returnjourneylogs | MINI-EVENT: RENDEZVOUS

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MINI-EVENT: RENDEZVOUS

March 9th, 2022
Tasked with picking up some emergency botanical supplies, the Peregrine stopped in Meodriotope in February and is now making haste towards another ship, for a rendezvous and hand-off of the supplies. In late morning, the view out of the windows on one side of the Peregrine will be blocked almost entirely by another ship — the Feather, also from the Admiralty's fleet. The hand-off will take place here, between two ships.

In the afternoon (local Peregrine time), a mini transport from the other ship docks in the Peregrine's loading bay. Three passengers disembark to assist in the loading, have some brief conversations, and then be on their way.

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

1. Observing the Feather

The Feather is one of the oldest ships in the Admiralty's fleet, a fact that is perhaps less known than intuited, simply by looking at it. While the Peregrine's sleek helices and centre spire move through space like some deep-sea organism, the Feather is a great drifting whale, its broad and boxy body speckled with simple portholes. The sides are painted with murals — abstract swirls of colour, flowers the size of houses, massive birds flitting between them. There's text that must have taken quite the ladder to paint: "Hope is a thing with feathers!" The murals are patchy and worn, but there's a lot of love there.

But despite how massive it is, it floats weightless in space. It comes so close to the Peregrine's side that it almost seems like they could brush, and the ships' respective force-fields thrum as they "merge", blending into one large bubble. In the distance, one can see quite a number of passengers on an outside deck, gathered at the railings to watch. Too far to shout across, but certainly close enough to see tiny limbs waving hello!

In the observatory, the computer monologues:

"The Feather. Currently on the 18th year of its current mission. Current population consists of 295 wardens, 306 inmates, 5 graduates in-transition and 53 supporting staff. Most passengers are from Earth Variants. The Feather is currently headed by Navarch Margaret "Old Lady" Lloyd, a Navarch with 45 years of experience..."

2. Loading the Materials

Want to lend a hand? The more the merrier. The crates of Lover's Kiss must be brought to the loading bay, checked and then loaded into the waiting transport ship. Caution is a must; we can't have the flowers crushed or damaged when they're sorely needed for medicines at their final destination.

Helping, of course, are the representatives from the Feather: two wardens and an inmate. (They'll have their own top levels below!)

3. Rewards

Passengers identified to the Navarch as having assisted in the gathering efforts will have a delivery bot stop by with a clear plastic container fogged over by steam. The container is warm to the touch, and opening it reveals a lusciously greasy cheeseburger with all the fixings, a mound of thick-cut salted french fries, and the fattest, cheesiest, richest-looking slice of pizza known to mankind. The food is cradled by red food-wrapping sheets with a white PIZZA PLANET logo. Enjoy!

(Or kill someone for a french fry after weeks or months of eating processed food substitutes. You do you.)

4. Oops, Caught Red-Handed!

So there was that thing the Navarch said — the flowers are fragile and must be handled with care, as they are only useful intact. And sure enough, on the surface of Meodriotope, dutiful flower-pickers had discovered that if you plucked them too roughly, they'd explode, leaving red stains that take weeks to wear off skin, even with dutiful scrubbing. It's been weeks and they're just starting to fade, fortunately, but there's a second phase.

Passengers stained red might discover they're having trouble sleeping. The redder they are, the longer their minds refuse to rest. In severe cases, this results full-blown insomnia. In mild cases, the body may shut down while the mind remains completely alert. These effects could last anywhere between a few days to a full week.

Good luck!

Threaded | Flat

Q&A go here!

1. observing

Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.

[It has been X many days since Claire's uttered the words. She's maybe come to terms with being in space, visiting alien worlds, and all this advanced technology, but seeing another ship alongside their own is another new tidal wave of awe crashing into her.

Claire listens to the announcement in the observatory and can't stop staring.]

Hundreds of people... I can't imagine.

[Is that what they have to look forward to?]

2. rewards

[Claire has taken her prize to the mess hall.

She holds the burger in her red-stained hands and looks at it the way she'd look at her husband. Lovingly. Adoringly. She hasn't been dreaming of a burger like this for the months she's been on board. It's been years. She chose love over things like this, but goddamn, she's missed it.

Don't mind the near-sexual moan as she goes in on that burger.]

3. red handed

[So, someone's been walking around with hands stained with Lover's Kiss. She thought it was fine. But as time passes and the stain begins to fade, so does the ease of falling asleep. In what should be the middle of the night, Claire can be found in the infirmary, the observatory, the halls, or just about anywhere, wandering like a ghost.]

