ss_noanga | Arrival #4

For the Crew

Between one blink and the next, the crew find themselves drawn back to the bridge, perhaps for the first time, perhaps not. It is a feeling, a pull, a tug; it doesn't matter how, only that they are there to witness the flash of light, the hint of a portal on the floor (it fades between blinks), the ragged breathing of two fae in their ears, and a word related to the ship stolen from their minds to be replaced with another: 'Noanga'.

Not that the crew has time to question Navi-No about this: they have new faces to deal with.

And... they too have a 'gift', again. It's the same as the new arrivals.

(OOC Note: The word is mod determined and part of the mystery of the Noanga.)

New Arrivals

You remember giggles, a touch of the faerie, the glimpse of a glimpse of figures, and the faint, indescribable words whispered in your ear. Then, between one blink and the next, you stand alongside others who share the same confused or alarmed look as you stare out at the spacious area before you. The area is the intact, gleamingly sleek bridge of a spaceship straight out of science-fiction, complete with holographic viewport taking over one wall, while gathered people mill about, including a giant robotic griffon-dragon some 23' at the shoulder.

Something tells you this is the only truly functional area to be found on the ship. That these people are the only people on the ship.

There is a weight on your dominant wrist: a fancy gold bangle that cannot be removed by any means. While it isn’t a brand, it does feel like a mark of something, and soon enough you notice that each bangle has one large jewel. Each jewel is one of three colours. Heliodor Green, Spinel Purple, and Zircon Blue.

Finally, you see a somewhat friendly looking AI hovering before you. It dips then does a delighted twirl with another dip at the end.

"Greetings, Invited! I am the Ship's Pilot, a Navigational Artificial Vector Interface – Noanga's Operator. Call me Navi-No of the Noanga." The mechanised voice is distinctly that of a generic British Butler and about as chipper. "It looks like you're trying to figure things out. I'd be delighted to provide assistance: I see you're all sporting some rather fetching bangles. Are you perhaps wondering about those?"

No. Not a Space Butler. It's Space Clip-It given a body, and, as you will very soon discover, about as accurate as Chat-GPT is.

And it's your (armed) pilot.

And, you also notice a that you are wearing, over your existing clothes, some strange, glittery, ice-cream themed woolen jumper you don't recall putting on. It's actually really fluffy and perfectly warm!

Oh, and you have some kind of pendant around your neck. The stone is your favourite colour.

Claim quarters

The first order of business is survival. Or at least finding a room for yourself. Luckily, there's plenty to pick from! Big and small, shaped for creatures who once measured from a child-sized three feet to titans towering at forty. Some rooms remain intact, dim but liveable. Others are half-eaten by dereliction: doors jammed, walls bowed inward, ventilation systems coughing dust. To claim room is to gamble: Will you risk wandering deep into the forgotten corridors or skirt the truly derelict zones for something grander, or settle for what’s close and known?

Exploring the Noanga

Once, the Noanga must have been a marvel of engineering and technology. Once. But now it's now it is a semi-derelict thing that travels the stars while some strange life clings and renders it somehow still liveable, though the Bangles will beep warnings when a character strays from the liveable sections.

The ship smells faintly of ozone, rust, and the synthetic tang of recycled air. Everything feels lived-in yet long abandoned.

Yet despite its state, there's lots to do and find, even without being able to get into the engines or control the bridge.

Chose Your Own Horror

Maybe you want to go deeper into the ship!

The deeper you go, the more likely you’ll encounter unstable gravity, radiation leaks, or things that have made themselves at home during the long years. Ignore the Bangle's warnings and wander too far into the dereliction, and they will shriek. The oxygen mix is wrong, the temperature too low, or the gravity plates stutter, leaving pockets of crushing or weightless voids.

Or worse.

Note: Anything found within the danger zones will not follow characters back into the safe areas. It's almost like they can't...

Perfect.... Ice-cream??????

SOMEHOW, the only thing the replicators wish to serve for the next few days is ice-cream themed anything. It tastes just like home - like a parent or guardian got it for you, but that is probably just your imagination and nothing to worry about. Everything's fine.

Ice cream makes things better and it's not weird at all that it tastes like home. Stop poking the replicator. It won't help.

... It's probably best you don't think too hard about this. That you just enjoy it.

Veterans of the Noanga will know that things are Very Likely Not Fine, more so when Navi-No shrugs and answers in ice-themed puns that don't answer anything outside end you on a wild chase across the ship that ends in you finding a Special Rock that you now just have to keep on your person.

Wooly Mayhem!

Wool. Wool. Wooly wooly wool. There's bales of it around the ship, but not all of it wants to stay in the bales. Some has somehow spread all over the place. In your hair, in your food. On the walls. In your rooms. Especially in your rooms.

In the aquarium?!? Though, now it's just a sad soggy mess that needs to be repeatedly fished out. Best to toss that out an airlock or something.

