ARRIVAL ▒ 006

[ataraxites]

CHARACTERS: Any and all.
LOCATION: Basecamp, Medical and beyond.
WARNINGS: Implied (and possibly explicit) nakedness. Gore and violence.
SUMMARY: The Tranquility jumps again, while the camp is beseiged by bloodthirsty monsters.
NOTES: Can be found at the bottom of the post. This post is also a plot 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 ) The Tranquility sirens have been wailing since daybreak, heralding a jump, but they don't command the same attention as usual. The air tastes smokey and there are fire-glows blossoming up from the tree line in the southern portion of the jungle, but there's a more immediate problem to contend with. Jungle creatures come barrelling from the tree line, making bad, frenzied dashes across the expansive crash path, directly for basecamp. Shrieks, growls, and the thump of bodies and scrape of claws against wood and metal, all connote the besiegement that those on the ground can't clearly see. A monster, bigger than a black bear, with jagged bony growths breaking through its skin, slams its paws into wooden walls, where overgrown claws strip splinters from them, shaking them, testing their strength. It leaps, snapping, blood spatter from its open maw painting ruined wood. An animal that looks like a cross between a heron and some kind of feline, scrambles up into the trees, and launches itself down onto an unsuspecting crewmember, who screams as tooth and claw slice through his clothing, flesh, muscle. A horse-like creature with a bony head slams itself recklessly into the wall, pieces of wood shattering, provoking cries of alarm from the people within. And on and on. The initial wave eventually dies off, but the animals persist, and so do the fires in the distance. Those brave enough and capable enough might investigate and put a stop to it themselves, and perhaps gain an idea as to how they began. Those that stay behind have the arduous task of defending the camp, dealing with the swiftly rotting corpses of infested jungle animals, and fortifying the camp. It's ten hours later when the jump happens, sneaking up on those preoccupied with the current crisis. There's a tremble in the earth, shaking up through the trees, and 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. Most of the crew and the passengers are unaffected, but some experience a moment of unbalance, the world going black at the edges, and a sudden trickle of blood running from both nostrils, or bursting the fine veins in the eyes to make annoying red splotches on white. The moment passes, and the immediate nausea subsides. There is still work to do be. 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 claustrophobic 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 to air that smells smokey and a little gory, surrounded by an immense, vast jungle. As your vision clears, you realise you stand on the hull of a colossal spaceship, crashed on an unknown world, two moons hanging heavy in the sky above, visible as the sky begins to darken. In the distance, far out on a great swathe of torn up earth through the jungle is a campsite, surrounded by walls, and seemingly beseiged by sporadic attacks of monster. Hopefully, someone will think to come and help you. Otherwise, you best be ready to run. N O T E S Anything remaining within a mile radius of the ship when it jumps will be irreparably 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 scattered beyond the ship. Feel free to find all of your inventory items, or lose as many as you like, as they will be randomly distributed around the jump radius. They will also be able to find jumpsuits and other standard clothing in the wreckage of medical. 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, some characters will be affected by dizziness, nausea, and nosebleeds/eyebleeds for a moment. This will only apply to characters who are at ability grid levels three through six. Everyone else remains unaffected. This arrival log doubles as a plot log. Please feel free to be attacked by and kill as many monsters as you like. Breaches to the wall will occur, but the camp will not be completely overrun only thanks to the combined efforts of passengers and crewmembers. Those investigating the fires should mark it clearly in their subject header, and if you are touched by a GM/NPC tag, please feel free to continue to tag in whatever order. If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to contact us via PM, the FAQ or Questions pages!

Comments

Algidus | first batch of openers

[thecoldshoulder]

Jungle Lining the Camp, Before the Jump - CLOSED to Firo

In a few short hours, the base camp will be under siege by both beast and fire, but right now there is a very different sort of trouble brewing just its walls. There is a another creature on the prowl, picking his way through the foliage; his measured movements and green skin allow him to blend in with the natural hues of the jungle effortlessly, the only thing betraying his presence as he watches the camp from a distance being the glimmer of sunlight off of his icy skin. The Tranquility's sirens do not command Algidus' attention in the usual way; he's not venturing over to scavenge supplies. He's hunting something--no, someone else now, and it's been a long time since he's fallen into this sort of behavior. It calls back to his earliest days in his previous hellish prison, makes him predatory in movement and gaze.

He's spotted his prey, the man that dared to threaten him when he was injured. The man that suggested he should be subject to the same cruelties he had fought and put his life on the line to escape from before; the man that knew nothing of his suffering, yet saw it as his place to comment on it anyways. Humans and their assumptions, born of bias and arrogance. He'd been willing to fight even when he was laid up in that tree house, but now that Algidus has healed, he's been feeling his slow-simmering anticipation steadily rising. It is time to take Firo up on the offer of a fight, and it is time to teach the vermin a lesson for his careless tongue.

As soon as the man breaks away from the camp he'll find that a row of ice spears erupt from the ground before him, jagged and glistening in the sunlight, keeping him from heading back in that direction. Now Algidus reveals himself, standing tall, his shoulders squared... and even though he would be happy to throw himself roaring from the trees to tear the human in two, he wants to take his time here. He's planning on enjoying this, so when Firo turns to face him he'll see that the alien's body language isn't overly aggressive yet.

