Move 22 (Chapter 1.22)

[yhlee]

[GM note: This is largely a maintenance move so that folks can continue threads from Move 21 without having to dig through a lot of comments.]

For easy reference:
- Move 21 recap (thanks to zuhrovet) [wiki]
- the escape plan [wiki]
- Station Moongray Timeline [wiki]

Year 361, Month Three, Day Seventeen (Monday), ~07:90

Confrontation with the baby fox
From this thread:

Sulen moves towards Mikodez, eyes gleaming the brassy color of clock gears. "I think it's time for some truth, Mikodez."

On the Wasp, Ashari (NPC) welcomes the arrival of Sulen, who threatens Mikodez with scrying after Mikodez is recalcitrant about answering Sasha's questions about why he didn't call for help for Istradez (NPC). Iawa is on standby in case Mikodez needs to be sedated again.

The disposition of a magistrate-thief
From this thread:

“‘Belong’ would be an overstatement,” Virmad says, concealing his amusement. “But yes, we did — I was just about to check on him [Gerae].”

He inclines his head to Sulen. “I’ll see you later; good luck with the foxling.”

Then, to Alaric: “Has Gerae had any food? I did tell him before I left that I’d make sure he got something to eat.”

"It looked like someone fed him, yes," Alaric replies, "although I don't know about Fluffy. Dragon snacks might make the conversation go smoother."

Alaric has just informed Virmad as to Gerae's status, and is about to hand Gerae over to Virmad's care. Meanwhile, Yehan (NPC) comes to talk to Alaric about mothling care: she reports that the station is having the remaining mothlings delivered to the Bumblebee and they are due any moment.

Comments

Re: natural conclusions

[zuhrovet]

That's not a lot to go on, but then Sasha doesn't expect double agents to wear nametags or have convenient identifying scars.

"Did the Shuos tell you how long this 'extra credit' project would last? Did you have a timeframe for your return, or a contact for retrieval?"

when has 'thinking the situation through' been useful

[pengwern]

"Sasha, please. When they ask like that, it's not for volunteers. I was surprised when I wasn't immediately shot following the interview." No, that's putting ideas in their heads, if it wasn't already there. Mikodez rubs at his wrist and contorts it at a terrible angle, but nothing doing; he can't escape that way.

"What this batch of interviewers at the Academy said was that everything was 'pending Rahal review'. You might imagine I'd have been briefed further on the transport moth, but all I got to see was the inside of my room. No opportunity to gossip with the supposed Rahal." Like some scenario maker knew he'd get bored. He woke up convinced that Istradez was telling the truth, but even now he can't be entirely certain that this isn't an exercise. He ought to poke at the Wasp's crew some more while he's like this.

Mikodez looks at Sasha, who may as well be an instructor. It is important that she gets to hear his critique of the scenario. "I fucking hate this scenario."

Wait, no, that's not constructive. Did he say that? Can he still bullshit his way through if he's volunteering information, rather than answering a direct question? He blinks and schools his face to earnestness. "This could have been quite good if not for some glaring indicators. Great attention to detail, and an excellent selection of threads to pull -- foreign visitors, a disgraced magistrate, an Andan-Rahal misalliance, all that Nirai research, your own inteference," nodding at Sasha, "Not to mention the official mission target. But piling family and traditional Shuos hobbies AND time travel on one single individual is unbalanced." Unless all the other options had equally mind-boggling revelations.

He continues in his most outrageous voice while observing the others in the room.

[SORRY VASS I'm pretending that Iawa said something especially Liozh during Pavn's science tour. And re Quill, got it! I will make up an unfortunate squeaky voice for them if pressed. Enthrallment question: would you know that you're being enthralled, if all was going well?]

when you're not dah overthinkingit iawa

[vass]

[GO AHEAD!]

"Scenario?" Iawa says, levelly. She should leave this to the fox's actual interrogators, but what if they miss the implication?

[Depending how convincing Mishka is/the others are at refuting him, Iawa may entertain the possibility that his training scenario hypothesis is actually correct. Is having lived her whole life thus far just to be an NPC in someone else's training scenario really more unlikely than the rifts? How would she tell if she's just a part of a training scenario? Maybe Iawa is a butterfly dreaming she's Zhuangzi!]

Re: when you're not dah overthinkingit iawa

[pengwern]

Would Iawa be the type that attacks when informed that they live in a game? "Either this is an extra realistic training simulation, which could have been helped by the least bit of subtlety, because you really didn't have to quote from the Classic of Web and Glint every other sentence, or...This is eight hundred years in the past and I've been set loose." Mikodez lets his lips quirk. "I could invest in startups and make a killing. Isn't someone inventing the mothdrive soon?"

[OT but relevant to the topic somehow]

[yhlee]

[I don't suppose you have read Bostrom's "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?", a philosophy paper that posits just that. The Wikipedia article on the Simulation hypothesis discusses it in a more, ah, readable format.]

[pengwern]

[I've skimmed the wiki article before, but had not followed that paper to its source! Paranoia about this being an ancestor simulation run by Kujen beginning in 3...2...1...]

