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meadowlarklogs2019-06-09 06:08 pm
- !arrival log,
- blade runner: kd6-3.7,
- dceu: diana prince,
- detroit become human: markus,
- detroit become human: north,
- devil may cry: v,
- doctor who-verse: ianto jones,
- gangsta: alex benedetto,
- kingdom hearts: riku,
- kingdom hearts: sora,
- legacies: hope mikaelson,
- mcu: daisy johnson,
- mcu: peggy carter,
- npc: gaby,
- overwatch: soldier 76 (jack morrison),
- persona: goro akechi,
- star wars: cassian andor,
- star wars: jyn erso,
- starfighter: cain,
- stargate atlantis: elizabeth weir,
- stargate atlantis: john sheppard,
- stargate atlantis: rodney mckay,
- the 100: clarke griffin,
- the expanse: james holden,
- the gifted: marcos diaz,
- the man from uncle: gaby teller,
- the vampire diaries: caroline forbes
ARRIVAL LOG 011
WHERE: New Amsterdam
WHEN: November 5
WHAT: The eleventh arrival
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Coercion, loss of autonomy. Further notes at end of log.
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 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.
"Stay here," one of the guards barks, right before looking to the guard to their left. "You've got the honors of passing on the message from the boss?" he asks. The woman nods, and then steps just in front of him. "Now listen up, everyone! This is way warmer than I'd ever go for, but he's got a soft spot for you." She offers a twisted smile, as if she isn't keen to play messenger. "Hello, everyone. You're likely wondering how you got here." She pauses to roll her eyes at the joke – because it is a joke, albeit a bad one (in her opinion). "That's not something I can share right now. There are too many hands invested in this pie. But I need you all to stick to the festival, and not go looking for trouble. Don't hurt anyone. Don't look for a police officer. Have fun out there until it's time to process you. I don't actually know how that goes, but the ones like you? They've got it down to a science." She pauses here, looking puzzled. She's read this message in advance, but there are still aspects of it that stand out. Oh, they were warned about the others. To avoid them at all costs, because they'd be looking. "And sorry for the scrubs – I know they aren't great for a party, but they make you stand out. Have a good time. Just don't get arrested out there. I can only pull out my Beijing contacts so many times." This message is read entirely off her neural implant – not that the people dressed in scrubs in front of her would realize that.
After she's done, the last of the guards turn to 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, there are many food stalls selling foods in mason jars, as well as a stage off in the distance with people in colorful outfits moving in unison. It seems that you've arrived at some kind of festival, and believe it or not, this is low-key compared to some of the last.
◉ 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 – and that includes the lengthy message passed on from the mysterious patron.
The message from El comes the same as usual: insistent, not waiting for any active attempt to open it. Scrolling within your vision as if being written while you're reading it.
Well, everyone, it's time for another round of saving your newly arrived displaced kidnapees. This time they're not blending in at all. It's white scrubs all the way. Probably doesn't really go with a harvest festival – is that some corn-in-the-cob in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? Anyway, have fun out there.
The New Amsterdam Annual Harvest Festival begins with a parade bright and early in the morning. Rather than being dressed up with large holographic displays with AR functions that interact with everyone's neural implants, this parade is au naturale. The floats themselves are handmade with careful craftsmanship and designs, especially given the lack of wood available in this world. Everything is bright and colorful. Between each float, there are large dancing troupes dressed in lavish costumes full of colors. Some of the dances featured are unique to this world and its future, while others pay homage to harvest festivals of the past, hailing from regions of Japan, Korea, China, India, Nigeria and the Philippines. The garb itself is unique to these regions – relics of a previous world, celebrating the harvest and promise of what may come in the future.
