Move 11 (Chapter 1.11)

[yhlee]

Year 361, Month Three, Day Sixteen (Sunday), evening
Station Moongray

On the Station, at The Bar on Level Three: Virmad

[lleullawgyffes, it's up to you whether you want to say that Virmad gets caught up with Teo and/or matters on station overnight, or whether he will take care of matters with Teo quickly enough to join the others at the "Bumblebee" below.]

Per this thread, Teo has just greeted Virmad in the bar. To recap for your convenience:

The Bar on Level Three really is on Level Three. There are helpful directories pointing the way, but the fact that a number of people are heading there, and the cheerful clamor of people talking, and music, would have made it easy to find regardless.

The bartender is a trim woman with her hair hanging about her face in fantastic coils; the combs and hairpins look like they're about to escape. She's pouring a drink for a slouching Nirai technician when Virmad arrives. "You're new here," she says. "What can I get you?"

Kel Teo is sitting at a seat where he has a clear view of all exits. (Very Kel.) He's had a chance to change out of his uniform; he's wearing a sleek suit in shades of deep brown, and he's also embellished himself with gold-and-amber jewelry. He waves when he spots Virmad, smiling.

Teo adds that he's happy to pay for Virmad's drink--the first one, anyway, and some of the local grub. "I recommend the fried pork fritters with barbecue sauce," Teo says, "But maybe that's not ascetic enough fare for a Rahal?" (He's teasing.)


On the Station, on the "Bumblebee": Sulen, Sasha, Iawa, Alaric
Also probably: Ashari?, Mikodez?

Recap:
Remi has explained, at Sasha's insistence, that the baby moths were hatched in captivity from eggs stolen from the parents by a heptarchate expedition, and that the parents are likely dead. He claims that this all happened before he himself arrived on the station, and that he's been advocating for humane treatment of the baby moths.

Alaric has just explained that he discovered the Wasp's "moth" is a sentient starfaring being and has been communicating with it using pictures [Move 10].

Moving on:
Remi's response to this is to stare at Alaric in horror. "Do you seriously want me to believe that you were using a living being as your spaceship and didn't even check for sapience? I thought that was basic protocol...unless," and his expression sours, "it was convenient for people to hush it up?" He stares at Alaric. "Well, I can't blame it for wanting to adopt the young of its kind, but that's a high-security enclosure..."

[Remi might well be responsive to helping them kidnap the baby moths, assuming the whole conversation doesn't blow up in a completely different direction, but he's not going to offer unless someone else brings it up. There's plenty of opportunity for people to opine on what should be done about the baby moths, whether Alaric has been behaving appropriately, who Sasha should have notified, etc. If you need help brainstorming on your action, please let me know and I'll get back to you when I can; others players might also have thoughts.]


[GM suggests that Ashari and Mikodez could either have returned to the ship for the meeting with Remi, or else could teleconference in.

smokedetective: Ashari probably wants to be present in some form for the discussion, not least for possible/likely pending confrontation with Sasha per zuhrovet's notes. If teleconferencing, Istradez will be happy to cover for them with any pesky people.

pengwern: If Mikodez prefers not to be involved in this discussion, he could plausibly be investigating the nonresponsiveness of the Kel at the moment after they helped Sulen stow Gerae, or assigned to keep an eye on Gerae, who might be feeling confessional while everyone else is occupied.]

---

Active in Move 10: Sulen, Virmad, Sasha, Iawa, Alaric, Mikodez, Ashari

Inactive: Yehan, Ankat, Kaliyan

Comments

what was Remi even thinking?

[zuhrovet]

Sasha brings her tea into the common room and sits down again, a little bit farther from Sulen.

"So," she asks Remi, "you contacted us because you were concerned about the treatment of the baby moths, but you didn't make plans to extract them. What, precisely, were you expecting to happen?"

it's a date!

[lleullawgyffes]

[since I'm 75 comments behind I'd be happy to let Virmad obliviously wander in the next morning to whatever chaos Remi has left in his wake. (EDIT: I mean, maybe he'll totally ruin things with Teo, so I guess we'll see, but.) if we need to make a hasty exit before then, I assume they have some means of contacting Virmad that will be sufficiently disruptive of...whatever he's doing that it will get his attention and get him moving.]

“We aren’t all cloistered calendrical theorists, or high-minded magistrates,” Virmad says with a laugh. “Pork fritters sound fine. Was the rest of your day reasonably productive? What do they actually have you doing on this station, most of the time? I can’t imagine your services are needed for station security every single day.”

It's a good thing I'm not Kel, because then this would be a Powerpoint

[zuhrovet]

[Wiki notes on the ongoing attempt to form an escape plan. Happy to make corrections as needed!]

[pengwern]

While waiting for the last of his fishing attempts into Station Moongray's encrypted files to fail, Mikodez starts to idly assign stats to his current position. In his inventory is a Lack of Snacks. On the Wasp, the approval of the crew remains fairly low, with Ashari one of the higher ones (in their own ineffable Andan fashion), while his own impressions of them in return -- well, if only he could figure out what Imsayed was meant to reference.

The Kel are two, the Rahal as well. Two cannons, two towers. There was bound to be some game with this number of pieces - take Sasha and Alaric as the equivalent of Nirai, that left one obvious Andan, himself for the Shuos, and no obvious Vidona. The three left could be keeping their faction affiliations hidden, or they could be regular citizens. Rebels. Regular, run of the mill heretics. But who's playing, and to what end? Was the one crew member who vanished prior to the Wasp's journey through the rift an eaten piece?

Far simpler to assume he's the player of this simulation, with an occasional surveillant here and there. Improbable, glitchy cousin Imsayed for one, and that straightforward announcement of Instructor Zehun's appearance as 'Andan' Bokali for another. Sometimes Mikodez had his doubts about whether Crowned with Eyes existed as a signifier, or if it was just easier to use it as an excuse to purge inconvenient Shuos. He couldn't think of anything he or the Vauhans had done to warrant this, but it's probably too much to expect fairness from the Hexarchate.

As he reviews what little he could glean, Mikodez pauses at the amount of supplies coming in. Animal research that needed to be carried out on a station, rather than more efficiently on a planet. What was Remi's research on, again? He pulls up a schematic map of the station, matches it with scan that the Wasp had taken earlier, and tries to locate the regions he hadn't seen on tour with where the directory says Remi's lab is, and the distance from that to the dance studio where Ashari and Bokali presumably wait.

[HI yay a Remi glad to see the interstellar tea party continues with 0 poisonings Mikodez has to go get mauled by moth babies or fake Andan now bye]