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by the inquest
"Arguments on their nature are refuted by those who return to shore, wide-eyed with tales of their savagery."
All Moirans are woken to the sounds of the ship coming to a rather grating halt some time in the early morning cycle. It’s no faster or slower than any other stop, but it is unexpected as the captains didn’t mention an upcoming disembarkment. Shortly after, a message is sent to every MID:Navigation has informed us that we’re approaching bad traveling conditions: an overactive star. Instead of stopping on Liant El, we’ll be docking here on Ceta. Please exercise caution while gathering supplies and during excursions. Follow their safety guidelines. If the chance allows, we’ll also be signing new crew on the planet. Please greet them first and show them to the ship. Thank you. The Ingress has pulled you in. Your body experiences several sensations at once: being pushed forward as if a hand is resting on your back, momentary and startling blindness, a gentle ringing in your head. You have difficulty discerning whether it is hot or cold, but where you have been prodded is noticeably warmer than the rest of you. Some may suffer from dizziness while others are perfectly fine. Once equilibrium has been reestablished, you will notice you are standing on a long platform and that the room is filled with a soft cerulean light. It's slightly humid and dark despite the glow around you, and nothing is familiar.
For those few who come through Ceta's Ingress, there will be crew of the Moira there to greet you. They tell you of the Ingress, how it is broken, even on this planet, and that the ship is headed back to the origin of this technology. This planet’s Ingress is set precariously atop a floating rock formation, the only way from one area to the next is on small air-propelled boats. Crew members will guide everyone back to the Moira and take them to the Medbay; contracts will be signed posthaste.
WELCOME TO CETA
At first glance, Ceta seems mostly inhabitable, and that's because it is. The atmosphere around the planet is surprisingly thick in most places, sometimes thin in others, and without some way to filter the air, it is mostly unbreathable; it's a giant gas planet, its core made of various molten metals and the atmosphere a mix of oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrous. Ceta's gravity is also uneven, meaning that some areas will have stronger focal points than others. The terrain, when it is visible, appears rather rocky—hardly the best conditions for life and stable living. What's more unusual, however, is that despite this fact, there is, indeed, a small populace "living" among the mist and clouds, but it's clear they do not live here year-round. It's hunting season, and they are there for the bounty.
These visitors have built small platforms that are hooked together by ropes and swinging bridges, which they call "temporaries". Unstable buildings are rare, dangerous, and spread out over these temporaries to prevent damage or accidents. The temporaries float along, swaying and shifting with the planet’s atmosphere, and posted at every point of entry and all open surfaces are a particular set of rules that everyone must abide by. They are written in dark ink and large block letters so that all passing by will stop and read them:
NO FIRE. Flammables, ignition sources, matches, lighters, and anything that creates a spark is prohibited. The atmosphere has higher levels of hydrogen, and the smallest spark will create a problem.
AIR BREATHABILITY. Monitor your vitals. Wear masks or re-breathers if needed.
WATCH THE EDGE. All walkways are the only thing from you and falling. Be cautious and watch your step. These signs should be given their due attention. The edge is just that: the end of where it is safe to walk. If a wooden plank gives way beneath your feet, you will plummet through hundred of miles of atmosphere before hitting the planet’s thin surface. The captains reiterate that crew should be careful and stick to the main temporaries, gather supplies, visit at their leisure, and then go back to the ship.
☄ IT'S A BIRD! IT'S A PLANE!The organisms that have evolved on this planet are unintelligent—a fact that is told to you by the other visitors. As there is no solid materials or ways for them to interact with their environments, these giants float along within the atmosphere, though it appears that they are flying when they are merely navigating through. They travel in groups of three or more and sometimes come close to the outskirts of the temporaries. Because there is an invisible filtration dome around the temporaries, this allows the creatures to pass through without harm and return again into the mist as they please. They are difficult to see at night and are rather skittish in the presence of sudden light.