"Turn around, little human. I trust you know what time it is."

Camp Wall - CLOSED to Cassie

Algidus finds himself falling rapidly back from the jungle, his operculum hooding like a cobra as he hisses loud, furious defiance. Maddened beasts fling themselves at the towering ice alien, only to be cleaved to pieces effortlessly by his limbs, which shift into sharp blades and cruelly serrated edges as his unique fighting techniques demand. This was not how he wanted his fight with Firo to end, but he had to admit that at least the human could fight. Their untimely interruption had been put down before either of them could incur too much harm--or deal too much harm to one another, for that matter-- and the two were forced to disengage on a rocky truce to see to the people back in the camp that they respectively cared about.

Before the alien can even get that far, however, he sees a large monster with jagged bony growths breaking through its skin slam its paws into the walls that had been erected to protect the camp. A roar booms from its slavering, bloody maw as its claws strip splinters from the wood, and Algidus realizes that he must act. If the walls fall then these creatures will flood through the camp, and while he normally might not care all too much about the humans that huddledtogether in their ramshackle arrangement of tents and huts, there are some people within that he's deemed worth protecting. So the alien waves an arm over his head in a broad arc, summoning up multiple jagged chunks of hail at once; he launches on at the beast to draw its attention, which turns and gives a furious roar as its already sore-mottled skin is opened in yet again... but the other two chunks of hail hold themselves in place ominously above the ice alien's head, making it wary to approach. Algidus bellows a challenge as jagged particles from his own projectiles rain down protectively around him.

Both beings are intently focused on one another, unaware of any outside interference that may be planning on swooping in. The monster stalks in a slow circle around the ice alien, then seems to decide it isn't all that threatened by the hail, snapping its jaws and beginning to bound forward. Algidus launches the other two jagged icy projectiles, which pelt the creature in the muzzle and forehead; it bellows in pain but does not stop its rapid advance, swinging its overgrown claws right at his torso. The ice alien is quick to liquidize to avoid the attack, but reforming takes time, and the creature is rounding on him again. He can weather some hits from the thing but he'd really rather not, so any outside interference would be wonderful while he's got the damn thing distracted.

[foundafamily]

As he’s been doing every morning now, he’d asked Rey to return his knife to him while he went out. He still doesn’t have faith in his ability to stave Szilard off in his head forever, but he figures it can’t hurt to have his weapon while he’s conscious and a little more aware.

It stays safely in the sheath at his waist for now, and his hands stay lightly in his pockets. He turns around when the ice appears in front of him, eyebrow raised at his attacker—what a surprise…

"You drop something, pal?"

Firo hadn’t thought too much about their talk, only enough to recall the hostility when making sure that both members of his family returned safely at the end of the day. So he didn’t bother hoping that gratitude would keep Algidus from showing up—and, knowing what he does of human nature, he’s not too surprised that it wouldn’t keep him away.

Wanda Maximoff | open

[divaricate]

[OOC: she's been canon updated this jump, so she's in with the new arrivals, and this time with new traumatic memories from home.]
___

It's the second time Wanda has been in this situation. The first time was when she first arrived here. Before she tries to sort out her memories -- her ones for her first time here, mixed with experiencing some new ones back home, and now back here again -- she pulls herself up to locate and grab a spare jumpsuit in the mess of wreckage in medical.

She doesn't exit the ship after getting a jumpsuit on, which doesn't take her long to locate. She stands there, palms pressed against her forehead as she tries to think. They were still fighting in Sokovia when she was first brought here. And here, on this planet ... Tony's here. Steve's here. And then when she starts to piece back memories from here, it hits her all over again. When she was first brought here, her brother was still alive. Now he isn't. That was the last thing she remembered from home now, the feeling of his death. She falls to her knees all over again, her own yell adding to the shrieking of the alarms. Experiencing it, remembering experiencing it, is a whole lot different than being told about it. Several seconds later, when her throat is dry from the yelling and her voice is gone, she just lets her forehead rest on the ground in front of her, while she's still on her knees.

She doesn't know how bad the dangers happening outside have gotten; she's just gonna stay here and she really doesn't give a shit anymore if this planet explodes. Maybe someone comes for her here, maybe they don't.

[letmetakeaselfie]

Tony does. They're neighbors after all and he takes that very seriously. A familiar dirty face comes into view, a calloused hand with tattered gloves. Those stupid sunglasses keeping back his hair. He gets a good grip on her arm and pulls up. It'll bruise but that's better than being trapped. Isn't it? A dog barks, suggesting they hurry. He's a smart dog and Tony's grown as fond of him as he can considering that he's a mammal.

"Maximoff, do you..." There's no time, his nose starts bleeding again but he doesn't have time to worry about that before he's leading her through the fray, lead by an equally familiar creature with a yellow coat. Tony likes that Digby is easy to spot in the midst of all these gray and black animals. His other hand is equipped with the gauntlet of his suit and it charges noisily, scaring off a few before he manages to shoot a blast off and knocking down a couple that were gathered in one place.

rey | investigating the fire (pre-jump)

[circumitus]

By the time the sirens wail, Rey is already awake. She is familiar with the scent of smoke and fire -- because there have been times in which she is that fire. So many occasions in the past had she been the cause and not the solution.

