thisavrou_log | ( august intro log )

Entry tags:

( august intro log )

Who: Everyone
When: August 1st and on
Where: The Moira
What: New “guests” join the crew on their journey and implement some changes.
Warnings: None for now. Please label your content!

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old but unfamiliar faces
"We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once."

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. Shortly after, you are led out and toward the medbay.

Inside this room, you are given a physical scan and offered a contract to sign that states you are now part of the crew of the Moira with a specific job. Any questions you might have would be answered in a straightforward manner as well as an explanation about how the Ingress, the thing that has pulled you onto the Moira, is broken and bringing people here unintentionally. This process also 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 or wrist with only the slightest pinch. From there, you are guided out of the medbay and to your living quarters.

At first, this month seems no more unusual than the previous one for those who have been aboard the Moira for any amount of time. The crew who had landed on the slaver outpost were rescued, and with everyone aboard, the ship has pushed forward into the darker parts of the Runoff. Anyone arriving through the Ingress follows the same routine—moving from the Ingress room into the Medbay for their physical and contract before being assisted by seasoned crew members and helped to their assigned decks. But all familiar things must eventually come to an end: two final travelers come through the Ingress. The first, and most noticeable difference between them and all the others, is their clothing. Both are dressed in standard Moira uniforms, though they bear the insignia of one sharing the same rank as Captains Cúrre and Thán. After a moment to take in all the people on the platform ahead of them, one of the two latest arrivals approaches one of the Ingress panels and begins to manipulate the controls. The Ingress completely shuts down. Unlike before, however, there isn’t an imbalance felt across the ship; everything remains normal and stable.

Utilizing the computer systems located in the Ingress room, they send out the following message to the crew via the MID:
To all those aboard this vessel: I am Ira Phirun, assigned captain of the Moira. First Mate Egan and I will be commandeering all rights to the ship as soon as word is sent to those currently in charge. Expect a more detailed report as soon as all records and logs in Navigation have been reviewed by myself and the First Mate. All questions will be answered in a timely matter. For now, there will be no interruption of daily routine or reprimand if conduct among ranks is broken. Thanks for your time.

Heading to Navigation, the Captain and First Mate, for seemingly unknown reasons, approach Navigator Manasseh and have her show them all records and logs of the Moira. Those working in Navigation when the Captain and First Mate arrive will see Mana greet them in a professional manner. Oddly, the Captain and First Mate act very familiar with the Navigator. They review all documents, but when they come upon news that the Ploiatos is on board, their mostly friendly demeanor shifts quickly. The Captain issues a sharp order, unintelligible to those who are close enough to overhear parts of their conversation, and without any warning at all, Mana loses consciousness and collapses right there on the bridge. Within minutes of this happening, the ship as a whole falls into a low power state with basic functions only. Mana’s MID alerts Medbay, and without hesitation, Captain Cúrre places her in cryo with strict orders to those who work there not to disturb the unit.

As promised, the Captain and First Mate soon address the crew.

☄ lights down low

The lighting has dimmed in all the rooms and halls, the normally crisp air that is pumped from the vents low, and all machines and tech are running at half-speed. These effects can be found throughout the ship. Water in the showers remain hot for only a few minutes before reverting to cold. Recreational equipment powers off not long after it has been turned on. The sanitation and water filtration systems require an hourly manual reboot, and all unused areas of the ship have no power allotted to them until a crew member steps inside. Even then, most functions are not optimal. It’s as if the Moira has been transformed into a dark house with only a candle flickering on the window sill.

☄ reuse & recycle

The Captain and First Mate are quick to establish that this is a new regime and go about making the ship and its crew more efficient in the wake of their change in course and the low power state of the ship itself. This means they will systematically inspect each occupied barracks room and leave notes for what needs to be disposed of or stowed away. Unlike before, this is no longer a pleasure cruise, and each member of the crew is a guest on board; they will not tolerate useless clutter. Anything seen as unnecessary will be either placed into storage in the Cargo Bay or disposed of through the airlock. This new need for efficiency also extends to the need to conserve resources until they reach their destination. The showers are set to an automatic timer to minimize water waste. Those few minutes of hot water are all a crew member is now given. Meals are smaller, bordering on ration sizes, and luxuries are done away with entirely in order to preserve supplies so that the ship can go longer before needing to dock at a planet.

☄ new jobs, same faces

The Captain and his First Mate, as expressed in their addressing of the Moira, explain that work efficiency is a priority. Applications for a head of the following departments will be accepted for a short period: Navigation, the Tower, Medbay, Defense, the Hold, Sanitation, Ingress work, and the Galley/Mess Hall. (Here.) After reviewing what they receive, one head of department will be chosen and tasked with helping crew find positions relevant to those departments and their own skillsets. They will be allowed to retain any positions that they held before that aren’t ship-functional jobs, but they will have to be done in leisure time. In two weeks time, they’ll be accepting department position applications which will be approved, and all those that do not apply will be assigned in accordance with their initial work application. They will also choose three individuals to act as guards of Ploiatos to ensure that there is a rotation available at all times. Will you choose to follow this new decision and promote yourself into a position of responsibility? Or will you simply wait for a reassignment?

