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the glass menagerie
"I want the world to be fragile. There is no place to hide a dark heart."
After the missive from the people aboard the vessel carrying those from Caducus Secondary, the Moira is alive with preparations for defending the ship. No matter how big or small, each individual is entrusted with the responsibility of protecting themselves and their fellow crew members at all costs. With the Captains having divided them into teams to devise appropriate Plans of Action, they have decided to merge all the ideas into a singular strategy and have relayed it to the entirety of the crew via the MID. Everyone has been given a vital part to play, and although the Captains realize that some aboard are passive, now isn’t the time to be idle. Now is the time for action.
☄ Step 1: Negotiate & Infiltrate
With this part of the plan enacted, a small number of those who have volunteered to attempt negotiations have been heard by the Caducans and have been temporarily “invited” to board their vessel. However, due to this highly stressful situation, a portion of the offensive team have been asked to accompany them in order to disable as much of the opposing ship and its crew to force them to evacuate onto the Moira. Regardless of time and what reparations are offered, negotiations ultimately fail. The Caducans want the debt of their planet to be paid by the people of the Moira with their very lives. While boarded with the Caducans, they will attempt to incapacitate the negotiation party through violent means, and it will be the responsibility of this particular team to attempt disengage the Caducans’ ship to prevent it from attacking the Moira. However, despite all efforts to sabotage their systems, the ship itself shuts its primary units into Lockdown Mode.
All Moirans are forced to make a decision: stay and be shut inside an unfamiliar ship with the remaining Caducans who are still out for blood or make an attempt to flee to the emergency escape units on that ship with the other Caducans who have used them to head straight for the Moira. Meanwhile, back on the Moira, the crew must work to secure the ship against the incoming assault by the Caducans after having left their ship via emergency escape units. This means that some of the defense team will have disabled the gunnery to make it look as if the Moira is defenseless and secure the rest of the area with those on the offense team. There is no place for mercy; the Caducans will board the ship through the Cargo Bay. They are not interested in granting it to the crew after all the losses they suffered at Caducus Primary. The only choice will be to fight for their lives (kill or be killed) or find a way to lure the Caducans into the Ingress room to send them to some unknown place where they will no longer be a threat. The Captains have given all members of the crew leave to use whatever means necessary to protect both themselves and the ship’s systems from the invaders. Failure is not an option.☄ Step 3: ???? & Step 4: Profit
In the aftermath of the fight, the Moira is in a state of devastation. Bodies of the Caducans as well as some of the Moira’s own crew can be found in the hallways. Those who were stuck aboard the Caducan ship have either been rescued or rescue attempts are underway. This is the time to recover, to calculate what has been lost and come together as the crew the Captains have wanted since the Ingress had brought them aboard. Any and all Medbay personnel will be at the crew’s disposal, though the Captains will be focusing their attention on the Ingress room and what has become of it after having thrown so many people inside it.
The Ingress technology is broken. Various events on planets and on the ship have shown that fixing it is near impossible, and that it is entirely unpredictable in nature. The Moira’s Ingress had recently turned off, sending the ship into a slight freefall before it restored and righted itself. Hours after sending the remaining Caducan crew members through the Ingress, the swirling blue light goes still and emits a pulse that ripples out in waves as far out around the ship as a few miles. For one lingering breath, it’s impossible to move, a near blinding light surrounding every crew member. The rush of wind is the only sound that can be heard. Moments later, every Moiran, even those that were on the Caducan ship, are now in the same place. The Ingress has malfunctioned, causing time and space to overlap—the two ships have twisted together into something unseemly and new. ☄ Shattered & Swept Aside
Parts of the Moira have ceased to exist. Areas of the ship have become crystalline and transparent. There are rooms that were never there before. The Mess Hall is gone, replaced by a single empty room devoid of all furniture. The tree at the center of the garden is still there exactly as it was except it is now made of glass. The floors are a jarred mess of glass and steel, and there is broken glass littering the ship. The air filtration systems are going into overdrive to clear out the miniscule particles floating everywhere. So, sometimes, too deep a breath may end with inhaling shards of glass. The clothing you’re wearing might have turned to glass, doors are sealed shut, and it’s hard to discern where the Moira starts and the Caducan ship ends.