Her senses kickstart her awareness and, rather than climbing down the tree dome, two miles from the base camp, she drops from the floor door and lands on the ground on her feet. A heavy thud under three hundred pounds of heavy internal cybernetics follows.

She's sprinting through the jungle, for once not seen decked out in her usual tanktop and cargo pants but a peculiar armor that covers her body. The hood over her head of mahogany hair obscures her identity as she bolts through the jungle towards the source of the smoke and flames.

Embers flicker across the foliage when she finds the blaze tearing through the jungle. Wildlife screech as they flail past her in the other direction, desperate to escape the certain death of burning alive like they do. Those that nearly collide with her are evaded by her quick steps from side to side, strafing across the clearings. Eventually she skids to a halt in front of the wall of fire, the oppressive heat almost too much for a normal person. But then, a normal person would not be actively running towards the first sign of danger.

All this time spent trying to maintain these new abilities, now Rey is finally able to put them to some use. There's no fancy gestures or clenching of the hands. Nothing that would indicate that she is the cause of the sudden pushback of the wall of flames heading straight towards her home. It's also difficult to tell whether the heatwaves undulating around her are coming from the wall of flames or Rey herself, as she focuses all of her mental energies on trying to put distance between the blazing storm and the home that she had worked so hard to create.

[thecoldshoulder]

While Rey had been running headfirst towards the fire, there had been a being back in the basecamp that had the exact opposite reaction. For once, Algidus was glad that he was back behind those walls even though it meant being packed in against humans--for if he had been lurking out alone in the jungle when the blaze had sparked, it could have meant his end. Now, as he watched those clouds of thick black smoke billow up into the sky above the treeline, he felt a growing sense of dread and panic welling up deep in his chest. He'd fought fire before, he tried to remind himself--but in the end Cinder had just been a singular being, and this was a force of nature that he could do little against on his own. It was impassive as it swept through the trees, consuming all that lay before it.

Though the ice alien would never admit to being afraid of anything, he had wanted so badly to retreat in the face of this natural disaster. He wanted to find the coldest, dampest spot that he could and simply melt down into a puddle as he waited for it to pass by... but then the creatures showed up, and Algidus knew that he could not afford such an action. He wasn't a coward. And so he had boldly headed to the front of the walls instead, fighting with everything he had to keep the waves of infected, maddened and terrified beasts from overwhelming the camp and threatening the few people within that he cared about. Even as he could smell the smoke growing thicker in the air as the blaze steadily grew nearer, the ice alien stood his ground.

His courage was one of the reasons that the camp managed to hold out, but it was not without consequence. Though Rey has done her best to curb the blaze itself, there is another threat that it poses--a number of the creatures that had been fleeing the fire had not been completely successful, and now they were running from the treeline towards the walls with flames licking across their bodies. One of these beasts leaps while Algidus is busy dealing with one that is scraping desperately at the walls, and the howl that rips from his gills when he feels the burning creature slam into his shoulder is almost otherworldly. Flashes of white and red fill his vision as he grapples with the creature and the flames wash across them both; Algidus, in his pain and terror, hacks his assailant to bloody pieces with a shifted limb, but his problems have truly only just begun as the fire that has caught him threatens to strip him of his icy skin.

rey | star wars: tfa | ota

[ventifact]

MEDIC TENT

The Force thrums peacefully in her mind, and Rey sighs into its embrace. Gentle, it holds her, and she tries to hold it back. But the power is illusive, slipping through her grasp almost as soon as she makes to cling to it.

These are your first steps.

In her head, she hears the familiar words and feels confused. Hadn't she already taken her first steps? Yes, back on Takodana. In Maz Kanata's Castle. Her journey had already started. She's well into it, already on the Millennium Falcon to search for Luke. Panic wells up in her gut. What's happened? Hazel eyes snap open to muffled sirens and blue goo, what she can only assume is the innards of a bacta tank. She's been injured? Her hands frantically skim over her body, searching for a partially-healed injury (she's naked, where are her clothes?), but the movement seems to trigger something.

The tube is withdrawn from her throat and the pod opens, dumping her to the floor--no, across the room. Rey gags, slamming against the cold metal and feeling close to retching. Her head pounds, the sirens wailing louder than they'd seemed in the tank. Rey knows that something is wrong--there are no Resistance medics to greet her--there isn't anyone to greet her. She is alone, and becoming afraid. Nakedness ignored, she enters full survival mode. There are lockers skewed to the side and she practically tears one open, body slamming against it with her disorientation. Ignoring the slime still coating her, she snatches the first clothes she lays hands on and pulls them on to her body--one of the jumpsuits, strangely fitted to her perfectly.

But this doesn't matter. What matters is getting out, finding her weapon, and finding the Falcon. Han would kill her if he knew she'd lost it... again. Vaguely, she smells smoke and hears panic, but that, too, is ignored. The only way out of here is through a gash in the ceiling, and she pulls herself towards it, every muscle in her body screaming for collapse. But she will not give up. Someone will explain what is going on.

