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

[Well that's... interesting. Not the part about the clothing being retrieved from the dead, he worked that out easily, but the alchemy? The way she put it, it's obvious it's not just some kind of attempt at sewing bits together. Ha.]

I have never heard of such a thing, but considering everything I've seen since joining COST? I know it would be foolish to completely doubt such possibilities.

[He shrugs lightly, and takes the coat off before offering it over.]

Do what you want with it.

You're a giving sort. [She takes the coat gladly, drapes it over her arm before looking back up at him.]

And open-minded. Plenty of people doubt things until they see them with their own eyes. Basically, stubborn.

Never heard of alchemy, though... not even in fiction? Where are you from? [She pauses - ah. Right. There's another question that's just as important, these days.]

'When' might be an explanation, actually.

Giving? [He snorts, and shakes his head.] No. But open-minded I'll take. A good strategist has to be open to all possibilities or they'd be a fool.

[Which was one of the reasons his dear friend Mitsunari hadn't always been the best one: his refusal to consider certain things because of his sense of honour had impeded him many times and would continue to do so until they died. But that was one of the reasons Yoshitsugu couldn't help but be fond of him, and want to help him try and fulfil his hopeless dream.]

Ha, indeed. [He folds his arms, tapping the left one gently in an idle gesture. 'When' and 'where' opens up more possibilities than one can imagine for their unit, doesn't it?] The country of Japan, before the beginning of the Tokugawa era.

[She puts her fingers to her chin as she thinks. Tokugawa era - ah, the Edo period. That'd make him from the Sengoku, wouldn't it? Japanese history is hardly her specialty - the Chinese made great strides in the art of alchemy, but she's read little on Japan. Still, she knows the broad strokes.

A strategist, too. The time period at least means he has some use for his art.]

That would place you... hm. A few hundred years into the past, for me. [Where she was when she was pulled here, anyway - her mortal life predates his by a couple hundred years.]

I was in Japan before I arrived here, actually. But it was in the modern day, so I can't comment on anything you'd know. [Bright lights, packed city streets, concerts and multicolored candies - her and Saint-Germain didn't exactly tour a museum, though now she wishes they had.]

Still, knowing your country still exists even hundreds of years after you must be comforting. Unless you aren't very fond.

[It's always fascinating to hear about the future of his world, if it is indeed the exact same one. The flow brought constant change, the movement of technology and culture and, indeed, all things. Ha. And that's what the Regency wants to alter to its advantage, if what they hear is true.]

I've heard a little about the future of Japan from another member of COST, so I'm not entirely blind to what will come.

[Ryuji, the young man with a filthy mouth but pure heart for whom he was gaining a brotherly affection. It reminds Yoshitsugu, actually... he was supposed to ask about a certain song once they got back to base. 'Superstition.' An intriguing title, for sure.]

But I can't say I am unhappy about it. [He makes an amused sound in the back of his throat.] The food sounds much more varied compared to what I knew.

That's one benefit of modern trade. Humanity might have different languages, but you can understand how something tastes without understanding the language of the people who made it. So food's become more varied globally. The Americans eat sushi, the Japanese enjoy hamburgers.

Of course, spreading things around means some of the individuality is lost. Some things are special because they're kept to yourself.

[She hasn't thought too much about it - she isn't someone who sees meals as something to enjoy - but being so focused on language and understanding means she's dedicated some thought to how cultures blend together, and that includes food.]

It's funny. If we brought you to modern Japan, you'd have trouble reading any of the English signage.

English? [It takes him a moment but he does know of it; didn't Ieyasu end up with a follower from the land that spoke it? His name escapes Yoshitsugu, though.] I would. The Portuguese traders mentioned it on occasion but it wasn't something I learned much about, aside from its mere existence.

[He goes quiet for a moment, lost in memories of that short and sweet few years of peace during Hideyoshi's rule; how oddly nostalgic of him! It fades quickly enough though, interrupted by thoughts of the present instead.]

...another member of COST is eager for me to see the Japan of the future. I'll have to meet him there as a ghost, one day.

Japan has become very fond of English, in the modern day. Not the intricacies of the language, but just the look and sound of its vocabulary. Stores often advertise using English words.

And we might go to Japan ahead of your time. No need to be a ghost, you can just be a time traveling problem solver. Though it would depend on how far into the future that person is, from you.

Hundreds of years... but I'd rather his home was spared that. It wouldn't surprise me if Japan was targeted by the Regency at some point, however.

[He's clearly thought about this before; not just in regards to his own time, but the history of Japan and the other countries he knows something of. The scale makes it a somewhat difficult task but it's a surely a useful one.]

There are three, perhaps four, critical points at which the entire history of my country could be changed by one man's death over the span of just twenty years. One might wonder how they determine which changes benefit them.

all this energy calling me

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