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

[Wow, Alaric is vicious. Or unaware of what sleep paralysis refers to. This could be fun. (For a value of fun where if Alaric does know and did that deliberately, he's going to fall foul of Iawa's number one deal-breaker: no torturing people. Which is also the case for Mikodez's interrogation of Istradez, when they find out.)

For reference, in case it becomes relevant and since Iawa's not here to infodump: the sleeping pills on their own will paralyse Mikodez anyway, by making him fall asleep. If he combines them with alcohol, though, Mikodez will get the paralysing effects of sleep without the sleep part - i.e. he'll still be awake and overhearing whatever Alaric says. With a bonus side effect of overwhelming fear and the feeling of something horrible sitting on his chest - night hag, shadow people, alien abduction, etc. Which since he's already convinced all of this is a simulation, should be just great for convincing him it isn't.

And yeah, that's what they taught Iawa in the academy about how to use this particular made-up sleeping pill. :( In the real world it lasts on average three minutes, but with hexarchate medications who knows.]

[How does the hexarchate punish non-heretical criminals, anyway?]

[Depending on the severity of the crime, anything from fines to community service (this could be anything from "help out at the local library" to "you are now an early colonist on this hardscrabble new world in the process of being terraformed, congrats!" to thoroughgoing ostracism.]

[So is the plan right now to intercept Mikodez as he lurks outside Medical and to threaten him until he takes those pills, and, if they're washed down with alcohol, to have the negative effects convince him that it's not a simulation, since (handwave simulations can't manage that much mental state alteration?)]

[Yeah, I was hoping this would work for you? Let me know either way and I'll include it in the setup for the next move tonight.]

[Yeah, sure! And since I've had the alice in wonderland definition of 'suppressed' on the mind - plz to remember the poor mothling :<<<]

[Roger wilco! Should I officially refer to it as Crowned-with-Eyes or what? *g*]

[I don't know what Alaric and Sasha are planning (is he more like a cat or a dog, pilling-wise?) but when I said it should be just great for convincing Mikodez he's not in a simulation, I was being sarcastic. I forgot about the tone not coming through in text thing again, sorry.]

[ahhh no, it'd be good to resolve that thread.
And CAT, absolutely. Hence the need for a sack to trap him in and sit on.
Re hatchling, what spy cadets with an excess of poster making/scrapbooking supplies may or may not have committed in the wee hours of the morning isn’t my concern at all @—@]

[Poor Alaric. Then I'm afraid "Hi Avrayen, we're really angry with you, so we brought you a snack" isn't gonna cut it.

Re spy cadet with scrapbooking supplies, you're his player! If you're not babysitting him, who IS making sure he doesn't glue googly eyes to the eldritch abomination's butt?

a googly-eyed rat

(source)]

[HA HA HA HA HA

That is all.]

[Popping in here to say that Alaric's entire plan was pretty much to hand Mikodez a roofied coffee, wait for him to fall asleep (sleep paralysis just means it works better, right?), and then haul him back to the ship like he's just had too much to drink. I do not claim it is a good plan, even without the other complications that have turned up.]

[I can't speak for your fellow players, of course, but sometimes bad plans lead to more fun RP! ;) ]

[I like this plan. It might not work, but I like it. It has a lot of potential for ridiculousness built in.]

Move 16 (Chapter 1.16)

Re: 04:50 - [sleep paralysis and torture plot hooks]

Re: 04:50 - [sleep paralysis and torture plot hooks]

[non-heretical criminals]

Re: 04:50 - [sleep paralysis and torture plot hooks]

Re: 04:50 - [sleep paralysis and torture plot hooks]

Re: 04:50 - [sleep paralysis and torture plot hooks]

Re: 04:50 - [sleep paralysis and torture plot hooks]

Re: 04:50 - [sleep paralysis and torture plot hooks]

Re: 04:50 - [sleep paralysis and torture plot hooks]

Re: 04:50 - [sleep paralysis and torture plot hooks]

[OT: googly-eyed mothlings]

Re: 04:50 - [sleep paralysis and torture plot hooks]

Re: 04:50 - [sleep paralysis and torture plot hooks]

Re: 04:50 - [sleep paralysis and torture plot hooks]