hexarchate_rpg | Move 16 (Chapter 1.16)

Year 361, Month Three, Day Seventeen (Monday), ~04:00-04:50

Assumptions, just to get everyone more or less on the same time track again:

- Mikodez ignored messages from the other PCs for a couple hours while he collected a DNA sample from unconscious!Istradez, screwed around with his gun, and entertained baby Crowned-with-Eyes the mothling and Fluffy the Vraselian pseudo-dragon. The notebooks that Mikodez abstracted from Remi's lab appear to be a Space Bullet Journal about life on a war-torn technologically backwards planet. [The heptarchate is evil, but as long as you're not a heretic, the standard of living is actually quite high, with good social/medical services &c.]

Also, at some point Mikodez will have noticed that someone (Sasha) has cut off his access from the lokwor into the station grid.

At 4:50, Mikodez runs into Vana looking for Remi at the bubble tea shop. We can pick up from there. As per

zuhrovet's suggestion, I advise that Mikodez is looking for Remi in order to get much-needed information on mothling care, although it may occur to him that he can possibly wheedle that info out of Vana as well.

- After the meeting between Sasha, Sulen, Virmad, and Ashari:

I presume that Sulen has either gone off to practice with the airgun in the interim (or lied to Sasha that they were going to, to get her off their back; your choice!). How good is Sulen with firearms? Ankat (running as NPC) will volunteer to show Sulen the basics, largely out of Kel paranoia that someone is going to screw up Gun 101.

Around 4:00, Teo has messaged Virmad saying that a Safety worker has discovered Istradez (running as NPC) in one of the guest rooms. He says that Istradez has been given first aid but do they want to send someone from the Bumblebee to retrieve him, or will they authorize sending Istradez to Station Medical? If Vass wants, they could go to Istradez and perhaps supervise any additional care that the medics give him.

Sasha will have overheard this presumably. In the intervening hours, it appears that the owner of the wriggly virus suspects that it has been detected. It has gone quiescent and/or deleted most traces of itself, presumably in the hopes of lying low until Sasha's suspicions die down.

Kaliyan (running as NPC) shows up in the newly made mothling bay to inform Alaric that she thinks that the modifications to the ship have screwed up something in life support--not critical now while they're docked at a space station, but kind a problem later.

Ashari, investigating Gerae's lockpicks more closely in some spare moment (maybe because they're having trouble sleeping?), discovers that some of them include hidden poison needle units. This isn't just a matter of a hobby of picking pockets, Gerae was prepared for Serious Business.

NOTE: If inactive players wish to return to active status, message me or leave a comment or email me (yoon at yoonhalee dot com), and we'll work something out.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The first thing Sasha does, when she gets the lokki message from Mishka, is start tracing where it came from. Then she opens it and sees the 8s. She tries, reflexively, to tug on a braid that doesn't exist any more. If Mishka wants to damn her for an eternity of eternities, he needs to get in line behind her father and the Rosemallow. But that would involve caring about someone besides himself, even in a negative way, so it's probably just some future Shuos slang.

The emoji seem to be pure scribbles; there's no steganography involved. The jeng-zai symbolism is . . . gears are always Nirai, right? Low gears aren't very smart Nirai? Or is she supposed to remove the qualities of the nine from the qualities of the page, somehow? She tries messaging Virmad and Yehan:

avrayen sent a message with jeng-zai emoji: (page of gears) - (nine of gears). any idea what that means?

[The two of gears was really boring before Jedao got to it, right?]

Then she makes a voice call to Mishka's lokwor. She doesn't know what in all the hells she's going to say if he answers. But practically speaking, she just needs him to keep talking.

[Correct, the Two of Gears originally meant "pawn/cog in the machine." Most people assumed Jedao was being mildly snarkastic when he originally registered the emblem upon making brigadier.]

Sasha hears: CRUNCH, CRUNCH, sluuuup, Rahal meditation music in whistly psuedo-dragon vocalisations, crunch. Then a cheerful, "Bayan! Have you seen cousin Imsayed around?" No visuals.

