( november intro log )

[hownkai]

Who: Everyone
When: November 1st and on
Where: The ship and on planet
What: Exploration + new arrivals
Warnings: Please label any warnings you have on your threads

THE INFLUX

"It is not so much about beginnings and endings; it is about muddling through the middle."

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.

Welcome to Caducus Primary

Shortly after your arrival, you are met by one of the captains and any of the crew of the Moira who might have accompanied him. You are given a brief physical scan and are asked to sign a contract that states you are now part of the Moira with a specific job. This process consists of a complete work-up of medical history and current health, and afterwards, you are given your MID, a device that is integrated into your hand with only the slightest pinch. Much like the Moira's own Ingress, C-Primary's Ingress seems to be malfunctioning, and nothing can return through it. If you choose to disregard this offer, you will be detained indefinitely by the natives of Caducus Primary. (Joining the Moira is really the only choice you have.)

DESCENSION

"I am the keeper of fragile things."

From a distance, Caducus Primary doesn't look like much. The weather on the planet is extremely stable, and the vegetation is neat, almost pristine. What stands out about C-Primary, however, is the fact that there are hundreds of VERY TALL buildings packed together in many of the cities. They are elevated about the ground on what appear to be stilts and sway almost gracefully in the gentle breeze that is always present. Their stability never wavers; they don't fall down. The streets are lined with beautiful sculptures that are placed wherever light is needed. Many other designs can be found outside as well as in. This planet is rather wealthy, and the abundance of their natural resources reflect in everything. The world glitters just as glass would in the sunlight.

Native Details
● They have darker skin tones, but their hair styles and colors are all as unique as they can make them. This can be seen as influence from other travelers.
● Friendly, welcoming, and encouraging to the crew to trade with them for what they need.
● There are no visible "poor" areas.
● Calm and organized. If lost or in need of directions, they will offer to take you where you are going.
● Vey strict when it comes to rules. (Trade what you say you're going to trade.)

☄CITY PROPER

There are many things to do once on planet. In the city proper, stepping into one of the multiple shops reveals workers crafting glass figurines, jewelry, cups, and other items to your specifications. Trading is the same as on all other planets—there is no one accepted monetary unit. Yet, any unsavory cargo (such as weapons, explosives, alcohol, and drugs) will not be found anywhere in the vicinity of these areas. Other travelers have set up places outside the cities near transporter zones for these particular necessities. Trade at your discretion. At night, if you catch your reflection in a surface that isn't quite as transparent (on a sculpture, the side of a building, anything made of glass), there will be a momentary glimpse of your past or future self. A blink, and then, it will be gone.

Staying on the Moira isn't required during time spent on Caducus Primary. Visit one of its many fine hotels with its beautiful accomodations. The price is remarkably inexpensive: it's free.

( OOC: For any and all questions and to see new rank privileges, go here. Please comment to activity check to receive new ranks (if applicable)! Check THIS to see your tag. They have already been added to the comms, but you'll have to tag them onto a post before they show up in the list. )

Comments

[whatdidisay]

( yeah, no dice. libraries aren't his style. )

Oh. ( a beat, and then it clicks. so much for salvagable. ) Oh. Right, you made an announcement about it -- being open. Head librarian. That sounds... important?

( well done, lieutenant lord ivan vorpatril. )

[tearmeanewone]

[Yes, well done. You're pretty Ivan, but she's realizing she's just encountered a man who doesn't read.]

I like to think it's a service that most people would find, if not familiar, at least useful. Plenty of materials related to other cultures and planets, even some things I've enjoyed back in my own timeline. Like meeting an old friend in a place you'd never expect them to be.

[whatdidisay]

( this is quickly veering into territory ivan is no good with. dammit. and he thought he was doing so well. well ish. sort of. something does catch his attention though, somewhere mixed in the idea of loving books. a perspective he can respect, but certainly not understand. )

Wait, there's stuff from our own planets and timelines or whatever showing up? That's-- ( he frowns, as if contemplating whether or not to think further on this, and then decides not to. ) I guess if we can get things from our own universe delivered to us, books wouldn't be difficult either. ( and then: ) What about planets that don't use paper anymore? Do you have anything from them?

( the image of having to go through the library and find every book that could possibly talk about gregor as emperor or ivan as a potential heir flashes through his mind. it's not pretty. well, the spending time with elizabeth part of it is pretty, but not the rest of it. he just -- he likes this, living with an odd sense that no one is going to target him for any stupid political reason. it's nice. he likes it. )

[tearmeanewone]

Uh... [That throws her for a moment.] Captain Thán is in the process of moving his personal collection to the library, but I haven't heard anything about... ah... [She searches for the word.] Digital volumes. I assume they exist though.

