Intro Log: The Forgotten City

GOOD MORNING NEW ARRIVALS

This time for real!

WAKEY WAKEY.

As the storm finally peters out and characters can once again move above ground it becomes abundantly clear that the landscape has changed. Where vast expanses of sand dunes once laid is now the half-buried remnants of what looks like some sort of...city? Full of structures. It stretches so far it's really hard to tell. But there is one thing characters will notice:

There are more stasis pods.

Revealed by the sandstorm, a whole new flurry of pods can be found scattered on the way to the city (curiously though, not in it. Hurry and wake those guys up!

SPREAD THE LOVE. OR ACID.

With the departure of the storm there's even more new arrivals to be found besides those fellow travelers of yours! The "Seedlings" and "Cactus" are now both available, the former blown in by the storm and the former uncovered.

The Seedlings are generally pretty harmless. They like to burrow into the sand so only their "Leaves" plant-like leaves remain above ground, and they're quite happy to stay that way until surprised. Then they pop up and trip over themselves a little, before slowing down and wandering aimlessly. When they find a patch of sand that looks comfy they begin burrowing back down.

Pull or yank on their leaves though and you'll find yourself with a face full of pollen that makes you want to just tell everyone how super-cool they are. It lasts a while, and then you get a fever and vomit for two hours. Good times.

The Cacti are much less harmless and just...why would you eat them? Everything about this plant is poisonous, and cracking it open causes a corrosive acid-like substance to spill out. It'll eat through everything but...dirt, oddly. Metals and flesh are like hot oil on plastic.

DON'T GET LOST

And last but not least: The Forgotten City. Maybe you want to check out the Hull first for some loot, but maybe that's not such a cool idea anymore? Although it looks like the ship's definitely more powered after draining the suits of whoever went in, now it's started to spread and fill the sinkhole the ship's in. Suits can go from 100% to 0% in just ten minutes--not good!

Lucky for everyone else, it looks like finally there's some sort of civilization up ahead. Go on and check it out!

OR DO. THAT'S OKAY TOO.

Go nuts, have fun, and enjoy! (This is the wildcard option)

OOC

The Flora, Fauna & Resources page has been updated with information on the seedlings, cacti, and crystals! These items are now all available for Discovery, and The Forgotten City will be available indefinitely from now on! Characters can take this time to settle & build up a foundation for themselves, explore the area, and of course, harass those poor little seedlings.

We encourage players to make their own open posts for this setting--you don't need to stick to just this intro log! But make sure to make our newbies feel welcome!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[There is a part of Lexa that is wary when it comes to the pods. She doesn't approach them right away. In fact, her initial belief had been that they had all recently arrived on this planet, though Inui had believed that they had been there for a while. The reveal of these pods leads her to believe that it's the latter. Right again, perhaps. But if he is right, then he may be right about the state of the pods themselves: messing with them can lead to them exploding. Survival instincts tell her to hold off.

When they don't blow up when the first of the pods open, she heads in to free the first she sees. Her eyes are suspicious as the door itself opens, and she steps back, body tense as she waits to see who (or what—it may be a what at this point) comes out.]

[ Jim's a little too busy relearning how to breathe to even notice someone near his pod. As Lexa stands there, she'll just see a man pretty much stumble out of the pod and fall onto his hands and knees on the sand, still coughing and gasping a little for air.

For a moment there, he really thought he was going to choke to death, and his head's still a little light on his shoulders. He gets to his feet as soon as he can steady himself —a little before that, actually, so he ends up stumbling to the side a step or two—, then his surroundings quickly come to focus.

A little too quickly. Jim feels like throwing up a but, honestly, but he turns to the woman instead. ]

Where— where the hell are we?

Some people have their suspicions, [she begins. At one point, she thought she was in the desert (yes, desert) just outside of her home in what she doesn't know is Virginia. But these pods have destroyed any belief regarding that. There's no sign of it, and while the hull and its foreign language should have been proof, it's oddly the pods and their apparent longevity here that seals it for her.

Just the same, she motions to the area around them.]

I can safely say that it's not Earth. Otherwise, it's difficult to say. It's difficult to guess whether you know what Earth is, too. Do you? [That is another thing that is uncertain.

There are so many uncertainties.]

[ He focuses, or tries to, on the words she says, the way she says them. Suspicions, guesses... looking around, he sees the other pods, other people climbing out of their units, and he looks back to his own.

