For Barrayar mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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forbarrayar2016-12-20 10:13 am
barrayarmods) wrote in forbarrayar2016-12-20 10:13 am
Entry tags:
- !event,
- #cetagandan base,
- *diya d'zefyst,
- *gail ghem-estif,
- adrien arbuckal | prorenataa,
- agent washington | protocol,
- agent york | infailtration,
- darkstalker | threemoons,
- daryl dixon | pigsfeet,
- duv galeni | komarran,
- egil dagsson | norms,
- kaidan alenko | standsentinel,
- lapis lazuli | mirrortide,
- ratchet | asafepairofhands,
- vlad tepes | theyfear
[ january i log: cetaganda ]
Who: Everyone
What: Arrival on Barrayar and what follows
When: January 2nd - January 17th
Where: Cetagandan base
Warnings: None (at the moment)
welcome to barrayar.
It's the dark of night when you come to beyond the foothills. Snow on the ground, chill winter wind whistling. A steep mountain range towers overhead, its peaks illuminated by the light of two moons, and the foothills behind you ascend quickly into rocky mountain faces. Whatever you last remember, it isn't how you got here, and you feel oddly jetlagged, slightly queasy.
And you're not alone. There are nine other people close by, all looking equally lost and confused. But before any of you have a chance to figure out what's going on, the soldiers arrive.
They're fitted with what look like futuristic tactical vests and armed with some kind of energy weapons that look deadlier than not. They surround you at gunpoint, dealing orders in intelligible English, but with some obscure, unplaceable accent, and their faces are colored with vivid paint. It quickly becomes apparent, however, that you are not the people they at first assumed -- something about Barrayarans, the barbarians in the mountains. The one who seems to be in charge steps away to murmur into what looks like a wristwatch-like communicator. After a minute or two of inaudible conversation, the officer steps back in. He orders his men to escort you all back to their base. As long as you cooperate, that's all that will happen.
the base
You are taken back to a military base of considerable scale and some serious fortification. There are two rounds of guard checks to go through, both taking what must be a lot longer than usual, and it's cold out. You are ushered past the guard checks into what looks like a barracks building, but relegated to a bunk on one end. They seem to have cleared the immediate area, with guards posted at the door, but there's audible activity beyond the short hallway in front of the door. They make it clear you are not under arrest, that you are merely being detained until they have ascertained the situation -- the word quarantine is used, but it doesn't seem to be of a medical sort. Either way, the only people who come to the bunk are those cleared by the guards, and they all seem much more interested than hostile.
They answer your questions with the very basic facts: the people who hold custody of you are the military service of the Cetagandan Empire, and the planet you are on is their Ninth Satrapy, and they're currently at odds with some of the native population. They won't say it outright, but it's clear they have no clue how you came to be here or why, but it's clearly of great interest to them. For the most part, the Cetagandan soldiers are civil, if at times distant and aloof, but if you look a little less -- or more -- than human, they'll eye you with visible curiosity, perhaps even some kind of appreciation.
At daylight, a few women in lab coats and the same face-paint as the soldiers come to the room to escort you across the base to the nearby medbay, two or three at a time. The medbay is an intimidatingly sterile and state-of-the-art facility, all gleaming chrome and polished glass and crisp holo displays. You are taken in one at a time for a physical examination -- they have to make sure you haven't brought any foreign contagions into their base, after all -- but the military physician isn't the only base personnel in the exam room. You hear the word exotic tossed around a few times until they realized they're talking about you. They call you the exotics.
the exotics room
For a military bunk, it's in surprisingly tasteful design. The room sleeps a dozen soldiers, so you even have a little bit of room to yourself, and while the furnishings are relatively spartan, they're hardly uncomfortable. If you're in need of clothing, the soldiers will bring you base fatigues – no rank insignia, of course, but the make of the textile is surprisingly fine.
You're served food at mealtimes, a combination of shelf-stable meal rations and what seems to be fresh food, all prepared with unusual artistry for a military base. There's a sophistication to the preparation that seems more like it belongs in a four-star restaurant than a military base. If you have any special medical needs, they'll do their best to attend to them -- and their medicine seems impressively advanced.
Soldiers and scientists alike come to the room every so often to ask you questions, more like interviews than interrogations, but behind the civility there's a burning intellectual curiosity. They seem intent on knowing as much as you'll tell them, and then some.
