The Legion [Mods] (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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legionmissions2017-01-03 12:57 am
letsgolegion) wrote in legionmissions2017-01-03 12:57 am
Entry tags:
SILENT HORIZON - [Part 1: The In-Between] [modplot]
Who| Everyone who signed up
What| 2 spoopy
Where| In The In-Between, the pocket dimension inside the Silent Horizon
When| After Valor's Day. Mission starts shortly before "No Sanity Clause" and runs simultaneously in game time
Warnings/Notes| Potential warnings for EVERYTHING. This is a horror plot that may tread a lot of ground. Please keep in mind that you can stumble on disturbing stuff in almost any thread. We advise all players to put warnings in the subjects of threads when they lean towards cut-worthy stuff.
The mission was simple. The team had to board the derelict Silent Horizon, a ship with an experimental stardrive, after it finally reappeared in UP space, many hours after it was supposed to reappear, during its first field test. No life signs were aboard, but the presence of several Roboticans on the crew -- who were undetectable by bioscan -- meant that the ship had to be boarded to make sure the Robotican crewmen were gone, too.
The United Planets government, concerned about the loss of the crew members, asked the Legion to step in, in case the threat on board was of a metapowered nature. Due to the massive danger implied by an entire starship crew going missing, the response team sent on the mission was relatively large, more than enough to handle any hostiles. None of this "we'll just send one tiny team to go alone into a giant starship against an unknown threat" business. No, if there was a hostile force on the ship, the plan was "let's drop 25+ Legionnaires on its head." Safety in numbers.
It was a good idea. In theory. In most cases, it would've given them the edge that would've let them face something very nasty without succumbing to it themselves. But in practice, it just meant that it was a much larger team that suddenly went missing after watching the last video log of the previous crew on the command deck.
Screams poured out of the screen the moment it started to play -- automatically -- when they entered the command deck. Onscreen, they saw the original crew murdering each other, tearing each other apart in a blood-soaked rampage.
"Wait, stop! What's wrong with everyone? Why are you --?" cried out one of the Robotican crew members, clearly immune from whatever was causing the madness, but his cries went unheeded as one of his Coluan crew-mates bashed his head clean off with a chair.
After the video played, the darkness swept in, wrapping around the whole team of Legionnaires, making them feel frozen all the way down to their bones and stealing consciousness away from them. When they woke again, they all found themselves separated, waking up in a realm of nightmares.
The halls breathe here -- at least in the places that have walls. They flex in and out, like the passageways inside the lungs. Sometimes the walls give way to open nightmare-scapes, remote and foggy, or bright and alien and exposed. The landscape bends and shifts around them, reacting to their thoughts and fears. And every so often, far off, there is the pitter-pat of something strange moving through this place. Like the sound of many feet -- or hands -- slapping against the ground or flesh-walls.
At some point, there is always a voice that each of them hears, tinny and robotic and distant, warning them of a being called the Faceless, that rules this realm. They're told not to feed from his blood, that if they do they'll be made a part of this place. If they accept his offer, and change forms, they'll eventually bleed to death, and if the Faceless isn't stopped before they die, those that die in their mutated forms will belong to him forever.
It's not the only voice they'll hear, though. This is a land filled with whispers. And screams. And the sounds of begging sometimes, too.
And for some of the Legionnaires, the In-Between speaks to them, touches something deep and dark inside them -- and it's calling them home.
What| 2 spoopy
Where| In The In-Between, the pocket dimension inside the Silent Horizon
When| After Valor's Day. Mission starts shortly before "No Sanity Clause" and runs simultaneously in game time
Warnings/Notes| Potential warnings for EVERYTHING. This is a horror plot that may tread a lot of ground. Please keep in mind that you can stumble on disturbing stuff in almost any thread. We advise all players to put warnings in the subjects of threads when they lean towards cut-worthy stuff.
The mission was simple. The team had to board the derelict Silent Horizon, a ship with an experimental stardrive, after it finally reappeared in UP space, many hours after it was supposed to reappear, during its first field test. No life signs were aboard, but the presence of several Roboticans on the crew -- who were undetectable by bioscan -- meant that the ship had to be boarded to make sure the Robotican crewmen were gone, too.
The United Planets government, concerned about the loss of the crew members, asked the Legion to step in, in case the threat on board was of a metapowered nature. Due to the massive danger implied by an entire starship crew going missing, the response team sent on the mission was relatively large, more than enough to handle any hostiles. None of this "we'll just send one tiny team to go alone into a giant starship against an unknown threat" business. No, if there was a hostile force on the ship, the plan was "let's drop 25+ Legionnaires on its head." Safety in numbers.
It was a good idea. In theory. In most cases, it would've given them the edge that would've let them face something very nasty without succumbing to it themselves. But in practice, it just meant that it was a much larger team that suddenly went missing after watching the last video log of the previous crew on the command deck.
