Jason Lee Scott (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kingtyrantranger) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
legionmissions2016-11-11 12:53 am
kingtyrantranger) wrote in legionmissions2016-11-11 12:53 am
Camping: Part II!
Jason didn't exactly sell the new world well. Stepping through the Threshold Gate, the Legionnaires find themselves on a landing platform overseeing their new vacation hotspot. The first thing they'll notice is that everything feels slightly heavier. Nothing dramatic, but if they were carrying a hundred pounds of stuff, now they've got twenty more pounds weighing them down. The planet, Futuro's Folly, is as advertised, hollowed out with the entire ecosystem on the inside. Outside, if they'd bothered to look, there was only a barren, crater-pocked surface of a dwarf planet about half the size of Pluto. Inside, however...
While they're standing in the midst of what was surely once a base of some kind, the criminal resort according to Jason, it doesn't stretch out very far. Just about three quarters of a mile out, the 'settled' area ends, taken over by a vibrant jungle of dense violet and orange foliage, with gigantic red and blue mushrooms filling just as much area as the trees. More, in some cases, as some of them seem to be miles high off in the distance, just when the earth seems to start curving in on itself. An orange sphere that seems to be the size of a silver dollar hangs in space above their heads, with something rotating in the core of it. If anyone were to watch it, the orb flickers rapidly as rings blur around the sphere itself. After about 8 in the evening, the fields that the rings generated would turn slightly opaque, bringing darkness to the entire planet at once.
The former crime resort itself isn't exactly in the best of shape. By 31st century standards, the technology is centuries out of date and finding people who are capable of repairing it without ruining the 'historical significance' is increasingly difficult. There are six main buildings other than the small spaceport they're standing in:
When the Legionnaires approach the border, heading to the wilderness, there's a small, almost decorative-looking wall. Even those with normal hearing will pick up on a ringing tone as they get closer to it, like a bad case of tinnitus. Walking through the gates is almost like walking through an actual barrier, but once they've done that, the noise fades the further they get from it. The sonic barrier covers the resort in a dome, meaning that they'd run into the same thing if they flew straight up.
Immediately outside the wall, the jungle starts abruptly. And, compared to the relative silence of the resort, the noise of life is practically deafening. Bugs clicking, birds calling, animals screaming at one another, it all slowly fades in the deeper they get. There are trails through the jungle, but they're slowly becoming overgrown as the resort's popularity slowly fades.
As they go deeper, it's not hard to find the first actual animals. Totally unused to humanoid life, they show more curiosity than fear. Small, chicken-sized dinosaurs roam in packs, sloth-like creatures hang from the ceilings, and there are trees that have been knocked over, and recently, in some huge brawl between titans. Every now and then, a small batch of overgrown buildings can be found, mechanical parts pushed out of them by growing vines, or torn out by wild animals. Slow, crackling noises that sound like drawn out thunder echo in the distance as something snaps trees, some of them several dozen feet in diameter, like twigs in the pursuit of prey.
The only thing that Jason's marked on the maps, beyond the default markers that the resort gives out, is a lake about five miles outside of the resort. Set in a clearing, it's over a mile long and several hundred feet deep, with a cave system connected to it underneath. The data regarding the caves is corrupt, the maps refuse to include them. A river feeds into the lake by a waterfall, and a number of small creeks seem to spring up near it. It's not uninhabited, there are several fish in there. And, possibly, something living in the caverns underneath. It's rare, but someone might see animals drinking from time to time, from the small dinosaur packs to titanic mammoths... with weapon mounts that alarmingly track anything that move too close, too fast.
There's a lot to work with, and Jason's rented the place for several days. Hopefully, everyone will find what they need to relax and recover from their recent traumatic events. Or just socialize and meet new people.
[[Okay, so there's some generic activity headers up right now. Feel free to pick one up and run with activities running in any of those areas. For those of you who wanted action, I'll have a separate top-level for that. However, I won't be running any of that chaos, so feel free to take it in the direction you'd like.