The nearest bathroom is at the end of the hall, and while they seem to have cleared the area of all other personnel, showers and baths are scheduled, and any trips to the restroom are chaperoned. The guards, while not hostile, are certainly not interested in letting you escape. You could try sneaking past them, but you probably won't get far.
Well, at least you've got each other for company: the exotics on the Ninth Satrapy.
What: Arrival on Barrayar and what follows
When: January 2nd - January 17th
Where: Cetagandan base
Warnings: None (at the moment)
welcome to barrayar.
It's the dark of night when you come to beyond the foothills. Snow on the ground, chill winter wind whistling. A steep mountain range towers overhead, its peaks illuminated by the light of two moons, and the foothills behind you ascend quickly into rocky mountain faces. Whatever you last remember, it isn't how you got here, and you feel oddly jetlagged, slightly queasy.
And you're not alone. There are nine other people close by, all looking equally lost and confused. But before any of you have a chance to figure out what's going on, the soldiers arrive.
They're fitted with what look like futuristic tactical vests and armed with some kind of energy weapons that look deadlier than not. They surround you at gunpoint, dealing orders in intelligible English, but with some obscure, unplaceable accent, and their faces are colored with vivid paint. It quickly becomes apparent, however, that you are not the people they at first assumed -- something about Barrayarans, the barbarians in the mountains. The one who seems to be in charge steps away to murmur into what looks like a wristwatch-like communicator. After a minute or two of inaudible conversation, the officer steps back in. He orders his men to escort you all back to their base. As long as you cooperate, that's all that will happen.
the base
You are taken back to a military base of considerable scale and some serious fortification. There are two rounds of guard checks to go through, both taking what must be a lot longer than usual, and it's cold out. You are ushered past the guard checks into what looks like a barracks building, but relegated to a bunk on one end. They seem to have cleared the immediate area, with guards posted at the door, but there's audible activity beyond the short hallway in front of the door. They make it clear you are not under arrest, that you are merely being detained until they have ascertained the situation -- the word quarantine is used, but it doesn't seem to be of a medical sort. Either way, the only people who come to the bunk are those cleared by the guards, and they all seem much more interested than hostile.
They answer your questions with the very basic facts: the people who hold custody of you are the military service of the Cetagandan Empire, and the planet you are on is their Ninth Satrapy, and they're currently at odds with some of the native population. They won't say it outright, but it's clear they have no clue how you came to be here or why, but it's clearly of great interest to them. For the most part, the Cetagandan soldiers are civil, if at times distant and aloof, but if you look a little less -- or more -- than human, they'll eye you with visible curiosity, perhaps even some kind of appreciation.
At daylight, a few women in lab coats and the same face-paint as the soldiers come to the room to escort you across the base to the nearby medbay, two or three at a time. The medbay is an intimidatingly sterile and state-of-the-art facility, all gleaming chrome and polished glass and crisp holo displays. You are taken in one at a time for a physical examination -- they have to make sure you haven't brought any foreign contagions into their base, after all -- but the military physician isn't the only base personnel in the exam room. You hear the word exotic tossed around a few times until they realized they're talking about you. They call you the exotics.
the exotics room
For a military bunk, it's in surprisingly tasteful design. The room sleeps a dozen soldiers, so you even have a little bit of room to yourself, and while the furnishings are relatively spartan, they're hardly uncomfortable. If you're in need of clothing, the soldiers will bring you base fatigues – no rank insignia, of course, but the make of the textile is surprisingly fine.
You're served food at mealtimes, a combination of shelf-stable meal rations and what seems to be fresh food, all prepared with unusual artistry for a military base. There's a sophistication to the preparation that seems more like it belongs in a four-star restaurant than a military base. If you have any special medical needs, they'll do their best to attend to them -- and their medicine seems impressively advanced.
Soldiers and scientists alike come to the room every so often to ask you questions, more like interviews than interrogations, but behind the civility there's a burning intellectual curiosity. They seem intent on knowing as much as you'll tell them, and then some.
The nearest bathroom is at the end of the hall, and while they seem to have cleared the area of all other personnel, showers and baths are scheduled, and any trips to the restroom are chaperoned. The guards, while not hostile, are certainly not interested in letting you escape. You could try sneaking past them, but you probably won't get far.
