returnjourneylogs | PORT: MEODRIOTOPE

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PORT: MEODRIOTOPE

Feb 11, 2022 – Feb 13, 2022
Welcome to Meodriotope! (Try spelling that without double-checking. I double-dog dare you.) This is our first port. Ports are, as the name implies, a visit to "shore", which can be just about any planet in the Oos Galaxy. This time, the Peregrine is dropping in on a flower-gathering errand, but it's a good opportunity for characters to stretch their legs.

The full OOC write-up for the port is here. If you have any questions about the event, please ask here.

1. Disembarking

For some passengers, this will be the first time they've touched land in almost forty days. Is it unusual, stepping down onto solid ground and breathing cool, fresh air? Is it frightening, to look upon the sea of blue grass and pale sky and realize you have never been so far from home? Is it exciting? Awe-inspiring? Gross, because who likes the outdoors anyway?

Of course, not everyone will disembark. Inmates cannot leave the ship without a warden as escort, and wardens will be responsible for inmates in port — they don't have to be glued to each others' sides, of course, but it's harder to make trouble under a watchful eye.

2. Camp

There'd be a lot of walking without the ATVs, so the Navarch has deployed both vehicles to serve as transport and support for housing. The campsites, once set up, look very much like regular Earth camping — turns out at some point in human development, people pretty much perfected what a rapid set-up/rapid tear-down camp can be, give or take some aesthetic trappings. A sleeping bag is a sleeping bag. A camp stove is a camp stove. It's just cooler when it's made of sleek white metal with designer rounded edges and blue lighting, and all.

There are four tents set up, each sleeping 4-6 people, so even if everyone decided to camp, it won't be too crowded. They are equipped with a solar-air tube that can generate power from sunlight, so they are climate controlled and have built-in lighting. An additional tent serves as a mess tent, though you'll all be eating on little folding chairs. Plastic trunks store rations. Those who want a bit of local fare will have to work for it.

Wardens also have a locked toolbox containing a hatchet, a firestarter, and a pair of utility knives. Should be handy for setting up a campfire at night. Shame no one picked up marshmallows from the commissary; that would have been nice.

3. [Mis]adventuring

There's plenty to see out in the world of Meodriotope:

Burrowing holes — Beware your ankles: the fields are home to colonies of littari, rabbit-like creatures the size of labradors. They leave large holes that are easy to fall into, if you're not watching where you step. This time of year, they usually stay deep in their warrens, but occasionally they pop up to smell the wind and scavenge for edible plants in the thick grasses. They're largely harmless, preferring to flee when possible, but they may go for the calves with their large, blunt teeth when cornered or struck. (They also taste good with mint sauce.)

Lover's Kiss — These little plants can be difficult to find, as they thrive under the grasses' shade, but when you find one, you find a lot of them. Each vine has fifty or more bright, red blooms, pinched at the sides and bowed in the middle like a pair of juicy lips. The Navarch requests that they be harvested; they're used in medicines on a neighboring planet and the Admiralty has asked the Peregrine to pick some up while we're in the area. Be careful, though: if you pluck them too roughly, they'll explode, and the red markings take weeks to wear off skin, even with dutiful scrubbing.

The Fishwives' Village — Five hours west is a small village close to the shore, home to...well, who knows if they're wives, but they have fish heads and bodies with humanoid arms and legs, and they wear little robes. Kind of like reverse mermaids. They are quite small, barely reaching four feet tall, and they speak their own language, leaving communication to little gesticulations and gestures. They live in small stone huts, arranged in concentric circles with a small market in the middle, and barter roast seafood, handicrafts, crabgrass beer, and small tools for off-world goods. Most of their culture seems to revolve around fishing and goods made of woven grasses. The fishwives are fussy about outsiders and carry little fishing spears when they visit, just in case.

The Shoreline — Long, long, long coastlines looking out at the sea, with beaches made up of smooth stones. There are plenty of interesting sea creatures to see in the rocky tide pools, but try not to handle anything indiscriminately (many things bite and some of those things are venomous). You can walk a long way out before the water gets deep, but be careful and make sure you aren't too far out when the tide comes in.

Rock Formations — Weathered in fascinating shapes from centuries of storms and high winds, these formations curl across the southeastern plains. They make swooping sounds when the wind passes through them, like deep and echoing woodwinds. Suneoff, resembling cat-sized mudskippers, dwell in the formations' shadow, while the bat-like knassu nest in the better protected crannies.

4. A Very Wet Last Day

Looks like we didn't manage to miss the rain. The storm clouds on the horizon take their sweet time to arrive, but on the last full day before departure, wardens and inmates will wake to the sound of heavy rain on the roofs of their tents. For some, it may be a struggle to leave the warm, dry confines of the tent to venture into rain. It's the kind that comes down relentlessly, soaking you to the skin within minutes, and cold to boot.

To make matters worse, the rain has transformed the long grasses into a veritable slip-n-slide. Step too quickly and you might find yourself shooting down a sloping hill, or at the very least on your ass. Visibility drops to barely twenty feet ahead.

Packing up in this? Ugh. We have to be back on the ship by nightfall! Anyone who isn't aboard gets left behind.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

0. 🅶🅰🅼🅴🅿🅻🅰🅽 (closed to Rhys)
The day of the Navarch's announcement, Volk texts Rhys before she's even finished talking.

jvolkhov: so, a port like that?

