thebastion | Day 204 :: any format [OPEN]

Entry tags:

Day 204 :: any format [OPEN]

Who: Rob and anyone
Open: Open
When: Day 204
Where: The entrance to the Bastion, then everywhere
What: The latest survivor has just arrived and doesn't realize that his world is gone yet.
Format: Any, will match
Warnings: I don't think so?

This had certainly been an unexpected event. One moment Rob had been walking to the game shop to hang out and the next he was lying on the sidewalk, part of the street and the small park he was passing the only recognizable landmarks. It was like someone had picked up a section of the world and deposited it here. Or dropped it; things were looking kind of broken. He had an initial moment of panic and confusion at the sudden change in his situation, but that quickly gave way to calm, and then to a bit of excitement at the prospect of an actual adventure in some fantasy world, since that was obviously what this was. With no people, monsters, or animals in sight, the buildings he could see in the distance were as good a destination as any, so he set off walking towards them.

A few hours later he walked into the Bastion, a bit sweaty from the heat since his backpack was too full to fit his coat in, but otherwise in a good mood, twirling the shard he'd found between his fingers. The new arrival was around 5'9" and broad-shouldered, with long brown hair, a reddish-brown goatee, and his ears and septum pierced, the septum with a fairly thick circular barbell. He wore a shin-length black canvas coat with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows, baggy black BDU pants tucked into red high-top skateboard shoes, and a black T-shirt with a red symbol on it, the front of it tucked up behind a matching belt buckle. For someone who'd just had their world destroyed, he looked to be in a pretty good mood. Maybe he didn't know yet?

A while later he could be found wandering around the Bastion, looking everywhere that didn't look like a private space and awkwardly pausing when he saw people, unsure how to strike up conversations with them. It wasn't like he could just walk up to them and press X to have them infodump, but these were people he was going to be around a lot and he knew it would be a good idea to get to know them all. How did video game protagonists do this?

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For the first time in the conversation, Rob looked somewhat distressed by what he was hearing. Something about the idea of the dead as statues instead of merely corpses struck a nerve for reasons he didn't immediately understand and he felt a sudden, urgent need to change the topic.

"Well, uh," he shifted uncomfortably, "like I was saying, um, how does getting food, clothing, and, uh, shelter work around here? You guys have trouble with supplies a lot or're you, uh, usually okay?"

Oh yes. Once he accepts that this has really happened, this is going to hit Rob like a ton of munitions falling off a hoverlift... Colin's mood brightens somewhat as they change topics.

"We're hanging on for now," Colin explains, gesturing in the direction of the monument. "About a third of the Bastion's population makes daily supply runs to the outlying areas around here. The monument can create a great deal of what we need, if we bring it shards. They're small batteries, basically, and the monument..."

He looks puzzled for just a moment, searching for words to explain it. It's a good, LONG moment, if Rob cares to interject.

Rob spoke up once the moment of silence had lasted for a while.

"'Shards'?" he asked, pulling one out of his pocket along with a dark green hair elastic, which he took with his other hand and returned to his pocket. "Is this one?"

"That's right," Colin says, nodding. "The monument takes them, and spits out whatever you can imagine. Seriously, ask around about the donut trees. I don't even know."

The look of exasperation on his face is unmistakeable.

"But anyway, it's some sort of matter-energy conversion system that I've never seen before," he says. "It can create living beings, animals, food, BUILDINGS, DONUT TREES. It's pretty amazing, and if it weren't so vital to our survival right now, I'd strip it down and try to figure out how it works."

Rob mouthed "donut trees?" with a mix of confusion, terror, and fascination on his face before he processed what else Colin was saying. Because what he had just heard wiped every other thought from his mind.

"Wait, you're saying that this thing can create life!? How!? What limits are there? Does it create biological robots or do the creatures actually have souls? Doesn't that mean you could potentially create sentient beings with this? Clone people!? This is..."

His words trailed off, but he continued to gesture for a bit and his mouth continued to open and close. A few unintelligible sounds came out, but he'd forgotten how to communicate the thoughts that were still running through his head.

"Living, breathing, bleeding, thinking creatures, yes," Colin says. "If you saw the mammoth herd out on the Skyway? The monument created it. The same with the little dragons you'll occasionally see."

He gives a grin then, and he shakes his head. "The big dragon, on the other hand, is Paarthurnax. The monument didn't create him, he's another survivor. And he's probably the most well-adjusted person here. Good to talk to, if you need a sympathetic ear," he adds, in diversion from his prior topic.

