PORT: MEODRIOTOPE

[returnjourney]

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.

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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.

Comments

wildcaaaaaaaard, lmk if anything needs changing

[omniavincit]

“You hear that?”

They've been tramping through grass—blue grass—that sometimes brushes their knees, eyes fixed on the cryptic slabs of rock in the distance. William's pictured the jawbone of some tremendous, long-dead creature jutting out of the earth. The teeth scattered. He's been in good spirits, trekking across this unfamiliar landscape—trailing a hand over the grass, watching for alien bugs bounding ahead of his steps. His expression as animated as their surroundings.

He stops. He holds his breath, listening to the low musical groan, a sound that seems to wind and wend its way to their ears. He looks to Travis, expectant.

[rank1]

Travis is thinking about the monoliths in D**d S**ce, the great spiraling stone structures that make people go bugfuck crazy. The ones that people worship and get all fucked up on with hallucinations and the paranoia and the violent urges. And he's here, in the flesh, tromping through the world. Pretty sick. It could almost replace his usual hard look with a smile.

What does actually put a smirk on his face is seeing this whackjob 'janitor' fucking pumped to see the world around them. You go, dude. See the universe around you.

"You think something giant carved that shit?" he asks. He walks with his hands in the pockets of his jeans, but he takes them out just to gesture in a circle. It is flippant and goofy. "You know, like giant wind chimes."

[omniavincit]

William's head tips back and he squints skyward, the breeze sweeping his hair into his eyes. The light is dazzling, the play of the wind invigorating. Easy to imagine it rippling over the sea, through the grass. How far have they all traveled, just to feel it?

“Maybe it's a warning,” he speculates, attention snapping back to Travis. He scratches at the back of his head, the bald patch that's still growing in. “Maybe it's a tomb.” This is offered thoughtfully, no trace of fear—real or exaggerated.

Another low sound rushes over the plain. He picks up his pace.

[rank1]

"Or a puzzle," Travis adds. "Or all three. Like in Tomb Raider."

He only barely picks up his own pace to follow, his skater shoes meant for a better grip on flat pavement than the occasionally slick and generally uneven grasses. Slip on these hills and you could roll all the way to the bottom. He imagines flailing limbs. Wouldn't that look silly?

"You want it to be a tomb?" he asks.

This guy does not look like the spelunking kind.

[omniavincit]

William makes it a ways—rolling his eyes at Tomb Raider, talk about on the nose—before realizing Travis is lagging, his voice growing fainter. He turns and waits, eyes roaming the landscape. “I just want to be wrong,” he says, falling back in step with the other man. Voice uneven as the terrain, almost tender in its eagerness. “I want it to be what it is. Something I couldn't have guessed.”

Markings'd be nice though.

“This is the good part.” A breath sighs out; his mouth catches in a smile. He tips his head for a look at Travis. “What's your world like?”

[rank1]

"Yeah," he replies, with something like a laugh under his breath. "Better than a video game..."

Life never works out that way, but it'd be nice if it did. Predictable enough that you know when all the cool parts are going to crop up, and just obvious enough that you can duck out of the shitty moments.

"Boring," he replies, instinctively, but that isn't it, is it? He plucks up a thought to the place he isn't in any rush to return to: "Corrupt, heartbreaking, aimless. The only people making cool shit are broke and fighting tooth and nail to make it in the first place. My hometown..." A note of bitter fondness. "Only thing worth shit was the people, otherwise it was just miles and miles of concrete and dead industry. Now it's corporate. I live in the woods now."

[omniavincit]

He thinks of the flowers—the flowers they've left behind, some doubtless thoughtlessly crushed underfoot—with their mysterious medicinal properties. Pictures them plucked by underpaid laborers then harvested by machines. Grown in orderly fields as the blue grass is supplanted by concrete, the sky fogged over.

Heartbreaking. What a word to say aloud, undaunted by self-consciousness. “Really?” he asks, surprise ringing clear in his voice. “You fight everyone who comes to see you?”

[rank1]

"Yeah," he says. Travis Touchdown, the unholy union of modded leather jackets and lifestyle camping. "You live out far enough, you're harder to find, but they eventually do anyway. Some of them want the rush, some want revenge, some want glory."

Every one of them breaks the illusion that he could be happy that way, parked on the bench with a controller in his hand, a man who could not even hope to guess at the date beyond how many days it's been since the last "visitor". It is, regretfully, just another gauntlet.

He gives a little roll of his shoulders, a shrug that isn't quite sure whether it is flippant or resigned.

"I let them try. Might as well have the company. Some of them are interesting."

[omniavincit]

It'd been half a joke, the question; William loses some ground to disbelief, and then consideration. It's tempting to cast it as a story, to imagine a shadowy tangle of Arthurian forest: the champion in the woods, undefeated. The Crownless King. Whatever that means. It's the sound of their footsteps that brings him back, Travis' fucking skin-tight jeans.

“You like people, huh?” William's smile skews crooked, his voice goes wistful. He doesn't. He doesn't give out chances. “You feel like you've outlived your usefulness?”

[rank1]

Does he like people? The question makes his expression tighten momentarily. He spends an awful lot of time alone for a guy who likes people. You put in enough hours in stories about people with something left to fight for, though, it kind of feels the same.

"Thinking people gotta be useful is a trap," he replies. "I guess you wardens gotta worry about shit like that though, right? A useless person isn't saving the world."

[omniavincit]

You wardens. He shoves his hands in his pockets, looking slight and hunched and promptly feeling stupid. “It's not like that.” They're closing in on the rocks, on the brink of a yawning shadow. Perhaps unconsciously he veers off, walking along the edge a ways.

“It's about finding something—something worthwhile and offering yourself in service of it. Sometimes it's about believing the world has it in it to be less corrupt and”—he has to glance away to say it—“heartbreaking.”

[rank1]

“Ha,” Travis breathes, and as William veers away, he follows like a dog swept off course by some strange smell. “Deep down there’s a light that never goes out, and all. Sure. So are you ‘useful’ when you’re not here?”

As questions go, it’s transparently curious.

[omniavincit]

He dips his head, almost companionable, an invitation, and leaves the sunlight behind. There's still grass here, shifting with the wind—sensitive as the hairs on the back of the neck—but it grows prickly and patchy then gives way to moss.

“I'm dismantling a multinational corporation,” he says, twisting for a look at Travis. It has the air of a confession; his expression clouds over, rueful. “That I run.”

[rank1]

That is the opposite of being a janitor. It's top-level, big-wig, rich asshole shit, and Travis's eyebrows fly up his head immediately.

"Holy shit." He falls closer into step with William, almost crab-walking so he can face William fully. "That takes balls. Why are you tearing it down? Is it corrupt? Shitty labour practices? Adopt some orphan who taught you that there's more to life than money?"

All three?