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

[evantuality]

I will say this is a much more welcome gimmick than exploding coconuts. I don't generally expect my potential food sources to cross-pollinate with my explosives, theoretically speaking.

[He reaches to take the bag, pleased as peaches to be able to get his hands on it again, and grins at King.]

I'd almost say you should try this but you've certainly got it covered already. I'm not--

[Stopping in his verbal tracks, he makes a small noise of surprise, one that quickly morphs into an expression of concern. He trots across the ceiling to one of the decorative arches that ridges the hallway, but with every step his feet are coming further off the ceiling's surface.]

Oh, uh -- oh dear. I think I'm -- ah!

[His two minutes are up. Evan, at first with a slowness and then a quickness, begins to fall as normal gravity reasserts itself on him. He scrambles to try and grab some of the decorative molding on the archway and succeeds only enough to break his momentum for a moment, but fall he does.]

[agrizzlysin]

[Fall he does... right into a floating green body pillow. It's much cushier than the floor, and King can't help but let loose a sigh of relief when he confirms that the pillow he's sent flying hasn't missed its target. His pointer finger lowers and so does the pillow, slowly dropping until it's no more than an inch above the floor before tilting its cargo to safety.

King is silent for several seconds, letting the situation sink in. Then, the sarcasm.]

Well... at least you didn't explode.

[evantuality]

[Those several seconds King regards his successful rescue attempt, Evan is working hard to calm himself down from reflexive hyperventilation. That fall should have broken bones. It was just as startling to find himself having fallen on a soft surface, albeit a much, much more welcome surprise than the mystery of which femur he would have shattered.]

My god, you really know how to look on the bright side, don't you.

[His sass is windless, and he huffs a mighty sigh. Taking stock of himself, he sits up gingerly -- and realizes he's managed to cling to the bag of spheres throughout. He looks at them, and huffs again.

And then the hangover begins to hit, hard and fast enough that Evan turns a little green.]

Oh I'm not sure I yet won't.

[agrizzlysin]

[King directs the pillow away on instinct. Please to not puke on his sacred treasure, Evan.]

What's wrong?

[With the pillow out of the way, King plants his feet on the ground and moves in to take its place. He leans down to get a better view of Evan's face. He doesn't look feverish, but... He is pretty green around the gills for someone who'd been so excited just a moment ago. King gulps back his gasp, instead forming more words.]

It's not because I gave the orbs back, is it?

[evantuality]

Oh, lord, I have no idea, I -- ugh.

[He does what he can to sit up and he manages it, but his joints are aching like the first and only time he'd snuck several bottles from his parents' liquor cabinet. He whines, squeezes his eyes shut as his head swims. He's still clutching the bag, but at King's suggestion he looks at it, glowers at it blearily as if it's the problem after all.

He thrusts the bag at King, woozy.]

Ughhh. Take it back, maybe you're right.

[agrizzlysin]

[King is not good with illness. Fairies don't get sick, and though he's tried to take care of a sick giant before, it hadn't been him who managed to lower her fever. Not at all sure what he's supposed to do to help a grown man who looks like he's about to fall over, he can only accept the bag when it's thrust toward him.

Maybe he shouldn't be holding it either in that case.... He looks dubiously down into the bag before returning his attention to the groaning human being.]

...Do you need something?

[evantuality]

[The bag, when King peeks, has three orbs inside. Evan had been collecting them, and they gently jostle one another, floating towards the exit of the bag as soon as King opens it.

When giving the bag to King doesn't fix the problem, Evan groans again in defeat. He pushes himself to standing, laboriously, finding himself shaky on his feet but only manageably so.]

I think... I think I need to go lie down. Ugh. We don't even have an infirmary or anything like that here, do we? I mean, I assume it's the orbs, but I'd hate to find out later...

[He trails off, flapping a hand limply, not quite able to extrapolate beyond a general sense of malaise.]

[agrizzlysin]

No infirmary, no. But we do have doctors and healers in residence.

[He might be giving the bag another sidelong glance. He hasn't experienced anything like this before now.]

Should I try to call one of them?

["...And would you prefer the antisocial pirate or the little girl?"]

[evantuality]

Ugh. No, you know what, I think... I think I'm fine. I think I had better just go to my room.

[Evan holds a hand up, warning King off and shaking his head.]

Um, you saved my bacon. Thanks. I'm going to just... go lie down now.

[With that he turns and with all the care of an old man hobbling along the hallway of a nursing home, he starts off towards the stairs to the wing with the bedrooms.]

[agrizzlysin]

Then I'll... take these to the cats.

[He replies lamely, obviously uncertain as he points at the orbs. King will just have to keep an eye out for the poor guy later.

As King retreats, he idly wonders if this is why humans don't fly.]