Screams poured out of the screen the moment it started to play -- automatically -- when they entered the command deck. Onscreen, they saw the original crew murdering each other, tearing each other apart in a blood-soaked rampage.
"Wait, stop! What's wrong with everyone? Why are you --?" cried out one of the Robotican crew members, clearly immune from whatever was causing the madness, but his cries went unheeded as one of his Coluan crew-mates bashed his head clean off with a chair.
After the video played, the darkness swept in, wrapping around the whole team of Legionnaires, making them feel frozen all the way down to their bones and stealing consciousness away from them. When they woke again, they all found themselves separated, waking up in a realm of nightmares.
The halls breathe here -- at least in the places that have walls. They flex in and out, like the passageways inside the lungs. Sometimes the walls give way to open nightmare-scapes, remote and foggy, or bright and alien and exposed. The landscape bends and shifts around them, reacting to their thoughts and fears. And every so often, far off, there is the pitter-pat of something strange moving through this place. Like the sound of many feet -- or hands -- slapping against the ground or flesh-walls.
At some point, there is always a voice that each of them hears, tinny and robotic and distant, warning them of a being called the Faceless, that rules this realm. They're told not to feed from his blood, that if they do they'll be made a part of this place. If they accept his offer, and change forms, they'll eventually bleed to death, and if the Faceless isn't stopped before they die, those that die in their mutated forms will belong to him forever.
It's not the only voice they'll hear, though. This is a land filled with whispers. And screams. And the sounds of begging sometimes, too.
And for some of the Legionnaires, the In-Between speaks to them, touches something deep and dark inside them -- and it's calling them home.
no subject
But if it holds her companion together long enough for them to make their escape, does it really matter?
"Might need to improvise a little more aggressively this time." Said as she moves to press forward again, towards the outer edges of that breathing, living space, trying to— ugh— feel out where the edges of a door might be. If this is a reflection of her memories, it can't be far. "But I've got a friend here already. If we can track him down, it might be a good place to start."
no subject
This is not your grave, but you are welcome in it.
"Let's find that friend of yours." Maybe Sombra heard it and maybe she didn't, but standing around talking about the Flood won't get them out of here any faster. "What's their code name?"
no subject
There's only a slight pause, and not for the way she's working her nails in between the slight gap in the frame, all attempts at hacking falling distinctly short. Gabriel doesn't have a good reputation within the Legion; as far as Sombra can tell, it's not just because of Overwatch's former operatives roaming around freely, either.
"Reaper."
If she can't trust Cortana with at least that much— a creature designed for locking away classified information (like herself, if you were to ask Sombra)— they won't get far.
no subject
"He might not be in great shape if we do find him," she cautions. "Our host doesn't have our best interests at heart." This all echoes the Flood much too strongly for Cortana not to jump to conclusions regarding assimilation. Those whispers in the darkness offering her eternity can't all be the hallucinations of a digital mind teetering on the brink of rampancy; even if Brainiac's promised cure hasn't worked, nothing has pushed her far enough to break. Not yet.
no subject
Best interests or not, there's a long, long list of disasters that Gabriel's either outrun or outlasted: stubborn enough to even put her to shame at times. Besides, like he always says, not even death can stop him.
What chance does that leave a place like this?
"Anyway, we'll figure it out. Maybe try to send out a signal, see if we can't catch anyone else once we're—" Another hard shove, another gritted noise and she's managed to pry open enough room for them to squeeze through, pale light seeping in from outside. "—out of here."
no subject
It's not a real place. She knows that, a quick scan of her memories finding no complete matches, just an element here and there. The Forerunner towers, graceful and smoothly technological amidst the murky green life of the jungle, are from the Ark, not Halo, but the primordial forest is the one the Chief fought his way through right after learning those Covenant fanatics had released a parasite from before history.
And the bodies? The bodies are from everywhere, human soldiers and Covenant shock troops alike, some merely dead with the ordinary gruesome injuries of war, some twisted into unnatural forms that seem more fungal than animal. Pervading the tableau, more smothering than the heavy rainforest air, is nothing but death and silence.
no subject
"—shit."
Same word, different context. At least until her eyes adjust, ever so gradually over time.
"What the hell is this..." That can't be right, can it? Can't be real, going from some flesh-sculpted room out into— this.
no subject
Cortana doesn't want this. She doesn't want to have to relive it, to try to make someone who didn't fight in their hopeless war understand what damnation lurked among the stars. And she certainly doesn't want to explain her role in the climax of it all.
But--and there's always a "but," isn't there?--Sombra is her partner. She agreed to keep this untrained non-soldier alive to the best of her ability, and that's no less true now than when it looked like this mission was going to be a milk run. Keeping her in the dark might get them both killed.
"The aliens are the Covenant. They waged a three-decade war of annihilation against humanity, the war the Chief and I have both spent our lives fighting." They won't show up as anything but scenery, she's sure. This is her nightmare, and the Covenant has never scared her.