Well, at least you've got each other for company: the exotics on the Ninth Satrapy.
Kaidan Alenko | Mass Effect | ota
He can feel the space in his perceptions where his biotics should be like the biggest and most phantom of phantom limbs -- an inexplicable absence even while everything else is reporting in as all systems green. (Although his toes and fingers might start shading into the blue if he's not careful.) Even at rest, he ought to be feeling the interplay between the eezo in his own body and what's in the world around him, subtle resonances between himself, the other biotics, the drive core of the ship... all the sensations he'd never even thought of, much less put a name to, until they were gone.
He'd had the amp offline before, but had attributed the dislocated feeling as much to the fact that he was on amazing painkillers following having seven shades of shit shaken out of him by a murderous AI-controlled mech. Now, mostly-hale and reasonably-hearty as he stands in an unexpected winter's woods, he can feel it all the more strongly.
The trees look like Earth evergreens, the mountains could easily be the Rockies, but he left an Earth that was smoking ruins, where even the countryside was choked with ash and death and the rubble of small towns taken out with a passing strike from a Reaper's main battery. One hand reaches automatically to call up his omni-tool's display, plans for amp diagnostics and comm broadcasts jostling for priority, only to find another absence: the omni-tool is missing. "What the shit," quoth Major Alenko, standing in the snow in nothing more than his Alliance duty uniform and a thick cloak of befuddled alarm that thickens still more as he realizes he's not alone. "Who's over there?"
Base
The differences between 'under arrest' and 'detained' are appreciable only on a longer timeframe than the one Kaidan's found himself in. In the here and now, they both result in a loss of freedom and a scarcity of answers, it's just that the latter one suggests it would be rude to try and escape. That 'detained' also neatly dispenses with the need to adhere to any rights like access to legal counsel... well, he'd be wryly impressed by their tactics, if he wasn't currently caught in the middle of them.
Kaidan's strategy seems to be to retreat into a watchful calm that might well be downright irritating for a hotter tempered member of the group to watch. He's polite to the guards and medics, trades questions answered for questions asked, and seems to be doing his level best to be as unremarkable as it's possible for an exotic to be. His medical scans betray his efforts, however, as the cybernetics of his biotic amp and the haptic implants in his fingertips provide enough to catch some medical interest all on their own, even without the mysterious shadows of the eezo nodes that nestle all along his nervous system.
It doesn't take too many question-trades for him to figure out that these people have no idea what biotics are, much less the witch's christening gift of his L2 implant. Paired with what seem to be exclusively energy weapons among the soldiers and the unfamiliar state of Cetaganda, and he's left wondering if this is yet another lost colony situation like the Manswell Expedition. "So, ah," he wonders, testing out a new question. "Does your empire still have contact with Earth?"
Bunkroom
The decor may be creepy in its perfection, but the food is slowly convincing Kaidan, who apparently retains his biotic's metabolism despite the amp's failure, that their captor-hosts may be trying to domesticate their new exotics by means of food rewards. Polite requests for comm network access being even more politely declined, he's left with trying to make sense of his situation based on observation alone. His fellow prisoner-guests are certainly the most varied pool of individuals, and the near-certainty that they're being recorded doesn't outweigh the utility of getting to know them. So, in between the various interviews from the Cetagandans, Kaidan turns up with a crooked smile and the reflection that "I really need to see if they'll give us a deck of cards or something... but what's your story? I'm earthborn, myself."
bunkroomies.
(He's looking for materials to make a shiv, but he hopes these stuffy pricks have their heads too far up their asses to guess his aims.)
He doesn't look up from the door handle he's trying to disconnect from the door when one of his fellow 'exotics' asks a perfectly innocuous question. Perfectly innocuous, and perfectly ridiculous. "I look like a damn astronaut to you?"
no subject
The colony folks in question, or at least those out in the Terminus Systems, generally seemed to exist to hurl snarky commentary about the Alliance in general and him in particular, so Daryl is almost a breath of home.
Besides, he's curious to see just how the other man plans to remove a door handle without any tools.
no subject
"Yeah," he says. "Hate to be rude."