[...shoot, how is she going to outfit the library to handle those? Surely they'll encounter them sooner or later...]

[whatdidisay]

They do on my world. ( he says, before using the minimal knowledge of books that he does have to continue. ) Well not everything. The stuff from the Time of Isolation obviously isn't, and the stuff from the Occupation. Not... that there were a lot of books being written during the Occupation. Too busy trying not to die in a million unpleasant ways.

( look at this great conversation topic!! )

[tearmeanewone]

[Just a thrill a minute.]

Nothing after? It seems like after most wars or monumental historical events where people suffer, there's an outpouring of writing about it.

[whatdidisay]

Some after. But then you had the massacre and the civil war, so that pushed back everything until after the dismemberment of Mad Emperor Yuri. And by that time we'd started to catch up to galactic technology. So most of the stuff is on discs rather than in books.

( barrayar: come for the god knows what, stay for the epic amounts of bloodshed. )

[tearmeanewone]

[No kidding. Good lord, Ivan's told her enough for Elizabeth to question if Columbia or Rapture could give this place a run for its money.]

Glad to hear that old forms of execution and example-making are still used in the future. [She makes a face that indicates just how much she likes imagining what a dismemberment of an emperor named 'Mad Yuri' would look like.] Well, another crewmember, Peridot, is helping me digitize the records of the collection, I imagine soon enough we'll have to do the same for books on discs or stored purely as data. Maybe once that happens, we'll have something you'll find familiar.

[whatdidisay]

( and that's only since they've been rediscovered by the rest of the galaxy! going unmentioned are the 'bloody centuries' and the mutagen disaster and, well, pretty much every part of barrayaran history ever. )

The joke's that Yuri managed to piss off so many people that everyone wanted a piece of him, so Emperor Ezar decided to let them. ( ask miles about it, his dad had the first cut! don't ask gregor about it, that was his great uncle. ) Anyway, we really only use example-making when it comes to public traitors these days. Lock them up in a square and let them starve to death. ( a beat, and ivan frowns. handsomely. ) I guess it works, because I can't think of anyone actually dying that way.

( impsec probably deals with the individuals whose treasons are more hidden, and ivan sure as hell wouldn't want to figure out how they do it. )

Maybe. S'not really important, anyway.

( if ivan were a man interested in working, here's the point where he'd offer his excellent services as a master of paperwork and lover of flowcharts. but alas, he has his own job, and taking up more work seems counterintuitive to spending time doing what he loves -- chatting with women and drinking.

sorry elizabeth. )

[tearmeanewone]

[No kidding. After hearing that kind of explanation of what was definitely a gruesome event, Elizabeth is wishing she had a drink too.]

You really know how to pick these conversation topics.

[whatdidisay]

Er. ( sorry, it's family history? somehow -- although ivan doesn't want to mention that away, he doesn't think even that excuse would go over well. ) Sorry. So uh, how are you liking the planet so far?

( there! that's better! )

[tearmeanewone]

[Much better!]

You'd think this planet would have problems with its infrastructure crumbling, given most of it is quite literally breakable. But somehow everybody seems to get by just fine. It's amazing.

[whatdidisay]

There's probably a billion rules in place. ( he says, looking from elizabeth to their surroundings -- it is something to see, he thinks. it probably counts as one of the things he'd wanted to see when he was younger -- all those places that came with having ship duty. but ivan never lucked out in that regard, no matter how far it would have taken him from his mother. ) I have to admit it is damn pretty.

( this is said with a pointed look at elizabeth and a flash of a grin. he's literally incapable of stopping. )

[tearmeanewone]

[Elizabeth catches that pointed look, and she knows she should rebuff him for his shameless flirtation.]

[...but she's getting kind of used to it, and finds it a little funny. And charming. No harm in that, right? She tries to keep her smile to herself, but she ends up looking up at Ivan from watching the street and giving herself away.]

I imagine rules are the only way they keep things clean. That, or a lot of glass cleaner.

[whatdidisay]

( ah, progress. )

Maybe both. Whatever they do, it sure keeps crime to a minimum. There's no real shady places here -- back home, even in the planetary capital, there was always some part of the city worse off than the rest. ( that should be suspicious to some people, or maybe deserving of more thought, but not to ivan. ) I was born in one. Don't really know the details, but that's what Mamere says.

