hexarchate_rpg | Chapter 3.4: Breaking down the base

zuhrovet posting in

As the meeting ends, the team members move to their assigned tasks.

Dar, Deyna, Seyli and Sulen collect some heavy-duty servitors and begin transferring supplies to the Cantata.

Alaric, Reshad, Shess, and the Cantata's drone prepare to remove the harness from Ankat's moth, The Sedulous Eel.

Back on the Cantata, Sasha goes to her office and starts remotely wiping memory nodes on the base's grid. Jedao is in the Communications/Gunnery room, controlling the weapons. Xiulan acts as his backup. Remi has been instructed to look for patterns or causes of the missing interstellar signals.

Meanwhile, Hana and Eddox look after the mothlings, perhaps joined by Mafyyil, who for some reason has not received clear instructions. Gerae and Ione divide their attention between the mothlings and the nest of pseudo-dragons.

[Welcome to a new move!

I know that things are stressful and uncertain for all of us right now. Please don't fret if you suddenly find yourself with less or more free time than usual--we will adjust! If you would like to give your character a node of peace where they drink tea and admire baby aliens for the next while, this can be arranged. Conversely, if you want a plotty distraction, we will bring you one!

My own focus is unreliable of late, but I'll work on a recap of the previous move as I can.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

zuhrovet

[Did Remi take anything with him when he left? Tablet, supplies, lokki, handwritten letter? Was the corridor where he disappeared on the way to anything in particular?]

Sasha checks Remi's quarters (via the grid) and his workspace within the grid, to see if he left a note. She also checks the remaining base records to see whether there are similar instances of items disappearing.

From:

yhlee

[Missing: Remi's tablet, a bag, his clothes, and about two days' worth of ration bars.

The corridor basically opens out to a couple storage rooms. The storage rooms' contents haven't been disturbed, but the kitchens are short two days' worth of ration bars. He picked the nastiest flavors.]

Remi's quarters are tidy, ditto his grid workspace. There is no note.

From:

zuhrovet

Sasha pings the tablet, choosing a method that should not alert Remi.

[Can Sasha even tell which are the disfavored ration bars?]

From:

yhlee

The tablet is either out of range or has ceased to exist.

[Well, let's just say that Remi picked a mixture of dried roasted squid flavor and natto flavor, and that historically the Kel have disliked both flavors but Kel Command's logistics division keeps acquiring them. Probably a lowest-bidder issue.]

From:

zuhrovet

[There should be a record of communication between the tablet and the grid. Does it cut off at the same moment as the sensor data?]

From:

yhlee

[Yes.]

From:

zuhrovet

[Has Remi made any attempt to access the base's artificial gravity systems?

Does the base have any escape pods or other vehicles besides the moths?]

From:

yhlee

[The last time he deliberately accessed the base grid at all was about half an hour before he vanished. (This is not counting whatever routine back-and-forth pinging was happening between the slate and the base's grid.)

The base has all of two escape pods, both of which are intact and badly in need of servicing. Remi has not been near either of them.

Besides the servitors, there are some hand carts and trolleys and a single flitter. Remi has not accessed any of them.]

From:

zuhrovet

[Has Remi been in contact with any entity or program outside the Cantata team?]

From:

zuhrovet

[Also, had Remi continued his habit of keeping a diary?]

Re: an unexpected development (paging anyone who wants to talk to the Cantata)

From:

yhlee - Date: 2020-03-28 07:29 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: an unexpected development (paging anyone who wants to talk to the Cantata)

From:

zuhrovet - Date: 2020-03-29 12:41 am (UTC) - Expand

Re: an unexpected development (paging anyone who wants to talk to the Cantata)

From:

yhlee - Date: 2020-03-29 10:43 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

yhlee

[No such contact.]

From:

yhlee

[I am genuinely not trying to be obtuse! I know exactly what happened to Remi and if you would enjoy this more with more clues, I can definitely drop more hints. On the other hand, if the sleuthing is fun for you and/or the other players, carry on.]

From:

zuhrovet

[I know I'm moving fast! No need to provide extra hints until other folks have a chance to ask their own questions.]

From:

hoardingpearls

Reshad replies over the grid, excluding only Remi himself from read permissions.

"Where was he last?" The conversation with the Eel may be somewhat delayed.

Then again, someone capable of everything this Kujen can muster, and who was demonstrably concerned about his safety, is not someone she wants running wild at any point of any operation.

From:

zuhrovet

"In a hallway." Sasha attaches the grid's data, such as it is. "Tracing his tablet, will set up a walkthrough."

From:

zuhrovet

Sasha forwards Reshad and Sulen the information about the gear Remi took.

She asks the Cantata, "Have you noticed anyone around the base besides humans and moths?"

From:

yhlee

Cantata's answering hum, even before the grid translation, is more discordant than usual. "No--all the numbers are the same except for Remi being gone. There weren't extra humans or moths."

From:

hoardingpearls

"Can you detect rifts?" Maybe moth senses? Maybe Norai sensors? But if a Nirai were to attack those very sensors-

"And can you run diagnostics? Is everything working all right?"

With someone else investigating the actual area of Remi's disappearance, Reshad busies herself warning the other two moth crews that the visitors from Cantata are slightly delayed, and would they please run the beginning preparations now. She copies this crew on the fact that she's done so.

From:

zuhrovet

[

slybrarian, any thoughts on methods for detecting rifts? Some kind of gravitational ripple or trace radiation, maybe?]

From:

yhlee

"I can sometimes tell the big rifts are there, but the little ones are barely noticeable," Cantata replies. "Mostly I only know they're there when something goes in or out and the masses change."

From:

zuhrovet

Sasha checks the base grid for any evidence of other objects suddenly disappearing, or for tampering by someone other than her or Remi.

She also writes to Ankat and Kaliyan:

remi has gone missing. keep an eye on your people. ~S.

From:

yhlee

No evidence of other objects suddenly disappearing.

However, there's evidence of slightly anomalous environental air flow in the corridor where Remi vanished, around the time he did so, a drop in pressure so slight and so temporary that the grid decided it was a sensor malfunction rather than an actual emergency.

From:

hoardingpearls

Reshad queries the error logs, looking for evidence of any similar malfunctions.

From:

yhlee

There was a brief possible blip in the same corridor about two hours before Remi's disappearance, of the same nature and duration; that time, too, the system decided it was probably a sensor malfunction.

[Alaric could verify, if he had time to do a sensor check, that the grid is not wrong that some of the base's sensors are janky as hell...]