BASECAMP

A figure haunts around the edge of the camp. Occasionally, it stops to lean against a tree, appearing to inspect the barely-contained chaos around it. In reality, Rey is unsteady on her feet and is trying to keep from falling over.

Locating her possessions had been simple enough--they had been strewn a bit away from one another, but still within the locale of the ship's exit. Yes, she had realized that she'd been on a ship, and even her sickened stomach couldn't impede her elation. A ship meant there was a possibility of righting the wrongness of her presence on this planet. Even with the fuzziness in her head persisting, she knew that this was not where Luke Skywalker would be. She'd been told that he had exiled himself, and from what she could tell, there were far too many people here. There was no way that someone who had put themselves into isolation would choose this place.

Her heavy breathing fogs up her goggles, but Rey ignores it. She isn't used to this kind of heat--a wet heat, crawling into her pores and weighing her down. Her clothing from Jakku doesn’t do so well here, sticking to her skin from a combination of humidity and sweat. Her quarterstaff weighs heavier on her back than it has since she'd been a child. Even the bag of precious portions, ten of them to be exact, makes her want to collapse where she stands. The only part of her that isn't constantly aching, she thinks, is the hand in which she holds Luke Skywalker's lightsaber. It's more of a deterrent than a threat, ready to be ignited and brandished in case of emergency.

Except it might be of use sooner than later.

She spies an alien creature, some kind of animal, one she's never heard of nor seen, stalking towards her hiding place. It looks injured, rabid. Rey freezes, uncertain if she can fend it off in her current state. Weakened fingers tighten around the lightsaber's grip. It seems as if she's about to find out.

Basecamp.

[notyourutopian]

The creature was maybe a third of the way towards Rey when there was a suddenly flare of energy next to it, and a teenage girl seemed to materialize out of it, crashing into the beast with a shout and a grunt. The weight of her motion sent the creature tumbling, and she flipped backwards with an easy grace, hitting the ground with a thump and bracing herself. She looked to be maybe seventeen or eighteen, dressed in a long, now-torn skirt and a blood-stained light blue blouse.

Strapped to her arm was a thick leather glove with a wicked looking syringe-spear attached to it, and she braced it, raising it as the animal righted itself. It was maybe half against as tall as her, four hooves, tusks, it might have been something akin to a boar before whatever had driven it crazed and rotting.

With a roar the creature charged, and the teen adjusted her stance, ducking to the side a moment before it reached her and plunging the spear into it's side. It squealed and kept going, but now she was hanging on, yanking the spear out and driving it in again and again...until with a tired, sickly sound it collapsed onto it's stomach and was still.

She hauled her weapon free, stumbling back a step from the motion as the energy and adrenaline from the fight itself faded. But her brown eyes were wild as she looked around, searching the trees for anything else that might be planning to attack her.

It seemed she missed Rey, hiding there, because after a long few seconds, she just collapsed down onto her rear with a groan and sighed, pressing her not-gloved hand into her face. Was this ever going to end?

Basecampish!

[hairrands]

The entire camp has had to endure the wailing of the ship's sirens while fending off rabid animals for the last ten hours; because of the heavy smoke obscuring the visible sky along the crash-path of the Tranquility, AJ would be certain that most of the day has held still through a, bleak blood-bath.

Nor is it close to over.

Everyone with half a brain knows that the disappearance of the ship and it's immediate reappearance is going to bring new people and new things. For better or worse, part of the camp that's willing to brave the elements is assembling to go out. AJ's glad that there's a chance to get back to the ship during this particularly vulnerable time. The last time a jump had occurred, the human clone had been one of the blue-gooed idiots stumbling around, and nobody'd been close by to keep her out of trouble.

Besides the patriotic route, there's also a chance of finding something useful scattered around the rip in the hull, though all AJ really wants for right now is a wad of tissues to cram up her nose. She'd been one of the ones to experience a massive nosebleed and she doesn't look the happier for it.

The going is slow as the posse works its way out from camp, defending against animals who scurry, fly and bully their way out from the jungle's undergrowth. It takes AJ a little longer, even, because she has to retrieve the arrows she'd buried in the earlier onslaught. She hasn't even spotted Rey, yet, instead reacting to the roar of another hammer-headed herd-beast. By now her arms are tired and her aim is slow, but she manages to put one of her last unsullied arrows into the tendons of the beast's flank, and though it doesn't go down for good, its motion is impeded enough that it staggers and drops before it keens and makes to right itself.

Others, at least, seem to have taken note of the animal. AJ has spotted what it was going for, and she raises her voice to outpace the intermittent bellowing as the thing is shot at by those with better weapons for the job.

"Hey, you!" Not exactly an encouraging greeting, but at least AJ's wearing a similar jumpsuit to the one that Rey had found, though the sleeves have been torn off. Nothing about the group looks especially menacing, even if it also isn't particularly welcoming. "Get over here or you're gonna get lunched!"

basecamp

[muscovy]

Out of nowhere, a child's voice will speak up somewhere behind Rey at about waist's height. The blond, human-looking boy who is standing there is wearing a sleeveless shirt, which makes the daggers and the small bag at his belt obvious, and his long hair has been braided intricately.

"You cannot climb a tree, yes?"

