RR 1-1: Waking in the Bunker

Mission Report

Tue, Jan 29, 2019 ((Nov 13, 2021))
Team: Delly (Cael), Fonn (Dragon), Ikhilzis (Schizo), Lae'eni (Aslene), Lottie (Basil), Smokes (Aunne), Ulthane (Sielic), Zenovi (Dae)

After dying, the heroes are rebuilt. The process is interrupted. The heroes awaken in medical stasis tubes at an unknown location. They escape from the pods and begin investigating. The location is called "the Bunker" and it's in lockdown. Two humanoids are also in stasis tubes, including a gravely injured man.

Details

• You die.
• For a time, there is nothing. Whatever you thought would happen when you died, it didn't. No audience with a god. No reincarnation. Just nothing.
• Then you think again. You have consciousness. But nothing else.
• For a time, you are nowhere. There is nothing to sense: no light or sound, no gravity, no temperature.
• Then, you are somewhere. You are conscious.
• You feel fragmented, with thoughts and memories and feelings and sensations all jumbled together. You feel unseen forces moving in your mind, making connections, putting the puzzle back together.
• It's a slow process, punctuated by periods of more un-being. Sometimes when you regain consciousness, much has been pieced together during the gap.
• You become aware of others like you: other spirits, broken but being healed.
• You sense the Sources among some minds. Someone is an agent of a god. Someone has another mind within theirs. Someone has a spirit partner. All of you are Unbound.
• You are all put back together around the same time. You can feel awarenes and will surging among you.
• Then comes the Tutorial. It's a torrent of information, so dense and fast you can't process on it as it happens. You get glimpses of missions and battles. Guns. Magic. Undead. Assemblers. The Tardigrade. Sigil Station. Caterina Berrett. The point of view seems to be a woman's. You know her name: Max Witkey. You know her team: Raptor Blue. You are being taught the story of Raptor Blue.
• The Tutorial also includes life on Earth in the 2010's. It makes more sense to some of you that others. As your minds get stronge, these Tutorial lessons about Earth lead to daydreams about mundane living. You see each others' daydreams.
• The Tutorial isn't linear. The Tutorial is somewhat different for each of you.
• The Tutorial doesn't finish. Something frays, then something breaks, and you wake up.

• Delly: Delly jams a battered red leather hat, a cavalier-sort of styled one, onto her head.
• Delly: Snow is small, white-furred creature with red eyes, small wings, a little set of elk-like horns, and a body somewhere between a ferret, a rabbit, and a deer.
• Delly: "...This is the worst designed menu I've ever seen on any elvish ship."
• Fonn Razorenth: "How many elvish ships have you been on?"
• Lae'eni: "... I think it loses some in the translation between languages..."
• Lottie: "Including your ship?"
• Delly: "I'm in the Tanyth Aramont Navy, so quite, though it's by no means a specialty."
• Lottie: "I didn't have to traverse it myself and I was still lost."
• Delly: "The ship wasn't terrible. This is just deliberately obtuse. At least it's not a brig. You hated that salt water."
• Lottie: "I never had to deal with it when I was alive, I certainly didn't want to deal with it when I was dead."
• Ikhilzis Poisonblood: "Well, I guess we'll find out if there's a lack of breathable atmosphere or not."
• Lottie: Lottie will watch Fonn back, but with a sort of "are you okay?" kind of look rather than a suspicious one
• Areas: Lab, Offices, Entry, Commons, Residential
• Fonn Razorenth: Fonn narrows her eyes ever so slightly at Lottie, something's off there, but will break the staring contest to observe other things
• Delly: "Ah, thank you very much, Ms. Lae'eni."
• Lae'eni: "No problem... check on that north guy will you?"
• Man in stasis tube: RJ Foster is a black human commtech (he/him). He's tall and lanky, with the muscle tone of a gymnast. He's wearing a gray turtleneck, an unbuttoned gray-and-purple flannel shirt, dark cargo pants, and black combat boots.
• Delly: "He doesn't look good, yes."
• Fonn Razorenth: "Bodies are awful morbid for the afterlife."
• System is in lockdown: Threat Level 5: Marauder element, with strategic malice
• Lae'eni: Before Lae'eni died she was working with the FBI on a task force working to free people from sex trafficking = as an agent of the Unbroken Tide assigned to earth. Farwatch coopted her into the force sent tot he war.

Core Memories

Delly

The memory is a freeze-frame, a slice of time. The first thing that hits is the cold- the utterly frigid, bitter cold, like knives in the lungs. Wind howls, snow blowing, obscuring the mountains in the distance, jagged like teeth scraping the sky. Delly is facing a monstrous beast, something between a yeti and an elephant, carnivorous from the giant fangs and ripping claws on strong limbs, nearly twenty feet tall on hind legs as it roars and nearly four tons. Something has carved a long bloody slash across its face and down the arm. That something is probably Delly, who stands bloodied and battered in front of the creature. Her exploratory clothing is shredded, and she is still, silent, waiting en guards, rapier held in a steady hand and parrying dagger in the other. The snow falling around her vaporizes when it comes close to her, heat shimmering the air like a corona. Her eyes are a molten gold instead of the normal cerulean, blazing literally and figuratively. The heat that wraps her spreads to her sword -a rapier-like one that has a little long sword in it and oddly, holes in the blade in a line down the fuller- and around her, giving a warped image like the shadow of something around her. Delly stands in front of a small, still, white-furred lump stained pink, interposing herself between the hunter and its prey, blazing challenge the moment before a strike.