Everyone has only one job: be careful of the glass. ☄ We Break Fast, We Are Glass
The crystalline glass that is woven into the ship is now possibly a part of the crew. The transition from skin to glass might be painful or feel as if it’s always been that way. Hair has turned to glass, and arms, eyes, patches of skin or entire bodies are now transparent and reflect light. Joints may be stiff, or flex and move as good as they did before. If a crystalline hand is smashed against a wall it might break, or dent steel. For those who need medical attention, all staff have been summoned to the Medbay once more to help their fellow crew. Prosthetics and coverings will be made and offered to ensure that the glass doesn’t get broken or to prevent further breakage. Crew may assist each other in finding a way to remove the glass, or leave it as it is until a permanent solution can be found.
( ooc; When it comes to barracks, each player can decide if their room has ceased to exist for the event or not. Characters that have roommates need to decide together what they’d prefer. The amount of glass that a character has turned to is up to the player, as well as if it is painful or uncomfortable in any way. For questions, please go here. Please comment to activity check to receive new ranks (if applicable)! ) ( Other helpful links: Original Negotiation Plan | Defense Plan | Offense Plan ) |
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hownkai) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thisavrou_log2016-07-02 12:22 am
no subject
"You were--" She had a momentary image of the Cadacans capturing him for some unknown reason before-- "Oh, you mean in the cargo hold. Right."
For the best, really. The last thing anybody needed was that much power running rampant around the--
A deep breath, and then the words spilled out like an overflow, "I don't get it. We destroyed their planet, what did they think they could do against that? They must have thought they were coming here to die."
They couldn't have known the majority of the crew that had been on Cadacus Primary were gone. Couldn't have known the ship had a small population of children and even more civilians besides, people who couldn't destroy a planet if they tried.
Whatever the Moira was, its crew might have just wiped out the rest of a species.
no subject
He gestured vaguely at his eyes. It wasn't just that he couldn't see the units either, but also that he'd have a really difficult time going from the department to the medbay without incident.
What she said next didn't sit too well with him. Maybe it was the way she said it, like just because they had a power on the ship capable of destroying a planet it meant they'd destroy the Caducans too. Not that Bruce wouldn't have protected those he loved at all costs, but that was not the same as purposefully deciding to kill them all.
"Except I didn't destroy their home because I wanted to, and I wouldn't have killed them either. I... don't know what they thought they'd accomplish, but like a lot of people said, they weren't coming from a place of reason. They wanted retribution, some kind of payback for what they lost." Bruce could hardly blame them for it, even if he thought it wrong to blame the whole crew for what just one of them did.
"And maybe... yes, maybe they came here thinking they'd die. Sometimes that seems like the best option there is."
no subject
The medbay was as much of a mess as anywhere else, but there was at least that.
At Bruce's next words, she lifted her hand automatically to gesture the misunderstanding, then immediately hissed in a gasp of pain. The pain was in her voice a moment later. "No, no. I know you didn't, I know. I mean they don't know. They might not even know exactly what happened - they might just know we destroyed their planet and left. We're not, but we could have been completely genocidal for all they know." She paused briefly, and there was loathing in what she said next. "We could have been the last ship I was on."
She lowered her hand, frozen where she'd lifted it, and rested it on the arm of Bruce's chair with a relieved breath.
"I know you didn't want to, and we tried. I know we did. That's what I mean - it didn't matter. For all they knew, we'd just destroy them without a thought, and they came anyway. Trying isn't enough sometimes. Not with something like this."
She got it. Now, with distance, she can wonder if she would have survived another planetary discussion mission. If she wouldn't have decided that...death was the best option there was for her before she lost herself completely.
no subject
He nodded at her answer, though, evidently relieved to hear it. "That's good." Not just for Trish, but for everyone else stuck inside one of the cryo units. He knew he didn't need to specify that he had a loved one in that situation either, by her tone alone he knew she'd picked up on that much— and he offered a faint smile to let her know that what she told him (or how she told him) didn't upset him at all.
"Right," he nodded, dropping his head. "You're right. We could have. There's no way they could know." Even if a good portion of the Moira's crew had helped with the evacuation efforts, maybe not everyone on Caducus Primary would've known that, and chances are even those who were helped by them wouldn't even know it or realize— or care.
Luckily this was nothing like the last ship she'd been on. Even if the captains seemed all too willing to use lethal force if necessary, but they did manage to send off most of the Caducans to a safe place instead, rather than committing genocide.
