legionmissions | Camping: Part II!

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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 By 31st century standards, the technology is centuries out of date and finding people who are capable of repairing it without ruining the 'historical significance' is increasingly difficult.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:

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?]]

Threaded | Flat

Out exploring beyond the boundaries of the resort? Well, good for you. Being cooped up in that all day, when there was this weird and glorious new area to explore, couldn't be good for you. Unfortunately, you're strange and new to these creatures. They might not have ever seen a human before. Everything's open to be tasted at least once, and the only real warning you get as everything goes silent around you, is a quiet huff of breath from some large beast crouched behind you.

[[And here's your actiony post! Feel free to change things up or invent your own details, but the general starter is that something big, and very hungry, thinks you look delicious. Fight or flee, however you want, but the only truly safe place is inside the resort's walls.]]

1. Luxhab

There's something about porches that Wash has always found appealing. It's a little open-air room - security concerns aside, what's not to love? He's delighted when he finds out he can change the shape of his luxhab and wastes no time adding a porch. (And there are no security concerns here, he keeps sternly telling himself, so long as he stays within the sonic walls. It's fine.)

He's requisitioned some alien board game and a beer and has taken them, along with a coffee table and small chair, out to the brand new porch. The board game is the kind that can be played by one or more people, so he's got it laid across the table and is trying to puzzle out the arbitrarily complicated rules well enough to start playing the single player version. At least it's more entertaining than solitaire.

2. Main Building, Lounge

There's something to be said for privacy. Then again, there's also something to be said for watching ridiculous sports on a couch on the biggest screen available. To that end, Wash has taken up temporary residence in the lounge area of the main building, beer in hand, blanket around his shoulders, and a game of splatterball playing on the almost obnoxiously large screen. He's only half-watching it; right now, he's too comfortable to bother with just about anything else, and he's not terribly invested in learning how to play the game, especially since he's fairly certain that nobody on the screen knows how to play either.

3. Bath House

Wash hadn't realized just how badly he'd missed actual honest to God water showers until he gets the opportunity to take one again. He stands there, letting the water beat down on the back of his neck and his shoulders, for far longer than he probably should, but it's nice and he doesn't know when the next time he'll get one of these will be. (After the camping trip, at least. He can shower as often as he damn well pleases while he's here.)

The sauna is his next stop, because that's a luxury he hasn't had in pretty much forever. He settles in on a bench, towel wrapped around his waist, and just leans back and relaxes. He's never really been able to turn his brain all the way off - not since Epsilon, at least - but here, the steam helps.

(The fact that he's dismantled the cameras entirely before settling in also does wonders for his peace of mind.)

Just because it's a vacation, it isn't an excuse for Jason to give up on his exercising. He was still up at an obscenely early hour for a jog, though he had to cut it embarrassingly short given the higher-than-normal gravity. And later in the morning found him running through his martial arts katas.

It was harder than he thought. After a few hours here, he hadn't really noticed the extra gravity when he was just moving around, but when actually trying to move faster or do any sort of prolonged exercise, he definitely felt the added weight. It wasn't even an hour before he was dripping with sweat, but it still wasn't time for him to quit.

An unfortunate factor was that he'd taken Karate Kid's advice. Normally when practicing, he went bare-footed. However, during a conversation, Val had suggested wearing these little slippers for superior grip on the floor when twisting or kicking. Less chance of slipping on untrustworthy terrain. Jason had decided to test out the advice here of all places, and it took some getting used to. With the sweat, the back kept trying to slip off of his heel.

It was probably inevitable, really. The fit, slightly wrong. Sweat making the material slip. When Jason goes for another crescent kick, it's just too much and the slipper is flung from his foot, arcing over his shoulder and flipping through the air towards some innocent, probably unsuspecting party. About the only warning, unless he's being watched, is a cry of "Oh shoot!"

Reaper can be seen sneaking around. He's not doing anything malicious, but after that fiasco of a trip to Murderworld, he's not content just sitting around and relaxing.

