EVENT ★ WELCOME TO PERDITION'S REST

[futurologists]

ARRIVAL Recruits leave Oska at midday, with about 10 minutes of final warning given from over jewelcomms. Then the white mist rises as rifts open, and Oska is left behind. When they arrive in the new world, they’ll find themselves aboard a train, specifically seated in the coach traveling compartments. The other passengers -- humanoids with muted skin tones and bright eyes -- have already been notified of their arrival, so although there will be a good deal of curious staring, particularly from children, no one is going to be very alarmed at the strange, eclectic assortment of aliens that suddenly show up on board. It seems that, for once, recruits will enjoy a peaceful arrival. The dusty scenery flashes by placidly outside the windows, the rumble of wheels is constant and soothing, and there’s even a snack cart that makes its way around (the snacks aren’t free, though -- recruits are provided a modest sum of Qorral currency, and the locals are already interested in getting in on it). BAD COMPANY The first sign of trouble appears about two hours after arrival when there’s a faint BOOM and each of the train cars gives a little shudder. That would be the rear train car’s back wall being blown open. The other passengers know exactly what this means, and some lock themselves into traveling compartments while others haul out previously put away shotguns and pistols, ready to do what needs doing. And what needs doing is to fend off the troupe of bandits that have decided that this train looks ripe for the plucking. They board from the gaping hole they blew in the last car and begin shooting their way up the length of the train, robbing as they go, but they also circle out on their horses (mechanical and only vaguely horse-shaped four-legged contraptions that easily keep pace with the train) to provide an armed and unfriendly escort. They’ll shoot through the windows if anyone looks like a troublemaker, and are old hands at ducking to the other side of their horses to use them as cover from any return fire. The conductor and all present passengers would really appreciate a hand from any recruits who feel like stepping up. Those not quite ready to engage in a shootout can always keep the civilians locked into the compartments company. They, especially the children, might need some calming words (and the sage advice to keep away from the windows, and stop making faces at the bandits). The bandits put up a pretty good fight, but will eventually be driven away (hopefully without having snagged too many ill-gotten goods from the hardworking citizens of Perdition’s Rest), and peace falls back over the train. The passengers will be a bit frazzled afterward, though, and no one can quite ignore that whistling sound caused by the missing back wall of the final train car. It’s a long two more hours before they reach their destination. WELCOME TO PERDITION’S REST A dusty wooden sign swings on rusted hinges overhead as the train pulls into the station: PERDITION'S REST. The engine finally stills with one puff of smoke, and as the passengers begin to disembark, recruits will find a small group awaits them. The Mayor, his aide, and the sheriff are gathered just outside the train station, and once everyone is more or less off the train and conveniently gathered, the Mayor will clear his throat for attention. "I'm guessing y'all had a long ride here, didn't you?" He addresses the crowd calmly, with the kind of voice that doesn't need to be raised much to be heard. "Heard about them bandits.They ain’t gonna trouble you here in town, but best mind your wanderin’. I'm Mayor Mordecai Jones, and Perdition's Rest welcomes your company. You'll find our businesses hospitable and our services ready. We're a quiet place, keep mostly to ourselves and don't bother none. You'll do just fine here if you abide that." The aide waits quietly as the Mayor speaks, while the sheriff eyes the gathered bunch with a resigned wariness. She, and a few other locals who would be willing to speak up if asked, are of the opinion that they've gotten by just fine for 30 years without anyone's help, and they don't figure they need it now. But they'll tolerate the meddling, so long as everyone plays nice. Mayor Jones's speech draws to a close with a last note that trouble can be brought to him or to Sheriff Rosamund Holladay, and he, his aide, and Sheriff Holladay break the meeting without further ceremony and head away. Welcome to Perdition's Rest. It's recommended that you look around a little, familiarize yourself with the place, and find lodgings. It's going to be home for a while. OOC NOTES Welcome to Mission: Perdition's Rest! This mission will last for around three months, currently slated to end in mid-December. Depending on developments, this schedule is subject to change at our discretion. You can view the dossier here, which contains information that is ICly known to all characters, no matter their arrival time. You can find locations here. Please direct all questions pertaining to the mission to the dossier page to keep questions and responses in one place for easy player reference. General game questions should be directed to the FAQ. The Bounty Board will be updated this weekend, so keep an eye out! Remember you can also request bounty missions or submit player plots at any time.