☄ @ THE MUSEUM Every evening when work is done, artificial light sources illuminate the streets of the temporaries. There is one bar, if you can actually call it that, but the main attraction is a museum. The support structure appears to be made out of the skeletal system of the giants that "swim" and live on Ceta, and though the outside seems rather unassuming, the inside is not for the faint of heart. As it's considered informative, there are displays of the internal structures and functions of the very creatures that seem harmless and as unintelligent as the visitors claim. There are sections of the museum dedicated to their anatomy and what makes them so valuable: inside their air sacs, which is what gives the illusion to flying through the atmosphere, is a mineral that, when harvested, attunes and sharpens the senses so that brain capacity and function excel over one-hundred percent efficiency. Likewise, aside from these informative areas, there is also a history of how and when the visitors began to hunt them for this valuable, unnamed resource.
☄ HARVEST SEASON Are you looking for work? Or perhaps you're bored with your duties aboard the Moira and prefer to see just what it is these visitors do during the day? Hunters will often pay for menial labor to help with the killing and retrieval of the giants of Ceta. It is by day, not by hour, and once aboard one of the many ships, you will be put to work handling equipment or being on the lookout for "signs" of the creatures. Once they've been spotted, the real work isn't in capturing them or even trying to subdue them—though they give a good fight. It's in the harvest, done below deck once they have been safely brought into the ship's cargo areas by the tethers, that can get quite gruesome. As a defense mechanism, cutting into the skin creates a rather noxious emission that can cause disorientation, hallucinations, or unconsciousness. Worst case scenarios can often result in death.
☄ WORD LIMITS As things are beginning to wind up (or down), something seems to have gotten into the MID systems and caused a malfunction. On the morning of 03.13, it suddenly becomes clear that communicating with others who are not from the same universe or similar timelines seems very difficult. Understanding each other becomes rather hopeless as the day continues, and these repercussions can be felt across the entire ship. The Captains send out another MID message that appears as a jumble of unusual letters and symbols. However, there is one word that can be read by everyone and (hopefully) understood: RATCHET. Figuring out this problem shouldn't take long if everyone can leap the language barriers and work together.
( ooc; All New Arrivals: you have the choice of coming through the Moira's Ingress OR Ceta's Ingress. For questions, go here. Please comment to activity check to receive new ranks (if applicable)! )
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hownkai) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thisavrou_log2016-03-01 02:40 pm
no subject
When someone comes by and knocks on the door, he looks up from the work he's doing - a holographic projection of the planet he's slowly putting together -, recognizing the voice and quickly speaking up.
"Come in," he says, the words getting the door to slide open on its own so she can come in. Smiling, he turns away from the holographic table, pocketing his hands. "Hi. How've you been?"
no subject
"My lungs never recovered from the illness that nearly killed me a few years ago," or did kill her, though she doesn't think that fact needs sharing just now. Not everyone needs to know her foster son dragged her back out of the afterlife. Rosethorn hates admitting that her own oversight nearly had irrevocable consequences. "I had medicine with me, and took it, but I didn't realize there were devices that could help with breathing. I collapsed. If someone hadn't gotten me back to the ship, I would most likely have died."
Admittedly, dying seems a lot less permanent after recent events aboard the Moira, but... only two out of three murder victims were revived. A better than even chance isn't enough to make them odds she wants to risk.
no subject
He steps away from the table, letting her take a good look if she wants to since she seemed interested, making his way over to her robot and greeting it with a smile. "Hey, Calendula." Then promptly, he turns his attention back to Rosethorn. "So, is that what you want to ask me, to get you one of those devices?"
Probably more than that, he figures, or she could have just gotten a basic one from the medbay.
no subject
Between Rosethorn's lungs and Lark's asthma, she has plenty of practice treating a variety of breathing problems. The issue is that medicine just isn't enough to restore either of them to what they used to be able to do. Lark, at least, had her asthma well in-hand with Rosethorn's medicine available to her. She just isn't a professional acrobat anymore.
