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pluviosa2024-02-14 09:13 pm
pluviosamods) wrote in pluviosa2024-02-14 09:13 pm
Entry tags:
GAME OPENING LOG
GAME OPENING
There's still dripping everywhere, and the gurgle of standing water shifting and draining to somewhere further down...
... But the sound of the rain outside has stopped. And you haven't heard the thunder in a while.
Take a moment. Look out the windows, the glass doors leading out to the balconies - the world beyond is lighting up. Mountains stand out against the distant eastern horizon, breaking up the first of the sunlight into scattered beams. The ship chases that light, running eastward towards the glow of dawn. Its motion is easier to bear now that the storm is over - the wind no longer tries to blow it off course.
You've survived the night - survived the storm. You get the feeling it won't be the last.
The storm abates over the course of the night - by midnight, it's dropped back enough that water and wind are no longer forcing their way through the bubble barriers, and by about an hour before sunrise - just when the sky is starting to get light - the rain has stopped completely. The clouds persist a bit longer, giving characters a spectacular sunrise to look at. When the first rays of the sun are visible over the mountains, any characters still affected by hallucinations feel their minds clear.
Fifteen minutes after dawn - about when it's getting to be a pain to look directly in the direction the ship is travelling because of the sun directly in the eyeballs - characters who are sensitive to electricity may sense the power kick back on. It's just in the wires and cables spread throughout the ship, however - the lights don't turn on, although the elevators do.
Five minutes after that, there's a crackle that is audible to all characters, from speakers spread throughout the hallways and rooms of the ship. Not every speaker is functional - some of them just continue to emit static instead of the message that follows - but enough of them are that every character will be able to hear a single piercing beep, followed by an artificial voice in an androgynous tenor:
"ALL PASSENGERS, PLEASE REPORT TO THE AFT LOUNGE ON DECK R-ZERO FOR A HEADCOUNT."
There's silence for a moment, and then another, quieter alert beep, and the same voice adds, almost as an afterthought,
"Please follow the emergency lighting in the hallways for guidance."
After that announcement, strips of lighting on the ceiling of the hallways - the lights are also on the floor, but even after the rain has washed so much dirt away, you're unlikely to see them anywhere except close enough to the stairs that you don't need them - light up. They begin to move in a pattern of diodes that leads characters to the staircases and elevators near the back of the ship, in the somewhat drier part of it that has more decks above the one where characters woke up.
The stairs are now navigable - even if there's still a decent amount of water flowing down them, not entirely contained by the channels cut into the outside of the turns of the staircase - and the elevators are now powered. Well, sort of. Although the elevators have power, the buttons inside do not - all of them are dark. Instead, the elevators automatically move characters upwards after they enter, depositing them on deck R0 for the indicated headcount.
Other than the increasingly large number of confused "passengers," however, there doesn't seem to be anything here. Some furniture in varying states of decay, sure, and puddles and debris from the storm's flooding, but no indication of humans or any other form of sapient life. The space is wide and open, and decently well-lit even with the overhead lights off, since the majority of the walls to either side appear to be made of glass.
Once everyone has assembled - or at least everyone who is willing to come, as nothing forces characters do follow instructions from a strange voice - there is another crackle of speaker feedback. At least there's no blaring alert tone to start this message.
"THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION."
The voice is the same as before - and anyone from a semi-modern world would be able to tell, from the pattern of speech, that this is a synthesized voice, not a real person, or at least not a real person willing to reveal themselves to be such. It speaks entirely in the language characters discovered knowing when they woke up here. The volume of the voice decreases somewhat after the initial announcement gets everyone's attention, but it is still audible to everyone.
"Please excuse the inadequate accommodations. Your arrival was unexpected. This ship has not entertained new passengers in 317 years, 6 months, and 19 days."
"We will do our best to prepare appropriate accommodations as quickly as possible. However, the immediate priority is to supply passengers with meals and other appropriate provisions. Please accept this with our sincerest apologies."
