come_sailaway | Welcome To The Village

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Welcome To The Village

Who: Everyone who was signed-up for the excursion
What: The Village December Excursion
When: Dec 1st - Dec 23rd
Where: The Village
Warnings: Involuntary capture and confinement including immobilization and restraints, violence, injury, maiming, possibility of death, torture, coercion, gaslighting, mind control, drugging, scientific experiments, and extremely inaccurate depictions of mental health facilities/hospitals, among other potentially triggering themes. Please mark all threads appropriately.

"Good morning, good morning, good morning!" A voice that sounds very similar to Friday's chirps over a loudspeaker outside your character's home. Yes, their home.

Overnight, all the passengers who signed up for this excursion have been transported to their very own personal cottages. They will awake in a bed that is familiar to them. While this home of theirs does not necessarily have to resemble the place they were born or raised, it will be a perfect replica of a place they truly thought of as their home, down to the most minute details.

The cottages are self-contained, the size of a large studio apartment so, in some cases, they may only resemble the bedroom and living room of a person's home with a shrunken-down kitchenette and bathroom adjoined. But the heirlooms of their past are here. A favorite doll? A treasured family portrait? Trinkets you have long forgotten about? All of them will be here, somehow. (All except for weapons, that is.) They are indistinguishable from the real item, down to the molecule.

After that wake-up call, the voice continues on to express that the weather will be warm and sunny, with no rain forecasted. A brass band concert is announced, to start at noon on the lawn next to the living chess set. And once that bit of news is wrapped up, lively marching band music will begin to play. And it will continue to play. All day. From every speaker...including the ones hidden in their home.

Welcome to Your Village

It only gets stranger from here. Characters may be dismayed to find that they are without any of their original clothes or belongings. They awake in conservative button-up pajamas. The closet in their home is full of the latest Village Fashion to choose from. Everything is The Village label brand, including the tin cans of food that stock the kitchen and any of the groceries you could get at the General Store.

Your ship phone rings. When you answer it, you will be greeted, once again, by the voice of Friday. "Your number, please? Of course, you have a number. Look at your badge." If they look down at their chest, they will discover a small round number badge has been pinned to their pajamas. Was that there before? It bears the symbol of a Penny-farthing Bicycle, with a number in the spokes. This is their number.

"No names here," the voice of Friday chides, "Only numbers. Number 2 would like a word with you at the Green Dome. He requests you come for breakfast. Thank you!" Before they can protest further, the line goes dead.

Some Notes:

No matter how many times your character tries to take off and disregard their number badge, they will always find it re-attached to their clothes again the moment they look away and look back.

Your characters still have their phones but now they can only make calls instead of sending texts. They also do not take or store photographs anymore.

If your character destroys or damages anything in their home, or in The Village it will instantly repair the way things used to on the Serena Eterna.

The noise from the speakers can be muffled by covering it with pillows or other creative items, but cannot be stopped entirely. (Sorry Phil)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yes, she can imagine what that's like. Worse than any otherworldly discordance out of L-space. She's about to speak up and make a suggestion when he asks about her instead.

The silence that follows is a little too long, but when Tayrey does speak, it's with a briskness that verges on brittle. 'You're right. I've made no secret of the fact that I have absolutely no interest in co-operating with our captor and helping him to maintain his prison ship.' A pause. A heavy pause, while she weighs up the value of this information - not to Phil, but to those she knows are listening in.

It'll be common knowledge soon enough, she decides. 'It wasn't me who wrote my name on that list,' she reveals. Her voice is steady, no emotion. She's had long enough to prepare for it, so there's no trace of the panic she exhibited over the labyrinth. 'I expect,' she adds slowly, 'it was someone more sympathetic.' Someone who doesn't like her attitude to things. Someone who likes that wretched ship. Not that this narrows it down sufficiently for her to guess the culprit.

“I. Oh.”

A long, long silence.

“Lieutenant, should we have this conversation in person?”

'We can. If you like.' She sounds fairly indifferent, because she knows that no matter where they are, there's no guarantee of privacy. But she can hear the waves over the communicator. Maybe she could do with a walk.

'You're on the beach? I can come to you.'

“Yeah. I was sticking my head in the ocean.”