Unlike many New Amsterdam events, there is very little room for technology and heavy advertisements. While numerous subsidiaries provide donations for the harvest festival, they do so with the understanding that their involvement will be obscured. The harvest festival is meant to act as a way of celebrating the natural way of the world, and of stepping away from technology for a time. That said, there is little emphasis on any artificial intelligence or mentions of the Xelkoven War – it seems as if this celebration is meant as more of a pure revelry of what the Earth used to provide, rather than what humans managed to avoid.
Once the parade is done, there is a large festival in progress. Every worker at the harvest festival is there because they believe in this celebration, and thus they volunteered to be involved. Anyone who wants to be there because they chose to volunteer can. As for the native volunteers – a large number of them will be sporting numerous tattoos of unique symbols that have been seen around the city (most notably the Insomniac's Ball and the shrines to the Displaced). They'll look at any of the Displaced that they recognize with admiration, but won't be quick to engage with them.
The harvest festival is just a one-day event, but it's jam packed full of things to do!
> HARVESTS
While the hydroponic farms around New Amsterdam are always working to keep the citizens fed, they celebrate their harvests once a year at the harvest festival. Many of these farms come together and sell their vegetables in mason jars and even create various sauces for citizens to purchase. Want some delicious spaghetti sauce that's ready to go? What about taco sauce or something to make quick tikka masala? These food stalls have everything ready to go – and they're all too eager to share what they've made. The stalls all offer discounts to anyone who buys their jars in bulk, hoping that they can happily impart their delicious and natural foods to the citizens of New Amsterdam. While hydroponic farms on a whole are "less natural" in how they grow food, these jars of food are less processed. What's in there is, for the most part, pickled or cooked down into a sauce, making it so that New Amsterdam citizens can enjoy a flavorful meal.
> CHARITY
In a continuation of the mindset during Halloween, the harvest festival doubles as a site for charitable activity around the city. Gaby will ask Morningstar's people to set up a booth to collect any clothing donations, and it'll be obvious that while this booth is not noticeably linked to Morningstar, it's set up every year in hopes of gathering these clothing donations for people in need. The Morningstar booth isn't the only of its kind, and many of the food stalls with mason jars will also have a box for people to donate goods should they want to help people in need. Unlike every other New Amsterdam festival, there are no food trucks. Instead, there is an all-day buffet that constantly rotates out food so that people who are hungry can have a full meal as the day goes on. Everything is free. However, this buffet includes no alcohol – as if to counterbalance the drunken revelry during the Halloween celebrations, there is none on the premises here.
> FERTILITY
In the past, harvest festivals have almost always been linked to fertility. While fertility is less of a concern in 2511 – thanks to the rigid population control – there is a sense of hope that Earth itself, as well as the terraforming colonies, will eventually give way to a future where these mandates aren't as necessary. For now, the harvest festival celebrates the idea of fertility, as well as allowing the Earth to replenish itself. Fertility is an aspect in that, after all. One section of the festival's stalls is dedicated to this ideal, and has a unique tradition brought over from Japan. Each of the stalls feature large phallic structures on the top, and like the parade floats, these are newly made every year from scratch. In addition, the food stalls also partake in an all-natural popsicle contest (after all, it wouldn't be a New Amsterdam festival without some kind of food contest). These popsicles come in all different flavors – from strawberry to pickle brine – and are all slender and phallic in their presentation.
> DANCING
Throughout the day, music will always be playing while some form of dancing goes on on the main stage. Most of the day, this dancing is thanks to the dance troupes that come in and perform, even though they've already done it at length on the parade routes. Many of the volunteers will be put in charge of keeping these dancers fed and hydrated so that they can keep at it – though they're always happy for the opportunity that the festival offers them. When these staged shows aren't happening, they have interludes where festival-goers can come on stage and learn more simplified versions of the different dances from the Earth's cultural history. Once it's dusk, there is a two-hour long dance contest where these troupes compete with one another, putting on a unique show that they've prepared for the event.
