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thisavrou_log2017-05-06 05:15 am
may mod plot log
When: May 7 to May 31th
Where: Thisavrou + New Worlds
Warnings: none in the description; please label your headers where appropriate!
thisavrou monthly info ( the tmi )
⋆ Storm Update: On day 29 (May 9), the typical structure of the storm surrounding Thisavrou seems to shift visually with the clouds and intermittent flashes of lightning forming new patterns. At the same time, Ingress technicians detect a strange energy signature emanating from the facility at low levels, almost like a leak. There is no obvious effect at first, but by the end of the day, that energy begins to flow across Kauto and Chioni with curious results.
Residents of the planet will soon discover that they have acquired strange superhuman (or superbeing, for those who aren't human) powers. Those who are particularly social or who have been around for a long time may realize that these powers resemble abilities wielded by those who have come through the Ingress in the past, or even those who have never set foot on Thisavrou but are from the same world as someone who has.
Effects of the odd energy vary – people may discover they can read minds, cast magical spells, or have become invulnerable. These powers may also replace ones they already have. The level of control is just as unpredictable—someone may be a natural with their new abilities, or be in great need of a tutor!
By day 33 (May 13 OOC), the effect has faded, and the technicians soon decide to restrict the days that the Ingress is active going forward.
[[For more information, check out this OOC post!]]
⋆ While Kauto has always been known for its temperate climate, the slow changes have accelerated as the onslaught of the storm around Thisavrou shifts. A noticeable drop in temperature from the norm finds the planet settling at an alarming 54° F / 12° C during the day. And at night, temperatures fluctuate between this and 40° F / 4° C. All residents who tend crops will discover that some plants and other vegetation have withered without the warmer temperatures. An evacuation of all scientists and researchers on Chioni will be announced within the month due to its incredibly unstable surface temperature of -60° F / -51 C during the day and -150° F / -101° C at night. Access to some of the furthest burgs have been restricted until further notice because of this.
⋆ Savrii Notices:
As recently made public in Deputy TOD’s broadcast, a foreign presence has infiltrated Thisavrou using the bodies of its recent travelers. Presumed both intelligent and hostile, the contaminant has prompted a rapid response from the Savrii. Testing and Decontamination Centers have been established on Kauto and Chioni, and all persons who have traveled off-world in the last two cycles are called to present themselves for examination.
The basic procedure will last about six hours: medical tests, technical analysis, and a high-powered chemical wash designed to “make any stowaways run screaming”. All of this in addition to prolonged questioning as to their recent points of contact both on Thisavrou and outside. Parties who demonstrate cause for concern (including, of course, acknowledged contact with the contaminant) will be flagged in the Savrii’s database and required to return for twice-weekly visits to continue the procedures. Other than the phantom emptiness described previously, characters will feel no side effects of their exposure at this time. They may, however, find casual passerby avoiding them after a visit. Medical secrecy only goes so far against fear of plague, and that chemical wash also stains most creatures a cheery yellow-green.
Whatever its effect on your life personally, the social effects of the incursion are difficult to miss. Whispers and fear turn to paranoia and full-blown fights, and Thisavrou's population centers are packed with heated debates about safety versus exploration-- or sometimes, versus the explorers themselves. A small black-market trade in preventative medicine (real or otherwise) has sprung up, and rumors claim that the full list of infected persons can be bought too: by those who have the right connections and a lot of cash to pay.
Combating this upswing of violence and disorder? Thisavrou's intermediaries. Combination police force and negotiators, the intermediaries have always been crucial to the rule of law on Thisavrou. Recent events, however, have seen them advertising their presence more: some wearing a strip of silver cloth to mark their status and availability to help. If approached by one, characters will experience a supernatural sense of calm. They will find their concerns met with sympathy and understanding... but somehow also the exact right words to talk all parties down. Whether that means persuading your neighbor to leave you out of his conspiracy theories or explaining why you need to report in for testing... well, that depends on you.
Following the opening of travel to the planet Deslora, an unscrupulous individual smuggled back clownbee larvae. In the weeks since, the clownbees have become a mildly invasive species in certain areas of Region 3. Victims of clownbee stings report an irresistible urge to smear garish makeup across their faces and the need to consume as much sugar as possible. Citizens are cautioned to listen for telltale sounds of buzzing and honking, and be wary.
An organization that purchased samples from the planet Aueia several months ago is opening an exhibit at a museum in Region 1. Those who participated in gathering objects from the planet, as well as any who care to attend, are invited to attend a small opening reception for the exhibit, where they will be presented with a small gift from an ardent lover of that world's wildlife: a small whale carving made of stone with mild psychic properties. When touched with bare hands, the holder will receive a mental picture of someone who means a great deal to them, with perfect clarity, as if they saw them just a moment ago.
