The Vatican had a lot of ground to cover. Normally covered in expansive gardens (just empty plots on the ship) and comprised of a multitude of buildings, holing up there meant holing up in simply a part of the Vatican. The group was therefore in St. Peter's Basilica, which had had most of its entrances sealed off. Now they had to work on small windows and a few other entrances left neglected, but overall, it was a very defensible position. There were no exits other than the ones leading to the sacristy and treasury--which was their main avenue of escape, and heavily guarded. The prisoners were being kept in this area, and guarded by the rear guards, as leaving them in the prison was deemed too dangerous for their safety. As bad as they'd been with the Yeerk conflict, they were crew, and no one wanted them to die.

The courtyard was a chokepoint. Gunners could sit on the roofs of the buildings running alongside the courtyard to strafe St. Peter's square from the sides.

The various chapels and vestibules along the sides made excellent areas for food, medical, and weapons supplies to be gathered, and most were clustered in the middle of the basilica. The Medical area was in the Chapel of the Column, the main weapons and ammo caches, and Food storage areas were in the two Transepts, respectively, to the sides of the Papal altar. Pews all in the main areas had been converted to sleeping areas, right in the center of the whole place.

There was still work to be done, before the other group could leave. Last minute barricades, blocking more windows, moving the last of the medical supplies, inventorying the food, and so on. Then it would be time to hunker down.

So push up your sleeves and lend someone else a hand, folks.

[ooc: Read instructions for these threads here!]

Sharp Tongue is hunched over a patch of paving in the city, painting the ground with a brownish paste using her hand claws. Her eyes are bloodshot and her movements jerky. Symbols, shapes, things that may or may not have meaning. Something that could be a serpent, a man, a raptor, all figures delineated in messy smears. Swirls and slashes and spots and shapes, more indistinct figures.

The shaman works quickly and intensely, occasionally making snuffing noises to herself as she goes. She has to get this down. Now. Before the memory fades.

Next to Sharp Tongue, there is a circle scratched onto the cement, her bag, and several emptied containers not including the one she got what she's painting with from. The remains of some ritual, perhaps?

Arha had been standing in the same spot for a very long time, staring into the the rainsoaked world she had asked he Sensorium to create.  She had done much research before she had begun to pull the world into her mind--many hours in the library looking at all sorts of worlds with rain--and now that the world was actually created, she couldn't make herself go inside.  It wasn't as if Arrakis hadn't had its rainy days while she'd been there; the open puddles on the streets of Arrakeen proved that, but on those days Arha had stayed in her cave and waited it out, burrowed down like Shai-Hulud in the depths of the sand.

And she still wanted to do that, epecially now that she was staring at her fear.

( That did not end well. )

Meet n' Greet, smell my feet, gimme something good to eat! Unfortunately, the newbie meet and greet takes place the same time the command staff is congregating, so they might be a little late to the party.

But the crew is there to welcome the newcomers and explain their situation. At the end of the milling and spilling about, the command staff is going to start a general meeting to apprise everyone of their situation and discuss their next course of action:

Getting off the damn ship.

Sharp Tongue's been avoiding the city since she woke up. It's instinctive for a raptor. The buildings, the streets, it's all very human and therefore not something that makes her feel welcome. To make matters worse, it's larger and far more sophisticated than the settlement she knew from the edge of her tribe's territory.

But still, it does demand her investigation if no one is going to stop her from poking around. She is a shaman and there are strange, unknown things. It's her duty to look.

The raptor stalks along the city's streets, claws clicking on stone and concrete and other forms of alien paving, head weaving back and forth in a wary fashion, and a stream of soft muttering going meant for her ears alone.

"Strange place. Very empty. No prey. No hunters. No plants. No life..."

It's not just broken. The brokenness of this place was obvious from the first step she'd taken into the city. No, this is all dead.

(OOC: Sharp Tongue's wandering all over the city. Feel free to dictate where you come across her if you want.)

Sharp Tongue has everything she owns spread out in a corner of the Obs Deck, where she's hovering over it jealously and arranging it with loving care as she makes sure it's all in order. The entire contents of her shaman's bag, and the bag itself, are here. Strange pastes and dried herbs and oddly shaped bits of stone, bone, and occasionally metal. Tools. All the mixtures and some dry ingredients are contained in various ways. Glass bottles are frequent, most of these in still-usable pieces with the few that are whole and stoppered containing some kind of mysterious liquid. Also common are things that at least appear to be the round bowls formed by the insides of broken skulls. Something whitish and about the consistency of cold butter is held in a sizable sea shell.

The bag itself is designed to hang across Sharp Tongue's back and against her left side, it's made of thick brown triceratops hide. Strange sigils have been apparently branded into it, usually in three claw slash motif. There are smears of paint in similar markings across it, in yellow and white and red. Hanging from the edges of the bag are teeth, feathers, and some claws. The biggest of these are two velociraptor hunting talons near the front.

It's a grisly assortment of things and doesn't smell all that great, but they all clearly seem to have a meaning to Sharp Tongue.

She's muttering to herself indistinctly as she goes over them, occasionally growling or hissing. She appears to have restored her body paint, having drawn long white and red slashed up and down her sides and legs, and a few across the muzzle for good measure. They're not sacred paint and they weren't done by Narrow Face, but they will have to do.

For the newbies, there are people waiting for them in the Obs Deck. A whole gaggle of people. Behind them is the nasty statue, and the beautiful sight through the windows of the stars streaming past and the swirling vortex of collars that was interdimensional travel.

There are more questions than answers, but the crew is willing to help, especially the Command Staff and greeters.

[ooc: Newbie Helpers List | Instructions: Post your character with one post establishing them as being podpopped. 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... )