It's definitely not Federation technology, he'd know it if it were. And the suit he's wearing doesn't even remotely resemble anything Federation-issued. Wherever he is... he can only assume he's been dragged very far from home. ]

Yeah. Yeah, I know Earth. [ He nods. ] A number of other planets too. You mean— we all come from different ones?

["Different ones" could refer to Earth or to multiple planets, and she pauses for a moment to process that. Her face is calm and unreadable, perhaps to an annoying degree. No one needs to be that blandly disinterested, but she's accomplishing it ... for now.]

Many claim to be from Earth, but our information doesn't match up. [Her world burned, and many others haven't. Or if they have, they were obliterated. It's very strange, and she lacks a knowledge of the multiverse.]

But not all are. There are humans from other planets. And aliens, too. I've never asked their place of origin. [Truthfully ... Lexa didn't care. It might be partly because of denial. Actually, that wouldn't be far from the truth.]

[ Multiple Earths, multiple planets, multiple realities... Jim's had his fair share of experiences with all of those, so it's not like much would surprise him at this point. That still doesn't make this situation any easier to cope with, though, and he's still feeling pretty disoriented as it is. ]

Different Earths, then. [ Said like it's a simple explanation. Well, to him it is. Even if it still doesn't explain how or why they were all brought here. ]

I might know some of them. [ Provided they're from his galaxy, and from his universe. He doesn't even know at this point. And besides, finding a Romulan might do more harm than good, so that's not necessarily a good thing. ] How's your Earth like?

One hundred years ago many nuclear bombs went off and the world burned. My people are among the few who survived, and what remains of civilization is merely a hint of what had been there before. [The words come automatically: it's as if she's explained it before. The clarity in the explanation is further along now thanks to some technological help that she's not entirely aware she has, and questions from other people. (As well as the people who came down from the sky three months before she arrived here.

Or what still feels like it.)]

We had limited space travel. As such I doubt you know of ... my Earth. [This last fragment of a sentence comes out like it's strange in her mouth, like she can't fully conceptualize what it is that she's saying.]

I don't, no. You're right. Nuclear bombs were a thing centuries ago but we never really burned up the whole planet. Nuclear energy's ancient from my perspective, too.

[ Their energy sources are much cleaner and harmless these days, not used with the specific intent to create weapons. Although they serve that purpose too (it'd be stupid if they didn't, really), it's not the focus. Jim, for one, is glad about that. ]

Space travel's also pretty developed where I'm from. You've got humans living in a number of different planets across the galaxy, not just Earth. [ He nods at her. ] What year was it, where you came from? [ If she'd even know that. ]

["Nuclear energy's ancient from my perspective, too." The information resonates within her, and she recalls Clarke's worries about her most recent crisis back home. While Lexa can't pretend as if she knows everything, she wonders if this is a place where Clarke could find the tools she needs to help their people. It can't hurt, but it's not the time to pursue that. Perhaps later, when he's better equipped to handle this setting, and therefore better equipped to handle a relentless teenage girl like Clarke Griffin.

For now, she only offers a faint shake of her head.]

I don't. We've kept a different calendar since my people began to follow the first Commander. [A beat.] It's been ninety seven years since then.

[ Jim would welcome just about any piece of information right now, whether it comes from an old man or a teenage girl. He has to believe there's some reason why these specific people were brought here, too, like each and every one of them has something to contribute to their situation. ]

Right. Worth a try. [ Not that it would make much of a difference, when it comes down to it. He offers a hand to her. ] I'm Jim, by the way.

[Ah. Like one of the Sky People. None of her people regularly do handshakes, exactly, and she lowers her gaze to his hand for a moment. Anything else that she could offer (a grip of his arm, for example) would be too ... intimate. She doesn't take it, though. Sorry, Kirk. Lexa's still reluctant to be any less of who she is—and where she's come from.

Still, she'll introduce herself:] I'm Lexa. [A beat. A beat more.] Regardless of the matter of space travel, I believe we have to assume it's happened here. [The hull of a backdrop and the pods themselves are likely proof of that.] But would you happen to know what could involve ... multiple Earths?

[It's the first she's heard of it, but hey—answers. He seems like he has an idea.]

[ No harm done, really. Jim just lifts a shoulder in a half-shrug and drops his arm back down to his side with no awkwardness. He's met a number of people who don't even know what a handshake is, and even some who do and wouldn't be comfortable taking part in one. So he doesn't take the gesture as a sign of hostility or unfriendliness, and easily moves on.