If you want to do anything, anything at all, and it doesn't fit into one of my toplevels, feel free to make a new thread entirely! Go wild with it, y'know?]]
While they're standing in the midst of what was surely once a base of some kind, the criminal resort according to Jason, it doesn't stretch out very far. Just about three quarters of a mile out, the 'settled' area ends, taken over by a vibrant jungle of dense violet and orange foliage, with gigantic red and blue mushrooms filling just as much area as the trees. More, in some cases, as some of them seem to be miles high off in the distance, just when the earth seems to start curving in on itself. An orange sphere that seems to be the size of a silver dollar hangs in space above their heads, with something rotating in the core of it. If anyone were to watch it, the orb flickers rapidly as rings blur around the sphere itself. After about 8 in the evening, the fields that the rings generated would turn slightly opaque, bringing darkness to the entire planet at once.
The former crime resort itself isn't exactly in the best of shape. By 31st century standards, the technology is centuries out of date and finding people who are capable of repairing it without ruining the 'historical significance' is increasingly difficult. There are six main buildings other than the small spaceport they're standing in:
- The main building. The top three floors were once dedicated to administration, communications, and security. The bottom two floors are dedicated recreational areas, with infonet hookups (reception's not a problem when you can turn your entire planet into a signal amplifier), a variety of holographic games, and a bar/lounge area with some futuristic gambling machines tucked into a corner. Jason has turned on the parental controls, however.
- Behind the main building is the storage center. There's a vast array of vehicles, furniture, and machinery that can be asked for, and it's all stored underground. Simply type in a command and the robots underground will shove the requested item into the gravity tubes, shooting them up to the customer's level.
- The food court has the option to make your own food as well as an outdated and slightly buggy robo-chef that can make a variety of meals. Meat is on the menu, but if anyone asks for meals that require it, they'll have a long wait. The larder hasn't been stocked in centuries. However, it does have coffee. STRONG coffee. And just about any vegan meal you could ask for. It's open air, but can be covered with a dome at the push of a button. The dome has controllable transparency and can be programmed to display any number of things as a ceiling.
- Standing roughly three hundred yards apart are two convertible athletic fields, each about a half-mile in distance. In the old days, they'd hold races or gladiatorial bouts in them. They'll form just about any field needed, however, from obstacle courses and splatterball to golf to the now-illegal slaughterball rings or laser tag arenas. However, most of the gear needed to play is in the storage center.
- Finally, there's a single public bath house. Rather than the sonic showers of Legion World, these use real water. The bath house holds rooms for spas, saunas, massages, public bathing, and showers. Jason has assured everyone, however, that there are private bathing arrangements. He neglects to mention the cameras that subtly fill the rooms, though they are now sporting brand new Legion of Super-Hero stickers over the lenses to keep everyone's privacy intact.
- About a quarter a mile off in the distance, there's about fifty luxhabs. Small cabins built for two people at most, with private bath rooms, small kitchenettes with freshly stocked food, personal computers, and a communications system to contact other luxhabs or make orders from the main house and kitchen. Food can be delivered by small drones if it's called for. The beds are made of a oxygenated memory gel, capable of taking nearly any consistency and shape requested, from a pudding to rows of gel-blades. Climate controls, down to programming the inhabitant's favored atmosphere or filling the luxhab with water, are in full effect. The outsides are programmable ferroliquids, so the guest can customize their vacation home's exterior, even going as far as to add porches.
When the Legionnaires approach the border, heading to the wilderness, there's a small, almost decorative-looking wall. Even those with normal hearing will pick up on a ringing tone as they get closer to it, like a bad case of tinnitus. Walking through the gates is almost like walking through an actual barrier, but once they've done that, the noise fades the further they get from it. The sonic barrier covers the resort in a dome, meaning that they'd run into the same thing if they flew straight up.
