Medieval World was one of the largest year-round renaissance faires in the multiverse.

Minstrels and bards wandered the streets, vendors sold ridiculously overpriced period clothing, jewelry, weapons, and turkey legs as big as a human's head, and the royal court mingled with the commoners. There were events everywhere: falconers, magicians, belly dancing, hypnotists, weapons competitions including swords, axes, maces, and bows, camel rides, Washing Well Wenches, fake jousting on wooden 'horses' suspended on ropes, and real jousting.

As was typical of these sorts of events, anachronicity was everywhere, as were patrons in all sorts of fantasy costumes.

Join in the fun!

[OOC: Add things if you want, and go for it!

Also, if anyone wants to win a flower for their lady from the Wenches, contact Shae for NPCing. >:3]

As night fell in the Rom village, the bustling activity began to die down. Even the energetic Rom needed to rest, and so the village soon became quiet and still as the moon rose.

Luminescent alien fungi began to glow once the sun went down, covering the village in a soft, eerie blue glow. It was easy to see why they had to wait till nightfall, now. In the dense forest, it would have been easy to get lost searching for the Tapestry. But the glowing fungi seemed to form a path leading towards edge of the valley the settlement was situated in, likely the way towards the Tapestry.

Loq'hi stood waiting near the outskirts of the town, waiting for the crew to arrive, along with a pair of his men at his side. Cargn stood nearby, having sent out a quick message to the rest of the landing party that it was time to retrieve the Tapestry.

It was time to claim their prize.

The crew had made it to the village where the Tapestry was supposedly hidden, but for now, they had to wait. According to the Rom, the path to where the Tapestry was hidden would only open once night fell.

That left them with a fairly good chunk of time on their hands, as well as a rather large Rom settlement to explore in the meantime.

It was rather hard to believe the expansive village was completely isolated from the outside world, but somehow it still thrived. Many younger Rom could be seen flying to and from the many small buildings built right into the forest. Despite the fairly advanced look of all the technology spread throughout the village, everything appeared to be rather ancient.

Still, there was quite a bit to do to pass the time. The central marketplace of the village was rather active, and the crew could always use more supplies. There were also a number of places to get food and drinks.

Most of all, it would be a good opportunity to learn more about the Tapestry and the Rom--along with their connection with the crew's destiny--by asking around. After all, if they were going through all this trouble for the damn thing, they might as well find out more about it.

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. New crew-mates might see a tall man in green armor and snake 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.]

Namira had sequestered herself off in a sensorium for this exercise. With her magic acting up at best, and being entirely unreliable at worst, she had decided to handle it the best way she could. Unfortunately, she didn't see how destroying a section of the city in a huge column of flame would help anyone with anything, and people would be terribly cross if she had landed it on someone's property.

Not that there seemed to be a whole lot of claim-staking going on, but you never knew.

Beside her, Hakkar lolled his tongue from his mouth comically, his tail going at a million stubby miles an hour. Whatever his mistress was doing, it made him happy. Especially since she kept absently summoning darkspawn for Hakkar to tear to pieces. Like a good dog!

Namira pushed her hands up her arms, as rolling up the sleeves of the plantsuit was fairly impossible, and straightened her shoulders, thumping her staff in the ground. "Alright, I think we'll start light, Hakkar, until Alistair appears or someone interrupts." Namira nodded to herself and reached inside her bag of components, opening her mind to the weak stirrings of the Fade her.

A large, hurlock alpha roared from the other side of the Ferelden field she'd conjured. "Sic!" Namira commanded and started casting the spell for Stone Fist. Hakkar growled and barked, racing towards the large creature. Three sneaky little genlocks ignored the mabari hound and chased straight for the mage.

It was taking her too long; she'd never finish the spell for the Alpha in time for her to defend against the genlocks.

Somewhere on Stacy, a fleshy wall opened and ejected four people. Sherry turned and kicked the wall as it closed.

“I hope this isn’t another stupid test,” she grumbled and pushed her hair from her eyes.

“I don’t think it is, that... thing did thank us,” Namira patted the little girl’s shoulder. “So, I imagine that our testing is over, for the moment.”

[Not a moment too soon.] Nehaalista signed as she stalked off towards where she hoped the Hub was.

“I’ll take Sherry-chan back to her parents,” Miku offered. “I imagine they’re worried.” Especially if they only just realized their child had been missing for two weeks or so. Namira nodded and Sherry frowned. “With her permission, of course.” She looked back at the little girl, who seemed a bit annoyed that she was being talked over (so to speak, as she was nearly the same height as the petite Japanese girl).

