hexarchate_rpg | Move 7 (Chapter 1.7)

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moves: chapter 1

Move 7 (Chapter 1.7)

Time: 361
Place: Station Moongray, at last!

[GM's note: If your characters wanted to make any preparations or do any interactions in between Move 6 and Move 7, that's totally fine--just start a thread here with an appropriate subject header so everyone knows. If it's more in the nature of character RP than plot-related RP, it's also fine to start a separate character RP post.]

The Wasp
The Wasp is securely docked under Kaliyan's guidance in one of Moongray's bays--pretty roomy, but Moongray must be used to receiving shipments of raw materials for any fabrication, plus any specialty equipment they can't make or replace with what they have on-station.

In response to Alaric's last communication with the Wasp [Move 6], it responds with a box containing the Wasp, a bag-of-water human figure, and the Rebellion's logo and a "1." Then it pauses and sends two juxtaposed illustrations, one of a moth inside a box with a specifically Nirai voidmoth logo, and one of three moths outside the box.

The welcome on-station
When anyone who's coming on-station emerges, Andan Bokali and Nirai Pavn lead the way.

The group is greeted by Station Administrator Nirai Paerani Shan--who watches them from behind a translucent partition. Shan is a short, stumpy woman whose every inch of visible skin is covered with tattoos and/or implants. The lenses covering her eyes combined with the colorful, shimmering shawl she's wearing makes her resemble a butterfly. "So what's this I hear about trade goods?" she says through an intercom system that distorts her voice.

A rather harried looking group of security workers appears at another door that is blocked by yet another translucent partition. Interestingly (and this was not mentioned in the briefing materials), their leader appears to be a broad, muscular lieutenant seconded from the Kel--the Nirai uniform looks like it only barely fits him, and the golden Kel ashhawk at his breast gleams in the lights of the docking bay.

"Before we start negotiating," the lieutenant says after an inscrutable look in Shan's direction, as if he's used to her jumping the gun (so to speak), "I will have to ask you all to submit to a security and medical scan, for everyone's safety. It might tickle if you have any implants." He holds up a handheld scanner.

Bokali looks bemused. "I always do love being the guinea pig for any bored diseases, but I don't even feel so much as a sniffle coming on."

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My father's also a physicist, and I can definitely second all that. Especially the puns. (Which are extra bad when they double as dad jokes.)

[From my time as the lone useless technician in a small lab, I guess there's making purchasing websites less painful, having people who know how to use the analysis programs to deal with the data (so grabbing a few extraneous Shuos analyst children for scutwork should be effective, if inapplicable to now) and, yes, definitely hoping on a star that things don’t break over the weekend >:(

The only things I can think of for him to try later is sabotage that leads impatient scientists to do the equivalent of propping secure doors open while they wait for it to be fixed, or the last resort of “nice people holding keycard doors open.” I'm sure the proverb in the hexarchate is [Beware of Shuos offering grid assistance] even by this time period, so that's out too. He could always be a rubber beetle who's very easy to joke with or yell at.

(tell me about these jokes)]

Edited 2017-08-24 05:49 (UTC)

[Whereas I'm picturing a seal-the-animal all on its own without its unicorn friends]

Iawa follows close behind Avrayen, embarrassingly empty-handed. He has not yet twigged that physics jokes might be a useful resource on a Nirai station, but has rich previous experience in smiling as said jokes soar over his head.

Iawa's grandparent had a favourite joke about being a Liozh invariant technology specialist: "If it doesn't work, it's physics. If it works in theory but is completely impractical, it's philosophy. If it doesn't work and is completely impractical, it's political science."

Iawa feels like he understands that joke better than he used to.

[Liozh Ton continues: "If it explodes it's chemistry and/or politics. If it smells it's biology and/or politics."]

[Iawa's decided to officiously Keep Avrayen Out Of Trouble, and will be dogging his footsteps. Odds on whether Mikodez can complete all of his errands while accompanied by Iawa, without letting on to Iawa what he's doing?

Or he could always try to ditch Iawa, but wouldn't it be satisfying to be able to innocently report to Ashari and Ankat that he was never out of earshot of another crew member? And besides, if he finds trouble he'd have backup.]

