hexarchate_rpg | Move 2 (Chapter 1.2)

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moves: chapter 1

Move 2 (Chapter 1.2)

Time: 702 (high calendar)
Place: a rebellion outpost near a stable rift

[GM's note: Elesa's player had to drop, so we'll just say that Crow tells you she's been called away to another last-minute mission better suited to her talents and move on.]

[Also, for your ease of reference, Mission information, mostly from Move 1 so far.]

The interior of the Wasp is more spacious than it looks. Crow, when asked, informs you that this is a precursor to variable layout technology. For the curious (and those from earlier eras), she explains that variable layout is a hexarchate-era technology that allows affected areas to be bigger inside than out, and for the "rooms" to be rearranged almost at will, or connected with internal teleporters. The Wasp's version isn't advanced enough for room-shuffling, but it does mean that the moth will easily accommodate all of you.

The Wasp contains, at minimum:
- a cockpit for a pilot and copilot
- a gunnery room (weapons/defenses can also be automated)
- an office for the commander [that's you,

smokedetective]
- a small medical bay--the Wasp can suggest first aid treatments with an expert system, and there's room in "freezers" to put up to two people in a primitive form of stasis so they can be taken to a real hospital elsewhere if someone gets badly injured [this will only happen to your character with your permission, but could make for fun drama if you are so inclined]
- a combination galley and dining room
- a large common room suitable for entertaining (which begs the question of just what kind of entertaining pirates do), although its decor is rather lacking unless someone wants to play with the matter printer
- sufficient quarters for everyone to have a cabin of their own
- a capacious storage hold filled with strange liquors and other miscellaneous trade goods, as well as occasional miscellaneous supplies

You can address the Wasp's mothgrid from anywhere within it, or access it through slates that communicate with the computers.

Once you reach the rift, travel through it is as simple as pointing the Wasp at it and going through. Inside the rift, you won't be able to see anything but a shimmering blue haze, and it is highly, highly disrecommended that anything alive go extravehicular while in rift transit; there are robots (non-sentient) to take care of any repairs that might become necessary.

[Note to Alaric: if he's paying attention to this, he may notice that, interestingly, Mothra itself appears to be unharmed by the rift energies, thanks to some sort of innate resistance. Mothra may or may not have anything to say about this if he can figure out a way to communicate with it.]

[General notes and formatting: Since I'm going to have probably limited internet access over the next odd-week per this announcement, this is what I suggest:

Players should familiarize themselves with the Wasp and feel free to set out toward the rift in order to commence their mission with travel through the rift. I don't think one day = one move makes sense, especially during boring travel bits. Feel free to use different threads for different conversations that may take place during different times in the journey (one thread for day one, another for day two, etc.)--whether that means making further plans, or devising clever weapons using the matter printer, or getting to know each other, or looking up the briefing materials on heptarchate culture/tech in the target year 361, etc. Just to make thread navigation easier, I suggest that henceforth threads about major topics be titled to help people navigate. If there's a major topic change, or you need to flag an OOC query/discussion, change the comment title, e.g.

immolationfox: Weapons Inventory
Shuos Jedao happily goes through ALL the crates in the hold to check for any weapons, including knitting needles.

overlyloyalhawk: re: Weapons Inventory
Gized sighs and goes to ~~keep an eye on Jedao~~ help him count, since Jedao sucks at numbers.

immolationfox: [paging GM]
[Are there any small arms in here? Grenades? Also, whiskey?]

We don't need to be strict about this, but if we do this for major topics it'll probably help navigating threads.

Once I get back the week after Readercon, we'll see about moving the action forward on the other side of the rift!]

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

[Yeah, no Space Internet during rift travel is a pretty safe assumption.]

The entire moth is a panopticon-- you can answer important questions such as 'Is Kaliyan in the common room?' just by querying the grid-- so Sasha's not going to get too fussed about amateur attempts at surveillance. She infects the teenager's tablet with a series of monitor viruses, though, just for the sake of completeness. The first in the series is essentially educational, and will turn up if Mikodez makes any attempt at grid hygiene; the others would take a concerted effort to clean out.

[I hope some of that tape peels off: we might want it once we arrive at our destination!]

[You want Andan minimalism for the year we'll be in after we exit the rift, right?]

Sasha accepts the meeting and requests that they add 'defining best and worst entertainments' to the agenda.

