Outside the Sensorium, a large floating sign proclaimed in large text:

SENSORIUM IN USE. PRIMARY OCCUPANT: AIBGHALIEN MARSAI. PURPOSE: DEPLOYMENT OF SIMULATED AND GENUINE MAGIC. VISITORS WELCOME. CAUTION! NONSIMULATED MAGIC IN USE!

A helpful magic mouth also repeated these words verbally to those who drew close, a necessary sop to potential issues of translation (or literacy). Despite this ungainly addition tio the illusory sign, Aibghalien was pleased with his idea.

Such thoughts had fallen far to the back of his mind, however, as in the Sensorium he had created a fourfold simulated environment. One quadrant, which the door opened onto, consisted of his tower laboratory from his days as a regent, with tables of magical and alchemical apparatuses set up in various states of use or disarray. The next quarter clockwise was a battlefield, with two armies clashing in a seemingly perpetual state of conflict. Continuing around, in the third quadrant, a group of orogs shuffled aimlessly around a dungeon hallway in exactly the manner one would assume orogs would shuffle about while waiting for adventurers to burst in on them in their otherwise empty and joyless 20x20 dungeon room. Finally, in the fourth quadrant stood Aibghalien, dispassionately deploy a mighty gout of fire from his hands into a swarming mass of Kessek.

“Pause,” he said out loud – not necessary, but Aibghalien found it helpful to set deliberate barriers between his general mental thought processes and the commands he intended to give the sensorium. The image froze in the midst of the fire impacting the Kessek armor. Nodding to himself, Aibghalien stepped forward to examine the intersection of attack and defense, analyzing the impact with the intent of improving it.

Who: Crematia and YOU
Where: Everywhere in the City level, take your pick
Summary: Crematia goes on a stroll. Naked.
Warnings: She is quite possibly the most awful person to grace your presence. Expect her to fling mockery from her behalf, threats, temper tantrums, to even possibly bodily and emotional harm. Watch out.

( Wish you never ever met her at all )

After speaking to one who appeared rather interested in the workings of the gateway devices she had been instrumental in constructing, Celena had seen to making her way via said gateway system to the device located within Engineering, where she had agreed to meet with the individual in question.

Letting the portal remain open for a moment longer she tapped the holographic console beside the open portal, bringing up the maintenance and status displays to ensure that the readings were as they should be. Satisfied she cut the portal with a tap of a claw before sitting back on her haunches, going through the maintenance displays while she waited.

[OOC: First thread for the Tenth Doctor, others welcome afterwards though]

If they were going to rebel (well, no longer a matter of if; a matter of when), Ildraniath knew that they were going to need more firepower than the average crew member tended to carry on their person. She, of course, had no need of further firepower. Her armor and her mind would serve her well enough. For many of the others, of course, they would need something more. Which was why she was paying a visit to the armory. In theory, Stacy might give her away. However, following that interesting performance at the punishment meeting, Ildraniath had reason to believe that Stacy wasn't about to give the crew away.

A gamble, of course, but Ildraniath was willing to risk it. So, the Eldar was perusing the armory. She tapped a button on her omnicomm and called up a blank document. She was going to need a list. And people to cart it all off later, but for now:

"Stacy. A list of all available small-arms and protable heavy weapons. Powered armor. Ammunition counts. And their effectiveness against heavily armored opponents."

|| Acknowledged, Ildraniath. ||

She bent over the control panel as the lists began to scroll past.

If she was going to do this, she was going to do it properly.

[OOC: sorry this is late, guys!]

For the most part, since the Punishment fiasco, the Daligig have been keeping themselves to the restricted areas of the ship, away from the prying eyes of the crew. But while they spend a good deal of time in places the crew literally can't access, they do venture into places the crew just might not expect them to be, as well.

Currently, a group of low-ranking Daligig are taking some readings on the damage SHODAN did to the pod caverns, making lists for their private records of the deceased - and taking samples from the crusted fluids still in the mutilated pods. What they plan to do with these samples is unknown, but they are doing some chatting amongst themselves.

Celena had been moving at a near non-stop pace for the last few weeks, when the shore leave had rocked around she had increased the pace again, dividing some of her time away from the reconstruction to collect a significant amount of supplies from the planet below as well as to monitor the situation with the potential rebellion.