Fonn

Cold golden dinner table, two armies of chairs divided down the middle. Rain, tons of it, little rivers down the unstained windows. Tears, rivers down little cheeks. Two cloaks, one black one green, arguing over little cries. A third cloak, green, joins, with sharper arguments. Then sharper blades. Window and rain now red. Green cloaks, red. Turned away from tiny feet that don't trip. Clattering of a chess piece falling to the floor. Grandfather lost, loyalties lost. Loyalties changed.

Ikhilzis

Noir/Sin City stuff. Black and white and greys, blood is the only color in the scene.  Working a case, interviewing a witness/slave covered in blood. Terrified of Ikhilzis. Rough case. Brutality of death showed problems, rage, unlikely that it was an assassination. During talk with work partner, received a call from possible mate. Strange warmth fills me at the thought of talking to her. Everything else is cold, but thought of speaking with her is like sunshine. Move to get privacy, it is a quick call, exchange of pleasantries, confirming dinner reservation nearby. World seems warmer, color flows into it.

Lae'eni

I was young, once...
You would not like me if you had known me then.  You see... when you are long lived you can outgrow yourself... many times over.  I like to think I have evolved each time.. made different mistakes at least, if not fewer of them.  I was taught many many incorrect things in my first stretch of life.  I wake each morning, and look in the mirror, and tell myself it is possible to outgrow your roots - it just takes a thousand choices a day to be mindful, and to double check your instincts.  I mostly believe myself.  Mostly.
But I know, I was born to be a killer.  A conquistador.  I was taught to be selfish, perfectionist, elitist.  To acquire and succeed at any cost.  And to always dominate.  In my native society... to fail is to die.  So we do not fail.  And we look down upon any sign of weakness.  Fortunately for me... we are also taught to be practical.  If it weren’t for that... love would never have changed me.
I never really relished the killing, not like my peers did.  It was always just a means to an end for me, a way to stay alive.  A way to be on top.  But I was quite good at it.  I admit that I have murdered many, many, souls.  I don’t suppose I will sleep well in the after life.
I don’t really remember feeling joy when I was young... except when I was winning.  I think it can be quite difficult for one of my species to feel joy.  There is a rabid sort of attempt at amusement, when we are not deployed... a sort of frenzied attempt to be novel, to indulge in ways perverse and elegant in absolute excess... as if we are all secretly desperate to prove that being on top is all worth the price we pay to be there.  After a while, it feels a bit like eating too much candy.
So I made sure to make myself so indispensable that I was never undeployed.  War was my happy place - as it seemed so much cleaner than limbo. And my ship - flying - was the happiest place of all.  I needn’t look into the faces of all those deaths.  I needn’t see how greatly we overwhelmed civilizations.  How much we cheated.  Instead, it was more like the playing of chess… only, in three dimensions and going at speeds faster than light.  I relished the game, and looked only for worthy opponents.  Fellow fighters that moved with carefully honed instinct.  Others who danced on the wind, finesse, beautiful deadly. 
It was in such a war, that I found my love.  But that’s another story…

Lottie

I was very small, I traveled across the caravan. The adults were carrying tons of crates, furs, boxes, barrels. All I could carry was a bundle of clothes. I carefully avoided barrels and finally made it to my mom, sitting on a wagon. I handed her my bundle. She took a cloak out from the middle and wrapped it around the woman, the woman in prisoners clothes, explaining to her the cloak and clothes should convince her a free woman. She traveled with us for the rest of her time. Sometimes all it takes is a new pair of clothes and a friend to change.

Smokes

You find yourself in a cave - but not a cave of stone, a warren carved from buildings in layers upon layers, below going into darkness - a hundred of your people are there, scales in dozens of shades - it is lit by candles, but it  is bright as day.  The council - six elders! - stand before you, and everyone argues.
"How dare you teach them those.. things!  You go against the ways, the ones we pass from elder to elder, and have for generations - they keep us alive!"
"They keep us safe!"
"You speak of future, you speak of things that 'could' be - but we know - "
"we know."
"We know what comes from this!  Death.  You'd kill the warren!"
"But it can be different - we can be more!"  you say - but you know they're not listening.
They yell, they wave - they carry on.  You hear the old insult Goldenscale.
And you know they won't listen.  You draw yourself up, you hiss - "Tradition is not a straitjacket, it was never meant to be manacles.  We can change.  We can be more!   One day you will understand - or your eggs will."
You leave.  The crowd parts before you.
"Don't come back!  You don't fit here - you aren't like us anymore."
"What have you become?"
"When you see our wisdom - when you learn out there - you will regret your words."

Ulthane

Deep beneath the grounds of Ravnica, caverns hide shadows within shadows.  Dvar carry torches, the light dances with the edge of the shadows.  The sound of pages fluttering, the gentle scratch of writing filled the light.  An orb rested in a pedestal, etched into the wall.  The Old Runes spread across the surface.  The designs sketched early in my notebook, words scribbled into the margins.  A soft drip of water puddling into a pool bounced and echoed, rattled in my head.  The runes reacted to my touch, a pattern slowly formed.  The orb lit up brightly, shadows banished further and further.  The wall opened.  I felt adrenaline surge, my limbs shook.  Realization lent clarity to everything around me.  The world came into focus, laid bare in front of me.  My people celebrated.  I heard the Old Runes speak out in celebration.

Zenovi

They know their grove like they know the weight of their bowstring as they take aim—like they know the weight of a pen in their hands as they sit hunched over a book. And, they knew at once the weight of trees were wrong, all wrong, the natural scales teetering with the forces of a pebble tossed in a pond, slight but with ripples shooting out into oblivion. In a panic, for whom is a dryad who cannot even keep safe their own trees, they examined the roots with the tenderness of a parent examining their child's wounds, gentle, nimble fingers tracing over bark, and found a small smattering of violet, vivid and striking as a predator, buried beneath.