At the close of those words, the elevator doors to either side of the lounge area open, and self-propelled carts - the kind you might see in industrial kitchens - roll out. Their lower shelves are stacked with bowls, cups, and those plastic utensil holders filled with spoons, while the upper halves are full of food and drink. Specifically, the majority are full of cafeteria pans of oatmeal, the kind with the metal lids that keep the heat in. In addition to the oatmeal, there's a wide variety of raw fruits and vegetables, and some additional options for throwing in your oatmeal such as cinnamon, honey, both brown and white sugar, shaved almonds, and other things that can be made from plants and stored for a long time. There are also two carts at either end full of hot drinks - one of tea, one of coffee - and one each of cold drinks such as fruit juice. There do not appear to be any meat or dairy offerings, although there's both almond and soy milk for your coffee if you can tolerate the substitutes. (It tastes somewhat metallic, like it was dehydrated for a long time, but the coffee and tea themselves taste quite fresh.)
Once the carts have wheeled themselves out, the voice continues from the speakers.
"In order to better serve our passengers, we would like to ask you a few questions. First: What is your locale of origin? Second: Why have you come?"
For OOC questions about this event, please use the OOC Questions header in the comments below. To respond to the Ship's questions, or ask it some of your own, please use the Talk to the Ship header. Otherwise, this post is a mingle, and players are encouraged to post their own top-level comments for their characters and reply to each other.
Following this post, simple food will be available in this area during "active" hours, starting from around dawn to two hours after sunset (the ship's days, at least at present, are about evenly divided). At night, the food carts roll away into one of the restaurants around the edges of this area. Instead, wheeled dumpsters with grabbing attachments collect up the old furniture and cram it into themselves, and starting the second night, 'new' furniture takes its place, mostly dining tables and chairs of various sizes.
Characters now have theoretically full access to the ship; however, the elevators are only mostly functional as debris is cleared from them. The rear elevators go all the way up the residential levels, but only as far down as deck 3. The front elevators only move between decks R0, 0, and 1.
More information on the schedule of shipwide upgrades will be available on the event plotting post in a few days. Until then - at least it's dry weather and smooth sailing for a while?
... But the sound of the rain outside has stopped. And you haven't heard the thunder in a while.
Take a moment. Look out the windows, the glass doors leading out to the balconies - the world beyond is lighting up. Mountains stand out against the distant eastern horizon, breaking up the first of the sunlight into scattered beams. The ship chases that light, running eastward towards the glow of dawn. Its motion is easier to bear now that the storm is over - the wind no longer tries to blow it off course.
You've survived the night - survived the storm. You get the feeling it won't be the last.
The storm abates over the course of the night - by midnight, it's dropped back enough that water and wind are no longer forcing their way through the bubble barriers, and by about an hour before sunrise - just when the sky is starting to get light - the rain has stopped completely. The clouds persist a bit longer, giving characters a spectacular sunrise to look at. When the first rays of the sun are visible over the mountains, any characters still affected by hallucinations feel their minds clear.
Fifteen minutes after dawn - about when it's getting to be a pain to look directly in the direction the ship is travelling because of the sun directly in the eyeballs - characters who are sensitive to electricity may sense the power kick back on. It's just in the wires and cables spread throughout the ship, however - the lights don't turn on, although the elevators do.
Five minutes after that, there's a crackle that is audible to all characters, from speakers spread throughout the hallways and rooms of the ship. Not every speaker is functional - some of them just continue to emit static instead of the message that follows - but enough of them are that every character will be able to hear a single piercing beep, followed by an artificial voice in an androgynous tenor:
"ALL PASSENGERS, PLEASE REPORT TO THE AFT LOUNGE ON DECK R-ZERO FOR A HEADCOUNT."
There's silence for a moment, and then another, quieter alert beep, and the same voice adds, almost as an afterthought,
"Please follow the emergency lighting in the hallways for guidance."
After that announcement, strips of lighting on the ceiling of the hallways - the lights are also on the floor, but even after the rain has washed so much dirt away, you're unlikely to see them anywhere except close enough to the stairs that you don't need them - light up. They begin to move in a pattern of diodes that leads characters to the staircases and elevators near the back of the ship, in the somewhat drier part of it that has more decks above the one where characters woke up.
