Move 1 (Chapter 1.1)

[yhlee]

Time: CLASSIFIED
Place: CLASSIFIED

The tan-skinned woman, your contact in the resistance, doesn't introduce herself, but she has that efficient way of walking that suggests some form of military training, and she leads the twelve of you to the hangar where a trademoth awaits. The moth is painted with some kind of stylized insect symbol. "Technically this is a reclaimed pirate vessel," the woman says abruptly, "but we prefer to call it an entrepreneur. We've named it Wasp, mainly because the technicians couldn't be bothered to repaint it."

She faces you fully, unsmiles. "Let me be frank. In an ideal universe we would send a fully integrated team that had trained together. We don't have that kind of luxury. The twelve of you are the people available for this particular mission, so we're sending you."

The woman's expression smooths out a little. "We have been informed of an opportunity to recruit a Nirai defector, who is going by the name Remi, from a certain time period in the heptarchate. Not only are Nirai valuable because they can always tell what the date is--useful when you're time traveling, as you might imagine--this one claims to have invented a method for detecting rifts and predicting where they will take us, possibly even generating them. As some of you know from personal experience, rifts are unstable and figuring out where they will take you is not...exactly a science. That being said, there's always the possibility that Nirai Remi is a heptarchate agent. Stay alert."

She continues giving you details: the twelve of you will be crewing the Wasp, which is thankfully largely automated, to go through a rift and recover Nirai Remi on the other end from Station Moongray. Her briefing materials include some photographs of Remi, a handsome young man with curly hair and striking ice-violet eyes. Apparently this isn't the first time he's run into trouble with heptarchate authorities, and he's much more interested in continuing his research than getting into yet more trouble.

Remi will be expecting you. The woman is happy to leave the details of his retrieval up to you. In particular, there hasn't been time to do a thorough reconnaissance of Station Moongray, as there's some concern that the particular rift leading to Remi's time and place is unstable and may dissipate soon.

[GM notes: At this point, you should feel free to ask the NPC questions about the mission. You should also feel free to organize yourselves either in-character or out of character--is there going to be a command hierarchy? who will specialize in what roles aboard the moth or during the retrieval? cover stories and identities?--and discuss preliminary plans. You can also talk a little bit about how your character ended up here, if you like. It's fine to have multiple threads going for simultaneous conversations. Given that this is a forum RPG and we're mostly in different time zones, some of that is inevitable. If you have any questions, feel free to ping me--I'll be watching the threads.

Once the characters get underway, there should be plenty of room for interaction and flirting and whatever you like--this is mostly to get us started.--YHL]

Comments

[pengwern]

Nobody familiar with the hexarchate should go for it, so - “Nirai like shiny new moths even better. Worst come to worst, we can get ourselves captured, if we can’t approach by stealth.” Mikodez goes on to list all the things they could do with exotic booze rather than sacrifice it to Nirai who might burn it up for pretty colors, watching the rest of the team and the rebellion contact with interest.
The people who don’t twitch at the thought of falling into the hands of the hexarchate authorities should either be foreign, good at dissembling, or oblivious.
He’d suggest towing the the wreck of the transport moth he came in to those Nirai, but he hasn’t seen it ever since getting picked up by the same woman earlier.

[yhlee]

[Formatting note: psst--for longer posts, consider adding an extra line break between paragraphs so they don't run together. (You won't be able to edit this comment after I respond to it, sorry!) I think Tumblr inserts that extra line automatically, but DW does not. And I know posting from phones is extra-tough, especially for formatting. Hope this helps!]

[Ahahaha Nirai burning up booze like some kind of chem lab gone horribly wrong...]

[vass]

"And you would rather they burn us up for the pretty colors?" Iawa says.

He seems very young and stupid to her. [18, right, pengwern? Iawa is looking down at him from the lofty height of 20.] Young, stupid, reckless, and way too sure of himself. Terrific.

[pengwern]

The condescension! It must mean that his master plan of appearing as brainlessly incompetent as some of his classmates (and, alright, himself sometimes) is working.

“I’m sure we can escape before the Vidona arrive for anything proper. Don’t you remember that scandal when they tried to play catch up before the centenary audit, and what was his name, Teacher Parenchyma spent two episodes of Sesame Corridor on why finishing reports on time is nearly as important as remembrances?”

