The rest of the crew assembled on the Observation Deck to meet the latest editions to their numbers. After the battle with SHODAN the place looks a little worst for wear, but the crew and even Stacy are trying to be in good spirits. After the revelation that their worlds are gone, and the little stunt in trying to kill off the people in the pods, many are even more eager to see people they knew from home.

Several people are set up near the doors to provide the new people with omnicoms and comm rings. They are also told they must read information about their current situation and a survival guide with their new omnicom. New crew-mates might see a tall dragonish guy with wings (but don't call him that), a large afro attached to a smaller girl, and talking ponies among their number. There are also several authoritative-looking figures ready to introduce themselves.

There's a lot to tell the new people. It's going to be a lot to take in. But thankfully this time, there's a system that was set up to aid the new crew members with a few more experienced ones.

[ooc: Only new characters and Command Staff can start new threads for introductions, to limit the number of threads. Everyone else, just tag in and have your guys greet the newbies. Big brother/sister, there will be a thread for you as well!]

Click click click click.

"There." Ash was rather proud of his menial little accomplishment as he stood with one metal hand on his hip and the other clutching a price labler gun, surveying his store.

"That's the whole aisle." His imaginary, sensorium created store, but his store none-the-less.

Last shore-leave he participated in did him a lot of good; he unarguably wore the whole cowboy get-up very well and if he had half a mind about it, he would have just stayed on that dirtball. Living inside Stacy was just... bizarre. He had explored on his on own time, deciding that spending a night in those claustrophobic sleeping pods was nothing like sleeping on a real bed in the crew quarters. He admittedly found a great attraction to the Media Library but could only handle so many hours of mindless TV (which is a lot of hours in Ash's case, mind you) before he felt like his eyeballs were going to fall out of his head. The Art Hall was just downright creepy. The City offered a lot but he felt like he had barely mapped any of it out. It was surprisingly expansive and daunting for being inside a space ship... though he had become rather intimately acquainted the Drunken Dragon through Nima. In fact, somewhere between the mishmash of ancient buildings and temples, alien construction, and random crumbling structures the idea of finding a place to call his own (for more intimate encounters) seemed pretty plausible with how damn huge the City was.

However, with talks of dragons roaming around there lately, Ash, frankly, wanted nothing to do with it and could deal with sleeping on bunk beds if it meant keeping his business out of the City until someone called the super-sized space exterminators. Deadites? Sure, he could take 'em out. Hell, he even battled the undead in a medieval setting where he would have expected to find some scaly winged beast (and just as well would have expected it to also be undead) trying to make a meal out of him. But Here? Now? Space Dragons? The Chosen One didn't want to deal with it. Not. His. Problem.

You know what The Chosen One wanted? He wanted normal. He wanted Earth, he wanted home, he wanted mundane, he wanted S-Mart. Ash could imagine the rows of aisles filled with shelves of food, toys, appliances, racks of clothes, the ever looming banners reminding you where you were, his own blue uniform complete with tie and name tag, the employee lounge (even the broken handle on men's bathroom door), blue light specials and senior citizen discount days now...

The deadite with the lazy eye standing in line for the register holding a pack of diapers...

NO. No. Ash squeezed his eyes shut and willed the persistent image away. He had boxes to put away and long stories to bore his artificial co-workers and customers with and NOTHING was going to ruin that. Nothing. Not even his own stupid mind.

His first tentative tests with the sensoriums when he discovered them were totally mind blowing. Once he got the hang of it, he could have happily stayed here forever. It was the next best thing to normalcy and all he had to do was think about it.

...He just had to try really hard to not think about any deadites coming along to ruin that, as that tended to happen...

HELLO,
MY NAME IS ASH.
HOUSEWARES

Red Rose was a bar in Western Side that only a few brave men and women chose to venture into. Once the private property of one Snidley Pridlash, the bar was still full of sympathizers and men who could easily stick a knife into your back.

Which is why, of course, they'd only send the best for the job. At least they thought.

