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]

Her voice is muffled as she has to speak through clenched teeth. "Really? That makes me sad. I don't want everyone else to be so different."

She strikes a match and suddenly everything stills as she stares at the little flame. The world fades around her as for a moment she's caught.

And then the broken matches burns her fingers and she drops it quickly, hissing. She grabs another one and strikes it but she's agitated now that she slipped in front of a stranger. The matches snaps and drops and she hisses out a vehement set of curses as she realises she's gone and frazzled her last one.

"Fuck." This isn't what she needs at all. "Fuck, do you have a match?" She doubts he does and she's ready to spit out her cigarette and scream at this forsaken reality.

[evantuality]

He watches her, brows still furrowed, as she seems to fall into her little task and then so quickly fall back out of it. Her agitation is plain and his teeth are set right back on edge, even if this time it's not directed at him. It so easily could be. Hell, it probably still is to some degree.

When she asks for a match he snorts softly and then bites his lip to silence himself. Does he want to come clean about who he is to this woman? Hell, does he care? Can she think he's any more of a monster than she already does? Rather more pettily, does he want to share the hot springs with a smoker?

Turning his head a little, he feels the breeze on his cheek, blowing out towards the lake, as it's wont to do at night. It'd be at his back, at least. Without a word, his face rather set, he holds his hand out for the cigarette and its elegant little holder.

[sereneflame]

Her eyes narrow a little and then lower as he offers to take her cigarette. He doesn't want to do her this favour, obviously.

"Thank you." She murmurs lowly, watching just in case he decides to hurl her expensive holder into the hotspring.

[evantuality]

In this case, at least, it's less for the reasons she may think. He takes the cigarette, briefly admires the holder, and is given pause by a scent he doesn't associate with smoking, and therefore can't quite place, but it's pungent, spicy, and puts him to wondering if smoking is a different habit on her world, too. Is that even tobacco?

To do the deed itself, he actually turns away a little bit: not enough to really conceal what he's doing as he cups his hand around the end of the cigarette, but enough to indicate that he would prefer not to be stared at, as such. He sighs out a breath and a small flame leaps up around the end of the cigarette. When he's sure it's caught, he drops his hand and quickly holds the stick and its contents out for her to take again, before the ember fails.

His eyes are wary, almost fearful as he watches for her reaction. This is not one he wants to speak aloud.

[sereneflame]

She watches carefully to see how many matches he has in case she has to trade him in the future.

Her mouth is hanging when he turns back and she ignores her cigarette completely despite the temptation of pungent tobacco and cloves.

"You're a Pyromancer?" She's loud with shock. She stands quickly from the water and leans in, eyes bulging as she stares at him.

"What generation are you? How far are you from the source!?"

[evantuality]

When she leans in so completely and immediately he leans back and away just as violently, his own eyes going round. All of his old instincts, the ones he's been trying to suppress that shriek terror whenever he reveals himself to someone new, come screaming back. Except her proximity has him frozen, so he can't even quite get himself to scramble back along the boardwalk.

"I don't even know what that is!" he blurts. Oh, this was a terrible idea, why would he even think after all that she'd already reamed him out for that he should go and do that--

[sereneflame]

He's frozen like a rabbitman under a shadow. She pulls panting, for her heart is suddenly hammering hard. The Pyromancers are dead on Callirhoe, but this is not her world...

"I'm a Charlord, a Pyromancer, but I'm the twentieth generation removed. The magic died away after the twelfth generation."

She sits down, grabbing her cigarette and taking a deep drag. The cloves crackle and she breathes out pungent, soothing smoke.

"A Pyromancer is one who can create and suppress combustions. Shimmer, the twelfth, was so weak she could only combust what she was directly touching, but Bylian, the first, could create flames as far as he could see in each generation. How far removed are you from the source?" For the first time that night she's as animated and bright as when they first met.

[evantuality]

"A Charlord?" Something about the term strikes Evan as barbaric, or maybe simply as unnerving enough to set his teeth on edge. But she's claiming some sort of firey heritage? Round-eyed again and with his feet pulled out of the spring again, he repeats, "Pyromancer? No, I -- I seriously doubt I'm whatever you're thinking of, there's, I mean..."

But again, the doubt of healthy skepticism tickles at his mind and he narrows his eyes at her. Here she is talking about generations -- maybe, maybe this is an overlap like humans on multiple worlds...? "Where do, um, pyromancers come from? What's, what's the source?"

[sereneflame]

"The Mance stone, it's said, dug from the heart of a mountain and crumbled to dust in minutes. It bestowed magic upon the humans who discovered it."

