I
N
T
R
O
L
O
G
|
by the inquest
"Arguments on their nature are refuted by those who return to shore, wide-eyed with tales of their savagery."
All Moirans are woken to the sounds of the ship coming to a rather grating halt some time in the early morning cycle. It’s no faster or slower than any other stop, but it is unexpected as the captains didn’t mention an upcoming disembarkment. Shortly after, a message is sent to every MID:Navigation has informed us that we’re approaching bad traveling conditions: an overactive star. Instead of stopping on Liant El, we’ll be docking here on Ceta. Please exercise caution while gathering supplies and during excursions. Follow their safety guidelines. If the chance allows, we’ll also be signing new crew on the planet. Please greet them first and show them to the ship. Thank you. The Ingress has pulled you in. Your body experiences several sensations at once: being pushed forward as if a hand is resting on your back, momentary and startling blindness, a gentle ringing in your head. You have difficulty discerning whether it is hot or cold, but where you have been prodded is noticeably warmer than the rest of you. Some may suffer from dizziness while others are perfectly fine. Once equilibrium has been reestablished, you will notice you are standing on a long platform and that the room is filled with a soft cerulean light. It's slightly humid and dark despite the glow around you, and nothing is familiar.
For those few who come through Ceta's Ingress, there will be crew of the Moira there to greet you. They tell you of the Ingress, how it is broken, even on this planet, and that the ship is headed back to the origin of this technology. This planet’s Ingress is set precariously atop a floating rock formation, the only way from one area to the next is on small air-propelled boats. Crew members will guide everyone back to the Moira and take them to the Medbay; contracts will be signed posthaste.
WELCOME TO CETA
At first glance, Ceta seems mostly inhabitable, and that's because it is. The atmosphere around the planet is surprisingly thick in most places, sometimes thin in others, and without some way to filter the air, it is mostly unbreathable; it's a giant gas planet, its core made of various molten metals and the atmosphere a mix of oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrous. Ceta's gravity is also uneven, meaning that some areas will have stronger focal points than others. The terrain, when it is visible, appears rather rocky—hardly the best conditions for life and stable living. What's more unusual, however, is that despite this fact, there is, indeed, a small populace "living" among the mist and clouds, but it's clear they do not live here year-round. It's hunting season, and they are there for the bounty.
These visitors have built small platforms that are hooked together by ropes and swinging bridges, which they call "temporaries". Unstable buildings are rare, dangerous, and spread out over these temporaries to prevent damage or accidents. The temporaries float along, swaying and shifting with the planet’s atmosphere, and posted at every point of entry and all open surfaces are a particular set of rules that everyone must abide by. They are written in dark ink and large block letters so that all passing by will stop and read them:
NO FIRE. Flammables, ignition sources, matches, lighters, and anything that creates a spark is prohibited. The atmosphere has higher levels of hydrogen, and the smallest spark will create a problem.
AIR BREATHABILITY. Monitor your vitals. Wear masks or re-breathers if needed.
WATCH THE EDGE. All walkways are the only thing from you and falling. Be cautious and watch your step. These signs should be given their due attention. The edge is just that: the end of where it is safe to walk. If a wooden plank gives way beneath your feet, you will plummet through hundred of miles of atmosphere before hitting the planet’s thin surface. The captains reiterate that crew should be careful and stick to the main temporaries, gather supplies, visit at their leisure, and then go back to the ship.
☄ IT'S A BIRD! IT'S A PLANE!The organisms that have evolved on this planet are unintelligent—a fact that is told to you by the other visitors. As there is no solid materials or ways for them to interact with their environments, these giants float along within the atmosphere, though it appears that they are flying when they are merely navigating through. They travel in groups of three or more and sometimes come close to the outskirts of the temporaries. Because there is an invisible filtration dome around the temporaries, this allows the creatures to pass through without harm and return again into the mist as they please. They are difficult to see at night and are rather skittish in the presence of sudden light.
☄ @ THE MUSEUM Every evening when work is done, artificial light sources illuminate the streets of the temporaries. There is one bar, if you can actually call it that, but the main attraction is a museum. The support structure appears to be made out of the skeletal system of the giants that "swim" and live on Ceta, and though the outside seems rather unassuming, the inside is not for the faint of heart. As it's considered informative, there are displays of the internal structures and functions of the very creatures that seem harmless and as unintelligent as the visitors claim. There are sections of the museum dedicated to their anatomy and what makes them so valuable: inside their air sacs, which is what gives the illusion to flying through the atmosphere, is a mineral that, when harvested, attunes and sharpens the senses so that brain capacity and function excel over one-hundred percent efficiency. Likewise, aside from these informative areas, there is also a history of how and when the visitors began to hunt them for this valuable, unnamed resource.
