hexarchate_rpg | Move 4 (Chapter 1.4)

Time: 361 (high calendar)
Place: out-rift near Station Moongray

[GM's note: I know several characters/players are still resolving matters from Move 3. That's fine! You may continue posting to Move 3 to resolve those threads or shift threads over to Move 4 to reflect the changed state of affairs, whichever you feel more comfortable with. Ashari and the rest probably ought to settle the matter of who's going where.]

A few new things happen.

Presumably Sasha has some kind of alert set up on the virus. She notices that it's trying to wriggle its way out into the wider grid, specifically so it can listen in on conversations and send back recordings to its unknown master.

[Since the grid responds to voice address, it's a fair bet that some form of sensors are always active within the Wasp.]

Meanwhile, Kaliyan, who is monitoring Scan from the Wasp's cockpit/command center, gets an alert from the Wasp's automated functions. While the "welcome message" from Station Moongray is still droning on repeat, what looks like the research moth Butterfly Lens is starting to move in the Wasp's direction.

What's more, a basic query of Scan will reveal that a second spacecraft has come out from the Scan shadow of a large nearby planetoid, and is also converging on the Wasp's location. While this second spacecraft isn't making any (more) effort to hide itself, any check on Scan will reveal that, unlike the Butterfly Lens, this second moth has some armaments. It's not a full-fledged warship--and it's almost certainly not Kel, since the Kel avoid traveling alone if they can help it--but it's probably intended for local defense.

[EDITED TO ADD: Sorry, I glitched and forgot]
If Yehan gets a good luck at the second ship on visuals, she'll notice with some surprise that it looks like a ship out of the past--there are markings on it that look Naxorian, but weirdly distorted, like it's from another dialect or related symbology.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

134 seconds. Ashari is pondering something, with an ineffable Andan expression. Virmad looks as if he's mentally computing isomorphisms of even lattices¹, though presumably that's not what he's working on.

They still haven't communicated with the outside. Sasha's not willing to leak information to the virus without a good explanation for why the leak would end (such as the grid coming back online). She could just send the message that Ashari already authorized, though?

Sasha drafts it in her very best formal high language. Might sound a little bit antique, but with luck that will be taken as eccentricity:

From distinguished artist Andan Rii, greetings. We are delighted to accept escort from the Butterfly Lens for our Bumblebee.

She copies the message to Yehan's and Ashari's screens, just in case they want to make a last-minute grammar critique, and sets it to send in forty seconds.

[¹ A math kind of lattice, not the Space Internet kind of lattice.]

Edited 2017-08-03 11:36 (UTC)

"As long as we have the power on and weapons at the ready," says Ashari, abruptly standing up from where they were sitting. "There's not much else we can do. I need at least another person with Kaliyan and Ankat, in case everything goes to shit, and someone here to keep track of any incoming... issues."

"Sasha, this looks good but. Hm. Yehan, what do you think of changing 'distinguished' to 'humble'? Or does that power play simply not translate into this time?"

"I'll have to go change to greet the guests, but before that... One more thing. Sasha, Yehan... Send something to the incoming ship. Greet them as fellow travelers. Ask what year it is or something about the local system or something equally affable. Try a couple of languages, if you can, to make it look like we're truly just curious travelers."

"Sulen and Virmad, tread lightly, especially if you're going to go off onto the station alone and we're going to have visitors. You'll need to start playing at all this early."

"Iawa and the kid, you're on guest duty."

"I'm going to go change into something more appropriate and get to the airlock. Is there anything I missed?"

Sasha makes the change to "humble" and resets her forty-second timer.

"Ashari," she begins, "About that second ship--" But Ashari has already swept out of the room.

She opens a comm connection to Yehan, and starts speaking in Naxorian. "That Rosemallow ship is a press gang waiting to happen. You can't let them know you're Kirrish, and they'd never believe I'm Fountain House. If Ashari wants us to talk to them, can you pick a language from the other side of the heptarchate?"

