thebastion | [Day 225] [EVENT] A sinking feeling

[Day 225] [EVENT] A sinking feeling

Who: Anyone and everyone
Open: Open
When: Early morning on Day 225
Where: Everywhere in the Bastion
What: Remember how cores used to be a thing? Yeah, they're still important.
Format: any
Warnings: terrible modpuns

[Early in the morning on Day 225, most people are probably asleep. For the couple of stragglers who may still be awake so late, though, they may notice something strange. At 2:31 am, any lights that are on start to hum, and flicker in and out of dimness.

At 2:32 am, every light in the Bastion (excluding the emergency lights) shuts off entirely.

At 2:33 am, a horrible grinding noise can be heard throughout the Bastion, seemingly coming from everywhere at once. This sound continues on for several minutes, throughout everything else that begins to happen.

At 2:34 am, for anyone outside Nathaniel can be seen running from the Apartments towards the Monument as if his life depended on it.

At 2:35 am, ever so slowly, sections of the Bastion begin to sink.

What do you do?]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Even though Nathaniel gets everything under control pretty quickly, he still waits a bit before leaving the Bastion to retrieve the others. He's pretty sure he's got everything under control, and the Bastion won't be sinking underneath them again for a little bit at least, but he still takes the time to test it, to see just how much energy the Bastion has left.

So, the horrible sounds stop roughly fifteen minutes after they started, but Nathaniel doesn't come out to the Skyway until nearly an hour later.]

So, I've got good news and I've got bad news. Which do you want first?

Bad news. Good news looks pretty obvious from here.

[Rob has a point, so.]

You know how we got a bit distracted from the whole 'find cores' thing when everyone got sick? Well, it turns out that the Bastion doesn't just need those cores to repair itself, they also provide power. And with all the upgrades we've gotten over the last few months, we were basically trying to use more power than we had available, and it shut everything down.

The Bastion's safe, for now. The bad news is that I had to shut off a lot of the extra, non-vital things, so we're going back to pre-in-home-electricity days most of the time. I can turn it back on when we really need it, but I'd advise against it for now.

The good news is that this is easily fixable. As soon as we find a core and bring it back, everything'll be back to normal. And as far as I can figure with my calculations, as long as we get the Bastion at least one core a month, we won't have problems in the future. But we need to find a core as soon as we can, because without one the Bastion will only last another week or two before it runs out of power entirely.

Edited 2014-09-06 04:21 (UTC)

[Rob shakes his head.]

I got here just as people were getting better. Never heard about any "cores", but I guess this explains where the electricity's coming from. So I guess the first question is if you've got any idea where another core'd be.

Sometimes they reveal themselves... and sometimes, we just find them, and have a big fight on our hands. They've got mutagenic properties at the very least. The last one we found caused a houseplant to turn into Audrey 2. I hope at least one person here gets that reference...

[Yep, that's Colin approaching from behind Nathan. He's still shirtless, he looks annoyed, but at least the emergency is temporarily passed.]

Nathan, I can assist with the power problems at the very least. We definitely need a core, but we've got a little more juice than just what's left in the batteries. And power just happens to be my specialty.

If we ever need actual electricity, I've got a guy that can help. [ And hey, since this is a free discussion for all, here's another guy to join in. Dressed completely - at least a shirt and trousers, even with shoes! He's left Blastoise to stand keeping watch on the Skyway for any trouble as this conversation starts. ] As long as you can take it from his body.

[ But he looks over to Nathaniel. ]

Did you get time to locate a core? Even if you didn't, I've talked to some people about finding a core already. We can go searching after everyone's grabbed supplies and gotten ready for the trip.

Er...

[Nathaniel is not really okay with taking power from a living creature, mostly because he doesn't really get how the Pokemon world works and he doesn't realize that it can be done without harming the pokemon.]

Not yet, but there are a few places we haven't explored yet, and one of them happens to be an old quarry where we used to mine Cores out of the ground. I'm thinking that's going to be our best bet for finding a core on short notice.

...Could shards be used as an emergency substitute for the cores while we search?

[Just suddenly showing up out of nowhere to join the conversation, no big deal.

...Okay, no, he's actually been here a while and just doing his usual not talking to anyone thing.]

They can, yeah, but we should save it for a last resort kind of thing. The Bastion will eat through shards very quickly, so it's not worth it unless we absolutely have to use them.