She'll need Yehan's linguistic help to clean up the matter printer's color definitions. Should they include Yehan in this meeting, or do Sasha & Yehan meet ahead of time?

Ankat lurches into his room, a large bag slung over his shoulder, his dog darting between his legs as he enters. Throwing his bag onto his bed he begins methodically unpacking; a set of water and food dishes for Yisrain go next to the door, multicolored clothes are neatly packed away, a pad of artificial, odor suppressing grasses laid in the toilet, and gridpaper briefing documents placed in a drawer.

Reaching further into his bag, stylized statues of a serpent, coiled around a tree, a group of people in exotic clothing, and an abstract form of flowing curves, unfamiliar to hexarchate eyes, are placed on his desk. He looks around for a suitable cabinet, before leaving for the matter printer. Returning, he carries a small metal locker (for some reason decorated with an eye-searing Andan-style floral print) with a sturdy, mechanical combination lock. A few invariant guns are taken out of the bag, disassembled, cleaned, oiled, reassembled, and locked inside.

As he reaches the bottom of the bag, he slows. He swallows uncomfortably, and his eyes go distant for a moment. He calls Yisrain to him, picking her up and giving her a treat as she comes, shaking slightly as he holds her in his arms. She bears this patiently for a moment before squirming free onto the bed, walking in a decisive circle about the foot of it, and lying down. Taking a breath, Ankat reaches into the bag and pulls out the hilt of a calendrical sword, glancing at the weapons locker before decisively hanging it above his pillow.

Edited 2017-07-09 18:40 (UTC)

Kaliyan decides she better get herself acquainted with the ship first and foremost.

Surprising exactly no one, she starts with the gunnery room. (She reasons that her predictability will make her easy to find if she's needed). She wants to familiarize herself with the moth's weapons, to get a good sense of their firepower. Based on what she gathered from the briefing, she fully expects her conclusion to be “Don't get into any space battle, you will die”, but still she wants to be conscientious.

She also looks for a vacant room to turn into a gym on the way, because working out is how Kaliyan spells taking a break.

[Kaliyan is slowly turning into a meathead. I blame the abundance of nerds aboard this ship.]

There's a crate of Kel exercise gear in the hold. Sasha has been meaning to go through it looking for free weights, but Kaliyan probably has a better idea what those devices are for.

Virmad doesn't have much to add to his quarters by way of decoration, as such, but as he's unpacking he does set aside a few things that aren't strictly essential (that is, besides his clothes and his Tlen Gwa textbook — with the friendly title Let’s Learn Tlen Gwa!, not at all reflective of its staid interior text, which is carried over almost unchanged from an earlier edition first published some fifty years before Virmad's copy — and reference grammar/dictionary):

three other physical books (collections of poetry by Rahal Senjek and Kel Zem Rao, and something in Gwa-an [on the off-chance anyone reads Gwa-an, the title is The Ontology of Thought]);

a small, framed watercolor painting signed "Rahal Ejad" — it's a very conventional seascape with a single bird flying overhead; and

a small metal icon in the shape of a lantern — if someone were to examine it closely, they'd see that it looks like it was meant to be a pendant, but Virmad hasn't bothered to put it on a chain or string.

The books (Tlen Gwa materials included) and the painting he leaves on his nightstand; the icon he takes a long look at, then sighs and puts it back in his now-otherwise-empty bag.

Despite having done the same to half his PE class, Mikodez has to tamp down a spike of irritation. As though he been told to not take candy from strangers. But look at who was stepping forward automatically at the mention of chocolate. What was chocolate, anyway?

It was too late to curse at himself, even inside his own head. He missed the opportunity earlier for stopping Ashari’s appointment as the mission’s leader, and the worst time for assassinating anyone was in a closed system when you didn’t have an escape route. He had no scapegoats prepared, as the shapeshifter womanform had mysteriously departed between their time in the hangar and now. The only consolation he had was that this was not quite the most logical time for Ashari to be poisoning him in turn. The resistance might have had him killed before getting on the moth, so what could have changed between now and the start of the trip?

Behind Ashari, a door hissed as it closed, shutting off the square of light from the common room. Of course. The brief time they spent with ‘Vauhan Imsayed’ in there earlier. They were still within eyesight of that doorway, but now there were no witnesses. Ashari had one sure ally who might be a wolf, two Kel at their command, and all the briefing material that ‘Crow’ had given them earlier. They probably had codes to their rooms and the weapon locker as well. Damn.