[I'm confused — I've been struggling to follow the planning for the last while. are we still thinking we're meeting station officials, or are we now preparing to greet people from the second ship? this post is entirely detail-free since I'm not sure what's going on. >_>]

“Being obviously a Rahal tends not to invite many questions,” Virmad says, “thankfully. But we’ll be careful.”

[My understanding was that Sasha and Yehan were worried about the second ship, because it appears to be from a heretical version that ties into their background, and everyone else is preparing to deal with officials from the station from the first ship.

In particular, could Ashari confirm that this is what they have in mind, or correct me if I have misunderstood the situation? Any further clarification welcome.]

Edited 2017-08-04 17:48 (UTC)

[This is what Ashari had in mind. I'm sorry I've been on and off lately, that should stop after this week. The finals for my summer semester are on Wednesday and things have been a little hectic. :'))]

Mikodez, having ducked away from Sulen, jogs off for the galley to retrieve a plate of miniature edible fidget spinners snacks, made with precise chips of hard candy. Small flowers can be seen scattered in the blades from a jar of osmanthus honey that he dug up somewhere, reminiscent of one of Ashari’s refinements on the moth. The ground-up powder from the leftover nutrient block they offered him all those days ago is not distinguishable.

He jogs off for where Iawa and Ashari are, and offers one to Iawa while temptingly pressing the button on the middle.

[your move, person who wouldn’t so much as open his homemade organic pink fairy armadillo meme >:O (Still haven’t gotten my hands on a fidget spinner, but I did watch the cookie video with fascinated terror.) Maybe the tracker in that nutrient bar only activates upon hitting bacteria in the digestive system, so it hasn’t started to work yet?]

[Whoa, what'd I miss? I don't remember being sent a meme!]

Iawa smiles at the edible spinners with genuine appreciation. "Thank you," he says, freeing up a hand to take the snack and spin it around before nibbling on it.

The flavour is exactly right, a little taste of home. He hasn't had one since he left home for the Vidona. The number of spokes is wrong -- six, not seven, and colours are a jumble of all the different faction colours except the traditional edible gold and white, but the design is otherwise exactly the same as when they were a Liozh delicacy.

"This is great, Avrayen. I've missed honey spice gears so much." Maybe the kid isn't so bad after all.

[Mikodez may have succeeded in bugging Iawa in the sense of feeding him a tracker (did he do that?) but he failed to bug Iawa in the sense of annoying him, this time. And may be interested to know that this snack used to be associated with a faction considered heretical in his time period!

PS, for everyone else who was wondering: edible fidget spinner video.]

Iawa seems sincere, which is odd, but Mikodez makes a note and moves on to his next victim. He politely offers the plate to Ashari, while starting on a less perfect one himself from the bottom layer, careful to only damage the translucent blades. The amount in one spinner snack of whatever active ingredient the nutrient bar held was bound to be far lower than what he’d eaten then, and he hadn’t actually felt any effects over the last few days. But giving Ashari a taste of their own suspiciously heretical comestible was worth six hours of messing with the matter printer, pouring candy, spilling candy and having to chip it off the stove top, stealing coolant from the moth engine to speed things up, and eating the full bowl of leftover honey mixture until he made himself sick.

[oh no, I was trying to come up possible overtures that Mikodez might have made during the transit time. So nothing that Iawa received, probably! But I thought it might be useful next move if Mikodez runs away and Ashari attempted to use the tracker in the bar, only to find a tangle of trails from all the people [like the incoming boarders] who ate one? Mostly this was for the video’s sake.]

Move 4 (Chapter 1.4)

Sasha fails at hierarchy: paging Yehan and Ashari

Re: Sasha is bad at hierarchies, Paging Team

worrying about Rosemallow - paging Yehan

Re: Sasha is bad at hierarchies, Paging Team

[clarifying planning: paging Ashari]

Re: [clarifying planning: paging Ashari]

Re: Sasha is bad at hierarchies, Paging Team

Re: Sasha is bad at hierarchies, Paging Team

Re: Sasha is bad at hierarchies, Paging Team