epidemiology | EVENT ★ PREPARE FOR TROUBLE

READY

After two weeks en route, the Mothership (maybe you should come up with a new name for it?) arrives at the rendezvous point. ALASTAIR technicians rift aboard and get to work, scurrying about the captured vessel to fiddle with controls and levers and buttons. After roughly a half hour, there's a flash of light --

And the Mothership is moored to Oska, tethered to the fragmented universe by strands of magitek and now safely encapsulated in the cloaking barrier keeping Oska hidden from prying eyes. Though Zymandis at large is no longer a problem, there must be teams still out there who are undoubtedly angry about losing their home base, so keeping the barrier up is a matter of safety.

Once they're ready, Audentes can disembark the Mothership via teleportation pads, beaming them directly to Oska's courtyard. There is already a line forming here of curious ALASTAIR recruits looking to teleport up to the Mothership and look around, and in fact, if you think Oska is a little more crowded than usual . . . you'd be right.

Usually only occupied by support staff and the occasional off-duty team or two, Oska is bustling with activity, similar to the sort of crowds seen at the Nondenominational Winter Celebration or Recollection Day. Except now, there is no revelry nor merriment, only a lot of people preparing for something very big on the horizon.

SET

While Audentes was off capturing the Mothership, it seems as though the TIMELINE.exe has calculated the most likely location of its twin, Zymandis's Timeline machine. Rift technicians are double-checking his work to ensure it's somewhere that recruits can safely rift to, but they're hopeful that they'll be able to deploy teams shortly to make short work of Zymandis's mechanical heart.

In the meantime, the technologically gifted are requested to help ALASTAIR scientists and engineers devise an upgrade for the TIMELINE.exe; if his calculations are correct and Zymandis's machine is where he says it is, it's important that its operating system is overridden with the new TIMELINE.exe 1.0.03 file. Otherwise there will be a chance that the universe-purging operating system that Zymandis follows will survive and all the efforts ALASTAIR has made through the centuries will be for naught.

For those who don't know their way around a motherboard, there's plenty of things to do -- with how many teams are in Oska, preparing for what is hopefully the final battle against Zymandis, you're likely to run into a familiar face or two. If socializing isn't in your wheelhouse, hone your skills in the courtyard or, for a bigger challenge, in the training room.

ALASTAIR support staff could also use assistance in the medical center or greenhouse, preparing vials, potions, and tinctures for use in the battle ahead. And if you're feeling really altruistic, stop by the kitchens to prepare some food for the one thousand Zymandis prisoners now filling the dungeons.

You didn't forget about the prisoners, did you? Of the captured Zymandis agents, only a small portion of them have agreed to join ALASTAIR. The rest are either too deadset in their belief in the Zymandis Timeline machine, or they're too distrusting of ALASTAIR to even consider joining up. The dungeons of Oska castle have not been used for their intended purpose in centuries -- prisoners are usually given a simple, heavily-guarded room somewhere in the castle -- but with this many prisoners, there's really nowhere else to put them all. Perhaps if someone were to be kind to them, they might change their mind about joining ALASTAIR's cause.

There's a lot to do and a lot to prepare for, so don't forget the relaxing opportunities that Oska has to offer: the baby squidges are due back on Zeta-12 soon for their maturation ceremony, so give them a warm goodbye while you can; the hotsprings is always a good place to relax one's muscles after a warm day; and the library is available for those who like to settle in with a good book in a dimly-lit room.

Most importantly, take advantage of this time in Oska. You'll need all the preparation you can get.

OOC NOTES

Welcome back to Oska! If you have any questions about this log, please direct them to the game FAQ. You may also submit mission ideas or player plots at any time.

Guest characters will be admitted to the comms until 14 October 23:59 UTC, so there's still time to sign up! We're excited to see some familiar faces and can't wait for you to be a part of the season finale.

We're in the home stretch now, so if you haven't taken the time to review our updated schedule, please do!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ he’s not so attached to the room to consider anyone entering an invasion of space or privacy; and he may never be. the only time he staked out a space for himself was his tent outside the dropship back when it was only the hundred, him, and raven on the ground. he spent most of his life sharing a small room with his mom and sister on the ark, and refused a room of his own when the people from the sky were building a permanent settlement on the ground. this room in a castle seems too big to him, too much, too luxurious for him to ever feel comfortable here. no different from how he feels about oska in general.

sieglinde benefits, too, from her age; she’s young and small, so he spares her his rougher edges. age doesn’t usually mean much in his world, but he’s an older brother to the core.

he pulls her up easily enough, standing as she does, and the slight wrongness of her feet doesn’t go unnoticed. noticed, but not understood; the practice of foot binding is a thing of his world’s distant past, and he has no context to recognize its scars. ]

“Sir” nothing. It’s just Bellamy. [ he realizes she is something of a familiar face, even if they’ve never met. her style of dress makes her recognizable, and he makes a point of knowing his teammates’ faces. she’s no new arrival, lost in an alien castle. ] What’s your name?

[ it's now, standing, that his eyes light on the additional gift sitting next to the tapestry. he hasn't bothered with looking at the ornamental fabric yet; it was there when he returned to his room earlier, together with the gun he now wears holstered at his side, and he'd assumed it to be a pointless trinket from ALASTAIR. ]

-- looks like you're not the only one who's been in here.

[ the things that happen when you don't shut your door, apparently. ]

Bellamy, then.

[An odd name by her standards, but then again, she had never left her village before joining ALASTAIR, and it was not as if she met many people to keep track of names. If it wasn't in a classic liteature volume, she had to add it to her own mental list.

But when it comes to her own introduction... she moves to curtsy, or at least, her vest version of it, lifting her skirts just slightly in a pinch of fingers and dipping slightly so as not to upset precarious balance.]

I am Sieglinde Sullivan, the-

[Ah. Would it see like boasting or asking for praise to say now the title she usually used with her given name? Or would it seem odd to discover later she had concealed it? With a moment's hesitation, she finally adds,]

.... Green Witch.

[ he hasn't stepped away from her yet, hasn't yet read the tag telling him who he can thank for the gift, so rather than familiarity all that registers at her title is, well --

a vague irritation. normally he'd assume the epithet to be a child's self-given name, or even point out that witches aren't real...except that he's been here long enough that he's met all kinds of people. just back on the mothership, he watched loki work magic to get a monster off their backs. and while it'd been useful, it had been undeniable evidence of the supernatural. in another life, bellamy might've been interested in magic being real -- but as it is, his eyebrows just lift. ]

The Green Witch. That color mean something?

[ or is it...her favorite color... are there witches for every color. ]

[Sieglinde couldn't begrudge anyone a healthy dose of skepticism. She knew better than many how vague the line could be between "magic" and "science", yet at the same time how starkly separate they were viewed in many worlds. In her own, even. Or, what had once been her own. She hasn't seen it in years now.]

The Green Witch's lineage specializes in healing and creation- the natural arts.

[So she just answers the question, with helpful additions.]

As opposed to... black magic and the sort. You have nothing to fear from me.

[She does wear a lot of green, though, even the ribbons in her hair.]

EVENT ★ PREPARE FOR TROUBLE

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i'm so slow omg i'm sorry

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