Move 13 (Chapter 1.13)
Nov. 13th, 2017 08:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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hexarchate_rpgYear 361, Month Three, Day Sixteen (Sunday), evening
Station Moongray
Mikodez, on Moongray Station, pondering an egg
[Follow-up to this thread.]
It's easy enough for Mikodez to switch the motion detector off; it's not really designed for security use, so the researchers in the lab have it set up so it's easy to take offline for maintenance, etc. (It's highly doubtful they figured the egg would know how to hit the off switch.)
There is no one snoring under the desk, but there is a small file box containing a few paper notebooks, the old-fashioned kind. The game's soothing purring continues.
If Mikodez wants to set up the matter printer for a fake egg and one or two guns, that's easy enough. It might take some extra time to make sure the egg doesn't come out attractively plaid, though.
Year 361, Month Three, Day Sixteen (Sunday), overnight
on the Bumblebee/Wasp/Mothra
After Sasha and Ashari's fight/cultural misunderstanding, and Ashari and Sulen clean up afterward, Gerae's distress becomes increasingly evident. He's pounding on the door of the room that Sulen deposited him in, crying in an increasingly hoarse voice that he refuses to leave without Fluffy.
[lleullawgyffes, it's up to you whether Virmad pays any attention to Sasha's presumed discreet lokwor message and returns in time to help talk to Gerae, or whether Virmad decides to ignore it in favor of continued shenanigans with Teo.]
Sasha appears to be in good health; Iawa might or might not want to write this up formally for Ashari or Ashari's superiors, depending on their assessment of Ashari's mood. [Iawa is the de facto medic as far as I can tell!]
Remi is asking Alaric if it would be difficult to set up a radio to soothe the mothlings into docility, which is less invasive than sedating them.
Meanwhile, Mothra is making rumbly noises again. It sends another Space ASCII diagram, this time of mothlings playing hide and seek.
Active in Move 12: Sasha, Ashari, Sulen, Mikodez, Iawa, Alaric, Virmad
Continuing inactive: Yehan, Kaliyan, Ankat
Station Moongray
Mikodez, on Moongray Station, pondering an egg
[Follow-up to this thread.]
It's easy enough for Mikodez to switch the motion detector off; it's not really designed for security use, so the researchers in the lab have it set up so it's easy to take offline for maintenance, etc. (It's highly doubtful they figured the egg would know how to hit the off switch.)
There is no one snoring under the desk, but there is a small file box containing a few paper notebooks, the old-fashioned kind. The game's soothing purring continues.
If Mikodez wants to set up the matter printer for a fake egg and one or two guns, that's easy enough. It might take some extra time to make sure the egg doesn't come out attractively plaid, though.
Year 361, Month Three, Day Sixteen (Sunday), overnight
on the Bumblebee/Wasp/Mothra
After Sasha and Ashari's fight/cultural misunderstanding, and Ashari and Sulen clean up afterward, Gerae's distress becomes increasingly evident. He's pounding on the door of the room that Sulen deposited him in, crying in an increasingly hoarse voice that he refuses to leave without Fluffy.
[
lleullawgyffes, it's up to you whether Virmad pays any attention to Sasha's presumed discreet lokwor message and returns in time to help talk to Gerae, or whether Virmad decides to ignore it in favor of continued shenanigans with Teo.]Sasha appears to be in good health; Iawa might or might not want to write this up formally for Ashari or Ashari's superiors, depending on their assessment of Ashari's mood. [Iawa is the de facto medic as far as I can tell!]
Remi is asking Alaric if it would be difficult to set up a radio to soothe the mothlings into docility, which is less invasive than sedating them.
Meanwhile, Mothra is making rumbly noises again. It sends another Space ASCII diagram, this time of mothlings playing hide and seek.
Active in Move 12: Sasha, Ashari, Sulen, Mikodez, Iawa, Alaric, Virmad
Continuing inactive: Yehan, Kaliyan, Ankat
Re: a valiant effort to change the subject - paging Iawa again
Date: 2017-11-23 01:40 am (UTC)This being Iawa, until now they of course had not considered that Sasha might have other things to do when they chose this moment to come in for tech support.
They've clearly embarrassed Sasha very badly by assuming she and Ashari were a couple. They don't want to upset her further.
"It's not that urgent, my tablet just started playing up. It hasn't been working right since I was on the station."
[Nice try, Iawa.]
tablet, butter knife, potato
Date: 2017-11-23 02:19 am (UTC)Sasha digs through a drawer, finds an external drive, copies her wriggly-virus detector onto it, and boots Iawa's tablet in safe mode.
"You had this on you during the meeting with Remi, right? You realize that it probably recorded the entire thing, and is just waiting for grid access to send it to the station? Did you have any grid-security training at all, in heresy police school? I grew up hearing the story about the antelope, the locket, and the trains, there must be something like that in the heptarchate."
[
The list of items I have absent-mindedly attempted to take through airport security includes a pocket knife, a butter knife, a piece of mathematical art that looks like a pure black cube when X-rayed, four pairs of scissors (twice; they only confiscated them on the return journey), a silver hairstick with three-inch spikes (only UK security cared about this one), and a potato.]
