Move 24 (Chapter 1.24)

[yhlee]

[GM note: This is a wrap-up move to close off the Station Moongray arc. Well done, everyone!]

[IMPORTANT: There is a roll call thread in this move. Please respond if you intend to continue as an active player for the next arc. Otherwise I will move you off the active list and to the NPC/inactive list.]

Year 361, Month Three, Day Seventeen (Monday), ~0900

Kaliyan (NPC) successfully guides the Wasp to the rift without complications or interference. She reports that the Rosemallow ship has veered away and chosen not to pursue or harass them further--at least in this timeline. The ship will be spending the next five to seven days in rift travel.

In the Rift:

Ashari orders everyone to catch up on sleep in shifts. After this has happened, they call a meeting that includes Sulen, Virmad, Sasha, Iawa, Alaric, and Mikodez [if pengwern is available], with Gerae (NPC) and Remi (NPC) as guests. The Wasp (NPC) may also venture opinions through Alaric and Sasha as interpreters. Kaliyan (NPC), Ankat (NPC), and Yehan (NPC) oversee the ship in case of emergency, but can be called via the ship's grid if anyone has questions for them specifically.

Tentative agenda as per this thread [Move 23]: (a) addressing problems in teamwork during the Station Moongray mission, (b) how to rectify those issues, and (c) next steps, including any recruitment.

[GM notes: Players are welcome to suggest plot hooks for what they'd like to explore in the next arc. Going after Quill? Rabble-rousing? Crashing the heptarchate's stock market?

Also, I'd really prefer the team leader to be a currently active PC rather than an NPC. If someone would like to volunteer their character for the job, I can move Ashari (NPC) to more of a background/support position, or maybe "shadowy boss who doesn't get involved in the day to day decision-making that much."

For recruitment, I still think the team would benefit from a couple of more fighty/meat shield type characters, and I'm thinking of opening up applications so we can recruit two more PCs. Thoughts on this are welcome, either IC or OOC. I'm personally not opposed to opening up mothlings as adoptable PCs, although they're not really meat shields yet...]

Comments

different user interfaces - still paging Iawa

[zuhrovet]

[Got it, thanks!]

"I've still got lots of cable ties, if you'd like to add some to the kit," Sasha says.

The next bit is harder. "On the list of things that could have gone wrong--you've noticed I use a lot of verbal commands with the grid, right? There was a minute there when I thought you were hostile Shuos. If I'd been a little bit more alert, I could have dropped through the floor and then flooded the room with carbon dioxide. Which would have been unfortunate. So. Maybe also gag people, if you're worried they might be hostile?"

Iawa obviously needs more experience restraining people. You never react the way you hope to in a crisis, you react the way you've drilled. (Sasha's personal contingency plans now have "CALL ANKAT FIRST" scrawled in red at the left margin; she runs through them before she falls asleep.) Sasha could use some practice restraining people herself. The obvious thing to do would be to talk to Ankat about working this into the sparring sessions. But Sasha's got plenty of experience with the way self-defense class can fail when you're smaller than everyone else and they don't like you very much, and Iawa's tentative during practice in a way that makes Sasha wonder if they've had similar experiences. Also, Ashari and Sulen come to sparring.

"If you want to practice tying people up, you can use me, if you want," Sasha offers. Green saint, this is the heptarchate, she has no idea how Iawa's going to take that. "I mean, in a practical way. I don't--I understand if you don't trust me. But I do think you should practice with someone."

Re: different user interfaces - still paging Iawa

[vass]

"Thank you, I'll take the cable ties," Iawa says gravely, trying not to show distaste. They'll see if the matter printer can make them something less likely to cause nerve damage.

They don't like the idea of gagging unconscious patients either. Too much risk of aspirating vomit. But that's clearly not a consideration that Sasha's going to listen to. There's something else about what Sasha just said that is nagging at them, but they can't quite place it.

"And thank you for the offer. I suppose I do need to review practise safe restraint techniques, if this sort of thing is going to happen again," they say. Any innuendo sails entirely over their head. "I think if you wanted to hurt me, you wouldn't need to ask me to tie you up to do that."

Thinking of the ways Sasha could hurt them with her technical preparations, to say nothing of her hand to hand combat skills, shakes loose what bothered them before about Sasha's mention of grid-based gas traps.

"Sasha, I don't mean this as... I'm sure you've thought about this already, but I don't know your reasoning. Have you set up the grid as a..." What's the word? [dead man's switch] "Um, if you fall unconscious for a long time, or are otherwise out of touch with the grid. Have you set it up to do something deadly?"

Because they'd really rather it didn't.

Iawa trails into silence.

Re: different user interfaces - still paging Iawa

[zuhrovet]

"Fuck, no. That is, it's a fair question. But I don't like single points of failure, and I'm not going to introduce them where I don't have to."

Sasha crosses her arms, then uncrosses them. She knows the next question she'd ask, if she were Iawa. "My levels of grid access are, themselves, a potential liability. I have thought about how to limit the damage, if I'm subjected to coercion somehow." Though she needs to go to back over those plans, now that she's seen Ashari in action.