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

[grindset]

That is a blatantly manipulative thing to ask, the price an empty line waiting to be filled by its target; he sees it, stares right into it, and it still works. The question still rolls over, claims its space and more.

My people, he says. An attractive thing to hear if you aren't listening.

Viktor slouches into the chair. The sigh that follows is real, a pair of coughs right on its tail. (Dry ones; his next visit is a ways off.)

"Without those years, I would not be who I am."

[kaijuice]

"And who are you, Viktor?"

Blatant. Manipulative — the things that matter always are. A life is rarely self-determined, a wound.

(They built a city upon scarred earth. Of course it should echo.)

[grindset]

"Does it matter?"

No sign of raised hackles in his voice, in the minor creaks and scuffs; if anything, he cools.

"To you, I mean. Who I am. What kind of... amphibious person." For an even trade, "Silco."

[kaijuice]

"No," He stretches his neck. Cartilage crackles. "But it matters whether you've decided."

[grindset]

In return, a puff through his nose, too soft to be strictly dismissive. Silco's not wrong, is the thing: it does matter. It's something Viktor holds fiercely, jealously close. But how many decisions have been made based on that same trap of logic, he's not wrong—

"It's funny."

He leans back, straightens his leg. (Funny, too, how after all that it still deigns to ache.)

"From the way the Councillor described you," an easy guess as to which he means, "I actually thought you'd be shorter."

[kaijuice]

"The yordle?" A joke. Obviously. "That is funny."

Grow up small and you never really shake it, but Silco knows enough of the strong to know them no freer. Too often, they cultivate self-consciousness, hesitate before the blow. Ever seeking reassurance —

It's a poor time to bite. He can little help it:

"He didn't speak of you at all."

[grindset]

Of course he didn't. Why would he? It wouldn't have made sense. This was a territorial parley, not a social call. You don't flash your weaknesses during negotiation. Besides, it's no accident that so few people outside that towering building have experienced Viktor's existence as anything more substantial than the vague idea of a collaborator, maybe, somewhere; he prefers it.

And still,

that

lands, and stings where it lands, senselessly. Each one of its teeth is another he's not wrong style decision, made not in service to their goal, but in spite of it. Of course he didn't.

So Viktor just sits, for the moment not looking at Silco, blindfolded, in that stupid shirt, and he says nothing.

[kaijuice]

They sit. Silence settles into friction; the wind, the leaves. Scrapes blade over blade. Sharper again for the parting —

"I'm glad of it," Quiet. "To have had you firsthand."

[grindset]

A nice enough thing to say, and maybe there's even truth to it, but the phrasing rasps. You haven't had me fills his mouth, reflexive; after it drains, You still don't is left. You don't flash your weaknesses. (Look what he got, the instant he did.)

They sit. Quiet settles, absorbs through the skin.

"We were going to address the Council," he says, no more or less gentle than ever. "That's the last thing," not that he remembers, but— whatever. Silco will know what he means.

[kaijuice]

Laughter —

Barked, harsh: Rattling the chest. Almost a cough, for the way his hand clutches at collarbone, puckered with old scars.

"The last thing," It's difficult to roll your eyes when they're packed with cotton, but Silco's never been a quitter. He quiets, "The last thing."

His head shakes.

"It's dead. There's no deal."

[grindset]

Dead, probably, because Silco is here instead of there—that's his first guess.

Hand settles between cuts of bright fabric; head shakes; the grass brushes vaguely nearby. Viktor's reaching out with the bent end of his crutch, trying to hook the fallen hat.

"This doesn't need to mean that."

It starts off very low effort, but when the first couple of pulls don't work he sits up to try for real—and pauses just so, that one same word vibrating in his thoughts. The inflexible prerequisite, easy to forget because it doesn't sound real: inmates are dead.

"Why? What happened?"

[kaijuice]

"Your people wanted too much," Yours now, abrupt as it's vicious. The knuckles at his neck curl for a fist. "Our futures. Our children."

There's a wildflower stuck through a gap in the hat's weaving. Periwinkle blue.

[grindset]

Abrupt, and scalpel-sharp, cold in the seconds before nerves recover to come alight. His voice reflects—

"What are you talking about?"