Comments

look at this drama queen, of course I do

[gutpunching]

[Yes, that's helpful. Jason doesn't bat an eye, too busy watching the bandit's back when he bolts and marking the direction. Sure, he'll probably circle around somewhere to try to cover his tracks, but there's no accounting for cleverness in common criminals. It's probably the right direction to start in.

But that's later. First things first.]

Be quiet.

[Quickly, he hops up to higher ground—stone fence to low-hanging stable roof—to get a rapid lay of the land and be sure they didn't draw any unwanted attention. (One gunshot doesn't seem to have been enough to alert the law. The bandit could be stupid enough to try to get back at them with a potshot.) When he's sure the coast is clear, he drops back to ground level next to Asher.

Who is...still here. Apparently he expects an answer to that rhetorical question.]

Go home, Boy Wonder. I'm not in the market for a sidekick.

800 yrs late

[moneyballer]

[He watches Jason make that move effortlessly, mouth hanging open as he does.

Yet another reminder that he and the others here are worlds apart, quite literally.]

I'm not-

[Asher seeks friendship and approval, but he's aware that he's done little to deserve any of that. Information digging is one of his few marketable skills, something he's gotten a chance to practice in his own way. Determined to prove that superpowers and fist-fighting aren't all that make a man, he continues:]

I just want to find the rest of this shit, okay?

I want to know if I can trust them.

[Alastair.]

[gutpunching]

[Come on, Asher, you've got the same amount of superpowers that he does!!! Just apply yourself better.

Given that the Millstone Meatsicle wound up actually asking the right kinds of questions unprompted—and unexpectedly—during their little impromptu interrogation, it doesn't take much brainpower to figure out which them Asher is referring to.

He aches a brow in Asher's direction, then starts moving. Out toward the edges of town and the fracking fields. There's no invitation given to follow, but it's not a hard pace to keep up with.]

Sounds like you're answering your own question.

[Can he trust them? Not with things as they are, not without putting out a whole lot of unearned faith in the honesty of largely faceless strangers. Doesn't sound like he can do that, or he'd be well on his way already. If anything, it makes him something of an outlier. The blind trust that most of the crew hands over to their new employers is pretty shocking. Maybe most people are just inclined to want to belong to something bigger than themselves. Take the path of least resistance when faced with the unknown. (Eager and unprepared idiots who'll get themselves killed if given half a chance. Kids turned child soldiers.)]

What d'you think you're gonna find? A handwritten note letting you know it's safe to drink the kool-aid?

[After all, ALASTAIR tasked them with retrieving the information in the first place. Could be a whole lot of nothing.]

[moneyballer]

I get that it seems like ALASTAIR wants to help other people, and if that's really their mission then fine, but...

[Jason's right about that.

Asher wants to finally be a part of something that's not wholly terrible, to work for a boss who doesn't destroy people's lives. Annalise does a lot of good but her methods are questionable at best, and she doesn't seem to particularly care for people's feelings.]

I don't wanna keep doing this if we're screwing someone over.

Someone we don't know about.

[David Allen had been rotting in jail for what, over 20 years?

That's almost as long as Asher has been alive. The realization hits him then and there, quieting him as he tries to keep up. He vaguely remembers his first time visiting a fancy restaurant where the waiters took coats and the women looked like they belonged in movies; he couldn't have been older than five or six. His family had been celebrating a recent career victory of his father's, a promotion...

Were they toasting to the lifelong imprisonment of an innocent human being, too?

He doesn't want that to happen again.]

[gutpunching]

[You think Annalise's methods are questionable at best but you're following at the heels of a guy who just interrogated a bandit at gunpoint, look at your life choices rn Asher.]

Funny how they never seem to ask if you want to keep doing this or not.

[Sure, you could kick back in the Saloon for the rest of the mission out of protest, but that's about it. For volunteer work, it's pretty damn compulsory.]

Wonder what happens when preserving the timeline and helping other people start becoming mutually exclusive.