He finds his way back to the matter at hand with sudden seriousness. "I don't know if it can clone people, and I'm not inclined to try it personally," he explains. "It's possible, I'm sure, but clones have a very rough time of things. Artificially created people are often stigmatized due to being created at someone's whim. Not saying anyone here would do that, but just the same, I'd rather not even try to find out."

Rob said nothing to any of that, instead bowing his head and running his hand over his face as he raised it, ending with a goatee stroke. His hand then returned to pinch the bridge of his nose for a moment. When he finally finished though, there were obviously gears starting to turn in his head.

"That all's something I can look into later. Doubt this thing will do much with one shard anyways," he snorted softly, then turned serious. "But you said the monument's vital to this place's survival. What's it giving you that you can't get any other way, and what's your plan if it stops working?"

"It takes about a week's worth of gathering to buy a small house," Colin confirms. "More for special amenities and the like. But all things considered, that's not too bad."

He smirks as he watches the gears turn in Rob's head. "Simply, it provides hope," Colin says. "Without the monument, I'm guessing that half the people here would have given up months ago. As for me... well, I don't like to put my life in the hands of one device. I'm working to build facilities and equipment that meet my standards. The monument is handy, though. It's shaved years off of my timetable already."

A person with a tendency to indulge in fantasy has been given the opportunity to make those fantasies real. The existence of donut trees has simply expanded his concept of what's possible. Colin may have additional headaches in his future.

"That's good. If something's this critical it's a good idea to have a backup plan.

"But until I can gather more shards, is there some place I can stay? And some place I can get a few things to tide me over? With how hot it is here right now I can pretty much guarantee that no one'll wanna be around me after I've been working if I can't change clothes. Especially if I'm wearing long pants like this."

Colin laughs quietly, and he nods.

"There are plenty of clothes to be had, we know all about needing spares. If you go to the distillery, over that way..." Colin points off towards the building. "They can hook you up. Meals are prepared for the community, also, so you don't really need to worry about providing your own food. Though, if you can help at the farm, it helps everyone."

He smirks slightly, and then he points between the two large apartment buildings. "As for lodgings, there are apartments for all the newbies, and a lot of people find them sufficient to not even need to build their own place," he says. "The older one has smaller accommodations. Think college dorm rooms. The newer one has actual apartments with several rooms. Nobody's yet complained about people taking rooms for themselves, but the place is basically for families."

He points off in the direction of the several cottages. "There's community housing out that way too, though I think a lot of them have already been claimed. Still, if you want a house, that's the place to go, but I personally prefer something I've designed myself," he continues explaining, and he grins and gestures in another direction. "On that topic, my workshop is over there. Near the armory. You ever need anything built, you can come to me. And if you need a weapon, you can duck into the armory. Stewart has good quality gear for people who want to go out on the Skyway, but don't have their own stuff."

Rob gave a half-smile.

"It almost sounds like you guys have everything pretty much squared away."

"I'd like to think that we're stable, certainly," Colin says. "But we've still got a long ways to go before anyone can say that we're actually out of the woods. There's a lot of work to be done."

He smiles slightly, then he gestures towards the entrance to the Skyway. "If you decide to join with the people that go out on expeditions, try to avoid going alone. It's very dangerous out there, and we've lost plenty of people to the Skyway," he says.

"Huh. I didn't see anyone or anything out there other than a lack of guardrails, but maybe I just got lucky. What kind of danger are we talking about here?"

"Then you were exceptionally lucky," Colin says, shaking his head. "This is the only place where we can realistically say that there's enough to survive on. The creatures that survived the calamity, and there are a lot of them, are hungry. The Gasfellas and the Squirts especially are having a rough time of things out there, and they're very, very protective of their territory. One of them killed one of our stronger people, a demon called 'Night', and greivously wounded another. There's also quite a bit of fauna and flora that's grown quite territorial. On top of that, there are other survivors who, for whatever reason, don't want to come here. And as is typical of a post-apocalypse scenario, they are neither trusting nor particularly willing to entertain peaceful meetings."

"Monsters, eh?"

Rob gave his goatee a single stroke and showed that look of gears turning in his head for just a moment.

"Do the stronger monsters or the other survivors get close to the Bastion often? Or do they know it's someone else's territory and mostly stay away? Like, are they actively hostile and out to get us or is it just opportunistic attacks and I shouldn't worry about getting attacked in my sleep?"