[slybrarian]

["Have you tried running an ancestor simulation where there's calendrical effects? It's a huge pain in the ass. Someone thinks the wrong way and suddenly history goes flying off a cliff. It's so much easier to just have the entire simulated universe to run on invariant physics, or one strictly enforced calendrical environment."]

[yhlee]

[*is dying over here*]

[pengwern]

[How do we know that it isn't the gate-space critters behind it, anyway.]

Re: when you're not dah overthinkingit iawa

[zuhrovet]

"Mishka, Mishka, Mishka. I thought you didn't want to hurt the mothling, and now you want to research how to bind it into a starship?"

where have all the voidmoths gone

[pengwern]

"This is the first that I'm hearing about it," Mikodez says. "Aren't you from the past? I've never encountered an actual voidmoth in my life, let alone any on the whoosh kind of moth besides the big one that Alaric claimed we have on board. Which I have yet to see."

Re: where have all the voidmoths gone

[yhlee]

[Man, all the icons y'all have for this game crack me up...!]

As if summoned, the Wasp's voidmoth thrums again.

[It's responding to the predicament of the sedated mothlings, with which Alaric is dealing with, but which people in the room have not been informed of yet.]

Re: where have all the voidmoths gone

[pengwern]

[*\\Ninefox whooshing through the heavens//*]

Mikodez spreads his palm against the floor. He remembers that sound from the storage hold. He lifts his head, eyes shining (metaphorically - first contact fervor), having made some very rapid calculations.

"Alaric said he could communicate with it. Can it talk to us?

If Sasha's right about the moths, a heptarchate without exotic drives would be unrecognisable, and there would be no way to guarantee his family's safety. But the world that led to Istradez as he is now is....hardly optimal, in too many ways. This ought to raise Sasha's approval, and the nice thing about being Shuos, of course, is that you can always change sides later.

Mikodez bounces to his feet and turns to Sulen. "Where did the mothling in my pack go? Do you still have it? I named it Crowned-With-Eyes but it doesn't actually answer to that. It's cuddly, and sometimes tries to attack people. Well, I say attack, but it might just be confused. Is it on this moth?"

[This is exactly how Mishka would act with a Shuos instructor.]

Re: where have all the voidmoths gone

[venndaai]

"I think we're getting off topic," Sulen says, a bit tightly.

Re: where have all the voidmoths gone

[yhlee]

Ashari makes a gesture of acknowledgment and tightens the enthrallment in order to get Mikodez back on track.

Re: where have all the voidmoths gone

[zuhrovet]

"Tell us about your siblings," Sasha directs Mishka. She wants some baseline information on how he feels about the Istradez in his own timeline.

Re: where have all the voidmoths gone

[pengwern]

"I have an elder sister Avradez, born some years before me..."

Without visible reluctance, Mikodez offers up a bloodless list of his siblings' biographical and educational history. Nothing that Sasha couldn't find, if she landed in his time.

Re: where have all the voidmoths gone

[zuhrovet]

Sasha glances cautiously at Ashari. They just made Mishka answer a question in an ordinary, straightforward fashion, which might be the most terrifying thing she's seen them do, yet.

"How do you feel about your sister Istradez, Mishka?" At least the gender difference makes it easy to keep the timelines straight.

Re: where have all the voidmoths gone

[venndaai]

"Is this relevant?" Sulen murmurs. "We just needed to know if he was a spy, and he is."

Everyone is entitled to their own feelings about family, and it's not Sulen's job to pry those feelings open any more.

Re: where have all the voidmoths gone

[zuhrovet]

Of course it's fucking relevant. Maybe Sulen isn't up on the fact everyone on this ship has at least four names? "Imsayed's name is Istradez, too," Sasha tells them.

Re: where have all the voidmoths gone

[venndaai]

Sulen frowns at her. "Yes, I'm aware. But we have the information we need. We don't need the details of something Imsayed might not wish us to know. We should simply lock this one up now, where he can't cause more harm."

Re: where have all the voidmoths gone

[pengwern]

"Let me put it this way: it's been years since I last met her."

Years can be anything above a single hexarchate cycle, right? And Mikodez had been away from home since entering Shuos Academy, so in truth, he's only had contact with Istradez on the many, many occasions when he needed to arrange for outside assitance on a school prank, or when she was working on her own school applications, or when he wanted to arrange a gift for their family on New Year's, or...

Re: where have all the voidmoths gone

[zuhrovet]

It's been a century and a bit since Sasha last saw Mirek, so that means exactly nothing. "What did our Istradez tell you, when he found you, on the station?"

Re: when has 'thinking the situation through' been useful

[zuhrovet]

Mishka sounds for all the world like Sasha's father critiquing Naxorian theology: if the Prophet has laid out a map for each one of us in the heavens, why is it that in one year there's an avalanche, a drought, and an attack on the signals, when another year we have temperate weather and extra guards? Shouldn't the Prophet sequence challenges in a reasonable way, like a thoughtful teacher?

[enthrallment]

[yhlee]

[A lightly enthralled victim may be aware that they're slipping. A deeply enthralled victim has no idea that anything is wrong. Feel free to play around with this. ;) ]