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transport log » ❝ welcome to Exsilium ❞

Date & Time: Sept 23rd, 2012.
Location: The Initiative Hold & Courtyard.
Characters: Everyone.
Summary: New Transports have all arrived and have been shuffled into the Courtyard after their initial briefings.
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. "This isn't standard," she's saying, walking perhaps faster than most of the people she's dragging around. "We don't normally have so many Transports at once. 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. 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. 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.

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.

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Blaine paused at the voice and turned around. A quick flick of his eyes down towards what the man was holding and he gave a small smile. This guy didn't look like he would know a damn thing about anything that was going on here, at least on the technical parts. He stepped over and picked up the case.

"This is a case for your tablet." He pulled out his own and slipped it inside and demonstrated how to close it. "It helps to protect it so you don't break it or scratch it."

"I see." He takes up another one and removes the item he had tucked away in his wide belt for lack of anything better to do with it to slip into it.

"You know of these things?" He waves it to indicate what he's talking about. Although he's still glancing around for the shop keeper, most of his attention is on the young man. "Could I trouble you with a few questions? They were speaking so quickly I don't feel that I completely understood what they were trying to tell us about them."

Blaine pulls his tablet out and puts the case back on the table. He's thinking about buying one, and a few other things but not at the moment. There are so many things he has to find out first before he starts spending his limited money. He's actually going to have to think about how much things are before buying them now. Ugh, when's the last time he did that?

"I have them back home, though I have to fiddle around with it. The technology might not be the same." He runs his finger over the screen and nothing happens. He turns it over in his hand. "Ahh, here's how you turn it on. You push this button until the screen lights up, then let the button go." Demonstrates.

He's not sure he needs one of the cases, himself. He doesn't know how durable or fragile the item is. It's nice to know the purpose behind something strange, however. He watches with interest while the stranger activates it. "It is inert unless it is lit? I hope you can forgive me if my questions seem ignorant. I have seen nothing like these in my life, and I have seen some very strange things."

He removes his from the case he had tested and does the same. When it lights up he takes a closer look and turns it around in his hands. "I won't bother asking how it works. I doubt I'd comprehend the explanation. What is the easiest way to use them for communication?" The buttons with numbers on them mean little to him. There's no such thing as typing in Thedas. It would never occur to him to try to use them to spell things out.

Blaine's not sure if these are durable either, compared to his ID cell he has on him, but it's always best not to drop electronic devices. They don't like shocks very much. "Inert...? Well, I guess you could say that." He holds his out and the screen dimmed then went black as it went to sleep to conserve power. "Right now, it's 'asleep'. That's so it doesn't run out of power while you're not using it. If you touch a button it'll wake up." Does so, and the screen lights up.

"To use it..." he does a few things with it, stuff pops up which he closes. The technology is new to him in the sense he hasn't seen this particular kind before so don't mind as he fiddles around with it to get to the right buttons and screens and stuff. "Okay, here we go. You push this to create a new post. Like a bulletin board. Other people can reply to it, so if you have questions you can ask them and others will give you answers or just talk to you about whatever."

He watches closely and mirrors his actions on his own tablet. The texture is as odd as the rest of it. Slick and hard. Obviously not stone. Any temptation to put it away and try to forget about it is negated by the need for information. He listens while they tap at various keys.

"Interesting. The elves had something like this in a lost age. Mirrors." He glances at him to see how he takes that. How different are the worlds everyone has come from?

"My name is Duncan. I'm grateful for your assistance." As he continues to push things, he realizes that the letters come up on the screen. So that's how it works. "How familiar to you are most of the things you see here?" A sweep of his arm includes more than the booth they're standing in front of.

"Elves... and mirrors?" He cocks an eyebrow at Duncan and hey, that at least explains what the other guy is wearing. And the sword. Definitely explains the sword. He had a few friends who liked swords and were proficient with them, but they didn't actually carry them around... "Sounds like a fantasy novel."

He reaches up and clicks a button with a red dot on it. "The name's Blaine. Good to meet you, Duncan." Grins and pushes the red dot again before he holds out his hand for a shake. After a firm handshake he pushes the button on the device and it repeats his introduction back at them. "It all looks pretty familiar at first glance, but we'll see after a week or so."

"A fantasy novel?" Duncan's smile is fleeting. "There are some in my land who might say the same. Such artifacts are mostly lost to history. The few that remain are dangerous and unpredictable, best destroyed altogether rather than used."

Duncan's first inclination is to grasp his wrist rather than his hand. It's an awkward fumble that rights itself soon enough with the good shake. He blinks his astonishment at the recording. "If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I'd never have believed it."

He looks around again. "I'm not certain how I might repay your kindness. If the opportunity arises, be assured I shall try. I'm not sure how much advantage familiarity with the environs will be. It doesn't hurt to have a friendly pair of eyes watching your back."

"Then isn't it good that they think it's fiction instead of trying to go out and find those things themselves? Those are the types who tend to screw everyone else over by being know-it-alls." That or they were greedy sons of bitches who sold to the highest bidder, and the one with the most money rarely did anything good with it. Blaine would know.

"That's technology for you." He chuckled a bit at the fumbling and he'd remember next time that there would have to be one of those warrior shakes you only see in old movies. Blaine got the feeling Duncan would be a good person to have at his back if they're going out in those teams to fight for the Initiative. He had no plans to show just how good he was in a fight, but you never know.

He gave an offhanded shrug. "You can owe me one. We're all new here, and hording knowledge isn't going to help anyone in the end. I appreciate a second pair of eyes in this place though. I'll do the same for you."