Not really, the salt is terrible for his hair, but that’s basically what he was doing. Just metaphorically. Or something.

“See you in a bit?”

'Yes. As soon as I can. Tayrey out.' Lucky he isn't there to see her look of confusion over the idea of sticking his head in the ocean - but if that's what helps him, she won't judge. She doesn't waste time, stopping only to retrieve some holovid headphones from the unit by the projector. She slings them around her neck, and begins a fast walk to the beach. She doesn't recall the entire layout of this village from when she was here with Peter before, but the essential directions are fixed in her mind.

It's not long before she's walking across the sand, heading towards him in her mismatched blue clothing, Tradeline tattoo on proud display despite the chill in the air. She raises a hand in greeting.

'Peace and prosperity,' she says, and holds out the headphones. 'Tell me if these help you any? They decorated the place like my starship. Down to the details. Didn't fool me for a second; it sounded and smelled completely wrong, but-' she shrugs, '-there was an effort. These are for viewing holovids in the junior officers' lounge without being a nuisance to everyone else. They're good at blocking unwanted sound, too.' Maybe not good enough for his purposes, but she has to try, doesn't she?

“Peace and prosperity,” he greets in turn. Shipside, Phil almost never dresses down from a dress shirt, belt, and long pants (although that’s partially because it’s far easier to get wings into a button-up than a tee), and now is no exception. The Village fashions are hardly flattering, though.

And Tayrey had headphones. He almost thinks that maybe she wants to show him something before she starts explaining herself, but…

“Oh—oh, you…” For him. He takes the headphones gently and slips them on. No, they don’t work nearly as well as the magic earmuffs Darcy gave him or the earplugs César specifically engineered for him, obviously, but… but they do work. They take the edge off, blur everything, softens the corners.

Phil smiles warmly. “They do help. Thank you, Lieutenant, seriously. This is very kind of you.” Anything is significantly better than nothing, and it’s genuinely touching that she would think of him like this. He’s still getting used to being thought of at all.

He takes a breath, casts his gaze up and down the length of the shore. “Let’s talk. Walk with me?”

'It's not, it's-' she holds up a hand quickly. 'No debt. I want you to be able to function when you have to be... further in. For your own sake and for mine Under these circumstances, you are - like my comrade.'

That's not said lightly. It's probably more of an explanation than he needs, but Tayrey, to whom all is fair contract and reciprocity, would find such a gift deeply suspicious at best if it were offered to her without the strings being visible. If the reassurance is unnecessary, perhaps it speaks to her outlook. She holds herself apart, always has, but when there's practical assistance needed, she'll do what she's able to.

'Yes, let's walk,' she agrees, falling in step beside him. 'Your hair is dry,' she remarks then, faintly puzzled.

The reassurance is unnecessary (which speaks to his outlook too), and a reminder, and Phil can only say he's fonder of her still.

"My hair?" he questions as they set off down the sand. "Why would... oh!" A short laugh. He's been hanging out with Darcy too much. "Sorry, sorry--when I said I was sticking my head in the ocean, that was hyperbole. I was trying to drown out all of the music with the sound of the waves, though. It kind of worked."

Kind of. Down to business, though.

"... You said someone else put your name down for this?"

Oh, that gets a faint half-smile out of her. 'I see! I did think it was an odd idea, but I thought it might be ordinary for Earthers so I didn't want to say so.' Tayrey shakes her head. 'Good that it worked.'

Business, though. The smile disappears when he asks that question, and she quickens her pace. It isn't deliberate.

'Someone did. I wouldn't be here willingly. I don't expect I'll find out who it was. Having me tortured by a third party instead of confronting me directly is cowardice, and anyone the coward trusts enough to brag to about what they've done to me is unlikely to pass that information on.'

Phil frowns deeply. A hand goes to his mouth as he stares forward in thought.

"I don't think I know anyone who would do something like that. Even the people closest to--" not the Captain, Ari wouldn't like him calling him that, "--our, ehn, captor wouldn't. I know them. Part of why we go is so nobody else has to."

Putting Ari Tayrey's name down is a betrayal on both major sides, as far as he's concerned.

"I'm trying to think... I can't remember if we've had incidents like this, where people were signed up against their will somehow. Last year I think there might have been a couple. It definitely hasn't happened in a while. I wonder what changed."

