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

"My hair?" He reaches up and touched his tousled waves, grins sheepishly. He'd been subject to the inevitable jibes about red hair back home, but this marks the first time someone has used it as a real mark of other-ness. "No redheads on your world?"

But his follow-up grin was broad nonetheless, wrinkling his nose. "Although really if that's the biggest difference that's almost weirder. I still haven't managed to come up with a decent hypothesis for how it is that apparently there are more worlds than one upon which humans have evolved. Much less red hair."

"No redheads. The closest I've seen is the royal family, who have chestnut hair, but that colour is nowhere near as brigt a colour as yours."

She shrugs at his mystery. "Perhaps the forces that created humans were all born before the universe fragmented. So little is known about The Mercy on Callirhoe, except that when it passes into a species it blesses them with sentience and raises them onto two legs."

The curiosity that that tidbit about her world lights in him is practically visible, in the way he straightens and stares at her, in that little grin. This is one of his favorite parts of meeting new recruits, ever since he first started quizzing folks who weren't from Earth. But he huffs out a sigh, still grinning, and shakes his head. "You'd think that'd be the explanation, but the mechanism by which humans came to exist on my world is well-understood. It has enough of an element of randomness to it, too, that it's nearly impossible to imagine it'd happen on another world with such perfect specificity.

"That said, what's The Mercy?" Finally, he can ask the really pertinent question.

Her brows raise and she grins in pleasure at the way the man is acting like she's just offered him a bag of gold. He's starting to remind her of some of the friends she made during her brief sojourn into university life with his raid rattling of facts in response to whatever she says.

"The Mercy is the force that makes mortal creatures into something more like itself, raising them up on their hind legs and giving them voices which to speak and minds with which to understand each other. We call it The Mercy for unlike the beasts that have yet to be raised we understand forgiveness and empathy for others.

"So what were you before you came here?"

Evan stares at her for a long moment, a little grin on his face. His curiosity is demanding he chase down that fascinating little tidbit she's fed him so nonchalantly: whether the Mercy is a religious construct or an actual force he doesn't know, but he wants to. Still, he's learned from other interrogations like this one how easily it is to drive himself off-track and end up boring whoever it is he's talking to into the ground.

So instead he says, "I'm going to ask you more about that later.

"I was a student, second-year computer sciences in case that means anything on your world. I--"

They are interrupted by the lights in the observatory dimming a little again, heralding a repeat of the recording that they've already listened to. Evan grimaces expressively, brushes his hair out of his face again, and bobs his head in the direction of the door. "Shall we move this conversation?"

"I know what sciences are, but not that type of science." She glances up at the dimming, tempted to watch once more, but the prospect of a lively conversation with an interesting alien had an appeal all of its own.

"We can go to my room, if I can find it again." She sticks her finger right under his nose and shoots him a brief and stern look. "But that's just to talk, stranger."

He scoffs, half a reaction of surprise at finding a finger in his face, and rocks back on his heels to hold up his hands in a placating gesture. "Far be it from me to get presumptive."

Tucking his hands back down into the pockets of his uniform pants he gave her a more assessing look, and then turned and headed for the door, keeping his pace to walk beside her rather than ahead. "If you just got here, I was going to suggest a bit of a walking tour of the castle while we chatted. But if you'd rather get away from the hubbub, I've got no problem with that." In all honesty Evan was beginning to feel the tickle that suggested he should go find himself some quiet space, lest he risk social burnout. He was ignoring it: it would be a little while before the need got dire, at least.

She hums, considering that suggestion for a moment as they stride together. She keeps her steps short enough they can walk together at a comfortable pace, having been trained by her short mother and lately her short swordsmaster to take other people into consideration when moving.

"First, let me try find the corridor I remember coming down from my room and then from there you can give me the tour. The tour will be more useful that way, as I'll have a reference point."

Already she's looking for landmarks as they head down the stairs together.

"Works for me," he replies, taking the stairs along beside her.

