hexarchate_rpg | Move 1 (Chapter 1.1)

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]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yehan is glad for once that her face rarely shows her emotions accurately; still, she can't help her eyes widening at the abrupt shapeshifting. She wavers awkwardly, not sure if she should jump in, then clears her throat.

"I'm Yehan." No need to give these people more information than necessary yet. And certainly no need to tell them she's a former Shuos--she's all too used to members of the resistance being disappointed that their Shuos isn't an "action" Shuos. Better to stick with what she could do. "Linguist by training. I can do some cryptography in a pinch. And any trouble with local languages--which could include the high language depending how far back we're going--I'm the one to go to." She isn't sure if stating how many languages she knows would be too much, but she decides that the others can find out as needed.

Mikodez turns around and smiles at her. Of the few linguists he'd met, one liked to stare worryingly when you talked, but the other liked to tell stories about the co-evolution of curses with the heptarchate's ever-changing heresies. "Off the top of your head, what's altered in the high language since the third century?"
Maybe later he can go up to check over exactly what type of cryptography she knows.
[ooc I know zilch about either of these two topics myself]

Yehan smiles back. Even if some of the others seem a bit irritated with the younger operative, it's nice to have her expertise be seen as useful. "There have been some slight vowel shifts--I can send you some audio clips--but the biggest difference to keep in mind is that back then the high language still inflected for number. You'll want to keep your I's and we's straight," she said, using the archaic pronouns. "The Rahal tend to preserve old styles the best, so when in doubt, imitate a modern Rahal and hopefully that will be close enough."

[this is mostly based on what I could quickly dig up on the high language in the books fyi]

[You're spot on, but for reference, for game purposes you're pretty free to make up what seems sensible. If you have a question, you're also free to ask me and we can work something out.]

"Given the time we'll be traveling, and with your help, I'm sure that at least some of us will be able to passably imitate it," says Ashari. They finally push off of Sulen and stand up straight. "Could you send those audio clips my way, too? "

Sulen wonders if this counts as historical reenactment, a level five heretical offense when not performed under the strict guidance of Rahal mathematicians. Somehow they doubt they and that other wolf count as proper supervision.

Mikodez abandons the thought of an impromptu impersonation of the strictest Rahal he knows - he doesn’t want to date himself in public more than necessary, and it’s more likely that the Magistrate was unusually grumpy that day from facing down Shuos cadets all cycle.

Yehan’s own intonations are familiar, not that he’d have expected anything else of a trained linguist. “That would help -- we can watch them once we get settled in.”

[general question: when Tseya and Brezan were watching Jedao’s duels, I got the impression that it was because they were already in the silkmoth’s grid, rather than them watching space youtube. They got video mail from Jedao/the hexarchs, but do people get inundated with space junkmail, and was Cheris streaming her favorite shows off the hexarchate’s space internet?]

[Correct--Tseya already had a bunch of records pertaining to Jedao loaded on her silkmoth's grid/computer. There is probably in fact space junkmail, which is alluded to very briefly in the segment in Raven Stratagem where Sfenni talks about the analyst who picked out Brezan's request for aid out of all the space junkmail. The hexarchate can generally be regarded as having instant space communications, it's not like there's any real physics in this setting. Cheris was probably trying to get her favorite shows off the local network--the hard part is usually finding what you want in the masses of poorly indexed space information. That being said, you can certainly mess around with space youtube if you like.]

[Though the Shuos are probably monitoring Space YouTube for unusual activity patterns. If you bring the hexarchate down on us through characteristic vid habits, Sasha will, as the resident information security expert, murder you herself. And in fact you can assume she will install an obnoxious firewall the second she gets a chance.]

[HA HA HA HA HA awesome]

(I actually suspect Mikodez to have taken that course by this time at Shuos Academy, and he's probably about to make inroads on the Wasp's grid later too, but I asked with the noblest of intentions! It is VITALLY important that Mikodez brings the space bounty of late hexarchatian space tv shows to earlier eras.)

[Ashari's also going to be trying to set up inroads and whatnot. Technology isn't their best skill, but they're pretty good at reading instruction manuals, so they might end up bumping into each other on that front. :p I can't wait for Mikodez to introduce the crew, and specially Andan Ashari, to later hex-space tv shows!]

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[Psst--just a formatting note, put OOC discussions in square brackets, like I'm doing now? This will help people tell at a glance what's in-character and what's out of character. Thanks!]

[Yup, sorry for the confusion!]

[Is Sasha going to (willingly or unwillingly) fall into the role of sysadmin and/or all round computer janitor/tech support to the team, in addition to her core competency of security? Because I can see so much potential hilarity there, particularly with clock issues and version/back compatibility issues and people's grid skills being hundreds of years out of date or hundreds of years ahead of reality.]

[Oh, Sasha would love to fix your watch-- that way she can track it, later. And ensure it only shows vids of fluffy rodents, if you are Mikodez. I did some handwaving about how on earth she figures anything out when it's hundreds of years in her future on the timeline page.

Out of character, I really am a theorist. If you or anyone else spot an opportunity for a sysadmin joke, have at it.]

Move 1 (Chapter 1.1)

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OOC: linguistics notes

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[Space Youtube, Space Junkmail, Space Internet]

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Re: [Formatting note / Space Youtube, Space Junkmail, Space Internet]

Re: [Formatting note / Space Youtube, Space Junkmail, Space Internet]

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