Despite having said that, he didn't display any major concern about that possibility; it was more like asking that was just a side question to his real line of inquiry. Of course, he hasn't been emoting exceptionally strongly to begin with, so he could just not be showing his worry.

"I wouldn't call them monsters," Colin says, shaking his head. "Animals, survivors. Gasfellas supposed worked hand-in-hand with Caelondians before the calamity."

Colin gestures in the direction of the Dragonfield then. "Paarthurnax and I arrived here at roughly the same time. Since then, he's been patrolling the skies around the area. Any creatures that may have lived close by have long since vacated the area. Paar is kind and understanding, but he's still a dragon, and he still hunts. Nothing that's afraid of being eaten stuck around."

Colin smiles slightly then. "So, basically, it's the latter, and even then, they don't really go looking for trouble. They're more likely to attack because you're intruding on their home territory than anything else," he explains. "I'm still wary about how exposed we are here, so I've been working on defenses just in case... but they have yet to have cause to be used."

"I so need to see the dragon," Rob said under his breath with a hint of childish glee on his face. He composed himself before continuing. "But, uh, anyways it's nice to know I won't be mauled the second I step outside. And setting up defenses is prolly a good idea."

He paused for a moment.

"So besides defenses, what else does this place really need? Maybe there's something I can help out with."

Colin smirks, catching the gleeful comment, and all but ignoring his comment on his likelihood of survival. "I really need to build an actual bridge to reach the Dragonfield sometime, but Paar is very welcoming of visitors," he says. "So don't feel you need to be a stranger. As I said, he's probably one of the best people here to talk to."

Colin thinks for a moment before nodding to himself. "The biggest bit of work around here is definitely the farm. It provides enough food for all of us, but it doesn't harvest itself. Rin is a little possessive about the kitchen, but I don't think she'll turn down a hand if you can cook. Gods know she started there by helping Mireille out before she had her child. Basically... if you see something that needs to be done? Do it. If you want to help someone out, feel free to ask first. And if you need to pick up a skill..."

Colin pauses, and he laughs at the absurdity of it. "Ask around, or poke the monument," Colin says. "Once you made it here, the monument would have given you an amulet. Yeah, the Monument is basically your all purpose RPG magic system slash Babelfish slash replicator. It's really kind of absurd, how useful it is. But given how badly off we'd be without it, I'm not about to complain."

"Amulet?"

Rob patted his chest where he would expect one to be, then started feeling around in his pockets while he continued.

"It kinda sounds too good to be true. Seems like a bad idea to rely on it for everything and not have backup plans. I mean, you're saying multiple worlds were destroyed. Compared to that, this thing breaking down or exploding seems more likely."

"I found it in my toolkit when I finally tracked it down," Colin says in amusement. "And yeah, it's not a good idea to rely on it. Again, there's a reason that I'm working on building everything I can. But given that this place, the monument and everything, was prepared by the same group that apparently instigated the calamity in the first place? I'd say it's got a better than decent shot of staying running for a while."

Rob finished checking his pants pockets and moved on to the inner and outer pockets of his coat. Having this much storage space on his person had seemed a good idea at the time.

"The Calamity, was it an accident? Or was it some 'ultimate weapon' that turned out more powerful than expected?"

"The latter. In a particularly idiotic move, the Caelondians conscripted a Ura and threatened his daughter to get him to build a weapon to obliterate the Ura," Colin says, his voice turning irritated and disgusted almost immediately. "Can't imagine why he went and sabotaged it to turn against Caelondia instead."

The sarcasm in his tone was completely evident and unmistakable. "In any case, we don't know what caused it to magnify so much, though I have some theories..."

Edited 2014-07-20 19:21 (UTC)

Rob stopped searching his pockets, because he needed his hand free so he could facepalm. He shook his head side-to-side slightly for a bit before tilting his head up slightly to look at Colin from between his fingers.

"You're serious, aren't you," he stated, rather than questioned. "I'd say that sounded like a bad movie plot but that would be an insult to bad movie plots everywhere. How could anyone think that that situation wouldn't turn out badly?"

"You'll come to understand Caelondian thinking if you stick around here," he says, shaking his head. "Jingoism is apparently a big part of their culture, as is a major superiority complex over their enemies."

He's not about to stop Rob's facepalm.

Rob sighed and dropped his hand away from his face.

"Is it really too much to hope for that old rivalries and bigotries didn't get dragged into a survival situation?"

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