"Actually," Rosethorn says more softly when Bruce asks what she wants, all the frustration leeching back out of her, "I was wondering if there was a modification you could make to Calendula. It's the sort of thing I would want to take with me everywhere. The problem isn't just this planet. High altitudes, anywhere the air is thin, even just too much exertion in a place where I can normally breathe just fine..."
no subject
Not to mention it wouldn't be the first time he'd meet someone too stubborn to seek out help or make sure they're back in top shape before being out and about again.
He nods, again looking over her robot as she talks. "It's not impossible," he reaches for the bot, turning it around gently this way and that, not yet deactivating it or doing anything at all. "We could fit an oxygen reserve for emergency situations, possibly an air filter too, and add a mask to it, but it might need an annex added to the robot. It's not as if it has a lot of space in here. I can make it discreet enough, I think... but it'd still add a little to its size. Would that be alright by you?"
no subject
"That's alright. It's not as if it will be too heavy for it to carry, presumably." Her robot doesn't need to be tiny or pretty. If it can do this for her, she'll finally start taking Calendula everywhere and making much more use of it. "It wasn't possible, on my planet, to do more for my breathing than the medicines I take already do. You know we don't have advanced technology. Even with magic, our healers couldn't manage it. Lack of air before I was revived during the epidemic led to tissue death and lingering damage in a couple parts of my body, most notably my brain and lungs. I learned how to talk all over again, and I didn't lose anything of my intelligence or my personality. The rest... it seemed a small enough price, however frustrating I find it."
Which explains why she's so careful with her words now. She very rarely slurs, but it costs a certain amount of consistent effort and deliberation to keep her speech crisp and clear. She doesn't like talking about this, but if she's asking this favor of Bruce, she's willing to offer him more details than she normally might. Opening up seems a small price to pay in thanks for lungs that aren't struggling all the time.
no subject
"No, and the systems shouldn't be so heavy that it would affect its hovering capacity either. So it can still follow you around wherever you choose to take it." He gets the bot to follow him to the holographic table, with a few swipes of his hand clearing out the image of the planet. He taps on the menu instead, activating the scanning program so he can get a complete and thorough schematic of the robot added onto his files.
All the while he listens to her story, eyes going to her every so often just to let her know he's paying attention. From what he's learned of her world so far, little as it may be, it's enough for him to easily imagine how complicated a situation like that must have been. But she's here, alive and standing, which, considering the quick summary she's just offered him, is a small miracle in and of itself.
"That's amazing," he says at first, then quickly goes on to explain. "That you recovered from something like that, I mean. Most people in my world would either take to their beds or heavily rely on machines to stay alive — most likely a combination of both. It's a miracle you're even standing up right now. I mean that as a good thing, obviously, it's... impressive."
no subject
"I was lucky, my foster children were stubborn and uniquely talented, and maybe all the gods I vowed to serve decided to help too. I always knew it was a risk, if I started picking apart another disease, but I couldn't do nothing." Both because she would have blamed herself for it, and because her vows say she can't turn away from helping anyone in need. She takes those very seriously.
"Before I joined the temple, I spent years researching infectious diseases and working on an alternative to giving people untested cures. I lost research partners." Members of her team lost their sight or their lives, falling prey to the very diseases they were working to cure. Rosethorn wrote Emelan's quarantine procedures. She's one of her country's two leading experts in infectious disease, and near the top of that list for her world. If anyone knew what she was getting into working with the Blue Pox, it would be Rosethorn.
no subject
Not a lot could be done to change things, but Bruce did what he could with what he had. He'd wanted to focus on helping people, and that was exactly what he did. Besides, it was pretty helpful that he never got sick, that no disease would ever pass on to him, no matter how exposed he might have been.
"I'm sorry to hear about your partners," he offers a little more solemnly, falling quiet for a moment as he turns the robot around and scans another area. "Did you manage to find some cures? And your children— they work on the same things as you? As in... plants, diseases, that kind of thing?"
no subject
That Bruce has done a lot of the sort of work she appreciates and respects most only makes her like him more.
