epidemiology | EVENT ★ RECOLLECTION DAY

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EVENT ★ RECOLLECTION DAY

RECOLLECTION DAY

On the recruits' return to Oska, they will find some dreary weather, plus the entire castle and town decorated in purple and silver. Ribbons, streamers, and lights in ALASTAIR's colors fill every populated space, and there are more people milling about than before: humanoids and others in equal measure, all of them dressed in ALASTAIR uniforms of some degree. Dagny, Uruz, Cherenkov, and Crowley can be found among the others, as can recent recruit Pomarr, the undead Dakal from the last mission. The weather seems to be due to Pomarr. It's generally overcast around Oska, but the in area nearest to their newest recruit it will always be softly raining to some degree.

THE FEAST

Inside the castle, one of the many studies is decorated lavishly in the same purple-and-silver scheme as the rest of Oska. Today the kitchen is porting food directly into this room, where it's set out along long tables at the edges of the room. You can find anything here, food to suit any kind of diet from any kind of planet at all. There are no promises that all food will suit all diets, though. But still, if you want to try the bubbling pot of orange with the little worms that keep trying to struggle out of it, no one's going to stop you.

A well-dressed, gently green lady stands at the center of the room, nursing a wineglass full of something silvery and addressing the room at large. She seems to be going over the history of Oska, to anyone who will listen.

The gist of it is that Oska was once an entire world, densely populated and well known for its music and carefully bred hunting companion animals. However, its energy was severely unbalanced, and the world was swiftly coming undone. ALASTAIR recruits of the time realized it was the very animals the natives so loved that were the focus of all of the planet's energy, but by the time they had finally figured it out and began to cull the animals, it was too late. This little scrap is all they managed to save. What locals remained eventually died out, being too few to repopulate by themselves, and ALASTAIR opted to move in and reclaim the space, so as not to let this world go entirely forgotten. With their very base of operations as a reminder of what can happen to any world at any time, ALASTAIR of today is not likely to forget the necessity of their mission any time soon.

Come for the food, stay for the slightly depressing story, and leave again fuller and maybe a little more somber than you were before.

THE OBSERVATORY
This room is usually home to a large telescope, a ceiling that slides open, and a lot of gauzy, ethereal decoration. Today it's been cleared out for what seems to be a room-wide, three dimensional documentary, playing on repeat throughout the festival. Images of a vast star system are projected into this room from no identifiable source, floating holograms the viewer can walk between and admire from any angle. A deep, soothing, presumably male voice speaks over the moving images, describing the action as it unfolds.

In the beginning, there was one universe. It was vast and eternal, and most importantly, self-sustaining. There was no reason to doubt it would go on forever. The images at this point are on a cosmic scale, an impossible number of tiny stars swirling in silent patterns. We don't know what shattered the harmony, we only know that shatter it, it did. We call this the Cataclysm.

This part is clearly an artist's interpretation. Slivers of light snake across the universe like the cracks in a broken window, shaking apart the entire scene. Some of the broken sections implode onto themselves in beautiful colors; some of them spread out and consume their neighbors. It's beautiful in a way, and probably completely visually inaccurate to whatever the real event looked like. The voice continues:

The Universe became the Multiverse. The harmony is broken, and the energy no longer balances out. Worlds are thrown into disarray and chaos, some burning out immediately while others struggle on as they are able. There are even dozens of iterations of the same reality existing in some places, just barely splintered from one another and overlapping in impossible ways. The shards of our formerly united reality are nearly limitless.

There are flashes of worlds as the narrator's voice continues. Each one lasts no longer than five seconds, filling the room and then flashing into the next scene. These are flashes of real worlds, broadcast up from the mysterious Viewing Hall and all of its mirrors down in the dungeons. Recruits watching diligently enough may even catch sight of familiar scenes.

This is ALASTAIR's duty. We travel from reality to reality, doing what we must to equalize the energy. The necessary tasks can vary wildly, as wildly as the realities themselves do. In some worlds we find great success, snatching them from the brink of destruction and allowing them to continue on, rebalanced. Some worlds cannot be saved.

