EVENT ★ RECOLLECTION DAY

[futurologists]

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 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 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.

Comments

[sereneflame]

"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?"

[evantuality]

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."

[sereneflame]

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."

[evantuality]

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."

[sereneflame]

"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."

[evantuality]

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."

[sereneflame]

"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."

[evantuality]

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.

[sereneflame]

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?"

[evantuality]

"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."

[sereneflame]

"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.

[evantuality]

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."

[sereneflame]

Her brows raise at that, for she hadn't expected that people could so easily be moved back to their origin from Lloyd's introduction. "Well I hope I can choose to stay if they wish to send me back so soon. I like the sound of this opportunity to much to return to reality without trying out this new life."

She looks up as his route leads them out into a courtyard.

"Is it odd that I'm surprised that the clouds are the same as on Callirhoe? Are they the same in your world or the worlds you've been to?"

[evantuality]

He shoots her another grin for that first part. "Well for what it's worth, I'm pretty sure you have to ask to be sent home. They seem fairly reluctant to give up recruits if they can convince us to stay."

But it's her second statement that draws a laugh from him and he looks up at the sky too, taking in the puffy shapes so familiar from Earth as well. "Oh, clouds are just physics, they'd be the same on any planet with comparable gravity and air composition." He raises a hand, gesturing out the shape of a cloud, "water vapour in the air just naturally clumps up like that. I find it much more interesting that there are apparently humans on so many worlds. The likelihood that you and I seem to be the same species is, well, beyond astronomical, really."

[sereneflame]

His complete dismissal of the mystery of clouds makes her chuckle.

"You really are a little scholar, aren't you? Has anyone been fool enough to fall pregnant here yet? We'll know if we're the same species when two people from different worlds conceive together."

She pauses in their stroll past a flower bed to crouch down and sniff a flower she's never seen before. Its perfume is both beautiful and completely new to her nose. She grins up at him. "If I'd have stayed at home, I never would have known this scent existed."

[evantuality]

Evan wrinkles his nose and snorts. "Well, I wasn't going to say it, but that'd be the tell, wouldn't it? Or rather," he corrects, "the tell would be if that offspring could conceive. Mules and all. But that would be rather a longer experiment than most people would want to invest the time in." That's drawled with good humour.

He watches her sniff the flowers, but his mind is thoroughly elsewhere. He's not oblivious, he hasn't wandered around with his eyes and ears closed this whole time; he's sure he's gotten off lightly with just the teasing threat of a kiss from Ramir. More flowers get sniffed around here than just the literal ones. "Actually I'm shocked that problem hasn't come up yet." He sounds even more amused. "People must be smuggling in birth control from home."

[sereneflame]

She looks up at him sharply, grimacing in dismay.

"There's no wombsbane here? Wombsbane grows everywhere!" She'd gone a few months without chewing wombsbane in her sixteenth year and as far as she was concerned she never wanted to experience menstruation again without the lightening effects of the herb.

"Tell me there's something that you know of a woman can take to regulate her cycles. I refuse to have the risk of children hanging over me like a blade waiting to drop."

[evantuality]

"Wombsbane?" The name was illustrative enough, and her appalled reaction to its absence. He shrugs, having ceased to grin, and admits, "I'm not familiar with it. I mean, I haven't heard anything about it... If we were on Earth, there'd be hormonal birth control that, uh, regulates cycles I think, but..."

He frowns, a thought occuring. "You know, for all I know there is some equivalent here, I just haven't heard anyone talk about it. You can put in a query with one of the older members, they're pretty good about answering questions... uh, though I might talk to Dagny about it, rather than, say Cherenkov or Crowley, I doubt they're up on their human birth control lore." This not a topic he's touched on before, he's starting to feel the awkwardness of it, beyond speculating about theoretical species barriers. He has a dim moment of understanding just a little better how much more pressing the issue is to the opposite sex, when he sees that look on this new recruit's face.