She nods confirmation that they found cures. "The research project I'm best known for developed... human essence. We can test all cures on that, never administering experimental treatments to living people. And they solved the Blue Pox cure while I was bedridden, but not until after I'd gotten much too sick to demand to see the day's notes every evening." ...Just in case anyone was wondering, Rosethorn is a terrible patient, awful at sitting idle and letting other people do the work.
"Lark and I... we have a cottage at Winding Circle, and they sent us mages who were struggling to fit into the temple school and dormitories. Some of them became family. A couple of my children were working with me and my research partner Crane during the Blue Pox epidemic, though they were only around eleven at the time." Which makes them fourteen now. She hates the fact that the Ingress forced her to leave Briar alone with Evvy, who is ten years old and half-trained, in an unfamiliar country where they don't speak the language. "Briar is my student as well as my son. He works with plants and knows everything I do about making medicines, though he specializes in shakkans, miniature trees, to make a living. Most of his medicine is for personal use or people who need it rather than for sale. Tris is a weather witch, but she's well-read, intelligent, and very good at spotting patterns and thinking critically. She's an excellent assistant regardless of whether the research is in her usual areas of expertise."
Rosethorn has a lot of children, probably more than Bruce guessed. It's obvious, when she talks about her family, just how much she misses them. "Sandry works with thread and fabric. and Daja is a smith. Evvy, who I ought to count now even if we only found her a few months ago and she's never so much as met Lark, works with stones." It isn't as if Rosethorn and Lark adopt every child who comes to them, but Evvy has no family. All she has are her cats, Rosethorn, and Briar. Rosethorn doesn't foresee the girl building a separate life for herself and leaving anytime soon. She's still so young.
no subject
Or the people in it wouldn't be human. They wouldn't be human in the sense he knows them, at least. Which may just be a good or a bad thing to think of, depends on how one looks at it.
Bruce listens with interest to everything she says, but even with his attention span and good memory, he realizes that's a whole lot of names for him to remember. From what he understands, though, they're not her biological children, at least not all of them— not that it matters on an emotional level, but he would have been very much surprised if they were, considering how much she's obviously worked throughout her life.
A part of him too, small and quiet, aches a little on the inside, tainting his expression with the faintest trace of sadness, a wistful longing for something he's never had and never will. He smiles, though, eyes fixed on the robot instead. Focusing on work makes it easier to let some things go by unnoticed, or at least not commented on.
"That's a lot of children," he says with amusement, which effectively drowns out whatever feelings he was mulling over in his head a moment ago. "Sounds lively. About that human essence, though, is it some kind of... shape? Do you create a body, or is just some kind of liquid mixture that reacts in the same way a human body would? Assuming it's even a physical thing at all." He doesn't even know where to start or end, when magic is involved, but he does have interest in learning.
no subject
None of her children are biologically related to her. She doesn't want to have any who are, nor does Lark. They'd have to welcome a third person into their partnership, at least to biologically father the child, and there's very little motivation to do so when their lives wound up so full of children just through fate or coincidence. Besides, Lark has had children in the traditional way, and lost them.
It doesn't take biological ties to make a family. Just look at Rosethorn's blood relatives, and then at the family who found their way into her lives. Bruce could still have this, if he wants to.
"It's a substance that reacts the same way, with a few variations so that we can accurately test for everyone's responses. Nothing so unwieldy or unsettling as a physical body. It took a team of us years to develop." They can distill diseases down into liquid essence as well, which is a lot of the work she does during epidemics. Manipulating disease essence trying to find all of the keys to create a cure.
no subject
(They must've been happy at some point, right? There must have been a few happy moments there, even despite all the suffering she went through, before her suffering was put to an end. But the power in dark memories is an overwhelming thing. They run like wildfire, they consume and destroy, wreck everything in their path. They take up the space of all things good and reduces them to just broken shreds in an ocean of darkness.)
Too close. Bruce's eyes shift to the robot again, a slow breath clearing his lungs, and he just nods at her words at first. He lets her keep talking instead, attention shifting to her once more when she goes back to talking about the essence she created.
