Once Domalai made sure the crew was fully informed of what was expected of them in the upcoming rituals, he showed them over to where the Rituals of Judgement and Joining would be performed.

As they neared the gate that led into the city of Orongo, they could see many other people milling about, waiting for their turn to undergo the rituals themselves. The crew, of course, being a special case, are moved to the front of the line. Thankfully, everyone seems to be in a good enough mood that no one puts up a fuss about it.

The first area they were brought to had a simple stone circle, around which were three smaller circles. Two Moai priests were waiting there as they approached, and Domalai moved over to join them before speaking up.

[ooc: wait for subthreads to go up]

[ooc2: Ready! Tag away!]

Stacy's voice came over the comm, blaring across the entire ship.

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

The mouth in the main sculpture on Obs Deck opened, revealing a screen with the image of a mottled blue and purple planet, rotating slowly.
( Read more... )

Time for another mission, then.

This was going to be the sweetest party ever. As if it could be anything else, considering who was putting it on.

The Sensoriums were pretty much exactly like that one “bonny lad” –a phrase Dave was seriously thinking about incorporating into his ironic repertoire- had described. A big room that responded to thoughts…it was like he’d been handed a big blank canvas and told to make his life’s masterpiece. Like he was on the mount, about to make his sermon that would bring in his flock and lead them to the path of awesomeness.

Had to do this right.

First, it needed music. The sort that pounded straight into the brain and overrode the senses. This was some zombie shit, a memetic virus that overtook the nervous system and forced the infected into party mode, forced into a perpetual dance party activated by only the sickest beats.

Dave took a moment to wonder if this thing was taking him literally, and then decided that it didn’t really matter.

Now it needed lights, but not just any lights. All the lights. There were going to be strobes and laser light shows, displays and…hell, why not throw in a giant LCD display on one entire wall? Why the hell not?

A giant LCD screen playing Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff-themed stuff. Hell yes.

Again, Dave spared a half-second to think about things. He wondered if this would be the first rave that ever needed seizure paramedics right out of the gate. And then decided in the other half to leave that up to the ship. It probably could summon medics or whatever it did without his help. Really, Dave thought, he ought to just quit worrying about all this stuff. It was like time travel, in that way. Just roll with it.

Still, he might as well make sure that there were provisions. Water and energy drinks, candy and granola bars. Something to keep dancers going until they finally collapsed. Glowsticks for those into that kind of stuff.

All that was left was to change into something more suitable for a rave. The Puppet Tux, he figured, should be a nice ironic counterpart to the causal nature of a rave. Undeniably cool, not too dressy, but just dressy enough to hold a superior air of cool over those who'd come in. This shit was like fine wine, and Dave was the snooty villa owner to guide party-goers through it.

Time to get this party started. Dave snapped his fingers, he music started up. Perfect.

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.]

"HYAAA HA HA HA HA!"

That wasn't St. Nick's jolly laugh waking the ship and ringing through the corridors.

Crashing through the halls, bolting through the City, smashing couches out of the way on the Obs Deck, ran nine minions of the Overlord, roped to a sleigh that appeared to be made entirely out of scrap parts Zetta had found lying around the city. (It was heavily armed, too, because, well, this was Zetta.) Another minion sat at the front of the sleigh, yahing the minions rather pointlessly, since they never slowed down or sped up no matter what the driver did. Behind that minion stood Zetta's minion of choice, proudly holding up -- the Sacred Tome, with a massive Santa hat and an even more massive fake beard attached.

"HYAAA HA HA HA HA! Meeeerry Overlordsmas, ship! Everyone enjoy your holiday gift -- the privilege of basking in my radiated badassery! Meeeeerry Overlordsmas!"

....well.... he HAD threatened to start celebrating Netherworld holidays....

"You look tired," a voice behind her remarked. Lash dismissed him with a wave of a hand as the projection towered next to her.

She had taken to coming to the sensoriums a lot more lately. They offered her a time off from everything; the engineering (which was fun and interesting) and the ranger training (which she might call Morphnominal ...if that didn't sound so cheesy). But something had been bothering Lash a lot more lately, even more so than she liked to admit to herself.

It was already hard to be a growing teenager stuck inside an intergalactic spaceship, yet it certainly had its merits, especially for someone who knew if she had continued to live in her World, would have ended up somewhere imprisoned for her crimes, but...there was worse.

Feelings. Black Hole was very discouraging of them. After all, conquering nations didn't want sympathetic officers, they wanted brutal commanders, something Lash had taken a liking most of her young life. She had been all that Black Hole could have wanted in a child soldier; brilliant, deadly and ruthless even to her own troops. How many weapons of hers had been used to murder countless others? Too much to count. Did she felt guilty about it? Maybe. A bit. Certainly a bit more than before.

And that's what scared her the most. Caring suddenly made you fragile. Her life was suddenly a lot more complicated; even looking at some of the guys on the ship, and that tiny pang of jealousy as soon as she saw them talking to other girls. It made her in turn notice how she suddenly felt, well...alone. Sure she was in a team now, and sure it reminded her of the happier days with Black Hole, but in the end the Rangers couldn't ever replace them and they weren't here with her now. The people she knew, like that tall guy next to her, with his tell-tale mohawke. Just an illusion, like the others around her. Was the real deal in the pods waiting? Each month made Lash less and less hopeful of his return and as her feelings grew and changed, she began to realize how much she missed his company.