[sereneflame]

"Dagny, but not Cherenkov or Crowly." She repeats to herself. This is a snag she hadn't thought she'd hit, not when the hardy herb grew like a weed back home, generously encouraged by sentient hands. She huffs and stands, her delight soured by the unwelcome responsibility. "I still have a fortnight until the need to find a solution grows pressing, so I shan't run off to find them now."

Trying to capture her good mood again, she raises her brows at him. "So you have no one here for whom you must hunt out that answer, or do you simply leave tending her womb up to her?"

[evantuality]

He'd been starting off through the courtyard path again, leading them on towards the impressive buffet back at the party, when she asked that question. He huffs, and actually feels a stab of reflexive embarrassment that he hasn't for a while, probably not since he came to terms with the fact that Ramir had just been teasing. He brushes it off as best he can, grinning in an effort to laugh at himself.

"Good lord, no, I've spent the last three months living in a village of deer-people with no sense of personal privacy, not even to address how much we had to accomplish while there. I don't know how the people who have been up to such things managed to find the time."

He supposes, but does not say, there's likely time now. The previous downtime he'd spent in Oska had been quiet, though fraught as he had tried to work his way into the social fabric here. Now that he has eked out something of a place for himself...

But does he want to? Hell, does he even know how he'd go about flirting with someone he has to share a castle with?

Well, it doesn't hurt to get some practice in. He grins at her pertly, feeling a flutter of nerves at the attempt, even if it's just practice flirting. "Are you planning on having to make that two week deadline?"

[sereneflame]

She laughs at the boldness. Usually these days she's the one pushing the boundaries while everyone else demurs. For all that she loves being rich, she's missed not having a title.

"I wouldn't bring someone into my bed until I find out how comfortable it really is by myself first." She answers with a twinkling smile, just in case he thinks he can follow her home now he's seen her bed. "Normally I prefer to slip from friendship to more, but honestly? If my two weeks are my last of freedom... I might."

She shrugs, grins down at him as they step into the dimness. "I shall just have to make friends quickly, shan't I?"

[evantuality]

Looking up at her when she grins down at him, he's caught by her grin in return. Lord, what is he doing?

But he laughs, because he doesn't feel like this is a bad thing, even if it's making his stomach tight with the unfamiliarity of the practice. He tucks his hands in his pockets and looks forward along the hallway, with its arched ceiling and long plush carpets. "I do not think you will have much trouble with that." Both because of how easy he's found it to banter with her, and because he's noticed certain elements around who seem downright incorrigible when presented with a pretty face, but he's not going to admit either of those.

He may be flirting for practice more than anything, but he'd rather not throw her right at near-literal Adonises like Achilles right off the bat.

[sereneflame]

"I never have before." She agrees easily, though that's not quite as true nowadays as it had once been. But urgh, she's going to pretend the last year never happened while she's got the luxury to be able to. She shoots him another bright grin, hoping to get his gaze to stutter on her for a second again and stroke her ego a little more. "At least I shan't if everyone here is as friendly as you. You do know how to make a woman feel welcome."

[evantuality]

He does not snag on her quite the same way just then; he's keeping his glance a little hooded, sort of skirting the line of how much he knows will make him feel like he's in over his head. But he's smiling, because that definitely wasn't a negative response.

Still, there's something in it that rings true, beyond the idea of flattering her. His smile turns forward, gets a little less catlike, and he shrugs. "I remember what my first few days were like. I'm uh... I mean, I found it very valuable when people took the time to introduce themselves and explain a little bit about this place. It's just good karma to pass along the favour, you know? It feels good."

[sereneflame]

She nods thoughtfully. "Indeed, it makes me feel more secure to know that I now know one person by name who I can seek if I have questions."

There's not much time for more speech as they step through into the feast. Serene pauses, gasping softly at the magnificent array of purple-decorated food on the tables about them. The deerwoman standing in the middle of the hall narrating a tale in her sonorous voice catches her attention briefly, but her stomach is overruling her ears.

"I am so glad I'm hungry." She's already stepping towards the crowds, intent on stuffing her belly.