here they talked of revolution, here it was they lit the flame

[initiates]

Date: October 1st
Location: The Observatory.
Characters: Everyone.
Summary: New Transports arrive and are shuffled into the Observatory for the show of the year. Initial briefings are very brief this time around, and that Greeter just won't stop crying.
Warnings: new confused people and old sad people??

Your arrival here has been very unceremonious. One second you were somewhere else, and now, very suddenly, your feet hit the glowing white of the Transporter pad, and you're here. You aren't alone, either. There's a crowd of others around you, each seeming just as bewildered, angry, or confused as you might feel. At the head of the group is a woman in purple robes, with eyes red as if she'd just finished crying. She hurries over a quick overview of your intended purpose here, and gives direct answers when asked for them, but to most things she simply shows you how to access the tablet you've just been given. There, you can find the history of this place and a record of what your new cohorts have experienced — although it won't have Network access for another 8 hours. Someone stands on hand to give you a weapon, and though the armory is now greatly reduced, you should be able to find something to suit you.

You're shepherded down a walkway tunnel and into the Observatory, where you will find screens mounted on three sides of the wide room. The only lighting comes from dull red emergency lights, and the scenes of a dreary, rainy city from various cameras up on the screens; the largest of the screens opens up to a view of Earth from a good distance away -- this one isn't a screen at all, you might realize, but a window. As you watch, all screens in the room fill with light, impossibly bright. It consumes the buildings, the people, everything. There is no sound played, perhaps mercifully, only that white light -- and then nothing.

Through the large window, there's a pinprick of light over one of the landmasses on the blue planet. It grows to a tiny blossom and then dies away, but a cloud begins to mushroom outward in the same spot. It pushes the natural clouds out of the way, claiming that small portion of the world and wrapping it in a uniform gray.

Strings of numbers begin to fill the blanked out screens as the base's AI begins collecting data and calculations, but the show seems to be over. You're free to explore the base, visit and use any of the VR rooms, or discover your new room and roommates, but try not to step out of any airlocks if oxygen is a requirement for your system.

Welcome to the moon base, with front row seats to the grave of Exsilium.

[[ooc; reminder! The Network will be down for 8 hours after the wave of new Transports.]]

Comments

[irritating]

[ Even though it's her abundance of energy that keeps her active and going all the time, it's probably good for her to be around people with a calmer energy. It keeps her a little more reasonable since she doesn't feel the need to torment everyone, if nothing else. ]

Good! In that case I'll try'ta share some actual snacks with you that don't taste like wheat and grass stains when I find them.

[imperfectness]

Oh, wheat. You have no idea how welcome something like that would be. It's been months since wheat products were banned. ...er. Not here, where I'm from.

[His home? Was Night Vale his home now?]

[irritating]

Banned? [ Of all the things that she's seen people try to ban, wheat had never been one of them. ] Well that's fuckin' stupid, why in the hell would wheat be banned? It's literally just... wheat! [ Very descriptive, this one. ]

[imperfectness]

It's...ah...kind of complicated.

[He adjusts his glasses.]

My...home... [He says it with almost a hint of uncertainty, but it feels right, if he's honest with himself.] ...there were some problems with wheat and wheat by-products. So they were banned.

[And that's about the closest as he can get to explaining it to someone who probably doesn't know Night Vale.]

[irritating]

Damn, musta been some big damn problems. [ Probably bigger than she is currently imagining. ]

Well, far as I know there ain't a thing wrong with the wheat stuff we got here. [ And if there is she doesn't care because her chili bread is delicious and she's stuffing more of it into her face. ] So go fuckin' wild.

[imperfectness]

Yeah, there were...snakes, and things like that. Reportedly. Then there were malevolent spirits...and then it all just kind of disappeared.

[He states it as fact, and yet, even to his own ears, it sounds bizarre.]

[irritating]

Wow, sounds fun. [ Her sarcasm seems to indicate that snakes and malevolent spirits aren't too bizarre to her. ] Shit, pretty good they disappeared on their own though. Last dumbass snake invasion I remember was a pain in the ass, had to kill the little bastards for days before they fucked off.

[imperfectness]

Yeah, things tend to come and go rather quickly where I'm from.

[Was he really FROM Night Vale? He wasn't, and yet...]

But what about you? Where are you from?

[irritating]

A world called Ce Monde. [ Beyond that, she has no specifics. ] Which you probably ain't familiar with if you're an Earth person who's never been to Rivelata. [ A beat. ] So are you an Earth person?

[imperfectness]

Yeah, I am. I didn't realize there were humans on different worlds...that's very interesting! To think that intelligent life would form on a different planet and still be strikingly similar to Earth's...I'd often wondered about it, but this is great! I wonder...

[He goes silent for a moment.]

...I mean, you are human, right?

[irritating]

Uh, mostly! But technically no, not completely. [ To prove her point, she unfolds the small, feathery wings that had been previously tucked in against her back. They were messy little things and nearly half of one was clearly somehow torn off a long time ago, but they were certainly wings and they were certainly on the back of someone who looked human. ] We're called Gryps, we're... uh, humanlike descendants of the original Gryphons.

[imperfectness]

Fascinating!

[Okay, you have his full attention now.]

Can you fly? Can I...can I look at them?

[It's too late he's already out of his seat and walking around the table to hover around her. He puts a hand on his face as he looks at her.]

Remarkable! Wings! Do all Gryps have them?

