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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Need? No. Still, Rinzler was hardly going to turn down the chance to assess another combat function. And her illumination of their targets definitely didn't hurt. Teeth and limbs, alignment and trajectory. Rinzler absorbs it all, flags targets by priority, and moves.

Three steps to reach the nearest threat. An easy sway back from its lunge, and Rinzler flows back into reach as a clawed limb passes, chasing it back toward the body before his disk cuts deep, from side to core. The bright sticky blood that spurts out from the gap is telling, but the attacker hasn't dropped, and Rinzler's in no mood to wait.

Limbs uncoil, weight leveraging off the gap carved in its side to twist his body up, a midair inversion. Rinzler's second disk slices a neat path through the center of its head. Then he he spins and kicks off, trading one collapsing threat for the next one. An elbow drives into a muscled neck as Rinzler rolls over its body to land behind. He hasn't quite touched down yet when his wrist snaps out: ricocheting one disk off the rocks in a bright streak toward a threat trying to run past.

It's possible, just maybe, that Rinzler's showing off.

At this point Aloy's started to pick up on it: someone is showing off more than seriously fighting. He's jumping around too much for her to feel safe shooting too much, but she can see which way he's going, which of the monsters he's hitting first and which he'll hit next - she's watched enough fights between machines, and been in enough, to have an eye for this kind of thing by now.

One of the creatures has stopped, seemingly hesitating between attacking the man whirling about in their midst or Aloy herself some feet away. She starts with that one, and the first arrow punches into the side of its head where its ear should be, were it human. She doesn't hear the thunk of it - the crackling flames, snarling and wet sounds of blades cutting through flesh cover it totally.

It charges. She rolls out of the way, comes up closer to where the blood splatters the rocky ground around the main commotion. One arrow, a second, a third, hocked all at once - and they make a neat line down the thing's face, but it barely seems to feel the impacts. Again. This time she draws back for just a second, putting the bow away entirely. It's not the only weapon she has.

Her spear is mostly designed for use on machines - there's a device attached to it that can override machines from home, although it's no good here - but she's used it in hunting, and fights with people. As distasteful as it is to realise, it's much easier to fight living things with spears than it is machines. The very first lunge she makes with it plunges the sharp point into the thing's chest - the crunch of it reverberates in her hands. She pulls it in, just enough that she can kick it hard off the spear - it staggers back, sways, falls to one knee.

Before it can get up, she turns the spear in her hands and drives it down, right into the crook of its neck. A twist, a pull - and it falls sideways, head grotesquely loose on its neck.

...And in the time it took her to do that, he's probably taken out the entire rest of them.

The entire rest? Not quite. Still, Rinzler's certainly managed to come close. Toothed bodies lay strewn across the ground, sliced apart or bent to improbable angles. A couple still twitch, but seem to lack the life (or body parts) to pose a real danger.

One is left standing. A swipe of its claw is slapped aside with a swift kick, and Rinzler's frame spins after, a blur of red-on-black that severs the offending limb. It lunges with a chittering shriek, only to take Rinzler's second weapon to the gut. He leaps as it staggers, frame coiling to double the circular momentum before both feet crunch neatly where its spine meets—or met—its head.

There are a few spasms, but Rinzler's focus doesn't linger. No, his helmet is aimed up toward Aloy, even as he shifts up to a crouch. Red sizzles off the edges of both disks, drips from his hands, and stains the dark armor in small spattered parts. Combined with the low growl still filtering from behind the mask, it probably doesn't make a reassuring image.

Still, when Rinzler moves, it's just in gesture: a small dip of the helmet toward Aloy and her spear. Not bad.

Something like blood is dripping from her spear as she yanks it from the creature; it's grotesque, but it's not what Aloy's looking at now. She's looking at him. Rust-like stains remain on the disk-blades as the blood sizzles off it, then even those stains burn away. The blood on the armour and tiny bits of blood on the headdress don't go away, though, even as he minutely shifts, crouching in place.

Somehow the sight of him then is even more intimidating than the littered corpses, though she couldn't begin to explain why. But some part of her...

"That was... That was really something." Part of her thinks that might have been the most awesome bit of fighting she's ever seen. "How long did that take to learn?"

She spent most of her life learning what she can do, but this...

The rumbling catches, an irregular oscillation... that sounds almost amused. Both weapons press together as Rinzler rises (crouch to hunch) and when his right hand drops, it's empty: only a single merged disk filling the left. He angles his helmet, considering the user's query. Long periods of idling aside...

...Rinzler has been fighting since he was created.

"Thousand cycles."

Least helpful answer? Least helpful answer. Not to mention, not entirely true. Tron might have been slightly more direct in his approach, but he had still been a skilled combatant. Rinzler shrugs, relenting a little.

"Written for combat."

She doesn't know what she expected out of an actual conversation with this person. He was hiding his face, had the kinds of fighting skills she's never before seen, has barely spoken a word up to now - in fact, is making an odd sort of sound she imagines she might have heard before but can't think where...

But maybe she at least expected what he said to make sense.

(And did one of those circular blades just disappear, or was she not looking properly? Maybe they just slot together...)

"I don't know what a cycle is... I know years, but..." Her gaze goes distant for a second as something occurs to her, and Aloy's never been one for internal monologuing: "If we're on a different planet, it probably doesn't go around the sun in the same time as Earth, does it. So I don't know how long a year is anymore either."

...Back to the current topic. "Never mind. That was the wrong question. I've just...never seen anybody fight like that before."

She's still trying to figure out what written for combat means. The thousand cycles were written for combat? Something about history? Who knows. Maybe she'll ask when she doesn't feel so dumb.

August Event Log: Part I

hitting the road

storm front

wild life

old familiar places

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