When they get to a narrow patch and have to pass another couple of people coming up, he falls in step behind her, letting her take point on navigation if she wants to get a feel for the castle. He takes the opportunity, too, to look this new recruit over. She's decked out in finery that seems right out of a movie, including that sword even if it does rather stand out against all that pale purple. But she doesn't look delicate: walking a stair behind her, he still only barely sees over her, and bare shoulders are more built than his have ever been. He stacks her up against the other very capable women he's interacted with during his stay here, and comes up amused at a pattern. Kida, Ramir, Undyne, Helga -- maybe ALASTAIR has a particular gravitation towards strong women.

They get to the bottom of the stairs and he comes up beside her again, hands still tucked in his pockets. He glances up at her, grinning a little, waiting to see if the new recruit can find her way without help.

She glances down at him as he comes beside her again, catching his grin and grinning in return.

"Don't tell me, I want to see how lost I really am."

She glances about as they walk, pausing and frowning at a doorway before shaking her head and moving to the next one.

"I'm sure I turned left when I came into this hall, which means that it should be... Ahh!" She turns down a corridor and points to a wide window on his blind side so that he'd turn his head as they passed. "There, can you see the observatory we left? It was that view that drew me in this direction. I am glad I followed my instincts with that."

He merely grins back, more pleased at her accusation.

When she points out the view he turns his head, unaccustomed yet to quite how far he has to turn it in order to take in the view she's found. When he does, though, he exclaims. He has seen that view before, but he had well forgotten about it. But then, he's been away from Oska three times as long as he ever had spent in the castle, hasn't he?

"Lord, it's too easy to forget. That is a lovely view." He flashes a grin up at her. "And not a terrible first impression of Oska, is it."

"I've had a delightful first impression so far." She flashes him a grin in return before glancing back to her route and turning them to the left.

"I'm glad to find my fellow recruits are so friendly. How long have you been working for Alastair?"

She glances back at him with a brighter grin and testingly teases him. "Do you smile like that for everyone you meet?"

In the course of his mirth he had not been expecting that. Evan continues to grin, although he turns his head to look away from her as he feels his cheeks faintly redden. That's progress, and as the flutter of nerves in his stomach fails to blossom into a full-blown fluster, Evan has a moment of realizing how much the last couple of months have affected him. Getting teased by a pretty girl, even one that looks like she could break him over her knee, isn't quite so terrifying as it once was.

Part of that is that he's been taught that such flirts are often done just for a giggle. Having learned the lesson, he doesn't begrudge it, assuming the same is true here.

"Oh, not everyone." It gets close to a flirt and it's about the best he can do. And of course he has to mitigate, grinning forward down the hall. "The last new recruit I specifically welcomed was basically a dragon. It didn't seem like a grinning kind of occasion.

"And I've been here three -- no, it's got to be four months now. I've only been on one mission but it lasted a solid twelve weeks."

"Dragons are real!?" Her voice soars loud and high. She stops in the hallway to goggle at him. "I've only ever heard of them in fairy tales!"

And those fairy tales aren't pleasant ones either. She grimaces, for the first time unpleasantly surprised by the situation.

"But are real dragons anything like the tales? Does he have hooked claws and poison teeth and a taste for living flesh?"

He stops too, once he notices she has, and looks at her in surprise. He's in good enough spirits just now that he volleys back with a grin rather than concern. "You'll be happy to know this particular dragon only ticks one of those boxes. He, um, I mean, he's a giant predator, it's hard not to be a bit intimidated, but he's actually, he seems quite civilized? Not that dragons back home aren't, but they're more like what you're describing."

Pushing his unruly hair back from his one good eye, he shrugs. "I'm not even sure this one would call himself a dragon. He had another name for his species... Askan? Something like that?" He grinned again, apologetic for the less than certain memory. "Anyhow, he seems like if you accused him of having a taste for living flesh he'd go off in a huff."

She raises her brows and considers this.

"Well... as long as he's a civilised dragon." She huffs. "This place is going to be an experience! I look forward to seeing how far my horizons will expand."

She shoots him a bright smile back for that grin and glances about, starting up her hunt for her room again.

"Oh! Ahh, I think that's the corridor!" She points down the hall and then strides off, walking faster than before. "I want to have a look in the door to make sure that this is the right room."

He grins broadly again, following her along, the brief bump in her apparent good mood smoothed over to his satisfaction. He has to pick his pace up to a trot to keep up with those long legs, but he does easily enough, having long since grown used to the pitfalls of the fairly short.