He's fairly sure of that, but it should still be checked - Rey looks in no state to fight, and he himself would rather raise an alarm and climb a tree instead trying to help someone who can barely keep on their feet to fend off one of the rabid animals (but leaving someone with insufficient defenses is absolutely no option, either. There's strength in numbers; the camp needs every single person. And someone will have to take care of the beast anyway - and he won't be the one to give people more reason to not take him seriously). At least he has been making improvements on shooting conjured up rifles - he'd really rather not have the beast get close enough to have to use his daggers, and he is having a hard time figuring out how much use Rey would be in a fight past serving as a distraction.

New arrivals (and having stalked her for a bit, he is fairly sure that she is one) usually have trouble with getting used to the place, so even if they would be good fighters normally, their reflexes can be off due to them being heavier than they are used to.

Basecamp

[bailedontheempire]

The scuffled does attract Bail's attention. He's not exactly the most combat focused person in the camp, but since he's in the area he feels like he should help. Especially when he realizes that she's wielding a lightsaber. It doesn't matter that she appears to be a stranger, a lightsaber makes her one of his people.

While he does have a lightsaber of his own (or rather Jaina's) clipped to his belt, he's not a Jedi and is not well suited to using the blade in combat. He pulls out a blaster pistol instead. "Miss!"

AJ | Defending the Wall | Open

[hairrands]

Things had gone from disputably bad to honest-to-god worse, but at least people were rallying after the first signs of smoke had begun boiling up out of the jungle. People'd assembled, some provisions were made as everyone discussed what the hell to do if the fire advanced into the crash-path of the Tranquility.

Some people, AJ knew, wanted to figure out what had caused all of this to go down. All that the clone could surmise was that it didn't matter who or what had done it (and she had an inkling anyways) because as the first group had disappeared into the tree-line to hunt that source down, overgrown, oozing, angry wildlife was as quick to pour out, and after a few minutes of build-up, it was showing no signs of stopping.

Thank fuck the wall was built up well. AJ wasn't about to cower now, so like others who were mounting the ladders built up access-points along its circumference, she took things two rungs at a time to help defend the camp. By the time that the Tranquility began to wail its familiar warning song, she was already burying fletching in the slavering, sore-riddled maws of beasts directly below her.

This was a culmination of one of her worst nightmares, being overtaken by a horde of monsters determined to tear her apart. With the wall (shaking though it is) between her and them, however, AJ was more determined than ever. She gave a demonic howl of laughter when a wall-mate managed to take a fair few of them out. "Do that again! More of that!"

[oldmanhusker]

Bill's keeping his sidearm in reserve for now. He'd thought bullets were a precious commodity at home, but it was far worse here. So he's giving Hawke's pointy sticks a try. The balance works pretty well for throwing.

"At least these are renewable." Though he only had so many right now.

garrett hawke. defending the walls + we didn't start the fire.

[queasycrow]

DEFENDING THE WALLS;

Hawke is having fun.

A little.

Not in any particularly sadistic way, and if he had a choice, he would most likely choose not for the crazed, blighted jungle creatures to besiege his home and the home of innocents, and certainly not this early in the morning. He never particularly revelled in the bouts of destruction he stood in the centre of, back in Kirkwall, often complaining that he was tiiired, can't chaos not unleash itself until the weekend's out, and so on. But he does, unstoppably, enjoy magic. Not just little tricks and nudges at the Fade, but violent gouts of fire and ice, reality punching, Veil-tearing magic. The kind you don't have round for dinner with your parents.

And this is an uncomplicated fight. He feels no moral indecision surrounding killing these beasties, and so he does, standing on top of one of the watch landings around the perimeter of the wall -- barefoot and without armor, during the initial wave, suffering a case of bedhead no one should tell him about, and sweeping his staff to send gusts of flame, miniaturised explosions that engulf one of the charging monsters, dragging it down, or paths of freezing, paralysing ice that seem to slice through flesh.

"Can't we talk about this?" he inquires of one snapping, frantic animal clawing at the walls just beneath his feet. "No?" It suddenly leaps, managing to get its claws into the wood to launch itself up and over, and Hawke startles back, swinging. Very unmagically, wood and metal thump into flesh and bone, the animal disappearing back down on the outside.

Hopefully no one saw that.

Later, when the initial wave has trickled down, Hawke is out beyond the boundaries, fully armored, sweeping the perimeter with his mabari dog trotting along at his heels, thick red kaddis dye painted in spirals on short fur, matched by the streak of red painted across Hawke's nose. A glow of icy-blue light emanates out of the stylised wolf head on the end of his staff as he follows where Dog indicates he senses the presence of the monsters.

[ ooc ; feel free to catch him at the wall, or defending territory beyond the walls when the chaos is less! ]

WE DIDN'T START THE FIRE;

"Be careful," Hawke says, slowing his stride through the jungle. The smell of smoke should be thicker than it is, but creative use of magic continues to push it back, a protective barrier around himself and anyone with him (no Dog, not here) to ensure they don't collapse before they even get to see flame. "For me, I mean. There's likely still to be monsters, and I'm a little busy."

Finding some underbrush burning away across a clearing, Hawke points his staff to it, and with a swirl of contained winter, frost settles over flame, making for a sudden rush and rise of white smoke.

[ ooc ; feel free to tag into fire adventures, but please just one thread! party time. ]

[rhyfelgri]

"This is gonna be a shit-show," Enfys sing-songs, axe in hand and machete strapped to her hip; things have been bad, lately, but this is another level of bad and not for the first time since crashlanding on this catastrophe of a planet, she thinks, maybe they're going to fucking die this time. Maybe this is the thing. Ivan's a goddamn vampire, they hate fire, he's fucked.

(One less thing for her to worry about, she thinks, philosophical.)

Everyone else, too. Unless they've secretly got some fire ... people. In their rag-tag band of misfits. Hawke, kind of, with his fancy stick and all, but she's pretty sure he's boned with the rest of them if this goes south, he seems cavalier only in the normal, like-Enfys way -

She's being careful, staying in the barrier perimeters, not aiming the blade of her axe at any person but especially not Hawke, what with him being the one with the barriers. (And her friend. Mainly that first one, though, probably.) She's just not sure it's going to matter.

(What will those probably-not-the-butt-probing-type aliens do if they fuck this up? The phrase 'salt the earth' has crossed her mind. Is this what happens? Did they already take too fucking long?)

Defending the walls!

[thecoldshoulder]

Hawke may not be getting any particular sadistic enjoyment out of slaughtering the maddened, infected beasts that are currently throwing themselves at the camp's fortifications, but there is another being just off to the side who very much is. Algidus is a whirl of movement, of icy particles and limbs shifting perpetually into a variety of weapons of malicious intent, rending his foes limb from limb and crowing loudly as he does so. A part of it is the exhilaration of combat, and another part of it is the release of having a proper outlet for the frustration that is always building up in him as he's stuck living among humans, separated from his homeworld. But there's also the fact that this is what he was made to do; his desire to destroy is something he normally has to hold back, has to smooth over for the sake of getting along with others. That he can indulge in it freely now without anyone casting judgment on him is also its own form of release.

He still, however, is not above laughing at another's expense, though the hectic nature of the situation means his verbal barbs are less pointed than usual. "Letting them get a little close for comfort, are you, human?" Algidus chuckles, jabbing his arm forward and shifting it into a lance to strike another creature neatly from the walls. "I think by now you surely must realize that these beasts cannot be reasoned with. There is only one language they speak, and lucky for you all, it is one I am well versed in!"

Defending the wall

[oldmanhusker]

Bill's keeping his sidearm in reserve for the moment. He'll use it if all else fails, but they don't have a lot of ammunition. They need to conserve as much as possible.

Eventually, his running battle with the creatures causes him to cross paths with Hawke again. "Good call on the sticks." They're working decently well.

helping

[spittle]

A visceral whump of muscle on muscle snaps a beaked mutant off of its legs mid-freeze, leaving a clawed foot to sizzle behind where it’s broken off in the ice. Werewolf vs alien bird, Flint twists over the creature as they slide along the parapet, long jaws champing up underneath for bare neck only to come up with a mouth full of bony ridges instead, clickity clack.

Splinters crack and snap, slung off in a froth, tooth on bone while they roll and garble and claw. The beak whips over and under his pinned ears in a rubber hose arc when he starts shaking, and clamps down into the bristle of his ruff the second he stops, outraged caws muffled into thick fur.

Deadlocked, both of them still, jaws caught up in a rhythm of squeeze and relax, Flint slows down and sinks into a sit to think.

The pitch of the bird-thing’s cries (and the direction of its bite) changes when he reaches down to grip at two of its remaining legs and pulls it deliberately apart, almost down the middle. He looks over at Hawke from where he sits, with half a monster twitching in each hand, and pushes the pieces back together.

Then he drops them both off the wall camp-side.

At least he has the general idea.

One Etrepa Seven | Shouting Rock, Base Camp | Open

[corpse_soldier]

What is it they say about not rearranging furniture when one's house is on fire?

One Etrepa Seven has stood guard, a portrait of implacable vigilance, over her captive since she was first detained. The circumstances are primitive - her bonds are re-purposed vines, binding wrist to wrist and ankle to ankle - and certainly nothing the prisoner could not escape in a transformed state. But such a transformation would be highly public, and while Etrepa shot her leg last time, the ancillary has promised to target a more valuable piece of anatomy should she attempt an escape before judgment is rendered.

When smoke begins to pour into the sky, underlit by the luminous orange of its origin, however, the question of interrogations and trials loses some of its urgency. As other armed and capable people begin to stream towards the camp's perimeter, Etrepa tarries with her captive, sticking to her self-assigned duty despite her growing sense that she has - through poor luck more than anything else - chosen the least of evils to remedy.

The sounds of mounting struggle at the wall exacerbate matters. She is not security; she is a soldier. She should be where the combat is thickest, where she can be of immediate use. Her agitation is visible only in the way she paces, back and forth, in front of the prisoner. After a spine-tingling CRACK of splintering wood resonates through the air, above the snarls and howls of the malformed animal attackers. Etrepa Seven turns her head to address Flint.

"If the fighting breaks through, you should remain near me, for your own protection."

[starspangled]

She knows how he feels right about now. Steve isn't a lawyer, he's not a policeman. He's a soldier too, and a thief - accused, not convicted - seems a lot less urgent than the other things going on right about now.

