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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
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"Well met, Jean Neige." He says it with the slightest edge of sarcasm. "I see you took well to what we were able to salvage for you. I'm glad."
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"No French, please, just plain Jon Snow. The garb is better than roughspun blacks, at any rate. Better than the Sans-Culottes wore, too.
"What do the crows want, aside from whatever they can get? I've fed ravens before... I suppose I've fed crows, too, but not in the same way."
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He looks at the nearest one, which seems to be listening in with some interest.
"To do good work, and be judged accordingly."
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"What sort of work do they do? From the noises they're making, I'd guess they're responsible for the names you're calling us on the BCEs." It's a jest, though: he can't imagine what crows would be doing other than picking over the dead, or stealing someone's lunch.
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"AI?" Before he gets an answer to that, he adds, "I'm not sure the order was clear. Now that it is..." He shrugs. It's something he's tried not to do since the aftermath of his conversation with Xici, but he may have done it anyway.
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"I can imagine that I might have joined you later than anything I can remember... if I don't fall in the wars to come. My wars, not yours. But if my people lose their war, then all life ends for all of them, for everyone, even for the beasts. If I agreed to leave them with that threat coming, your need must have sounded more dire to me."
And that must be unimaginably dire: an enemy that can unmake entire worlds in a day. Jon feels compelled, for the time being, to believe Chiron, and that much shows on his face and in his tone, which is troubled rather than challenging.
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"You have no children now," he says, "but it is possible, in all the times and worlds, that you may. These hypotheticals have been targeted by the Regency as being... destructive to their rule." Chiron sighs. "We involved you in this war because you are already."
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Then, in increments, it's come to him, along with things he never asked for. He could be the Lord of Winterfell if he chose; instead, he's been King in the North, and Winterfell is his as much as it belongs to any true Stark, but Father and Robb and Rickon are all gone. He wanted some kind of miraculous help in the war of the living against the dead, and Daenerys brought her dragons to Westeros and joined them to his cause, but there was the grief and guilt of losing one. He wanted her, and now he has her, as she has him... there's no thorn in that yet, only joy. He wants a son. Her belief in herself aside, there's no way to be sure that will ever happen until it does. He has more belief in her ability to bear a child than she does.
It's an easy enough thing for Chiron to say. Most men want children of their own. Even when Jon had thought he wouldn't, Benjen Stark had seen the truth of it: Jon would one day.
His eyes aren't shuttered for long... just long enough that it's obvious that he's absorbed some kind of blow.
"Is that true for everyone?"
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"In a way. Some of your recruits are volunteers, some are here to protect the progeny of those dear to them, or for choices they've not yet made. It varies. But one thing remains the same: we all fight for the sanctity of the future."
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And if there are children for him and maybe for Daenerys, children who survive, children who live to become a threat to the Regency in latter days... that would mean that he and Daenerys and all of their allies have beaten the Dead, have beaten Cersei, and may find some peace outside of the grave. If it's true, it means that there's a road to it.
The fact that he can feel his desire to cling to this hope in the deepest part of his bones makes him distrust it a little, but his instincts pull him in both directions. His ultimate inclination is to like Chiron, whether or not he can remember agreeing to join his cause.
"I don't know how much you really know of me, but that is something I'd fight for." A pause, a little awkward, before he continues. "And another reason I'm coming to you. Training routines: I need to learn how to use your guns. I don't know when they came into use between Jerusalem and Paris, but I'd have to be a fool not to notice that there were no arrows at Valmy."
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