> WRESTLING
The other event that goes on all day is an event borrowed from Korea: ssireum. Multiple people enter this wrestling contest, and thanks to the amateur-nature of it, there is little concern about who wrestles with one another (outside of age, of course). The sport itself involves two opponents holding on to each other's red and blue band called a satba. Throughout the contest, they try to put the other person down, making it so that their upper body touches the mat. There are rules set up to ensure that no one brings any real harm to their opponent, and since it's wrestling, there is no room for any dirty tricks like punching, kicking, biting or anything similar. When it's over, the person who's wracked up the most wins throughout the day is given a sash that declares them "The Most Powerful."
Located under an abandoned hover-bike garage, access to the safehouse is a hatch in the floor beside a rusted set of metal shelves that used to hold tools and supplies. The immediate area is similarly abandoned: full of rundown and dilapidated warehouses and forgotten businesses, where numerous people squat in hopes of having some stability because they can't afford a place themselves. 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 safehouse is a large space with multiple rooms for storage, with the largest of the rooms 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.
◉ There is a mini-bar set up in the kitchen. The quality of the alcohol inside is akin to what someone might get from the well, but it's well-stocked.
◉ 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 NOVEMBER 09 (JUNE 17). 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.
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 NOVEMBER 09 (JUNE 17). 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.
As a note: all new characters arrive after the parade ends.
If you have any questions or ideas about how you'd like to get your character involved in the world, 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 June calendar rundown for a look at things happening this month, as well as some additional notes from the mods.
As a note to the entirety of our playerbase, we are at 58 players, which is 2 players away from our game cap! This is very exciting for us as moderators, especially as we quickly head toward our one year anniversary! There is a very good chance that this will be our last "full" arrival log for a while, though we have plans (and ideas!) in mind for future months.
As a reminder, AC for new characters accepted in June 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 July 1 at 12 AM UTC and close on July 8 at 12 AM UTC. If you do not reply to AC, you will be considered idled and dropped from the game. We will not post a warning list.
no subject
'Lord Ren'? [ Stars, she's going to never shut up about that now. ] Did he tell you to call him that?
no subject
Not in so many words. However if he were of status, and I did not refer to him as such, I would offend. And a queen does not easily court favors from those she offends.
[At least -- that's how it would have been in Westeros. And what is a Lord, to a queen? It doesn't harm her to throw that assumption out when she's uncertain -- it does not give them power over her.]
It is not so obvious here whom once held status and who did not.
no subject
She confronts the fear by dismissing it outright. ]
You were right to think it. [ He has that air about him, doesn't he? Someone who is used to things a certain way. Who is used to things being done for him a certain way by people he does not need to pay attention to. ] He did have status. But not anymore. He's going to give it up.
[ Has Kylo Ren said this: No.
Has Rey decided that since they banged it must be true: Yes.
She can feel a faint fear climbing up in her throat again despite her vigorous dismissal. She doesn't know if it's true. She's getting ahead of herself the same way she had on Ahch-to, assuming that what they share means something to him. But she assures herself that it's not the same at all--he has joined Morningstar against a fascist government where others have chosen differently. That means something. ]
no subject
You will forgive me for saying that I do not find you at all convincing in this matter.
[And even if she was the least bit convincing, Daenerys probably still would not believe her. People (especially men) did not simply give up their lands and titles -- for what? Because they'd crossed worlds?
She would be just as annoyed if someone refused to recognize her status in another world after being informed of it. It was simple courtesy.]
no subject
[ It's impossible to miss Rey's faint bristling at what sounds like an order. But it fades because it's not really Dany that has her stressed. So she deflates notably, even if the shades of frustration are still there in the set of her jaw.
She can't stop Dany from extending that honor, obviously. But Kylo could if he said it himself. That would assuage them both. ]
Don't take my word for it. Though, if you really care about his status, he still wasn't a lord. He called himself the Supreme Leader. [ Her face says 100% what she thinks of that. ]
no subject
Surely not. He did not carry himself as a tyrant might. But there is something suddenly steely in her gaze.]