⋆ Mission notices have been posted to TABs for anyone interested in earning a little extra cash. Available missions are listed below:
Day 28 (May 8th) - While recent events have been difficult, the Department of Ingress Contingency Coordination is impressed by the rapid response of all Savrii in coming together to ensure public safety. A few holdouts, however, are rumored to be hiding their conditions-- and thereby putting not only themselves, but the entire population at risk. The department will therefore offer a reward of 100 sencs to citizens willing to report these cases, with an additional 200 senc bonus if the persons involved have been directly exposed to the contaminants. As Deputy TOD puts it, "you're only SAVING EVERYONE'S LIVES". Day 36 (May 16th) - EN-Line systems throughout Thisavrou have begun to suffer a strange outbreak of mechanical failures that are leaving commuters by the wayside. Rumor claims some of Chioni's insectoid residents might be to blame. The Savrii will pay 50 sencs to anyone capable of confirming the problem, and 300 to anyone who solves it.
ingress travel info
⋆ Missions are jobs or specific tasks listed on the TAB once new worlds are open for exploration. Be sure to check if Clearance Levels are required to accept some of these missions.
⋆ Clearance Levels are given to visitors for the length of time they have been on Thisavrou (or traveling on the Moira). Each CL offers access to certain things or incentives that others will not have. As of this month, security will be in place outside the Ingress to ensure no clearance violations occur.
⋆ The Ingress powers Thisavrou in every way: economically, socially, and as a literal source of light and heat. However, between the biohazard incident and the recent escalation of the storms, the hazards of free travel can no longer be ignored. As a result, on May 10, the Ingress will be sealed against intrusion.
While sealed, Ingress travel must be directly controlled by the technicians. Instead of directing the open channel of the Ingress, technicians will be opening access to specific worlds, and closing it immediately after. As a result, traveling parties will have certain timeframes to leave and to return. Missing your schedule can result in being stranded offworld until the next travel period comes. Additionally, no new arrivals will be able to appear while Thisavrou's Ingress remains sealed. ((For OOC ramifications, check out the new app schedule!))
* Due to the closure and a recent push for regulation, no new worlds will be opened for exploration at this time. However, travel to established worlds will still be permitted, especially by individuals who have made contact there before. This opens up the opportunity for...
Revisiting Old Haunts
⋆ As many concerns have been brought up about the risks of their own Ingress travel, the Savrii are united in one certainty: that manipulation of the Ingress by other parties poses a far greater risk. A colony buried in the ruins of Thiri has been discovered engaging in their own in-depth studies on the use of Ingress energy. The Savrii consider this behavior to be a threat to the stability of all universes, and as with the Midway Hub, intervention is required at any cost.
A team is being sent to destroy all research data and technology onsite, along with anyone who interferes. As the colony's population is expected to interfere in its entirety, full combat gear will be provided to all volunteers. The mission will be supervised by high-clearance Savrii, and pay 250 sencs to each volunteer. All volunteers must be of at least Clearance Level 3, or personally vouched for by someone who is.
⋆ A year ago (by their local calendar), one of Thisavrou's established trade partners was approached by a pirate ship, one that had stolen from their world before. When the ruse was discovered, they attempted to force out the invaders, and in doing so, suffered a tragedy beyond proportion: the loss of an entire world.
Caducus Primary is no more. The mission announcement also notes that their sister planet, Caducus Secondary, also suffered massive losses in their efforts to force reparations from the murderers. On Day 35 of the current cycle (May 25th), a gathering is being held in the field of shattered glass where Caducus Primary was, to piece together a monument to the fallen. Thisavrou has pledged to send a delegation to assist. The pay will be minimal (30 sencs, to cover a missed workday), but this mission is open to all clearance levels.
[[ooc: For questions, comments, or additional information, check out the OOC post here.]]
SUPER POWERS
But it's impossible, once meaning logs, to mistake the eager babble for correction. It's not reprimand or automation—not part of his systems at all. Reflexive loathing subsides to wariness, mask pivoting as he scans the periphery for the source. There must be one. It's a transmission. A broadcast link, like Kerrigan established—but much less specific. Less controlled.
When his stare settles on a pale, long-limbed shape? Rinzler is really more exasperated than surprised.
"Threat."
It's practically a greeting. Possibly a complaint. Of all the errors this glitched user world could make, of course it would give this user a way into his head.]