Immediately outside the wall, the jungle starts abruptly. And, compared to the relative silence of the resort, the noise of life is practically deafening. Bugs clicking, birds calling, animals screaming at one another, it all slowly fades in the deeper they get. There are trails through the jungle, but they're slowly becoming overgrown as the resort's popularity slowly fades.
As they go deeper, it's not hard to find the first actual animals. Totally unused to humanoid life, they show more curiosity than fear. Small, chicken-sized dinosaurs roam in packs, sloth-like creatures hang from the ceilings, and there are trees that have been knocked over, and recently, in some huge brawl between titans. Every now and then, a small batch of overgrown buildings can be found, mechanical parts pushed out of them by growing vines, or torn out by wild animals. Slow, crackling noises that sound like drawn out thunder echo in the distance as something snaps trees, some of them several dozen feet in diameter, like twigs in the pursuit of prey.
The only thing that Jason's marked on the maps, beyond the default markers that the resort gives out, is a lake about five miles outside of the resort. Set in a clearing, it's over a mile long and several hundred feet deep, with a cave system connected to it underneath. The data regarding the caves is corrupt, the maps refuse to include them. A river feeds into the lake by a waterfall, and a number of small creeks seem to spring up near it. It's not uninhabited, there are several fish in there. And, possibly, something living in the caverns underneath. It's rare, but someone might see animals drinking from time to time, from the small dinosaur packs to titanic mammoths... with weapon mounts that alarmingly track anything that move too close, too fast.
There's a lot to work with, and Jason's rented the place for several days. Hopefully, everyone will find what they need to relax and recover from their recent traumatic events. Or just socialize and meet new people.
[[Okay, so there's some generic activity headers up right now. Feel free to pick one up and run with activities running in any of those areas. For those of you who wanted action, I'll have a separate top-level for that. However, I won't be running any of that chaos, so feel free to take it in the direction you'd like.
If you want to do anything, anything at all, and it doesn't fit into one of my toplevels, feel free to make a new thread entirely! Go wild with it, y'know?]]
Campfire Tales
Re: Campfire Tales
"I've never been on a trip like this," he said, looking around the fire. "What sort of stories do you tell? Anyone else want to go first?"
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He pulled his gaze away from the friendly fire blazing and instead looked over at the younger boy. "I think it's tradition to tell scarier stories. I don't really have one in mind right now though. Of course, at Camp Half-Blood they typically hosted sing-a-longs around the campfire...but I'm not sure if all of us even know the same songs for that to even work."
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Kubo was prepared to come up with a couple of those.
"Well, if it's a scary story you want, I could tell you about the time a boy, a beetle, and a monkey fought an enormous demon made of bones. That kind of scary story?"
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Red and grey paper flew from Kubo's pack, folding itself into a small red boy, and two identical, broad-hatted women. Dark green paper swirled around them like menacing smoke. They crowded the paper boy in with deliberate, threatening movements, until a golden sheet of paper snapped between them and the child, became a figure of a woman, and exploded in a paper flurry that dispersed the grey sisters and the green paper "smoke."
"Our hero, chased from his village by the terrible daughters of the Moon King, his mother gone after using the last of her power to save him from her evil sisters, was no longer alone." Kubo announced, as the fleeing paper boy found his feet, looked around at his solitude, and made a few tentative, searching circles. "His quest for the Sword Unbreakable began with the help of his new friends -"
The white paper launched to the foreground of Kubo's playing stage and folded itself into a monkey again, its movements animal and quick through a complex martial arts sequence that defied the realm of what should have been actually possible to depict with origami.
"Monkey! His mother's last magic brought her to life to protect and guide him, no matter how hard, no matter the cost!"
The dark green paper flew back into the exaggerated shape of a four-armed Samurai, fitted an impossibly intricate paper arrow to the string of a paper bow, pulled and aimed, four more tiny arrows held in his lower set of arms.
"And Beetle - once a mighty samurai, now a cursed half-man, half-bug, wandering the Farlands with no memory and no quest - until our hero brought a quest to him!"