☄ HARVEST SEASON Are you looking for work? Or perhaps you're bored with your duties aboard the Moira and prefer to see just what it is these visitors do during the day? Hunters will often pay for menial labor to help with the killing and retrieval of the giants of Ceta. It is by day, not by hour, and once aboard one of the many ships, you will be put to work handling equipment or being on the lookout for "signs" of the creatures. Once they've been spotted, the real work isn't in capturing them or even trying to subdue them—though they give a good fight. It's in the harvest, done below deck once they have been safely brought into the ship's cargo areas by the tethers, that can get quite gruesome. As a defense mechanism, cutting into the skin creates a rather noxious emission that can cause disorientation, hallucinations, or unconsciousness. Worst case scenarios can often result in death.
☄ WORD LIMITS As things are beginning to wind up (or down), something seems to have gotten into the MID systems and caused a malfunction. On the morning of 03.13, it suddenly becomes clear that communicating with others who are not from the same universe or similar timelines seems very difficult. Understanding each other becomes rather hopeless as the day continues, and these repercussions can be felt across the entire ship. The Captains send out another MID message that appears as a jumble of unusual letters and symbols. However, there is one word that can be read by everyone and (hopefully) understood: RATCHET. Figuring out this problem shouldn't take long if everyone can leap the language barriers and work together.
( ooc; All New Arrivals: you have the choice of coming through the Moira's Ingress OR Ceta's Ingress. For questions, go here. Please comment to activity check to receive new ranks (if applicable)! )
|
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hownkai) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thisavrou_log2016-03-01 02:40 pm
no subject
[Flynn drags himself away from horrified contemplation of ramping his brain activity higher, and turns. He looks up higher to find the face in the big suit of armour beside him, blinking.]
Wow. Hi. Uh, no, I was talking to the relics - myself. Just me. You're interested in this stuff too?
[He leans back and forth as he talks, looking over the details of the armour. Vaguely Japanese in style, so maybe human underneath, but the voice is very strange. Most intriguing.]
no subject
[Now he feels like a bit of an idiot, interrupting when this stranger hadn't been talking to him at all. He would wonder if this was a hunter or a visitor from the Moira like himself, but it's pretty obvious, nobody has ever looked less like a hunter in their lives.]
It is pretty interesting, though it's also kind of sad. It doesn't look like there's any necessary reason to hunt these animals, it's all for recreational or luxury reasons.
no subject
Right?! Totally unjustifiable. They're not even trying to claim they're pests. And I'm betting any creature that actually produces a mineral which enhances brain activity isn't going to be just a dumb animal. Which makes this not just hunting. It's murder.
no subject
I wonder if there's any way we could try and communicate with one and find out... the ship seems to have a way to help us understand each other, right? Maybe it would work on these animals too?
no subject
Yes! Yes, we have to try that! How do we get close enough? How close do we need to be? Are we talking psychic frequency or audible sounds? Wait, wait, wait, there was a display on this! Over here!
[He takes off across the museum to a different exhibit, fingers fluttering as he tracks his way back through the information.]
Ha! Yes! Here, look! Communication between pods and individuals. It's part of how the hunters track them, too, but there could definitely be a language in use, at minimum the same way dolphins have specific names and noises for different things and if you've ever seen orcas work together it definitely takes a sophisticated kind of co-ordination but we're probably looking at a full and complex communication system that would be so much easier to be prepared for if they had writing of any kind but I suppose that's too much to ask for -
no subject
[He's caught up in the enthusiasm, though. His footsteps echo loudly in the museum hall, heavy and clanking, as he jogs after Flynn through the exhibits.]
I think we'd probably have to be pretty close to try and actually talk to them, but I'm not sure how we could get up there. All the boats they use belong to the hunters, and they're only taking people aboard who will work to catch them.
no subject
Well, we could bluff our way into one of the hunting parties to get up there, but then we'd have to somehow stop the whole lot of them from killing anything, and try talking with that many people opposed to us on board. Or -
[He spins around, grinning.]
- we could bypass the hunters entirely. We don't need them. We just need their transport. They're not up there 24/7, or... however many hours there actually are in the day here and do you know, that's something I completely forgot to check before coming down here? And while we're at it, do we even have a consistent basis for time among all the crew? If we're all from different worlds then we must have different horological systems, so unless the translators are accounting for that and converting measurements as we speak then if I say I'll meet you in ten minutes that could mean something very different to you, and –
[Save him from himself.]
no subject
[He cuts across Flynn's ramble about the different ways time could be measured, though he does admittedly find it interesting himself, to focus back on the matter at hand.]
I don't think we should be stealing someone else's ship, especially not when we're just visitors to this place. We could end up in jail. Or worse!
[He has had enough of jail, thank you.]
Besides, do you even know how to fly it? Because I don't!