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.]

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 )

Erhart was quite intrigued by the Sensorium demonstration, so he immediately starts utilizing it for his own needs, creating a huge scene from one of the many battles that grace his roll of honor. In this case, the battle of Carrion Gulf, third year of the Torment crusade.

It was a manufactory world. All large buildings with huge smoke-stacks, clattering conveyor belts, and downtrodden citizenry. And then Chaos came, turning the citizens into frothing cultists, and populating the world with the dark reflections of Erhart, the Chaos Space marines.

His fighting company rides the lighting, bombarding the planet in ceramite and steel drop pods which crack open like eggs, disgorging black-armored paladins like himself inside the capital. Bolters roar from friend and foe alike as the defenders of the faith, and the defilers of the faith square off, ripping into one another at range.

"INTO THEM!"

Erhart roars, through augmented external speakers, before thundering down the assault ramp of his drop pod, and decapitating a corrupted Chaos Marine with a two-handed swing from the Black Sword, the crackling of the power blade drowning out even his battlecry for a moment as it bites through armor, flesh, and bone.

And so it begins....

Now that everything was over, and people regained their memories and appropriate ages, Ronnae found herself staring at the sketchpad her younger self was carrying around. She was somehow scared of opening it. Fearful that the memories would be too painful. She had, after all, done her best to not think about things while on the ship. She knew it would only bring her heartache knowing that they might or might not be in the pods and even then, would they be the same? 

She sighed as she settled under the large tree that made up Nokosi's house, slumping down till she sat on the grassy floor, relaxing against the smooth bark of the tree. Placing the sketchpad on her lap, she looked at it with hesitation, maybe she'll take a peak.

((PLOT POST! READ IT!))

Stacy's voice rang out through the corridors of the ship, announcing that a message had been received and would be played on the Obs Deck momentarily.

The message was patched through a few minutes later, shown on a holographic screen. It was shot in very poor video, from a very old communicator frequency.

( A plea for help. )

After typing up her message, Sasami sat back at her little counter and waited to see who would come up to see her and have a meal or two.

Between finding out that most of the stuff in her restaurant wasn't useful, the attack by KAIN and the subsequent reveal of her true self and the slight relaxation moment after getting everything on XaXing, Sasami hadn't had the time to open up her shop. Now, after all that time, Sasami finally had a moment to finish up and open up the newly-christened First Tree Cafe. If anything, she wanted a place to show off her cooking skills and give some of the crew some good meals here and there. Hopefully, those who aided her recently would come back to keep helping her.

As of now, all Sasami could do is sit and wait...

If there was one thing that Saber needed to do no matter what her circumstances were, it was to keep busy. But if there was one thing about her that remained a constant, it was her caution and reserve. Perhaps she should have volunteered for one of these missions on the various worlds, but the Servant remained suspicious of the whole matter... not to mention that she needed to find a long-term solution to her prana problem before she threw herself into anything like a serious battle. Her transient body hadn't dissipated, which meant she was anchored to the material plane somehow; it might have been that Stacy herself was Saber's temporary 'Master', as bizarre as the concept was. But she had no way of knowing what might happen if she pushed herself beyond her reserves.

She had kept her activities to a minimum as a precaution -- spending much of her time sleeping to conserve her pool of mana and searching out better meals than the unidentifiable (and inadequate, by the King of Knights's standards) mass Stacy provided for nourishment. However, she could not afford to let her skills deteriorate. She needed to practise. Fortunately, the Sensoriums were up to the task.

The plant-suit she had accepted as this reality's 'civilian attire' was replaced by the raiment of a Heroic Spirit: gold-trimmed blue dress and blue-etched silver cuirass, gauntlets, tassets, and sabatons. Yet, to the naked eye, she appeared unarmed; Excalibur remained hidden within Invisible Air: the Bounded Field of the Wind King. With her unseen sword in hand, Saber moved through training patterns with the natural ease of a veteran warrior who had known little but war her entire life... and even after her death. Out of all the mysteries surrounding her, at least she knew this. Perhaps things would become clearer with a little workout.

After having been on the ship for a number of weeks now, Merlin was beginning to get the hang of the place. Or at least, he wasn't finding himself in completely unfamiliar places where it would take him all day to get back to somewhere he recognised quite so often.

At least now he didn't have to worry about needing to get back to his rooms so he could feed Iniss. He hoped that Tom was alright - he still wasn't sure that taking Iniss back was the best thing for Tom, but Merlin had resolved to check up on him. And if Iniss still wasn't letting Tom control his own body...well, Merlin could always cast that spell again.

One thing Merlin definitely hadn't gotten the hang of, however, was the omnicomm. Which meant that he was currently walking along the corridors of Stacy, blissfully unaware of the fact that a very public declaration of both Merlin's actions and his magical ability had recently been broadcast to the entire ship.

When she made her contract with Alaya -- the part of the world that governed humanity -- the girl known to history as the King of Knights had understood that it would involve certain sacrifices. She had been pleasantly surprised to learn that in eras well into the future of her own, good food would not be among them. In fact, the cooks -- she was hard-pressed to call them that -- of her own time were so terrible that she had wondered if food was merely a form of punishment. It was only after she had been summoned as the Servant Saber in the Fourth War for the Holy Grail that she had been awakened to a new reality: eating could be a pleasurable experience. That is, if the food was pleasant to the taste.

Whatever this 'food' was that was foisted upon her was decidedly not pleasant by any stretch of the imagination.

It did not seem to be an unreasonable thing: the little blonde was not especially picky about food as long as it tasted good. A simple but tasty (and large) meal was far preferable to a fancy but bland (and small) one. The indecipherable mass she was served was the worst of all worlds: unidentifiable, small... but worst of all, tasteless.

She accepted her 'meal' with her usual impassive expression, seating herself in silence. Yet, she made no move to begin eating, staring at the slop with no change in her stony mask. However, those sensitive to supernatural phenomenon -- or even those who were simply observant -- would most certainly feel the heavy weight of a killing aura surrounding the otherwise proper and elegant young girl as she sat in morose silence.

The Shrine of the Aquila never seemed to get any less creepy, no matter how often she visited for her lessons. For the moment, however, it was the best place for her to continue to repair the defenses that BZ had crashed through when they'd battled.

Miku sat in seiza position, her hands folded in her lap before the altar, facing the pews. Beside her, in a rather mundane looking dressbox, was her kimono. It hadn't left her side since she got it, since she wasn't sure where the safest place to store it would be. The last thing she wanted was a musty furisode.

Her breathing was very slow and regular, almost as if she were sleeping. Maybe she had fallen asleep. After all, she'd been sitting there for well over an hour now.

[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... )