Intro Log: Puddle Jumpers

[hadrielmods]

Who: New arrivals and everyone else!
What: The intro log for September
Where: The colosseum and all around the city.
When: September 10th-13th
Warnings: Fresh meat, lots of rain and angry ogres

If the rain on your face isn't enough to wake you up in the colosseum, maybe the thundering footsteps and- well, thunder- is. The first thing that you may notice is that it's incredibly wet around here, with winds that could knock you over if you aren't careful and thunder that brings with it a torrent of constant rainfall.

That's all fine though, because the gods saw fit to help you out on your way in and now everyone will be waking up wearing a rain coat! These coats are a little odd, and some of them are downright silly, but we trust that you'll make do. Of course, a few of the raincoats have additional sleeves, neck holes, and entirely too many buttons as well- but hey, it's the best we could do.

Wait, what was that about thundering footsteps? Oh right, as you're navigating your new fashion choices, there are some monsters afoot who will want nothing more than to grind you into a pulp and eat you- well, if you're organic, that is. If you're not organic, then they still want to grind you to a pulp, but maybe not so much the eating part.

Ogres are from many fantasy stories, but these in particular are from the Dragon Age series. With incredible strength and stamina and massive horns, fangs, and a bloodlust for violence, these monsters won't stop until everyone around them is a blood smear on the ground. They're also not too happy about this rainfall either, so be careful not to slip in the puddles as you run away from them!

Once you've splashed around a bit, feel free to run off into the stormy abyss of our islands. You can explore the rest of the city! Find a house, a new monster, a project to help with, or simply scavenge for supplies. Good luck, and enjoy your stay in Hadriel!

► This log covers September 10th-13th.
► Feel free to make your own logs as well!
► All characters arrive with phones that have network communication and the newbie guide installed.
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!

Comments

SHHH ITS OK

[sciencelizard]

[She responds quickly, a nod that he can't see.]

Yeah, it's-- I'm coming from the Lab. It's on the same island, so it'll be quick.

[Oh dang, she's gonna have to explain the islands also. How long ago did he disappear...? It feels like a lifetime.]

Just stay there, and I'll come, and we'll g-get to the Lab. Okay?

[She says like she isn't already jogging there, knowing the path well after nearly two years of traversing the city. She doesn't recall which god's temple it is, but she doesn't much care as she puffs her way nearby and just starts yelling outside of the phone.]

Metta? Metta! It's me, I'm-- I'm here!

[such_a_teez]

Hopefully when the weather is better. [Tyki smiles once more, and then turns and walks away.]

[jocoeur]

( there's something of a bemused chuckle at the 'smelly' description as he leans his head down just slightly— enough that he has to push his glasses back up on the bridge of her nose with a surprised— ) Hmm?

( at her question.
this girl had only just arrived, plucked from her world and thrown through the door with an apparently stinky ogre and she... wondered how he was?
it was so genuine and candid... it almost caught akira off guard. enough that he feels as though he has to answer honestly, at least. )

I'm...

( C R A C K.
above, the sky seemed to literally open up, pouring down on the two of them with a forceful, sudden downpour that had been promised. )

... wet! This way, let's go! ( pardon him while he breaks into a run. )

[jocoeur]

( there's only a shallow, knowing nod in reply to that. akira could have guessed as much but... he hadn't really wanted to accept it, not just yet, at least. not with how things had been left between him and akechi especially... and makoto— what would they do without her now? )

Thanks, anyway. ( it had been a fool's errand from the start. but a boom of thunder overhead has him looking up, his glasses getting pelted with the increasing size of the droplets. )

It looks as though it's going to start coming down pretty hard again. ( harder he supposed... ) There's probably some shelter around here, if you're in need.

( butterflies... can probably only handle so much, right? )

[such_a_teez]

[Tyki is slightly sympathetic. As much as he can be for a stranger, anyway.]

Too bad. Maybe they'll be in one of the shops. It can't hurt to look. No one wants to wander in the rain.

[Tyki looks up towards the skies, despite the butterflies effectively blocking his view.] Suppose you're right. I'll be fine, you might want to make your way somewhere.

[jocoeur]

Yeah, maybe...

( not likely. but he appreciates the gesture all the same, at least.
honestly, this guy did seem pretty calm and collected with everything that was going on but then, akira supposed— his companions turned makeshift awning made it obvious that he was no ordinary man. )

I'll see you around, and— thanks again. ( he pops the collar on his cardigan, taking off up ahead, and out into the storm. )

[such_a_teez]

Good luck. I hope you find them.