Allard, Nomalanga's right hand man, didn't really know the people he had picked out for it, but he was a good judge of character just by a person's eyes and attitude, and so, the quiet peace of this small place and all it's terrible men was interrupted by five people dressed in their best cowboy attires, looking about as dangerous as everyone else inside. Granted, their eyes first drew to the only lady of the group, Aya (aka Sharp Shooter), but she was flocked only by Stacy's best; Ash (Aka Iron Hand), Mal (Aka Lonesome Cowboy), Eine (Aka Fire Hands) and Han Solo (aka Han Solo I mean Scoundrel). Did they really need those nicknames? No but you had to admit it sounded cool.

They had been dressed up to fit even more with the decor, sporting pairs of leather pants, spurs (they made the best noise) and a leather belt which held their guns, they looked as local as any of the other wild animals in this place. The musicians stopped for a minute, but once no one else tried to kill them, they continued.

The bar was modern, sleek and very steampunkish. Lovely ladies in tight clothing stood near the entrance, eying the men with approving gazes. There were rows of tables and wooden ones farther down all playing one game;

Poker.

And that's what they'd come in to do. There mission was to find information about Snidley by playing card games and beating the locals. There was word of a five man team that was unbeatable; A humanoid with four hands named Fingers, a Lion named Leo, a Meerkat named Tim, a robot named Bolts and a Warthog named Stinks.

The liquor was hard, and the game would probably last all day. And hell, if they managed to play good, they might actually walk away with this with not only information, but some money to boot.

[OOC- Just so you four know, I don't really know that much about Poker and it's going to be more about the CR and stuff with dramatic hands than real games of blackjack, so no worries if you don't either.]

||Attention all crewmen, shore leave is now in progress, attention crewmen, shore leave is now in progress...||

Stacy's voiced called the entire crew, until all of them were gathered at the Obs Deck. Then, a dossier appeared on the screens, along with the image of a rotating planet.

Planet Designation: Geartopia
Status: Terrestrial, H-class.
Non-sentient life: Extensive flora and fauna.
Semi-Sentient Life: Yes.
Sentient Life: Homo Sapiens, Homo Animalia, Machina Erectus.
Water: 20.6% of the planet's surface.
Climate: Earth-like, Arid desert
Landscape: 70% Desert..
Air: Normoxic concentration.
Air Pressure: 101.3 kPa (kilopascals) = 14.7 psi (pounds per square inch)
Sky: Blue
Sun: A class G2V, yellow star.
Warnings: Wildlife, humanoids and plant-life can be hazardous.
Nomalanga has given us a map with which areas to avoid.
Mission: Shore leave, and preparing for an attack in a few days, planet's time. Nomalanga has promised food, clothing and animals in exchange for your cooperation in aiding her.

( You are then given more information, from what you know... )

[OKAY ALL DONE GO FOR IT. You are also free to create additional places, to post your own private logs involving the town! Contact me if you need extra information about Geartopia either via PM to things_go_boom's account or by AIM, I'll be happy to answer. NPC goons if you want to do a bunch of bar fights, just think typical cowboy stuff. Shore leave will last until the 31st and players can go to and from the ship to the city each day, so you can have your characters stay for a day or two and then come back.

People in the miniplots, the mini plots will start up in a few days! There will also be a general fight for anyone who wants to join in on the 29th. Thank you and enjoy yourselves!]

If Vala's talents lay anywhere in particular, they lay in her seasoned ability to sniff out the seedy underbelly of a place. Before her time on Earth at the SGC medieval taverns just like this one, scattered across the galaxy, had been her life. Shady arms deals done under tables, intel exchanged at a price, secrets slipped over a tankard of ale or an inflated ego, even just plain old gossip could all be found right here, if you knew the right person to ask.

The ne'er do wells, the mercenaries, and more importantly the resistance, congregated at places like this. Stacy was so vastly populated, Vala was absolutely positive that they weren't all willing to fight someone else's war. She'd seen the recruitment drives already broadcast across the communications channel, all the new arrivals that were willing to sign up without so much as needing a shred of evidence before they were metaphorically saluting and pledging their naive and blind allegiance to the cause. If she wasn't so willing to risk her life for a war she knew very little about, then there were bound to be others.

