themnemosyne

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🪐 event

Event

EVENT

As L3Th3 predicted, Mnemosyne reaches the found planet on the 15th. The first view of the planet is both awe-inspiring and perplexing; a world fractured into countless floating landmasses, orbiting a radiant core that pulses like a living heart. The core's golden-red light casts shifting hues across the fragments, where forests cling to jagged cliffs and rivers spill into the void in endless waterfalls. Despite the chaotic appearance, the ship's sensors confirm the presence of a breathable atmosphere, stable temperatures, and signs of life. Strange energy readings does emanate from the core, while metallic signatures suggest ancient remnants of advanced structures scattered across the fragments.

The ship's cameras capture even more details - bioluminescent foliage shimmering under the core's light, clouds of mist swirling between fragments, and glimpses of winged creatures darting through the open air. L3TH3's systems report unstable yet navigable conditions for a shuttle, but urges caution while exploring.

When descending from the Mnemosyne, the landing shuttle's autopilot will navigate the surreal landscape of floating islands. The fragments are larger on the outside, breaking into smaller pieces the closer to the core they are, and reveals alien forests, glowing moss, and grassy plains. Here and there, vines stretch like natural bridges between landmasses, making the navigation a bit rough without an experienced pilot. Weaving through shifting gravitational forces, the shuttle's engines hum as it adjusts to the planet's gravity.

As the shuttle nears the landing zone - a stable plateau near the edge of a larger fragment - the core looms in the distance, its pulsating glow bathing the surface in warm light. The shuttle's landing gear extends with a soft hiss, touching down gently on the alien soil. The engines wind down, leaving only the faint heartbeat of the core and the distant sound of wind rushing through the fragmented terrain. The planet waits, silent and enigmatic, for the first steps of exploration.

Welcome to AG-001!

In the spirit of world-building... here is one! Characters are welcome to create and build this planet within the frame of the setting. Creatures, flora, anything non-sapient. In the end, it will not be a good planet to create a settlement on, but markers to survey it will be added.

On the 22nd, the Mnemosyne will continue the journey.

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[ Weird plants is one thing. Weird animals? That's less amazing. ]

Huh?

[ Did Rin say something? ...Oh shit, yeah, right. He raises his scanner, pointing it at the...

...it's a fairy. A bright light in a colored ball? That's a goddamn fairy, what the hell?! ]

Yeah, yeah, scanning.

[ It's definitely animal and not plant. The scanner doesn't report any toxins or sharp bits, but Wolfwood takes a step back anyway, in case it, y'know. Explodes. ]

Nothin' immediately threatening. No idea how it's glowing though. Scanner's just reporting a lot of unknowns.

[Scanning aliens is always so helpful, isn't it?]

[Rin takes a few cautious steps closer, moving slowly and cautiously as they put themself at an equivalent distance from the creature to Wolfwood, though they've left a generous space between the two of them, far enough that neither could accidentally nudge into each other. There's a few flickers of their CL-10 screen, as they start pulling information.]

Bioluminescing is usually harmless. And threat displays are usually... more threatening.

Yeah, on Tellus.

[ Rin isn't wrong -- the bubble fairy doesn't seem threatening -- but neither does an anglerfish's light to its prey. Wolfwood stops scanning the fairy -- yes, he's going to call it that -- since Rin is already on the case, and instead turns his attention and scanner to the surrounding foliage. Is there anyone hiding in there? Come out come out wherever you are! ]

I'm seein' a bunch more of those things, distance point eight meters through, uh... six meters. Plus a bunch of smaller life forms, looks like swarm bugs of a couple kinds... somethin' like a fungus... nothin' big enough to take a bite out of either of us.

[ Which doesn't mean that unknown life won't poison or electrocute them and then spend the next three weeks chomping through their corpses. ]

Confirmed, next estimations will be drawn from extensive database on alien fauna.

[You know, the one they definitely don't have. They frown down at the screen in front of them, shuffling a few more things before closing it away again and refocusing on the problem(?) at hand.

... Poking this thing would be stupid and they're not going to do it, but they do kind of wonder what would happen if they did. Would it just deflate? Or maybe it does have some defense mechanism despite its general harmless appearance.]