( ooc; For questions, go here. Please comment to activity check to receive new ranks (if applicable)! )

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So, that was obviously not the response she was hoping for. It doesn't come as a surprise-- if he'd thought a moment before opening his mouth maybe he'd have found a nicer way to phrase it. Too late for that, now. Maybe someday he'll get the hang of this fatherhood thing.

"Sorry," he says, a bit more gently. Jaina Solo. So, he's got a daughter. In the half-light of the corridor he can't really look at her the way he'd like to, seeking some sense of familiarity in her features. He doesn't doubt her, but it's gonna take him a bit to get used to the idea. The years of familiarity she's calling on are still years ahead of him, presumably.

"I didn't realize-- look, we're gonna have to sit down and draw a family tree sometime, okay?" There's kind of a joke in the tone, but he's pretty serious about it. He tries and halfway manages a reassuring smile.

"You think you could give me a hand with some of this?"

It's not child labor, it's unexpected family bonding time. Really. And in the Falcon at least he can turn up the lights.

"A family tree with or without the Sal-Solos?" Her own thin joke, as her knowledge of her mother's side of the family line is tragically limited, and the Solo family she knows is a hairy mess. It'd probably be cleaner fun, she supposes, to draw up Chewie's family.

Short or not, Jaina does pull some more things from Han's arms. It'd be easier to use the Force to float things along, but it seems a little too trivial to do it now. Besides, it's not the toughest job in the galaxy. It's practically a chore, almost like packing up the family's ship for a vacation.

"I can get back to things here later." She flashes him a smile, and tries to indicate with a tilt of her head to move on down the corridor. It's almost an idle question, but considering how little seemed to come with people at the Ingress and how sometimes junk seemed to end up piling up around her father, it seems worth asking, "How much stuff have you picked up here?"

Giving her a sidelong glance, he doesn't answer immediately. It's as strange the second time around to be confronted by a total stranger who's grown up knowing every damn thing about him. Something about the cadence of her voice, the way she jokes... Once she's taken a reasonable share of the load, he shrugs the rest into a more comfortable position and starts down the corridor.

"We visited this system a while ago, me and Leia--" he stumbles a little over the words. Should he have just said. your mother?-- "picked up a few things, and I don't want someone else poking around deciding what's worth keeping."

A little defensive? Maybe. But, hell, if he wants to fill his freighter with freight, why not?

"If they're worried about resources, everything's worth keeping at this point." She's absolutely certain on this point, even if she probably wouldn't have picked up the same sorts of things on visits as her father. She's also ignoring the way Han stumbles over some words. It could be even more awkward -- he could have denied her.

Jaina focuses on the practical. She's a competent young Jedi now, surely she has helpful input. "There's a lot of things that can be salvaged and repurposed to extend the ship's viability." Until then... "Do you plan on locking all this up until we get to the end of the trip?"

"Maybe not everything," he mumbles. Trying to explain their vacation of sorts on the Collective planets and the rather absurd shopping spree the previous captains had encouraged feels a little awkward. They'd had the space and little reason not to use the money; if circumstances are changing, then they'll adjust. Carrying a pile of extra clothes and excessive pillows and whatever else is stuffed in these boxes does feel a little ridiculous, though.

"For now I'm just putting it out of the way in the Falcon." As he says it he can't help but glance at her, not sure what reaction to expect. Ben's carrying an inexplicable grudge against the ship, but this girl-- his daughter, he has to remind himself, still taken aback by the suddenness-- seems not to share his general rage, so maybe she won't take it out on an innocent spaceship, right?

"So, uh. Tell me something about yourself." It's an awkward question, but he doesn't know what else to say.

"We're not so worried that they're going in the hidden compartments, are they?" It's meant as a joke, but...she wouldn't be too surprised if her father went to that extreme.

Mentioning that their destination is the Falcon puts some pep in Jaina's step. It may be beat-up and half its systems jerry-rigged just to keep the thing flying, but as far as she's concerned the old freighter is one of the best ships in the galaxy. Dad's set records in that thing, and surely time has only made the ship's quirks a known quantity.

As for herself, it's a little weird to try summing herself up to her own father. She chews on her bottom lip a bit, hugging the pile she's picked out close as she thinks something up. "I'm the oldest. I have a twin, Jacen, and we've been learning with Uncle Luke. He converted the old Yavin 4 rebel base into an academy. It's been pretty exciting actually -- we're rebuilding the Great Temple, and we just headed off a pretty big Black Sun plot."