He pressed his lips into a thin line, turning sideways as if looking away from her. "Grief can cloud your judgment, more often than not. I'm sure they weren't thinking straight just then, and we can't blame them for it."
no subject
She didn't know what those Caudcans had known. Maybe the people there had documented everything - maybe they knew it was a tragic accident of a dozen things going wrong, from gamma radiation exposure long ago to idiocy in the more recent past to the strange happenstance of a planet made entirely of glass. Maybe they thought the Moira was a menace to the galaxy. Maybe nothing mattered apart from their own anger.
"My people lost our planet - we were run off it, it still exists." She tapped her fingers nervously on one another as she spoke, standing up again properly - but the harsh clack of glass-on-glass made her stop rapidly. "And we've held a grudge about it for three hundred years. The only reason we haven't done anything similar yet is because more of us have cooled down enough that we don't want to kill ourselves for revenge.
"That doesn't mean a lot of people don't want it, though. There are quarians who would die to take some of the geth with them."
no subject
Right now, it was enough to hear Tali say that everyone else was fine. God, he couldn't handle knowing Trish had turned to glass, while not knowing if that had somehow killed her. Just because his vital body parts kept working even when turned to glass didn't mean that everyone else's would.
"Right," Bruce nodded, falling silent. Tali was right, of course. Reason played no part here, grief and anger and the need for revenge would lead a lot of people into doing reckless things even without all the necessary information. It was true for these Caducans as it was true for those few quarians that she mentioned.
"No, you're right. I guess they probably wouldn't have cared if they'd died, so long as they took us all with them." Even if no one on the Moira aside from him could possibly be blamed for what had happened in Caducus Primary.
Trying to shift the topic a little, he tipped his head. He heard that clinking of glass when she moved, and it made him wonder. "You've turned to glass too?"
no subject
...Pun not intended.
"Part of my arm," she told him, and reached out to lightly tap the back of his hand with a fingertip. The feeling of the tendons straining on glass was both a uniquely painful experience and something she'd already learned lead to nausea if she thought about it too much. "The skin on my hand, then my whole arm further up. I look like a science experiment from the wrist down."
Her laugh then was a little ironic. "If it wasn't mine, it would be really interesting."
no subject
He could live with the guilt, though. Still, he was glad to not talk about it anymore, as he was to not talk about the state of the people in the cryo units. Because as far as he was concerned that was also ultimately his fault.
"Jesus." She laughed but he didn't. A morbid part of him wished he could see it, a desperate and helpless part of him wished he could see it just so he could try to help her. He could guess it hurt her, if her occasional winces were anything to go by— in that regard, at least, he'd been luckier than her. At least he wasn't hurting, thankfully. Which was a good thing in more than one way because pain could be a trigger too sometimes.
"I'm sorry. That's... have you tried painkillers of some sort? So at least you suffer a little less."
no subject
Well, it's pain, definitely. But an odd kind that painkillers don't seem to be able to do more than blunt.
"It's...nauseating, more than anything else. The glass doesn't move as well as skin does, it's not flexible. When I move I can feel..." The sickening pull of muscle flesh from skin that is no longer willing to move entirely with it - and occasionally a sensation she could have sworn was all-out tearing; the strain of muscle straining against a cage; tendons pulling harder to move a substance that needed to be convinced to shift. It was an acute awareness of the inner workings of her arm that was so sickening that even with painkillers, the phantom of pain still remained. "It's hard to describe. And you probably don't want to hear the details, trust me."
She looks into Bruce's face as she carefully rests her arm against her midriff, like wearing an invisible cast. There's no pain in his features, not specifically, but she grew up looking at masks, not faces. What did she know? "You're not in any pain, are you? How long have you been here, anyway?"
Getting around the ship blind couldn't be an easy task - or rather, not if blindness wasn't what you were used to. Knowing Bruce, as well, chances were high he'd been here for a good long while now.
no subject
"It doesn't hurt, no. Neither my eyes, nor my heart." Thankfully so. He can't even begin to imagine how unbearably painful it would be if his heart literally hurt with each beat— and that's even without considering how something like that might trigger a transformation. "And I've been here... well, since I got this." He gestures to his own face. "I'm not really in a state to be walking around the ship."