Who: Anyone and Everyone
When: February 10-19
Where: Avagi
What: Life support fails, and a team sets out. Check out
this ooc post for more.
Warnings: Label your content.
Synce their arrival, Avagi's residents have been plagued by minor system failures. Faulty taskbots and infested crawlspaces, supply shortages and the floods last month. For the most part, they've coped admirably, and quality of life aboard the station is substantially improved from what it was. But even as the damage in the lived-in space is scrubbed away, more dangerous poisons have been building underneath.
On February 10, the groaning from the walls will escalate to a harsh scraping, audible station-wide. Then silence falls as the filtration systems die completely: leaving all vents to begin spewing thick, black smoke.
|
| System Failures | |
| (February 10-19) | |
Acrid and hazardous, the cocktail of gases emerging from the vents are the result of three centuries' toxin storage spilling over. A shallow breath can cause a coughing fit, but individuals who draw in too much of the toxic air will find themselves becoming dizzy, passing out, or worse. While effects may vary based on individual biology, all beings who require breath will find their lungs burning and their vision blurred. An hour after the initial failure, the lighting goes out too. With it, all station power: to computers, doors, and any system not hooked up to its own supply.
Investigation:
The electrical failures can be sourced to an automated safety shutoff, override-able from Life Support's main controls. But the mechanism isn't in place without a reason. Generating station power produces more of the dark fumes, and without working filters, they will pump straight into the air.
Wait in the dark (and growing cold), or suffocate more quickly? Either way, your air troubles won't be resolved quickly. Over the next couple days, groups searching Sanitation can track down the vapors to their source. A small mob of taskbots run sad circles in the filtration hub: between the air processing units and a row of shelves along one wall. The label reads Purification Crystals, and a single empty container remains. Survival (Home Team):
Without the crystals, there is no effective way of restoring the entire living space. It may, however, be possible to section off small areas. Able bodies will be required to seal off the fumes and guide those suffering from their effects to safety. Many may need medical assistance, and technical skills will be in even more desperate need: to equip these regions with oxygen and power, and insulate them against the cold that leeches in from the outside.
Some amount of work has already been done, and a few safe rooms are prepped across the station. As days progress toward weeks, however, their air and power reserves will run thin, and some larger sectors may warrant securing regardless. The Greenery contains young plants that are susceptible to the fumes, and those invested in the library's book collection may also want to take measures. The gas has acidic qualities in higher concentrations, enough to eat through paper... for a start.
Contain it? Remove it? Or just try to protect yourselves? One way or another, you'll need to hold out for a while.
|
| Travel (Away Team) | |
| (February 12-19) | |
When Avagi's current population first got here, it was clear that others had inhabited the space before. Recent developments have even proven that these others—or, perhaps, their descendants—might still exist elsewhere on the station now. With the crystals that might repair your home missing, diplomacy is no longer an optional consideration. It's time to meet the neighbors, and hope they come in peace.Navigation:
Those volunteering to undertake this mission will be provided with a patchwork set of maps. However, these contain little to no information on the current state of the station—including which parts still exist. The explosion that tore apart the former Ingress Complex left wide gaps in the structure, many of which have been invaded by the storms outside.
Scanning tech will be required to assess what lies behind the sealed walls, and physical labor to cut through them. As no contiguous paths across the station remain, this process will need to be repeated numerous times. Where no adjoining regions can be verified intact, smaller scouting tools (or group members!) may be required to traverse crawlspaces for a view of nearby rooms. Survival:
Behind the first wall lies a pressurized room with normal gravity—and contaminated air. This will not persist as the travelers continue. Some regions have power, but no gravity. Others contain pockets of unaffected, still-clean air. Few spaces will be fully online before the travelers get there, but local generators can be found that might allow for a night or two of "comfortable" camping. At least one juncture can only be crossed by floating through an empty docking bay. The area contains no power, air, or gravity, but spacesuits can be procured... inside the sealed vacuum of the bay. Creative thinking may be required.
Enveloping the station's outside, the roiling shadows of Avagi's storms have crept invasively into all unsealed regions of the interior. While the Observation Station may have accustomed some Avagians to the view, there's something much more immediate about the shadows pressing at the other side of these windows. The faint patterns of light that ripple through the clouds prompt a sense of malice and exhaustion, one that lingers even when you've turned away. Those who attempt more intense scrutiny may suffer more severe effects.
Certainly, it feels like something is watching back. Discoveries:
As harrowing as the journey may be, it's not entirely without its gains. A few tools can be salvaged from some of the decks visited along the way, and while food is in much shorter supply, there are a few signs that it might not have been, long ago. Wrappers and empty cans turn up in strange places. A few glyphs can be found scratched into one wall: ones that your ACE's translators roughly interpret as prayers.