Now however she was focused on the opportunity that she had been waiting for, the initiation of the Gateway network that would aid with transportation throughout the ship. At that current moment she looked over each of the ten gates that would form the initial network, checking over each gateway device in turn. Each device looking near identical to her initial Gateway pair, the smooth grey base plates inlaid with the crystals that would power them. The gate crystals of each spinning idly in a tight vertical circle above an indentation in the base plate below. To the right of each a holographic display panel projected from a raised pillar off to the side of the base showed the status of each of gate in question, and once connected would allow crew members to select the gate to which they wished to travel.

With checks underway she waited for others to show up and to wait for Rhiow, ready to assist with the construction of the Catenary should she be required.

(OOC: Feel free to come and have your character help out, or even watch or chat with Celena)

Who: Billy and whoever wants to find him late at night!
Where: Anywhere, just name a location in your tag.
Summary: Billy thinks he sees a pattern in the recent repoddings. Worried about his future and all the recent revelations, he prepares for the worst.
Warnings: None
( Is this a horror movie now? )

Who: OPEN! Especially people interested in infrastructure.
Where: Assorted locations around the city, and the locations for construction of the new safe zones.
Summary: Celena being a busy dragon and overseeing and coordinating construction efforts.
( Read more... )

(OOC: Feel free to run into her at any of the locations, especially if the character is interested in or already helping with the repairs and/or construction work!)

Finding Aibghalien was never too difficult, if one simply set about the task.

Most of the time, he was doing Department business, either in his office in the Jedi Temple, which he used for research, study, and paperwork; or in the Tower of High Sorcery, where he spent a great deal of time in more practical matters.

For the most part, he had abandoned the use of his private laboratory except for certain private researches and experiments that he spoke to very people about. Instead, he encouraged people to seek him out at his more common and public haunts... and recently he had indeed been encouraging that. He'd made no secret of his intentions to propose a departmental restructuring... nor of his desire to hear feedback and input on the problem.

So if you wanted to speak to the wizard in his role as Loyal Crewmember, that was easy.

On the other hand... if one were to keep their eyes skyward in the City, eventually they would spot a blue-marked dragon swooping overheard, taking his relaxation where he found it. If one was so inclined, catching his attention was easy enough... and perhaps you might even get a word or two out of him that wasn't directly related to magic or the department, if you tried.

The Tapestry had spoken. Not in words, but in ideas and images, ciphers and cryptic nonsense that had been laboriously deciphered, interrogated with spells and technology, pieced together from scrap. They had led here.

( The mission statement was a bit confused and confusing... )

The battle had raged for three days with the occasional lull, and there was still no sign of Baron Raleigh and reinforcements. There had been heavy casualties on both sides; King Demetrius's forces had been cut in half, but that still left Nasat outnumbered two to one.

Things were about to change, though.

[OOC: The Spy's Report is now open!]

The previous night, the team had learned the details of the situation. King Demetrius Fenley had once been a fair but strict ruler. Three years ago, he had acquired a new advisor, a beautiful woman named Diana Wynnthrope, who came from a small nation on the other side of the mountains. The changes were subtle at first, with the king becoming more suspicious of others’ intentions and enacting harsher laws.

Baron Archand had noticed these changes, and had spoken up about the new laws. He had always respected his king. What had happened?

Nasat was located near a mine that produced precious gems and metals for the kingdom. King Demetrius had become convinced somehow that the town was not paying its fair share of taxes, and accused the baron of hoarding said gems and metals to fund an army and take the crown. Archand had done everything in his power to refute the false claims, but to no avail. So, with word that the king was sending an army to seize the rebellious town, he had sent for aid from his friend Baron Raleigh in Pertus. Raleigh had readily agreed, also being uncomfortable with the new laws, and was further seeking the help of the bronze dragons (bronze dragons that looked exactly like Crucible) in the nearby mountains he had his own alliance with. Unfortunately, Raleigh’s troops would not reach Nasat before King Demetrius’s.

It was impossible to find a person in Nasat that wasn't helping to prepare for battle in some way. Even the children were busy, packing food and clothing for evacuation and carrying supplies to and from for the adults.

There was an entire section of the town dedicated to the creation of weapons and armor: women making arrows, blacksmiths forging blades and breastplates, and engineers building siege engines. Oil was being gathered, along with firewood, and a fire brigade was sent out to place buckets of water in strategic locations throughout the town. Mages gathered and shared their spell components with each other.