"Insightful," he observes. "Yes, it's a very good thing. More often than not they are discovered quite by accident, or so it seems." It wouldn't surprise him if the corrupted ones had demons behind the scenes manipulating the material world to bring them victims. That wasn't unheard of, either.

"Not any kind of technology I've ever seen. It's a marvel." It's the sort of thing that would keep the Shaperate busy for decades taking apart, studying, and recording in the stone.

He inclines his head graciously. Unspecified debts can be tricky things, he knows. He doesn't get the sense Blaine is a sort who'd take undue advantage. If he's wrong, he's prepared to deal with his mistake when the occasion arises. "Agreed. If these devices can be used to summon others as they say, you're welcome to contact me when you are in need." He decides he's not going to buy one of the cases just yet. If anything happens to change his mind, he knows where to find them now. He shuts his off and tucks it into his belt where it's relatively dryer.

"I think that's more or less true no matter what 'world' you're from," he mused, looking at his tablet and pushing a button to delete the voice file and confirm that yes, he really did want to delete it. "That's how you remove it from the system. Though just because you did that doesn't mean it's gone forever. I wouldn't ask any sensitive questions or gather private information using these, if I were you."

Blaine certainly knew something owed to him could be valuable, especially from the sort Duncan seemed to be. Betraying his trust, however, might not make whatever dubious request the blonde had worth it. He was content to be an amusing instigator and let no one know the lengths he had and would go to for what he wanted, much less what he needed. "Thanks for that. Can't know too many people here."

He slipped his own tablet into his inside jacket pocket, which was barely big enough to hold it. "They don't take debit out here, which I would have liked to have known before going to the bank." He'd have to see if the regular stores had what he needed.

That's a very good thing to know, not that at the moment he knows anyone well enough for sensitive exchanges. "I would also think that whoever is responsible for providing and powering them would have a way to monitor exchanges." It's what he would do in their position.

"Oh, you say that now. Wait until you meet that one person who gets thoroughly under your skin." In his youth, he had been that person often enough to be able to say this with a sort of cheerful glee.

"Debit. That's what they call those little cards they tried to give us, right?" He's doubly glad now he didn't fall for that. As though some little slip of a thing could ever substitute for money.

"They probably do, to a certain extent. I'm not sure just how paranoid they are, with all of us weirdos wandering around."

At that Blaine couldn't help but laugh. "How do you know that person isn't me?" he teased. He had been known to pick at people until they thoroughly hated him, but usually they were people he had deemed not worth cultivating anything positive with.

"Right. In my world I can use it anywhere to buy anything I needed. Food, clothes, furniture, anything I wanted I could use the card to get." He probably should have known better himself, but he'll just have to take out some cash to have on hand.

"All of us 'weirdos' with a good reason for a grudge. I'd say the odds are high." He has no idea how they intend to ensure anyone in this place fights for them rather than against. He has a feeling they'll all discover the answer to that question sooner than they'd like.

"Call it an instinct." There's another brief flash of a smile, white teeth in the thicket of beard.

"In my world coin has always been king." He could see the convenience of a little card, if one could convince others to accept it. Obviously, these vendors weren't on board with that. He'd take the comfortable weight of the coin pouch, and more importantly what it might be able to do for him in a pinch. "If it's the worst of the adjustments here, we can count ourselves lucky."

"Wouldn't make sense not to, if they have the ability to." He picked up a different style of case, this one that had a flip cover so you never took the tablet out of the case to use it. "If they can pull us from across space and time, I don't see how they couldn't monitor our conversations. We have that tech at home, and we aren't even traveling to other planets in our solar system without it taking years."

They would have to see how that instinct worked out for Duncan... But in the mean time, "The worst? Ha, now that's just being too optimistic." There's a bit of teeth with his smile at that. "In my world, you lost your cash and that was that. If you lost the card, you could disable it and they didn't get shit for stealing it."

"Precisely." As for the rest of it, he's not completely convinced he has gone anywhere or that it's real at all. He has first-hand experience with how real certain things can seem in the Fade. If there is a powerful demon or spirit at work, it could show him anything it wished for him to see. He'd have little chance of breaking free on his own, until his life force was so drained that there would be no saving him back home. He suspects there may be no saving him back home regardless.

"Wishful thinking. I'll readily admit it." No, the currency issue is the very least of things. "That sounds like a dreadful arrangement. For thieves." He wouldn't have been able to make any sort of living on the streets in a world like that. Who would have thought something could ever make him grateful for Val Royeaux?

He bows slightly at the waist. Water drips from his beard and the end of his nose to hit the pavement. "Blaine, it has been a pleasure. I'm going to continue trying to see what I can find that may be of use. I'll contact you later if I find anything of real interest." He taps the tucked device.

There was nothing like the Fade or even virtual reality that was indistinguishable from real life in his world for him not to believe what he saw. Powerful narcotics might produce these effects, but he'd wake up soon enough if that were the case.

"Exactly right. I've got not problems giving money, but I don't want someone to take it." Blaine was thoroughly soaked himself and pushed his hair back with a run of his fingers through it. Here's to hoping he didn't catch a cold. "Likewise, Duncan. Call me if you have problems with that," and he pointed at the tablet tucked away.

"Thank you. I shall, and well met." With a final slight bow, he eases off into the milling crowd. He feels slightly better if for no other reason than he understands something more, a tool of dubious but not worthless value, and has started to make tenuous connections that could prove beneficial down the line. It's a beginning.

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transport log » ❝ welcome to Exsilium ❞

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