escape for any of them, should their identities be loosed.

Speaking of identities. Ashitaka finds him at a conversational stumbling block, deciding to simply cut to the chase.]

May I have your name? [He's just very direct, sometimes...]

[mylawn]

[76 knows all to well that clemency is hard to come by in a war of this caliber, but just sitting here and talking about it won't do any good, he thinks. Something like this is often learned directly through experience, and it's never pretty. He remembers being young, exposed to war for the first time, but by now it feels like a life lived by an entirely different person.

For once, giving a name is easier, even if it's not really his name at all.]

It's 76.

[By now, he expects a little bit of pushback on that answer--or at least some confusion at his mode of address, but if it bothers him at all, he doesn't let it show.]

[lonelywar]

[It had seemed easier in his own time. There was more time for action and reaction, for declarations and entreating peace. War had seemed so harsh outside of his own village and their lands, where rifles and cannons and bombs had started to spread in popularity for waging war. It seemed so much more vicious than firing an arrow, so much less merciful. Like a power man should have never been given to brandish against themselves.

But that was merely his own perspective, in the particular frame of history he had so far lived through.

That... seems more like a number than a name, but if he says so...

Ashitaka gives a slightly hesitant nod. He wasn't going to argue with it. Most names given to him sound bizarre to his ears, anyway.]

I am Ashitaka. ...Thank you for speaking with me, 76.

[mylawn]

Yeah.

[You're welcome seems out of place--this is what anyone would have done, he hopes. For now, he doesn't want to overstay his welcome, and he can't exactly forget that he walked in on what was effectively a funeral rite. He stands, a little apologetic.]

Sorry for interrupting.

[The best thing to do for now seems to leave Ashitaka alone with his thoughts--or to finish anything else he feels he needs to do for Xici.]

[lonelywar]

No. [Apology seems slightly out-of-place as well, at least to Ashitaka's ears. He shakes his head.] Speaking to you helped my confidence in this. I am happy you were here.

[At least he didn't have to be alone, fumbling through the funeral rights of a culture and religion he still felt as though he barely understood.

With this, he gives a final nod to his companion.] Until the next time I see you. [And then disappearing into the quiet corridors of BASE.]