And then he lifts his leg, and forces the heel of his heavy boot down on the door handle with as much force as he can. There's a loud clang of metal, and he manages to scuff the surface of the door, but the handle stays stubbornly in place.
no subject
For one thing, if Daryl can manage to break the thing off and does have a cunning plan to use it to escape and get back to his apparently earlier version of Earth (?!?) Kaidan wants in.
no subject
Which is to say, obviously they're being watched. Obviously they're being listened to. "They're testing us," Daryl says, "so test back."
It's all for a plan he can give when he knows his thoughts are being recorded. If this guy is smart-- smart, not just not stupid-- he can work with that.
no subject
What he'd really like is some less-monitored space to compare notes in. He settles for offering "I'll keep a watch for any signs of interest, if you're going to keep kicking."
no subject
"Where you think the cameras are?"
Because there have to be some, and Daryl's never given a shit about the I-know-you-know-I-know game.
no subject
no subject
He finds what looks like a lightbulb (sort of. It's definitely got light coming from it) on the roof, and climbs up on a bed to reach for it.
"You got a name with all them manners?"
no subject
Daryl's clambering gets the same sort of observational interest as his attempts with the door handle, and he huffs a soft laugh at the question. "Kaidan Alenko," he supplies. "And I didn't think I was mannerly, just Canadian. You're somewhere further south, I'm guessing?"
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Ratchet watches Kaidan curiously, wary but not hostile--on his list of expected character traits for a pack of kidnapped people, 'friendliness' was not especially high.
"I'm a combat surgeon, so I'm from wherever I'm stationed, mostly. Name's Ratchet." He holds out a hand. "And you?"
no subject
no subject
"Yeah, I bet you are. Though it seems our charming hosts are intent on boring us to death, instead of sending anyone out to commit thrilling heroics after which I am then required to clean up."
no subject
"I have a feeling we're cooling our heels while a lot of extremely frantic members of the brass figure out what the hell to do," he says with a sigh, then offers the prediction that "We'll keep sitting until either they come up with a way to use us, or someone gets squirrelly enough to attack the guards, at which point they can efficiently and morally shoot us."
no subject
"Always nice to bump into a fellow optimist," he says, his voice just as dry. "But yeah, they seemed as confused as we were that we're here. I haven't decided whether that's comforting or not."
no subject
Currently at odds with some of the native population isn't all that hard to decipher, especially not when their surprised welcoming party was carrying energy weapons.
no subject
no subject
As for himself, he's well aware that the bulk of his military specializations are useless here. And he's not exactly enthused to apply them blindly even if they weren't. "On that note," he says, "Did you get much of a look at how they operate, while we were getting vetted?"
no subject
"A little. I was pretty disoriented when I woke up here. I got a decent look around their medbay, though--high tech, obviously. If I recognized half the stuff I think I did, way more high-tech than I would have figured for a military outpost on an occupied planet."
no subject
He pauses, recalling Noveria and its frosty facilities, and adds a third option of "Or both?"
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base
He's watchful, observant - notes the strange way they call them exotics as if they don't know who or what they are, or why any of them are here. There are military aspects that imply that the base is setup for that purpose alone which suggests to him that they might be prisoners of some odd war. More disconcerting, that they will be used in a way that is eerily similar to how the Ottoman Empire had taken so many young boys to train in their Janissary Corps.
None of the options are appealing, or comforting in any way, but he chooses to wait and watch, form his opinions through caution and questioning.
"Humans have ventured into space, but never colonized. They were very much rooted to Earth."
He comes up to stand beside the stranger, arms hanging loosely at his sides. If he's thoughtful and responsive, this person might become an ally, or at the very least, answer some of the questions he has.
"Does your empire no longer have contact with Earth?"
no subject
"I'm from Earth," he volunteers as he settles in one of the chairs to wait for the next medical summons. Where he hails from is information already given to the Cetagandan staff, considered and found to be little threat if shared with them. "We've got well over fifty human colony worlds established, and none of them named anything even close to Cetaganda. You can see where my curiosity comes from."
no subject
"Yes, I can. My curiosity lies along the same line of thought, though more from the fact that the Earth I come from had not progressed so very far." He leans back, eyes tracking one of the nurse's as the pass. "I feel that we've upset the balance they have here. They call us exotics and study us."
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