"Hey, not bad, for your first, what, hour here?" he laughs. "My first couple days here I spent a solid hour trying to find my way back to my room. Ended up in the garden. I am still not entirely sure how I managed that, honestly." He came up short beside her as she checked her door, glancing up at the young woman again. "I'm almost disappointed. I was half convinced we were going to take that tour impromptu."

"Oh, I'm still going to demand that tour from you," she assures him cheerily as she inserts her key into the lock, "I'm more than ready for lunch right now. You'll show me where the food is, won't you?"

The lock clicks open and she opens the door so they can both get a peek inside. The walls are pale green, the furnishings are carved from light wood and the bed is wide and low to the floor, spread with a deep green quilt.

"It's like a cell, isn't it? I can't believe I have a room without a window! Do you have a window? I'd have been tempted to sleep in the garden without one, if I were you."

He peers in after her, makes a little exclamation of a noise at the way her room's been furnished. He hasn't peeked inside of the rooms of other recruits much at all, and the differences in decor are both fascinating and quite stark. But at her complaints, he looks at her with raised brows. "You know you can swap rooms, right? There've got to be a ton still empty, with everybody who got reassigned while we were at Nalawi, and at least one of them has got to have a window."

Following her in, he lingers around the door and takes in the full sight of her room. "I mean, mine's got a window, but I specifically looked for one of the higher-up ones. Thought I'd be able to stargaze." He grins. "You should poke around for one."

"We can? No, I didn't know! You'd think that Lloyd would have mentioned that fact."

She gives him a long moment to indulge his curiosity before pulling the door shut again. "But that bed is very comfortable, so I'll drag it with me if I can't find a room with one with as good mattress."

Evan's mouth cants briefly. "There's quite a bit they don't mention in the welcome package." But it's not exactly displeasure that draws that look from him, so much as the vivid memory of how much he'd had to learn by trial and error himself, or through the advice of other recruits.

He backs out of the room when so shooed. "Though honestly, our employers are very... shall we say laissez-faire in their leadership style. Most things you can do here, you're probably allowed to."

Turning, he expects her to follow as he begins down the opposite direction from which they came.

Edited (") 2016-06-18 21:31 (UTC)

She joins him at his side again, stepping round behind him to make sure she's on his sighted side.

"Now that is a pretty free range that they allow us. Do you know of how they punish those who try what they shouldn't? How do they deal with, say, a recruit who attacks another? Have you seen that happen?"

"Attacks?" He seems lightly taken aback by the question, and looks at her as he takes them down a hallway that will lead them deeper into the castle proper. "I've never seen a recruit attack another, at least not beyond sparring. And, uh, I think once a slap. So I mean..." He shrugs his shoulders, bobbing his head in pre-emptive equivocation. "I don't really know, but... they might get contacted by Human Resources," that one's offered wryly, "to get a talking-to, or if whatever caused the conflict is intractable, they might be reassigned to another group within ALASTAIR.

"I think they're hard up enough for recruits that they wouldn't send anyone home unless they wanted to go, but ALASTAIR definitely isn't shy about reassigning folks. They've done it a few times that I can remember since I got here, including, I think, once to take some of the kids out of the group when we were facing down a really dangerous situation. I'm sure if they did it for that, they'd do it for really serious interpersonal conflicts too."

"Hnnn..." So there are no explicit rules on physical and sexual misconduct. This man seems kind enough that he hasn't thought of such acts existing but she's troubled that the rules haven't been spelled out in a place containing children. His reaction is interesting too in that it tells her that his eye wasn't gouged out by another person in the group.

"Do you like the group you've been assigned to?" She wants to keep the conversation light for now rather than diving into ethics and morality.

Evan shrugs, an ambivalent response, though when he realizes how that must look he glances at the young woman and clarifies, "I like most of the people I've spent much time with here, yeah. But we're a big group, I think there are seventy of us? Maybe more? In any case I haven't gotten to know everyone."

He purses his lips and adds with interest, "There's also a surprising amount of turnover. People getting sent home, people getting reassigned... I mean, half the time you'll strike up a dialogue with someone and two weeks later, poof," he gestures, "they're off back to their own world."

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