—something more complicated than insult. (The hat can wait.)

[kaijuice]

"He didn't stop to mourn, did he?"

Neither had Silco. He'd kept Renni's boy to hand for a reason. My people, and his to hold in line —

It feels now like unfolding a blade. The pleasant shape of steel: Just what all of them deserve. My people, his daughter; the desperation in her voice that even now reaches for his.

"Could you even tell? Was there any change in him at all, when he broke that boy upon his hammer?"

That isn't how it happened; it is. Truth has a way of eclipsing detail.

[grindset]

Nerves recover. They come alight. The slow writhing in his gut, maybe that was a warning against this very thing—truth's shadow turning beneath an increasingly murky surface—and he came and sat despite it, to spite it, because his own body is so rarely on his side.

Could he? Was there? (Could he tell when he came to the spillway, found Viktor leaning over the ledge?)

What boy? When? Why? (Maybe why the lab was empty for so long, why he had time to clean it up.)

The hammer—that thing—was there blood in the creases when he set it down? Did he clean it first so no one would see? (A common container, just some can, so no one would see—)

All condensed into one soft syllable:

"What?"

[kaijuice]

He can't spy the man's expression, but he radiates in it; the acid curl of pressure. Righteous.

(You can grow drunk on the taste. The Councilor would know.)

"He came to the Undercity, a pile of Enforcers in tow. Decided to make a point of it." Bitter, "Nine years, perhaps?"

An engineer's habit.

"More than some get."

[grindset]

You're lying jerks at him, a reflexive slap of rejection.

Other things left unspied: a slow bend forward, palm heels finding the sockets of his eyes, his crutch across his lap, nestled just behind his elbows. The wind moves his hair. His mouth moves like he might say something, instead presses closed. He breathes, in through the nose and out again, deliberate, necessary, and maybe it's audible through the rush of the grass.

After not too much longer,

"Who was he?" Some of the thickness is swallowed away. "The boy."

making up a name bc he doesn't have one so bear w me

[kaijuice]

"Isin," He'd some initiative. Might have grown into more than a glorified hostage. "A Baron's son, eager to help his mother."

"He sounded an alarm. Perhaps saved lives."

🐻

[grindset]

The details are concrete on which to stand: Isin, eager, sounded an alarm. His mother's a Baron; she's still a mother. The loss must be unbearable.

He sits up, takes his hands from his face, uses the one still wrapped in human skin to wipe one eye and then the other. At least he doesn't have to worry about being stared at—

"Where did it happen?"

don't show me pictures of vander at a time like this

[kaijuice]

"Under my watch," Isn't difficult to guess. The Eye has never afforded him the luxury to blink. "They attacked a factory."

[grindset]

"What was he doing there?"

It could easily be a prying question—some knee-jerk topsider judgement, a pivot toward revenge or punishment—but suspicion is absent from his voice. All the same, he's compelled to add,

"This isn't an interrogation, I just... want to know." He was eager, he sounded an alarm. Nine years old. (Roughly.) "It matters." He doesn't need to keep talking, is compelled all the same: "It was never meant for that. Our work. My work," and a vague hand gesture, rising and falling loose into his lap, unseen.

[kaijuice]

Interrogation bristles him where the question hadn't — obvious, a stir of the spine. Hackles up.

Smoothing them is a conscious effort. Necessary: The boy's still speaking. He breathes. The weight of the sun urges him fitful; behind the cloth all is dark. Dark and deep and cold.

Stillness.

"He was working, too." What else? Old enough to bring in coin. Safer than scrapping in the Lanes. "What did you intend, Viktor?"

[grindset]

He nods, pointlessly. Working. Of course. Even children do what they can—what they must. He'd have liked a clearer picture of how, what job, did he enjoy it, what else did he enjoy, this little person who no longer exists because of something he made—

The question sweeps him along. He sniffs, dry; coughs after it, three times, in reverse of the usual.

"To improve lives. To make things easier, for... for us." It sounds so vague. They never made it to specifics, but he'd imagined— "Redirect topside runoff... maybe, maybe consolidate and send it through a generator. Cap the vents, collect the gases that can be repurposed and neutralize the rest. Filtered water. Cleaner air. Something."

Anything.