She can see he's ready to run. She doesn't know how fast he'll be but from his body she's sure she's got more stamina if she has to chase him down. "And your magic? Where did it come from? Are you really like how I should have been?"

[evantuality]

Something about the stance she's got is really getting all the hair up on the back of his neck: he's seen that stance in cats waiting to lunge. He's sure if the light was high enough to see as much, her pupils would be just as huge as any hunting cats, and suddenly it annoys him that he's feeling so very intimidated by this person. Never mind it's physically warranted, he feels terrorized and very judged and he does not like it one bit.

"I seriously doubt that I'm anything of the sort, we're not even close to from the same world, I don't know why you would even think that." His voice is fast with nerves but he stares at her, brows suddenly pulled together, his shoulders up but defiant. "Will you back off, please?!"

[sereneflame]

"I'm sorry." Her attitude is a complete swing from moments before. She back in the water, staring up at him with wide, wide eyes.

"I just... You have fire. My whole life was shaped by fire. I should have been born with it, I was raised to manifest it and here you are..."

She's actually choking up a little. She turns her head away quickly, wanting to hide her shame. "Mercy, if you turned up on my world you could point to the kingdom you wanted to rule and it would be yours."

[evantuality]

When she pulls back it's a sudden, intense pressure off of his chest, like she'd been physically leaning on him. A gust of breath escapes him, though his shoulders do not properly come back down. He stares after her, and the sudden and dramatic plummet of her mood is as alarming as her extreme interest had been, if quite different in flavour. It's occurring to him that this woman he's so haplessly flirted with may be kind of a rollercoaster. He is not equipped for this, he thinks.

"Well then lucky for your world I have exactly zero interest in conquest," he blurts, rather urgently. He's always hated the idea of his powers as a way to intimidate, as a tool to use to get his way -- at least partially because, well, isn't that one of uses one expects of fire as a skill? "Good god."

[sereneflame]

She swallows hard and laughs breathlessly, trying to regain control. This is like a frustrating dream. She'd grab his hand to make him show his power again but he might skittle off.

"For the best, for I'd have been obliged to bear your children. The idea chills me, though it was all I was good for after I proved to be a dud."

She draws another deep lungful of smoke and coughs as a snuffle catches her at the wrong time.

[evantuality]

This entire conversation has worn through his filter, so that when she exposits that little gem, he stares at her, openly appalled.

" 'Obliged to'?" he exclaims, pressing his hands to the boardwalk and leaning forward. That that's just a given to her, albeit not one she sounds happy about -- it paints a picture. "Good lord! By who? What kind of world do you come from?!"

[sereneflame]

"Somewhere I don't plan to go back to for a very long time." She answers firmly. "Somewhere that likes girls like me to be victims and wombs. Though I should get word to my mother, she's probably beside herself already." She winces, thinking on how distraught she must be.

[evantuality]

The conversation has taken so many unexpected twists and left turns that this most recent topic swap just about floors him with its unexpectedness. First off, he has trouble seeing this rather intimidating creature as anyone's victim, much less someone who could be strong-armed to taking part in some horrific breeding program, although he understands intellectually that there are societal pressures that trump physical strength any day.

He drops his face to his still-damp hands, scrubs his palms against his cheeks fiercely. He feels the smooth leather of his patch against his fingertips and makes a noise of frustration and deep discomfort as he thinks of what's coming tomorrow. All that, and then... and then she has to go and bring up the one thing all of them have in common, the one Evan's been trying to use his brand new downtime not to think about.

"If you find out a way to do that, be sure to let the rest of us know," he tells her flatly from behind his hands.

[sereneflame]

She huffs at that and takes advantage of the moment he's covering his face to wipe her snuffly nose on her arm.

"You were supposed to tell me that you've discovered a scholarly contact among the staff who lets you drop notes through the rift."

Her belly twists. Mama is going to be beside herself thinking Serene had run away, but even with that clenching guilt she doesn't want to risk going back and not making it out again. She draws in a lungful of cloves, hooding her eyes as she watches the ember flare and dim.

She pops the holder from her mouth and offers it to him, a little peace offer.

"Here, if you wish. The smoke is soothing."

[evantuality]

He peers out from behind his hands -- and then caught by the absurdity of peeking like he's an errant child, he slowly drops them, looking at her furtively sidelong instead.

"Thank you, no," he turns her down rather bleakly. "I don't smoke."

This was a terrible idea in every way. He wishes he had simply gone back to the castle after his swim; all of his goodwill generated by physical work has dissipated, replaced by uncertainty churning his stomach. He feels, just how, that he's regressed back over all the social ground he's so painstakingly gained by learning to even just talk comfortably with other recruits. He looks away from her and doesn't look back, trying to get a handle on himself before he leaves.