"Nah, I'm just thinking of my next move," the wunderkind explained as she clasped her hand under her chin, looking down at the glowing display before her, and an all too familiar scenario. "Fighting against an A.I. is much harder than I thought it would be." All of her data on the other nations she had once carefully stored and kept so she could analyze what had gone wrong that day of the battle, now based mostly on her memories. And yet now she found herself on a very different situation; this time she was letting the A.I. play the role of Black Hole as she played the Allied Nations. As she walked, the scene around her changed. She pushed a few tanks backwards to bait them. Seven days had passed, and the laser fired at her units. Her Laser. The five hundred foot Death Ray she had built for Sturm those years ago. It felt so incredibly ironic.

"Damn it! At this rate I'm gonna lose. OH! I HATE loosing so much!" She pouted, crossed her arms in anger and nearly threw herself down to sit on the ground as the laser hologram harmlessly pass through her. The units behind her were completely obliterated. Well at least she could rest easy knowing how efficient that laser was?

"I'm not worried." Ha! For a few seconds Lash looked up at the man before returning to the puzzle before her. If she hadn't known any different, that could have really been Hawke sitting next to her. Wordlessly, she grinned and shut him off.

"Thanks birdbrain. Wherever you are." Holographic representation of him or not, Lash felt a tiny little better.

[[Open Log! Come bother Lash and talk with her as much as you like.]]

Who knows why the ship was doing this. Maybe it was some kind of social experiment. Maybe Stacy was feeling festive and somewhere, out there, it was Halloween. Maybe the players just wanted to have Halloween fun. No one would ever know, would they.

In any case, what better place for a Halloween dance than a graveyard? In an area in the center, clear of headstones, there was a dance floor, and there were seats and tables with skeletal frames. Somehow grisly carved torches and jack-o-lanterns of varying sizes and shapes, cast enough eerie light to light up the place, despite the fact it was night. There were places to bob for apples, popcorn balls on strings strung up for people to try to eat for games involving that. The food tables will full of Halloweeny snacks and candy.

Far off, there was a haunted house, decrepit and foreboding. It seemed people could look into it if they dared sent down the dark trail to where it was. [ooc: Haunted house post link forthcoming].

Creepy--but danceable music was playing, from nowhere.

Perhaps most notable was the fact that the moment someone entered the Sensorium, they would find themselves in a costume. Sometimes these costumes would be what the character themselves would choose, but sometimes they'd be dressed as something strange, embarrassing, or just something they wouldn't even recognize. Leaving and coming back wouldn't fix the problem, in most cases. The costumes wouldn't change, and if they did, it wasn't guaranteed that they'd change to something better.

Whatever the case, party hard, Meatship. Somebody's got to teach the Vikings, draconians, aliens, and other sundry people to Thriller dance.

 Alex was sitting in one of the abandoned buildings, where part of the wall and roof had caved in. It was a familiar place, though it wasn't one he had spent much time in. The significance was that he and Luna had talked here for quite some time after the whole fiasco with the bombs. They had been so happy that the other one was okay.

Luna had told him about some of her magic- he still didn't really understand it, and now he didn't know if he ever would.


He sat against the crumbling wall on the same slab of rock he had used last time, staring at the rock Luna had been sitting at.

Why did Fate let him meet someone as wonderful as her, just to take her away?

Why couldn't he bring himself to tell the ship to make him forget her?

Instead, he was sitting there without either his jacket or Alice, his arms wrapped around himself, and his fingers digging into his arms as he cried silently. The building was off the beaten path, and he hoped that he might get some solace here. In his room he had to face Tavros, and Katara had already tracked him down once. 

Right now his hands were still, but jagged and slightly bloody scratch marks were evident on his upper arms where he had apparently mindlessly been grabbing and squeezing. It was unclear if he had noticed them or not, though anyone who knew him would know it would be unlikely that he had, knowing of how he normally reacted to blood.

The beer tree. No matter how much she thinks on it, Mei-Xing just can't make that work in her head.

But there it was. Mocking the laws of nature.

With a shrug, she tugs off a brew and pops it open, taking a sit. At least it's not bad beer. She settles down under the tree, leaning against the trunk, and sips again.

It's not where she usually hangs out, or where she'd even prefer to do her business, but there was a powerful, stable gaiasphere here, and if she was going to be putting her magic on things, she'd rather have a stable environment. Until the guy with the monster problem arrived, she'd just be sitting here. Drinking. And using magic to flick pebbles at any animals that got too close for comfort.

Flick. Flick.

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.]

Ever since the last podpop, there seemed to be a new addition to the obs deck. Nearly once a day, a certain brunette could be found huddled on one of the meatcouches and staring sadly in the general direction that all new arrivals came from.

She didn't know why she was still clinging to this.

Ophelia had explored the ship a little, but a combination of overwhelming unfamiliarity and a nagging feeling always drew her back to the same place on the obs deck to wait. She knew Eddie wasn't here, because he would have made his presence known by now if he was. She hadn't seen anyone else she knew yet, either. From what she had gathered, though, she knew there was a good chance all of her loved ones (and Lita) were in those... pod things, like she had been, and the ship seemed to let them out erratically. She also knew that they came from that huge cavern to this huge room.

What she didn't know was how often the ship let them out. She was pretty sure it wasn't every day, or even every week, since it seemed like a big event to the people who were already awake. But maybe there were some stragglers? Maybe today there would be more?

Maybe she was fooling herself because she didn't want to consider the alternative.

((OOC NOTE: Hi there. I meant to post this forever ago, but RL happened. So this can be bendytimed to any time since the last podpop I guess. 8D))

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 green-skinned alien 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... )