The images shift, this time replaying old, completed missions. The variety is huge here, too. One team of blue humanoids dressed in ALASTAIR purple struggles to pull a mammoth out of a tar pit. Two small, doglike recruits dash through a dark alleyway, dodging laser fire. A team of something human-shaped but bundled up in spacesuits climb carefully through the weightlessness of space along the outside edge of an enormous spaceship.

The narrator has just one more line to add: Ours is no easy task, but if not us. . . who?

The informational recording fades out, and five minutes later, plays again from the beginning.

THE COURTYARD jonathan kuo

Down in the courtyard, the festivities continue, this time led by Dagny and Uruz. They have a great number of temporary pens set up in the middle of the area, each one holding a strange, fantastical animal, which doesn't seem at all happy to be there.

These are new mounts, Uruz will explain. Each one of them was personally rescued from a dying world by Dagny and herself. They're not quite tame yet, though, and so they've made a competition of it: anyone who can convince a creature to let them sit astride its back and then guide it into a pen in the stables proper will win a prize. Dagny would like to request that you be really careful, please! Those tusks and spikes can get really sharp.

The prize given to any winning recruit will be a small, silvery musicbox. Opening it plays a soothing tune that will calm anything within the area for about 30 minutes. It can only be used once.

Feel free to make up what kind of creature your character runs into. The stables of ALASTAIR are well known for their variety!

LOST ORBS

Have you ever wondered how Oska is powered? Well, obviously it's plasma orbs, how else? Oska's resident cats have been hard at work creating more of these, to the point that those not yet in use need somewhere to be contained. The problem is, these things are mobile. They'll float anywhere they please with some kind of debatable mind of their own, and lately it's not been uncommon to see two or three of them floating idly down the hallway together. Crowley and Cherenkov have requested recruit assistance in corralling these things and bringing them to a room set up to keep them in on the third floor.

They're a bit like slowly deflating helium balloons, and can be guided with gentle taps to get them floating along in the right direction. Touching one of them is a strange experience that tends to leave hair standing on end. Touching more than one of them at the same time, however, is not recommended. Simultaneous contact with two or more plasma orbs has been known to have strange effects on people, including but not limited to developing the power to fly, sudden weightlessness, animal shapeshifting, ice breath, teleportation, and creating a protective and impenetrable bubble around oneself. None of these effects lasts longer than two minutes, and in each case, the following magitek hangover will make any orb-toucher feel awful for at least half an hour.

HOTSPRINGS
jason parker

There's a new addition to Oska, down by the lake. It seems another team recently extracted an enormous, very hot core from a sentient and murderous AI. The core's power source isn't expected to run out for at least another thousand years, and unsure what else to do with it, the team dug it a pit not far from the lake. They failed to realize that this would accidentally have a very, very pleasant outcome.

There are now hotsprings by the lake, nestled into the small grove of trees that grow around it. The water bubbles softly up from the ground in a new (technically man-made) pool, and some enterprising recruits have built wooden decks and stairs around and through the whole affair. It's a little bit of a hike to get there from the castle, but anyone who has visited can agree: it's worth it.

OOC INFO

Welcome to the festival! This will ICly last for 3 days (and OOCly for 2 weeks), at the end of which the other teams visiting the party will ship out to other missions and leave the PC team to unwind with Oska all to themselves. Through the duration of the festival, recruits will find themselves asked one question repeatedly: do you new guys have a team name yet? It seems everyone else has a team name! Really, it's just sort of sad that a team this big doesn't have a name, isn't it? We'll be including a section for characters to ICly suggest team names, and later on will be hosting an IC vote to pick a team name.

Characters who signed up to remain in Nalawi for three months will arrive late to the party, but how late is up to players.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Hot springs aren't a part of Serene's world either, but she's quickly learning to like them both for the sights and for the luxuriance of being able to wallow in water that won't go cold soon. She's fine glancing at people and being glanced at in turn, for she's vain about her pretty face and her muscles, but when she realises there's someone peeking from the bushes she flushes badly.

She storms out of the bath, wrapping a towel around herself so as not to give any more thrills to what she assumes is a man with his hands in his pants, but when she realises that this is just a peeking child she unclenches her fists and snorts]

So who are you staring at, little girl?

[Sieglinde didn't even notice the approaching woman, not only because she wasn't exactly a warrior with trained senses... but mainly because she simply wasn't paying a lick of attention. To Serene at least.