[sereneflame]

Now that's body language as clear as day. It stings, for though she's been castigating him over his vile diet, the fact that he's a Pyromancer, a real Pyromancer is something she desperately wants to know about.

"My apologies, I am stopping you having your bath." She scoots back to her handbag, watching him through her haze of pungent smoke. "I can leave once I have plaited my hair." She offers him that, gripping her cigarette holder between her teeth so she can begin plaiting now.

[evantuality]

Evan groans, pushing wet hair back from his face. He's been out from his swim long enough that the edges are beginning to dry, but they still cling. He shakes his head, feeling a consistent backbeat of frustration fueling him. "No, uh, don't... rush on my account. Christ, if all I'd wanted was a shower I'd've just headed back up to the castle."

He's not thinking straight through his alarm and it's starting to annoy him. Frowning fiercely into the spring, he struggles to sort out why he's so put out, why the interaction has him so upset. Because... because it puts the lie to all his social progress, he supposes, that this new recruit can put him so off-guard and shaken simply by being annoyed at him. It's not especially flattering for him, and though his urge to retreat is still strong, it's not the reason why he's been forcing himself to be around people more lately.

Shooting her a guarded look, still frowning deeply, he sighs. "My mother is an elemental," he tells her frankly, an answer to the question she'd asked several minutes ago. "Which I suspect is a very different way to get one's powers than your, what was it, Mancy Stone?" Agitation has his usually good memory shaky, which is further embarrassing.

[sereneflame]

"The Mance stone," she corrects softly, not wanting to upset him again by challenging him, "though the gift was called Pyromancy, the wielder was a Pyromancer and the act of wielding the gift was Mancing."

She lets go of the hanks of hair she'd grabbed up at his permission, relaxing back into the water.

"Your mother is an elemental and your father is... Human? You look like a human." A short and mildly active human, too soft to stand up to her in a rage. Oh, appearances can be so deceiving. "Is that why you have red hair?"

[evantuality]

"Human, yes," he confirms. He still does not look at her, but he is working very hard to get a firm, firm control on his voice and his mood. This is absurd: really, shouldn't he even have seniority here? What is he so skittish about? If Serene is bothered by what he is, in this place she'll be the odd one out. "And, no... well, maybe, but not directly."

"She built herself a human body." He snorts, delicately, and lowers one foot from the boardwalk to touch the water he's still tempted to frown so fiercely at. Raising his eyes from the water to look at the dark forest beyond, he admits something to her he's never really had a chance to admit to anyone, stupid as it is. "I think she thought it would be funny if she gave it red hair."

[sereneflame]

She recognises that little sting of bitterness. "You don't look like a joke." She shrugs, admitting in turn. "In my land, Pyromancy was associated with my phenotype. My father courted my mother precisely because he was sure that they would have a child that would look like me."

She's watching his foot as he tests the water, trying to keep herself from sitting forward in interest. He's obviously someone who gets jumpy over too much attention all at once, so she has to rein herself in.

"May I ask about your power? I studied the old training texts for years as a child and am so very curious now whether the fundamentals are the same."

[evantuality]

Finally, finally, he swings his gaze back to her. There's still something of the predator her her bearing, but as much as he's trying to rein himself in, she seems to be attempting to do the same. It jangles at him, but better this than her face in his face again.

"It may well not be," he warns her. Uncurling his other foot, he rests it on the edge of the spring too, and fixes her with a serious look. "What do you want to know?"

[sereneflame]

"Can you sense the potential of the world around you?" There's something wistful in that question. "I was told all true pyromancers could do that, to sense not just a burning fire but the fires that could burn if I reached out to spark them."

She's having trouble staying still as she is, as piqued as she is by him. She hoists herself out of the water and sits straight-backed on the edge, crossing her legs into a lotus position. She's animated as she describes what she's doing.

"I would have to sit like this in front of a fire every day and meditate upon the smoke and the flames and the heat until I was attuned to the fire. They told me that I should be able to feel the life of the fire, that I should be able to feel where it burns most fiercely and where the reaction was struggling. Once I fell into a meditative state they'd douse the fir and see what I could sense of the world around me. I should have been able to know how to start to fire, to feel where I could start a fire. Had I my sense then I would have been able to reach out my thoughts and know that the plate where the sulphur sat felt like I would need to exert more or less power than the wooden chair or the cloth pile or the bucket of fat. Is that how it is for you? Can you close your eyes and know the world as a fabric of potentials?"