The stairs are now navigable - even if there's still a decent amount of water flowing down them, not entirely contained by the channels cut into the outside of the turns of the staircase - and the elevators are now powered. Well, sort of. Although the elevators have power, the buttons inside do not - all of them are dark. Instead, the elevators automatically move characters upwards after they enter, depositing them on deck R0 for the indicated headcount.
Other than the increasingly large number of confused "passengers," however, there doesn't seem to be anything here. Some furniture in varying states of decay, sure, and puddles and debris from the storm's flooding, but no indication of humans or any other form of sapient life. The space is wide and open, and decently well-lit even with the overhead lights off, since the majority of the walls to either side appear to be made of glass.
AT THE CAFETERIA
Once everyone has assembled - or at least everyone who is willing to come, as nothing forces characters do follow instructions from a strange voice - there is another crackle of speaker feedback. At least there's no blaring alert tone to start this message.
"THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION."
The voice is the same as before - and anyone from a semi-modern world would be able to tell, from the pattern of speech, that this is a synthesized voice, not a real person, or at least not a real person willing to reveal themselves to be such. It speaks entirely in the language characters discovered knowing when they woke up here. The volume of the voice decreases somewhat after the initial announcement gets everyone's attention, but it is still audible to everyone.
"Please excuse the inadequate accommodations. Your arrival was unexpected. This ship has not entertained new passengers in 317 years, 6 months, and 19 days."
"We will do our best to prepare appropriate accommodations as quickly as possible. However, the immediate priority is to supply passengers with meals and other appropriate provisions. Please accept this with our sincerest apologies."
At the close of those words, the elevator doors to either side of the lounge area open, and self-propelled carts - the kind you might see in industrial kitchens - roll out. Their lower shelves are stacked with bowls, cups, and those plastic utensil holders filled with spoons, while the upper halves are full of food and drink. Specifically, the majority are full of cafeteria pans of oatmeal, the kind with the metal lids that keep the heat in. In addition to the oatmeal, there's a wide variety of raw fruits and vegetables, and some additional options for throwing in your oatmeal such as cinnamon, honey, both brown and white sugar, shaved almonds, and other things that can be made from plants and stored for a long time. There are also two carts at either end full of hot drinks - one of tea, one of coffee - and one each of cold drinks such as fruit juice. There do not appear to be any meat or dairy offerings, although there's both almond and soy milk for your coffee if you can tolerate the substitutes. (It tastes somewhat metallic, like it was dehydrated for a long time, but the coffee and tea themselves taste quite fresh.)
Once the carts have wheeled themselves out, the voice continues from the speakers.
"In order to better serve our passengers, we would like to ask you a few questions. First: What is your locale of origin? Second: Why have you come?"
OOC INFO
For OOC questions about this event, please use the OOC Questions header in the comments below. To respond to the Ship's questions, or ask it some of your own, please use the Talk to the Ship header. Otherwise, this post is a mingle, and players are encouraged to post their own top-level comments for their characters and reply to each other.
Following this post, simple food will be available in this area during "active" hours, starting from around dawn to two hours after sunset (the ship's days, at least at present, are about evenly divided). At night, the food carts roll away into one of the restaurants around the edges of this area. Instead, wheeled dumpsters with grabbing attachments collect up the old furniture and cram it into themselves, and starting the second night, 'new' furniture takes its place, mostly dining tables and chairs of various sizes.
Characters now have theoretically full access to the ship; however, the elevators are only mostly functional as debris is cleared from them. The rear elevators go all the way up the residential levels, but only as far down as deck 3. The front elevators only move between decks R0, 0, and 1.
More information on the schedule of shipwide upgrades will be available on the event plotting post in a few days. Until then - at least it's dry weather and smooth sailing for a while?
no subject
[He laughs, but his heart isn't fully in it.
The fatuus sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. The whole thing was still a headache for him. Caught within something between habit, respect, and a very personal score to settle. It wasn't the same as what had happened in the courtroom-- That wasn't personal, Childe knew. And while he'd been angry, and frustrated, and lashing out, there had been tons of space to do so.