The one we haaaaad to wait for, he means.

1a. 🅲🅾🅼🅿🅰🅽🅸🅾🅽🆂 (closed to Rhys, Travis, Waver)
Volk's got a bag of stuff.

What! It's not suspicious, he's going camping. It's fun. We're having fun you fucking idiot.

Rhys is with him. It's deja-vu is what it is, back here in the garage the same as they were the first day - but now with a lot more of a plan.

His eyes sweep the room as he gnaws a nail absently. They need a warden that's either a soft touch, trusts Volk or Rhys a lot, or-

Or, Travis could be right there, with someone Volk is positive Travis could overpower. Volk elbows Rhys.

3. 🆂🅰🅺🅻🅰🆂 (closed to Rhys, Travis, Jack, Waver)
It's going to be difficult to make Travis and Rhys get along for this, Volk knows. He can only keep them apart for so long, but at the very least after a few hours he won't have to. As soon as the three of them can get this damn thing to a road, they can start nutribulleting each other for all he cares. Until then, if he can keep them focused on either the goal or the warden, that'll do a lot of the work for him.

The girl is a totally unknown quantity, and Volk doesn't mind her coming with them, but he's going to have half an eye on her the entire time until they're out of range for her to call in wardens with guns.

Oh yes. He's noticed you carry guns.

(There's a memory bothering him, a dream he had a few weeks ago. A sharp crack, a fracturing -)

He's got in a bag two changes of clothes and food he's been saving. He'd put money on them being a few hundred miles out in a desert somewhere. Normally he'd be checking to make sure Rhys did it too, but at this point in the game he's so close to escape he can taste it and he just doesn't have the patience for babysitting.

He misses Hera, Gail, Cory, his parents, even Michael - like they're just as wired into him as cigarettes were in the first few weeks. Like he had no idea how dependent he'd gotten, and their absence was causing cascade failures in every receptor that had gotten used to the chemicals they provided. Love is chemicals. It's worse when he's so close to seeing them again. It's the apple on a branch just above his head.

He pushes his glasses up in a way he knows hides his expression, and steps down the ramp for the first time. Swallows hard. The wave of dread hits him as he hears the metal clink of his shoes change tone from the deck to the thinner metal of the ramp.

Why? Why let us out? How do they think they'll get us back? What's the catch?

What am I missing?

The thing he's missing is a step, as the ramp drops him down a warren in the ground that hadn't been visible from further up. His bag falls on top of him, then the whole momentum sends his taxi fare - one tarot card - fluttering down after both of them.

1b. 🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (ota)
He swears in a colorful mix of real and imaginary languages, skins an elbow, nearly loses a shoe. He claws his way up from under the earth, grabbing handfuls of dirt and remembering - ha ha - he's supposedly dead. His family probably buried something symbolic. Did they? He hauls the bag that represents everything he owns right now out - it had, of course, followed him down and landed directly on his head. Could they even find anything to bury?

He can see sky through the opening, there's dirt in his hair - fuck! - but he can see the sky for the first time in months and it's so bright that it's dazzling. He hauls himself up towards a slice of blue and for a moment when he emerges he thinks the rest of the planet has simply disappeared, and left him alone, just him and infinite sky.

Blue above, blue below. He could fall into it again, if he's not careful. A haze of lilac across the horizon is what he picks out first, as his eyes adjust, and what he'd taken for more white clouds is cascading shimmers of sunlight catching on pearly waves of grass. If home is here, if the real world is under this awake-dream somewhere, he can't even see it.

It's been 964 hours since he's had a certain green tablet, he did the math yesterday. One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small. And the ones you aren't taking don't do anything at all-

Volk giggles like he's just about had enough of this horseshit, this horseshit being a general way of referring to the process of being alive and dealing with sensory input.

"Fuck this. Fuck this. What is everyone else seeing?"

Edited 2022-02-12 01:36 (UTC)

[ This is exactly what Rhys has been waiting for. They had to touch down at some point, and it's way sooner than expected to boot. ]

Exactly like that. No idea what this planet's going to be like, but anything after Pandora's gonna be a cakewalk. I got this.

[ It's go time baybeeee ]

Yeah. great.

[Space bullshit, whatever, delusions can be complicated but the person underneath is still a person and Rhys is resourceful and, frankly, needs Volk a lot less than Volk needs him. Hopefully he won't get ditched.]

Do you have a bag? If not, get one together, who knows how long we're going to have to last without finding any other people.

Yeah yeah, all set to camp with you under the stars little buddy.

[ This probably comes off as rude and patronizing (and it is a little bit) but this is Rhys in a Good Mood. Freedom is so close, he hopes this planet isn't filled with noxious gas or something beyond the perimeter of their touchdown site. ]

normally sized buddy! What are the chances you can drive either the van or the plane if you get inside of it and I can get it started?

I can drive, these things are probably advanced enough to have cruise control anyways.

[ Despite Volk's whole "you'll never fake it till you make it blah blah" dig the other day, Rhys can and has faked it till he's made it his whole life, and that won't stop at mini ships or ATVs ]

Takeoff and landing are when most people die, I think.

You really need to work on your positivity skills if you want to be a hype-man. I do not feel very uplifted right now.

I am absolutely not a hype man. I have people for hype. And, frankly, for man, if I can verb that noun. You said we're going to want the one with wheels, right?

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