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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Questions & Answers

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

[saklas]

"Oh," says Volk. This is sure something that's occurring. He's already covered in tons of dirt, and now also this.

"Uh. Корона и престол."

The pronunciation makes it clear this is, approximately, Jesus fucking Christ.

"I don't know what to do."

He laughs again. It feels like his head is full of helium. God, vomit smells really bad, huh.

"Is it blue?"

Is it actually blue or is he completely fabricating that part?

[helenite]

"The vomit — ?"

No. Not blue. Alice stares down, still braced against his shoulders like a high school slow-dance. At least, the way they look in the movies.

(In the movies, probably they aren't both filthy, standing in a field of Easter pastels; pretending like everyone isn't about to die.)

God, she's breathing fast. No one's about to die. She has to wash her mouth out, Volk needs a shower. No one is about to die.

"It's blue. Everything's fucking — blue," She finally agrees. "We have to get out of here."

He needs a shower. She needs —

A hand pulls loose from his hoodie, at last, presses hard over her eyes. She needs a minute. That's all.

[saklas]

"It's okay," Volk tries. It sounds like he's forcing it out through a mouth coated on the inside in ashes. He goes to pat her on the back. Pat pat. It's mechanical. Social comfort dispenser; insert quarter to trigger human sympathy response. He's barely aware of what the words mean, they're just sounds. He's barely aware of where he's standing, or what year it is, or how he got here.

(Devastation sweeps across the field of blue grass, scorching to dust. The rabbits scream in their holes. Acid-red solar auroras ladder sideways across the sky. He can smell the rot and burning. AQ isn't reacting, so Volk knows what he's seeing isn't real. He blinks, breathes through it. A magical flare builds and climbs his spine as a shudder, the vision trying to reach through him to become real. It dashes itself harmlessly against the flood barriers of the inmate cap he's restricted to.)

It's enough to knock him back to the present moment. Holy shit. Whatever is keeping him from using his Court gift is still working and he's never been more relieved. He has no idea how long he was out of it. It felt like an hour. (It was only a few seconds.)

"Let's go back up," he says, hoarsely. Someone needs to have a plan. He's got it. He's fine. He has a handle on it. "Back in the ship, figure it out from there."

[helenite]

"Yeah. Yeah, you need a new shirt,"

Did he — go blank, for a minute there? Hard to tell. Hard to tell in this, the normal person section.

"I've got one that'll fit you." Probably. He weighs like, ten pounds. "You okay to walk?"

Her own knees are pretty shaky.

[saklas]

"Am I? Fuck, as long as there's not another hole, I guess I find them face-first. Are you?"

Wait, did he literally fall down a rabbit hole and end up in Wonderland? He hates that. How derivative. There've been too many adaptations of that, you can't do an original take these days. It's played out.

This still feels like it's happening to someone else.

He's simultaneously seeing this as script beats, dispassionately watching himself from a distance and marking off where things could fall better, could be more dramatic, could be more appealing - and also, actually there, actually feeling the heat and the smell and the blinding blue and the twinge in his ankle. He ducks his shoulder so AQ can put her arm around it and lean on him if she has to, and he watches himself do that. Good image, he thinks. Comrades in arms, limping away from the front lines where they've been decimated to a man. That'll play well. That looks authentic. I wish I had some takes from another angle, being lit from the front is all wrong for the mood I'm trying to set.

[helenite]

"Bad news," That's supposed to be deadpan. It doesn't hit — "This place is full of a-holes."

Okay. So it's an open-air panic picnic, not standup night at the Laugh Factory.

They limp. They straggle. They stink like they soaked in a garbage dump, but they're moving. And eventually, the ship's in sight. A long plank leading up, away, into sterile white. Locked rooms. Lights on a schedule.

Alice stops. Stuttered from her drifting thoughts only to find herself cold, sweating; the adrenaline all gone.

I know what I am,

"Are you sure you want to go back in?"

As though ultimately, he's got much of a choice. I know what I am, and I promised myself if it ever got this bad —

There's always a choice.

[saklas]

Volk makes a noise of pain at the pun, but otherwise mostly seems to be... trying to process. The laugh that comes at the question is abrupt, callous.

"What, like escape is out there? Like that's home?"

He's going to keep limping back indoors.