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ABOARD THE MOIRA
Whether adjusting to space travel has been difficult or not, there is always something to be done. From working to leisure, the Moira offers a multitude of opportunities to get to know your crewmates a bit better. Exploration of the ship is highly encouraged, but as another planet grows closer to being docked, things start to get a little hectic. You'll notice a slight change in the artificial gravity as the Moira is pulled into a gravitational field; however, more noticeable changes can be found in the overall morale as you prepare to descend.
☄ on your ownThere are plenty of other communal areas on the ship to explore! Pick a place, and see where it takes you. ( These scenarios can be used as in-game canon. ) H A I S T O SUnlike previously visited locations, the sweltering heat of this planet can be felt long before arrival. The surface of Haistos is not a place for those with a weak constitution. It’s in a constant state of low-level volcanic activity as its land masses are dotted with many volcanoes—all of them spewing black ash into the air. Breathing is difficult without the aid of a respirator due to the potential of breathing in ash, and the plant life is stunted, adapted to living in an environment with little sunlight. The weather is unpredictable, and ash-storms will often blow in fiercely, leaving people trapped for a hours at a time before they blow themselves out. But that same ash which chokes everything on this planet is what also provides its livelihood. Haistos’ volcanic resources are a highly sought-after commodity elsewhere in the universe, and as long as gathering the ash is profitable, people will continue to return.
Looking closely, etched into the curling paths of ignimbrite deposits that swirl along the base of the volcanoes is a language that is easily translated by the MID, often resembling Latin. Carved over time by visitors and travelers, it tells a tale of fire and stone and power. Some might even say there are mystic abilities associated with these volcanoes, though the rumors and myths behind it seem to be nothing but a warning to those who think to go looking for it. It’s also hard to tell if the words carry any true meaning since there are no natives to question, and all those who harvest the ash can only tell stories. Still, it’s apparent that people from many different times have all added to the scrolling messages.
A word of caution: you cannot build here. Stone, metal, and wood all burn, all crumble. Only what is true can survive, and fire will show its true quality.
☄ breathing sparksDespite the haphazard lay of the land, there are things to do. Or, at least, things to see. The rocky terrain often leads to some inactive volcanoes that are perfect for exploring and harvesting the ash that continues to rain down across Haistos. There are step-like structures built into the sides of the volcanic craters, narrow but sturdy. With each move down, the air gets even thicker, and your respirator takes longer and longer to filter the unbreathable atmosphere the deeper into the planet you travel. Yet, the risk of asphyxiation is worth what awaits at the bottom of the staircase. Still warm, the volcanic rocks that are sunk into the deposits are both smooth and clear as crystal. Most of these gems retain heat permanently and can be used to warm small spaces. Gathering too many together in a single place, however, creates a reaction with the limited air supply and can spark a faux volcanic eruption—yes, these rocks are capable of producing lava at an impossibly quick rate.
Is it possible to outrun the flow and reach the steps before it begins filling the bottom of the crater? The only thing worse than a sudden swimming pool of lava would be the respirator finally breaking because of the abrupt, extreme heat, wouldn’t it? ☄ under pressureDespite being unable to actually build any structures of substance on Haistos, walking around the planet itself is surprisingly easy. Due to its unusual composition, the ground itself is a noticeable mixture of dark rock and shining surfaces. More than that, each step around the bases of the volcanoes reveals something both amazing and rather fascinating: the ability to create diamonds without much pressure at all. It only takes a single step or even a hand print. Take a break and sit to rest? Diamonds. Wrestling over what pile of ash is yours to claim? Diamonds. Tripping and falling and refusing to get up so that no one sees your embarrassment? Diamonds. Suddenly, moving around on Haistos has taken a whole new turn. Especially when it’s completely possible to keep what you make with your very own body weight. ☄ if you break it, you buy itOut of the eater came something to eat, and out of the strong came something sweet.
At the base of one of the smaller volcanoes, this message is carved into the rock in large, curling script. The volcano is currently inactive and is dotted with openings large enough for visitors to enter through. Stranger than the message is the faint tinkling sound - almost like glass clinking against glass - that grows louder the deeper into the volcano you go. The intricate honeycomb of paths all lead in the same direction—towards the sound and a mellow blue glow.
At the center, the sound is loud and the light illuminates a large space. Thousands of crystalline creatures swirl and bump against one another, the source of both the sound and light. They appear to be a cross between a lightning bug and bee, glowing and noisy and harmless. The beautiful sight may, or may not, be dampened by the fact that the cavern is littered with glass honeycombs that have been built up within the bodies of fallen travelers. It’s clear that the organisms didn’t harm them, perhaps the result of too much ash or broken respirators, and the honey they’ve produced is light blue and clear. It’s sweet if eaten, bright and citrus-y, and carries an earthy undertone, making the skin glow temporarily after ingesting.