'There was another incident very recently,' she reveals. 'Just the same, although for that person's privacy I oughtn't to say more if they haven't.' Harvey had written down Valdis' name, and Valdis had been left with no choice.

More quick steps. She's looking straight ahead, it's easier that way.

'I know you won't want to think so badly of your friends,' says Tayrey, 'or of anyone else for that matter, but the fact is that it happened. I did not write my own name - and there is nobody left on this ship whom I've had a personal argument with and might suspect of retaliation. That leaves reasons that are, for want of a better word, political.'

"Oh, shit."

Sorry, there's no hold on the language there. Valdis and Harvey are both far out from his network of relationships, so all of that passed neatly over his head.

"Yes, it did happen," he affirms. "What I'm doing is--it's more than just not trying to think badly of my friends, it's eliminating likely suspects, because even though it does read political, it's... at least not my circle. We take shifts to go on excursions, you know. All volunteers. We manage among ourselves who does and doesn't go. I've been off of it for the last two months, I tagged out." More like Darcy made him. "Now I'm back."

His jaw shifts.

"And since we've been managing the battery on our own, I even asked Skulduggery and the big man about it, I can't imagine what signing you up would do for us except cause problems that nobody needs."

She's going to take issue with the language, but possibly not how Phil might have anticipated. Her forehead wrinkles. 'And by the "big man" you mean the utter coward who now outsources the abuse of his prisoners.' It's not really a question.

Darcy told her about the rota system, and she accepted the idea with indifference. More proof of the depth of her trauma, because young Lieutenant Tayrey fresh from her ship would have wanted to weep at the horror and injustice of it, at people willingly subjecting themselves to that, thinking of themselves as fuel and being so damn organised about it.

Instead she must be iron, she must be stone, she must stand steady and give nothing.

'I don't think ill of all of you. I suspect that whoever did it hasn't told the others because they know it'd be met with disapproval. But I-' she frowns. 'I have no interest in throwing myself into investigations to track down the culprit. It won't change anything, and I don't want to be the catalyst for simmering tension to turn into open conflict.'

It's not as noble as it sounds. Tayrey doesn't want people focused on infighting instead of escape. So she's prioritising.

"I'm running out of euphemisms. But yeah." And regretfully: "In the interest of technicalities and keeping our ducks in a row, I'll mention the outsourcing is because of the low power. It's less efficient, but less costly."

Phil wears his heart on both sleeves and will never again be convinced to stop, but exhaustion lends itself to a certain kind of listlessness, and there has only been one month in this whole voyage where he ended it of sounder mind than he began. It's been a year and a half. He's now been widowed for longer than he was married. He is so, so, so tired.

But here he is.

The way she speaks--there's a conflict in him there, because she's right. Suspicion and infighting and more open conflict will do nothing but chop up the serpent. But the idea of letting it lie...

"I don't think," he begins lowly, "that I like the risk of it happening again, either." To her. To anyone.

'You can use your imagination,' she counters, but it's half-joking, as if teasing an old friend. If he's refraining from calling their captor his captain for Tayrey's benefit, she's grateful and she values it, but she also thinks it's the least she should be able to expect of anyone who wants to meet her on neutral ground, or better.

Speaking of very low bars, there's a growing bitterness in her tone as she carries on. 'Ah. Clarification noted. Business, not cowardice? When the defendant was no longer able to continually torture the ghosts of his previous victims in order to gain power, he ensured that his remaining living prisoners were abused cheaply, prioritising cost-savings over efficiency.' Tayrey laughs, dark and mirthless. If it sounds terrible, it's meant to. Because none of this should ever be normalised.

Sometimes she thinks the swift death of an airlock exit is far too good for such a monster. She thinks about what he really deserves. They're very un-Tradeliner sorts of thoughts.

She refocuses. 'I don't like the risk either, but I don't see that anything can be done about it. Although I'll say that if it happens to me again, next time I won't keep my mouth shut about it until the torture actually starts.' And Tayrey wouldn't ever write someone else's name down in retaliation, that month's weary off-rostered collaborator or one of their loved ones, because Tayrey holds herself to far higher ethical standards - but once the information was public, anything might happen.

'If you do ever find out who it was that did this to me, you can have a quiet word with them, yes? I'm not going to look for answers this time myself, because no good can come of me having them.'