It's a far safer topic, away from thoughts of any kind of family life —past, present or future.
"It would be pretty weird, I'll admit," he arches his eyebrows a little. It makes him wonder, though, if that were possible, if such a body was close enough to a human being's, would it even have a conscience? Would it be aware, or alive? Not that he's curious enough to try. A little too many ethical issues there for him to want to. "But that's impressive. Would you know how to replicate it here? Not that we need it, I know. I ask mostly because I'm curious about it."
no subject
She doesn't think the memories of her father screaming in her ear, of being locked away in his house, will ever become less vivid. It's a voice she still hears in her head sometimes. His cruelty was bad enough, but there are days when she thinks the false affection may have been worse. Rosethorn left her father's home twenty years ago, and she still has trouble trusting that people mean it when they hug her or tell her they love her. She believes the family that's built up around her. Anyone outside of that is much harder to trust, and she rarely offers any of the physical or verbal trappings of emotion even to the people she loves most. Rosethorn knows how easily those can be counterfeited. She's happy enough to let the topic go, for her own sake as well as Bruce's.
"It would be a challenge," Rosethorn muses. It would take an awful lot of work and frustration. Not starting from scratch by any means, but working without some of the necessary materials for a formula complex and finicky enough to protest substitutions. It would give her something to do besides garden, she supposes. "And we developed a formula that works for humans. Not all of the Moira's crew are human. We would still be treating anyone else with untried remedies. I agree that it would be better to begin working on it now, rather than during an emergency epidemic if we picked something up during one of our stops."
Disease on the sort of ship Rosethorn is useful, built of wood and sailing across oceans, is a nightmare. She thinks it would be the same on a spaceship.
no subject
There's more to family than just his parents, though. He did have his aunt, she tried to help him, raised him as if he were her own child, but it wasn't the same. By then he was just a little too broken, a little too lost. Too far down a pit for either of them to be able to do much, even if he does have nice memories of her too.
He's thankful Rosethorn doesn't insist on that topic, though he didn't think she would. Someone who's been through anything even remotely similar to what he did as a child would know how hard it is to even think about those memories, let alone share them. He would expect no less from her than to respect his boundaries and quietly agree to let it go, and he relaxes a little again as he focuses on the other subject.
"I wasn't even thinking of something we could use to test remedies on, I'll be honest. Although I do think we've been lucky we haven't had any kind of outbreak on the ship so far." Nothing short of a miracle to him, if he's to be honest. Even if they don't pick something up on one of the planets they dock, with all kinds of people being brought from all sorts of different worlds, they're bound to get someone carrying a pathogen that not everyone (or even no one else) is immune to. "It could still be useful in that sense, though. Not everyone is human but a good portion of us are, so it's a start. We can always study other species on board and see if we can adjust the formula later on, too."
no subject
That they understand how much they mean to her without words or gestures is something for which she's unspeakably grateful. Some people would be too insecure or demanding to accept that and still stay with her.
She manages a laugh when he admits he wasn't after the practical applications. "Scientific curiosity? I wouldn't put in all the time to convert it for use with the materials available here just to satisfy that, but... I think it's worthwhile for everyone's safety. When supplies run low is always when things go wrong."
Rosethorn thinks that additional adaptation for other species is very ambitious, but she's willing to attempt it if they can come up with a baseline formula they can produce here.
no subject
He grins almost guiltily when she laughs, shrugging a little. "I'm a physicist, we work on things we'll never use all the time." Not strictly a lie, not the complete truth either, but Bruce really is just joking here.
"But it would be useful. Medbay people might want in on that too, if you'd be open to the idea. It could be an interesting project to bring everyone together in. Science people, medical people... you." Because she's a whole other kind of classification that he doesn't even know where to place.
no subject
She nods, considering. "It's a process that might not make sense to a lot of scientists and healers, simply because my magic is very different than that of most worlds I've found represented here, and it will at the very least factor into my work. I'd be willing to try, though. And if I could manage to work with Crane, I'm sure I'll be able to work with any of you."
