DECEMBER EVENT PART ONE: ALL IS CALM

[sailmods]

early morning on the 23rd, Friday makes an announcement over the speaker system, cheerfully asking everyone who signed up for the excursion to gather in the atrium. when they arrive, they will find Friday, very seasonally dressed, who takes them down to the tender, which it appears she will be “driving” this time. during this particular trip, none of them lose consciousness, nor suffer any sort of physical aftereffects. however, it does feel like the trip takes about five hours of just. sitting in the tender in utter silence, with little light and still air. so maybe stop being little babies about the anesthesia???

when Friday opens the tender door for them, they find themselves stepping out into the lobby of a hotel - though, if they turn around, they’ll find there was no door at all, and any passengers they see after that will appear as if they are appearing out of the ether.

there is a clone Friday manning the front desk, and though, like the others, she isn’t much for conversation, she is very snappily dressed! she helpfully hands out keys to everyone who approaches her; they aren’t numbered, and are actually entirely physically indistinguishable from each other, but they seem to open up whatever room you want easily enough, and don’t seem to work for any others. weird. the dressers and closets in the rooms also contain suitably sized winter clothing, enough to last the few days they’ll spend there, and then some. weird.

once they’ve situated themselves, they’ll find that what lies before them is a realm much larger than others they’ve encountered; the land extends for miles in any direction, including upwards, though you’re more likely to hit a cliff before the hard barrier. there’s about a foot and a half of snow on the ground, and it continues to fall steadily. the forests lack all signs of life, but the foliage is rather attractive, as long as you don’t examine it too closely; coniferous trees are just easier.

all of the amenities are seemingly staffed by ghosts, though they give off even less of a presence than the ones aboard the ship do. there is also an industrial kitchen attached to one of the dining areas, though the meals served don’t seem to come from it, and it has a distinctly different feel than everything else around it, as if added in slapdash at the very last second.

there is one last oddity, however. every night, at about 2AM, the entire reality goes mute. voices don’t sound. snow doesn’t crunch under footsteps. even the winds are quiet. the effect ends at about 6AM. it’s probably fine.

happy holidays.

Comments

[neverleave]

[Natsuno isn't going to touch the whole timelines/snapshots thing. He's dead, won't go back to "his" Earth even if he could, and so has no desire to discuss any existential crisis. However, he comments on the follows:

1. They're worse than prisoners, they're fuel.

2. Lots of people come from awful places, some of them are in this room. That's not an excuse and there may be a point where sympathy would do harm than good. He does agree that using positive emotions is meaningless unless there's also an effort to get them out of here before they burn out and turn into shades.

As for the binder:]

I've been here since this voyage started. If there's anything else you doubt, I can try to corroborate.

[astrogator]

[She nods her agreement with his clarifications, mouth set grimly in a thin line. He's right, on both counts. The offer he makes regarding the binder, however, just makes her look more troubled.]

I don't want you to think it's personal. If you tell me that you have direct experience of something, I'd be inclined to believe you - but I doubt anything unevidenced. The notion that the captain is some innocent trying to find his own freedom and we were brought here by a magical conduit that he has no control over and that nobody has ever seen. [Her voice absolutely drips with disdain for the idea.] Who would believe that? An especially stupid child? [Whoever it was didn't even try for minimal plausibility by calling it an interdimensional wormhole or the like.] Oh, and a lot of effort is spent telling us how stupid we'd be to try to fight the captain instead of just submitting to our terrible fates, on the basis that someone stabbed him and someone hit him in the head and neither was fatal. I believe that both of those incidents happened. They can be corroborated by those involved. I don't believe the conclusions drawn from them. He can't be harmed - oh, but don't kill him, or we'll all die! It just doesn't follow.

[She's very passionate about this, but if there's anger, it's not directed at Natsuno.]

[neverleave]

I know it's not personal. And we both agree that trying to make nice with the captain is pointless.

[Everyone here has the same goal, driven by the same anger. Sorting out the finer points is exactly why they're here.]

No one in this room thinks he's innocent. Whether his sob story is true or not, he lost any right for sympathy when he started using people as fuel. But I do believe he has no control on who gets caught up in his net after he set it up. I was here when one of his spells backfired and affected everyone, the captain and Friday included. He can't make anything original and once you take a closer look you see how poor the set dressing really is. He's not some genius sorcerer, he's an easily bored hack who throws things at random until something sticks.

As for harming him, I think you're arguing semantics. It's not that he can't be harmed, he can't be harmed in this reality. Here, he has total control. He can freeze us in place [The post-battle royale dinner], keep a fireball in the caster's hand [Poor Rita] or turn someone else's magic mid-air [Undine's blorble, back in the desert.] If there's a way to hurt him, my guess is it's by finding a loophole or luring him to a reality he didn't create.