[Zulf has been fairly quiet throughout this whole conversation, but he finally speaks up.]

Burstone Quarry... That's where you're thinking of, isn't it? Raile and I know of it. [There's a brief glance away as he seems to remember something that has him frown before he refocuses on the question at hand.] It's certainly a good start, but you'd all have to be careful. There's... a very old and large Lunkhead that tends to roam around that area.

There's also some other places we could try... But Raile might know more about those areas than I would.

[While Nathaniel is still 'miffed at best' with Zulf, Zulf is the diplomat here, so he would be more well-traveled than Nathaniel would be.]

We can take a day or two to discuss it before we decide where to actually go and look. With the setup I have now, The Bastion will stay afloat for two more weeks, so there's time. We're going to need a plan if we're going to go anywhere dangerous anyway.

But for now, I'd suggest that we head back and get some sleep.

[Even though the night doesn't continue out onto the Skyway, it still is 3 in the morning, and everyone is bound to still be tired.]

[Zuko is skeptical about moving back into a place that was falling out of the sky an hour ago.]

How sure are you about that two weeks? None of us knew we were low on power until this happened.

There's always a margin of error, but in this case it would be measured in hours, not days.

Obviously we want to find a core ASAP, but if it takes us a couple days to make sure we do so safely, nothing bad will happen.

[Theoretically.]

[Rob's been feeling like the question he's thinking of might be stupid, but he finally works up the courage to voice it.]

Um... So, uh, so why does the Bastion need the Monument powered to keep floating, anyways? What makes it different than the rest of the land here?

It's not so much that it keeps it floating as it is that it keeps everything connected. The Bastion itself is only really the middle part, around the monument. The rest is just chunks of Skyway that has been pulled in and connected to it.

Think of it like a giant electromagnet that draws chunks of land to it. Shut off the power, and what happens to the land? It drifts away, and since the Skyway doesn't really go in any set direction, some pieces drift down, others up, and others in all different directions.

[Rob nods. That made sense. An odd design choice, perhaps, but there was probably a good reason for it.]

How much power does the "electromagnet" part take? Is it something we could power with a generator if we had to, or are we talking about a full-on power plant? Having some kinda backup for that one function in particular would be good, since there can't be an infinite number of cores out there. Eventually we're not going to be able to find any more.

[...hmm. That is something Nathaniel actually hadn't considered before. So he takes a moment to think on it before answering.]

Well...I suppose a power plant is possible, but we would still need to have a steady supply of fuel, which is pretty much our problem with cores right now. Also, power made in a power plant can't be stored like cores can, so we couldn't just trust it to run on its own. We would need people monitoring it at all times, feeding whatever fuel we used, to keep it running.

It's certainly an option, but I'd save it as a 'plan B' for now. In the long run it would have more headaches than powering the Bastion via cores would.

If I may, something else to consider once we've all rested and to discuss tomorrow?

[Oh hey, some other asshole is joining the conversation.]

We need to be more organized- both with evacuation efforts when something like this inevitably happens again, with who is going to search out the cores, and some actual form of leadership.

Something to keep in mind.

To say nothing of the time it would take to get it built and then properly integrated with the Monument, without blowing up something vital.

Power is easy for me, but it's NOT easy in general.

[Colin's going to nod in agreement with Nathan here, before looking to Saix.]

Agreed. That's something we need to start working on immediately.

[Zuko glances over at Saix and nods. She's definitely been thinking about that.]

There are people we look to already. We should probably formalize that if we want things to run more smoothly.

[Alucard will be the first to admit that he doesn't really understand most of this science stuff (although probably not aloud). He does, however, have a simple suggestion.]

...Would it not make sense to attach the pieces that wish to drift away together with rope or chain?

[Nathaniel agrees with the idea of some kind of leadership, there's enough people here to justify that at this point.]

If you're looking for leaders, I think Zuko has the right idea. Look at who tends to have the plans right now, and decide from those people.

[For Alucard's question, though...]

Well...pieces of the Skyway don't exactly have a set size. The part with the chain attached to it could break off from the rest, and then we'd have the same problem as before. Plus that wouldn't solve the problem of having things like electricity.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Day 225] [EVENT] A sinking feeling

MORE PLOT

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject