(no subject)

[initiates]

Date: November 1st
Location: The Observatory.
Characters: Everyone.
Summary: New Transports arrive and are shuffled into the Observatory after their initial briefings. The zombie plot will not spill over into this area, this area is safe and unaffected! To face zombies, characters must leave the area, and please move to the event log with those threads.
Warnings: None.

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, solemn and taciturn. 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, or tells you that the DITR's greeters will explain everything. On the tablet, 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. It's night outside the great wide windows, and the lunar landscape isn't much to look at right now; the only lighting comes from dull red emergency lights, but there are… noises. Listen carefully. Over the voices of your fellow Transports, now and then you might catch the sound of a scrape, or a low and muffled cry. It doesn't sound human. Are there animals up here?

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, and to the remains of Exsilium.

[[ ooc; As a note for players of current characters: please keep your root comments confined to the various groups and organizations that set up root comments to greet new characters! We highly encourage tagging around here, but since it's a log meant for new characters specifically, we ask that they be the ones to set up root threads to the entry. Thank you, and happy playing! ]]

Comments

Re: I'm sorry I'm not sorry?

[tergiversant]

[It's not as if Barma catches himself... so much as forcibly controls himself. Shoved down under thoughts of needing to know how this happened - to prevent it. How public this venue is and how youthful this ... person appears.

The strange aura vanishes as the fan snaps shut.]

Tis Rufus Barma. Perhaps we could converse elsewhere, Liam.

[veratrum]

[Liam doesn't flinch, doesn't even seem to blink or move out of the way when Rufus lashes out. He doesn't need the confirmation Rufus' retaliation has given him, because he still sees it plainly etched in the man's heart, his brightly shining wish. It's beautiful, Liam thinks, and echoes a pain in his own heart.

So he simply smiles, and nods, easily and casually as if the past few seconds hadn't even happened.]

Of course. You just arrived, right? I think I can probably find somewhere we wouldn't be bothered...[A beat of pause, where something else genuinely just occurs to him.] ...Or bothered by zombies.

[tergiversant]

... Thou art unnerving. [Said simply, plainly. Though all the same he nods, hooking the fan at his belt rather than kept in hand. His heart still flutters a bit, speaking more than shock... though even that is calming.]

What manner of disturbance or beast are zombies?

[veratrum]

I get that a lot.

[SHRUG. It's true, he doesn't mind, anyway.] Apparently, they're undead people who try to eat other people? Or something like that. I'd never heard of them before, either.

[He considers for a moment, before pointing off down the hall. Kido's meeting room had been around there, he could probably use one.] There should be safe places down this way.

[tergiversant]

[That... sounded like an awful lot of trouble. And smell. Avoiding it seemed the best plan, indeed.]

Prithee carry onwards. I shall follow thine steps.

[veratrum]

[TO A MEETING ROOM we're winging this I don't remember the base layout.]

...You know, I'm going to guess you're some sort of nobility, because I never met anyone other than the upper class who talks that way, but you don't have to keep up appearances up here.

[tergiversant]

[I think most of the base layout is handwaving.

The chances he was pulling the child aside to kill him seem to dwindle further as he settles on one of the chairs in the meeting room.]

A Duke, though I hast no knowledge of land nor House claiming the name of Ireland.

[He waves the complaint about his speech out of the air. There were more important things to talk about...]

How didst thou divine what ye did?

[veratrum]

Ireland's an island off the coast of England, which is off from the European continent?

[You're weird, Ruffles. Liam watches him sit, and considers how to explain for a minute, before shrugging, and chuckling faintly.

The shadows almost seem to ripple when he does, and for a moment, Liam's not the short brown-haired boy of fifteen, but a taller white-haired teenager, bright-eyed and timeless and only human shaped, and then it's gone. It's not a threat, not really, and maybe it's just a trick of the light, the same with the returned, unsettling brightness.]

Well, it's a little complicated how I came to be this way, but the short of it is, I can tell what it is you wish for. With you...the wish in your heart is so bright and vibrant, I could never mistake what sort of wish it is. It's....really quite beautiful.

[tergiversant]

[The names meant as little to him, though he nods, mind quickly accepting that if he had been taken from his own world... well it follows that other worlds were in reach as well.

It was a little hard to breath, a little heavy to swallow as the boy changed. Something more primal than a clinical mind reacting to the other form... But... oddly enough, Rufus actually seems to relax a little. It places the child into something he can understand. He's dangerous, eerie and uncanny... but much like the most powerful, autonomous beasts from his own world.]

Tis of some importance to keep such wishes downplayed and forgotten.

[veratrum]

You mean you don't wish me to tell others? I never share wishes.

[A lot like a Chain, but a lot not. Liam would note the distinction in being that the Abyss is still a facet of reality, and by his nature now he winks in and out of the rules of existence itself, a flickering soul both nothing but a wisp of self and too great to be contained simply in the walls of the world.

But he doesn't, so he doesn't, and he shrugs.]

I'm afraid, though, I can't grant your wish, either. I've...no power over people's hearts.

[tergiversant]

[... And that answers that. It certainly could still be a fortune teller's guess, but that same unease warns him against being dismissive. His fan snaps open, covering his face. But if it's true, how easy would it be for the child who isn't a child to simply tell him whatever he wishes to hear.

The answer to his statement, however, he can offer an absolute truth in reply.]

I wouldst not wish it, even should I think for a moments life that she would not simply throw off such bewitchments with ferocious irritation.

[veratrum]

Nor would I wish for that kind of power. Besides, the price you would have to pay for the change of her heart would be...

[He trails off, calculating it out, and shakes his head.] It's not worth mentioning. Better to suffer for love than twist it with a god's power, or so I tell myself.

[Not omnipotent. Not all-knowing. Just in possession of uncanny sight. Liam laughs like a human, sounds distantly sad and crushingly longing as a young man would, and the wrongness to him does not change or go away but simply is.]

I believe, though...that you probably have other questions for me?

[tergiversant]

[He waves the hesitant, half formed thought out of the air between them with an impatient snap of his fan and a darkening expression again. One does not spend a lifetime on a goal and even entertain such an easy answer.]

A few, though I shouldst wonder if ye would even answer most. [Who else can do this? How do I defend against it?

Instead his eyes narrow over the edge of his fan, as if he's smiling behind it.]

No, I would only inquire from thee what thou hast learned of mineself. What is the wish of Liam?

[veratrum]

My wish...? [He pauses for a moment, considers it. There's a great many answers he could give, and none of them are lies, but--

He smiles, a little sadly, a little...wistfully.]

It's much the same as yours.

[tergiversant]

[Interesting. If true, it makes the comments about the price a bit less of a baiting point... and a bit more telling. In the face of such powers, he had no idea where he stood, how much of this familiar tale is the reflection in the water, and how much was the creek bed.

But it wildly intrigued him.]

Reside thee, then in thy place of both grandeur and wretchedness. Tis, I am of a belief, a matter of patience and persistence.

[veratrum]

[Liam laughs, again, a sort of sad, wistful sound, and rubs at the back of his neck.]

Time is no longer of any obstacle, so patience I have in spades...but the knowing doesn't make that any easier.

[tergiversant]

Wouldst it be worth even half so much if it wert easy?