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.

Navigation |
FAQ |
The Peregrine |
Calendar |
Questions & Answers |
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

William | Warden

[omniavincit]

Hello, my name is WILLIAM. I like INTERACTIVE FICTION and BALLET RECITALS.

1. name and shame

The man looks—not entirely out of place, but as though he ought to be outfitted with a clipboard, performing some kind of inspection. Instead, a pair of Navarch-issued handcuffs weigh down one pocket of his suit jacket (he does not wear a tie). He lingers in and around the loading bay, betraying no impatience but quick to turn at any sound. Eventually he'll tear himself away and head to the observatory, stopping to scope out the solitary confinement cells along the way.

His name tag is stuck to the thinning blond hair at the back of his head. Almost as if someone expected him to be wearing a hat.

a. Try to pull it off. Do it.

b. Once he's wise to the general shape of what's going on—once he's glimpsed a few name tags in passing—William's demeanor shifts from wary consideration something more on edge. He beckons the first person who doesn't look overtly suspicious over. Turns around. “What's the number?” he asks, quiet. Intent.

There is none, of course. He's a warden.

But you don't have to tell him that.

2. share(?) and care(?)

He nearly turns and leaves the mess hall: he despised this kind of thing on the other ship. Cookies and other sweet inducements, extravagant virtual parties. Anything to forget half the population was dead and the other half could fuck off whenever they liked.

But stay he does—now missing a patch of hair at the back of his head.

a. He selects a fruit from the dwindling supply, hefts it absently as he trails a cleaning bot around the mess hall. Sets the fruit directly in front of it to see how it reacts. More experimentation of this sort ensues.

b. Even—especially—if you have the look of a warden, he catches your eye and squints as though trying to dredge up a name. Instead it's a number he ventures: “One? No, six.” Or: “A lot, wasn't it?”

3. wildcard!

[ I'm planning to hit up individual inmates for interrogation threads, but if you're raring to go feel free to throw a starter here! Or whatever else your heart desires. ]

2b

[nineteenfortyfive]

Eye, caught. Claire hangs there a moment, then figures he's stuck.

"Claire," she offers. "Hello."

She'd shake his hand if she wasn't holding a fruit or vegetable in each of her own. She has no idea which is which. So, instead, she shrugs.

"Fascinating, aren't they?"

[omniavincit]

His eyebrows raise, his expression otherwise blank, faltering. The fruit sits forgotten in his hand. They're in space. Some of them are dead. Earlier in the week they were forced to wear their secrets on a name tag that couldn't be peeled off.

She's talking like they're in the aisle of a grocery store. “These?” he asks, glancing down at the produce without seeming to register it. “Are they?”

[nineteenfortyfive]

Claire Fraser is a master of compartmentalizing.

She looks down at what she has.

"I don't know about you, but I've never seen anything like this. Though I suppose that can be said for the rest of it, too," she says, lifting her eyes to look at the very greenhouse they're in. "It's all new to me."

[omniavincit]

Obediently he follows suit, glancing to the ceiling. Taking in the glass wrapped around the trees, the clear substance the roots almost seem to be suspended in. It reminds him a little of specimen jars: he tucks that thought away.

“And the inmates?” He turns the fruit over in his hands, but his gaze finds her before he asks: “Are they fascinating?”

[nineteenfortyfive]

She looks back to him with a lift of her brows.

"Of course. But they're not alien produce," she says, hefting what's in her hands. "Nor zoo animals. I find them just as fascinating as my fellow wardens."

Claire likes people. Even the weird ones.

"Strange question."

[omniavincit]

She's worse than the fucking owl.

He tells himself he can't stand it—the bland pleasantries, this cheery conversational wallpaper with faint lecturing undertones—but he can, of course. He has to. She's a warden—therefore dangerous, whether she knows it or not.

“Forgive me,” he says, lowering his eyes. “It's just overwhelming. I'm William.” His voice is convincingly warm, though his gaze remains a touch remote. “What brings you here, Claire?”

[nineteenfortyfive]

"To the greenhouse, or the ship at large? I don't know whether the latter is inappropriate to ask."

Hello, how are you, why are you apart from your loved ones? Hey, were you about to die or something before you found yourself in outer space?

"If you meant here... just curiosity. I didn't know what to expect of a greenhouse on a spaceship."

[omniavincit]

He stares at her a moment too long before offering a watered-down smile. Fucking wardens. Talking about appropriateness after locking people in cubes and interrogating them.

"And the fruit, of course," he suggests. "Well, Claire, it's been informative. Here." With very little in the way of warning, he attempts to dump his fruit into her arms.

[nineteenfortyfive]

Well, that just leads to her dropping the cocaine fruit with a sad little splat. Hopefully no one thinks to lick it up.

Rude. She probably means to mutter the next part, but it comes out at normal volume.

"I do love learning who doesn't enjoy conversation," she says, that polite Englishness dropping in favor of annoyance. "Very informative indeed."

[omniavincit]

A flicker of carefully calibrated dismay passes over his features as the fruit spatters. "Don't worry," he assures her, touching a hand to her arm—light, not lingering. "I'll have someone take care of it."

[nineteenfortyfive]

As tactile a person as Claire can be, she really doesn't like that touch, but it's so fleeting all she does is frown with a pointed glance downwards.

"Spoken like a true man in charge."

Not a compliment.

2a

[shiftedshape]

Really, Loki's first question upon seeing William should be similar to the ones he's posed all the others he recognizes from the Barge, and he'll get there eventually. But frankly, when he first spots the man across the mess hall where he is clearly stalking a cleaning droid like he intends to make it his meal, he gets distracted.

He doesn't approach, at first, opting to watch from a distance, eyebrow raised. It's only after he sees William place a piece of fruit on the ground that Loki finally has to say something, has to know.

He makes his way over, moving smoothly and silently enough to not interrupt-- whatever this is, but clearly in William's line of sight. He pauses beside the man, glancing between him and the robot a few times before, finally:

"Is it going to do a trick?"

[omniavincit]

William squats next to the bot, guiding a piece of fruit slowly toward it—stopping the moment he spots a twitch of its sensors, a gleam of light. He looks up at Loki's approach, disappointment—not at who it is but who it isn't—smoothed over in a heartbeat.

His eyebrows arch. “Are you?” he asks, blurring the line between patience and insolence.

He rocks back on his heels, scratches at the back of his head. This time he lets the bot reach the fruit and snap it up, watches it swish a trickle of juice from the floor. “Maybe they keep the seeds. That'd be clever.”

[shiftedshape]

Loki rolls his eyes. But does, with a flourish of his fingers, snatch a small white flower out of the air, only to drop it in a shimmer of green-gold light.

That silliness aside, he watches William's new friend work and hums in agreement. "Misty would approve."

Somehow, despite all the time he'd spent with her, Loki hasn't really gotten to know William, her inmate. Perhaps that was how she wanted it. She did have her secrets.

He tries to keep the unease from his voice when he asks, "She isn't here, is she?"