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I. ｆｏｌｌｏｗａｔｙｏｕｒｏｗｎｒｉｓｋ
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In the main building, he stops by the rec area to test the infonet hookups. He has a device that allows him to connect with it, after all, and he does a little bit of researching. The universe is vastly different from what he knows, every piece of news both alien and unsettling in ways he's not sure how to interpret. It's beyond him, too big to wrap his mind around, his way of thinking much too narrow for this sort of thing. He's lived through some bizarre stuff, but for some reason, it's the little details that strike him as the most jarring.

He leaves that area as soon as he's finished, not letting anyone notice him and catch him in the act of being stationary. They may see him in the corner of their eye as he slowly dissolves into mist and disappears around the corner. If you want to try and catch him with your super speed or whatever, then by all means, try. Just be warned that the moment you try and sneak up on him, he'll lash out on impulse, the feeling of someone trying to pull a fast one on him usually met with Great Disdain.

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II. ｎｏｔｆｏｒｆｕｎ
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Behind the main building, he checks out the storage center to investigate their inventory. A lot of the items available are things he's never seen before, and he works those robots for all their worth as he requests anything that catches his interests. Only to send them right back down as he's finished inspecting them.

A strange golf-cart looking thing, various sports-like equipment from a sport he's never seen...though he doubts sports equipment vary all that greatly anyway, unless they're accommodating wildly different alien body-types. He's curious about the sports here. He very briefly walks past the athletic fields, but doesn't stick around.

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III. ｉ＇ｍｈｅｒｅｔｏｍａｋｅｉｔｍｙｏｗｎ
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The luxhabs catch his eye. Isolated enough, he finds the appeal in occupying one of these cabins to wait out this stupid trip that he didn't intend on going on but here he is. He has no use for things like kitchenette or freshly stocked food or comfortable beds, but he is curious about it all the same. The level of tech is always worth checking out, anyway.

He's flickering through the different exterior options, adding porches, removing them, adjusting window sizes and shapes, adding a dark tint to them (leaves those on), and without even realizing it, he's turned the luxhab into a cold and unwelcoming presence among the other quaintly decorated ones around him. How typical! Come and poke fun of his penchant for dreary edgy design.

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He completely avoids the food courts and bath house.

Pidge really just wanted a moment of peace. Away from the possibility of running into people for just an hour or two. Even the Luxhabs required sharing it with someone else. She grabbed a book off the shelves, some ancient thing about physics that she isn't really absorbing.

She went maybe a little farther in than she meant, but the sounds of the jungle are actually pretty soothing to her. She could lie down on a log and take a nap right there, see if her unconscious brain might dream up a solution to some problem she's been chewing on. Or she might have nightmares about everything that's happened up until now.

Hopefully not that one. But it is safe to sleep out here anyway...

That's when she hears the sound of...something coming through the bushes. She snaps awake and snags a branch right off the log she lay down on. She's going to beat the stuffing out of whatever it is that's coming at her.

This may not have been the kind of bar Reinhardt was used to, what with its post-modern look, and variety of drinks he's never even heard of. But at the same time, it didn't mean he wasn't enjoying himself, given the way he held up his stein, and took a swig of it while recounting stories to some of the strangers sitting beside him. He was more used to the tavern-styled bars that were common in Germany back in his world, which even to those standards, were pretty dated. But to Reinhardt, that was just what a bar felt like. A crappy building, packed to the brim with lively patrons. Everyone smashed off their ass, sharing nonsensical stories, and waking up in the morning in absolutely no recollection of how they ended up there.

It just wasn't a bar otherwise.

The future was a little different, but it didn't mean Reinhardt couldn't bring some of that here. If nothing else, he could drink everyone under the table, and he had more than enough stories to pass the time if anyone wanted to sit with him. Of course, some times, he was perfectly content to drink alone, and simply wait until the next patron took a seat next to him. Whatever the case, whoever sits beside him will find that he has no shortage of things to talk about.

Threaded | Flat

Food Court Hangouts

Swimming

Laser Tag

Exploring the Jungle

Campfire Tales

Party Games

Trust Falls