[And with that, he turns and heads away.]

[restinglichface]

Fair.

[No one really has guidance on how to live through their time here. Sometimes you just need to focus on simply living.

Lup rises to stand, a hand reaching up to casually flip her bangs out of her face while she regards the other woman.]

The name's Lup, if you ever need any Hadriel advice. I've been here for awhile, I know how this place operates.

[offloaded]

[ It's more complicated than DiMA makes it sound, anyway, given how Nick didn't remember him -- and still doesn't, here, as he'll learn. But that comes later. ]

I will do so, then, thank you for the recommendation. If she can power my bank and perhaps assist in a bit of waterproofing, I don't mind issues like my own run-down appearance. We've simply been repairing me as much as possible as things break, and I expect my time here will be more of the same unless you succeed in... how exactly are you attempting to find a solution? The trouble in my world is a lack of supply.

It's not like I got a good look in the storm, but this doesn't seem like a particularly industrial area.

[offloaded]

It seems it very well could. But not everyone is inherently selfish. In my world, no one stood up to stop it from happening, perhaps in another world, someone did. Because those people do exist.

[ A little bit of hope for you, kind miss. Though DiMA shakes his head at her next question. ]

You would likely prefer not to know. Most of what I know is rumor, anyway, no use spreading terrible tales that may not be entirely accurate. I thank you for that assessment, though. I mean no threat to anyone. And you've heard correctly, my brother is a good person.

[completelycrazy]

[He notes the flick of her eyes, but doesn't think much of it. The lab is a sight to behold for anyone who doesn't frequent it.]

All of us have lots of time. That's not the point. The kind of expertise you're talking about, that would take years. I was studying something... sort of Door-adjacent back home, right? Even with modern technology at my disposal, plus buckets of funding and a whole team of lab assistants in PPDC's heyday, we'd barely scratched the surface with K-Science research in more than a decade. The interdimensional portal we were dealing with? Yeah, we only ever learned enough to break it. Figuring out how to accurately tune it to make it useful for us is, like, a whole separate thing.

[It's frustrating when laymen refuse to understand how scientific research actually works. Maybe it's different in the magical world, but science? Science takes time, takes brilliance.]

Look, I'm more than happy to scrabble around in the dark with this Door stuff, alright? I'm just saying, don't expect miracles. This thing doesn't work like anything any of us are familiar with, magic or no magic.

[dedikated]

( Hmm. She does have stuff that might be able to help there, but without names for half the fuckers, this could get messy— )

Show me it.

( It'll be much easier to put powers to images or descriptions. )

[oldtonew]

Thank you.

[ She means it sincerely, blinking up at the woman. ]

I am Kettara. A shaman of the Earthen Ring.

newt's bestiary is broken atm but it's still intact when this thread is happening lmao

[completelycrazy]

Oh, yeah, it's on your phone. Here.

[He pulls out his own phone to show her. It's been attached to the welcome guide Nick maintains, so it's easy to download. For the sake of ease, he just pulls it up on his phone and hands it to her.]

[abyssalarcana]

[Ugh. He reminds her of one of the archive scholars, an old, bent little foxlike yugoloth who somehow manages to try and tower over everyone with his supposed knowledge since he doesn't have the physical stature to do any intimidating. It rarely works on any of them of course and if he wasn't so quick with his spells she would rip his head from his body herself, but it isn't worth the effort.

Newt isn't worth that effort either, though in this case it's because she actually needs him and Alphys and the others to do all of the bullshit they talk about being able to do. Needs them to stay alive and healthy and able to work.

How distasteful.]

No miracles. Just get it done. The moment the gods get involved to do this themselves is the moment you've failed.

[offloaded]

[ DiMA files all that away as potentially useful information, but not worth digging into at the moment. He is a curious fellow, they just have bigger problems at hand.

He ducks into the next room as Starscream tears the door opening bigger, peeking back when it sound like the damage is complete. Sure enough, there's now a hole tall and wide enough for the other mechanical fellow to get inside. ]

Nothing ever is, no. Come inside and help me search for something to cover the hole -- we can repair it later.

[ And Starscream can decide if he wants to live here now, or what. ]

[completelycrazy]

[Newt's less-than-intimidating physical stature doesn't stop him from straightening at her attempt at a command. His eyebrows shoot up. Who does she think she is? No one's talked to him like this since Pentecost sent him to find Hannibal Chau, and at least Pentecost could pull rank. Not only was he the Marshal, but Newt actually respected the guy.]