Rosethorn still loves Crane, most of the time, though it would be pulling teeth to get either of them to admit it. They're fantastic research partners, but only in the case of something so important that it overrides their usual (often petty) rivalry.
no subject
He believes it now, while before he'd have thought it insane, or would've tried to explain it with science— but at this point, he's willing to believe it's something else entirely. Not just that, but something that can actually work alongside science. He'd lie if he said he's not excited by the prospect of figuring that out.
He goes back to her question then, not at all surprised that she doesn't know. It's not a field of study everyone here is familiar with, after all. "A physicist studies the interactions of matter and energy across the physical universe. That's what physics focuses on: matter and how it moves through time and space. I specialized in nuclear physics, which studies the nuclei of atoms, their composition and interactions. Basically, it's the study of the tiniest particles that everything in the physical universe is composed of."
no subject
As for Bruce, Rosethorn isn't really concerned about working with him. He seems very uninclined to offer insults or offense. "I'm more likely to be difficult than you are, I think. And I don't mind talking about magic."
She listens, intrigued. Rosethorn has no idea what an atom is, but the idea of analyzing the substance that makes up everything is a good one. "We don't have the means to do your work, in my world. I would need to study a lot if I wanted to understand it."
no subject
It must be somewhat frustrating for her, though. For Crane too, possibly. He kind of feels for Lark, the innocent bystander, and he even chuckles quietly at the mention of meditation.
"Alright. Then I'm sure we'll manage to work together just fine." Bruce really is very patient, it's rare the person he can't work with, provided they know what they're doing. And Rosethorn evidently does, even if she might not understand what an atom even is.
"The basic concept is easy enough to explain. All matter, be it tangible or not, is made up of atoms, particles so small you can't even see them, and they have varying amounts of the same constituents that make them differ from each other. They bind together to form molecules. For instance, water molecules are made of one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms. Oxygen also exists in the air we breathe, although it pairs up with itself, forming dioxygen molecules— two oxygen atoms put together. This molecule is fundamental for our respiratory system, for instance. If there's no molecular oxygen, we can't survive. And then you have ozone molecules, which are made up of three oxygen atoms put together. Unlike dioxygen, it's much more unstable and even dangerous to people." He pauses then, and immediately looks at her with an apologetic smile. "Too much? I go off on tangents sometimes. Sorry."
no subject
She likes her somewhat peaceful cottage and her usually quiet garden, both of which are helped by Lark's cheerful presence. While she misses both Crane and familiarity enough that she'd welcome a verbal sparring match or two, she can't take that in the close confines of a competitive research environment day after day. Not and be happy.
Not too much. She counters wryly, "Too relevant, given why I came to see you today. Of course, that's all the more reason I should learn about it." Understanding air and what makes it more or less breathable seems like a very good use of her time, if a little bit of a sore subject at this particular moment. Literally, given the pain lingering in her lungs.
no subject
Not that Bruce has ever had any relationship like that, not to that extent anyway, but he does get it.
"Right," he chuckles softly, looking a little apologetic. "It didn't even occur to me." But she is right, it might just come in handy for her to know a little more about this. Which is why he goes on to add, gesturing at her robot. "That's what Calendula will be equipped with, by the way. An oxygen reserve. This way it'll provide you with the oxygen you need, be it because of your condition, or because of environmental conditions."
no subject
"Will it be able to draw oxygen from the air, provided there is some, and replenish itself on its own?" The problem with reserves is that they run dry. Sometimes there really might not be anything to breathe, but sometimes the air is just too thin for her to manage it. And that raises another question. "And what's in the air besides oxygen?"
no subject
"Calendula will answer to basic voice commands anyway, if you need it to do anything related to the reserve, the filter or the mask. By the way, you should come by every so often for maintenance purposes. Especially after a situation where you need to use the tank, just to make sure it's all working properly."
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