[wait, let me explain this incomprehensible visual pun >.<
On the surface, Page of Gears is {Prosperity/vraselian psuedo-dragon if you seize the opportunity. A reliable friend.} Nine of Gears is {Recovery from hard work.}, so "a reliable friend" diminished by his intent to get food to recover from the arduous journey of the Fluffy fetch quest!

But if Sasha or one of the putative instructors running the '''simulation''' had been capable of viewing all of his activities since 18:00, the emojis could be understood as [a garble of void fronds, named for the signifier associated with the Deuce of Gears]

I saw a few mahjong emojis and thought they might be fun with jengzai involved!]

Sasha whistles a lengthy greeting to Fluffy-- she memorized a bunch of wild pseudo-dragon calls as a kid, that summer her tutor claimed she might get a pet if she studied hard enough-- and quietly keys some commands. "Your cousin is in the hospital," she tells Mishka. "You've missed all the excitement, wandering around the station. The Rahal have been particularly busy. What exactly have you been doing? And where are you now?"

"I'd better go find him later," he says, then puts a stylus through the cage bars onto the end call button of the lokwor, and waits to pass a corridor nexus. "I need to get more things for Fluffy to eat first, since I've had no success with finding mango cookies for her. They must be around here somewhere. And a person called Vana was looking for a tall curly haired guy, but I guess you couldn't have seen him if you stayed on the ship."

As he passes a set of elevator doors, he calls out, "I'll bring it to you soonish!" and ends the call. Time to reach Medical before she comes to physically wrench Fluffy from his fingers.

Sasha messages "WE HAD MANGO COOKIES WITH SUPPER ASSHOLE".

It occurs to her that she didn't actually have supper, or lunch, for that matter. Eating always seems like a tremendous chore when she's taking meds to stay awake, but she forces herself to eat one of the Kel ration bars anyway.

"OK
COOL BEANS
WILL THERE BE ANY MORE AFTER WE'RE DONE HERE AT MG"

[Still from that same set of elevators. 500 words of free association on what Sasha's word choice suggests about any covert careers she might have redacted]

Sasha replies:

what the fuck we have a fucking andan on board of course there will be sufficient dessert

[If the high language allows for a dessert/desert spelling mistake, she makes it.]

[Let's say there totally is a dessert/desert spelling mistake. Among other things, I am too lazy to develop a full-blown conlang for this setting. I tried doing for one novel and there's a reason it is forever trunked, never to be seen again.]

Virmad is slightly taken aback by the message. “Two gears...” he murmurs to himself. Jedao? Surely not. It must be a coincidence. He wishes, not for the first time, that he had a better idea what time periods everyone is from.

Either way, he sends back to Sasha:

The primary meaning of the page of gears is “a reliable friend”; nine of gears is “resting after hard work”. What that actually means in the context of this message, I couldn’t begin to tell you.

[this response based on consultation with pengwern.]

[Oh! My bad, y'all, I'm so sorry; I will add the entire jeng-zai deck and meanings to the wiki. You shouldn't have to pull individual card meanings out of the Machineries of Tarot app, that's super-inefficient...I'll update this when I have made the entry in the wiki.]

[oh! I literally didn't even know there were meanings for all the individual cards. I figured pengwern was just extrapolating/making things up.]

Here you go!

Move 16 (Chapter 1.16)

Sasha tries to call Mikodez - paging Virmad for cultural assistance

[Deuce of Gears meaning]

Re: Sasha tries to call Mikodez - paging Virmad for cultural assistance

Re: Sasha tries to call Mikodez - paging Virmad for cultural assistance

Re: Sasha tries to call Mikodez - paging Virmad for cultural assistance

Re: Sasha tries to call Mikodez - paging Virmad for cultural assistance

Re: Sasha tries to call Mikodez - paging Virmad for cultural assistance

Re: Sasha tries to call Mikodez - paging Virmad for cultural assistance

[desert vs. dessert]

Re: Sasha tries to call Mikodez - paging Virmad for cultural assistance

[jeng-zai deck]

Re: [jeng-zai deck]

Re: [jeng-zai deck]