Day three of the tournament. With less than half of the entrants remaining, and many of them having grown substantially in power with their conquests, the fighting was building to a fevered pitch destined to end in a crescendo of glory. But this far out, it's still anybody's game...


[Results are due by the end of Thursday. Contact me if you need to know your power gains for the last round.]

Alendian was leaning up against the wall to the entrance of the mess hall. Robe wrapped tightly around her and hood up over her head, she clearly didn't want to invite outside conversation. Of course, she was rarely in a conversing mood but the state she was in now was borderline shut off. It wasn't because she was angry or feeling like cutting people out but because she was thinking. How could something like that have ever happened? What that was...well, it that spoke of Eldar and human relationships of a certain sort.

To help sort out that confusion, she called for the Space Marine to meet her at the mess hall. Her pride had taken a huge beating while doing that. Asking a human for anything was possibly the lowest thing on her list of things she ever wanted to do in life.

As for why she called the Black Templar, it wasn't to blab what she knew, that was for sure. Sharing misery could be fun but she didn't want the fool running off and doing something stupid. Instead, she wanted to figure out what was so fun about spending time with a human. It never occurred to Alendian that Erhart was definitely not the best candidate to test this out on. All humans were the same to her. Even if some were almost twice the size of others.

Damn, she really didn't know why she was doing this but she kept waiting. It was better than embarrassing herself by running away. That was something she'd definitely be called out on.

The man sat at one of the mess hall tables, eating with one hand and tapping on the omnicomm on the table with the other. He wasn't just tall, he was big, broad across the shoulders and built like a tank underneath the plant suit. The pale skin of his neck and face was laced with scarring. He was entirely focused on what he was reading, brow furrowed slightly.

There were only a few people on the ship that might have recognized the Master Chief without his armor.

He had been asleep for a long time, that much was clear.

It was making things difficult.

He'd originally set out to find the Hydroponics area and check it out, but after being stuck in an isolated part of the ship, Roger wasn't particularly interested in Hydroponics any more. At least, not for the moment. He'd go looking for it again eventually... when he had at least one other companion and a little more confidence in not losing communication with the rest of the ship. For now, he was happy enough with what he had.

And what he had was access to the City again, and all the people in it.

Better see if he couldn't find the handful of people he knew on this end of things, and make sure everyone was okay.

||Attention, Attention. All personnel please report to the Observation Deck. Attention, Attention. All personnel please report to the Observation Deck. Attention, Attention, all personnel...||

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: Pelau
Status: Terrestrial, H-class.
Non-sentient life: Moderate flora and fauna.
Semi-Sentient Life: Yes.
Sentient Life: Yes
Water: 75% of the planet's surface.

Climate: Climate varies by region.
Landscape: Landscape at the North Pole varies. Within the biodomes, significant development. Outside the domes remains mostly pristine.
Air: Normoxic concentration: 29% oxygen, 60% nitrogen, 3% xenon, 6% trace gases, such as hydrogen, krypton, and argon.

Air Pressure: 14.352 pounds per square inch.
Sky: Blue/violet with white clouds.
Sun: A class D4K, yellow star.

Warnings: Be careful of frostbite outside the biodomes.

Mission: None. Shore leave is now initiated.

[Here's a handy map of the North Biodome where the crew is being dropped]


( Read more... )

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

Howard Bassen
Allenby Beardsley
Jake Berenson
John Crichton
Kanoe Zouichi
Lash
Jamie McCrimmon
M'gann M'orzz
Erhart Ritter||

On the Obs Deck, the following mission information was displayed, for any who cared to see:

Planet Designation: Nereus IV
Status: Terrestrial, H-class
Non-sentient life: Extensive flora and fauna
Semi-sentient life: Yes
Sentient life: Yes
Water: 79.3% of planet's surface
Climate: Earth-like
Landscape: Variable. Much of the planet's landmasses are partially submerged.
Air: Normoxic concentration: 31% oxygen, 60% nitrogen, 2% xenon, 4% trace gases, such as hydrogen, krypton, and argon.
Air Pressure: 93.8 kPa (kilopascals) = 13.6 psi (pounds per square inch)
Sky: Blue.
Sun: Class G yellow star
Warnings: Occasional hostile or poisonous sea life.
Mission: Assist the crew of the Saratoga in investigating the communications loss with the deep oceanic station, Deepstar 7.

Additional setting information for the station, including a list of available areas, is here.