[tablets and wriggly viruses]
Date: 2017-11-23 02:23 am (UTC)Sorry, I just had two slices of chocolate cake excuse my metaphors.
I once got stopped by airport security in the...I think the '90s sometime, definitely before 9/11, because I was carrying a massive amount of metal and security was very suspicious.
Let this to be a lesson that on no account should you ever try to take SIX harmonicas with you through the airport scanner.]
Re: [tablets and wriggly viruses]
Date: 2017-11-23 03:04 am (UTC)Gorm less, talk more - Iawa's motto
Date: 2017-11-23 03:02 am (UTC)"Yes -- no -- I forgot, I'm sorry! We had one grid-security session. They told us a long rambling story about a Vidona cadet who used heretical passwords because he thought no one would guess them because they were heretical, but the servitors found his passwords and then he was in even more trouble, so don't do that."
[Actual (bad, obvs) security advice I once read somewhere: choose 'shocking' and offensive passphrases because they'll be easier to remember. I can't remember where I read that advice, but maybe he had a point: clearly his security advice was shocking and offensive enough to stick in my mind!]
"And I don't know what any of those things are except the locket. And that's only if you mean the jewelry and it's not a tech thing with the same name."
[Australian security would actually care about the potato -- agricultural quarantines are serious business here.
Here's the best absent-minded airport security story I ever heard: the purple unicorn passport.]
"Does that mean the tablet's permanently broken?"
Naxarat story time!
Date: 2017-11-23 04:10 am (UTC)There's a formula to it. "Years ago, and lightyears away, they were building a train across the steppe. A literal train: it's a way of transferring freight, on planets, that runs on rails. Some of the Kirrish were concerned that the train line would disrupt the migration patterns of the antelope (it's an animal). So they formed a working group, to bomb the lines. People came from different bands, and of course they set aside their tablets and calculators and so forth for the meetings, because train security would hear them, through any sort of device. But there was a girl, who had a locket with a picture of her lover. It smiled in the winter, and laughed in the summer. Of course the animation worked because there was a chip, inside. It recorded the conversations, and they were all arrested."
Sasha shrugs. "I suppose in the heptarchate they would all have been tortured and killed, right? Where I'm from, they were bound. Bound into the minds of the trains, in this case, the way our moth is attached to the Wasp. The story I heard, when I was growing up, is that when the train whistles, you know the girl is crying for her lover."
[The purple unicorn is outstanding!
Sasha, of course, was not admitted to the Nirai Academy. Her player was hugely jaded because she had already taken university classes & dated a university student & ... did not want to make out with everyone she explained this to, yet somehow people kept assuming she did. Ah, freshman year.]
Re: Naxarat story time!
Date: 2017-11-29 12:31 pm (UTC)The Vidona buy their makers from the Nirai rather than making their own, and the really high quality ones are either low batch makers calibrated for food and medication only, or else larger volume ones that produce a narrow range of items unless you pay to unlock the next tier of recipes.
If you knock over someone's ceremonial calligraphy ink and stain their ritual apron, they have to pay to replace both items, because the Vidona can't afford to just hand them out (they are locked into the Nirai's proprietary matter bricks. btw, most of the hexarchate doesn't use this sort of business model for matter printers, just the regions with really shitty trade agreements.) They will be frantic and angry, and their instructors (whose background is probably closer to theirs than Iawa's, and who have strong feelings about not screwing over your yearmates) will be all kinds of disapproving.
And the Vidona aren't really a faction full of secrets or privacy.
In short, despite being on an Actual Heretical Mission, Iawa had kind of forgotten that allowing the team to be spied on might be more of a problem than damaging a tablet.
Files are not a problem - they have none that weren't downloaded from the Wasp's grid to begin with.
Sasha's story makes their shoulders start hunching up toward their ears. If they're understanding Sasha correctly, where she's from differs from the heptarchate in the details but not the general principles. "They still do that where you come from?" Iawa says. It's a question, but only barely. Of course they do.
"I'm sorry, truly. I'll be more careful next time," they add.
Re: Naxarat story time!
Date: 2017-11-29 01:34 pm (UTC)Sasha snaps the external drive in half. "I'm glad you have some idea of the risk you created. But one person being careful isn't enough. We should have a system, and fail-safes. I think my detection for the station's viruses is good enough that I can let you use this tablet on the ship, now that it's been wiped. But I'm going to set an alarm in the airlock, to prevent you from removing your tablet from the ship, or any other device that hasn't been explicitly cleared. Try not to set it off; that would be embarrassing for all of us."
She bites her lip. "When we're back on base, if you get reassigned, you can ask me to lift the restriction. But if you don't get reassigned, honestly, I think you're better off leaving the tablet here. I don't know what the powers that be were thinking, sending you here without any proper training. Avrayen's as wriggly as the local viruses, but at least he was Shuos. You-- I don't know if they were trying to kill you, or trying to kill all of us, or just grabbing whomever they could, to fill this ship. And in any of those circumstances, I think you're better off assuming that the folks on base are not your friends."