Nasat was clearly a town where everyone was used to helping their neighbors, and happy to do so.

Baron Archand was not adverse to getting a little dirty and helping out himself, either. While making his rounds, he worked the bellows for the master blacksmith for a few minutes, chatted with a group of older ladies while fletching arrows, and dug one of the holes for a wooden spike with a shovel.

Sentries had reported that King Demetrius's forces would arrive the next day, and there was much more work to be done.

[OOC: Backtagging in the previous post is definitely okay and encouraged! The next post will be going up on November 26th.

Feel free to NPC the townspeople in the first subthread! You can be creative with how your characters help with preparations, too, so have fun with it!

All subthreads are open!]

||Attention, Attention. The following personnel please report to the Observation Deck. Attention, Attention. The following personnel please report to the Observation Deck.

( Personnel )

Between the recent fights, as well as the mixed feelings about Jordan-- she was safe in the pods, at least, and so was the rest of her family, probably-- Rachel really wouldn't mind working some stuff off in the Sensoriums.

Plus, there wasn't much else to do on the ship, and practising different morphs and getting some added thrill from fighting? Wasn't a bad way to spend time. And if she got better about fighting in the process...

There wasn't any finesse to it. She wasn't in her favourite morph, for once, instead opting for a combination of speed, grace and power in the form of the cheetah. The room was filling periodically with an assortment of enemies-- some of the smaller Ohm grunts, Hork-Bajir, even some human (Controllers, something she was used to fighting). She spaced them out enough so she could handle them, but she still tore into each with the same quick viciousness. She lunged with the force of the cat onto a particular human, the instinct taking over to allow the teeth to sink into the throat for a killing bite.

As much as he hated to really admit it, Jake was settling in aboard the ship. There was a strange sense of normalcy that followed him around - he was at war, he was trying to avoid getting people killed, he was thinking about strategies, thinking about the future - and that all seemed perfectly normal to him. He had slipped back into the patterns and the habits he'd formed over the War very easily and that bothered him, in some little corner of his mind. But the rest of him? The rest of him was happy he had something to do that he was good at.

He was wary, paranoid again, watching everyone who said they were a friend with a trained suspicion. And sometimes at night, it made him sick to realize that he accepted that as a normal part of everyday life. It was 'late'. Late being relative when there was no way to really gauge what time it was or how much time had passed, so he went wandering to settle his mind. He found his way to a large hall, filled with strange and surreal sculptures and images. It was like a twisted sort of art gallery.

That was exactly what it was, he realized as he slowly drifted through the various pieces of art, staring at pieces that caught his attention. He finally paused to stare at a strange, shifting piece that stood underneath a sculpture of a head. It didn't really look like anything, though. Just inky blackness that seemed to shimmer strangely in the dim lighting.

He was about to turn away, when it finally coalesced into something he recognized. A scene he remembered very well. Probably too well. The bridge of the Pool Ship on that last, horrible day of the war. He was staring at the viewscreen, free hork-bajir and the other Animorphs standing around him. A defeated and weary-looking Visser Three. And on the view-screen, Tom.

That moment when he had condemned his brother and his cousin to death.

But that had all changed here. They were both alive, his brother was free - but that didn't stop the memories. Or the guilt. Or the second-guessing. What if he'd been a bit faster? Or a bit more careful? Or tried a different way?

The scene changed. Now it was the Animorphs locked in combat with Hork-Bajir. And then a Howler. It changed again - the auxiliaries being shot down one after the other by the Pool Ship's dracon beams. Sharks, swimming in an alien sea. Rachel's funeral. The smoking remains of the Yeerk Pool after they'd blown it to smithereens-

He tore himself away.

He shouldn't dwell. He had the present to think about. He flexed his hands and for a moment, he stared down at them. Was this all he was going to be good at for the rest of his life? Planning for war? Fighting war?

Jake shook himself off and turned to walk deeper into the strange gallery. He didn't want to spend anymore time next to this particular piece of artwork.

 After dropping off some of the crew at Balisair, it was time for the crew to set course for Lirath. The situation greeting them wasn't the most promising.