Watch out for nests.

[Hey - fuck, that blob's floating closer. It's almost funny, how quickly and completely Rin ducks to the side to get out of its drifting path.]

[ Wolfwood would laugh at how frantic Rin is to get away from the little fairy light, but he's too busy sidestepping away in the other direction to comment. ]

Wha...? I'll fuckin' nest you!

[ Wolfwood, that didn't even make any sense. He flips a hand at the fairy, to see if it's just caught in the breeze and he can waft it away. ]

Shoo!

[If they both duck away like it's a bomb, it doesn't count, right? It's a tie, neither of them says shit about it, they both mutually silently agree that it never happened. Rin will just keep their distance as Wolfwood tries to direct the thing further away.

That response, though;]

Even I'm better at comebacks than that.

[It's the most casual Rin's sounded since the entire team came down to this planet. Maybe the most casual Rin's ever been, talking to Wolfwood. Even that first time, they weren't angry, but they were still being kind of a dick about everything.

They shake their head as they straighten, examining a smear of dust and plant matter on one palm of their suit, where they'd been forced to plant a hand against the base of one of the taller fern-things.]

Let's outpace it.

Edited (rereading a tag as I hit post is a curse) 2025-02-05 22:21 (UTC)

[ Look, it sounded better before he said it, okay? Now: outpacing the pairy seems like a good idea, especially since it seems to be following whichever of them is closest. Later, when the little glowing bugs invade the Mnemosyne, they'll discover how attracted the glowing cores are to electrical things, but right now? Right now it feels like a threat.

A very minor, rather pretty threat, but a threat nontheless. Heading away from the thing seems like a good plan. ]

Yeah? Prove it, if you're so clever! Let's hear this better comeback.

[Rin picks up their stride, getting just far enough ahead that they're in front of Wolfwood, marshalling their scanner as they set off away from the flat area of the landing platform, and into the denser nest of ferns. Each casual brush against the things knocks down a shower of yellow dust around them.]

They can nest up your ass.

[It's not delivered like a comeback, but in the dryest, most humorless tone Rin can apparently muster. Followed by a small beat of static, as Rin pauses, putting their hand to their helmeted head. It lasts only a moment, before they adjust something on their camera and resume pace, their head tilted more towards tracking the ground they walk on than the strange fern forest they're wandering into.]

[ He's used to the way Tellusian ferns drop spores like a sandstorm, so the mess decorating Rin's suit barely registers due to its familiarity. Wolfwood's attention is on the bobbling fairy light -- make that lights, plural -- that are drifting as though caught in a breeze. Their movements seem random, but they're still slowly following after the two intruders.

Wolfwood's bark of a laugh at Rin's reply surprises the hell out of him, and he stumbles over an exposed gnarl of root (odd, part of his mind supplies, ferns don't usually have roots like that) before finding his equilibrium again. ]

Careful. [ His words are warning, but his tone is light, verging on friendly. ] Talk like that'll get you a round on the MAT.

[ MAT. Good ol' Mandatory Appropriateness Training. Five hundred years in the future and management still thinks the way to deal with everything from foul language and a lack of social skills to deeply inappropriate interpersonal conduct is with a multi-hour test, the questions interspersed with videos of awkwardly acted improbable workplace harassment. ]

[Surprisingly weird: Making Wolfwood laugh. Rin's helmet tracks towards Wolfwood, briefly, apparently just as surprised by the burst of laughter as Wolfwood himself, before twisting back to watching their feet, navigating the unfamiliar territory with careful surety.

Too bad they're too far from the Shuttle and the Mnemosyne to be able to pull out the training that the ship surely took with it out into the great unknown. It would be a great time for them to clip one of the more trite phrases in it and send it over - but it's not like Wolfwood would see it in this instant, either. No one else here is quite as wired into their CL-10 as Rin.

They just have to make do with their mouth, instead. Surprisingly easy - maybe it's the helmet, helping with their eternal paranoia over being looked at. ~~Maybe it's the fairies slowly converging.~~]

Then I politely decline your offer to nest.

[ Send him video clips of training lectures and find yourself missing a couple screws next time you sit in your favorite chair, jerk. It's strange -- or it will be strange, when he thinks about it later -- that for all that he's being chased by fairies on an alien world and might, in fact, die at any time, he's actually enjoying this argument with Rin.

