epidemiology | EVENT ★ LOST IN TRANSLATION

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EVENT ★ LOST IN TRANSLATION

RETURN TO OSKA

Upon arrival in Oska, new and returning recruits alike will find that something strange is going on. Any attempts to communicate with someone who doesn't speak the same language as you will be just that -- like you don't speak the same language. Let's hope everyone is good at charades, because you're going to be out of luck for a full day.

On the second day, a text comes across -- surprisingly intelligible to everyone. Is it over? Well . . .

crowley:
Hello, Audentes. We are currently experiencing magitek difficulties, as you may have guessed already. Temporal insects have arrived with our latest arrivals, and as you may imagine, we have had our paws full.

cherenkov:
We are working out how to mitigate the pest problem for good. For now, please put your unpleasantly huge feet to use and stomp them out. Or other such methods.

crowley:
We have created a quick patch to facilitate text-based communications, but verbal translation will continue to be down until the insects are exterminated. Thank you for your patience.

It's not over.

TEMPORAL INSECTS

This invasive species has worked its way in through the rifts along with the newest batch of arrivals, and information on them is available in the library (provided you can read the language it's written in!). It seems they behave like locusts, living quietly within the space between rifts for many years until their numbers suddenly balloon and they begin to swarm in search of food.

These bugs move fast and pack a nasty bite, but are unarmored and easily squished. Each one is about the size of a football, and leaves a little tell-tale slime trail that makes it easy to track. They can cling to any surface, and won't hesitate to leap onto attackers and bite if they feel threatened. One can take a decently sized but non-lethal bite out of someone, but a number of them together will pose a real danger. If punctured or squished they tend to explode into moderately acidic goo that can cause caustic burns if not immediately washed off.

They are attracted to any area of high temporal energy, which can be literally any surface, corner, or point on or within the castle and its grounds. As they begin to feed they cause temporal distortion in the area. This manifests as the immediate area seeming to flicker backwards and forwards through time. An insect gnawing at a table leg in the dining area, for example, might cause the area to stutter between years and years of dinner parties, ghostly attendants of all fashions and species appearing and disappearing as they enter and leave the affected area.

An onlooker can't interact with temporal distortions directly, but if the insect is left to its own devices, it will eventually eat through all of the temporal energy and render the immediate area gray, frozen, and completely inert. It's highly recommended you kill or otherwise chase off an insect before it manages this, as it can do irreversible damage to a world.

For affected Oska locations, please see this post.

OOC NOTES

The translation errors will continue through the rest of the month. For more information or to ask questions, please check the plotting post here!

New bounties are available in Oska!

Please remember to fill out your squidge success form before August 31, 23:59 UTC! Filling the form out is mandatory, even if you do not have the 3 squidge threads. You will not pass AC if you do not fill out the form. Characters who have been accepted on August 20th are exempt. Please direct questions relating to the success form here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ With the way Rey reacts to Keith interrupting her in the greenhouse, you'd think she had a hand down her pants.

She whips around with the suddenness of someone who's had a very personal moment interrupted when she hears his disgruntled huffing, eyes wide and shoulders tight. They had so much greenery in Oska that they could afford to keep it in cages, and she could come see it as often as she liked: that was a privilege she'd never been afforded. Indulging that ache in her chest felt private. ]

Do you need something? [ She sounds impatient and ready for him to leave. ]

[Fortunately for Rey, the implication of looking guilty after being walked in on with a bunch of greenery is lost on Keith. It's not really within the realm of possibility with most people. (Now, say, if she were Lance, Keith would be a bit more willing to leap to that conclusion.

And that's because it's Lance.)

No, he just thinks she has no right to be agitated with him.]

Any chance you've seen a red lion around here? [Oh. And the others, too.] A green or black one, as well. I'm talking mechanical, not real lions. Just for the record.

You're going to have to be more specific than that.