Childe couldn't have and wouldn't have acted out like that in a bank in the middle of the city he just tried to drown. And thanks to his misadventure with his brother, by the time he left Liyue, the opportunity to meet up with Zhongli and fight it out had evaporated.
So here it festered. He'd let go* of it eventually.
*Childe has never let go of anything in his life.]
In retrospect, it was painfully obvious anyways.
[The only other archon he had heard of to act that way was Barbatos. Of course it was the two oldest of the Seven, that walked among their people with fake visions. Lying to everyone they came across, regardless of-- He reels his thoughts back. Neuvillette had a little insider information from the Traveler, at the very least.]
He wants to live how he wants to live now. I can't blame him for that.
[Neuvillette explains the nature of a sort of justice to him, as he saw it, as the people of Fontaine did. The intention of the Court as both a spectacle and institution. Childe listens, hand up to his chin, his fingers grazing idly at growing stubble.
And... It made sense. Everyone wanted closure, catharsis. A sense of yeah, that happened, it was horrible, here's where it ends. The Harbinger understands the idea, very well. A little too well.
The people wanted something to believe in, something to assure them that even if something were to happen, their woes would be taken seriously, that justice would come, and things would be okay.
The Iudex's words also reveal quite a bit about himself. It helps the redhead's mind form a clearer picture of who he was, what he valued. What did making justice a public affair on par with magic shows and theatre mean for the man who oversaw it all? What did it make of him, the one who stood as judge, who doled out punishment, who allowed citizens to battle to the death for a chance to leave the Court a free person?
The answer comes to him the longer Neuvillette speaks: It made him someone who was attuned to the feelings of his court, the people under his care. This wasn't just a job to him, not simply a task, but something he cared about. It meant something to him.]
That... makes a lot of sense. You've really thought about this.
[He did have like. 500 years of pondering it, to be fair. The Harbinger thinks of his own sentencing, one that left more questions than answers for everyone involved. The case was over, and he'd been uninvolved in the issue at hand entirely.]
But... Some people fall through the cracks, don't they? Basing this sort of thing on the emotions of the people and what they believe justice to be is... fragile. Fallible.
no subject
Or correctly enough, at any rate.]
Of course. I'm skeptical that a truly 'perfect' system of justice is even possible.
[He sounds tired, when he says it. Childe is correct in guessing that Neuvillette cares deeply for this matter; the imperfections of the justice system, both those he can fix and those he can't, have kept him up for more than a few nights over the centuries.]
Some aren't satisfied with the sentence the justice system hands out, and take things into their own hands. Some feels that the system won't support them, and so they work outside it. Many victims, of course, never live to see justice handed out at all.
[The young women whose longing for justice persisted even after their deaths were unusual, in that case. And it is precisely because of the failure of the system to protect them that Neuvillette allowed their final justice, allowed Vacher to make the mistake that he did, stepping into the fountain.
He had heard their voices, felt their anger, for a very long time, and he could not say they were not justified. The waters are quiet, now.]
I believe that the system we have, even with its flaws, is better than none at all. Part of my role is to compensate for those flaws where I can, to try and make the system more fair to those who would otherwise fall between those cracks, and to, when possible, change things so that those cracks no longer exist.
[Indeed, no one is more intimately aware of where the system is fallible than Neuvillette, who from his position at the center of the court, sees every place where the gears of justice catch and slip. He is the very face of that system - but a face that is perfectly willing to look the other way, if the situation calls for it.]
no subject
You can't make everyone happy. You can't save everyone. Sometimes the damage is done. I guess all you can do is try, huh?
[Like most things in life. He was unsure what to think of the Iudex, before they'd met. He'd only heard things in passing. Largely praise, of course. He'd kept his opinion curbed until actually meeting the man.
Now that they were actually talking, not within a courtroom, not between the Opera and Meropide... He had a chance to see a different side of him. Less commanding. Thoughtful, even kind.]