[astrogator]

[The trouble with Ari Tayrey is that she'll absolutely get stuck on semantics. She's relying heavily on her diplomatic training to avoid visible, irritated disbelief at mere mentions of spells and magic, for instance. She's a rational, scientific-minded person. Recognising that natural laws differ in different universes is one thing, calling these differences magic and not even trying to explain how they work is quite another.

It's not relevant, she tells herself. If she wants she can have that debate out with him, but there will be a better time and place for it. She needs to focus. She needs to appreciate that she's in a room with people who aren't taking her critique of the binder personally, who aren't trying to convince her that she's overreacting and the captain isn't so bad as she thinks. That's novel.]

It's possible that his clear incompetence means he has no control over bringing us here. It's also possible that it's all deliberate on his part. I don't take issue with an individual believing either position or weighing the probabilities differently to me - what I object to is one of them being set down as known fact, with no proof other than... was that Skulduggery's word alone? Because we don't know for sure. We can't.

This is some kind of bubble universe, isn't it? If we could get him outside of it, he'd have no power - but if we knew how to do that, we'd be free to pursue our own aims anyway. We wouldn't be trapped. Loopholes are always useful. He wouldn't negotiate contract with me, but if anyone here has better fortune, I'd gladly advise. Contracts are the building block of society where I'm from; I've a fair bit of experience with them - and their loopholes.

[Then, more thoughtfully:] He doesn't have total control, even here. Physical control, when he chooses to exert it directly, but he doesn't know we're here right now having this meeting, does he? Else he'd probably kill us. [Which is what happens if you get caught in a mutiny, isn't it?]

[neverleave]

[Addressing the final point first:] I know for a fact that Friday doesn't look into bedrooms. [When Clarke told her she threw Jenny's gun into the ocean, Friday shut down in distress. But that was a lie, and the gun is still hidden in cabin 109.] Either way I don't think he'd retaliate so fast, and if we keep worrying about it we won't get anything done.

[One that's out of the way - ]

I'd be careful with any negotiations. Jenny Storm played a game for her freedom, and all it got her was eroding her memory for years while she was searching for her brothers. We have to find something to force his hand first.

[astrogator]

Oh, I'm not worried. We know the ultimate result of inaction. That makes action worth the risk. [Ari shifts her weight, moving her makeshift crutch forward a little, leaning on it more.]

That's good to know. About the game. Maybe we need to keep our own repository of knowledge. I don't suggest writing it down anywhere public, but we could commit to memory everything important that we learn from one another.

How do you know about the bedrooms? [It's respectfully asked - she now has enough faith in his capabilities that she expects he'll see it for the collection of evidence that it is, not a questioning of his honesty, and so she doesn't rush to explain herself further.]

[neverleave]

[Natsuno never told others about the gun, but... Tayrey is the kind of person who needs constant proof to be convinced, and they need more people convinced.

He leaves some details out, as well as Clarke's involvement. But the evidence is still there.]

Back when I just got here, I took something from her. Later in turned out to be just some trinket, but back then everything could look important. So when she asked where it was, I told her I got rid of it and she got sad. Except I still kept it in the cabin.

A bit later, we had our first group meeting in cabin, because the organizor heard from Friday she's not looking inside.

drive-by ish

[skaikru]

( she's not outright butting into the conversation, but has caught the familiar story and all of natsuno's careful edits, — which are almost funny considering this is the exact opposite of the story she'd told friday in regards to disposing of the gun they'd kept — and thus drifts over to exist on the edges of this conversation.

doesn't so much as look at natsuno, least that serve as some sort of dead giveaway. just holds her notepad to her chest and tilts her head at ari, curious and ready to listen to her follow up. )

[astrogator]

[For her, it's about avoiding hypocrisy. She can't stress the point that because Skulduggery said so is not sufficient proof of anything at all, but then accept because Natsuno said so, even if she believes one to be more trustworthy than the other.

The 'trinket' is unimportant to her - and in fact, even hearing about a gun would mean very little, since she goes about with one clipped to her belt all the time. She nods.]

That seems safe enough, then. Certainly proof that she's not searching them. Although I ought to add that the captain once left a note in my cabin. Whether that involved him going inside or him causing it to materialise there I couldn't say.

[myagic]

[Rita's been letting Natsuno try to talk sense into who Rita is pretty sure is a newcomer still in denial--true or not, she doesn't always pay that much attention to who's who around here--but around here she pipes up in agreement.]

Yuuki's right. Trying to beat him on his own turf where he makes all the rules is only going to end in pain, you know.

[And she's not just backing him up because they're close--Rita herself would've suggested much the same thing if he hadn't first. That's her Natsuno.]

He'd be most vulnerable outside this reality--but that just means it'll be hard to make him leave, too.