meadowlarklogs | ARRIVAL LOG 006

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ARRIVAL LOG 006

WHO: Everyone
WHERE: New Amsterdam
WHEN: Night of September 3 to night of September 4
WHAT: The sixth arrival
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Coercion and loss of autonomy. Further notes at end of log.

> ARRIVAL LOG #006

Awareness comes to you in blurred snatches, cloudy fragments of sound and light, color, sensation. Hazy and difficult to grasp on to, but slowly aligning into focus. A series of regular, rhythmic beeps. A medicinal, astringent smell. The sensation of movement, a low hum and accompanying vibration under you. Your eyes are heavy, hard to keep open, but in the glimpses between slow, dark blinks you see four people in black body armor seated opposite you, as well as a man in dark gray scrubs.

You realize there are others next to you. All of you in white scrubs, hair recently cut but at various stages of growth, restrained by straps across your chests, arms, feet, holding you to the bench under you. To your left, an armored interior door, two more people visible, the movement of streets passing through a windshield. You try to open your mouth to speak, but it's as if your tongue is coated in tar, and you manage nothing more than an empty parting of lips.

The vehicle stops. The guard opposite you stands and comes to unbuckle you from the bench, helping you to your feet. Your limbs feel wooden and heavy, slow to move. One guard opens the back of the vehicle, and false, colored light, illuminating the streets in the distance will first alert your senses of being somewhere else, combined with warm air that's only cooled with the setting of the sun. The nurse moves to stand at the back, checking each passenger over one by one just before they're helped out of the vehicle, quick and methodical. He doesn't climb out after you, moving to sit as the last passenger is unloaded.

The guards keep their heads down. Their actions are quick, firm, but not entirely unkind. Once all the passengers are out, they climb back into the vehicle and close the doors. The engine powers up again, and then the bus is gone.

You're left alone in an alley, with no idea of where you are or why you've been brought here.

Around the corner of the alley, the streets are lined with bright orange, yellow, and red ball-shaped lights cluttered together overhead. Despite seeming rather tangible in nature, the balls themselves are merely well-designed projections. These lights illuminate the streets filled with people – some of which seem indifferent to the festivities, while others move in dense clusters toward a city square filled with countless trucks and tables. They disperse as they arrive – to trucks, to stations to have faces painted, to admire the wide array of sweet confections available. Numerous bits of signage announce various additional activities – but anyone new won't be able to interact, won't know what information is there.

◉ Though entirely capable of independent action and thought, new characters will find themselves completely, unquestioningly compliant to any verbal statement which could be taken as a command or request.

> LANTERN FESTIVAL

The message from El – no, wait. It's Gaby this time. Otherwise, it's the same as previous: insistent, not waiting for any active attempt to open it. Scrolling within your vision as if being written while you're reading it.

I'm on announcement duty this time. Bus #6, for anyone who's counting. The location? Well, the heart of the lantern festival. A short walk from the safehouse.

Like many of these festivities, the New Amsterdam Lantern Festival is an annual event, dating back decades as a means of celebrating the mish-mash of culture that influences New Amsterdam as it's seen today. Sponsored by Polarized – a known subsidiary of Pulsar – the lights go bright just as the sun begins to set late in the evening, spreading over the city, acting as a dense layer of luminescence for 24 hours. Even in the daytime hours, the lights remain, and the technology seems to make them seem just as bright – which acts as a sign that the lights themselves are not natural, projected outward by numerous devices set up throughout the city.

Most of the events are concentrated in a district square that was once known as the city's Chinatown. At the heart of this festival is a large gathering where numerous food trucks and restaurants come out to advertise their wares. Specializing in desserts and little else, these businesses flood the street every year in hopes of bolstering their business because they can't partake in the restaurant promotion throughout September. The festival concludes with a competition, with each chef revealing their unique lantern festival dessert. These are often rather impressive in nature: cake pops strung together like a dragon, ice creams that make people's mouths look like they're glowing, and large cakes, shaped and designed to celebrate New Amsterdam's arts and festival scene. Many of this year's offerings will both celebrate the year before and offer a somber reminder of the lives lost in the monster attack just months ago. Smaller, sample sizes of these desserts will be available for purchase, which also grants people access to one vote for their favorite dessert.

As the lantern festival comes to a close almost a full day later, the lights clear a path to the river, where countless people will be stretched out and looking skyward for this year's fireworks. Loud, symphonic music featuring some of New Amsterdam's most popular composers will play throughout the area, synced up with the bombastic explosions themselves.