( Conner's a new face among the inmate population — he slips in with little to no fanfare, a quiet orientation and a subtle approach to feeling the place out. He spends his time doing about what you'd expect from a paranoid ex-soldier conscript — exploring all areas available to him without crossing any boundaries, scoping out the people for a couple hours in the mess hall and taking notes on his observations, and taking up way too much time at the Helpdesk terminal seemingly poring over every menu option and every scrap of information available to him.

It's impossible for him to spend too much time idle, with nothing but his own mind to keep him occupied. That's a bad route, and so his remaining downtime is spent doing manual labor. In this case, volunteering to help load the materials. He shows up just a little later than most people, an unobtrusive and slightly awkward presence, hoping to catch the attention of whoever's organizing the affair so he can ask — )

What's the process?

( In case there's a specific method of organization happening here.

Once he knows what he's doing, he'll offer a nod to whatever inmate is nearby and cohesively help them out by handing them things, moving out of their way, taking loads from them to stack. He's a helpful guy.

Ultimately, it's not him that winds up dropping or damaging a crate — but he is one of the first on the scene for clean-up. He's calm about it, reassuring, thorough. Unfortunately, it means staining his hands a deep red in the process.

And it won't wash off.

He spends minutes — too many — at the sinks in the inmate showers, repeatedly washing his hands.

It still won't wash off. It won't wash off. It won't wash off.

The first session of ten or so minutes doesn't get it done, so he gives up and wanders off again — but he can't take the sight of it for long. It's not but a few hours later that he's back, scrubbing longer this time. Fifteen, twenty, more. Eventually, after a few days it's starting to take an obvious toll on his mental heath. You can catch him scrubbing himself raw or, later, breathing way too quickly obviously on the cusp of an anxiety attack trying to get it off.

His mental faculties begin to deteriorate over days without sleep. He can be found wandering the halls in the middle of the night, pacing, sketching — increasingly poorly, if one were to compare it to his earlier works, sequestering himself into the most private place he can to try and regulate his emotions as that center of his mind begins to suffer from the effects — likely even shedding a couple of shameful man-tears in the process, and eventually he can be found just staring off into nothing, seemingly unresponsive. )

( Feel free to hit me at

paingravy for any questions, plotting, or chatting! )

1A. text | un: MDay

Hey, two questions: does anyone have flashlights, powers that lend themselves to being bright or colorful? And does anyone know morse code?

1B.

[Or catch her asking these questions in person, in ongoing search of new vantage points, volunteers, and lights brighter than her communicator alone provides. There's an excitable urgency in this distraction, pleasure in moving and having an objective without fear of penalty. Pauses are reserved for listening to the observatory and taking photographs of the other ship rather than introductions, but she'll chat with anyone inclined to walk with her.]

Even just more communicators would probably work fine, I don't think we're competing with a lot of light.

I just want to know what they'd have to say, y'know?

[ True to his word, Rhys is (less than enthusiastically) helping carry crates onto the visiting ship, though he'd be here anyways, because while it's not like he's never seen other space crafts before it's been months since he's been up close to one. Catch him in the loading bay wearing one of his "I Shaved My Balls for This?" T-shirts (because he doesn't want to stain the last nice one he's got.) ]

A. [ Rhys is far from the strongest guy in the galaxy, like...really far. And his endurance? Also not so great. At least when he was back on Pandora he got plenty of legwork in, but it's been months and any gains he made in that department are long depleted.

So while these boxes of flowers aren't the heaviest thing on the planet, after a couple loading rounds he'll put down his stack midway to the ship, falling into a crouch as he replenishes his endurance bar. ]

Whew just...uh, just give me a second.

B. [ If Volk were still around, he'd probably have come to Rhys the day the announcement of an incoming ship dropped, eager to start making shiny new escape plans. They could stow away, and hop off easy peasy the next time it landed leaving no one the wiser as to where they'd gone.

Maybe Volk could have hidden in one of these crates, he was a little guy....

He figures he'll honor what could have been by at least snooping around, it would be cool to see what this other ship could offer. Maybe this one had a much missed robotics lab so he at least wouldn't be bored, and then he could ask for a transfer.

He's going back and forth between being lost in these thoughts and simultaneously trying to discreetly (his sneak level is in the negatives) snoop around the Feather's loading area as he carries a crate in, so any attempt to interact with him right now is bound to make him jump, and no one would want that (or would that...) ]

Edited 2022-03-12 06:01 (UTC)

a. WELCOME.

Ellie is new to the ship, and makes a bee line for the infirmary. Underweight, with wounded hands and covered in dried blood-- she doesn't look well. She finds the doors open, and slouches against them, letting gravity slowly pull her to the floor. It's okay. She can wait.

When someone comes by, it doesn't matter if they're an inmate or a warden. Ellie isn't bothering to guess. "Hey," she says, voice hoarse. "I think I need an aspirin."

b. PAINT IT RED.