Is this fun? Is he really having a good time here? Weird.

Crashing through the underbrush might not have been the best course of action if they were looking to get away from this world's wildlife. Wolfwood snorts at Rin's reply, and just barely managed to avoid stepping on a pile of leaf litter that shifts on its own as he passes. ]

Speakin' of nests, watch yourself.

[ He swings his scanner around as he walks past and confirms that, yup, there's a whole swarm of something small in that pile of detritus... and more of them, around the base of these fern-trees and going down into the ground itself. ]

Those fairies aren't the only things runnin' around out here.

[ It shouldn't be a surprise that a warm wet green world is covered in bugs. Hopefully nothing else decides to follow them, though! ]

[Of course this is the one thing Rin comes over to observe, once again checking the camera on the side of their helm as they observe the whole scattering swarm of ants and their movements. They even crouch down, to get a closer look at the strange insectoid bodies on the antlike creatures, though they're careful to do so at a good distance from the swarm of disturbed leaves and loose dirt.

They don't linger too long - that would give the so-called fairies a chance to catch up - but data collection is a part of the job, after all. If they have to be on this planet they're going to be efficient about it.]

Confirmed at least one loose homo sapiens specimen in environment.

[ Wolfwood should be really upset that Rin stop moving and puts themselves anywhere near the pile of bugs he just identified. He should be freaking the hell out about this whole situation, actually, especially since there's now fairies between them and the shuttle. He shoudl be stressed, and, dimly, he's aware of that.

It's really strange. ]

Just the one?

[ His voice sounds far away to his ears, like there's somebody behind him doing the talking. Since there's swarms in the foliage, he's going to head up toward that rocky outcropping, and scan some space lichens instead of getting close to more bugs. ]

There's two, by my count.

[So: weird feeling, objectively; the bone-deep rejection of the concept of being human that Rin feels in response to that statement.

It's not bad, really - not upsetting. Just... intensive. But how the fuck do you explain that? You don't. And they don't - they just watch the ant-like creatures for a while more, recording the swarming pattern. Eventually they break it off, when some of them start to amble investigatively in their direction.]

The other one's genus asshole.

[Don't worry about which of them they mean, Wolfwood.

For that matter don't mind the staticky hiss they make over the comm in the wake of that comment.]

[ Oh. ...Yeah, okay, he walked right into that joke, huh. God dammit. ]

Fuck you.

[ And here he'd thought for a minute they were getting along. If they were back on the ship he'd stop in his tracks, turn around, and give Rin a piece of his mind. They can't stop here, though. They have to keep moving.

(And, weirdly, he doesn't really want to stop and cuss Rin out. The edge has been taken off his anger, and it's really bizarre. Later, when he thinks over this whole adventure again, he'll wonder about that. Now, with a couple fairies humming after them, all Wolfwood does is stomp through the underbrush, heading for the rocky area just to the east. There shouldn't be any more bugs there -- less foliage means less bugs, right? -- and there's good visibility for any more approaching fairies.

His CL-10 beeps as he steps past the last of the leaf litter and out into brilliant sunshine once more. ]

Soil pH just spiked. I'm readin' high levels of calcium salts in these rocks.

[ It's such a pretty world, but these readings are just proving it to be less and less hospitable to humans... or assholes, for that matter. ]

[Oh. Is calling each other assholes not a gesture of friendship? Good work Rin. (Maybe it makes sense, given the unstable ground of interaction between them. Maybe they've spent... a lot of time calling Wolfwood an asshole in an unfriendly way. But Rin isn't going to look at it that way, because who needs to have healthy reactions to rejections?)

Luckily for the both of them, there's fairies to keep from sending that thought properly spiraling - still, Rin is a bit more work-focused, after Wolfwood calls out the soil readings. They make a note on their own tablet, and start to look around the surrounding area.]

We need to take water samples.

[ Wolfwood has no idea how friendships work. Saverem brings him coffee, and Rin calls him an asshole... before he got sick and sent back into cryo Doc Jiaoqui brought him soup in his cell. Friendship is confusing, and really, he'd be better off not bothering with it at all. Best to keep things professional. ]

I'll get it.