Oh, good, so I have a couple of weeks to solve all our problems or I've failed? Where do you get off charging in here and slinging orders around? Sure, let me just magically pull a solution out of my ass! I've been sitting on critical info that will get us all home in a couple of days, but I thought I'd just keep it to myself until you bullied it out of me!

[A few weeks from now, when Newt sees that anonymous post with a picture of Caedra's frozen body, he will sorely regret mouthing off to her. But, for now, well. He picks up the scalpel and settles back in to his mess of ogre parts, waving her away with his free hand.]

"Just get it done." Are you kidding me? I don't owe you anything.

\o/

[dedikated]

( Oh, here we go. Some of these notes have her grimacing in remembering the monsters that were there, the fights had. The amount of people who made sure they weren't eating meat when she first arrived, shortly after the wendigos had possessed people. )

Been a lot of physical attackers. ( It's an offhand comment, as though seeing the whole list written down helps her realise something that's seemed off for a while. But there have been a lot of straight nasty biological types, who fight with claw and muscle rather than supernatural powers. ) Don't think anything here now's going to start spewing fire.

( And honestly, neither were a lot of the others. She remembers monsters which used to spew lightning and fire, and wonders why the change to what the Door brings in.

Maybe that's a question for later, though. )

[abyssalarcana]

Who says you only have a couple of weeks?

[Is that really all he's willing to invest? Great. He's truly an atrocious individual and this is a waste of her time. It's only the hope he might achieve anything at all that keeps her from pulling her blade on him and spilling his insides across the lab floor right here and now. Well, that and she's aware that if she aggravates a member of the lab, they might all decide to use whatever they do find against her, or to withhold their findings from her somehow.

Irritating creatures, all of them, and she has no restraint left to give so she just shakes her head and turns to leave. But first:]

You owe me for sparing your life. Get to work.

[whip_poor_will]

"The way resources work in this place, I would hardly consider it fair to prevent you from maintaining a stockpile for your own survival. It is about as unfair as the fact that I do not eat for survival, myself."

She cants her head a little at Abigail's question.

"Is there? Can it not be anything more simple for a change?"

sorry for being so slow! the last few months have been a big giant dumpster fire for me. (ಥ﹏ಥ)

[whip_poor_will]

Simple. I am not only quite dead myself, being psychic certainly has its boons as well.

[Just as she has a strong feeling that Sal would not take this information with the same level of hostility as most are when learning that they are talking to a dead woman who can see right through them.

[She smiles.] Or it could be a lucky guess. Who knows?

[completelycrazy]

[It's rare that Newt will let anyone have the last word in an argument, but he decides to make an exception here for two reasons.

One, this is his lab, and he was already trying to shoo her out of it anyway. It's not like she's listening to him, and clearly she's got a skewed idea of how Hadriel works if she thinks the gods are going to give them more than a couple weeks with the fragments. Even if the gods don't reclaim them, they're not just going to sit around and wait for Hadriel's finest to do the work for them. Hell, it's a miracle they're even allowed to study the fragments before forking them over.

And two, something about that last comment unsettles him. Like, yeah, logic would dictate that it should, given that it was essentially a death threat, but he's gotten those before. No one ever means it.

He can't shake the feeling that Caedra does, though.]

Yeah, whatever.

[It's muttered half-heartedly as she walks out. After a moment or two, he shakes it off, and turns his attention back to his specimens.]

[am_i_a_monster]

"You don't eat at all or you don't eat what most of us eat?"

It's a valid question in her mind.  Even before Hadriel, she knew people who didn't eat traditionally.

"That would be a big change."

Nothing's been simple in her life since the shrike.

"If it did get simple, I might not trust it."

[offloaded]

[ He is, indeed, super chill! Alphys' anxiety doesn't seem to be contagious, that's for sure, he just looks relieved that she isn't the sort that would attack in fear. It's a very human response to do so, though, and he's got no experience with whatever species she is. ]

A pleasure to meet you, Dr. Alphys. I suppose I live here now, too, unless you know the way back to Acadia.

[ That's a little worrisome, honestly, he has responsibilities and needs a great deal of maintenance... hm. ]

May I ask you, is it always so rainy here?

it's no problem at all!

[sallyfaced]

Oh.

[He echoes his earlier sentiment, this time it sounds as if something actually clicks, though.]

Normally I know when I meet someone dead...totally threw me for a loop this time around.