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

     Cayde watches as his Ghost floats about Rey's droid curiously. It looks like quite the unusual construct, if perhaps a little impractical.

     "Like, sand and stuff, that kind of desert?" he asks, optics flicking towards the girl again.

     "-oh. Well. You know. Something comes all of a sudden, blots out humanity starting from out farthest colonies and right up into Earth. The Darkness. Would've swallowed up everything, but the Traveler kept it back. Now we're down to one city, and every day beyond it is a battle against things that just want to wipe us out."

BB-9 swivels her head around and adjusts her lens so she can see the Ghost clearer. A few soft beeps, and one of her panel pops open and her interface arm pops out. The appendage, while not very adjustable, is maneuverable enough for the astromech droid to offer a sort of wave. Rey glances over at the noise and smiles a bit. But Cayde's question catches her attention again, and she raises an eyebrow at him.

"Are there other kinds of deserts?" There is only a touch of sarcasm to her voice. She knows there are near countless planets in the ever-expanding universe, but she's pretty sure there's only one kind of desert.

His explanation is... not at all what she expected, really. She blinks a few times as she gathers her thoughts, and then tilts her head, not looking entirely convinced. He said all of that way too casually, because that sounds more than just 'downhill.'

"Something like that doesn't just happen all of a sudden." At least, it shouldn't.

     The Ghost's vertices shift in something of a pleased expression, and then they rotate around its core, just slightly as it returns BB-9's greeting.

     Cayde shrugs, but he seems to be smirking. "Well, you never know. And I guess there are desert planets and deserted ones."

     Pausing, he begins to nod slowly. "Maybe not really, but anything is sudden when you don't expect it. And sometimes even when you do, it doesn't pan out the way you think it might."

Rey rolls her eyes, but doesn't respond. Most people off-planet through Jakku should be deserted. But for scavengers, for people like her, the potential hidden in the sands was too much to ignore. When she was younger, she'd dreamed about leaving and searching for her family. But the older she'd gotten, the more clear it had become that staying right where she was, utilizing her skillset, was the best chance she had of finding them.

She stares into the water, rolling her thoughts around in her mind. "So what are you doing about it? Back in your part of the universe, I mean."

It wasn't meant to be an insult. All the other planets in his solar system had been deserted until the Traveler had given them the means to do otherwise. Of course, while they weren't completely deserted even after the collapse of the Golden Age, they weren't held by those of Earth any more.

"Fighting. Every day out there's a battle. Every day we've got Guardians taken down Fallen, filtering out the Hive, the Vex... We're protecting our City and those within its walls who can't fight."

Rey takes a few moments to try and sift through everything he's saying. None of it makes much sense except one part--and she gives an approving nod at it. "Don't give up." She states it as a fact, not a suggestion. "When you get back, I mean. Just... keep on fighting." She isn't sure if she's saying it to herself or to him, all things considered, but it feels good to say.

Cayde nods. Giving up doesn't seem to ever be in his list of options. There are lots of things he hasn't given up on, not just the fight for humanity's survival.

"Sure will," he says, looking quietly out towards the mouth of the cave as the storm tears at things outside. "So what about you?" After a moment he glances back at Rey. "What is it you do?"

Rey isn't really one to offer up words of encouragement all the time, and she turns back to stare into the pool afterwards. Her time on Thisavrou has made her soft, she's certain. But such is a normal life, she supposes. "I'm a mechanic." Maybe she's a little more than that, but she prefers to keep things simple. "I specialize in starships, but I'm good with just about anything."

"Shoulda figured it was something like that," Cayde grins. It certainly fit in with her specific interest in his Ghost. Her claims to be good at just about anything doesn't sound like an empty boast either. "Starships, eh? You pilot, any?"

One thing she'd learned on Jakku was to never undervalue her skills. While Unkar Plutt had a monopoly on Portions and water on Jakku and could get away with paying her less than he should, the captains that stopped at Niima Outpost couldn't.

Smirking a bit, she nods. "I've flown everything." In simulations, but that had already translated well to reality once, so her confidence feels warranted.

Seeming to smirk a bit himself, knowingly, in a way, Cayde nods. "Kinda remind me of someone I know back home. The moment she saw the first starship from the City take off, she knew right then what she wanted to do the rest of her life. Best jumpship pilot and mechanic I know."

August Event Log: Part I

hitting the road

storm front

wild life

old familiar places

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