He nods when she introduces herself, eyebrows raising a little and head tipping to the side at the question. ]

I can't say how it happened in this particular instance. The only time I experienced it, it was when a friend of mine, from some good years in the future, traveled back to the past. But in doing so he altered certain events and the course of history enough that he created an alternate reality.

Theoretically speaking, though? You can have an infinite number of universes, and infinite possibilities so far as what might happen in each one of them. But traveling across said universes, that's just something else entirely. Not something that can be done in my world, at least not yet. But there have to be universes out there where that's a reality— possibly even commonplace.

[Jim putting it so simplistically makes it seem like a concept that she should have considered much sooner. She seems to process his words for a moment, and the nagging question—how is she even alive?—still lies at the back of her mind. It won't go dormant for a while. What he says explains a great deal of things, though: like why Clarke has lived past her death by so many days, why her knowledge of the world and Inui's don't line up, and why one Earth wasn't just burned—it was destroyed.

In her mind, the Flame works, too, contributing to some of the knowledge she needs to put together the pieces. Still, a lot of this technology never existed, so, as such, it isn't entirely available to her. But she manages. Thanks, Dead Commanders.]

It explains a great deal of things. Thank you. [Everything is a transaction, as far as Lexa is concerned.] And I believe you may be helping a number of us explain our discrepancies. In turn, I can offer you as much as I know—though we're still in the process of uncovering the mystery ourselves. For example, we don't know what the Atlas is, exactly. It may not be the typical definition of the word. [And thus, the transaction continues: give and take. He offered one possible (probable) answer to a longstanding question, so she'll begin to offer him what she can. It isn't kindness, exactly—it merely balances things out, and that's what she knows best.]

[ Well, Jim does have some experience with this kind of thing. Not a lot of experience, mind, but definitely more than most people brought here, if not everyone. He's also been stuck in unfamiliar planets before, so it's a little easier for him to just mesh those experiences together to both cope and try to figure out what they can do or where they can go from here.

Equal trades might not be how Jim always operates but he's no stranger to them, and he nods and gladly accepts the exchange. What little she can offer him right now in terms of information is invaluable, considering he knows next to nothing about why they're here. ]

I'd have guessed a map, among other things. [ Either a map to a treasure, to a trap, or just a means to get them out of here. Either of those options make him feel like all this is a little too much like some kind of game. ] Could be some weapon. I'm guessing you also don't know who wants us to find the Atlas either.

I thought it might be a map, but these symbols are apparent on all of us. [Lexa turns her gloved hand over so that Jim can get a good look at the A-like symbol on it.] While these suits don't have to stay on, I believe anyone can see that we're quite visibly branded at the moment. Whoever it is is—or was—invested in our survival.

[That they've survived what might be a crash of some kind says volumes. That means they had the technology to pull this together for multiple people.]

But if we're been here for a while, the investment may have passed.

[ Jim turns his own hand around when she shows him the symbol, cupping the back of it as he looks down, then back up to her. This branding, for whatever reason, leaves him more nervous than being stranded on an alien planet does. Even if it might mean nothing, or not affect them in any special way. ]

If we were on a ship, chances are we were headed somewhere. So it's likely that this planet wasn't our intended destination. The Atlas, whatever it is, probably isn't here. You ask me, we were supposed to search through a portion of space, not through a single world.

[ He looks to the distance for a moment, another unsettling thought bubbling to the surface. ]

I wonder if those responsible also survived the crash. If they're somewhere around here.

Moved on, but waiting? Or they did wait. It's possible. [And probable. There is one thought that comes to mind, especially as Inui had made a point about it.] But whoever they were, they may have perished regardless. This planet doesn't seem to be very welcoming, and they did little to salvage what had been left behind.

[The hull is in bad shape, so maybe they did salvage it, but it looked like it was left to be a grave, forgotten years and years ago. It's haunting.

Though incredibly likely as the source of their arrival.]

If we were meant to travel, do you think there would be someone made aware of our awakening?

They might've, yeah. Either that or they found a more hospitable area on this planet, but... I don't know. Guess it depends on how important we were to them, if they'd be willing to abandon the pods just like that.