[open for tagging now]

That Mindy girl's alien burgers had turned out pretty good last night, and Roger will remember them in future, but right now his mind was on something else she told him about. She'd mentioned the Sensoriums could simulate just about any environment he could think of, and since he'd found a map to their location on his omnicomm this morning, he figured he'd put that to the test. He'd seen virtual reality training pods before, although as an MP he never really rated using one, so he wasn't sure what to expect.

... the desert north of the Lost Hills bunker where they'd been taking the younger Initiates for training, apparently. An absolutely perfect replica thereof, even down to the scorpions the size of Corvegas.

Huh.

Well, no sense wasting a perfectly good blighted hellscape. They'd pulled him here to fight a war, hadn't they? Might as well start practicing for it.

He pulls his helmet over his head, flips the neck latches shut, and reaches over his shoulder for the supersledge he carries. He'll break out the laserguns later. Right now, for all that he's taken his situation pretty well so far, he really, really wants to hit something.

Gods could be too arrogant. Such was the case of SHODAN, who had turned the Pods into a nightmarish zone where she could freely amuse herself and torture those that had come here.

But arrogance breeds pride which breeds mistakes. Instead of killing everyone off, she had decided to do this more slowly – watch them suffer in a slow agony, and, therefore had not expected them to fight back.

It had been a lucky shot, really, one in a million, But one of the people present that day had accidentally shot a tiny, insignificant object. A tiny little drone, that, once it had been the source of the power damper, had fallen. The tables were turned, and the goddess had been forced to retreat from the pods.

Now she was on a panicked mode, not only because some of the other people on the ship had managed to work their way into her system files, using another AI to send pointless images and sounds to her, distracting her from her task, but they knew how they could defeat her and gain their powers back.

It didn't take long for the message to be sent out, as the word quickly spread. Find the tiny little creatures, and shoot them down. SHODAN couldn't work their shields properly and once they were found, it was only a short matter of time before the powers returned to an area.

It would take time, but, finally, the tide of the battle was turning on the side of the crewmen and women. In vain, she was throwing her all; even more strange robot creatures, attacking in packs, but with hope on their side, they could win this...

[OOC - OKay go for it! NPC players, feel free to NPC as many robots as you like. Players, once your powers return, feel free to make as much scrap metal as you like, no need to have people NPC for you if you just want to write tags of them kicking ass.]

Erhart kneels before the great statue of the god-emperor of mankind, lost in prayer, and contemplation. His armor is bare, stripped of all the paint and embellishment that is his right to wear as the Emperor's Champion, instead it is mostly gunmetal gray, with a few patches of gold showing through in places. His Crusader and Purity seals are nothing more than tattered scraps of parchment and wax, mostly burned away. His right pauldron is shattered, his left deeply groved, there are multiple puncture and burn marks on his plastron, and he bleeds. Oh yes, inside, there are many bruises, and he can feel at least one broken rib grate as he holds his humble pose before the image of the Master of Mankind, going through a Litany of Remembrance as he does so.

He stops, after finishing his devotions, and anoints himself with an ampule of holy water from a great marble bowl set in the Reclusiam, off to the right of the statue of Him on Earth. He turns, and stands, looking out over the city, watching the flashes of gunfire and the sounds of battle. He can do nothing, for now, too tired. While one of the catchphrases of the Eternal Crusade is no mercy, no respite, he can't bring himself to go out to fight again quite yet. Not like this. He can barely lift his sword. He needs.... rest.
And so he waits. For someone? Perhaps. Or perhaps just for a few moments of rest before returning to the war.

Sneaking through corridors armed to the teeth was something she'd gotten depressingly used to over her time on Stacy, but Trudy didn't think much of the latest threat. For one, the invasion was scattered across all decks of the ship, giving the crew small pockets of robots intent on taking over key areas. It made it easy to fall back to Level 1 and Level 6, respectively, to regroup.

Contagion was a safe zone for now, and Trudy intended for it to stay that way. In fact, she intended to retake this whole deck very shortly, once they had enough manpower to do it. Medical seemed to be handling themselves fairly well on their own, and the only spot that threatened to be overrun was Special Weapons.

"All right people, listen up, here's what we do. Move anything you can to barricade the windows to Contagion - we don't want them to know how many people we've got in here. We'll wait until we have a fairly sizable force and then we'll push out into the corridor and retake Special Weapons. From there, we'll push forward to Level 2 and try to force them out of the pod caverns. Fortify this position as much as you can and keep an eye on the corridor. Friendly target, pull them in. Unfriendly target, eliminate with extreme prejudice."

She didn't want any surprises, but she did want as many people on her side as could be had.