He doesn't refute. He can't, and there's no need to. Skulduggery can love the Captain as he likes, and others can fight for his second chance, but it doesn't mean they all have the ability to let go of what he's done. Phil won't say that he isn't someone with whom Ari can keep her anger. Anger means there's a problem. There is a very big problem.

Speaking of.

"If I find out, it won't happen again."

That's as much of a threat as she cares to see it as. He cares, Tayrey, and the weight of it is mighty.

Edited 2023-12-06 08:53 (UTC)

She hears those words, the simplicity of them and the truth they carry. She believes him. She doesn't have to ask what he'll do, because she knows the answer. He'll do what is necessary.

Half the prison ship's population have been weighed up by Ari Tayrey as potential suspects. People she hardly knows. People she likes well, but whose fundamental values clash with hers at times. Phil? He had never been under consideration. He's too honorable, she had thought, and here he is proving her right.

It's a moment before she responds, because she has to get the emotion under control, the sudden comfort of support from an unexpected place stirring up some feeling without a name, one that appreciation and value only go half-way towards covering.

'Thank you,' she says at last. 'You're a good man. In other circumstances I would have been very proud to call you my comrade, I think, but there's something to be said for having a good man standing on the other side, too.'

Very proud to call you my comrade. Very proud. Comrade. Parsing the language of Ari Tayrey--not even her spacer terms, but getting to know her habits, her priorities, the ideals by which she leads her life and the lens through which she views it--has been a bit of a trial by fire, but not one he regrets. This is a sentiment with weight behind it, from someone who won't give it easily. What a gift to have.

"We all want to get out. Might fight a lot over how that gets done, but no one gets left behind, if I have anything to say about it." He shakes his head. "It's basic decency, and besides, I'd like to keep the sign-up sheets sign-up."

He places a gentle hand on her shoulder. "You're... you're a good one, Tayrey. I'm around if you need me, yeah? Here and back on the ship."

She looks up at him, and the ghost of a smile crosses her lips. 'Thank you,' she says simply. 'It is the most difficult thing, to be alone without my people. I'll stand for you too, at need. Fair contract.'

She tells him this because he has understood her, because he won't insult her with platitudes about how the prison population can be her people - or worse still, her family - when most are so alien to her even when they aren't in opposition. Phil, for his efforts, has gotten through Ari Tayrey's shielding, and seen her genuine feelings, recognising them despite the careful Tradeline phrasing. He has earned her high regard, and a measure of trust, even if she can't let herself forget that he is friendly with her enemy.

'We will get out someday. Away from our captor. All of us who are willing to go.' She'd never even contemplate leaving anyone behind because of previous disagreements, if it's her plan that works. 'I will get home, and getting out of here is the first step, yes? We must have hope.'

“Fair contract.”

That’s all he can ask for, a fond regard. He spent a hundred years trying to be worthy of even that much. One should wish that something is working.

“Yeah. In spite of us, and without our permission, there comes an end to the bitter frost,” he quotes. “One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I still must have hope.”

One morning the sun rises on February 3rd. Even eternity didn’t last forever. This too shall pass. The cool breeze of his Mantle kicks up between them, carrying the smell of melting frost and the promise inherent in a cold March sunrise; in a return from an expedition in the ice.

Edited 2023-12-16 13:38 (UTC)

Not knowing any better, she takes the words for his own. Ari grew up on a terraformed, climate-controlled colony and rarely left her Tower; she doesn't have the steady experience of the seasons' turn that Earthers of a certain geography do. And yet. And yet there's something that resonates.

Before she speaks up, she feels that breeze on her skin, and she's put in mind of crisp cold and of homecoming.

The young lieutenant looks him in the eye. 'Winter Court?' she questions.

She knows. Not personally, obdurate as she is, but it's a reminder to her that there are those who have suffered far more than she has. Erin explained it all, and Phil has been changed, that's plain enough to see.

Blinks. Ari knows about this stuff???

(If she catches him outside of broad daylight, she’ll also notice a sourceless dull orange light on him like an old streetlight, and a second shadow on the ground. Almost like he’s constantly got one foot in a different time and place.)