If careful, visitors may harvest the honey, but do not disturb the creatures. Their wings are sharp, and when agitated, they swarm out of fear.
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thisavrou_ooc2016-06-07 03:39 pm
no subject
( good luck with that. she's not strong like you but she's designed to withstand three pregnancies in a year, shitlord, she's durable af. )
You did what
Are you high? Did they strap you down long enough to give you hallucinogens? My last litter was cut out like half a day ago, they're going to do some tests to see if I can handle another one tomorrow.
( which everyone knows she can't, at this point, but hey. gotta wring all the use they can out of mama mouse. )
no subject
me, mikal and alva risked our lives to get that kid, the least you could do is remember him.
[ wait.
fucking. wait.
"do some tests to see if i can handle another one tomorrow"
you have to be fucking kidding him. ]
how old are you, miray?
no subject
( you are not making one lick of sense andyr prince what the fuck is going on )
I'm almost five. They just took my
( hold on a sec while she counts )
tenth litter.
1/2 hahahahaflkidhghsagl
son of a fucking bitch, of all the versions of her that could've been snatched out of time or space or whatever the fuck the ingress does, it had to be this one, and it had to be at this time of her life.
the one he'd known practically all her life. the one he'd made up stories for about alaska, and held her hand, and let her sob into his shoulder when she was so afraid to die.
fucking christ.
you'll have to give him a few minutes, because andyr actually goes off to break things. a lot of things. he might be punching the wall of the inside of a volcano someone on haistso. and maybe then crumbling to sit against the rock, with hands over his face, blood on his knuckles and maybe a few choked sobs.
that moment, in the quiet of her room, when her crying had seemed like death wails, had been the epitome of just how fucked all of this was. is. and there'd been nothing to fix it. even for all their arguing and bickering and vitriol, she'd just been a broken victim of this cruel, sick world, the same as him, afraid to die in a whimper, after so short and so cold a life. ]
2/2
pulling himself up, andyr's scrubbing the back of his sleeve over his eyes, and heading out to one of the shuttles to take him back up to the Moira, sending a message to Miray in the mean time. ]
don't leave the medbay
[ not terribly long after, maybe twenty minutes max, because andyr is a pushy shit when he wants something done, he's marching his way into the medbay, still dressed in all his planetside gear, respirator around his neck, and, oops, knuckles still a little bloody. he's wiped some of it off on his pant legs, but it hasn't healed over completely yet.
he heads straight for her, on whatever part of the medbay med she'd ended up at. ]
I need you to just listen to me for a second and trust that I'm telling you the truth, because I've always told you the truth, because why the fuck would I lie to you? [ miray didn't have any kind of sway over his life, really, and he never had any reason to. andyr's a lot of bad things, but a liar isn't one of them. ]
First thing - we're not at any of the Houses. We're not even on Earth. This is a space ship, and I'll show you a window later, but you need to not be moving right now. [ so if she happens to be standing up at the moment, this is Andyr taking her by the shoulders and steering her towards and empty bed. ] Second thing - it's been two years since what you remember, for me, Alva and Val.
[ there's a heavy pause there, andyr's eyes lost somewhere on the sheets of the bed, a bit vacant. ]
Be... careful with Alva.
This'll be bad for him.
no subject
You're lucky I physically can't walk very far or I'd leave just to spite you.
( she wouldn't, really. alva knows she's here, at the very least, and so long as she doesn't move that means he can find her. that doesn't mean she's going to completely listen to him, though, or at least not the spirit of his command — she gets up to walk a little bit, moving tenderly, investigating the medbay. it's not at all like the one in gloriana, and she's still poking around when andyr finally shows up. she's about to say something snarky, when he just comes out with — that.
she listens as he speaks, eyes going progressively wider. he doesn't lie, not to her — there'd be no point, what could he gain from it? — but it still sounds too far-fetched to be true.
far-fetched and miraculous. )
We're not in a House?
( it's her first, stupid thought, but she can't — she can't believe it, she can't just accept it. she was going to die in glory, but now she's in space, and she's moving for the door before andyr's done speaking. he corrals her toward a bed and she groans but goes, staring over his shoulder at the door.
and then the next sentence, and she's just staring up at him again. two years? how the hell could she have missed two years?
What? What happened, what have I missed? Am I — ( dead, she doesn't say, but of course she is. she purses her lips for a moment, easing herself up until the bed and ignoring the twinge of her staples. after a moment, she lets out a breath and looks back at andyr. )
Why will this be hard for Alva?
no subject
because she needs to know this. so that she knows what alva's dealing with. so she can at least try to make it easier. he hears "am i--" and knows what that question is without needing her to finish it. ]
Yes. Alva was the one to do it.