"Oh, everyone where I'm from gets a nickname," Sasha says. "Sasha's much better than legendary-commander-only-gendered. But also I'm about to give you a weapon, so I checked your training history."

She forces Mikodez to sit through a brief training on the 3D printer-- there's a game on his tablet which he can use to select weapons and a dummy printer interface which he should load before creating one; please remember everything you do is probably being recorded, and don't connect your personal devices to the station grid if you can help it-- which should give him time to ponder his next move.

[Sasha will reveal the existence of the stuff she looked up if Mikodez steers the conversation in that direction. After that, he has to either persuade her that he needs the information for mission reasons, or hack Ashari's memos and grab the data that way. I don't recommend trying to hack Sasha's files directly, at least not unless you have a lot of in-game time to kill.]

"Oh, hi, Iawa," says Sasha. "I'm just giving Avrayen a quick briefing on data security. Here's a lokwor; the station's welcome pack is already installed. Please leave your tablet on the ship."

[Sasha's more like a grad student in terms of social power, so meetings are less of a problem. She's more susceptible to suggestions that her advisor/boss is clueless and doesn't recognize her brilliance than people who assume their importance is obvious, though.

But, yes, shiny things! Shiny new equipment, TIME, funding!]

[Have you ever tried having a conversation about medieval seals without all of your interlocutors barking at you? STRANGELY HARD.]

[Hmmm, any memo about Sasha's data gathering probably went to Yehan and the Kel as well as Ashari. Feeding the grid a Kel joke book might get you a passphrase that works when Ankat's on the ship.]

Station records for Remi, Pavn, Admin. Nir. Paerani Shan attached. Dating profile for Pavn (others nonexistent). Best, S.

Alaric considers the Wasp's message. He thinks it is distinguishing between the moths harnessed by the Nirai from moths in general, but what's the point?

He ends up sending back the three moths, along with the 01010 question indicator. Meanwhile, he also pulls up the engineering user manual and starts looking to see if there's any information in there pertaining to using the mothdrive in different calendrical environments - specifically, if there's any indication of why hexarchate ships have to switch to invariant drives, as opposed to just instructions saying shut up and do as your told. He's got a suspicion that the problem is not with the moth's ability to fly, but with the ship's ability to tell the moth what to do....

[Everyone, please excuse me if I fail the critical thinking puzzles and break our ship. :D]

[Virmad would LOVE a chance to have, like, an actual briefing, or at least a chance to talk to Ashari privately (well, with Sulen), because there's some key info — namely "Andan" Bokali's Shuos signifier — that he feels it's urgent everyone who's going to the station be aware of.]

[Just as a note, if y'all felt you could steal time for even a brief consultation/briefing, you can definitely roleplay it as a flashback in this move. Totally allowed!--the GM.]

[May I recommend the memo format? This may not be obvious from Sasha's notes, in which I'm making my best attempt at bad mathematician-style writing, but she's pretty freaked out; Virmad would've gotten her memos about the Rosemallow ship.

The lokwors should be secure even on the station, assuming you don't try to read your messages underneath a security camera.]

[Just as a reminder, in general you can always include OOC information about your character's move in brackets like this note here, to give other players (or the GM!) additional context.

(Sorry, responding in between nightly TV with my daughter--will catch up in depth after she goes to bed. :p )]

The Wasp is humming slightly and does not respond immediately. Then again, it's probably trying to formulate its responses, just like Alaric is.

The answer to Alaric's question is buried in one of the appendices. His suspicion is correct: moth harnesses, which tell the moth what to do, are an exotic technology. Mothdrives are fitted with additional invariant tech that effectively paralyzes a moth and prevents it from flying wherever the hell it wants when the harnesses are inactive due to a change in calendrical terrain.

There's nothing in there about when this system was invented, though; this is a pretty bare-bones user manual that looks like it was written by committee, not a historical overview.

[oh, good call!]

Hello, all. “Andan” Bokali’s signifier is Ninefox Guardian. Those who are going to the station should be especially careful. Yrs, Virmad.