It's like someone unleashed a wool bomb on the ship. Or... maybe there are sheep? There seems to be faint baa'ing now and again and it's coming from... your rooms?

Oh. And there's also hay bales, too. Lots, and lots of hay bales.

((Note: there are no real sheep, at least. Unless you really want a real sheep and all that entails?)

Make your own location.

What it says on the tin! Want a gym? Pools? Indoor rock climbing? Sure! Go for it! The skies the limit.

code bases by tricklet

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Oh, you know. The parts of your thinking that aren't you." Some concepts are just hard to explain, no matter how hard he tries. The Reach is him, is thinking, but it's not a separate entity to point itself out to be talked to - at least not unless one was a computer, better reached by cold logic.

"Anything that makes colors" He's used clothes scraps before, collecting bits of things that had the shades he desired. Then crayons and now a variety of paints and pencils, some lugged along, some stored, some just left where he can find them again.

If that was meant to be reassuring, it didn't work. "How can you have thoughts that are not you, unless they are from some other being imposing their thoughts on you?"

He's still hanging back. "Does that 'anything' include... living things?"

"Do you have to think about breathing? About which muscles to move if you want to walk? About how to digest food? That are thoughts that happen, but they aren't you. They don't have feelings." And what is your self but the part that feels?

The other question puzzles him and gives him an idea of a living canvas. Creatures working together to form a big, shifting vision of greatness. Then he considers the logistics of organizing that, with any of the species known to him, and quickly puts it aside. "No. Too much trouble. To inconsistent results."

He does, actually. Or he did, at least, when he first took a new form. He had to think about how it should move, remind its lungs to take in air regularly. That he was capable of doing so at all set him apart from the crude Grade 1 Ols, but he was (now) painfully aware of how those bodily functions were not as automatic as those of actual living beings. Only the greatest of Ols, the Grade 3s, could even hope to mimic signs of life without having to think about it at all.

Though of course he can't actually say any of this. So he just nods, as if he understands from a personal example. But he also wonders that this creature has a name for those automatic functions. His human friends did not; the closest they would talk of was "instinct", but that was different, and it was something he had as well.

The denial that he uses living beings is a relief, but "inconsistency results" sets off the alarm bells again. Those were words from the Factory, used for the experiments that failed, to be eliminated or set loose to haunt the Shadowlands as Wild Ones. "What- do you mean by results?" he asks, sounding confused and hiding his fear.

"You ask people to do something and they say no and then you have to spend energy arguing and that takes far too long. And if you ask things that aren't people it takes too long to make them understand what you want." Forcing it doesn't cross his mind. They've long moved past such notions and the octopi weren't doing much of that anyway. "And even if they agree, they are not me and might understand wrong!"

That... was not at all what he was expecting. It's so human, the sorts of problems he had never heard of until he had left the Shadowlands and spent time among humans who weren't slaves and could make choices and decisions of their own. He imagines this creature saying this to Doom, who would have snorted and said that if it's that important, then you must spend all the time and energy arguing.

He lets himself smile and start to laugh. "I suppose that means you prefer to work alone most of the time?"

"We are more together!" Though he does still prefer to be the only octopus in the room. It comes with less hassles, less discussions that spring up dozens of new arguments into all directions. (For all that his Reach would disagree, when many of them can network fast as a computer.)

Another surprise, this one hitting like a lightning bolt. How many times had he heard Doom say nearly the same thing, reminding others of Deltora's history of uniting to drive out evil? He stops and looks at the being. Strange as it looks and talks, he thinks he can understand it.

"That is what the Resistance lives by, and Deltora before the Shadow Lord's invasion," he says softly, gently.

"Oh. Do you've not yet learned how to be Humans?" The capital letter is a notable difference even in tone. It matters, to draw that line of before and after.

Now he's just confused. "What do you mean? How do you learn to be human?" Other than, well, how he learned to imitate humans. Then started becoming more like them.

"Oh, it took them a bit to see the spiders as people. They had to infect them with the Rus-Calif virus first but we had that already." A kinship, forced by genetics.

Dain looks more confused. "I thought it was human nature to see outsiders as- not entirely people. It is a struggle to overcome that impulse in order to work together. How does an infection help with that?"

"Oh, you use it to rewrite some neural pathways and then everyone who has it sees each other as kin!" Or something of the sort. It had limits still, but at the very least it did enforce that idea of facing other people.

"What are neural pathways? Do you mean they- create roads between groups?" That does make some sense to him. Allowing travel between the homes of different groups brings them closer and makes them see each other as kin. It was why the Shadow Lord had discouraged such connections in Deltora.

Uh oh. "How much do you know about anatomy?" He is happy to explain, one arm already getting up schematics on the slate, but just how far back does he need to start? And the painting isn't forgotten, just shoved to a lower priority while they sort this out.

Arrival #4

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