Ellie is helping load and unload the crates, because the urge to be useful didn't die on Earth. She ferrets them forward with downcast eyes and a dull gaze. According to books she's read, manual labor was a way to punish people in the olden days, so this makes about as much sense as anything. Ellie zones out, letting the repetition of work send her into a quasi-meditative state.

But occasionally the pain gets to her. She's pushing herself a little hard, for someone who's been through what she has-- she's skinny verging on underweight, and the wounds on her hands (one and a half fingers missing on one, a bite mark on the other) are clearly still fresh. She trips, or her hands just can't hold the weight, and a crate of red flowers tumble to the floor, maybe eve all over you.

Ellie is left covered in red marks. Everything is red. Her reaction is brittle and slow, as though she's not sure she is where she... really is. "Fuck," she says, and her voice is close to shock, or something deeper. "Fuck."

c. STILL LIFE.

Ellie is taking a break, because she apparently needs to. Having stolen a pen and some paper from the Storage Complex, she's doodling people's faces, their hands, their eyes and mouths. It's clearly just practice, no complex masterpiece, but she has some talent. Maybe she's drawing you, and you notice, her eyes flitting up and down, focusing and refocusing on your face. Maybe you look over her shoulder, and see the face of someone familiar, or a horse, an owl, or some... monster?

d. WILDCARD.

[im good for it, have fun o/ combining prompts or coming up w something new is always good.]

Observing

[ There's a new inmate checking out that colorful ship docking beside the Peregrine. Look, being here sucks, but also that's the coolest fucking thing he's seen ever. If not, it comes pretty damn close. That's why he's a bit slack-jawed as he appreciates the flower designs more than anything. ]

Aw man, that looks way better than what I got.

[ Referring to a tattoo that's covering a bullet hole on his back shoulder. Of course it's not going to be nearly as good — it's covering a bullet wound. Though, he did appreciate how the artist worked it into a flower. Probably easier than the more obscene (or hilarious, as he would say) design he almost went with.

He listens to the informative spiel about the ship, then his face falls and his shoulders sag. Another ship like this one — there goes that immediate thought he had about trying to stow away.

Because that totally would have gone well.

He spots the people on the bridge as they spot him as well. They wave, and he waves back. ]

Loading

[ Okay, so stowing away was out of the question. But it's fine, he won't give up on scanning for escape opportunities. For now, though, he helps with the crates.

Fortunately, Jerry is weirdly strong. He carried more than this on the way to the gas station in the middle of the snow in one trip! (In major hindsight, he could have probably driven there). Either way, Jerry is working at a decently quick pace.

His stack is also precariously tall... ]

Reward

[ Excuse the fuck out of him, but even if he hasn't been here very long like...at all, the sight of the greasy artery-clogging food is like spotting water in a desert.

Catch him going for the pizza first. Except, he's rolling it up like a cigar before taking a big bite of it. ]

Red-handed

[ Yeah, so Jerry flew too close to the sun with his impressive stacking until like many a great empire it all came crashing down. Now he's red. Really, red. He looks like he just finished stabbing a guy eighty times.

Time passes and the red doesn't wash off no matter how hard he tries. Eventually, he gives it the old "fuck it" and stops trying.

He doesn't make the connection when he begins to have trouble sleeping. Now he's red and tired! So tired, in fact, that one night when he goes to brush his teeth in the bathroom he squirts shampoo on his brush instead of toothpaste. But instead of spitting it out, he pauses, squints...and then he keeps going. Eh. Close enough. ]

Wildcard

[ If you have a specific idea in mind for anything with Jerry feel free to make shit up. hmu at

nicknacked if need be c: ]

1. CLOSED TO LOKI.

Forced labor is... new. Jack's previous stints at being incarcerated were mostly just trying to stay alive and, most recently, being frozen in cryogenic stasis so she didn't explode the entire prison and kill everyone involved.

How lucky that Peregrine managed to lock her powers down, somehow.

She's moving boxes and she's looking annoyed. Which isn't that unusual, but now she's sweating and that makes her more annoyed.

She puts a box down carelessly, just letting it drop to the ground with a thud. "Don't we have robots to do this kind of shit?"

2. OTA.

With the manual labor out of the way (or with Jack skipping out on the task early because fuck that), Jack is simply milling about the observatory, watching Peregrine's sister ship across the way. Its construction looks more familiar, closer to the human- and Turian-run prisons she's been in; Peregrine looks more like an Asari vessel, all clean lines and too pristine. She wonders if everything is the same on Feather, or if the differences continue beyond the surface.

She glances at whoever else is in the observatory and jerks a derisive thumb toward the window. "Piece of shit, right?"

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QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

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