[Virmad clearly has no idea what the appropriate register for a memo in this context would be; inter-Rahal communication tends to be both fairly terse and extremely formulaic, just with spaces for situation-specific details to be inserted depending on which of the approved formulas you're using.

Also in classic H*archate chauvinist fashion he’s assumed that everyone will immediately know that this means Bokali’s a Shuos.]

Edited 2017-08-25 02:26 (UTC)

Virmad is very interested in this Kel scientist; he’s always had a soft spot for Kel in general, and Kel with an interest in anything beyond shooting people... He allows himself a moment to hope that maybe the lieutenant would be interested in a discussion of Kel Zem Rao’s poetry. Hopefully there’ll be time in between, well, collecting a would-be dissident, disrupting the High Calendar in the vicinity of the station, and just generally fomenting rebellion.

Perhaps not. Still, it doesn’t hurt to look. He makes a mental note to ask Sasha if she can find out anything about the lieutenant’s dating profile. He musters his winningest smile — with just a hint of regret; Ejad always said his smile was his best feature — for the lieutenant’s benefit, and a situationally appropriate bow for the Station Administrator.

[I think I'll do that in a flashback post where Ashari steps away to quickly review things with the team.

I've been worried about stepping on toes with what the other players would like to do, so I've been trying to let everyone do their own thing.

I think some collective OOC planning would be good to do, too, to make sure everyone's able to do what they want to do with their characters.]

[This may well be a case of everyone being worried about stepping on everyone else's toes! *wry g* Collective OOC planning sounds like a great idea. Thanks for your responsiveness--it's much appreciated.]

[Memos sound good; if Pavn and Bokali were our guests all the way to Moongray, it would have been difficult for Ashari, Virmad and Sulen to leave their guests alone all at the same time.]

Ashari smiles and excuses themself from the escorts under the guise of freshening up and collecting their works.

"Quick status check," they murmur into their communicator. "These station folk are a bit too pleasant, but don't seem all that suspicious of us.

I'll need the little fox with me. Iawa, Sulen, and Virmad, I think are coming too. Give me a quick rundown of your current thoughts as soon as you can.

Alaric, Sasha, Ankat, Kaliyan, Yehan. How are things?"

[OOC: Ashari wants Mikodez to do some sneaking around the station for them. Sulen and Virmad have their own thing, and Ashari also wants people to keep an eye for signifiers and the like. Alaric and Saha seem to solidly have their own thing going on. I think maybe someone apart from Ashari should be on the station to do trade negotiations, as Ashari currently wants to play more into the innocent artist]

Ashari-

Thoughts?

-Sulen

[Sulen's met Andan with Shuos signifiers before- well, Ashari said they were legitimately Andan and definitely not spies, but who knows with Shuos. They've never heard of a Ninefox Guardian Andan before, but maybe Ashari has.]

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Page 2 of 7

Move 7 (Chapter 1.7)

Re: [manipulating Nirai: brainstorming]

Re: [manipulating Nirai: brainstorming]

Re: [the Rosemallow ship and 3D printer]

Re: [manipulating Nirai: brainstorming]

Re: marching orders? - snipe hunt for fox and spider

Re: earlier, on the Wasp, with the printers - paging Mikodez

Re: [manipulating Nirai: brainstorming]

Re: [manipulating Nirai: brainstorming]

Re: [the Rosemallow ship and 3D printer]

Re: earlier, on the Wasp, with the printers - paging Mikodez

Memo: Sasha to Ashari, cc Ankat, Kaliyan, Yehan: extracted personnel records

Engineering

Re: marching orders? - paging everyone, especially Ashari and Ankat

[GM reminder: briefings in flashbacks]

Re: marching orders? - paging everyone, especially Ashari and Ankat

[reminder to all players: OOC notes]

Re: Engineering

Re: marching orders? - paging everyone, especially Ashari and Ankat

MEMO: Virmad to everyone going off-ship

hello, scientist

Re: [marching orders: GM suggestion]

Re: [marching orders: GM suggestion]

Re: marching orders? - paging everyone, especially Ashari and Ankat

Flashback: In-n-Out of Character Plans (PAGING TEAM)

paging Ashari