[ he says it simply, and blank, the rest of this all coming in the same empty tone, and andyr's face a stony, unreadable thing, especially given he's going about setting up everything at her bed like nurse. god knows he's watched it happen long enough to memorize it. blanket pulled up, pillows at her back, call button close to her hand, water nearby. ]
The next iteration commit suicide not even a year in. The one after that is the mother of his son.
That's the kid I brought back from Florens.
[ And at that point, he'd run out of things to set up, and just blinks back over to her, features stoic. ]
That's why.
no subject
she hasn't had much opportunity to be in the same physical space as andyr, but she knows this isn't usual for him. he doesn't do nervous energy, moving around a room because he needs to distract himself. that he's doing this now, with his expression and tone so utterly lifeless, means that something's gone horribly awry.
the fact that she's dead isn't a surprise. it would be a stretch for her to reach five, really, seven would just... be too much to hope for. but that alva was the one who had to put her down — that was a thought she hadn't even considered before. her heart aches for him, the alva that would have been and that somehow already is, so gentle and so good, who held her hand and told her what it was like to be a parent. that they would make him kill her —
not much makes her mad anymore. you can't get mad if you expect the worst. for a moment, though, she's so angry she can't even think. )
Did you kill the ones who made him do it?
( she looks up at andyr, gaze fierce. it's not often that she agrees with his approach, but. they made him kill her. someone so kind, forced to kill someone who felt responsible for.
that's all forgotten in the wake of andyr's next news, and before he can stop her miray's pushed herself into a sitting position, staring forward, unseeing. she's not going to go anywhere, the staples in her abdomen are already giving her enough grief just about that sudden motion, but she needed — she needed to move, to do something.
some version of her, somewhere in the future, had a litter — no, not a litter. not a pup, not any of the words the gloriana scientists used to try to distance them from people. she had a child with alva, and it was taken from her just like the others, but andyr got him back.
somewhere in the future, she has a son.
there's nothing she can say to that. she can barely process it — just enough to start crying, quietly, a hand pressed over her mouth, the other twisted with a white knuckle grip in the sheets. )
no subject
[ in comes ground out and vicious, a tone that's much more familiar, coming from Andyr. the kind that says "i'm about to pull someone's lungs out through their stomach". it'd taken him a bit to get to them, but he'd known which ones it was. it helped that he'd lately been so passive at gloriana, they'd gone lax in watching over him.
their mistake. ]
One without eyes, one without a throat, the last with a bonesaw in his skull.
[ he'd been in ISO for a month after, having killed some of the lead science team for Gloriana, which had Hapsburg scrambling to make amends, but it'd been worth it.
he'd found himself doing a lot of favors for miray, through the years after that. usually because it meant benefiting alva, and half the time he'd hated himself for being so pathetic. and the other half could admit it wasn't just for him. as much as he'd acted the same around her sixth and seventh iterations and he always had, after the fifth, he couldn't look at her the same.
and now, here she is, and andyr can't watch her, when he hears her begin to weep. he's cold and he's distant and every inch of him wants to bolt from this room.
and yet, he finds himself offering some mild condolence. ]
She's safe, both of them. With Alva's parents, in Anchorage.
no subject
she sucks in a breath, dropping her hand from her mouth, and lets it out slowly through pursed lips as she assesses herself. her hand shakes, but that's fine, she's not about to start sobbing loudly anymore, so she'll count that as a victory.
a son. she has a son, alva's son, and he's safe in alaska. away from the houses, away from gloriana and the reaching hands of the humans trying to steal his life away from him. she has a son and it's the best thing she's ever heard.
it hardly even matters that technically, he isn't hers. she presses her hand to her stomach, right over where she's stapled up, and smiles, blindingly bright. )
I have a son. ( after a moment she turns to andyr, tugging him closer by his hand. ) Tell me about him. Does he have a name? How old is he? Has Alva met him?
no subject
not yet, at least. not until watching her go from sobbing tears to overjoyed with the thought of her son. there's something in him that's touched by it, pleased to see her so happy - especially this her, who suffered so much.
and another part that can't really stand it. nothing to do with the child - he loves avis, even just as an infant, he adores him, and he thinks the two of them will be wonderful parents and love that boy until the end of their days. and, if he's honest, hardly much to do with miray. just the fact of how events unfolded, and where it leaves him now.
which is something he immediately wants to shove from his mind. and standing here talking to her about her and alva's son isn't going to do that. so his hand slips away, and he turns, moving to go grab a pair of thermals left for her. ]
Alva will probably want to fill you in on that. [ it's his kid, it makes sense. it's spoken shortly, and he's setting the folded up thermals on the table near her bed, shifting the topic. ] It's cold on the ship. You should put those on when you get a chance. Once you get your physical and talk to Alva, they can probably grab you a wheel chair to go by the observation deck.
[ and this here is andyr's "do you need anything else?" face, standing with eyebrows raise expectantly, with that air of something bored or unimpressed he tends to have now and again. ]