ARRIVAL ▒ 002

[ataraxites]

CHARACTERS: Any and all.
LOCATION: Basecamp, Medical and beyond.
WARNINGS: Implied (and possibly explicit) nakedness.
SUMMARY: The Tranquility jumps again.
NOTES: Can be found at the bottom of the post.

T H E   C A M P   ( C U R R E N T   C H A R A C T E R S ) Clouds have rolled in, obscuring the high noon in grey shadow when the alarms start. Wailing through the air, not as keenly as it had when base camp still huddled in its shadow, but still loud enough to turn heads and give people pause. It sends a shiver of nervous energy throughout camp. They were out of range the last time, and there is no sudden scrambling attempt at retreat, but the crowd does begin to thin. Some pick up and go, just to put distance between themselves and the inevitable, because you never know. Others stay behind, for whatever that reason might be. Those who were closer towards the ship emerge from the treeline in a hurry. It's ten hours later when it happens. A tremble in the earth, shaking up through the trees, sending the jungle's wildlife into distressed flocks of movement and alarmed cries. Under the shrouded sun the wreck of the Tranquility begins to cord with lines of white light, threading across the hull like veins, some patches remaining dark, standing out against the vision like splotches burnt to the back of the eyelids. There's no great sound. In an instant, the ship is gone, a soft whomp, a feeling of air rushing past, the trees bending towards the site as if blown by a fierce wind. It's only a second. With a crack, the wreck returns, a rumble rolling through the air like thunder. The earth shakes. The trees tremble. The ship groans, the sound echoing out like the cry of a wounded beast. The jump has passed. Before search and rescue can gather and see for themselves if anyone new was dragged from their homes, something strange happens. A gas mask, old fashioned and heavy, round-eyed, with a filter like a muzzle at the mouth, lands in the packed earth at someone's feet. With a clatter of plastic and metal, something that was once a radio receiver apparently plummets from the air, shattering on impact when it strikes the metal framework of a communal tent, and another lands in softer earth, intact. Tin cans of food, earthenware bottles of water, candles wrapped in paper and tied in string, a box of matches, a set of well-used playing cards with roughed up corners, a rough woollen blanket, a pillow, a gas lamp all hit the ground throughout camp, or are discovered in the jungle beyond. This unusual rain of items ceases, hardly a minute after it has begun. M E D I C A L   ( N E W   A R R I V A L S ) 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. All around you is chaos: the sirens of alarms are shrieking in your ears, close and claustrophic in the wreckage of the medical bay you've awoken in, lit dim and red. Around you, others are waking up, falling from other gravcouches, stumbling to their feet. Light catches your eye, and you look up to see a huge rend in the outer wall high above you, overhung by broken structural beams and damaged cabling. Climbing up takes all the strength you have. You emerge in bleak, grey sunlight, surrounded by an immense, vast jungle. As your vision clears, you realize you stand on the hull of a colossal spaceship, crashed on an unknown world, two moons hanging heavy in the sky above. In the distance, far out on a great swathe of torn up earth through the jungle are a clustered crowd of figures, moving towards the wreck. Your welcome party, but are they friend or foe? N O T E S Anything remaining within a mile radius of the ship when it jumps will be irreperably damaged. Soft organics will be pulverised, while all trees and plants will initially appear fine but crumble to pieces within a day (or sooner if disturbed). Non-organic material will also be weakened, bending or falling apart when touched. Newly arriving characters venturing through the medbay will discover their inventory items somewhere in the heavily damaged locker banks. They will also 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 wreck will show increased signs of instability for a few days after the jump, and will have seemed to have sunk further into the rock of the cliff than it was before. As mentioned, items as described above will also rain down on camp and all areas beyond it. Feel free to find these in sporadic quantity. If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to contact us via PM, the FAQ or Questions pages!

Comments

(Later)

[hairrands]

[If it hadn't been for the fact that the sky had begun raining relics after the jump, AJ might have gone to inspect the desperately new goo-bath arrivals to see if perhaps she could loot any of them of their gear, or see if maybe any of them shared the same origin as did she and her ice-alien friend. However, she was held up by that first heavy ceramic jug that had managed to survive impact with the ground by bouncing off of a ratty tarp and landing in a pile of loamy moss a few feet away.

From that point on, the scavenger hunt had begun, and not least of which because the ceramic jug had been full. It was not quite as full now, but AJ was prone to saving anything of value, and a dribble of ale seemed more miraculous than a rain of fishes as far as she was concerned.

Moreover it had prompted her to go out and check her various experiments, buried and hidden out around the jungle, lest other scavengers decide to start digging up signs of tampering. It is at one of these little nooks on the edge of the devastation that the ship had wrought that AJ finds a gas mask and, playing with it, she can probably be heard making slightly melodramatic breathing noises from the relative darkness and shelter of the forest line.

When Octavia yells, and AJ stops immediately, startled enough to fumble her mask and nearly drop it. Peeking around the huge, gnarled tree trunk that she's built her little experimental stash beneath, the woman spots the machete first, then person who it belonged to. Nope, not dealing with this.

AJ hurriedly begins covering her little hole in the ground and tamping it down, but the effort is made more difficult because she is a little bit inebriated and juggling a lot of tins and things that she'd been finding that she definitely doesn't want to give to this gruff and deadly bruiser. Bruisee? Whatever the case, AJ has been meeting her fair share of brutal women these days and she's not taking chances. If Octavia manages to spy AJ, it's because she's trying her damnedest to circle around to another trunk to make a fuss and a noise about, much like mother birds will feign broken wings to save their nests.]