The Drunken Dragon seemed, at first glance, the ideal place to start. Vala wanted to know how to buck the system, how to get hold of contraband, who to give a wide berth to, everything that the hierarchy didn't tell you. That was how you found out how a place really ticked. She might not have anything to barter with, but that could easily be fixed. She didn't have a reputation as one of the best thieves in the galaxy for nothing, and she always had her feminine wiles to fall back on. And even if she did say so herself, her feminine wiles were an incredibly attractive proposition.

Flagon of ale in hand Vala looked around for an empty table, surveying the faces of those already huddled tightly in conversation with a smile warm enough to appear alluring, whilst still not trying to appear overconfident. 'Time to lay on the charm, I guess,' she told herself.

So the name of the game today is – wait for it – Find Your Fire Exits Boys and Girls, and if Aeryn comes at him, John Crichton’s determined to be able to point her toward any ships for a fast getaway. Prove to her that things his way don’t always screw up. That he can do this without her hovering like some gun-toting babysitter.

A cycle ago it wouldn’t have even crossed his mind. These days it’s different.

He knows better.

The hanger he eventually stumbles upon is insanely huge. Like “huge” as in “he has a hard time processing it in one go” huge. It’s so big that he gets slightly dizzy just looking at the sheer size of it and John has to take a moment to really adjust and get down to business, swallowing and moving on. A lot of the ships he sees so far look so big that he imagines they probably can’t pilot it with a two man crew. So. Basically they need something smaller, and when he spots what looks like robot animals, John ducks his head and hurries past, not willing to put up with that growing question of if it’s one of those things he’s also getting flashes of. Like maybe that robot dragon isn’t there in reality. Maybe it’s just him. Maybe he’s cracking up.

It takes awhile and a glimpse of shuttle white that makes his heart flutter in his chest. He jogs without realizing it. John rounds the corner and there it is, the second most beautiful thing he’s seen recently aside from Aeryn Sun. His module. Good Ol’ Reliable.

John walks around Farscape One, ducking his head under one of the folded wings as he checks the ship out. It might not be top of the line out here. Maybe it’s equal to throwing rocks at someone with a pulse rifle. Doesn’t matter. It’s a little piece of Earth and she’s been through everything with him, no matter how much she’s cobbled together now with space duct tape. John runs a hand over that faded American flag, lost in thought.

Instructions: Post your character with one post establishing them as being podpopped. Tag each other in groups of 2's, 3's, and 4's, to get some interaction to start with. If a thread doesn't already have 2 or 3 people tagged in, tag it with your character's podpop popping near the other people, rather than making a new subthread. If you would like to play out them talking to the AI, please send an email to the mods making the request--we do this only by request. Then move onto the big Newbie Meeting. Once your character has gotten the rundown from the old crew, you may start posting entrance posts and freely tagging.]


||Pod Release Protocols Initating|| Stacy's familiar voice sounds out to all the podmates through the ship.

In the Pod Caverns, there are the sounds of: Pop. Pop pop pop. Poppuhpoppoppop. KASCHUNKhiiiiiiiissssss.

There is condensation and mist spraying out from cracks in the pods, as the people inside slide out onto the floors, covered in slime.

--

( There was nothing... )

The rest of the crew assembled on the Observation Deck to meet the latest editions to their numbers. After the revelation that their worlds are gone, many of them are even more eager to see people they knew from home.

Several people are set up near the doors to provide the new people with omnicoms and comm rings. They are also told they must read information about their current situation and a survival guide with their new omnicom. New crew-mates might see a tall dragonish guy with wings (but don't call him that) and purple girl among their number. There are also several authoritative-looking figures ready to introduce themselves.

There's a lot to tell the new people. It's going to be a lot to take in.

[ooc: Only new characters and Command Staff can start new threads for introductions, to limit the number of threads. Everyone else, just tag in and have your guys greet the newbies.]