Most of the six newcomers will have hopefully been gathered long before the fireworks go off – but anyone else is free to enjoy them and the festivities leading up to that final conclusion. The festivities vary in nature, from a place for someone to claim a lantern of their own with a wish, to using UV paint to legally cover the ground in unique symbols and lights, to joining competitions where people place chess and checkers for a wider audience. Each of these activities is monetized, so don't expect anything to be for free.

> A VISUAL DETOUR

There will be several new and persistent additions along the most likely path to the festival from the safehouse: small, man-made shrines that have appeared just hours before the dense layer of lights settled over the city. Depending upon their makeup, these shrines vary in structure, size, and design, but have several unique, persistent similarities between them.

Some of the shrines are fully formed, with candles lying underneath them, and cloth blankets acting as an overhang for the art within. At the heart of each of these shrines is an image of a person, with a large, upside down triangle projecting from their chest – blue and noticeable – with their arms spread wide. Some of these triangles project from the chest as if a piece of a 3D pop-up structure, while others are simply a part of the image itself, a flat, smooth surface. Beneath them, there will be a scene from a familiar event for anyone who's been here for a while: a car flying into a monster's mouth, a person healing someone else, bright blue eyes and fingertips, showing the artist's personal interpretation in motion. Any of the cloth is covered in geometric symbols, intersecting circles and triangles, many of them in specific and particular patterns.

Other shrines are two dimensional in nature – painted, to be more specific, on the walls themselves – both hidden bits of scenery meant to blend in with the surroundings, or large and spread out, splashing wide arrays of colors and symbols. Whoever set up many of these artistic displays had a special paint and familiarity with the lantern festival lighting, as it draws special attention to the blue light that pours out of the people featured, whether it comes from their eyes, mouths, or the traditional chests. Silver and gold geometric symbols stretch around these images, framing the scene portrayed.

These additions aren't only located near the safehouse, but that's where they're concentrated for now. Within days, they'll be elsewhere: on walls in oft-frequented public restrooms, behind popular nightclubs and bars, and just about anywhere else – popping up and coming down as people tire of their presence – or are simply bothered that they're there at all.

> THE SAFEHOUSE

Access to the safehouse is a hatch hidden behind stacks of empty storage shelves in the back of an abandoned supermarket in an outer district of the city. The immediate area is similarly abandoned, empty stores, flanked by several blocks of dive bars and clubs which cater to more niche tastes. A place where people can come and go unseen, or, if seen, not spoken of. A dark haired woman called Gaby is ready to greet the new arrivals and get them settled in, brusque and no-nonsense – she'll be open for in depth questions later, but will advise everyone to ask the people who brought them in for the beginning bits of information.

◉ The safe house is a large open space, filled with rows of basic cots set up to sleep a large amount of people. Basic, but outfitted with everything necessary for daily life. A few doors lead to back rooms for storage, medical care and a large communal bathroom, and past the long rows of cots there is a communal kitchen, fully stocked, and an eating area. Privacy is at a minimum.

◉ New characters will be asked to pick their beds, and provided with a change of (second-hand, mismatched and somewhat threadbare) clothes and basic toiletries.

◉ While there were previously also NPC occupants of the safehouse, natives to New Amsterdam, these people have now been moved on to somewhere safer. A few of their belongings remain, discarded or accidentally abandoned.

◉ Gaby will make it clear to all new arrivals that if they have any requests or queries, they should contact her or El.

◉ The drugs making new characters compliant will remain in their systems for a few hours after their arrival at the safehouse before finally beginning to fade. They will be gone entirely after a night's rest. In the meantime, they may want to be careful of what others say to them.

◉ New characters will be given rudimentary access to the network on arrival in the safehouse, but will not have their ID set up yet. They will be able to make posts and replies, but their messages will be anonymous and they do not have inboxes yet.

◉ New characters will not be allowed to leave the safehouse until SEPTEMBER 7. These 4 days are for them to adjust, learn about the world they've arrived in from their fellows, and for El to speak with them and work on setting up their IDs.

> FINAL OOC NOTES

Welcome to Meadowlark, newbies! You're now free to post to the network and logs comms. To reiterate, your characters will have no IDs or inboxes, nor be allowed out of the safehouse until September 7 (January 14). At that point it's expected they'll have gotten a good idea of their new situation from their fellow characters, and will have discussed their background and job potentials with El in order for their false IDs to be set up.

If you have any questions or ideas about how you'd like to get your character involved in the world, or if they'd like to join Morningstar, please head over to the plot engagement post and drop us a comment! For questions specific to this log, there is a thread below.

Please check out our January calendar rundown for a look at things happening this month.