[ The way Rey said it chided him, as though she were reminding a child to keep his manners, but at least it was a step up from her curt annoyance at his intrusion. ]

I'd have to know what it looked like to know if I'd seen it. [ Which, perhaps, was a better way of saying that she couldn't imagine how a real lion was any different than a mechanical one. Did mechanical not count as real? She imagined BB-8 would be cross with him for making a claim like that one, and it made her miss him. ]

It's red and a robot. Trust me, if you saw it, you'd know exactly what I'm talking about. [It's not that he doesn't psychically link up with his lion or anything like that—he definitely does. He'd go as far as to say that his lion is his friend. It's saved his life before! But: it's not a big fluffy cat, so that's where the different lies.

Come to think of it, why did the Alteans make robot cats? Couldn't they have gone with something a bit more convenient to turn into Voltron?

Uh, thoughts better kept to himself. Rey wouldn't understand.

He glances up at the ceiling of the greenhouse, looking more irritated than he has any right to be.]

It's probably too big to fit in here, anyway. [Says ... the individual who came in looking for it.

Yes.]

Well, I didn't ask you to come barging in here demanding to know where it's gone. If it's so big, how did you manage to lose it?

[ It's not the same as a ship that you could lose in a bet and watch get sold off or stolen by rogue after smuggler after smuggler. That, she could understand. A droid, she could understand. But a lion? If he were that concerned about it, he'd have kept it closer. ]

I didn't lose it. ALASTAIR took it from me! [Yes, all of those italics are necessary. Like Keith would ever purposely lose his lion. His lion is awesome. It's important, his entire life revolves around it, it's—

Well, anyone can get the idea. Not having it makes Keith feel a bit like he's screwed up somehow. Besides, he's pretty sure they can do more good with their lions than without.]

I went through the wormhole inside of it, and then somehow, I just ended up ... here.

[ That explanation didn't help curb the incredulous, belittling expression that Rey wore when she looked at Keith. ]

Uh, it didn't come with you? [ The lilt of her voice at the end of the question was too sharp of an edge to be a genuine question; no it was rhetorical, and poignantly so. Obviously. ] If you haven't found it here, what makes you think ALASTAIR ever had it at all?

[He makes a frustrated sound fairly quickly and stalks up toward her, narrowing the distance so that she can hear him better. That isn't actually the reason, but anger inspires closeness. Sometimes. Or dramatic closeness, which is undoubtedly the case here.]

It's like a ship. I was piloting it. I was inside of it. How else do you think it just went away?

Then you should have been in it when you arrived! [ Rey's voice steadily rises to the point where her tone sounds less didactic and more like she's ready to start a fight about physics that she can't claim to fully understand herself. ] If you weren't, it means that the wormhole swallowed you from inside of it, not the whole ship. It probably never came to this universe at all!

Sounds like you think you know better than me. [Because he should have come inside of his lion. She's right.] I was inside of the wormhole inside of my lion when I turned up here. That means they took the lion. Somehow. Some way. I think I'd know better than you.

[In a way, he's both right and wrong: he did enter a wormhole. The wormhole spun out of control and sent him somewhere random. And then he ended up here.

What he doesn't realize is this: there were two separate wormholes.]

If two things go into a wormhole together, they come out in the same place! That's just how it works! [ Obviously she does know better than him—that's what she's really saying. ] If it had come with you, it would have been there when you got here and then they'd have taken it. You'd remember.

If they can pull people here, why wouldn't they be able to take my lion from me? Do you really just want to make it seem like they aren't that bad of people that they wouldn't steal it? Because that's just going to get you hurt.

[Given her weird belief in people, that seems to make sense to him. It doesn't make sense for why she wouldn't just believe him, but maybe he's an exception to the rule. That would make sense. Maybe he doesn't get to have his word trusted because, frankly, he trusts no one's word.]

If it's the truth, yeah.

[ And to her, it obviously is the truth. All he has is wild speculation, easily explained. While Rey won't make excuses for bad people, she's yet to see ALASTAIR do anything truly sinister. All suspicion and questions, persistent particularly on Urahara's part, and she has lent him her ear, are only that—they lack the substance required for merit. ]

If you want to go chasing something that's probably not even here, be my guest.