"They're pretty well packed." There's a joke in the tone, but it's also the absolute truth-- with everything they've managed to accumulate he's being careful. There's Alderaanian wine and Corellian rum tucked away for the proverbial rainy day, bits and pieces of useful things here and there. Maybe he's a bit of a pack rat.

Having been on the Moira for months, he doesn't have to pay much attention to the maze of corridors... Which is good, because that's incredibly unexpected. Oldest? Of how many? And twins? Foiling Black Sun plots? (For that matter, what kind of father lets his kids get mixed up with Black Sun plots?) The part about studying with Luke doesn't pass him by, either.

"So, uh. You both take after your mom that way, huh?"

That makes three.

"That way, Dad?" The look she gives him says she knows exactly what he's referring to, and he's right, but. How can her dad make being Force sensitive seem like an embarrassing thing? In a moment, it passes, and she's goggling at the corridors again -- she does still need to finish learning her way around, after all, and it's more amusing than actually awkward for her.

"We're young jedi knights, if that's what you mean." And then the truly important question -- at least from her perspective. "Hey, how does the Falcon compare to the ships in this area? There's got to be a whole new set of records to break."

If she keeps calling him Dad, he's going to get used to it. What an idea.

That glance makes him feel pretty awful about bringing the subject up. Han is even less used to dealing with the Force than she'd be used to him being-- this time-difference is going to give him a splitting headache if he thinks on it too much-- and it's a subject that's been on his mind a fair amount. He's guessing she's used to him being useless about the Jedi business, which seems likely enough to him, but she doesn't seem entirely traumatized by that.

Which means... something. What it means, he can't begin to guess. Either way the change of subject is a relief.

"They've kept us on the move, it's hard to learn too much," he answers a little more easily. "The only things I've gotten a good look at are the shuttles they've got us flying, and those..." He rolls his eyes. Needless to say, Han isn't terribly impressed, but his standard is the Millennium Falcon.

"We've done what we can to give 'em a little more speed."

It's always seemed easy to divvy up topics between the adults in her life. Mom has responsibilities, Uncle Luke has the Force, Lando gets to show off flashy new entrepreneurial pursuits, and Dad has flying. If she thinks about it, Jaina's not sure his visits to the Academy ever actually involved showing him what the kids have been learning. Instead it was stopping by to drop things off for the academy, and they get to catch up a little.

And that's fine, because she does love that piece of junk freighter. Odds are she shouldn't think of the Falcon as a standard-setter, but here they are. "I wonder if they handle the same way. If the systems are completely different, that'd make it harder to upgrade them."

At any age and under nearly any circumstances, flying is a topic he's more than willing to discuss. It seems like it'd make sense to leave everyone to their specialties-- he can't imagine himself having anything remotely useful to say about the Force-- but that's a worry for another time.

"It's not the same, but you can figure it out. Mostly. A little trial and error." He shrugs, easing into this a lot more now that they're on comfortable topics. It's not so difficult to believe they're related with her talking like that.

"Did they say where you're working?"

"Apparently I pulled janitor duty." For the child of a galactic leader, Jaina doesn't seem put out by it. She and her brothers already tried the routine of salvaging a droid to try getting out of doing chores, and found out it's better to just do the work and be done with it. She adds, "It should leave plenty of time for other things." Jaina lifts her armful of junk for emphasis.

"Let me guess. You've been assigned to pilot?"

Way to look on the bright side, though he'd definitely be complaining more if he'd been assigned to sanitation. (He'd still do it. Probably. He'd just be complaining a lot.)

"I guess now and then they have good judgment." Flashing her a grin, he turns down yet another corridor, the door to the flight deck looming at the end, a rectangle of slightly greater brightness.

If he was inclined to disbelieve her claims, he'd probably be convinced by the tone of her voice that she's his kid. It's a pretty nice feeling, actually.

Jaina loves her dad's passions, blind to just how ridiculous Han is about so many things. Mostly she just wants to be included in the shenanigans. Last time she got to go somewhere with him, they'd ended up with a new friend and providing relief to a war-torn planet -- it can only get bigger and better, surely. A brighter future, just like the lights in the flight deck.

Her pace picks up as they approach, not quite running ahead to get her first good look in the hangar. "Only every now and then? You're going to have to tell me some stories."

The eager, easy way she talks to him is immeasurably strange; it sort of makes sense that they'd have an easy rapport. She might be a stranger, but she's known him her whole life.

"You'll have to trade," he says, trying not to feel sheepish. "Tell me one's I'm supposed to know already."

At least she seems willing to let him get to know her. That's a pleasant change. He nods toward the ship as it comes into view.

"C'mon, let's get all this stowed. I'll show you around some."

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( august intro log )

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