[irritating]

[ Oh boy here we go, Apollo loves attention so she is more than willing to let him investigate. She doesn't think her wings are much to look at these days but it always cheers her up when Offworlders find them intriguing. ]

Only the purebloods can fly, I'm pretty much a mutt so my wings ain't big enough and my body just ain't built for it. I'm thinkin' wings must be the last Gryp thing to hold over when you start addin' in human though, 'cause the purebloods got stupid tails and ears and big ass wings while all I got are tiny ones and our crazy colour range. [ She vaguely gestures at her head then, meaning to refer to her red hair and her eyes, one of which is blue while the other is green. ] So hey d'you have gryphons where you're from?

[imperfectness]

[He's murmuring to himself, peering closely at the feathers and gingerly touching one of the wings. Wow!]

No, there's a dragon, but no gryphons...except for, umm, mythological ones.

[He sounds a little distracted, and he is. She must have very unique bone structure to support the wings! One looks a little worse for the wear, but otherwise...]

[irritating]

[ She watches him closely as he inspects her wings, the curiosity he has in her seeming to make her a little inquisitive about him as well. Gryps were fairly commonplace in her world so she wasn't exactly familiar with the idea of someone being as intrigued over it as Carlos was, although she seemed happy enough to let him conduct his mini research anyway.

She makes a face at the word "dragon", and a disappointed little noise when he says "no gryphons". ] From the amount of us there are in Ce Monde you'd think it'd be a little easier to find an actual gryphon, but shit sake's even other worlds haven't seen those dicks lately.

[imperfectness]

[He nods slightly, standing back and smiling softly. How wonderful! There was so much more he wanted to know, and it was curious that they were almost vestigial.]

On a long enough timeline, I'm sure one would show up in Night Vale.

[Though, if there were some of her kind that could fly...]

Do you often break bones? I'm just curious.

[irritating]

That the place you're from? [ She was unsurprised to find she had never heard of it. And when he asked her about broken bones, she couldn't keep a short laugh contained. ] Sugar, at this point I'd do a better job rememberin' the ones I've broken than the ones I haven't.

[imperfectness]

Yeah, it's where I was when I wound up...here.

[He laughs, as well.]

I wonder if that's because of your bones. Mostly flying creatures are a little less dense than terrestrial creatures, like humans.

How much do you weigh?

[Oh good, Carlos, that's totally an appropriate question.]

I mean...er...I was just thinking that your bones might be a bit less dense than a human's...

[irritating]

[ He's probably lucky that she isn't the type of girl who's at all concerned with her weight. She's got some pretty high limits of what counts as inappropriate so to ask her for her weight is literally nothing. ]

Shit, really? [ Carlos had some very valid and true points of course, but Apollo had never thought about them before. ] Uh, I dunno. [ At that she stands up in front of him to let him try to figure it out. She's somewhere around 5'8 and athletically built so... whatever that usually means. ] Wanna pick me up and see? [ Is she kidding who knows. ]

[imperfectness]

Umm, I can try! It won't be an accurate measurement, but should give me an idea.

[There's a chance he could pick her up wrong and throw out his back but yolo it's science time

He stands back so she can stand up from the table.]

[irritating]

What oh uh, shit okay! [ Honestly she wasn't expecting him to attempt it if only because people normally ignored her dumb questions, but now that he'd agreed to try it she figured she'd cooperate. After all, she really didn't have a clue in the world how heavy she was and maybe it'd be something interesting to know about herself.

Stepping away from the table and readjusting herself, Apollo faced the scientist and stood directly in front of him. ] Alright, go for it. [ Normally when she said shit like that while standing in front of somebody it meant that she was about to start a fight, but thankfully for Carlos she was being a willing test subject right now instead. ]

[imperfectness]

[He scoops her up with little difficulty, and makes a small thinking sound, pursing his lips and halfway nodding to himself before setting her back down.]

For your height, you do seem a little light. I'd have to test to make sure, but if I were to guess, I'd assume the lower weight to mass ratio is a leftover from the...ah...other Gryps that are able to fly. Much like your vestigial wings.

Still, there's also a chance that the gravity here might not have calibrated exactly to the same as Earth. We might not notice much of a difference, but it could be enough to change your weight slightly.

[He thinks for a moment, then nods.]

So the test is inconclusive right now.

[irritating]

Uh huh. [ It probably wasn't hard to tell she didn't quite understand all of that. She knew surprisingly little about herself and her breed, so there was some genuine curiosity there even though science was absolutely not her area of expertise. ]

That all means you dunno, right? So how d'you test... gravity? [ The way she says the word "gravity" suggests she doesn't know exactly what that is either, but hey she's trying at least. ]

[imperfectness]

[He nods.]

I don't have enough data to reach a conclusion right now.

[And then he adjusts his glasses.]

Well, there are a few ways. Mainly, we'd have to find a control to test the gravity against, something that we know has a fixed, definite weight on earth...something like a weight or even maybe...some sort of...well, we could use a sack of flour or something, something that has a certain weight. And then all we'd have to do would be to weigh that.

[He gestures with his hands a little as he speaks.]

Because, you see, your weight is really just a measurement of how much gravity pulls on your mass. Generally speaking, more mass means a higher weight, but that isn't certain for things that aren't as dense as others. For example, five pounds of feathers is much less dense than five pounds of lead.

So, you might have the same mass as an average human of your height, but your body, especially your bones, might be a little less dense than average, meaning you weigh a little less!

[ISN'T THAT COOL??????]

[irritating]

[ Okay if she wasn't confused already she definitely was now. Mass? Dense??? She was raised by pirates in the 17th century what do these words even mean. She opens her mouth as if to say something, but then closes it a second later. Apollo stares vacantly at him as she tries to figure out what part she actually wants to ask about. ]

So if you weigh a sack of flour you can figure out how much I weigh too? [ That's totally what he was saying right?? ]