Steve told her that he was coming to relieve her of duty, as much out of concern for the detainee's safety than anything. One Etrepa Seven didn't strike him as someone who would be abusive or violent for violence's sake - if anything she was a bit too level-headed. But if the prisoner did try to escape, things might turn ugly.

Speaking of ugly, if he's late, it's because he had to deal with a couple of creatures who got through a breach, which Steve then tried to patch it up as best as he could. But he knows it's a temporary hold. Steve already has his shield at the ready, and when he jogs up to her, it's not actually for guard duty anymore.

"Change of plans." Steve glances from Flint and back to her. "We need to be defending the camp and see if we can get to those fires. They're driving more of those things right to us."

Re: One Etrepa Seven | Shouting Rock, Base Camp | Open

[lafautedevoltaire]

Having been sent away from the fighting on one wall, Gavroche is on his way to see if people will be more cooperative elsewhere. The original crew aren't the most understanding about a boy his age wanting to help and being able to. Especially not one who looks even younger than he really is.

He wasn't expecting to find someone just... standing around guarding a prisoner. "Shouldn't you be fighting with the others?"

Carlisle Longinmouth | approaching jump time | closed to Rey, Firo, and AJ

[tongueamok]

Though the sound of the sirens broke the stillness of the early morning air, Carlisle was far enough from the camp by the time they went off that they didn't startle him too badly. The night had been rough for him -- many often were -- and he'd set out for a walk long before the sun came up, trying to clear his head. He'd thought he'd turn back for the camp come daybreak; instead, he found himself drawn elsewhere by idle curiosity.

There was a fire in the woods.

He'd smelled it first, and considered it might be the strangers -- the crickets, as some had taken to calling them. Since they'd revealed themselves, he'd seen them lurking in the trees from time to time, always just on his periphery as he scavenged for materials and walked long paths in the forest. Despite their appearance and the kidnapping he'd been a part of, they seemed benign enough, ever watching the survivors, but disinterested for the most part in the goings-on at the crash site. They were out there, yes, but the fire didn't seem to be from their camp, he noted: the direction was all wrong, given what he could remember after his capture and the long trek back home. Their camp was east, and their outpost just north of the base camp, but the fires came from the south.

Perhaps another settlement then... or someone else. Despite his best judgment and the thought that there were definitely more suitable people for such endeavors, he started walking that way to investigate. He'd promised to learn what he could about them to keep himself useful, after all, and as someone relatively non-threatening, perhaps they'd keep hostilities to a minimum, should he stumble upon something he ought not. Adventurousness was unbecoming on him, but with the sirens howling and his head starting to ache, he wasn't keen on heading back to the camp anyway.

It wasn't the crickets, though. He found that out soon enough.

The farther south Carlisle went, the more apparent it became that something was definitely amiss. There were creatures moving in the trees, running to escape the flames: they were neither the strangers, nor benign. One of the four-legged beasts that had run through the camp before tore past him, followed by another almost immediately. To his left, several birdlike animals emerged from the underbrush, all headed in the same direction as their predecessors. They shared another commonality -- all of them seemed sick, misshapen from how he'd seen them in the past. The open sores and jagged protrusions just beneath their skin were obvious even at a passing glance.

They were not the only ones on the move. From deeper in the jungle, something else stirred -- something far bigger, enough to rattle the ground as it thundered toward the camp, and toward Carlisle himself.

And as the monstrous, deformed creature cleared the trees and came into sight, barreling toward the base camp the same as the rest, Carlisle decided it was time he run, too.

[hairrands]

There'd been a point when the healer had swung close to the encampment without realizing it, close to the edge of the crash lane that separated the southern forest from the north. Already the animals had start to come and most of the tatty village had come together to start to figure their shit out, and AJ, on the perimeter wall to practice her shooting, had felt a tug of fear at her gut that surmounted her own shoddy survival instincts.

It wasn't like the occasional leakage she got from the rest of the camp. Most days, it was hard not to go a full twenty-four hours (or however many a full day here) without someone's sorrow or fear or delight percolating around, and AJ had almost gotten used to feeling things that weren't hers. This fear felt compelling and impossible to shove off. If it had come with a voice, she'd be wary immediately. As it was, all she could think of now was that she had to go out and find something.

She slid down the ladder and marched out of the camp doors without a second thought, heading in a different direction from the one that others had been going to charge into the flames that were already licking up from the far south.

For some time, she used all of her wits to run, hide, and dodge her way through the forest. Her spear sliced through hanging vines and she stabbed furiously at the smaller animals that had spotted her. After a while she spotted a flash of dusty blue breaking into a run. She didn't shout or reach out to Carlisle yet, didn't realize she was tracking what was a huge, deformed creature. She just felt unmitigated fear in her gut, nascent signs of worse to come.