The twang of his rolled-paper bowstring could almost be heard as he fired one, two, three, four, five arrows, and each paper arrow split the one before it down the middle.
"Together they journeyed through sleet and cold, through sun and cloud, out of the cold, distant Farlands and down, down the mountains, to the very gates of the Temple of Bones -"
Kubo's plucking took on an ominous tone as he described their approach to the Temple of Bones. The last time he'd told this story, he'd emphasized the action of the battle, but now, he took his time setting the scene - leading his audience down the eerie bone-strewn jade path, into the wide temple where an enormous skeleton hand held a single sword beneath a roof so tall it could not be seen in the darkness.
The foolishly enthusiastic Beetle tripped the very obvious trap by pulling the sword from the open hand of bones, bringing to life an enormous, jagged-toothed paper skeleton that loomed behind Kubo with a head full of paper swords. The fight for their lives commenced as the Gashadokuro snatched the paper figures in turn, raising them to its broken teeth to bite their heads off, foiled each time by interference from whoever was free of the skeleton's two hands at the time. Kubo wove in moments of suspense and terror and glory for each fighter - Beetle's arrow pinning the falling Kubo to the wall through the neck of his robes, Monkey's relentless strength breaking free from the skeleton fingers to smash sword after sword in search of the Unbreakable one - until, when Kubo's friends were moments away from literally losing their heads, the tiny paper boy plucked the Sword Unbreakable from the demon's skull, and sent it crashing down to the floor of the Temple of Bones.
He could have focused entirely on the suspense and the fear of the battle, but he found time to fit in emphasis on Monkey's determination and skill, and all of Beetle's silly jokes. He'd cared deeply for his companions on that quest, that was clear in the telling.
"But their next great journey was about to begin," he said, when he'd left the trio on the beach of the Long Lake, "For now their quest would lead them on - in search of the Breastplate Impenetrable. For all stories have an end -" he finished, with the way he'd become accustomed, in these last years, to ending his tales - "but there is no end of stories."
The tale was not by any means a traditional campfire story, but only because Kubo had no frame of reference for what scary stories campfires called for.
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So, sure, it wasn't all that scary but it was a very well told story and that could make all the difference really. When Kubo finished Jason applauded, because how could you not? "That was really good, Kubo. The fire light made it even more intense I think," he added. He doubted even Apollo could deny this kid's skill with an instrument and a story.
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"So, how about you?" he asked of Jason. "Do any stories from your adventures work even better with a fire?"
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That's how it always was. Or that's how it had always been once Raven had explained to her that knowing every face in an army was important. They're all allies, and she'd never spoken to Kubo before, so why not start now?
no subject
"I don't know if I have any secrets," he said, honestly. He had things he didn't want to talk too much about, but that wasn't the same as having a secret. "But since we've never spoken, in a way I guess we have a lot of secrets from each other."
He nodded to her bow. "First question: how did you get your bow?"
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She glances to her bow before picking it up and setting it in her lap. The string is taut, and her quiver is leaning against her leg.
"I've had it since I arrived. It was with me whenever I was pulled here, I imagine. If you're asking where it's from, it's just a bow I picked from the armory. I'm a soldier, you see."
And there's warmth in her words there. She's proud of helping her lord. Why wouldn't she be?
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"What kind of soldier? What's your lord like? My father taught me how to shoot, but he only got to teach me once, and I haven't had a bow since. Do you mean I could just go borrow one from the armory?"
This was news to Kubo! This was exciting! Not that he was likely to get as good as his father at archery without further instruction, but he could still practice. If he could still practice what his father had taught him at all, that was a new way to stay connected to his memory, without the Obon festival to pray at.
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"I'm sorry if I misled you with my words, but I meant the armory from back home. It's run by a strange man named Merlinus, I think he'd die of shock if he ever saw the weapons they used here."
She runs her fingers along the string as she holds her bow, finding comfort in the fact that at least one weapon here makes sense to her, even if its her own.
