voidtreckerexpress | A New Platform [Intro Post March]

A New Platform [Intro Post March]

PLATFORM STOP: MONTH 17
(QUICKSAND)

BEFORE ARRIVAL

"Good morning Voidtreckers, it is day 1 of the month of Quicksand. Points have been updated on the system."
The voice of the Voidtrecker Express welcomes passengers at the same time as always, sometime after breakfast. With points updated, everyone can spend the morning shopping. Most people will be expecting the second announcement that comes a few hours later, as the colours of the void outside the windows blur more and more.

"Shortly arriving into a designated void platform. The weather is cold and damp. Exit from void in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one."
A lurch and a jolt, and the windows fill with the fog that means they are at a platform.

ON THE PLATFORM

1. THE ARRIVAL

At first, all your character can see is steam billowing around them as they come to their senses. But as their eyes adjust, they find themselves on a platform.
It is cold, a slush of ice and rain on the ground underneath their feet. It's not currently raining though. The platform is made of black cobbles, slippy under their feet, dark stone gates serving as barriers giving the impression of a severe and grim place.

They stand in clothes not their own, in a style they might not even recognise. They're carrying a rucksack on their person, and for a moment it seems to just be them, alone on this platform. Before the fog starts to subside, and they'll see they're one of eleven figures: all facing the tracks, and all dressed in cargo trousers and hoodies, the latter in one of four colours. Purple, red, blue or orange.

But then there's a roaring sound to get their attention, and out from the fog arrives a train. A sleek black, it it reads The Voidtrecker Express in gold lettering on the side. Every one of the doors hiss as they open automatically, and out pours a strange assortment of people, over a hundred at least. Some are human, some less so, with a majority wearing the same hoodie of four colours as they do, though some sport outfits in a variety of styles.

The train doors close behind them, and the vehicle is cloaked in the same fog that hides the world beyond the platform. A group of people head towards the gates of the platform, their expressions blank and unaffected by their surroundings. Ansem, Connor, Curufin, Elle Days, Freddy Fazbear, Margulis, Murderbot, Potato, Vexen, Will Stanton and Yota They disappear through the barriers, but no one else can - all people can do is wait until the train re-emerges, finishing whatever changes it's making.

2. BOARDING THE TRAIN

After a short time, perhaps ten minutes or so, the fog clears and the doors hiss open again. Everyone will feel a pull when they do, a need to board, and those from the train may encourage new arrivals to board. This feeling grows into one of apprehension and turns worse the longer they stay off-board.

For those that do board, they may find themselves in a few different carriages, but most likely the standard coach. A row of seats sit available, with a few tables between each. More likely than not, some cookies have been set out with jugs of drink, and cups available for pouring.

For those that don't, however, they're likely to attract attention if they're spotted. And if that fails... an unfortunate end will await them.

3. DEPARTURE

Do a little exploring, if you will. But people will have half an hour total from the train's arrival before a second horn sounds, encouraging any stragglers taking advantage of the fresh air to board. After five minutes from this, the doors slide shut. Veteran passengers know what will happen next, but they may wish to brief their new companions.

The train begins to rumble with activity, and the platform starts to disappear into a fog as the voidcraft moves. A female-coded artificial voice echoes throughout the train.

"Welcome aboard, passengers of the Voidtrecker Express. Please take the time to read the passenger information displayed on the Information and Communication points, and familiarise yourself with the layout and emergency exits."

The train begins to tilt, leaving the ground and rising up into the fog-filled sky.

"Entrance into Voidspace imminent. New passengers are advised to remain seated. Entry into Voidspace in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one."

A shudder, a jolt, a lurch to the left. A flash of light, colourful and blinding. As quick as it happens it is done. The train seems to steady itself. The fog from the windows is gone now, replaced with a kaleidoscope of ever-changing colours.

Welcome to the Void.

ON THE TRAIN

1. EXPLORING

With nowhere to go but through the train's carriages, this is a good time for newcomers to explore. For veterans, it's back to your everyday life aboard the Voidtrecker Express.

¤ New arrivals will notice a screen and console in every carriage sharing the same message, and a stack of leaflets in holders by them offering further information to the curious (see 'Publications'). There are lavatories available on each carriage on one end, with another console with a deposit box under it at the other. This is the train shop.

¤ It'll take some time for newbies to figure out the layout, even if there's only two directions to go in. Go one end, and you'll find the food stores and washing utilities. This month's key ingredient is pineapple, and you're sure to bump into others curious about what's in the stock.

¤ Go to the other end, and you'll find the sleeper cabins. Plaques sit on the wall by each door with the names of their occupants, and one of these will be yours - hopefully, they'll figure out that swiping their ticket against the doorpad will open it up to them. In most rooms, the occupied beds are obvious, leaving the spotless, empty spaces for the newcomers. Room is tight, but there are storage cubbies at the head of each bed, beds fold up and, the bottom bunks double as benches for the small table. There is storage under those benches full of spare blankets and pillows.