Once Atom had read the initial comm post, he headed over to the closest place where he thought people would be -- the Vatican, once converted into a fortress against outside attack. It had since been mostly restored to its original state, but some fortifications still remained -- hopefully, some food and supplies, too. He'd heard people had used it as a safe area before, so maybe some of them would head there now. As he touched down within its limits, his rocket boosters kicked off. His footsteps seemed to echo through the tall construction as he walked along the paved stone... but for now, he seemed to be alone, in the midst of dead silence.

Or was he?

"Hello?" he called. "Is anyone there? Does anyone need help?"

[Robutts will be forthcoming 83. I'll bring some Terminators, but if anyone else could NPC some other robots, that'd be great!

P.S. I will be waiting for more people to tag in before I add robots.]

Morgan had been in Hydroponics when the message first came over the comm system. He had exactly enough time to frown at his omnicomm before the power limiters engaged and the hyperspace compartments in his cloak failed. Like some outtake from a horrible collision of the Matrix and Harpo Marx, the entire contents of that space fell back into normal reality, leaving Morgan in a thigh-deep mound of guns, swords, and an electric guitar.

"Damn," he said, mildly, as he rolled his neck. He glanced off into the distance, quickly judged the amount of time he had till the robots he saw way out there reached him, then spent a few of those precious seconds tossing out a heads-up over the comms for his location.

That done, he dug out the multi-sheath he had made back when he used to carry weapons openly, slapped half-a-dozen blades through it, threw it on, then scooped up a pair of submachine guns.

"Why can't there be an army of good robots for once?" he muttered, flicking off the safeties.

(ooc: feel free to thread together to help Morgan defend against the evil robots. Also, evil robot NPCs are needed here!)

The next few hours when on without much problems for the ship. Life went on, and in fact, seem to be going for the best. Of course, the saying goes, if it's too good to be true....That's probably because it is.

Late at night IT finally made it's presence known and spoke.

( And speak it did... )

[[OOC - Planning post! :3c.]]

Zouichi assumed that he'd see a few acquaintances while he and Ildraniath set off on their investigation into the City. Maybe even a few people who'd been mentally displaced, like he had, and were now trying to negotiate having two minds currently crammed into a body used to taking orders from only one.

What he was not expecting was to run into Alendian on the way there. He wasn't sure she monitored the comm channels... but perhaps her unique senses would tell her something was a little off today, anyway. He almost called out to say hello, but restrained himself. It was Ildraniath's body, after all, and not his own.

...what was Alendian doing here, anyway? He thought she'd be training in the Sensoriums.

Following you awakening and talking with a few of the members through the communication systems by way of the three kind people who had awakened her, Nezaitben realized how the crew was stuck in a terrible mess.

So many of them felt sad and depressed. Considering the entire ship, it wasn't too hard to see why. The next day, there had been an unusual amount of magical flowers spreading all over the ship. Nothing that damaged the controls (she might be naive in the way humanoids were, but Nezaitben was no fool either) but they were found in the most unexpected of places. Her own awakening area was now blooming in a flower paradise, the wooden palace standing proudly on top, the smell and pink cherry blossom strong enough to carry through most of the central city area where most people resided.

Yet the ship was still sad.

This would not do.

That night, or what passed as a night for in the ship, Nezaitben took to the 'sky', letting pieces of her own essence fall on top of the sleeping populace, or those that were not sleeping finding themselves feeling the need too. Enveloping the ship into a peaceful slumber, she searched their dreams. The powers granted to her by the pantheon of gods in her homeworld allowed Nezaitben to weave a series of dreamcatchers giving her the ability to see those whose hearts connected true.

These noble souls would do. Lead by example had always been her philosophy. She would give them a great gift - communication with each other in a single body, allowing them to share everything together. Their two soulcatchers were woven together that night into a single, grand ones, hanging in the garden's trees.

A few minutes later, the empty husks of the bodies that weren't being used showed up at her palace. With a smile, she welcomed them like her own children and began to dress them for their task.

That morning, some of the crewmen would wake up to a strange surprise...and that would just be the beginning of a long, strange misunderstanding and young gods trying too much to please everyone.

[OOC - Just a few rules. Keep in mind the listed rules. You can all start your own threads of waking up in the bodies of others. If you feel like leaving a 2nd post for other people to intact with them, start a reply to your own first post with OPEN header. That way everyone else will know where to post and if you don't feel like having an open interaction post right away, you won't have to!

There will also be another post for all the soulless characters to go around spreading joy and love, so look forward to that too!]

