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ximilialog2021-12-05 08:32 pm
- ! event log,
- altered carbon: takeshi kovacs,
- doctor who: clara oswald,
- doctor who: river song,
- doctor who: the doctor (11),
- fear street: ziggy berman,
- grishaverse: the darkling,
- gundam seed/destiny: yzak jule,
- knives out: marta cabrera,
- marvel comics: gwen stacy,
- mass effect: kaidan alenko,
- mcu: daisy johnson,
- mcu: erik stevens,
- naruto: shikamaru nara,
- one piece: rosinante donquixote,
- pacific rim: newton geiszler,
- star trek aos: james t. kirk,
- star trek aos: leonard mccoy,
- yakuza 0: goro majima,
- yakuza: zhao tianyou
STATION LOG.02
● ● ● S T A T I O N 2.0
A few days following the arrival of the latest batch of the new Orbers, Viveca’s voice filters through the communications devices across the station.
As soon as you arrive at the round room in the middle of the station, you’ll find that Viveca in her robot body isn’t the only one there to greet you, but Degar is present too, this time wearing a leather tunic and what appear to be cargo pants under his ever-present hooded cloak.
With fingerguns directed at those on the team who can see through illusions, Degar grins and then turns towards the door to the North Wing, waving his hand — and with that, the doors slide open with a hiss.
Degar bows to Viveca with a flourish and waits until she’s past the door before he waves his hand again at the team with the universal sign of go, go, go.
And what else is there to do but go?
1.0 The room you step into is long and rectangular, and without any furniture to clutter the space — instead, you’ll find a large sphere, almost crackling with magical energy front and centre and surrounded by open circulation, perhaps for its own protection — the barrier of this object is so powerful that even those without any magical talent can feel the way it feels, almost like static electricity. A (slightly) closer look will wield three different globes of light circling each other in colours of gold, red, and green.
If you choose to take a step closer, you’ll immediately sense it: there’s an awareness, a quiet whisper in your ear, or a chorus of indistinct words, reaching out to you.
Degar, walking back to the room, directs his steps right towards the sphere of energy… and as he walks right up to it, something strange happens — his cloak begins to glow with the same energy as the barrier, allowing him to simply walk into the field of energy… and disappear.
Should you circle back into the room when neither Viveca or Degar is there, you might be overcome with the urge to approach the energy sphere still situated in the middle … but touch it and you’ll be flung across the space like a rag doll. Maybe some of you will stick the landing, but those of you without a 'Poser' finishing move might need some assistance after.
2.0 As you leave the room, it turns out Viveca really wasn’t joking about the lack of excitement. After a sight like the one you’ve just witnessed, this next room appears to have nothing of note except for a set of chairs lined up along the sides of the room, and then one larger one in the middle — a mechanical armchair with several different wires running directly into it.
On both sides of this space you’ll find maintenance rooms directly adjacent: one for the station itself, and one for the AI. Both of these rooms are filled with advanced machinery and screens — and one thing to note is how … clean the one designated for station maintenance seems to be. Not a fleck of dust to be found anywhere. On the other hand, the AI maintenance room feels quieter, looks darker … but as soon as anyone walks in, they’ll find a little cleaning robot beeping at them angrily. Whoops, it seems as though you’ve located the robot’s home, so make sure to not trail in any dirt. (This room is also spotless.)
3.0 Connected to the station maintenance room is the power and life support, a room with a large engine at its back, and closed pods on its sides. Most of them have a blue, glowing stripe on them; only one has a red one. But no matter how you try to open any of them, they don’t budge.
On the other side, connected to AI maintenance, is a room that has clearly been used as sleeping quarters. If anyone were to check, they’d count twenty beds in the room, half of which are divided into bunk beds on either side of the room… and most of them still have some items near them: clothes, a few books written in a language that your translators can’t seem to decipher, a soft elephant toy, and a photograph of eighteen people — a diverse mixture of women and men, older and younger, of different races, and makes; a few droids among them, but all faces unfamiliar to the current team. The group are all posing with smiles across their faces — it’s a commemorative picture, that much is clear. The right upper corner of the photo has been torn away.
Only one of the beds seems to still be in use — everything else in the room smells slightly musty, as if none of it has been touched for a long time.
4.0 The last place to explore within the North Wing is a hexagonally shaped room that matches the ones teleporting food and other essentials onto the station. Indeed, in the middle of this one is an almost identical platform, though what it connects to is a little unclear — in any case, it doesn’t seem to be powered up right now. At the end of the room is circular cut-out and a heavy-duty latch, currently locked into place to seal whatever is beyond it. It’s a door, of course, but it isn’t just any door … for anyone wondering about exits on this station, you’ll realize now where it’d been all along. There’s a control panel on the wall next to it but it requires a passcode … unfortunate for anyone who wanted a scenic tour outside of the station itself.