At the sudden voice she started, biting back a surprised sound and straightening up immediately, hand still frozen over her red face, fingers still spread to allow her to peek through them, puffing up to defend herself, when...

Oh. It was just a woman.]

Not you, madam, I assure you.

[She snickers]

I know it wasn't me, for you did not pay the least bit of attention when I approached. I had been intending to punch you if you were a man, but...

[She sits down and peers at the bathers, seeing what she can see from this vantage point. She's grinning in fond amusement]

I remember when adolescence hit me like a falling rock while I was staring at one of my friends. It broke my heart that the same revelation didn't drop on him for another half a year. So which one is he?

[Having already prepared herself for a lecture, (and already quite done with such things in general, particularly the sort that came from people who considered her a mere "child" and all that entailed to them), Sieglinde was left somewhat off balance by the fact that the woman didn't launch straight into such a spiel.

In fact she... didn't seem to be planning to out her, or anything. She peeked, too, which made her just as guilty, so...

The young witch turned her gaze back on the male bathers and their... charming male chests. The occasional flash of rear wasn't too bad either...]

I am still deciding that, actually.

[Best not to put all her eggs in one basket.]

Hmmm....

[She almost tells the girl not to set her heart on someone that much older than most of these men, realising she wouldn't have listened at her age, not when her heart was first fluttering, even if any man who went for her in return would have been the distasteful sort expecting too much from a child]

Let me give you some advice: when you look, look first for the men you can overpower long enough to run if they turn nasty on you.

[Easy enough for Serene to say, given her height and musculature]

...

[That... wasn't the sort of thing Sieglinde had been expecting, when the woman said she'd give her advice. Quite the surprising one, this woman.

It brought her gaze back from the more tempting sight of the hot springs to the new recruit, looking her up and down. From where she was sitting, her long gown obscuring her thin and somewhat atrophied legs, the bound feet a mere few inches long, she couldn't exactly call the woman unobservant or tactless, but. Sieglinde couldn't outrun anything.]

- That is hardly fair. I shouldn't be able to look at any at all if that were the case.

[At least she had no illusions about her own physical prowess?]

[Serene grins sharply]

Shall I show you a few tricks I learnt as a child to break out of an adult's grip? [Teasingly] If you manage to understand these you can go up to those pretty boys in public and ask for their help practicing how to protect yourself on missions.

[It's the least she can do for such a delicate girl]

I was told that the men in the outside weren't all beasts consumed by their lusts.

[Her gaze narrows a bit suspiciously. Admittedly, she'd had her doubts... after all, she's met quite a few men since joining ALASTAIR, and some of them really were like the books in her manor library had described, but.

Most of them weren't. Weirdly disappointing.]

- Besides, if it is my safety you are concerned for, I assure you I can defend myself most well.

[Just... not in hand to hand combat.]

Oh? Do tell me how.

[She's genuinely interested in these foreign people and their methods of violence; anything she learns is a weapon she could wield herself ]

Ahh, by the way, my name is Serene Charlord.

Do ladies speak of such things?

[Sieglinde didn't quite know for sure, but she has an inkling that her tutor on manners would have thought not. But around her waist, hanging from the end of the chatelaine chain, amongst a set of keys, a compass, and a potion bottle... there is a knife.]

- Sieglinde Sullivan.

[She'd say "pleasure", but. The woman was distracting her from that, technically.]

[She snorts]

The rules about what ladies can and can't speak about while remaining polite are simply there to keep us defensively sweet, in my experience. I prefer to be rude and equal to any threat.

[Her eyes go wandering for a moment as a well-built man strodes to the opposite side of the pool from their position and drops his towel casually before climbing in]

Hmmmmm... [She'll have to go see if she can make friends later]

Are you a warrior of some kind?

[The woman seemed to talk like one, and she was certainly... physically able-seeming. But rather than keep eye contact to hear the answer to the question, Sieglinde follows Serene's gaze...

And abruptly colors a bit fiercer, slapping her hand back over her face again, fingers tight over her eyes... Until she just.

Peeked again.]

How lewd...

[Anatomy textbooks really didn't prepare for the real thing.]

[Serene cackles]

Lewd and ugly, right? Nothing down there looks pretty, even on the best looking person.