As a reminder, AC for new characters accepted in December and January will be 10 comments across 2-4 threads, while current characters will need to provide the full AC of 20 comments across 2-4 threads. AC will be posted on January 20 and close on January 27. If you do not reply to AC, you will be considered idled and dropped from the game. We will not post a warning list.

> NAVIGATION

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Well. [Clarke reaches out, tugging at some of the cloth, careful not to knock over a couple candles in the process. There are so many, but she can see that this was set up to catch eyes, perhaps to even catch their eyes.]

I think you can take them evidence that you're the wrong one to turn away. No fine involved. Unless it's ... to them?

[Okay. So, things Clarke knows little about: money and religion. And she just tried to combine both as if she gets both of them.]

[ Religion and money are intrinsically interlinked in the sort of tribute culture Eugenides has until recent times taken for granted. But he listens to Clarke as she struggles with the candles. ]

You've never given offerings, have you?

No. We didn't have much in the way of religion where I grew up. Space didn't leave a whole lot of room for that for my people. [It's easy to explain it. Clarke wonders if it should be harder to spell out how aspects of it were a foreign concept for her. And where money comes in is hard to say. Her first interaction with it is here, and it's not something tangible that can be left behind.]

There are temples all over Eddis. Mostly unkept shrines for the superstitious to leave tribute. But in Eddis we are all reckoned to be superstitious.

[ He looks again at the figures, haloed in blue light. ]

I suppose we could take any tribute without fear of reprisal. [ As the gods are said to punish those who steal from their tribute. ] But they haven't left us anything. We need a higher class of supplicants.

[This is Gen, so she assumes that there is some degree of humor behind what he says in that last bit. A little ridiculous, but with some truth at the heart of it. Would it be good for them to have "better" worshippers? She's at a loss: uncertain about whether that should be the case.

They don't belong here. And she still believes that a fervent religiosity and sense of superstition had allowed the Mountain Men to manipulate the Grounders outside. It was easy for them to take advantage of that mindset.]

Do you want us to have that? These are new. Perhaps the offerings will come. Maybe we should give them our implant IDs for donations.

[ Maybe offerings would come. Maybe the drawings were a kind of offering, themselves, a worship he didn't recognize. ]

No. I think I'd rather be poor than be that Eugenides.

[ He was named for a god, after all. ]

But I don't particularly want to explain that to them, either.

[ It was a conversation he couldn't imagine having, and tactically unwise. Being overestimated could be just as useful as being underestimated. The only completely useless thing was being well and truly seen. ]

No. I'm not sure that exposing ourselves is a good idea, or ... I don't know. Giving this leverage. I don't know about you, but I never asked for this. [Yet hasn't she been in these shoes before? People claiming that they could kill her and absorb her power to command death. Clarke knows what it's like to be on the end of some ... reverence, if not worship itself. She had tried to take advantage of that to bring peace as Praimfaya burned on the horizon.]

Who was that Eugenides? Do you think it'd mean anything here?

The gifts the gods send you are seldom asked for. [ There's an easy bitterness in his words, like chewing on a dandelion leaf. Of course he didn't ask for this. ]

Eugenides is the god of thieves. [ Who the legends say was colored black as soot, but really was just the reddish-brown color of fired clay, like the people who left portraits of themselves on the ruins of middle sea. ] But no one here knows that.

[Clarke makes a thoughtful sound. The god of thieves isn't what catches her attention. It's what he says before that, some inherent belief that these shrines are ... gifts from gods? She struggles to make the connection.]

So. Wait. [Better to ask.] Do you think gods send us all things? Not just ... [She motions before her to the shrine.]

What? [ Does he believe that? ] No, it's just an expression. Like "the gods must have arranged it" for a particularly amazing coincidence. Or "oh gods" when you're drunk and you've stubbed your toe. People don't really believe in the gods, where I'm from. They just never stop talking about them.

[The look on Clarke's face spells out that she both gets it and that she's puzzled. She's smart. She understands that mythology and religion were a thing of the past, but that doesn't mean she processes it as a thing she can internalize now. It's why she doubted that Loki was a god until Fitz had indicated as much to her, saying that it was true. Being a man of rationality and reason, she had no true need to deny it.

But—this isn't like the grounders speaking of spirituality and blasphemy over a chip meant to integrate a human mind with past minds, and provide answers. At least that spoke of a lack of understanding. No, instead, it's more like—like if her people had clung to the mythology and religion of the past. Jaha is the closest of their people to do it, and he had ... other reasons for holding on.]