One sealed room has a large "X" scrawled across the walls despite the detectable presence of power, air, and gravity. Opening it produces a strange sight: two skeletal corpses pressed up against the still-active force field that cuts this room off from the storms. Both bodies show extensive burns to hands and faces, but don't appear to have died from that effect. |
[For questions, signups, or plotting, check out the ooc post. For the duration of this log, characters may travel between teams to whatever extent they are capable. The event will escalate with a second log on February 20.] 
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thisavrou_log2018-02-10 04:46 pm
no subject
None of which means he has much of an idea what to say.
Half a cycle back, saying wouldn't have been a consideration. Two cycles earlier, and he wouldn't have known he had a user at all. And a thousand cycles before that...
Rinzler doesn't know.
But it probably would have been easier.
He shakes his head to the question. Shifts slightly, offering his user space: along the wall, on a nearby crate, wherever he prefers to settle. The hall outside is dark and empty, no power from the generator's sparse supply wasted on lighting spaces while the users sleep. Rinzler stares down it anyway.
"...no threats observed."
no subject
“Good,” he murmurs. “I feel a lot safer with you keeping watch.”
That constant vigilance for attack may cause trouble at times, but even Alan can’t deny that it’s a valuable trait at others. That is, in part, what Alan wants to address. But more than that, Alan wants to clear the air. If things go south later on in their journey, well… Alan doesn’t want either of them harboring any unnecessary regrets.
“If it’s alright, I was hoping we could talk." He tries to keep his tone conversational. The last thing he wants to do is make Rinzler think he's here to scold him. "I know there are some things I haven’t understood very well with you and… I’d like to fix that.”
At the very least, he wants to make an effort.
Sorry for delay!
He won't let any threats get by.
Still, it's not entirely surprising that his user came for something different. 'Talk' matches readily to tags of censure and review, and it takes effort not to bow his head, frame shrinking in towards defaults. That doesn't match Alan-one's tone, though, or the conditionals that hover around the term. Shoulders set, a flicker of uneasy tension, but Rinzler only nods again in answer.
He's willing.
no worries!
“Well, we both know that things got rather... tense, after what happened with Anon. I’ll admit that I jumped to conclusions.” Alan lifts a hand to his neck, a small, contrite grimace on his face. “I was wrong. And I’m sorry.” He’s already apologized. That isn’t the reason he’s approached Rinzler now—at least, not all of it.
“But it seemed like you were upset for another reason, too. Another reason that I’m not as clear on.” He stifles a sigh of frustration. This could much too easily be taken as censure, especially by Rinzler. He opens his hands at his sides. “This isn’t a criticism or an order for you not to feel that way. I just want to understand why.”
Whatever Alan had done, it was enough for Rinzler to seemingly renounce Alan as his user and then refuse to accept repairs. Of course Alan wants to know what it was. And, perhaps, in light of what Rinzler has said, there’s another, more fragile question beneath the surface—the same question Alan had asked after he had first learned who Rinzler used to be: ’So am I still your user?’
no subject
And it's not the first time Alan-one flagged him a risk.
The enforcer ducks his head. Bows assent to the clarification: inquiry, not correction (if not any easier to respond). Alan-one is his programmer. His user—and to Rinzler, that value has never been in doubt.
His own value, slightly more so.
"...why did you write Tron?"
no subject
He’d said this wasn’t going to be a lecture and he intends to stick to that.
no subject
It's the expected response.
"How?"
no subject
’But we aren’t in ENCOM anymore,’ Alan stops himself from saying. If that’s a point he needs to make, then he’ll make it—after Rinzler has finished his own inquiry.
no subject
"...I'm not Tron."
Not his code. Not his function. Alan-one acknowledged it cycles ago (when Tron was still a distinct program to approve of). But there's another side to the fact too, and the enforcer's sound rises, harsh and defensive, as he continues.
"Told you what I'm for."
no subject
“I know you’re not Tron,” Alan says. And then, more reluctantly. “But maybe sometimes I forget that you don’t have his function. Or, I choose to forget it.”
Of course, Alan hates to think of Rinzler as belonging to Clu. Thus, it had always seemed better to him to think of the program’s ‘function’ as an obstacle to be circumvented rather than an integral part of who he is. And in the void that leaves, Tron’s function is the natural substitute.
Given Rinzler’s identity issues, Alan can see why that would be upsetting.
“After what happened with Anon, did you feel like I was treating you like I would Tron?”
no subject
"Tron does—what you want." The syllables stutter, shoulders shrugging close: in frustration or apology. Imprecise. "Meets standards."
Alan-one's standards. He was written that way.