Perhaps it’s a little less exciting than you were hoping for, or maybe it’s just what you expected — whatever it is, the mystery held above you for the last three missions has finally been revealed and you’ve now seen what the previously enigmatic North Wing has to offer. As most of you exit the wing, you’ll notice that there’s still no visible signs of Degar anywhere (and also no strange whispers in your ear, no awkward feelings of being watched) ... but if some of you decide to return to the orb room and watch for him, you’ll see him leaning against the wall, using magic to create different shapes out of a smoke he seems to have charmed into existence in front of him. Watching the little performance will demonstrate Degar forming a puff of smoke into a ship with many sails, moving through an orbit of several smoke rings. Pretty funny, right? Clearly word travels fast.
Throughout the week, whenever you return to the North Wing, you will find it unchanged.
5.0 For those of you who often cross through the sunlight room to break paths into other areas of the station, you may notice some changes in the optics around you. Where the trees had once reflected images of a lush foliage of a typical temperate planet during its warmest season, now a series of various conifers (firs, spruce, cedars, hemlocks, pines) in deep greens and soft, spiky, needle-like foliage takes its place, scattered across your field of vision in no particular pattern. Snowflakes glisten and glitter at the tips like miniature crystals, catching the simulated wintery sunlight above from a crisp, cloudless blue sky.
Follow the path into the trees and you’ll find that the room’s detritus is now covered in a fluffy white blanket of snow not yet trodden over: perfect for your footprints. It even feels just a little cooler, brisker — each breath you exhale coming out in a cloud of fog, and yet it never feels uncomfortable enough to require any sort of winter gear.
When you’ve cleared the patch of forest, on the far end of the room is a snow-covered meadow just waiting to be populated with snow angels and maybe a family of snow-people. Grab some twigs for arms and a handful of pebbles for facial features, and you’re set to spend a couple of hours playing in the snow. The rest of the sunlight room has become something of a winter wonderland: the shallow river beneath the bridge has frozen over into ice, shiny and clear, leading into a small pond perfect for sliding across even if you’re lacking skates.
The atmosphere in the room makes for a pleasant in-between to the rest of the station’s rooms, or simply a pleasant space to chill (heh) for a little while.
6.0 During the early days of the festive month, Viveca’s cheerful voice will broadcast across every Orber’s communications device, announcing the appearance of a box to be left near the mess hall. The purpose, she explains, is for any Orber feeling the holiday spirit and wanting to spread a little joy and cheer by way of a surprise gift.
Anyone is welcome, of course, to put in a gift request for another Orber on the station. The intention is to spread good cheer and encourage team-bonding, and honestly? It’s just a nice thing to do. Once in a while you might come across another fellow Orber on their way to the box, or you might find someone already there, inputting their request onto the box’s screen. Don’t peek (or do, we’re not your mother) or you might ruin the surprise!
7.0 This month’s supply drop arrives like Christmas itself is here, in two parts and with a fairly obvious theme in both. There are a lot of reds, golds, greens, and blues, and the scents are unmistakably festive.
Part one arrives earlier in the month with a smattering of requested holiday goods: decorations in all colours of the rainbow (tinsel, streamers, bells, bulbs, and canes), a tree outfitted with a bright silver star at its top, and a small woven basket filled with sprigs of mistletoe tied in blue ribbon. There are also small bags of baking and cooking ingredients, as well as a modest array of equally quaint glass bottles filled with holiday-specific spices: cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, to name a few.
Halfway into the Orbers’ reprieve at the station, a generous stack of completely concealed, gift-wrapped boxes will arrive on the transport, each one with a tag addressed to its recipient in bold black letters. They will have to be moved (some more carefully than others) to the tree that a few Orbers will have set up in the station by now, awaiting Christmas morning to be unwrapped.
8.0 As the month continues, anyone who stops by to visit the infirmary, either to visit patients currently in stasis, to replace some bandages, or grab something for that headache and the like — you might notice that the room seems to have changed enough for it to be noticeable even to the occasional passerby.
It’s bigger, for one thing, and some of the room has been sectioned off to include a pharmacology centre. Equipment to synthesize medications has been installed on one end of the new room, and adjacent to it are a couple of shelves with medical texts from across familiar and unfamiliar galaxies alike. Across from this are overhead cabinets to house a generous amount of first aid supplies, and similarly, stored in cabinets under a long counter space are more equipment: beakers, pipettes, meters, and basins.