Re: SUPER POWERS
Her gaze finds the creature soon after it finds her. There’s a flare of surprise and then a blaze of anger that immediately manifests as flames forming at her fingertips. But there’s something else as well, a frustrated perplexity that stays her hand, quickly poured out in a jumble of words.
“REDsharpthing Nihlus TRAPPED stuck dead you ran you ran you RAN.” It feels accusatory. Maybe it is. After Nihlus had left her still struggling with the tether he had looped around her, she had fully expected the creature to re-emerge and finish the job. There was no reason for it to run. There was no reason for either of them to run. They had her bound and vulnerable, but right when one of them should have made the final blow, they had fled. It makes no sense—even less with their lights literally shining out hostile intent.
The last thought isn’t brief; it’s twined through the memory of that battle, it resounds and echoes, insistent and demanding—but it’s only one word: “Why?”]
no subject
"Not stupid."
Nihlus hadn't joined the fight for his sake. Not even just to break things up. He wanted to protect the user, no matter the cost. The 'teenager'.
(...Rinzler's still not sure why that term matters.)
Depending on Big Sister's awareness, the entire train of thought not convey. It's a flicker of bitterness, a lightning flash from one process to the next. What follows is more focused, output arrived at and returned.
"Wasn't going to fight both of you. Not—"
'—when'. Not 'risking'. The line branches and splits, a tangled snarl of code that does its best to brush itself away. It feels like old pain. (Or betrayal, or helpless terror, covered by a flat wall of rage.) Thoughts realign to a different fact, dull and angry, but at least external in its focus. Attack, not vulnerability.
"Users stick together."]
no subject
The tangle of emotions that follows reveals far more than the words could. It’s a familiar feeling—the confusion, the helplessness, the rage of a lie exposed. Of betrayal.
So. Nihlus has betrayed the creature as well? Perhaps he makes a habit of it. She’s still piecing it together when another of the creature’s thoughts catches her attention with a strange word. She’s still angry. Still wary and tense. And yet, there’s an undercurrent of puzzlement too.
“Uses what?”]
no subject
Don't think about it. Don't go there, don't give this enemy another tool to use against him. Betrayal chills to a vicious awareness, lines of processing cutting off with the finality of a severed limb. Rinzler's good at that, good at shutting himself down, at not thinking what he can't afford to. He has a thousand cycles' practice, after all.
"Users."
It's as good a distraction as any (better than most). A series of image files answer her uncertainty, layered with both scorn and resignation. She is a user. She should know. But then, so many of them don't. The view flickers over pictures of her, of Nihlus, of Miller and Jane_Shepard and Peter_Maximoff. Of humans. Organics. All their kind.]
no subject
The word from before redirects her attention. The images that come with it are mostly unfamiliar faces, not all of them human. From her view, there doesn’t seem to be much in common between them and her; the only standard the creature seems to be using is that they are all flesh and blood—not machines. The only emotion that answers his classification is unmoved skepticism. Common flesh hardly seems like enough of a reason for such people to ‘stick together.’ It hadn’t been in Rapture.
His answer does spark another question though. She can believe that he’s not a creature of flesh and blood; it would explain his utter lack of scent for one thing. But he’s also clearly alive. And she isn’t sure how that’s possible without flesh and blood.
“What are you?”]
no subject
"Program."
The set of images joined to this term are likely to be much stranger to the Sister than the last. People, in small groups or large, all wearing disks and lights of myriad colors. Glimpses of a world designed by similar contrasts, impossibly tall structures with impossibly clean lines. But also: letters. Symbols. Row on row on row of characters, scrolling out in a display.
And the strong sense that that and this are perfectly alike.]
no subject
After a moment, she returns with her own set of images: Rapture, an underwater world with its own ecosystem of gatherers and ADAM, blighted by splicers who disrupt the cycle. And those like herself, Big Sisters and hulking Big Daddies, who protect the gatherers and seize ADAM back from those who would take it by force. Memories of laboratories flit through her mind as well, places where people like them are taught to be what they are, though the images here are disjointed and hazy, more a concept than a place she remembers with any accuracy.
And tacked on to these thoughts is a title, an answer to that which the creature had attached to his own group and just as matter-of-fact: “Protector Program.”]
no subject
...
That too is well within the program's scope of experience.