“I can find my way on my own, but fine.” Sherry crossed her arms. “Can we get going? I don’t want GLaDOS to change her mind.”

“Absolutely. I have a mabari to find, myself. Goodbye, you two. I’m sure we’ll see one another soon.” Namira smiled and hurried off to care for Hakkar.

“Alright, Sherry-chan. I think it’s... this way,” Miku put her hand on Sherry’s shoulder and led her down the hallway.

((ooc note: If you want to interact with anyone, just put their name in the subject line. Miku and Sherry are available together (before Sherry is delivered back to her parents) and apart (after Sherry’s been delivered), just let me know. :3))

Namira had never imagined that her head would start to ache from simply reading. She enjoyed reading, as did most Magi of the Circle, but trying to learn concepts that otherwise took years to understand by mashing it all into a few weeks... Oh, what a mess it all was!

Some of the people from the more advanced places (for even on Thedas, Ferelden was a backwater), just didn't realize how lucky they were.

Exhausted, and her head heavy with new knowledge, she and Hakkar sat on the Observation Deck, on one of those meaty couches. Namira's head lolled back against the couch and she sighed heavily.

How could she make herself, and by extension the other Wardens, fit? And properly, too? "It's like learning to read all over again, hmm, Hakkar?" The dog whined, for as smart as it was, it wasn't as if he'd been sitting there researching with her. "Oh, don't make that face, you know what I meant."

A hunger for knowledge generally drove Namira here and there, hunting darkspawn and gathering treasure between gleefully and greedily snatching up books, notes, and hilariously ill-timed love letters whatever else happened to catch her fancy. But with no darkspawn, and indeed, little treasure to be found around the ship, Namira had been passing her time in the Media Library.

Book after book after article she read, and to an extent understood, but for the bulk of the information... just what in the name of Andraste's flaming, flickering knickers were these people (and she assumed they were people) talking about? In most cases they didn't even mention the Fade or anything remotely familiar.

Namira rubbed her temples and sighed, closing the data file she'd only recently figured out how to use and listening to her mabari snore noisily on the ground beside her. It was probably a good idea to get him some exercise before he got hilariously fat, but for the moment, Namira needed to put her concentration elsewhere.

She closed her eyes and drew towards the Fade as best as she was able. It was weaker on the ship, but there (people still dreamt, after all) nevertheless. She felt warmth in her hands bloom and burn outward on a single fingertip and opened her eyes to find herself rewarded with the cantrip's success. A single flame, small and well contained, danced precariously over her index finger. It had been good at home for doing things like lighting the sconces and warming food snuck from a larder.

She switched it back and forth over her fingers lazily, soothing her mind with SCIENCE! the familiarity of the spell.

There wasn't much on the ship that wasn't new and unusual to Yve. It was slightly overwhelming, and more than a little unsettling, to be completely out of one's own element. She'd blessedly managed to find her way to the armory, and found a suit of heavy mail to wear over the pulsing plant suit, but even with the small addition of armor she still felt largely out of sorts.

Anyone seeing her wandering the halls wouldn't notice, of course, she had gotten fairly good at keeping whenever she was unsure or even a little afraid clear from her face, and only the mabari warhound at her side constantly would be able to sniff out his mistress's discontent.

She'd situated herself in her own room in the crew quarters, but it was yet another strange and unusual place, so when she had the opportunity she found her way into the city. Many of the buildings were foreign and of a construct she'd never seen before, though the addition of stone and mortar was a little more comforting to her than the living flesh of the ship. In her exploration, she didn't expect to come across anything familiar.

But how surprised she was to find, in one corner of the city, Castle Cousland. She recognized it immediately, though she hadn't seen it in over a year. After all, she'd grown up in the castle, and as it was the unmistakable laurel wreath heraldry still hung above the front gates. She moved slowly into the remains of the castle, still partially destroyed from Howe's attack, it seemed. The memories were sharp and clear, finding Oren and Oriana's bodies, leaving her mother and father and so many others to certain death...

She entered the main hall, and moved to sit down on the edge of the dais, covering her face with her hands for a moment. Boulder whined softly and circled around her, before resting at her feet, and she absently reached out to stroke a hand over his broad head.

"Looks like it truly is just you and me now, boy."

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. New crew-mates might see a tall man in green armor and snake 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.]

[ooc: Newbie Helpers List | 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... )