THE CRASH

[ataraxites]

CHARACTERS: Any and all.
LOCATION: Medical and beyond.
WARNINGS: Violence, implied (and possibly explicit) nakedness.
SUMMARY: Arrival in the crashed Tranquility

W E L C O M E You wake up, alone in the dark. There's a breathing tube jammed down your trachea, and you're suspended in a tube of clear blue fluid. Through the fog you can see shadows of movement, the muted sound of alarms crying. Upon registering your level of consciousness, the gravity couch drains the fluid surrounding you and retracts the breathing apparatus; the doors in front of you open, and you're suddenly dropped several feet onto the opposite wall. The impact is painful, winds you, and it takes several seconds to overcome and persuade uncooperative limbs to move. You barely have the time for it. All around you is chaos: the sirens of alarms are shrieking in your ears, drowning out the cries of confusion from the people awakening around you, trapped in their gravity couches or stumbling through the wreckage. Louder than that is a deep rumbling, coming from somewhere farther away, vibrating through the metal underneath you. It's hard to make out much of anything in the dim red light, but you catch sight of a sprawl of garbled black on your forearm and wonder-- Who are you? How did you get here? A drip lands on your cheek. Another. You look up as a flash of light illuminates a rend in the outer wall high above you, a steadily increasing fall of raindrops showering through. Another rumble rolls through the wreckage around you, and you pull weak, unsteady legs underneath you, rising to a shaky stand. M E D I C A L There's a shout, nearby, and your attention turns from the hole high in the wall to the room around you. Standing sideways, the smooth doors of gravity couches under your feet, fallen wreckage and debris making obstacles in your path. But there are others here, climbing through it as best they can, or trapped inside their gravity couches, injured, or worse. You step over the body of a man in a jumpsuit, venturing further into the gloom of red. The shout comes again. Someone might need your help. Or they might have answers about what happened here. O U T S I D E It takes all the strength you have to climb up through the fallen structural beams and hanging cabling, metal slipping wet beneath your fingers and feet. Eventually you emerge, and in another flash of bright light realise you stand on the shell of some colossal structure, the shadows of dense jungle all around you. The night sky above is a violent flux of colors, a dense, roiling tower of cloud crawling with lightning as if on fire, thunder booming again and again as the deluge pours down. In the brief flashes of light you start to notice figures, further away, scattered across the shell. Dressed in dark jumpsuits, their shouts are drowned out by the storm, but their struggles are evident; lashing out, grappling, fighting each other for their lives. There's a sound behind you, and as you turn one lunges towards you, a jagged shaft of metal in his hand. His eyes are wide, teeth bared, and as you stagger back he yells something, coming for you again: "You did this!" N O T E S Venturing through the medbay will discover the lockers and main bay, all heavily damaged. Characters will likely be able to salvage some belongings from the destroyed lockers - otherwise they will be able to find jumpsuits and other standard clothing in the wreckage. The alarms will cut after two hours, a which point a looping audio message telling passengers to make their way to the blue lifts will be audible. The lifts, if investigated, will be missing, leaving only empty elevator shafts. The nexus of the strange superstorm will disperse out into colorful clouds after approximately half an hour, at which point rainfall will ease to something less torrential. The storm will pass entirely after five hours. Dawn will come two hours after this. The Tranquility's original crew members can be found amongst player characters, either in medical or outside of the ship already. They will similarly be suffering from memory loss, but worse than that, a small number of them will be extremely violent in attacking player characters, other crew, or even harming themselves.

Comments

[hacker]

[ Looking up at him, Skye's instinct is a twinge of fear—like maybe after kicking that guy in the head, Sam's now here to turn on her. She had no way of knowing who'd started that confrontation. But then he kneels down, expresses concern, and she relaxes.

A brief, genuine assessment involves a glance down at her body, and she nods. ]

I think so. [ She looks back up at him. ] You?

[familybusiness]

Yeah, I think so.

[If you didn't count the complete and debilitating amnesia or the bumps and bruises.]

I don't know what happened he just...came after me.

[And then he'd known exactly how to take him out and that wasn't the most settling thing in the world.]

[hacker]

Well, I don't know about you, but I don't wanna stick around to find out what his deal was.

[ She jerks a thumb further back into the jungle. ]

Let's get out of here and figure out where the hell we are.

[familybusiness]

Yeah, no. Me neither.

[He starts to move towards her, intent on moving past her to follow her lead, though his arm instinctively reaches out to guide her along with him.]

Don't have to tell me twice.

[hacker]

[ Skye keeps close to him without a second thought, happy for the company, and happy to feel safe in it. Her memories keep coming back in pieces, never enough to make anything meaningful out of. ]

I'm Daisy. [ She glances up at him expectantly. ] You have any idea what to make of all this?

[familybusiness]

[He fidgets a little, his expression awkward.]

If I remember my name, I'll be sure to let you know what it is. [He'll look in the journal he found in his locker later. He'll probably think his name is John for awhile. Worst.] Not at all. It looks like we were on a spaceship, and it crashed, but beyond that?

[He's the most lost.]

[hacker]

Spaceship, sure, but why? I mean, what was the deal with those creepy goo pods? And why don't we remember anything?

[ She's not expecting him to know, but she wants to announce her dissatisfaction with the lack of answers. Skye always wants answers. ]

[familybusiness]

[So does he, Skye Daisy. So does he.]

I wish I knew. I'm hoping it'll come back to us. Amnesia doesn't usually last forever.

[hacker]

Usually amnesiacs have a support system to remind them, not just a bunch of other amnesiacs.

[familybusiness]

They also usually have familiar surroundings and people to help jog their memory. We're only going to have half of that, if we're lucky.

I was just trying to be optimistic, but this isn't a good situation, no. I'm just hoping it was more of a side effect of being in those pods instead of trauma, that it'll just wear off. Having the entire population affected with it isn't normal considering amnesia's usually caused by head injuries.

[hacker]

And considering none of us seem to be sporting giant lumps on our noggins? No kidding.

[ She sighs, clearly dissatisfied with the fact that there's no active way to solve this. It's a waiting game. She hates waiting. ]