[She flexes her arms, showing off for Sieglinde]

Yes, I'm a trained warrior and I have been since I was eleven... [Her face drops as she realises her trained warrior self had left all her weapons by the side of the pool when she'd come storming over here to kick ass]

I'll be back in a moment! [She hops up and secures her towel before sprinting over to gather up her pile of belongings before heading back. At least tying her swordbelt on over her towel is a good way to ensure that if it drops, she'll only flash her top half]

It's a far throw from da Vinci's sketches that is for certain...

[Anatomy texts and artists renderings had been the bulk of her experience with men, growing up in an all-female village, (wit the exception of a single manservant, who'd been viewed more as a loyal hound than a man most her life), and since joining ALASTAIR, well. She's learned a lot.

The mention of eleven, rather than horrify Sieglinde like it might should have, was rather reassuring. After all, she had begun her studies the moment she learned to read, had her feet ritually broken and assumed the mantle of the Green Witch when she was five... It seemed refreshingly normal, in fact, and she nodded along,

When Serene got back, she'd find Sieglinde still waiting, appraising the sword.]

It is common for women to take to the battlefield in your world?

[Not to imply they could or should not, simply that she was used to it being considered a good deal more rare.]

[She draws the sword from its sheath and offers it hilt first to Seiglinde so she can feel its weight for herself]

On the borders of the realm it's far more common, as a woman who can't defend herself against hunting parties is a woman who'd be killed, but in the city where I live it's an occupation a woman has to actively choose to follow rather than be expected to take up. Why? Is it common in your world?

[People didn't usually offer Sieglinde their swords- for a variety of reasons, to be sure, but she was usually considered too young or weak, (much to her chagrin for the former, and to her reluctant agreement on the latter), so she simply stared at the blade until it registered that... she was supposed to inspect it?

So she took it after a jilted pause, lurching forward slightly for the unexpected weight.]

Ah- no, not at all... it is quite a legendary matter for a woman to take up arms in such a manner on the frontlines.

[She laughs at that]

Then perhaps I should ask ALASTAIR to return me to your world instead of mine; I'd like to be legendary

[She touches Sieglind's hands without asking permission in order to adjust her grip]

Here, you will find the sword balances more easily if you hold the hilt here.

I do not know if ALASTAIR will allow us to return to worlds not our own...

[Almost everything Serene has done since they started speaking has surprised Sieglinde, and having the woman's sword thrust into her hands, then adjusted, is just the latest.

She did her best to fix her grip according to the guidance, at least.]

Ah- I see...

Ahh, in that case I shall have to just content myself with becoming a legend here.

[She glances over Sieglinde's grip and her eyes slide to her so very foreign clothes and hair. She's fascinated.]

Since I'll never visit, what is your world like? What sort of life did you lead?

[Sieglinde sometimes thought perhaps that they all were somewhat legendary amongst ALASTAIR. Would they not live on amidst the legends of the worlds they visited, in some form or another?

She wasn't sure.

But the question at least is one she's used to. Even though the answer she usually gave was a lie, she'd believed it to be truth for so long that it didn't ring much like falsehood at all.]

- I am the Green Witch. A healer.

[She raises her brows at that, surprised ]

A witch? Do you possess magic?

[She's yet to talk to someone who openly professes to have magic, only having been here for a few days, and is deeply interested to see someone who might have the sort of power she so desperately longed to manifest as a child ]

I do, yes.

[Now, she did, at any rate, but she didn't clarify that point, simply nodding along in confirmation.]

But I also know the physical means of the profession as well.

[She carefully takes her sword back from the girl, lifting it with far more ease. She's earned her muscles over the years, yes, even if she never manifested any magic]

How old were you when you began to train in your arts?

[Sieglinde has met many strong and capable women since she joined ALASTAIR, but one wielding a sword like that was a first for her- better she take the sword back, though, that thing was heavy.]

I began when I was not yet walking- but I did not take over the title until I was nearly seven.

[She says it as if it was quite a long time to wait for such a thing, but.]

[That startles a bark of laughter from her]

You put me to shame! I did not pick up a sword until I was eleven.

[She turns away for a moment as she sheathes her sword securely, humming thoughtfully to herself]

Though I began my magical training when I was six. Even with that, you have me sorely beaten.

EVENT ★ RECOLLECTION DAY

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