From the outside, this deliberation looks like Mikodez checking the ingredient list of the nutrient block over. “Chocolate, chili powder, processed bacon chips, artificial mangosteen flavor, nuwheat flour.” He tears the packet open and bites through three-fifths of the bar. Ashari will be able to make out a very indistinct thank you, and have a chance to be appalled at how quickly he’s eating.

[was it poisoned :0 also thanks for letting me check off a square on the Mikodez bingo sheet.]

The distance between each crew quarters is negligible. Mikodez takes one set in the middle, rather than one far to the end of the corridor like a fox gone to ground. He might even consider keeping his door open all the time and turning the volume on his shows and games up instead of using headphones.

Inside, he seems to have gathered most of the useless sidetables around the Wasp. On them, if samples of the alcohol cargo are allowed, will be tall glass decanters with settling layers of various liquids, and various gridpaper with recipe notes. It’s too bad that grid searches aren’t working for him, or he could have looked up their specific gravities of the liquids, instead of keeping this obstacle maze of furniture in his room, all of them flimsy and easy to shove towards someone coming through the doorway.

His bed is off on the opposite side from the door, partly blocked by a tall storage cabinet. He has a emptied bag of belongings, as the few shirts and sweaters he has are flung around the room, folded but not precisely neat.

[It would be terrible of Mikodez to forget which pieces of tape are his bugs and which were already on the moth. Which will certainly happen, if he turns all his tablets off for the duration of the trip. He might mumble something about the chargers being wrong and go back to jengzai solitaire.]
[--I didn't realise you could change the subject! So that's...how you change thread titles...]

After unpacking the few things he brought with him, Virmad's agenda has two items on it. First, he wants to ask the mothgrid for specific information about the High Calendar in the period they're traveling to — he's got a general idea of the trajectory of the Calendar's development, but if he needs to pose as a Rahal from hundreds of years ago (and he has the not entirely pleasant suspicion that he will), he needs to make absolutely sure he's got all the remembrances and their attendant rituals straight (on top of not accidentally referencing anything from the future).

He'll have plenty of time to review whatever information the Wasp can provide over the course of their trip, so he's not going to settle down to study it right away (although he'll skim through it quickly to reassure himself that none of his memory of this period from his Historical Doctrine seminar was blatantly wrong).

His second priority is to try to find Sulen and talk to them alone. He needs to find out what another Rahal — or, presumably, ex-Rahal — is doing here; that is, he needs to find out how worried he should be about their presence on the moth. He wanders idly (putting on his generic "purposeful Rahal" mask) through the corridors in search of Sulen, although he's not in any particular hurry, and if anyone else stops him en route he's willing to chat.

[I forgot to ask during move 1/you mentioned he was thinking about it but didn't say what his conclusion was — what signifier is Mikodez displaying at the moment?]

[It's currently unclear to me how exactly we access the grid ; do we all have some kind of mobile device or do we use terminals ?]

Edited 2017-07-09 18:58 (UTC)

Kaliyan answers Ashari's memo regarding the gunnery with a very brief "On it.".

[I just did a quick text search of the published books, and found the following methods:

Tablet (probably come in different sizes)
Terminal
Voice command (I think?)
Augment.

Sasha's tablet is sadly antique, and augment technology from her time wasn't good for much, so she's primarily using the moth's terminals.]

Briefly, this is what Ashari has on the other team members. Note that these profiles are theoretically only visible to Ashari, but a reasonably good hacker would be able to get access to them; Sasha almost certainly, if she cared.

- Vauhan Istradez: Related to a very powerful well-to-do family with Shuos and Andan connections from ca. 1250 and has the skills you'd imagine. Suffered physical trauma going through the rift that brought him to the rebellion, so someone should keep an eye on him for medical reasons.

- Sasha Zuhrovet: Hacker with borderline heretical influence over "luck," especially regarding games of chance. Nirai flunk-out, not because she wasn't good enough but because of aforementioned borderilne heretical tendencies.

- Aricura Sulen: Rebel Rahal inquisitor who turned up with you, Ashari. Standard scrying and inquisitorial abilities, probably not very good for undercover work.

- Vestar Ashari: Disarmingly, the grid does not have an available profile of you, although one almost certainly exists in the rebellion's records somewhere.