I'm guessing you've never thought about this that much. Because it's just habit. [She offers a smile and a hint of a laugh in realization.] Sorry—I've had some ... trouble with getting this stuff before. [Like literal blasphemy-style trouble.]

[ Well, Eugenides doesn't believe Loki is a god, either. So, there's that. ]

I didn't use to think about it at all. I paid my fines and said my prayers, same as everyone, but... [ His eyes fall to the place where his right hand used to be. He'd beseeched the Great Goddess for mercy; he prayed for her mercy. And since then his relationship with the gods had been different. ]

I think about it a lot now, actually.

[Clarke catches the glimpse to where his hand used to be, where hopefully he'll have something in place in the future. They would need to talk about that another time. But the look is meaningful just the same, especially for someone as observant as Clarke. Should she ask? Would it be too much to ask?]

Why is that? [Without pressing overly much. Without being too forceful. She leaves it up to him to explain.]

When I was young— [ he says "young" like he isn't still a month or two short of twenty, and seems a little ridiculous for it ] young and whole, I stole something that belonged to the gods. Moira wrote my name into her tablet, and I very quickly became much more religious.

I assume you didn't have a choice in the matter by then. [For Clarke, it's hard to process, but not impossible. Whereas before she might have used his belief if the time served her—just as she did back home, all to try to protect people through some thoughtless action—she has to reconsider that. Put it into further and deeper context. Of course, it helps that she's learned from that behavior.]

I don't know if "I'm sorry" is appropriate here.

It isn't. I consented to all of it. [ He wavers. ] I suppose that doesn't mean much, because I couldn't have known what I was consenting to. Still.

[ He means he would have done it all the same, even if he knew the consequences. ]

[When it comes down to it, Clarke can understand the sentiment. Whether it's gods playing as gods or humans weighing the lives of other humans as if they are gods themselves, sometimes choices need to be made. Sometimes things need to happen. Does Clarke regret being sent to the ground? Regret losing what little bit of her childhood in the process? Regret even turning herself into a Nightblood after playing god, following Emori's intentions to protect herself until they all realized what it was?

No.

She gets it.

She closes her eyes, ruminating, and finally nods.]

I understand. We do what we have to do. [For Clarke, it's for her people.] No matter who's on the other end of that decision.

So. [ Eugenides had done it for his people, too. And for his Queen. which is almost the same thing, but not quite. ] Since then the gods have been nearer to me than most. Sometimes they tell me things.

[ Words hanging naked in the sky, born from no mouth. A gift. ]

And it's hard to be who you were before that. [So even asking, as a point of reference, is difficult. Clarke remembers who she had been on the Ark. That is, she remembers who she was before she was arrested and locked away in solitary. Prior to that moment, one could almost call her naive. She learned the truth of her life and the world she was born into after the fact.

(Seeing her father die before her eyes, killed for wanting to tell people the truth? That had shaken her, too. It always would.)]

Will you miss that? Being here.

[ He tries to shrug casually, as though he were indifferent. But how could that be convincing? ]

It's not the only thing I can't go back from. [ That isn't a lie. ]

Anyway, they mostly told me to stop complaining. It's not the sort of thing you can write poetry about. [ Eugenides cannot physically air quote and nor would the gesture occur to him organically, but his tone of voice provides much the same effect. ] "To you alone, Attolis, we give these gifts: a nagging rebuke and an early bedtime."

[ Not exactly the shield of righteous conviction or the awe of men. ]

[Leave it to Eugenides to make this humorous, to bring a smile sprouting over her lips despite the prior conversation. He is funny, if nothing else. His entire way of carrying himself stands out.

After panting a laugh, Clarke cants her head to the side.]

The worst part is that I genuinely can't tell if they said you were staying up too late. Is that truly the boon of your newfound freedom?

[ For his part, Eugenides is glad to make someone laugh. Problems aren't worth having if you can't laugh at them. Or something. ]

They did. [ The grin on his face falls. ] I don't like to sleep.

[ It's hard for him here, anyway, unused to all the night time noise and light pollution. ]

[Clarke makes a humming sound, and then steps away from the shrine. Time to leave it be. She's examined it enough today.]

I hope whatever power you got helps with that. I heard a rumor that sleep is good for you.

[She offers him a smile.]

In fact, you can even say that rumor came from someone akin to a doctor.

Then it can be safely ignored. Good to know.

[ He's mostly joking, now, but it's less fun to protest medical intervention without an audience to plead to. ]

[Clarke offers him a shake of her head, and then turns to return to the festivities.]

Come on. Let's go have some fun. It seems like a good day to not sleep, doctor's orders or not.

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