transport log » ❝ welcome to Exsilium ❞

[initiates]

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.

Comments

[mentore]

[Now that is an attack of questions if he'd ever heard one. He narrows his eyes slightly, taking that this young redhead has been here long enough to ask these kinds of questions.]

I am new, si and I am fine.

[Forthcoming with information? Not exactly. He knows they're not telling them everything, he's lived this sort of life long enough.]

They told me all they deemed necessary for me to know.

[ladyspitfire]

[Her expression does not sour, held in check by thin control. Her frustration, however, is evident in her eyes.]

So they told you next to nothing.

[She's not entirely certain if she expected something different. It hadn't been any different for her or for any of her companions.]

I had been hoping there was an explanation to the influx of arrivals. There are more now than have been at any one time. It's...disconcerting, to say the least.

[mentore]

[Ezio narrows his eyes at all she says.]

This is a war, si? And we are to fight in it? I can only think this is because they need the numbers to fight back.

[Speaking from experience? Perhaps.]

[ladyspitfire]

We are over two hundred strong already, if what people say is true. The number is arbitrary; I know more people will always be needed to fight a war.

But for so many people to come at one time isn't like them. We went nearly a month with no new recruits.

[mentore]

Numbers count for nothing if those numbers are not applied properly. One only needs some few to win, in the end.

[That is something interesting to hear, but he doesn't quite know what to say.]

Perhaps in time we will know.

[ladyspitfire]

Perhaps. I wouldn't expect them to tell us anything until we give them a push.

[Or two. Or three.]

My apologies. I've been rude. My name is Elissa Cousland. I've been here for a little over two months now.

[mentore]

And I am Ezio Auditore. [He gives her a shallow bow of his head.] A pleasure to meet you.