[ That throws it into perspective for her, what she's really trying to discourage him from with such vehement force that even she could barely understand the escalation. False hope. Keith is clinging to blind optimism, convincing himself that it must be here because he needs it. Rey let false hope drive her too long, lost too much of her life to it; she can't watch him sink into that tar pit too. ]

You don't seem to have an explanation for where it is if it's not here, [Keith points out. For him, he wouldn't view it as false hope and more a rational need to recognize that it's definitely here. Where else would it be? The shift of wormholes had been too quick for him to tell the difference, the blink of there and then not being as quick as heading through wormholes always is.]

Unless you're trying to say that people don't turn up through them. Is that it? [It's certainly nowhere near the truth.

Besides, if ALASTAIR has it, that means the Galra don't.

(So, maybe it's a little false hope.)]

I just finished explaining that you probably left it behind!

[ Men and selective hearing smh. ]

You don't have any proof it's ever been in Oska. You never saw it here.

Okay. So how did I leave it behind? And not just me, but my entire team? [Sans one, but he's willing to bet that it'd be the same for Hunk.]

All of us were inside of our lions. And just before we got here, we saw that it is possible to separate someone from it ... and take it as their own.

See? You don't know what you're talking about.

And you don't think the fact that your entire team had the same thing happen could just as easily prove they were all left behind? [ Sounds like selective interpretation of evidence. But she doesn't know what 'it is possible to separate someone from it and take it' really means in the context of what is apparently an oddly named spaceship, so she's also deliberately avoiding that part. ]

The lions are the most sought-after set of ships in the universe. The thing is, it isn't just the lions that matter. When all five are brought together, they form Voltron. Anyone would be nuts to pass up that power, so I wouldn't put it past ... well ... anyone.

[Just concluding the obvious (in Rey's opinion, anyway) seems like a foolish choice. They have four out of five right now.]

[ She shakes her head dumbly. ]

What's a Voltron?

[Why doesn't anyone know what a Voltron is? Or rather what Voltron is? Okay, so there may have been ten thousand years between its inception and return, but somehow the Galra all know what it is. But no one else. Except some people do. Stiles did. Loki did. Keith is beginning to wonder why they had that privileged knowledge and so few others did.

What a weird situation.

He makes a characteristic huffy sound because there are people who are better than explaining this, but maybe she will finally understand.]

Ten thousand years ago, a now-destroyed civilization called Altea made the Voltron lions. There were—are—five of them, and they're each piloted by a paladin who has a special weapon called a bayard. These pilots have to sync up and work together to create Voltron, which is the most powerful weapon in the universe. And all the paladins have one job: to protect the universe.

So, you see, it'd make sense that a group like this would want their hands on them for good or bad.

... Your ship is a superweapon?

[ She'd seen the kind of power in Starkiller Base, and it was terrifying. Entire planets, gone, the entire base collapsed into a new sun after draining the old when it imploded. And the Voltron lions, they could make something more powerful?

Abruptly, words tumbling out of her mouth in a hurry, ] You can't tell anyone here about that.

[Her reason for him wanting to do that is completely lost on him. If anything, her words get under his skin almost immediately, and he waves both his arms erratically at his sides.

To him, it sounds like she got one point but completely missed the other one.]

Why do you think I'm trying to find it?!

[ She makes a loud noise of frustration akin to, "You should have told me sooner." ]

I might know where it is. But if I'm right, I'm not sure there's any way for us to get to it.

It's better to try than not to try.

[And if she has an idea, then it might be somewhere he hasn't checked. Keith is relentless about this. It isn't just him who lost his lion, and he's worried about where they might end up.]

Come on.

[ Rey won't disagree with that point; and besides, it'll at least answer the question of whether it's possible that it could be down there. She doesn't know what could be behind that door, though, only that it seems to be the only one that she can't get through. If she were going to hide a superweapon away … ]

I haven't been able to find a way in. I only just found it when we got back. [ Rey explained while she walked, her breath short and quick as her pace. ]

searching for lions; greenhouses in the courtyard

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