The cracked surface of the moon called Lirath was one of its most unmistakeable features. One of the three moons of the planet Kehoe, it had been terraformed and served as a settlement for a hundreds of different species, some humanoid, some not. Despite occasional class struggles, environmental issues, and speciesism blocking their way, the darker parts of Lirath's past were largely left behind, and an era of peace and tolerance had reigned for quite some time. The only problems they'd had recently were with a terrorist group whose cause for their actions had been a mystery, but they weren't tied to any particular species or social group and had been likened to a cult and had largely gone quiet in recent years.

Now the peace on the moon of Lirath had been shattered by the invasion of the Ohm.

The capital city had been destroyed. Now, all that was left of the peoples of Lirath was evacuating from one of its smaller cities, one known as Smyteval. A desert city, existing in a valley in between a rocky range of canyons and mountains, even though it was in the low ground, the natural channels of rock served as bottlenecks for any Ohm attacking from the ground.

GIA squadrons patrolled in space, locked in explosive warfare, protecting the Bleed-gate that had been activated to see the evacuated ships to the refugee world, and a shield created by massively-powerful shield generators extended around the city and up into the atmosphere, creating a shielded tunnel so ships could escape.

Word had come that there was a vital weapon to be deployed on Lirath, one that needed to be destroyed, hence why the Transmigration 9 had been called in. Given the diverse crew, and the ships that were in its hangar, there was at least someone or something on board that could blow the weapon up if it did show.

There was no sign of it yet. Right now, there was just chaos, streams of evacuees boarding ships, armies of Ohm engaged with GIA soldiers outside the shields, and forcefields that everyone hoped would hold out just a little bit longer.

The crew would be following Leon's orders but finding themselves fighting side-by-side with GIA platoons, full of various species that were currently all getting their asses kicked severely.

[ooc: STAGE 1 is now open! Please do not tage STAGE 2 until it's announced as open as well.]

[ooc: STAGE 2 is now open!]

 After receiving the warning the Tapestry had provided them, along the order to begin preparations from Councillor Kang, the crew had been getting ready for upcoming combat with the Ohm.

Unfortunately, the rather vague nature of the warning they received meant they had no particular way of knowing exactly when this battle would occur. Understandably, this put some of the crew on edge, but at the very least they had some prior warning that they would be facing the Ohm, rather than being thrown blind into such a dangerous situation. Combat drills, vehicle maintenance and armory inspections seemed to be regular sights for the week or so following Kang's message. Not much time to prepare, but the crew worked with what was given to them.

Eventually, however, the call came.

||Alert, Alert,|| Stacy called out throughout the ship, ||Priority One message from GIA High Command. All crew members please report to the Obs Deck. Repeat, Priority One message from GIA High Command, All crew members please report to the Obs Deck...||

Stacy kept repeating the message over and over until the crew began making their way towards the Obs Deck to receive the message.

[ooc: As implied by the post, we're assuming the crew's ICly had a one-to-two week heads-up about the battle. It was supposed to be played out, but RL timing prevented this from working out. Feel free to come up with the details of your character's preparations on your own

Also, as usual, please wait for subthreads to go up before tagging in.

Edit: It's up! Feel free to start tagging in!]

Taking some time from other projects, Celena had once more brought down her Paired Gate device down to the park in an attempt to work on a number of issues of the operation of the device while in the Bleed. After all if a stable gate could be established, even for short periods of time, it could make for quick travel about the city and about the ship in general.

Thus in her usual draconic form she had set herself before the primary end of the gate device in the middle of a large clearing in the park, with the secondary portion of the device not a hundred feet away. After some time in pondering the problem she had decided to take a break from her work. Locking the device down she stretched herself out and padded away to wander the park for a short while before taking off to stretch her wings. Keeping her general flight path around the vicinity of the park itself.

[OOC: Feel free to run into her at any point, whether while she's working on the device, wandering the park or even flying around overhead!]

The City was the area of the ship that was frequented the most. Not only did some of the crew members made their homes there. But a lot of the more pleasurable areas on the ship could be found there as well. It was mostly empty, a ghostly graveyard for many of the buildings from the many worlds that had gotten saved by you lovable ship, Stacy.

The sheer size of the City itself was impressive and yet it wasn't hard to run into someone exploring it, or bump into one of the occupied buildings... Three of it's denizens now found themselves going about their everyday lives on the ship that had become their current home.




[[OOC: Didn't want to clutter up the comm with three posts, but I really wanted to do all of them! So this is a general post and you can go ahead and tag whichever you want to, wherever you want to! There will be an individual tag for each one of them.]]