- Dah Iawa: Liozh heritage and Vidona background, but with a weak stomach for violence except as regards stopping torture.

- Eshegen Virmad: Former Rahal. His connection, however tenuous, with the arch-traitor Shuos Jedao should be monitored, especially if traveling to a time overlapping Jedao's.

- Zirvesi Ankat: Outprocessed infantry Kel. Useful in a firefight, but his grudge against Kel Command could become a problem. Adorable dog.

- Kaliyan Ette: A Kel's Kel despite being, technically, a heretic. Warmoth experience.

- Cherrewin Yehan: A polyglot Shuos linguist. Should not be used as Shuos infantry.

- Vauhan Mikodez: Shuos cadet, primarily an administrator/analyst candidate. It is imperative that his life be preserved. The profile doesn't say why--that information is need-to-know only.

- Liatris Alaric: Foreign Nirai-alike with the heretical ability to null local exotics. The rebellion wouldn't mind finding more of him.

[You can also refer to the character apps, but not all that info will be in the profiles. And as per

zuhrovet, you probably want to research 361, not 693-704?]

[Re: briefing, there is one note that sticks out--the person who initially assessed Nirai Remi highly disrecommends seduction as a contact method, and adds that Remi appears to be around 20 years old, unusually young for his position at the research station. Other specific questions, ask.]

[Yeah, your weapons will buy you time in case of smaller pirates, but you're better off running.

Kaliyan can have a gym no problem.]

[You're welcome to invent early high calendar filler detail and I'll run with it. :)]

[Yeah, tablets, terminal, voice command. Augments that won't look too suspicious in the 300s are not great, so the first three will work best.]

[Oh, researching the calendar of the time period is a good idea, why didn't I think of that.]

Sulen's on their way to the cargo bay to check out these exotic liqueurs mentioned, and is only mildly panicking over all the noises the moth keeps making. They stop dead when they see Virmad. It's not that they want to avoid him, exactly. It's just that they have some very mixed feelings about their former faction, not to mention old insecurities. Whoever this wolf is- and he's clearly not trying to hide that he is a wolf- he probably has much stronger, better thought out reasons for defecting than they do, and did it after careful consideration, not in a fit of bitter anger.

They give him a respectful bow. "Eshegen Virmad, if I remember correctly?" they ask, using the forms for politely addressing a coworker of equal standing.

[is Virmad's signifier still scrywolf circling? Sulen's is scrywolf trapped in glass to indicate an obsessive and rigid personality]

[Are communications between our respective devices dependent on the grid ? My point of concern being : do we have a way to talk to each other outside of the moth ? ~~Should we look for Station Moongray's wifi password ?~~ ]

Edited 2017-07-09 20:15 (UTC)

[Most of the current devices require the mothgrid. There's a small supply of communication devices that will work without it--and you can manufacture more using the matter printer.]

[EDIT: ~~their wi-fi password is probably XYZZY~~.]

Edited 2017-07-09 20:17 (UTC)

[Good call! Sasha adds "Check encryption protocol on space radios" to her to-do list.

~~Their wifi password is RemembrancesAreExcellent, because the heptarchate thrives on subtlety.~~]

[Iiiii'm fairly sure it's Smiling, since the phrasing in the book is "a brief shift", Zehun allowed him to pass the assessment, and contact with the Rahal over his career is bound to have turned up other instances of Ninefox Crowned with eyes. His priorities at the moment are all short-term rather than long term strategic vision for the hexarchate's trajectory, but that might change (along with his signifier) when he acquires more information about the rebellion?]

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 2 of 7

Move 2 (Chapter 1.2)

[space internet during rift travel]

Re: [more on bugs, the spy kind]

Re: Ashari's Agenda

Re: Ashari's Response to Sasha's Memo - paging Yehan

Re: Interior Design: Ankat's quarters

Getting acquainted with the moth : Gunnery

Re: Getting acquainted with the moth : Gunnery

Re: Interior Design: Virmad

no subject

Re: Interior Design

bugged tape

Virmad's agenda (paging Sulen?)

no subject

no subject

Re: Ashari's Agenda

no subject

Re: Ashari's Agenda

Re: Getting acquainted with the moth : Gunnery

[high calendar note]

[grid access methods]

Re: Virmad's agenda (paging Sulen?)

Re: [grid access methods]

[communication devices]

Re: [grid access methods]

no subject