[ He'll get a better notion of their situation once he starts looking around, and he'll likely draw similar conclusions. How it looks like the ship's been here for years. Jim happens to have a very vivid memory of something similar. That'll be an unpleasant memory to relive, yet at the same time a hopeful one. ]

It's possible that someone was meant to to know, but that link might've been severed when we crashed. Otherwise I think someone would've come for us or the actual crew of the ship by now.

Typically, I'd believe there would be an obvious absence of communication. There were people who lived in the sky back home who had no way of knowing about the ground below. They sacrificed their people to find out. [Clarke had suggested that it may be the same thing here. But the advanced and evolving technology says something different.]

The suits we wear suggest that we're important. They evolve. Which means we can evolve. I don't want to be arrogant, but I do think we're important. We just may not be a lost set of leaders. Leaders are usually the ones who are sought after when they're lost, all in order to restore stability.

[And while Lexa is a leader—she believes she was born to be one—she doubts she has that stature among the people behind the A symbol.]

That could be the case too, but with a ship like this, and these pods? The mere fact that they managed to snatch us up from different universes— I can't imagine someone with that kind of power being unable to hold steady long-range communications. Something must've gotten screwed up during the crash.

[ Jim's not sure if he's sad or relieved about that. Granted, having people come here to get them could be a good thing, but on the other hand sometimes it's better to be left to your own devices rather than be captured and unable to set themselves free. ]

I have no doubt we are important to them. Or were. I don't know— they could be keeping us for a myriad of reasons. We might've not been more than just glorified lab rats.

What were you before you came here, Jim? [Aside from Inui—who has presented himself as insignificant, and Lexa is prone to agree—most of the people are unique in some way. Lexa and Clarke are, as well—though she realizes that she may be building herself up unfairly. All the same, that unique quality still lies within her.]

There are those with great abilities, and those who were leaders. And one boy, who may be nothing but a factor to show that the rest of us are special. Would you say that you're the same?

[ He really would like to tell her otherwise. He'd like to say he's just some average person with a commonplace occupation, who has nothing special or unique about him, who doesn't stand out from the crowd. Only because he knows his answer is only going to further fuel her belief and serve as a bit more proof to the theory she seems to be building in her head.

Which isn't to say she's wrong... it just doesn't mean she's right, either.

But pressing his lips into a thin line, he drops his eyes and looks away for a moment. ] I'm the Captain of the USS Enterprise, a starship operated by Starfleet, and the flagship of the United Federation of Planets. [ So yes, he is... relevant, you could say. ]

And taking you would disrupt the very foundation of where you've come from. [It doesn't mean that her theory is true, but his words support it. Then again, Lexa knows that she has already died, that in her passing, the disruption has happened—and to some degree, has begun to pass, thanks to Clarke.

It's not a factor that is certain, but they can't overlook it.]

Whoever may have taken us may have wanted chaos. Or they may have wanted individuals competent enough to handle this. [But then there is Inui. He is still a sore thumb that sticks out regardless.]

Well, not the very foundation, but... yeah, it might a slight mess of things. [ But the new Enterprise would still fly, it would still have a crew and a mission. It would just be led by another Captain. Starfleet, the Federation, his crew and those closest to him might take a hit by his sudden disappearance but things would keep working as always.

He's not sure if that thought is more comforting or unsettling, but he quickly decides it's best to not even think about it. ]

I'm more inclined to believe the latter. They wanted us here for a reason, not necessarily away from our worlds. At most they don't give a crap about how our disappearances might change things. [ He looks to Lexa. ] You're important too, in your world? What were you before coming here?

The leader of the coalition of the thirteen clans—their Commander. Our numbers may be smaller than what some are used to—[which is an addition made in part because of her experiences here]—but I wouldn't say that our society is small. [Especially compared to where they are now.

Lexa is reluctant to share that prior to coming here, she met her demise. If anything, the true problem lies in the one place where she's met confusion: the Flame in her neck. Clarke spoke of using it later, of becoming the next Commander in all but permanence.

If anything, that will only come out if she's absolutely forced. It hasn't seemed important yet.

(But then, she's not against being selfish and deciding what is or isn't important.)]

It's not that my people aren't accustomed to me occasionally having to go into hiding, but as you can imagine, there would still be disruptions. One of my ambassadors is with me, too, and I believe that she'll be leading her clan before long. [Honestly, Lexa thinks she should be already. It's apparent that she's the best suited for it.]

Intro Log: The Forgotten City

GOOD MORNING NEW ARRIVALS

wakey wakey (in the pod no less)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)