Rinzler twitches back, shoulders curved with an aggressive, coiled weight as his hand locks rigid on his disk. Noise swells up, a voiceless, scraping growl, and each staccato beat sounds internal as much as out. Wrong. No. And yes, and right, and necessary all clashing in a medley of sheer hate, fractured processing running in opposition as he jerks his helmet to the side. It's a rejection, angry and vicious. It's a suffocated dismissal, a helpless need to wipe the errors from his queue. Lights flicker, bright/dark agitation, but only one word matches from both sides of the mental divide.
"Rectified."]
no subject
There’s little sympathy in the words she returns, but there is recognition. Understanding, however imperfect.
“You too.”]
no subject
But it's close.
Close enough to draw another flare of mismatch and sharp/nauseating loop. Enough for a struggling twitch of frustrated pride. He's not like the batch-recycled drones. Not like her, either. Clu made him perfect, Clu took away his faults. (Clu took everything, and for a fraction of a moment, the unsteady shiver of his lights glimmers a cold, defiant blue.) But Tron failed, and Clu had to.
It doesn't matter. Or it does, but not so much. Rinzler knows it, and if he can't lie to himself, he can't lie to her either. Not now.
"Yes."
The admission tastes so very, very bitter. Him too.]
no subject
“Lamb.”
Her mind draws connections like it’s a game, almost pleased at the correspondences after being trapped for so long in a world so different from her own. Lamb wanted things to be perfect too—wanted utopia as the broadcasted recordings of her said. ’Not a place, but a people.’
But unlike the creature, the Big Sister feels no twinge of defiance at the thought of her own world’s authority; Lamb had shown care for her and her Sisters when no one else would. She had brought order to the nightmare that was Rapture. And she had shaped the Big Sister herself, given purpose to the mindless screaming rage that had consumed her when she outgrew the delusions of her childhood. Lamb had given her a place in the Family. She had taken something feral and lost and made her Big Sister.
So she doesn’t understand, or at least, she doesn’t understand all of it. Doesn’t understand the conflict still threading through the creature's thoughts, doesn’t understand that flicker of ingratitude. She latches onto one thought that might carry some explanation, turning it over with the careless curiosity of a child asking after a story.
“What did he take?”
She thinks she might know part of the answer. It hasn’t escaped her notice that the creature growls instead of talks—and she is well-acquainted with that price.]
no subject
(
...right?)He doesn't like it. He doesn't like her blank complacency, doesn't like the prying, too-close question. Doesn't like that she can be happy where he can't. She's pathetic, broken, worse than any of the batch-wipes, but she dares to poke and prod into his processing as if she can find where he went wrong?
He doesn't answer, but the thoughts still come. Nothing (and everything); it doesn't matter and (voice) (name) (memories) (face). (Choices) more than any of the rest, a thousand cycles as a tool to take out and put back, waiting behind glass or trailing after his programmer, another showpiece on display. The lock of automation, the rigid intricacies of correction and reset, and it's none of her business, not her right, he hates it, and it isn't—
"You're not any better."
It's a vicious dig, a spike of resentment lashing back as noise bubbles in a snarl. She's worse. She's still deluded, and she doesn't have a name.]
no subject
The creature’s resentment only stirs within her a kind of retaliatory pride; they had paid similar prices for what they are now, but the Big Sister hadn’t let it turn her against her purpose. She hadn’t let it fill her head with traitor thoughts, hadn’t needed to be corrected over and over again like he had (just
twiceonce, and then she never looked backbecause there was nothing worth missing behind her), and when he lashes out, she returns just as viciously.“Not BROKEN like YOU.” And then, as if it’s irrefutable proof: “Else he wouldn’t NEED to FIX you.”]
no subject
(Like him.) But—not. Rinzler was always different. Always the best. She spits back a reply, and he agrees wholeheartedly: she's broken much worse than he was. She's a Sentry, lacking even a single skill or thought to tell it from the rest. He's Clu's champion. And if he's (always been) broken, if he's (always) glitched and struggled and needed to be fixed—
The simmering resentment falters. The nauseated tangle of mismatch stills, lights stabilizing back to solid red. And with it, a bubble of surprise, delight, a fraction of glee that's not quite (not just) anticipatory. There's no vocal string to accompany it, nothing aloud, but if it were?
It would be laughter.
It follows with smug satisfaction. With threads and fragments, file-references to sound and sight. Memories: of words, of tests. Demands made, and a single guarantee returned in answer. It comes with the feeling of an edit that took nothing. Clu corrects him when he's broken. Clu removes all pieces of his mind that Clu considers wrong. But Clu took nothing, and Clu gave something, and that promise is worth far more than any taunt this creature could attempt.
"He doesn't."
Because Rinzler's not broken. Because he's better like this.]