Most of this will be foreign (and dare one say uninteresting?) to anyone who isn’t involved in the medical or chemical fields, but for those who are, it might feel like the Christmas spirit has spread to even the most practical ends of the station. Nevertheless, the upgraded infirmary room should prove useful in the future.
F Y I
• Throughout the month, remember that all the locations in the two wings and the center of the station are available to use, even if they’re not detailed in the prompts in this log. So feel free to make your own wildcard prompts using the training room, the armory, the living quarters, the kitchen, etc.
• If you have questions about anything in this log, please direct them HERE.
• And finally, have a soundtrack for this log! ♪ ♪ ♪
2.5;
[ kovacs doesn't necessarily understand the necessity for the winter season himself either. he's native to harlan's world, a planet with longer days and an entirely different sense of the seasons, namely in that it doesn't shift around in the way that it would on earth. even in knowledge of that is limited, considering the lone week he actually spent there.
but the weather change here doesn't bother him, whether he sees the sense in it or not. it's a touch chillier but nothing that's easy to notice, especially since he's typically caught wearing his own dark trench coat anyway.
not to mention the cigarette he usually has prepared to keep him warm. pulling out his carton, he holds it out to rosinante in offering. ]
Careful for the little gremlins that might pop out at you, though. Some tricksters'll throw snow down your clothes just to be an asshole.
no subject
Thanks. And... I hope that's a figure of speech. Actual snow gremlins aren't part of winter on some planet, right?
[Look he just can't be sure around here.]
no subject
You know what? Wouldn't doubt it.
[ who knows what kind of weird shit'll pop up. he's definitely learned about a number of things since he's been around. ]
But, no, some of the other rascals around here are going full "kid". Pulling pranks and all of that. Harmless, but danger's always in indulging 'em.
no subject
[Not that he terribly minds - in fact, he'd challenge any of them to actually dump snow down his shirt. They'd have to jump.
Pants, though. That could be a danger and probably far worse. The idea makes him laugh.]
Snow must be one of those things that brings out the kid in a lot of people. I kind of miss getting to drop in on North Blue villages like I used to years ago with work now and then, or some of the winter islands in the Grand Line. Seems like the harder it is to scrape by in a place, the more people are willing to welcome you and give you hot drinks and tell stories.
no subject
Sounds like you've had better luck with people than I've had.
[ then again, in his world, most everyone's become an asshole for some reason or another. ]
Been to a few chillier places myself, but for the most part, they tend to avoid settlement on the colder planets. Never really a lot of sense in settling down where food's gonna be scarce anyway. Not that there isn't still the occasional winter. But I think people just choose to border up and keep to themselves then.
no subject
[An unending job, that's what he's left with. But someone has to do it, and he does his best.]
Been to lots of different planets, then?
no subject
[ plenty of trouble, but only because he was often the one causing it. ]
Pirate gangs and bandits though, huh? That kind of crowd your regular company?
no subject
[Makes him wonder about the guy, honestly. Who hears someone refer to thugs, thieves, and murderers and assume that's who they hang out with?
Must be some kind of joke, but he just snorts at the thought.]
But you said you were a soldier for a while. What made you quit?
no subject
[ plenty of people get mixed with the wrong crowd while still knowing they're the wrong crowd. especially in the age where he comes from where everyone's some level of trouble, where being a criminal is more of the norm and the only real distinction is whether you're rich enough to brand yourself with a fancier name just for the cover up.
the question asked, though, is of course plenty loaded and he brings back his cigarette to his lips as he considers his answer. ]
They called themselves the Protectorate. Said it was because they protected innocents from lawlessness, from the same kind of guys you're talking about. Convinced me to join them when I was a kid, but — well, let's just say they turned out to be the biggest dickheads of them all.
no subject
Sorry to hear that. But you got out of there all right...?
[Probably depends on one's definition of "all right," he's aware of that much. But alive, and able to look back on it, that's something. More than some of them get. Something has softened in his expression, meanwhile - something that stems both from familiarity and genuine concern.]
no subject
Ditched them once I caught onto a pretty lie. Freed my hands of them for a few years. [ eventually joining in with the envoys to fight against the protectorate, which is ... an entirely different complicated story. ] Went on the run for a while, and when they did finally catch me, they stuck my ass in jail for two and a half centuries, so —
[ he shrugs, like it's the most normal and simple conclusion. ]
no subject
[He can follow the logic, he really can, but his head is getting stuck on the timing of it. Two and a half decades, he can comprehend. That's enough to leave a man either eager for revenge or eager to move on.
But.]
Is... that a normal amount of time for people to live, where you're from?