"The ones on both sides that are...changed are infected by the Flood. It's a sentiovore, a parasite that invades and converts any organism with a central nervous system into itself." Again, nothing but scenery. A Flood form can't do a damned thing to an AI a thrown rock couldn't, and though it tried its best on the Chief, he's still here and the Flood's not.
"When the Flood converts enough biomass in a single area, it...wakes up. Forms a Gravemind, an intelligence with its own memories and the memories of everything it's absorbed." Cortana pauses, and surprises herself with the distinct proprioceptive memory of clenching her teeth. Her echoed humanity always chooses the most inconvenient moments to surface. "You...should expect to run into that."
no subject
"No."
Just no, Cortana. That's her commentary right now.
no subject
"It's not actually the Flood. Just a set piece for my benefit. The Flood is gone and it's all over."
Cortana had been gone too, according to John, and yet here she was.
No.
Though unspoken, it's as flat a denial as Sombra's. If some malevolent entity wants to get to her, this is the smart way to go about it. (And what that says about the Faceless's reach into her psyche makes it seem even more like the Gravemind.)
No. It's just theatrics. If they look hard enough they'll find the seams in the scenery.
no subject
Sombra shakes it off a beat later, already pressing ahead towards grim carnage.
"And you're sure what we're going through now is different."
That this isn't some strange offshoot of the Flood.
no subject
"Besides, if this were real, where would they have found a bunch of Covenant corpses to stage the scene?" She starts to regain some of her normal confidence as she lays out the reasoning. "I'd expect to see people from this universe, not mine. Instead it's showing me ghosts from my past. I don't like the idea that it's accessing my memory banks somehow, but that's better than a Flood infestation."
And she'd expect the infection forms to be swarming Sombra right about now, but that can just stay her little secret.
no subject
Her steps come more quickly, attention focused on the horizon rather than the ground ahead as she sidesteps corpses, tangled together down into the earth: makes it easier, thinking that if she walks far enough, they'll be done with this.
"Are you picking up any signals yet?"
Any signs of life from the crew they'd left behind.
no subject
Now that the initial shock has passed, Cortana notices more about the landscape through which Sombra is picking their way. It's the same twisted forest from Halo, but the dark, stagnant water is thicker, and Cortana decides not to point out to Sombra that it appears to be blood if she doesn't ask. All around them, the trees seem to pulse, as though they're the branching veins of a massive circulatory system, fed by an equally massive heart.
She ought to find that reassuring, she thinks, more proof that this is just an elaborate hallucination. Instead, she can't put aside the memory of Flood biomass spreading through the entire Covenant holy city, a craft that mimicked the Forerunners' architecture turned into the triumphal stronghold of their greatest foe. Metal disappearing beneath flesh and foulness, the tentacles curling around her chip and into her mind--
I am a timeless chorus. Join your voice with mine, and sing victory everlasting.
"Oh, hell." There's no way Sombra didn't hear that.
no subject
"Cortana..."
Unlike Sombra's usual tone, something casual and withdrawn, this is more direct. Steady. Demanding. Not just because whatever's doing this seems to be feeding on her memories, but because she seems all too prone to bleeding them at the moment. Which means Sombra has to ask:
"Are you gonna be okay, manita."
no subject
"You've got the right to know what's going on, anyway." As unpleasant as the retelling is for Cortana personally, if she can't keep the memories inside her own mind--and doesn't that loss of control annoy her--Sombra should at minimum have enough information to understand what she's experiencing by proxy.
"During the final battle of the war, the Chief and I had to split up." Cortana doesn't elaborate on why. It's complicated and the fact that it happened suffices for her clipped retelling of events. "I stayed behind enemy lines while he went back to Earth. The Gravemind captured me soon after that. It wanted everything I had on Earth's defenses, but the damned thing was just rotting meat and a grudge, so it couldn't break my security. It had to break me instead."
That perfect AI memory turns into a curse sometimes, processes cropping up as quickly as she can kill them. Cortana can almost feel the pressure again, like a drowning victim struggling to hold their breath because they know it will be their last.
You said you would answer my questions...you should never make a promise you cannot keep.
"...It didn't." And that's that, except for the part where it's so clearly not.
"The Chief came for me, we killed it, and we got on the last shuttle out."
no subject
"So if it's dead, and it failed, why's it here?"
There's a pointedness to the question, most of it revolving around Cortana herself rather than the nightmare: are you really over it?
no subject
Yet still, she hesitates, and the Faceless doesn't.
Live forever. Live in me, Cortana. And if John comes, John need never face death again, either...
Quieter now, the pressure relieved this time not by submitting, but by trusting, and that, rather than any tactical analysis, breaks through her reticence.
"I was never weaker than that."
no subject
But she still hates the sound of that thing's voice.
"You want me to put on some music instead? I mean— if this is just an illusion, there's no reason we have to actually listen to it."