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

moving on

[ryuuzaki]

The pace of these days is strange. Sometimes Tex's old team is all in step with each other, and L with them, but at other times their organization is patchy and he finds himself walking alongside someone else for a while. This doesn't bother him, as long as he has a basic idea of his girlfriend's general location.

Otherwise, things have gotten miserable. He's hungry, even when he eats food that someone else has hunted -- it seems to make very little difference. Yet he also feels an extraordinary pull in the direction in which he's walking, one that won't let him go, one that even makes it hard to rest.

The man who comes alongside him is an object of curiosity. Some kind of device floats near him. The man could be wearing a suit of armor, but L isn't sure... isn't even sure he's a man. But he's distinctive enough that if he had been there the last time they had been at the Midway Hub, L thinks he would remember it.

"Is this your first time here? It wasn't like this before," he observes, his English-accented voice projecting from his suit.

Which is not to say, of course, that it was pleasant the first time.

[This is the suit, except it's been painted over in dark grey!]

[deal_me_in]

     The Ghost comes out to check on their heading every now and then, this being one of those times. Both it and Cayde glance over at the helmeted figure that they've found themselves nearby. Not the strangest thing to see, especially considering that armored suits are commonplace at the City back home.

     "Yep. But I think I've heard of it, if it's the place I'm thinking it is. Not the worst place I've seen, but that's not necessarily meant to be flattering..."

     Cayde tilts his head at him, then glances back out in the direction they've been headed. "Been here before? How was it back then?"

[ryuuzaki]

"Not as bad as it is now," he begins, then tilts his head slightly and corrects himself by adding, "But, as you say, that also isn't meant to be flattering. When we were here before, the atmosphere was primarily just one of abandonment. I wasn't hungry unless I didn't eat, and I didn't feel any particular compulsion in any direction."

He notices the little device again, the way it hangs around the guy he's talking to, and indicates it with a small gesture of his hand.

"Tracking...? Security? I've seen A.I.s a little like that." But he doesn't say where or with whom, and it is indeed quite different from a tiny projection of a man in a suit like the one he has on, the A.I. Tex and York had showed him.

[deal_me_in]

     Times like this he wishes that his face had the capacity to frown. Because he'd be frowning oh so much right now. "Oh! Well that's pleasant."

     When the Ghost is gestured to, it gives a small flutter of its vertices. Cayde nods. "Oh yeah, this an' that. Hacking. Mechanic. Stuff you said." The little AI seems to nod a bit in confirmation of that. "I'm a Ghost," it offers amiably.

[ryuuzaki]

So his guess that the device might be an A.I. of some kind was much closer to the mark than he'd expected. He looks at it more closely -- as closely as his closed helmet allows.

"We don't have things like that on the world I originally came from... not yet, anyway. How long have you had it? It seems very useful."

[deal_me_in]

     "Oh yeah? What world you come from?" Cayde asks. There's a thoughtful pause at the next question. "Hm. I dunno. It's been a pretty long time now. At least a century?" He glances at his Ghost as though for confirmation.

     "At least," it agrees, seeming to nod.

[ryuuzaki]

That turns L's slight curiosity into intense interest, and he doesn't immediately answer the question about his own world. His posture becomes more fascinated, as does his tone.

"Are lives that long typical on your world?"

Clearly, they're not typical on his... not active lives, anyway.

[deal_me_in]

     Eventually conversations seem to always turn towards that subject. It's never a pretty picture to paint, but it's unavoidable, as the questions are linked to less than pleasant things, and those things are a part of history and who he is, and what he's become.

     "I guess they kind of are, now," Cayde replies almost nonchalantly, shrugging. He's been around long enough. He's got no reason to hide things like this. "I'm sure Exos get longer lives by default so long as we don't bite off more than we can chew. As Guardians, we cheat the normal life expectancy, although technically we should be dead."

[ryuuzaki]

"How so?"

[deal_me_in]

     "It's not a happy story." Cayde offers that in vague advisory, pausing a moment before continuing. It's a long walk ahead of them, and while he usually likes being off on his own, there's something about this place that makes him more open to tolerating company.

     "Simply put? I was dead before my Ghost found me. Brought me back. That's what Ghosts do; they go look for potential Guardians among those that have died when the Darkness came through, bring 'em back to help fight against all the things still trying to snuff us out. Heh. As though wiping out almost everything on Earth wasn't enough."