Algidus | second batch of openers

[thecoldshoulder]

Medical – Closed to Carlisle

It had only taken a couple of minutes for Algidus to regret his decision to allow Rey to bring him in to whatever passed for the basecamp's medical center. As soon as she'd staggered into the tent with the alien's unmelted arm slung across her shoulders for support, things had become a flurry of urgent movement. Despite her intervention, fire still had drastic consequences for a being that thrived in the freezing cold; it didn't help that no one in the camp was familiar with treating his species. It also didn't help that the ice alien, despite his serious condition, was not a cooperative patient. Relying on people had been difficult enough ever since mistrust had sprung up in his heart as a result of his cloning; subjecting himself to scrutiny while he was injured was even more difficult. The underbody of his left shoulder, flank, and most of his back had been stripped clean of its ice and was sporting burns, leaving Algidus feeling weak and exposed as the medics tried to look him over. A number of times he hissed a rebuke when they drew too close and tried to draw in on himself.

Eventually everyone realized that the treatments that were available to them were helping the problem somewhat, but not truly fixing it, as the burns across his skin were continuing to gradually deteriorate. As much as he was in a lot of trouble and he knew it, the ice alien couldn't bring himself to tell everyone what really needed to be done; he wasn't going to let them cut on him, especially when that would mean removing such significant swaths of his underbody. He knew he still had one other chance; he'd stayed on Carlisle's good side for this purpose, after all. So he had the medics put a call out for more unconventional methods of healing, while the alien waited miserably in the far corner for the clergyman to arrive, curled up in on himself as he tried not to pass out.

Basecamp – Closed to AJ

After all was said and done and Algidus' injuries had finally been properly seen to, he'd taken the first opportunity to leave medical and find some place more secluded to rest and recover from what had been, quite honestly, a draining and genuinely terrifying ordeal. He was still feeling so out of sorts over the wildfire that he for once had no desire to head back out into the jungle—even though it seemed to be under control for now, it had all happened so suddenly that he was unconvinced that a new blaze wouldn't spring up elsewhere—so instead he was stuck, wandering around the camp listlessly until he managed to find a vacant tent to retreat into. His body was exhausted and his mind felt numb from all the pain he'd endured; he wasn't even aware that he'd been subconsciously drawn back to the same tent that he and AJ had settled in, the night after she'd returned from her strange absence…

… Speaking of AJ, that tiny little black scrap that she'd torn from her jumpsuit was all he had right now to cover his exposed underbody. There was a part of him that so desperately wanted to cast it away, as he felt spurned by the way their last interaction had went, but he simply could not bring himself to. As much as he hated relying on people, and as much as he rebelled against the idea of caring for anyone, the other clone had been the one good thing to happen to him in on this planet and the only one to understand him for what he was. It was somewhat bittersweet, but he needed the ties to something good right now to keep him afloat, because right now this world felt just like the last one he'd been in, finding painful ways to bring him low so it could impassively watch him suffer.

So the alien tied the scrap of fabric around the blackened base of one large curling horn so that it would hang down across the melted region of his shoulder, then lowered himself down onto the ground, lying on his front to not put pressure on any of the areas that had been wounded, just in case. It was laughable how little it actually covered—the underbody of his trapezius, flank, and a good portion of his back were still exposed—but it was all he had. Eventually he would have to move again, try to find some source of water to begin reconstituting his icy skin, but for now all he could do was lay still and recover some strength while the cruelty of the universe ate away at him. Algidus found himself thinking of the night sky and all the stars that he knew hung just beyond the dark fabric that made up the ceiling of this little tent, and not for the first time found himself wishing he could be up there instead, finding his way back home to his people rather than being trapped in yet another cruel world. Normally the thought of one day returning to them would give him the strength and conviction he needed to push on in spite of all hardships, but right now the pain he'd been in coupled with his longing for his home was was all becoming too much; despite himself he lifted his head on that curving neck and opened his gills to let out a low, mournful note that rang out through the camp, as if his people who had been lost to him for so long would hear it and take him away from all of this.

swops to the rescue~

[hairrands]

If he was hoping for his own people, he was only ever going to get second best around here, but maybe that would be enough.

AJ was finally retiring for the night from an endless bout of her own ordeals, and Algidus' voice was clear enough that she lifted her throbbing head and paused for a moment, frozen in sudden fear.

She hurried through the shimmering blue fabric that made up the vestibule of the tent she'd claimed to find Algidus cowering in a melted pile in the middle of the beaten dirt floor. He was hard to parse like this; AJ immediately dropped to her knees beside him to try to make sense of what was wrong.

It became evident immediately that what was wrong was that his green skin--made dark by the barest amount of light in the hovel--was melted down to the point that parts of his underbody were showing. She was not familiar with his physiology but she could tell without a doubt that this was a bad sign, and when coupled with the mournful keening he'd been doing, she couldn't think further than the immediate fear of what to do next.

It had been a very long day, not the least of which because she had been dredging everything she could into reality to drop on monster-heads, and then had burst some kind of blood vessel for her efforts when the Tranquility tried to jump. Still, she strained her arms apart without giving more of a greeting than a concerned grunt--downright polite for her--and within a few moments an over-sized snowball made heavy and wet by the humidity of the camp had formed up between her dirty hands. It was the sort of thing that she'd have been proud to lay down as the base of a snowman when she was a kid, but just now all she could think was that Algidus was moments from death by overheating and the fear of that trumped petty migraines or other discomforts. "This isn't gonna last long, but you hang in there," she demanded, lowering it so that it could blanket the exposed part of his back, at least until it decided to melt and crumble apart.