I don't have much experience with your legal system, but I'd say it's better than nothing, too. People lie and cheat all the time. You'll never know every detail that happened. If it gives most people something to believe in, and can set the score straight for those who have been harmed, even after death... Maybe that's all it needs to do.
[It was an interesting juxtaposition, but Childe knew everyone had their facets. Neuvillette had shown that aspect of his role earlier, offering him a sort of compensation for the wrongful imprisonment, his role in forcing the Narwhal back into the Primordial Sea before it could hurt the civilians in the opera.
Making the system more fair... Childe's mind thinks back to the Oratrice..... Er. Whatever all those words were. How it had given him a different ruling than even Neuvillette had.]
Fairness, huh. So did you fix whatever was wrong with the. Oratrice...?
[He's sure he's saying it right. Childe is not going to attempt to repeat the whole name. He'd probably get banned from Fontaine, too.
It does make Childe wonder. If he hadn't been imprisoned, he probably never would have found the Primordial Sea. And then never have found the Narwhal that he'd been chasing. Maybe his being there was the intention.
He's not going to wonder why a machine would want that, or how it could have figured that one out. He's willing to chalk it up to pure coincidence. Or fate.]
no subject
[Thoughtful, at least, is a descriptor Neuvillette can feel confident in. He truly has rolled over these thoughts many a time, and even more so now, that the concept of justice without the supporting structures of the court hangs before him.
The question of what it means to judge the gods is one without precedent, after all.
At the mention of the Oratrice, a faintly wry look crosses Neuvillette's face.]
In a manner of speaking. The Oratrice Mecanique d'Analyse Cardinale was powered by the Gnosis of Hydro, which I forfeited to the Knave after the events of the flood. As such, it no longer functions, and the role of passing judgement at court falls entirely upon my shoulders.
[So, while it is not exactly 'fixed,' it is no longer a subject of concern.]
no subject
So the people really were gone. But... they couldn't be, right? Childe has trouble grasping the concept. Surely not, Neuvillette would have been a lot more sombre about this whole thing if they were all dissolved.
Neuvillette had a faint expression on his face, like he'd thought of something funny. There was something the other man knew but wasn't quite revealing, Childe is sure of it. And he's also sure that whether or not Neuvillette revealed it to him depended on how badly Childe wanted to know.]
So the prophecy came true, then. Fontaine flooded.
[Childe had spent the first week back in Snezhnaya asleep and recovering. Very little, if anything, was said to him about the state of Fontaine after his fight with the Narwhal. He'd assumed the Knave and her children more than capable of handling it. And given that she now had the gnosis...]
But you're still Iudex, and there's still court. So. What happened to the citizens, then? Is everyone alright?
[The redhead wonders what exactly happened, after he'd passed out. A glimpse of Skirk, after having desperately tried to enter the Abyss for years just to find her again. Waking up in an unfamiliar place with a nurse trying to take his temperature.
Childe's mind drifts back to the gnosis. It had powered the Oratrice, and had not been inside Furina or with Neuvillette after all.]
So the... gnosis declared me guilty?
[Or had it been Furina? She was a known stage actor.... But the gnoses weren't wholly connected to the archons that held them, right? They were passed from archon to archon.
His mind shifts to that strange guy in the wide brimmed hat that was also on the ship, the warnings about being careful with his family. Childe was not made for this weird political struggle between gods. He just wanted to knock heads together and get the daylights beat out of him for fun, and see how well he fared against each nation's most powerful warriors. Yes he wanted to see the Tsaritsa's plan through, but he had no real love for playing power games between nations.
The gnoses were somehow connected to... Celestia. And tied very deeply into the Tsaritsa's plan to topple it.
Maybe the fatuus' thinking was too grand. He was just another pawn to be used, after all, and everyone who ended up with his piece was more than happy to borrow it from the Tsaritsa for a bit. If he hadn't stayed in Fontaine, he wouldn't have been able to find the Narwhal. It wouldn't have called to him, if he weren't already close to the Primordial Sea at the time. It would have just attacked the city.
So he was being used by the gnosis itself. Maybe. Okay, yeah. He'd believe that.]