Schrodinger's Shuos
Date: 2017-12-01 03:40 am (UTC)Several responses occur to them: Well, of course they're not my friends! I barely even met them! And I'm not good at making friends anyway! is the first. But following that, and taking Sasha's point: and what about you? You tell me not to trust them, but can I trust you?
"I will consider what you say," they say slowly.
Joining the resistance seems like a more desperate gamble now than it did when they were freshly out of that first rift. They'd impulsively tried to stop a remembrance, almost been killed, then tumbled through the void all alone for an unknown time, and then found themselves on solid ground among people who... at any rate, were not Vidona, and who promised them a chance to stop all the remembrances, to end torture. And in a space of how long? Less than a day? They were on this ship with more people they didn't know, and hadn't questioned it.
If the resistance is a gamble, who is running the game? And how fair a game is it? Iawa's not good at mathematics, but Ton, explaining statistics to them, told them one important thing about gambling: the house always wins.
Damn it, they think. Why do I always forget that people lie? They know perfectly well that people do lie -- they can lie themselves, in fact. Can lie to themselves, as they've had reason to reflect on lately. But it's easier to assume people are operating in good faith and then correct from there as necessary.
Otherwise you can either start out by operating in bad faith yourself or maintain a complicated double vision in all your dealings in which you consider an innocent and a malicious motivation for every other person's action, and try to respond in a way that will serve the greater good and your own interests whether your friend? opponent? is honest or deceitful. Is that how Shuos think?
Speaking of Avrayen... "Where is Avrayen, anyway? I haven't seen him since the tour."
Where is Avrayen, anyway? - paging pengwern and GM as well as Iawa
Date: 2017-12-01 04:22 pm (UTC)Oh, saint of growing things, Iawa is so soft. And sort of fluffy, in a bedraggled way. Sasha wonders whether she should be bringing them white mice and teaching them how to hunt.
"I'm pretty sure Avrayen and Imsayed are still on station, but I can check the logs for you. Otherwise, if you want to be more precise, maybe send him a lokki message? We've got hours yet until we need him, and I don't want to access surveillance data more than I have to."
[Did Mishka or Istradez return to the ship at any time prior to 00:00-ish?]
Re: Where is Avrayen, anyway? - paging pengwern and GM as well as Iawa
Date: 2017-12-04 07:14 am (UTC)"We left him behind? I wonder what he's up to. He left the tour back when I went to get the splatter, and I thought he was with you. Oh well, I'm sure he's safe with Imsayed, right?"
[Iawa is still under the impression that Mikodez needs supervision. Which he does, but not for the reason Iawa somehow thinks.]
[And having finally batted that plot point around long enough, Iawa can probably exit and let Sasha work.]
Avrayen is one thing, but where's the second printer?
Date: 2017-12-04 12:47 pm (UTC)Sasha lets the volume of her music grow again. She's not listening to incoherent screaming any more, but normal conversation is going to become difficult rather shortly.
Re: Avrayen is one thing, but where's the second printer?
Date: 2017-12-05 01:01 am (UTC)Re supervision, yes he needs help :< this tentacle mop isn't going to attack Cousin Imsayed by itself, you know :< :< :<]
Re: Gorm less, talk more - Iawa's motto
Date: 2017-11-27 08:19 pm (UTC)If there's a reason Iawa survived, they're willing to wait for it (paging GM: plot hooks)
Date: 2017-11-28 04:28 pm (UTC)(If someone's controlling the rifts, maybe the helpful floor was not the lucky accident Iawa assumed it was. But why? Did they witness something without realising it? Do they have specific knowledge from their time and place that they don't yet realise is significant? Or is someone trying to save people who would have died in certain circumstances, and/or grabbing people with nothing left to lose and throwing them into danger?)
I do want to suddenly remember Mikodez in this conversation, though. Up to you if you want Sasha to add losing the kid to the list of things to chastise Iawa about, or if Sasha is more concerned about security and Quill and what Mikodez is really up to than Iawa's babysitting failure.
Sorry for leaving you hanging again. I'll reply to the comment above in about twelve hours - I meant to do it now, but I need sleep, my brain feels like glue.]
Re: If there's a reason Iawa survived, they're willing to wait for it (paging GM: plot hooks)
Date: 2017-11-29 12:55 am (UTC)Sasha's under the (erroneous!) impression that Mishka knows how to take care of himself, but she can certainly make some unflattering comparisons.]
Re: If there's a reason Iawa survived, they're willing to wait for it (paging GM: plot hooks)
Date: 2017-11-29 02:25 am (UTC)Re: If there's a reason Iawa survived, they're willing to wait for it (paging GM: plot hooks)
Date: 2017-11-29 12:16 pm (UTC)[Sasha hasn't even been awake for 24 hours yet, and she's already whining. Slacker.]
Re: If there's a reason Iawa survived, they're willing to wait for it (paging GM: plot hooks)
Date: 2017-12-02 12:48 am (UTC)Plot hooks noted. If you have a favorite candidate, do let me know!]
Re: If there's a reason Iawa survived, they're willing to wait for it (paging GM: plot hooks)
Date: 2017-12-04 07:07 am (UTC)No favourite candidates, just incoherent thoughts.]