exsiliumlogs | (no subject)

Date: June 1st
Location: The Initiative Hold & Courtyard.
Characters: Everyone.
Summary: New Transports arrive and are shuffled into the Courtyard after their initial briefings. Now with 200% more People-Seeking lists!
Warnings: None.

You've just been hustled and bustled through mazes of information and literal, wide corridors of the Initiative Hold and you've been equipped with your weapon—be it a gun, a sword, or even your existing powers. They've handed you this light netbook and a small pouch of coins (or a debit card, if you're more inclined), and there are several Transports before and after you going through the very same motions. You can hear the Greeter's voice as she walks alongside large groups, telling them all about the history of this place and sharing with you your purpose here in a hurried and urgent tone. "You're in luck that we have enough rooms for all of you; the housing building is getting awfully full. Please, let me show you into the courtyard."

You pass what looks like huge gymnasiums, all with dummies and targets strewn and splayed around the room. Training areas. There are even classrooms, and a few small offices. You're rushed past a large library while the Greeter informs you that you can find almost all your information there, if you've got the time to look—and trust her, you'll have time. You don't spend a lot of time in the bank, and it's a bit of a blur of exchanges with more and more of these strangely-accented and oddly polite-seeming members of the Initiative.

Soon enough, you're in a massive courtyard bustling with all the other Transports. It's not exactly what you'd expect, and it looks more like barracks than anything—huge walls of concrete and stone, separating you from all of the hallways you'd just passed through. It's raining heavily, and dark clouds loom in the air, though it hasn't turned to snow. It's a chill cold, and there are shelters—long cloth hangings that extend from the walls of concrete to house you from the rain, but not enough. Most notably, the courtyard is filled with a marketplace. Even in the cold and the rain, there are several citizens seated at their covered booths and tables, bundled up against the weather. They're selling all manner of their own handmade goods and foods, and citizens and Transports alike are traveling from one small covered shop to another in search of all manner of necessities. Now and then around you you might spot paper fluttering in the faint wind from somewhere relatively dry. It looks like a list.

The Greeter's voice has become so faint now, but you swear you can make it out in the back of the crowds as she tells you, "Good luck. Be safe!"

Her voice is drowned out by the busy marketplace, though even the transactions taking place are somewhat subdued. Nobody is overly happy, really, though most citizens can be found with smiles on their faces. It doesn't seem like they're that shocked to see you, either; even if you're not bound in tattered rags and wrapped in heavy shawls as they are. You're welcome to walk up to a shop, and find yourself something to eat—hey, maybe you'll even find something akin to a raincoat. Or, you can join the others under the coverings against the walls. Where am I? What war? She was talking so fast, and it didn't all make very much sense… did anyone else catch it all?

Welcome to the courtyard. Welcome to the Initiative Hold—and most importantly, welcome to Exsilium.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ezio sighed. "There is more at work in this place, I fear, than just this war." His father would understand, surely. Even for having been here a little while, he was still convinced that something else was at play with their... hosts.

"She is a smith, but she is not of our world. Perhaps she may understand it well enough, if she has not left the city."

"There usually is."

There had been a lot to consider since his arrival but one thing stood out as glaringly wrong. It had struck him immediately in the Hold the moment he had been told why he was here and what he was expected to do. Even if these people were in trouble, on the losing side of a war, kidnapping others to fight for them was wrong. It had made their whole position questionable.

"Then we should speak to her if she is still here. But, until that time I would like to hear more about you. You are all grown up..." Impressively so! "Did you ever settle down?"

Might there be grandchildren? That thought made him feel so old!

"What have you been doing here? You must tell me all about it."

"I fear there has been little time to stop," Ezio admitted, albeit a little sheepishly. "The cause and the Brotherhood has taken much of my time. As for what I have been doing here..." He paused. Ezio has kept himself busy, trying to find answers, scrambling for a way back home and to break the United Earth and quite possibly The Initiative itself.

"I have been fighting, and searching for the truth." Now he took a deep breath. "There are others of our kind here, from another time. Perhaps you should meet them." Because managing Connor and Altaïr is its own sort of beast.

"Ezio..." The tone was only mildly disapproving, "You should not spend all of your time on the Brotherhood. There are so many important things in life."

His son could not be faulted too much for this. It was easy to be swept away by a cause, but if something was important, like family, you made time for it. This was something Mario had never understood either...
And then he realized, here he was instructing his grown son like he was still a child. He raised a hand hoping to prevent a rebuttal.

"I apologize. I suppose it will never matter how old you are, I will always worry."

Now the matter at hand...

"Have you had any success in that, finding the truth of this place? I would like to meet the others. If they are of the Order they might be able to help."

Ezio only smiled, shaking his head. So strange that even though the years had passed for him to so much seemed to have not changed.

Though he knew that his father would need to know of the the truth and his future, a particular struggle that he didn't consider.

"I should warn you," Ezio began, "that they are of another time and they are... stubborn. Very stubborn. One nearly killed the other when they first met." Which is still something he's not entirely thrilled about but Connor was the least trained in the ways of the Brotherhood.

The years had passed for Ezio, but for Giovanni they had not. Ezio, though older, still seemed like he should be that brash young man who was always off getting into trouble. The one who was so much like him at that age. While he knew that was no longer the case the old habits would not change so easily.

"Why would Assassin's fight each other? They are both members of the order and working for the same things we are?"

Not that Assassin's could not argue. How many times had he and Mario had their tiffs? But at the end of the day they always came together for the greater good. Surely these assassins would be the same in that?

"As with all people, they don't see eye to eye," Ezio explained. He had to take threatening measures to ensure they'd back off each other, and he planned on making sure they kept in line at least in front of him. He didn't care if they liked each other, as long as they did what needed to be done and respected him and each other enough to make a mission successful. "They come from very different lives and circumstances. I believe it may be an effort to get the two to work together."

"They sound lively. I look forward to meeting them."

Then he could see what this was all about for himself and get a better idea what might be done about it.

"There are only the two other assassin's here?"

"Si. If others are here, they have not shown themselves. One is from a time far before ours, the other ahead. Their names are Altaïr and Connor."

He'll just let that sit for a moment so Giovanni can grasp the concept of the greatest Assassin being a difficulty.

Oh yes. That name was well know to him... to all assassin's if they bothered to learn the lessons of the order properly. So then the immediate conclusion was that the other, this 'Connor' must have been at fault for what ever had caused their quarrel. This brief thought was then filed away... it was not fair to judge him without meeting him first. After speaking to them both maybe the situation would become clearer.

"You have a way to contact them? We could arrange a meeting to discuss the situation?"

And hey, he just kind of wants to meet this legendary figure of the Assassin Brotherhood!