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

[completelycrazy]

[He snorts, dropping the gooey bundle of t-shirts into the trash and then bending over to clean up the floor.]

Hey, at least it's a raincoat. The storm'll clean you up the second you set foot outside.

[That's the one benefit of the weather. Hygiene has been difficult to keep up with while he's living in the lab, but his frequent trips outside help to balance that out.]

Uh, well, most anatomy is similar. These ogres? They're built just like humans but bigger, for the most part. When I'm poking around something's innards, it's not really because I'm looking for mystery organs. It's like, comparing the bodies to my existing knowledge. If humans and ogres are built so similarly, I can apply what I know of human anatomy to extrapolate information about the ogres. Like, what's in its stomach and how its teeth look can give me information on their diet. That sort of thing.

[64th]

Hmm. [ she looks at him and then back at the ogre. ] I didn't think about it like that. I figured that they'd be - different? Somehow. Obviously I don't have a lot of experience in cutting things open and looking at their insides. [ but you know whatever your hobbies are, dude ]

What if you find something different?

[completelycrazy]

Yeah, given how evolution works, most living creatures are relatively similar. We might eventually get something, like, totally weird and different, but the Door has yet to throw anything too crazy at me. Hell, even the Kaiju back home weren't all that foreign? But they were bioengineered—kind of like your jabberjays, actually—so I suspect they were specifically designed to work like fauna native to Earth. They needed to be able to survive in our atmosphere, after all, at least short-term.

[He stands up and deposits another gooey mess of fabric into the trash. There, all clean. Relatively speaking.]

If I find something I don't recognize, I experiment. My options are pretty limited here since I have, like, no tech whatsoever, but nothing's stumped me yet, not for too long.

[64th]

Someone made your Kaiju? Why would they do that? Who would do that? [ why do all of their lives have to be so fucked up? ]

[ Cashmere doesn't have much of an idea of what any of the stuff in front of her is. strange to think that it was all once alive, blood pumping and lungs breathing and... whatever else it did. ]

[completelycrazy]

Uh, yeah, loosely speaking. It was these aliens called the Precursors. They opened a door—uh, we call it the Breach—between our planet and theirs. They're colonizers, you know? They've depleted all of their own resources, so now they go planet to planet, destroying any intelligent native species that might have a problem with invasion, and then harvesting the natural resources of that planet. They, uh, tried to do it with Earth.

[As awesome as Newt still finds the Kaiju and the Precursors, the reality of how close humanity almost came to extinction is still hard to stomach. He's not stupid; obviously he knew the Kaiju were a massive, immediate threat. He knew people were dying and the planet was on the verge of total destruction. Drifting with Mutavore's brain, though... That's what made it real for him. He hadn't—no one had realized the severity of what they were facing. The Kaiju went from being mindless, chaotic invaders to a systematically deployed series of weapons designed specifically to eradicate humanity. They were coming through the Breach for a reason, and they weren't going to stop. There was a much, much bigger picture at play, and no one would've ever known about it if Newt hadn't taken an extraordinary risk.

Maybe it's stupid, risking his safety each month to dissect and catalogue monsters that, in the grand scheme of things, don't affect the city very much. But most everyone back home thought his research was stupid, too. Pentecost was one of the last who believed K-Science was even worth keeping in the Shatterdome, and he still thought the pinnacle of Newt's research, Drifting with a viable Kaiju brain, was a glorious waste of time. If Newt had listened, if Newt had been any less himself, mankind would be long gone by now.]

But I wasn't gonna let that happen.

[64th]

That sounds completely terrifying. Like a nightmare. [ things are terrible in Panem, but they've never had to wonder who the enemy is or wonder about any of the whys.

she stops her prodding of the monster to look at him. ]

What did you do?

[completelycrazy]

[He laughs a little, though it's missing his usual energy.]

Yeah, uh, I guess you could call it a nightmare. It sure was when the first Kaiju breached. Trespasser, back in 2013. We'd never seen anything even remotely like it before. Not outside of movies and stuff.

[Even for someone as enamored by the Kaiju as he is, K-Day and the week that followed were probably the scariest days of his life. The day before he ended up in Hadriel was pretty bad too, but at least he knew what to expect from Otachi and the rest of the Kaiju that breached that day. At least the world already knew what it was dealing with. At least he'd Drifted. He knew the plan.

Trespasser, though? That was chaos. He doesn't like to think about it. Her next question is easier to answer, at least.]

Well, long story short? We've got this technology back home that allows two people to establish a neural—uh, it's like, you know, mind melding? You link brains temporarily. I built a machine that allowed me to do it with a chunk of a Kaiju brain. See, they're a hivemind. I was able to access the Precursors plans—in bits and pieces, anyway, kind of like blinking your eyes really fast—and I figured out how the Breach works. With that intel, the Jaeger pilots were able to get into it to collapse it, cutting off the point of access for the Kaiju.