[tearmeanewone]

[SHUSH, SHE IS AN INDEPENDENT LADY WHO DEMANDS RESPECT. 8[]

I grew up in a... very protective environment. [To say the least.] The first time I saw a 'shady' place, I was shocked. I tried with everything I had to help them find a better life, wished that Columbia could be like... this, really. But now that I see it, it feels strange for some reason. Almost fake.

[whatdidisay]

( he has plenty of respect to give! mostly! at least in the bedroom! )

Parent coddle you, too? ( he knows that feeling, elizabeth, although not to the extent that she does. ha. ha. ha. alys vorpatril meant well, but as a single mother she hadn't had the best approach towards child raising. who knew that putting every waking moment into the care and attention of a child could backfire so epically into a man who just wanted to escape her long grasp? ) Like it's too good to be true? Maybe. They probably don't know any different, and the places we come from would be just as odd to them.

( ok. barrayar seems odd to people who are from it, they're just used to neo-feudalism and all that. )

[tearmeanewone]

[Hahaha. Ha.]

...The man who posed as my father kept me isolated in six rooms, locked from the outside, almost all of the mirrors were windows to watch me from. I had a giant mechanical bird as a friend, he brought me books and kept me from getting too close to escaping. [Talk about epic backfire.] So I suppose you could call it 'coddling', I just call it kidnapping. [Because that's what it was, and Comstock was a horrific human being.]

They probably don't know any different... that's amazing, though. They've achieved a society where nobody has to experience stress over where their next meal is coming from. I wonder how they managed it.

[whatdidisay]

So less 'coddling' and more all out crazy. Got it. ( whoops. his bad. never going to ask about overbearing parents again, nope. and then, with obvious sincerity: ) I'm glad you got away.

( she had to have, right? not only here, but ivan remembers her talking about two different years. something like that, anyway. )

Something no one else in this galaxy has, and selling it? ( some sort of in-demand resource that can function as their main source of income, maybe? you need something to finance all this, at any rate. ) They all look like businessmen to me.

[tearmeanewone]

Eventually my actual father came to get me. [Elizabeth smiles, though there's a distinct sad overtone to it.] He's the reason I could escape. So at least one of my 'parents' didn't fail me.

[Elizabeth looks around at the passers-by, noting their mode of dress and so on.] I guess you're right. But what resource could it possibly be? They don't even have alcohol on this planet.

[whatdidisay]

You mentioned your dad back when we first met. He seems like a good man. ( ivan wouldn't know. ) It's just m'mother and me. My father ( got shot in front of his pregnant mother during an attempted coup for having vorbarra blood in him ) died the day I was born.

They don't have alcohol? ( he sounds distressed, because he regularly enjoys a state of being not sober. vor lord, and all that. ) I don't know, though, I can't think of anything else. Some sort of services, maybe.

[tearmeanewone]

He is. [Elizabeth smiles, sadly.] He's the best man I'll ever know. [Even if he was an alcoholic, and a gambler, and a former Pinkerton agent, Booker DeWitt had never given up on her. One hundred and twenty-three times he made the same choice to get her. One hundred and twenty-two, he died in the process. He'd known the odds, and he'd still come for her. Over and over again.]

I'm sorry. [Elizabeth looks sympathetic.] My mother died in childbirth. I know how that is, somewhat. [She'd grown up without any parents at all, really, so she... sort of knew?]

[Elizabeth fixes him with a smirk and a raised eyebrow.] None. Contraband, apparently. I'm not much of a drinker, but it does seem a little overboard to ban it outright. [But that really wasn't her business. Every place was different, and valued different things. Economy included. She tries to figure out what these people specialize in based on how they're dressed, but it's so eclectic she can't begin to guess.] I guess that would make sense. I haven't seen any kind of farm or food production anywhere.

[whatdidisay]

( well he doesn't think being in competition with someone's dad is something ivan should be aiming for, so he decides to settle for 'acceptable man'. ivan shrugs, though, it's not really important. well, it is, but possibly not in the way people think. )

There's nothing to be sorry for. It's not like I knew him or anything. ( it's just a fact of life. ) But, uh. I'm sorry you never knew your mother? ( fucking smooth, ivan vorpatril. ) If mine were here, you could have her. She's got the energy to spare after looking after me and Gregor. Although that's only in a professional capacity.

( careful, ivan, you might have to explain why. )

Wonder what, though? ( ivan likes asking questions to get people who are not him to do the heavy thinking for him. it works with miles, surely it'll work with beautiful and intelligent women as well. )