August Event Log: Part I

[savmods]

Who: Everyone
When: August 9 and onward
Where: An unexpected destination
What: The newcomers go on a trip and end up far from where they expected
Warnings: Potential violence. Please label your content!

NOTE: PLEASE READ THIS OOC POST FIRST.

When the time comes for the travelers to go on the off-world trip that will help restore Thisavrou, they are not alone. Others who have settled on the planets longer and come to call them home are also prepared to travel; through the Ingress and do their part. Yet when the newcomers step through, whether they stepped through the Ingress seconds or hours apart, they will find that they have arrived at the same time, and only newcomers are in sight.

What awaits them is not a land of plenty. The land is barren, and dark storms in the sky resemble those held at bay by the Ingress complex—but much, much closer. Those who traveled on the Moira may recognize the landscape; though they have come through at a different point from the crash, they are on the Midway Hub. And there is no portal back. They are trapped.

hitting the road

Though some have been here before, the Midway Hub is not as they remember it. The storms fill the sky, leaving it dark and ominous even when they are not sweeping across the landscape—but they have clearly done so in recent times, and often. While never a lush land, large patches of ground an acre or more wide looking nothing more than utterly dead; the thistle that naturally grows is brittle, black and unable to be consumed even with the usual preparations to make it edible, and here and there animal corpses are found twisted into unnatural poses, but seemingly uninjured. These places are particularly concentrated near the broken Ingresses litter the landscape. While Midway Hub as a whole may seem naturally arid, these dead spots leave no hope that anything can possibly live there again.

The travelers have two options: stay where they are, or move on. While it might seem that they've been tricked into coming here and been left abandoned, those with the technological ability to do so may detect a sign of hope: a familiar energy source, far in the distance. Although none of the Ingresses they pass will ever work again, the faint energy shows that one still-functioning Ingress lies far in the distance, days away.

Although technological scanning or impressive memory of the landscape indicates that they are not separated from their destination by one of the gates that divide the land, they are also far from the shelter of the facility at the center of the Hub. Any attempt to travel in a direction other than that of the energy signal will result in a strange disorientation after several hours, bringing individuals back to their original path as though they've gone in circles. Meanwhile, though travelers will feel the need to slake their hunger and thirst through any natural water sources they discover, wildlife they can hunt for food and any supplies they have on them, if they don't find sustenance, they'll find that they will never pass out or reach the point of starvation. Instead, they'll be left alive and awake but feeling utterly hollow.

storm front

At regular intervals, the energy storms above descend onto the land, bringing not rain but violent clashes of negative energy and thunder so loud that nothing can be heard above it. The passing of the storms leaves some strange effects. The ground is warped and rotted by their touch, even solid stone degrading to a spongy surface. The air is tepid and oddly charged. Prolonged contact with air or ground will not supply energy, however — it drains it from organic and synthetic life alike.

Those who remember their last trip to the Hub, or simply explore in the right direction, may come across the cave complexes with their glowing surfaces and streams. The light is dimmer now, a sickly green, but drinking from the streams will still restore the energy lost, for a time. This time, however, the lethargy that inevitably follows is much more severe, and the drinkers are left with a raw, empty feeling leeching in from the wasteland around.

Those who are exposed to the storms, either by finding themselves in very close proximity or even closely observing them for too long as they approach, may lose their sight, or hearing, even much of the ability to feel touch — whatever sense they used in observation. What lingers in its place is a numbness. A hunger. And as time passes, the time between storms decreases; what seemed like hours between the storms becomes scarcely one, and their intensity grows.

wild life

Sentient beings are not the only ones affected by the storms; these creatures, attracted to sound and able to track by scent, and these panthers, which once looked normal but have been twisted by the storms into more monstrous forms, are numerous enough that travelers must be constantly alert for their presence. Though natural predators, the threat the creatures represent is not itself natural. They are also more aggressive. Some strange instinct drives them, not a need for food. While the panthers themselves can be caught and their meat cooked, it has little taste, offering nutrition but not satisfaction.

old familiar places

Although it's difficult to track the passage of time without day-night cycles, after what seems like more than a week of the travelers' unexpected trip, the storms abruptly come rushing in at the group of travelers, as if they're herding the group to move faster toward their destination and the Ingress energy that awaits them. The true nature of that destination becomes clear when debris appears on the horizon; the energy comes from the wreckage of the Moira, the interstellar ship that crashed here months ago.

Despite the trauma of impact, large sections of the ship remain surprisingly intact, though few of them are properly vertically oriented. If travelers are able to make their way inside the damaged sections of the ship, they'll find familiar territory, if they are one of those who traveled on the Moira, as well as shelter—something that's increasingly necessary as the storms seem to center over the ship, leaving little hope for survival outside. Useful items may be scavenged from the ship if they are willing to explore, but no personal items of any kind remain.

Strangely, the deeper travelers go into the crashed ship, the less familiar their surroundings will seem, regardless of their orientation. The inward-leading paths into the ship become generic metal, and as with the travel on the surface of the planet, they may find themselves back where they started. And no matter how far they go or how hard they try, they will find themselves unable to make it to the Ingress chamber itself...for now.

Comments

[lavelly]

[Lavellan makes a noncommittal noise and doesn't shoo the dog away, which is about the most he can bring himself to interact with it. This pretending at normalcy is losing its appeal.

He's barely spoken to Nate, in all honesty, but he still can't stop wondering if he knows. It's eating at him. But he also can't bring himself to ask.

So he'll just talk about something else until it comes out on its own or he mentally screams himself to death, probably.]

Why did you bring it with you?

[Nice.]

[sketchycharacter]

[He laughs, but there's a faintly bitter edge to the sound.]

I thought he'd be useful for tracking down resources on Sawarga. He's got sensors and stuff in his nose. Like a real dog, but better.

[Barkley would have been useful there, he's still useful here. But not nearly to the level that they need.]

Plus I just like him. He's my pet.

[lavelly]

[Lavellan's hand hovers awkwardly, like he's not sure whether he's supposed to pet something made of synthetic material. He doesn't really understand it, but that doesn't matter, does it? In the grand scheme of things? Why are they even talking about something this inane?

The question bursts out of it before he can stop himself.]

What do you think about all of this? Why we're here?

[No, that's not it.]

How much do you know?

[sketchycharacter]

[Barkley noses against Lavellan's hand. He might not be a real dog, but the sensors embedded in him means he still likes pets.]

It's a bunch of bullshit. That's what I think and that's about all I know.

[He shakes his head.]

Look, let's get the awkwardness out of the way, we both know what you did and how it fucked things up. Whatever. You're not the first person to incredibly screw things up. But anyone who'd do this--who'd drop kids here, for fuck's sake--is already pretty screwed up themselves.

[lavelly]

[Lavellan freezes; Barkley might as well not exist in the face of this. Sorry, buddy.

Then he shakes himself back to awareness, as Nate's words finally sink in. What is he surprised by? Isn't this what he was trying to find out? Nate knows. People know. And yet no one has said anything.

Why don't they blame him?]

I don't understand why more people aren't angry with me.

[sketchycharacter]

[Barkley whines. It sounds surprisingly lifelike, and only a little mechanically tinny.]

It's not like I'm happy with you. You could have fucked up and gotten a lot of people killed, sure. Join the club. But we pulled things together and didn't die.

Those guys, though? They definitely wanted us to die, or at least wanted to drop us off alive so they could feel morally clean about it even though odds are good none of us make it out of here. Fuck those guys.