Supreme Leader of what, praytell?
no subject
It takes the wind out of her sails, and she looks wounded to have to say it. Growing quiet, like an animal licking its wounds, she admits bleakly: ] Everything.
[ She's not hungry anymore. She sets her half-eaten plum on the booth's tabletop. ]
no subject
But Daenerys was not so cruel. There was something deeper going on in Rey's mind that she did not understand, and that was likely not much of her business. She did, however, understand the implication of what "everything" meant and frowned for it.]
Power can be cruel. But not all conquerors are cruel, Rey. The right person in power can do a great deal of good.
[She could not guess one way or another -- but she could surmise at least that whatever system Kylo Ren had served had been a cruel one.
A title like "Supreme Leader" certainly did not inspire confidence in her. But she did not need to share that now.]
Should it comfort you, he did not introduce himself to be in any such manner. I merely guessed.
no subject
No, that's not entirely accurate. She sounds like what he likely imagined himself to sound like. It has the opposite effect of comforting her--instead, it makes Rey just a little wary of Dany. She'd seen what had followed his insistence in the throne room. He did not want to do good: he wanted to destroy all that had hurt him, and tell himself it was good.
Rey grapples wordlessly with that for a moment. ]
Actually, I'm glad it came up. [ She's not. But it helps her to latch onto something. Forward momentum. A productive path forward that they can set on together, leaving behind everything that leaves her unmoored. ] I wanted to speak with you about something. You know a lot of politics, obviously. Did you know the Governor here has decided not to seek reelection?
no subject
I had. Though I have little context for what it means for us or the people, as of yet.
[She hasn't yet grasped the manners of communication in this land, though she was a quick study.]
Why do you ask?
no subject
[ There are people walking past. ]
A relief organization. [ She arches her eyebrows meaningfully. Most people hear a bit about Morningstar from Gaby when they first come to the safehouse, and since Dany is still staying there, and is close with Jon, she probably is more familiar still. It's not just the Displaced they provide relief to. ] One interested in making things better.
But we haven't decided which of the new candidates to put our support behind. [ She looks out at the passerby. ] From what I've been able to find, they all have ties to the megacorporations that seem to run just about everything here. Uh, traders? [ She checks for understanding in Dany's face. ] But it's like you said -- the right ruler can make a big difference.
You might be the right person to figure out which of them is right, and why the Governor is stepping back.
[ It's easy to teach someone to blend in this world; it's hard to teach the nuances of politics. ]
no subject
She takes a moment to think upon it, violet eyes flicking upward to check to eavesdroppers before replying:]
I might be. However, in my experience, it is rare for conversation and counsel to be taken from a foreigner, let alone a foreigner without something to offer -- be it money, goods, armies, or other such things.
[And she, of course, has none of those things. She does not need to say as much. Moreover, she is perhaps more obviously a foreigner than most others.]
Do you know of someone I might speak to, in that regard?
no subject
[ She waves her hands. Some nicknames don't make sense and that's fine. It's no different than flipping between Ben and Kylo for her interchangeably, so it's a simple task. ]
She's a foreigner too. She can probably help you get the language and mannerisms down so that you'll pass easily as someone from around here, and be able to listen in and make your judgments easier.
no subject
I know her. Not well -- but I do know her.
[She also happened to like her a great deal.]
Very well. I will consult her on the matter and see what she has to say.
no subject
[ Maybe it's bold to make that assumption, to reach out with it, but-- ]
The help that we spoke about before. That we can provide to this planet. This is how we do it.
[ She puts one hand on the donation bin, regarding it. Relief. Hope. Something other than the bleak cityscapes that they've numbed themselves to. ]
no subject
Times of peace would be found with the public provided for -- or so she believed. She could do nothing with the UNA hovering.
And there was the matter of the state of the planet. No, Daenerys did not need very much convincing at all.]
What higher calling is there but service to the people?
no subject
I'm glad to hear you say so.