Mikodez is still trying to probe for a timeframe of the rest of the team. Sesame Corridor has been under interdict for 129 years, but it was part of kindergarten curricula before that for another 204 years. A popular but borderline heretical meme involved pasting the genially irate face of Vidona Parenchyma over any announcement of delayed projects.

But he should ask the contact. “Did Nirai stations have a full complement of remembrance officials in the year 361?”

(I’m assuming that every place in the hexarchate has Rahal/Vidona to oversee remembrances, given Nija’s chapter? And sorry about the spacing earlier - mobile makes everything look scrunched up anyway.)

[yhlee]

The contact nods. "There will be a certain minimum of remembrance officials, yes. But probably not ones with much authority or pull, which may or may not work out in your favor. Nirai stations are considered something of a hardship assignment."

[No worries about the spacing! I have trouble navigating DW on mobile myself, so it's completely understandable.]

[pengwern]

Mikodez makes sure to look politely blank instead of commiserating about confounding Nirai installations, like one of the exercises in a Security class set on a Nirai vessel. They had been given a floor-plan at the beginning and had based their operation around it until half way through, when their instructor informed them that the two main levels were now subject to hideous exotics from an escaped experiment.

[vass]

Iawa, who has three years of experience in loftily allowing pop culture references to sail over her head, just shrugs. She doesn't know what Sesame Corridor is, but she can tell when she's being memed at.

Whatever she says in response, she knows he's going to laugh at her, and she's not taking the bait.

[venndaai]

Sulen can't stop their wince. Immediately they feel angry at themselves. They're a seasoned interrogator- were a seasoned interrogator, they keep forgetting, which is concerning, they don't usually forget things like that, they are not absent-minded, no Rahal is-

They're very used to not reacting, is the point, yet this relaxed child made them flinch. This is something they're going to have to work on.

The child looks young, though of course anyone in the Heptarchate can look that young if they want to. But it's harder to regain the mannerisms and energy of the truly fresh-faced. This one looks pretty harmless, but if there's one thing Sulen's learned in the last twenty years, it's to never take your eyes off the fox.

"Interesting suggestions," they say. "You're clearly more experienced on the subject of exotic booze than I am. What did you say your name was?"

[pengwern]

Mikodez notes the reaction of the two by the crate - are they suspicious in general, suspicious because they think that he’s foreign for suggesting it, or suspicious from knowing specifics about his background?

“Oh, I’ve been doing this for the last year. You should try the grassjelly mix in melon goblets some time. Maybe we could swing by the Nirai, tell them that we’re an avant garde travelling bar, like those library ships out near the Pale Fracture? I’m Avrayen, by the way,” raising his voice to reach the whole group. Mikodez is splicing the name of his older sister Avradez together with a generation marker used at other times in his family, and he makes sure to smile brightly at ‘Vauhan Imsayed’. It’s possible that the family resemblance has been noticed, and that he was slung into this group for this psuedo-relative to keep an eye on him.

Sooner or later someone will ask what he brings to the rebellion, and he will only be able to offer the truth: that he said he wanted to join and was accepted. Makes it all the more likely that a trusted rebellion agent will be on the ship, or that this Wasp is bugged, no matter how antique the decor. He'll plan on being a typical student like his cousins back home all the way to the Nirai Station, even if that leaves him with scutwork on the trademoth. (He knows from experience that it's easiest to plant bugs when you're supposed to be keeping an eye on the servitors.)

[smokedetective]

"A traveling bar!" Ashari exclaims, delighted. This child might stink like a fox, but at least he seems to have a sense of humor, if a suspicious nature. "That's quite the idea. I still think we'd have more luck being traders. Although I suppose the Nirai do need to relax every once in a while. The idea of posing as a pleasure ship does sound like fun."

The child was being discreet in his uncomfortable probing, and with a name like that, he had to be from the -archate, though perhaps after Ashari's time. They just hoped they wouldn't get too fed up with his antics. From personal experience, they knew that young didn't always mean gullible, or easy to influence. They'd need to keep an eye on that one.

[slybrarian]

Alaric looks at Ashari in blatant disbelief. He had gone to a college where the fundamental Properties revolved around the study of deviant and blasphemous technologies, where the sun never shined and monsters stalked the halls. Everyone had still found plenty of time for drinking and parties. Surely grad students were the same the universe over?

"I think," he says carefully, "that we can safely assume the Nirai do go drinking. Among other things."

[smokedetective]

"This is by far the more amusing cover story," says Ashari. "Can we please go with this one?"