"And I'm an archer in the service of Eliwood, Marquess of Pherae. He's a gentle and loyal man. He and his men saved my village from bandits once, it was a day I'll never forget."
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An archer in service to a Marquess sounded like it had to be an interesting story, especially if bandits were involved.
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"Scary stories, usually," he tells Kubo, thinking. "Ghost stories, urban legends, stuff that happened to your cousin's friend's roommate but that you swear is really true. Stuff like that." He shrugs. They're not usually that scary, but once you've heard one urban legend, you've pretty much heard them all. Plus, trying to tell Kubo the man door hand hook car door story would probably lose something in the requisite explanation of what a car is.
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He kept looking at Wash eagerly, waiting for one of these 'urban legends.' Whatever those were.
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Um.
"Like I said, they're not very good." What, him? Stalling? Absolutely.
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Usually when the men around town didn't want to tell him a story, it was for either of those two reasons.
"If it's embarrassing, I think you should tell us anyway. No one will make too much fun of you. Right?" he addressed the campfire in general.
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And, because this is a teaching moment and Kubo needs to learn these things, he continues, "By the way, asking someone not to make fun of you is only warning them that you're about to say something they can use to make fun of you." There are definitely people sitting around this campfire how can and will use every opportunity to make fun of Wash that they can get
York. "Not everyone's going to be nice about it."no subject
"We probably all have stories that are more interesting than anything we could make up, anyway."
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Would it bring the room down, what would it make everyone think of her...questions she doesn't really know how to ask but stay on the tip of her brain as she waits for the go-ahead.
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"You can tell it if you want to, but if not, don't." He shrugged, and smiled. "Sometimes I'm ready to tell my sad stories - some of them, I'm not ready to yet."
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She lifted her eyes to the sky, and the unfamiliar stars. "My father was always heavily involved in the Galaxy Garrison, and my older brother was apprenticing to him. They were preparing for expedition to the distant moons of Pluto and my friend Shiro was going to pilot. They were going to study the make-up of the ice there. My dad was always obsessed with looking for alien life and he had high hopes."
"...And then they disappeared. They don't even tell me or my mom, we only see it on the late-night news. They called it a death due to 'pilot error' but...I knew it couldn't be true. Shiro was their best pilot, my family had done this a thousand times. So I snuck in and hacked their database, watched the footage from their cameras, and found no evidence at all that any pilot error had taken place."
She can't keep the emotions out of her voice anymore, though she's trying very hard to do just that. "It was like they just...vanished off the face of Kerberos and the Garrison wouldn't admit anything, like they were hiding whatever really happened! After the, what was it, third time? They banned me from the property and the commander told me I'd be arrested for treason if they caught me trespassing again."
"So I enlisted. I made a fake identity with a new name, cut my hair, and disguised myself as a boy just to be on the safe side. And it worked. I was officially enrolled and I could gather all the information I needed without anyone suspecting me. But...it seemed like Garrison had already given me all the information it had. I kept scanning outer space for anything I could find and eventually one word kept rising to the surface: Voltron.
Eventually I found out that my family had been kidnapped by a hostile war-like race called the Galra. Shiro escaped, much worse for wear, but my family was sent off to a work camp somewhere. I still don't know where they are. I found that Voltron was a powerful robot weapon and I became one of it's pilots and...well, then I came here."
Stupid tears in her eyes. She'd probably not admit it out loud, but she misses Team Voltron terribly, even Lance. Who could think you could miss Lance?
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They went to multiple moons? Looking for moon people, and didn't find any? What was a pilot, why would a pilot error kill someone, and then the moon people kidnapped Pidge's family after all -
Well, the important part Kubo understood was that her family had been taken from her, her people had tried for some reason to cover it up, and she had done daring, difficult things to try and find them herself. A true hero's story.
"It must be hard for you to be here, when you were already in the middle of another story," Kubo said, "Especially since you were searching for someone."
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