It takes him a second to recover from his surprise, but he settles back in. “Spring, actually,” he hums. “I’m… not technically one of the Lost, I wasn’t dragged into Arcadia like Erin’s people were, but I’m still claimed by Spring. Son of the waking land, that’s what she called it. All things rebirth and desire. Everything that survived to see things get better, and get to start doing more than survive.”

And if that doesn’t say a hundred things about him.

“I didn’t know you knew about the Courts?”

'Citizen Erin told me,' she explains simply, leaving out what an arduous task it had been for poor Erin to make her understand. Tayrey, who still called magic nonsense unless it came with rational citations.

Spring. She adjusts her assumptions, because spring, she understands, is winter's end. 'There is no Arcadia in my universe. Small mercies. I find it strange.' She tilts her head, considering. 'So much Spring here. Citizen Summer is, too.' Ironically. 'As I see it, the time to think of more than survival is when your captivity is over. You can't heal while the damage is still being inflicted.'

She knows, of course, that Arcadia is behind Erin, and she also knows that Johnny suffered at least as much before the ship as on it. It says more about Tayrey herself. The ship is the worst ever to happen to her, by orders of magnitude. Not that she'd be taken by Spring sentiments anyway. Lieutenant Tayrey's sympathies lie with the soldiers of Summer; in her strength she's all bright anger and clear principle.

And that's why there's four seasons instead of one.

"You're right. I'm not sure that Spring here is doing the work of 'healing,' though. The way I see it..."

A hand goes to his chin in thought.

"... On Earth, there was a horrific atrocity. It was evil on an unthinkable scale. An entire nation mobilized to attempt to exterminate entire peoples out of nothing but unfounded frenzied hate, this need for an enemy, and of course this has happened before, but the scale of it, the industrialization of it was new. I won't describe to you the specifics, but it's... it was millions dead, two thirds of an entire people and anyone who dared to help them rounded up and tortured and killed."

A hand cards through his hair. "But the people. Even when they were holed up in bunkers, separated from families, starving and scarred, many sang songs. Told stories. Traded philosophy. Thought about the nature of the world. Made art, even, out of what they could find. And this happens because that's part of surviving too, right? It's morale, it's keeping your head above the water, it's--it's when your captors want you to suffer completely and die in rage and saying, no thanks. I'm more than just a victim, even if I am that too. It's awfully inconvenient for a world that wants you to only be horrified and sad and dead.

"And you don't just do all of that, sure, but you do that too. You know? You still have that. I saw the way you talked about the Tradelines."

Edited 2023-12-16 20:13 (UTC)

She's silent a long moment, letting the weight of his words sink in.

'I'm truly sorry for what happened on Earth,' she says at last. 'We want to think it's unimaginable that people could behave that way, but-' Tayrey shakes her head. She makes no statement about the people of her sector being more enlightened than Earthers, of how it would never happen there. It's true that it would never happen, but that's because up and down the lines, Tradeline ships stand ready. Their free people are of the same species that dreamt up every Tirvan oppression, and there will always be those who want only to harm others. Peace and prosperity has its price, and a century after Breakaway, young Tradeliners are warned against any complacency.

'Yes, I talk about the Tradelines the way I do because I never want to lose sight of who I am,' she says firmly. 'So when someone tries to tell me I'm worthless, that I'm nothing but fuel, that I'm a copy of a person who only exists to be tortured, I can say no, no you're wrong, I'm real and valuable and none of my captor's attempts to dehumanise me will change that. I have many contracts... many connections to other people and places and companies,' she explains.

'When I started out on the Tradelines I didn't understand why there were so many songs and stories - and especially I did not appreciate the ones that couldn't possibly be true,' she says with a small smile. 'On Cardalek all our inspirational stories were true. But Lieutenant Brannenford told me that it was for this, for shared culture, especially on the lines where you can have a Company Tower girl working beside a girl from the frontier colonies, or a born stationer. Very different. It doesn't mean our homeworlds don't matter, but that we have something new and shared as well. Your Earthers under tyranny? They must have wanted to keep their culture. Keep what mattered, even in the worst of circumstances.'

Welcome To The Village

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trying so hard to crawl out of my art uni finals hole

oh no! hope they're going well <3 also I adore this CR

completing the last leg of it now! & me too 😭😭😭

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cw vague holocaust talk

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