[ There's no open water here, but his scanner reports that there's plenty just a few centimeters beneath the rocky soil. This is such a wet world! It's a shame that it's so inhospitable to humans.

But maybe that's for the best. No humans will try to settle here and tear down these fern trees to build their factories. It'll stay a pretty world, with its bugs and fairy lights undisturbed. ]

Watch my back for those lights.

Fine.

[No joking about how they're probably harmless, at least. Even if Rin wouldn't have ground to stand on after their flailing bullshit earlier. Really, though - there's not that much to track, considering how fucking obvious the glowing things are. Rin doesn't turn on Wolfwood to watch him work.

But, as though they're echoing Wolfwood's thoughts;]

Early data shows markers for a stable ecosystem with some unstable geological elements.

[ Lots of things seem harmless until they're not. Ask the anglerfish's prey about harmless-seeming lights. ]

It's a nice world.

[ Even if the readings he's getting back point to an environment that's far too acidic for humans -- or anyone else, for that matter -- to be comfortable here, it's still a pretty world. All the nicer, really, for being so hostile to human life. It'll keep the place safe, for now. ]

Water pH reporting between three point six and five point two.

[ Damn. No swimming in any of these little rivers, then. ]

[Who doesn't enjoy swimming with a burning in their eyes and losing a layer or two of skin?]

There are water treatments for that, but they're only effective if removing additional toxins from a contaminated environment. [Hello fringes life.] If that's the environment's equilibrium it'll change the entire system.

[Too bad. It's beginning to look more like humans living here would take a while to truly terraform into hospitable - in which case, might as well have stayed on Tellus.]

Any microorganisms?

Lots.

[ No, if they terraformed this place, it would kill off all the life already existing here happily. Wolfwood's tablet blinks as data rolls in, reporting all manner of living things bumbling around in the water sample. It's a stable, complex ecosystem (if a bit sulphur-smelling on the other side of the helmet's glass), and they don't belong here.

Wolfwood stands, finally, not bothering to brush the dirt off his knees, and tucks his tablet away. There's really no reason to keep scanning, is there? This isn't the world they're looking for. ]

Should've known this place was too good to be true.

It's alien.

[It's statistically unlikely that the first place they found would be the perfect home for their cargohold of humans - but there are a few years left of their navigation of the nebula, after all. Who knows what they'll find.

(Who knows if they'll make it.)

But Rin seems entirely prepared to keep going, until Wolfwood starts moving, and putting his instrument away.]

... What.

[ He's about to head further up into the grassland here -- just because they can't stay here doesn't mean they can't take a little time and look around before heading back to the ship, right? -- when Rin interrupts with a question devoid of context.

Wolfwood appreciates a taciturn companion, he really does... but this fucker really pushes every limit. Wolfwood glances back, just to make sure Rin's comment wasn't about their fairy friends. The fairies are a ways back still, though, seemingly more interested in the trunk of a giant fern than the two intruders. So if that wasn't it, then what? ]

What what?

[ Two can play at this game, jerk. ]

[For a moment Rin glances from Wolfwood back in the direction of the shuttle, then instead in the direction that he's turned instead, like they expected him to turn around and start heading back, instead. Like being done obviously meant being done, leaving the planet or at least this environ behind for their transport.]

Where are you going?

[It's a genuine bafflement that echoes in their voice, even as they lower their scanner and move to follow Wolfwood.]

Edited 2025-03-05 05:54 (UTC)

[ It would make sense to head back, wouldn't it! Wolfwood follows Rin's pointed glance, and shrugs, nodding up in the direction of the waterfall that can be seen in the misty distance, past this patch of grass and the rocky cliffs beyond. ]

You can go back to the ship if you want. I'm just gonna stretch my legs.

[ Even without the fairies bumbling about and raising everyone's moods, Wolfwood just sounds, well... mellow. Relaxed. Maybe even happy. His helmet doesn't let any UV from the planet's sun through the visor, he can't feel the grass beneath his feet, but he's still outside. This is the best he's going to get for who knows how many more months, and he's got no intention of heading back into their tin can anytime soon. ]

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