Alendian knelt in a large, flat, and obstacleless area - one she had created for this sensorium trial. Robed and without armor, she had a long rifle in her hands. Slowly, she plinked away at incoming targets far, far out in the distance. Metal machines with weapons that glowed a bright green. No, there was no danger since she had set them to just march forth. No attacks, no weapons blazing. Just mindless machines. Mindless so she could keep her own mind wandering while knocking off head after head on the metallic skeletal creatures known as Necrons.

For Alaitoc Eldar, what she was doing was wrong. She was using a weapon and skills she had gained on a previous path in life but Alendian wasn't quite known for her rule following. Still, she was forced to wonder how much the situation had changed from home. Was this the right thing? Was making use of what she knew really going to cause problems on a scale larger than she could view? Alendian had it in mind to ask the Farseer but she wasn't from Alaitoc. Just as Alendian couldn't understand why the Biel-tan were so aggressive, the Farseer would probably have trouble understanding why those from Alaitoc were so strict.

It probably wouldn't hurt to ask in the end.

With a barely audible noise, another shot left the rifle and pinged into a head of yet another Necron. Releasing a sigh, she realized it was going to be a long day.

Erhart had been stalking around the Hangar for quite some time. The various ships interested him, as he went from ship to ship, analyzing each with the augmented mind of an Astartes. But then... he saw something strange. A flash of red. Something obscured by other ships, but now found to him. His hearts pound, and he runs toward it, clambering up the side of a larger mass-conveyance ship to find the half hidden thing.

A gunship, in the colors of his artistic brothers. The blood Angels. Heavily armed, and with a certain ferocity to it, like that of a predatory bird. He stares at this wonderful fruit of the Omnimessiah, unsure of what to do with it, who he should call. What he should do. Indeed, if he can do anything with it.

It was like a Thunderhawk, the steed his chapter rode to war in, only smaller, more agile. But so heavily armed it could only be a form of gunship. He crossed to it, touching the heraldry of the Blood Angels blazoned on the side with a reverent hand. "Dorn's blood!"

Allenby hated the Sensoriums, a fact she was willing to make known to all and sundry whenever the topic came up. They gave her the absolute creeps... one of the benefits of being ejected from Starfighter Command was that she didn't have to show up for PT in the hated chambers every morning. If she had to go in there for any reason, she could yell at Stacy for as long as she wanted before getting on with it.

Besides, why did anyone need Sensoriums for training on foot when there were so many great places in the City for it? Hell, there was everything from the Great Wall of China to a whole amusement park! And it was easy to get around the little helmeted robots that ran the place to shut down the rides. The roller coaster, for instance, made a great running track, and was damn fun to ride when she wanted a break.

So for much of the 'day' Allenby could be found either running along the rollercoaster track and doing various martial arts moves in mid-air, actually riding a ride, or sitting on one of the benches glowering (because she always made sure to spend at least half an hour a day thinking hostile thoughts at Stacy).

Harry Potter was, inexplicably, unbelievably (given the circumstances) bored.

Then again, maybe it wasn't so much boredom as the fact that he was used to running and fighting and running and mulling over puzzles and running and fighting and so on and so forth, that being stationary for so long was difficult to get used to. Knowing even more was to come had him keyed up with a sort of nervous energy that was difficult to disperse.

He tried fighting holograms with his magic in the Sensoriums, but that didn't help him in the least bit, because he only got more ramped up instead of letting the coiled up spring in his chest release. (Hands down, the feeling was far worse than previous chest-feelings he'd had in the past). He wandered the hallways aimlessly but that only made him feel more restless. He poked his nose in places he was fairly certain he wasn't supposed to go, like the Bridge and the Special Weapons lab, but that didn't help, either. He stared out the Obs Deck window, he canvassed the Art Hall, and he even took a hike through the city, but the feeling wouldn't go away.

In the end, he wound up in Hydroponics, laying down in the grass, the fake sun on his face. Pulling the legs of his plantsuit apart slightly got his feet free and let him wiggle his toes in the grass.

This is relaxing, isn't it? You can still do relaxing, can't you?

He couldn't, though. He just couldn't. In fact, he was fairly certain that even if Ron and Hermione had been there, and they'd been lounging around by the fire of the Gryffindor Common Room, he still would have had trouble.

Why couldn't he seem to let his guard down for even a moment?

[ooc: You can have your character find Harry in just about any area of the ship! Just specify where your character ran into him. Also, please note, I will be tagging this VERY slowly until probably Friday or Saturday, due to school.]

||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!]