[Just theoretically. After all, one of those is their actual mission statement. The latter? Not in so many words. Even here, preventing the destruction of the planet has nothing to do with their primary goal. Just looking into the people planning on hollowing it out.]

[moneyballer]

[tbf... that guy was a jerk, a thug and a criminal?! juSTICE]

I was wondering the same thing, to be honest.

[Asher's brows furrow.

Everyone he's seen seems to comply with ALASTAIR'S demands, but he's never heard of anybody whose started a mutiny. Funny, very funny.]

Like what if you don't want to go along with any of this?

If you choose to fight back?

[gutpunching]

[Now you're getting it.]

What would you do if you did?

[Choose to fight back. Mostly rhetorical, but for once, it's not at all ironic, or antagonistic, or dismissive. Just pointed and deliberate.]

Take out the crew?

[If you don't mind that lion's share of them are in the same boat as you are—or worse. Conscripted and clueless with their old lives held hostage against them. Would ALASTAIR even blink if you wiped them out? (Or tried to. Kolitra-shaped evidence points to no.) Or would they just send in a new team of unlucky and conscripted johns to take over?]

Sabotage the mission?

[That, they might respond to a little more earnestly. You'd have to decide if it's worth the lives of all the people here on the planet. You'd have to know how to make it count, how to stop the powers that be from working around you to defuse it. Checks and balances and collateral damage for greater gains. The problem with figuring out if it's worth it—so much of ALASTAIR is still under wraps.]

[moneyballer]

No, no I-

[Asher's tone could be mistaken for anger, that is, until his shoulder's fall and his voice gets a good deal softer.]

I like the crew.

[More than they do him, probably. More than the people back home, in some ways.

At the very least, he can name one or two people who actually pay him some attention. While he's aware that he's little more than entertainment for some more mischievous souls on the network, that's still something, isn't it? If he were to be gone, he'd be missed in some way, and that's better than an absence going unnoticed.

There are so many teammates he's come to admire.]

Some of them, anyway... And I'm not saying I'm here to rock the boat, or anything...

I just don't know how harsh they are. And I don't know if I'd still be willing to work for them if I found out-

[Something very, very bad.]

If I found out how harsh they could be.

[gutpunching]

[He's making a point, so he's not disappointed to earn a reaction—angry or otherwise. Talk about fighting back and you need to start taking into account where the leverage is. He spreads his hands as he walks, palm up.]

If you're asking for precedent, I'll have to disappoint.

[To be honest, ALASTAIR is remarkably permissive about what they do with their time. Maybe rocking the boat wouldn't be such a bad thing. They don't enforce much, but they don't inspire much loyalty in their distance, either. Just vague claims of cataclysms and communal efforts to help. Assurances that all this is happening by accident, that working off their debt will get them shipped home soon enough. That they're doing this for the greater good. Fighting against entropy. A tough thing to prove one way or the other, isn't it? Pretty convenient.]

They left Loki red handed for a while after an attempted b&e. Far as I can tell, anything more than that slap on the wrist has been self-governed. [That's about the only time he can recall hearing the Powers that Be stepping in on their business in any way that wasn't issuing general-purpose missions. Even their courses of action and general team morality are crowd funded, and not at all unified.] But I've only been around since Nalawi.

[He does his homework. That only goes so far.]

i'm so sorry

[moneyballer]

Nala-whatty?

[like

the lion king???

bcuz damn lmao, that lion chick sure was hot]

smh

[gutpunching]

[Yes, Asher. The Lion King.

Any esteem Asher may have earned from asking the right questions starts to backstep in record time, amazing.]

Did you just decide making an appearance in the library was effort enough, or did the monster bugs scare you off for good?

[Have you been talking to anyone about the crew's past missions, bud, because they haven't all been babysitting.]

[moneyballer]

No, I-

[practically growled in response!!!]

Is that the one with the zombie cat-

[please stop talk ing]

Night of the living pussy, and all that shit?

[gutpunching]

[Shockingly, this isn't really encouraging him to take Asher seriously.]

Tell you what, why don't you ask her next time we're back at casa d'ALASTAIR.

[Surely the vengeful magic undead cat won't mind you making light of her suffering in the least.]