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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The Helpdesk

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

[nineteenfortyfive]

The offer of company does coax a genuine smile from her. After so long with children or other household residents underfoot, being entirely on her own again has her a little uneasy.

"I see you like to prepare for the worst."

But, she nods.

"Shall we?"

[hiddenblade]

"When it serves me," he replies, with the barest touch of humour. "Let us see what we can find there."

He offers his arm.

[nineteenfortyfive]

Claire takes his arm.

"Do you know which way we're headed?" She asks with a wry smile. Don't trust her, she has a shit sense of direction.

[hiddenblade]

"I believe I passed it earlier," he replies, leading her on. He's poked his head in just about every door he's seen, but the specifics are somewhat lost on him. "It does not look like what I would think of a doctor's quarters. Like much of this place... smooth, white."

He reaches out to the wall with his free hand, giving the plastic panel a hard knock.

"I have been told it is called plastic."

[nineteenfortyfive]

She hums in thought. Is it rude to ask where and when of people? She might have taken offense to it, once.

"I take it by your accent that you're from Italy, no? What year was it for you?"

Being offended isn't the worst thing.

[hiddenblade]

Ezio's smile twitches. Italy is only to be unified against the French; within the peninsula, any man calling himself an "Italian" would be thrown into the streets. From where he's standing, Cesare Borgia hasn't been cold for long enough to even entertain the idea.

People from the future, he reminds himself, do not understand that.

"Florence," he corrects her, but he keeps it lighthearted. "It was 1507. And your time, madonna?"

[nineteenfortyfive]

"Florence," Claire repeats.

1507. Christ. Her eyes widen a touch--and she thought she was from way back when.

"1772," she replies. She used to jokingly wonder what it would have been like to be thrown four hundred, six hundred years into the past rather than just a couple. "I thought I'd be the one scrambling to catch up the most, here."

[hiddenblade]

1772. Not as far ahead as he thought, but clothing is hard to parse when he has so little points of note to compare.

"You have me soundly beaten," he replies, amused, and he pats her on the hand once. "We will have to trade stories on what we learn here. See that no inmate tries to catch us unawares."

[nineteenfortyfive]

"It's not a great competition to win, believe me," Claire says with a dry laugh. It gets her in trouble more often than not.

"Though from what I've gathered so far, this ship is more advanced than what anyone is used to."

[hiddenblade]

"It certainly is," he replies, and he gives a subtle little shake of his head. "But the further people here have marched through time, the easier it is for them to conquer that difference. I have lived amongst them before. Their understanding of the world is different."

[nineteenfortyfive]

"Is it better, their understanding?" What's a better measure of a man than asking that sort of question?

[hiddenblade]

"Sometimes," Ezio replies, and he fixes her with an odd look; there are things he has never put to words before. "I admire what scientists have discovered about medicine or the natural world, and what wondrous inventions have made it possible for people to do incredible things, or speak across time as we are now. But there is something to be said about how little people have learned since my time, and likely yours as well."

A considering pause. An admission:

"Perhaps it was too optimistic to think people would become less warlike, less prone to corruption."

[nineteenfortyfive]

Always another fucking war. She's starting to collect them like badges at this rate. Claire sighs.

"Unfortunately, no. And we wouldn't be here if people were less prone to corruption in any place or time, I think. But we do have a chance to make a difference."

There's her optimism.

"We already made the choice to try. And there's a handful of us."

[hiddenblade]

“That we do,” he agrees. The selfishness of his own proposed windfall gnaws at him with newly sharpened teeth. There’s so much more in the world it could be used for. “You have a lot of faith in this, then?”

[nineteenfortyfive]

"I think it's more... hope, rather than faith." There's a difference, to her. "I'd like for this all to go well, for obvious reasons. Both for our sakes and the inmates themselves."

[hiddenblade]

"I have never been one for hope," he replies. "Nor faith, if I am being honest. Not when our work so often determines our results."

He takes her right to the infirmary door, just where he had passed it before, and he fishes out his communicator to unlock the door.

[nineteenfortyfive]

"I find hope to be less harmful than faith," Claire says, but the door opens and she's eager to step inside, letting go of Ezio's arm.

"My god. I can already tell this is far more advanced than any hospital I've set foot in."

She's going to live here, goodbye.

[hiddenblade]

He smiles as she steps ahead, following her at a lazy place. He takes in the room with a limited idea of what he is looking at; it is impressive, of course, but if someone told him the machinery was for chopping logs or roasting hens or just for sleeping in, he might have believed them.

"Is there means of measuring such a thing?" he wonders. And then wryly: "I cannot imagine how leeches would play a part in this."

[nineteenfortyfive]

"Just a sense," Claire says dismissively. She's seen the differences between hundreds of years with her own eyes. This just feels incredibly beyond her, though she's eager to become familiar with everything in sight.

However...

"No leeches to be found in space, I imagine. But possibly good to keep on hand if we find any. You never know when advancements will fail." Said as she taps on the outside of a stasis pod. Remarkable.

[hiddenblade]

He's more interested in her, watching the way she pokes and prods at things.

"I have seen..." He doesn't know the name for them. He has to pull up the closest thing, accompanied by a gesture with two fingers, a small space between: "Little loaves, often white. They take the place of herbs. It is impossible to say what any of them do just by looking at them, unlike the different leaves of herbs."

[nineteenfortyfive]

He does draw her attention away from the pods, and she smiles maybe a little too fondly. It's endearing. Jamie would probably say something very similar.

"Pills? Medications," Claire supplies, and wanders over to a supply cabinet that looks like it might house as such. She's glad to see it locked. She trails her hand along the door before putting a few things together, brow creasing. "Where did you see that? You said something about living among advanced people before?"

[hiddenblade]

"Pills, maybe," he replies. He waits a beat before answering the second question, expression just fixed in a smile. "This is the second ship I have served on as a warden. I was not on the first for long, but it was enough to familiarize myself with some things."

[nineteenfortyfive]

Huh. Claire looks surprised, eyebrows lifting.

"Like Loki. Do you know one another, then?" Except Loki had gone from inmate to warden, he'd said. "Or is it just a coincidence?"

[hiddenblade]

“We came from the same ship, though we did not know each other there,” he replies. “This is your first?”

[nineteenfortyfive]

"First and last, I hope." She's a little tired of these constant separations from her husband, willing or not. "I don't think I'm selfless enough to do this twice."