SET SAIL: FIRST IMPRESSIONS

[returnjourney]

SET SAIL: FIRST IMPRESSIONS

January 1, 2022 – January 7, 2022
Welcome to the new year and the Return Journey's opening event! We're starting with something light to get everyone acclimated and so no one feels they've missed too much if they app after the holiday season. We'd like to make it easy for any new players to jump in right away.

If you have any questions about the event, please ask here.

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1. What? My name is who? My name is—

Salutations! Now that everyone's respective warden and inmate orientations are out of the way, you've been given a helpful, mandatory name tag. It instantly appears on your shirt and can't be taken off, though where it appears on your shirt is a bit more unpredictable; it's an imperfect science, so it's just as likely to pop up on the back of your shirt as the front. If you try to remove your clothes, the tag appears on your skin; they're waterproof, so a quick shower won't get rid of it, either. What can we say — it's mandatory.

While the tags all follow the standard "HELLO my name is" format and have your name or most common alias, they also include some other information. For wardens, it features a space that declares "I LIKE" and one or two of your most choices hobbies. For inmates, it features these hobbies and "I have killed [x] people" (this may be a specific number or something akin to "a lot of" or "no"). Fun icebreaker, right?

2. Twenty Questions

Speaking of icebreakers, a brief announcement summons everyone to the observatory. Again, yes, it's mandatory; wardens must retrieve absent inmates before any more information is revealed. Better hop to it!

Upon arrival, passengers will discover that the Peregrine's resident bot force has reconfigured the observatory with small, portable cubicles, each with a transparent wall that retains a lovely view of the observatory's massive window. Each inmate is assigned their own cubicle and, upon entering, cannot leave without a warden's say so; the door only unlocks with a warden's CommLink.

Wardens are tasked with interviewing at least one inmate, to get a feel for their prospective charges. They can have as much time as they need to formulate what questions they want to ask, but that might leave some inmates waiting. Maybe that's on purpose, though. In any case, the exercise is over once an inmate is asked five questions and a warden receives five answers.

Archimedes will collect name tags after the interviews for incineration. The robotic owl is, notably, the only one who can remove them.

3. Polite Picnic

The greenhouse doesn't always have enough fresh produce to go around (and often what is collected is frozen and preserved), but given the circumstances — a new mission and new passengers — everyone can reap the rewards this month...if they share. A bot stationed in the mess hall mechanically tells anyone who crosses into range (whether they mean to visit the produce table or not) that they aren't to take more than three fruits and/or vegetables. If you choose not to abide by the rules...well, that depends if you're caught and by who.

The produce available are as follows:

Adalfane: Tastes like cocaine, but very nutritious, especially when eaten raw.
Tuadath: Smells awful, but very hearty when cooked, tasting a little like steak.
Tsanyi: Pure, sugary sweetness. Can be made into a refreshing drink, eaten raw, or sprinkled over a desert.

There are notably fewer tsanyi than adalfane or tuadath. But if everyone's nice and cooperates, each person can get exactly one.

Comments

[lessandmorethanhuman]

Alex raises an eyebrow, before removing one hand from his pocket and reaching out to clasp it. Wouldn't hurt to be polite, right? "Not sure how many choices we'll get here."

[kaijuice]

The squeeze of palm is brief, calloused strange after the pattern of some absent knife. Silco nods to the room beyond,

"Then you ought to make one."

A spiral of unfamiliar faces, sand; cells. As open an opportunity as one could ask for. His eyes cut back to Mercer, head canted in faint curiousity: What are the boy's priorities?

[lessandmorethanhuman]

"Maybe I have already?" Alex murmured, raising an eyebrow as Silco's head canted. "Right now my choice is observing things."

[kaijuice]

An old man in a corner. Well, then.

"And what have you seen?"

[lessandmorethanhuman]

"Bunch a people shoved together in a room and their reactions." It was the boring answer and Alex knew it. He wasn't entirely inclined to share all of his thoughts yet. "What about you? What choices are you making?"

[kaijuice]

A long breath, out through his nose.

"Cooperation." With their captors, with his willingness to continue this conversation — "Tell me,"

A curt gesture to the stars beyond.

"Is this in any of your books?"

[lessandmorethanhuman]

"Space?" Alex asked, raising an eyebrow. He shrugged. "Plenty of books about space travel, space prisons. Whole subgenres in Science Fiction where I'm from."

[kaijuice]

"Only within fiction?"

[lessandmorethanhuman]

"There's some space travel in fact, but nothing this advanced yet. Most of our prisons are still Earthly bound."

[kaijuice]

Most stretches a span to rival the seas. Does it matter? Difficult to say. This already tracks rapidly beyond the domain of the known, but in practice —

How many might explain the mechanism of a Hexgate? Whatever magic that allows one to step between land and sky, it matters little once minted. Anyone might lift a foot.

"Why do you think it such a fascination?"

All those books.

[lessandmorethanhuman]

"Space? Why do you?" Alex asked in turn, curious about what the other was thinking. "It's the unknown. Last unconquered frontier besides the oceans and all that."

[kaijuice]

"I've never held the stars in regard."

Too smothered beneath the choke and grey. Who could ever stand high enough to behold them? Who could, and still name himself a man on solid ground?

[lessandmorethanhuman]

Alex shrugged. "What would you hold in regard then?" He kind of liked the view, given he'd never seen the stars so clearly in the city.

[kaijuice]

"Every breath you take, you take because the water gifted it."

The oceans. And all that —

[lessandmorethanhuman]

"The Oceans and seas are the last unexplored frontier on my world. But space is marginally easier to explore, as engineers don't have to worry about how to deal with gravity or how to protect against the massive amounts of pressure being underwater can cause."