¤ At the farthest end in this direction is the luggage carriage, where passengers who have bought items from the train shop will find their purchases. There are also medical kits for every one, each labelled with their full roster name. These are scattered around the luggage carriage in various suitcases and bags, but there's also a small fridge and kettle here with bottled water, for those who want a quiet drink.

For those of Purple team who go looking for their reward they will find simple boxes of cupcakes to share out. There's a cupcake for all of purple team, even the new arrivals, share in your new team's success!

2. ACTIVITIES

But of course, there's also everything in-between those two directions, and the people in them.

¤ Areas of note will be the training gym, where there's always regulars training to pass the time. There's a training board offering services, but maybe you'll find someone who catches your eye in here. Or even its gear?

¤ Is your character used to the appliances to be found in the kitchen? Depending on when your character wanders in, they may find someone testing out a recipe, preparing for lunch, or even dinner time.

¤ The library offers a quiet place, with a fair selection of books from fiction to non-fiction. Is your character interested in learning more about the void? Picking up an action or adventure book? Wow, there sure are a few magazines.

¤ There's also media to consume, from the games car, the cinema, to the arts carriage. Ever played a virtual reality game? Wanted to learn how to fly? Have you seen a screen of moving pictures? There's now documentaries to be found in the cinema's catalogues, from How To programming, Void-related topics, and sports.

3. REST AND SLEEP

¤ Time is difficult to track in the void, even with the few clocks around showing a 21 hour time. But the windows allowing a view of the kalediscope void will shift to a pitch black once the time reaches 12, and keep for the rest of the day.

¤ Breakfast, lunch, and dinner time is usually announced by whoever's cooking that day, and when. Sometimes it's decided by the team chores; other times, it's decided by who wants to be cooking.

¤ But sleep eventually comes to all, even if they don't want it to. When 21 hours have finally passed on the train, all passengers, whether they need sleep or not, will see black - only to start a new day in their cabin beds, with the sound of the train's automated voice greeting them with a 'Good morning' message.

NAVIGATION ~ GAMEPLAY ~ SETTING ~ CHARACTER INITIATIVES ~ QUESTIONS

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Why do all the vibrant beautiful colorful things have to be poison or nauseating or come with horrible bird noises."

But oh, hey, it's a kitty. He still looks a little queasy, but-

"Is your cat friendly? I mean, okay. That's a dumb question." Cats are inevitably selectively friendly. "I mean, would it be okay to pet it if it let me?" Because something soft and fuzzy would help a lot in not looking out the window.

"Hmm," Koumyou taps his chin in thought, and looks over at the face of the kitty in question. She opens her glowing, aggressively-purple eyes to look back. "What do you think, Wiggles?"

The cat turns her attention to Hunk, contemplates him for a long moment, and then...

Yeah, okay, she stands up on Koumyou's narrow shoulders, pushing his head forward for a second before she leaps down to be in range of Hunk.

"She's not the friendliest, but she accepts tributes of attention sometimes," Koumyou notes, watching with amusement. "Just don't push your luck with her."

"Noted." Sometimes the cute fuzzy things you find in mysterious environments want to murder you. Even if they're obviously someone's beloved pet.

Firmly not paying attention to the window, he leans over and gives her little cheek and underchin scritches. "You know, my robot that I used to pilot was shaped like you. Sort of. It was a lion. Way too big to ride around my shoulders, though. My loss, huh?"

He chuckles at Wiggles, giving her a gentle swipe down her back, managing a smile.

"You're an exo pilot?" Koumyou asks, and then covers his mouth to muffle a laugh when Wiggles takes the opportunity to suddenly get much, much bigger. Lanky housecat becomes the size of a panther in the span of an eyeblink, hogging all the space.

"...That's as big as the train lets her get, right now."

"We never called it an exo, but- AH!" Poor Hunk startles, falling back into the next seat, bringing up his arm in defense because sudden giant cat.

Pretty sure his heart just tried to climb out of his throat.

"What kind of cat is she? Is she even a cat?" He hesitantly rights himself, not wanting to offend anyone. But, come on, a shapeshifting cat just happened. What?

"She likes being a cat," Koumyou says cheerfully, as if that explains everything.

The now-giant Wiggles trills a noise, and Koumyou corrects, "My cat."

Poor Hunk just stares uncertainly, not out of dislike just, you know... He doesn't know what's going on. His dark eyes dart too and fro, and then he glances at the big cat 'sidelong'.

"...Is this a normal thing that happens a lot?" Should he expect things to change shape randomly?

But then he just makes a little 'easy, kitty' motion. "Sorry, you just surprised me. It's been a pretty startling day... few hours? How long has it even been since I got here?" At least this time the train uses mostly human-type time measurements so the adjustments aren't too bad. Tick and phoeb were both rough to adjust to.

"It can happen," Koumyou shrugs one shoulder, reaching into a sleeve for a cigarette. "She's a shapeshifter."

As for the day being startling, Koumyou just nods as he lights up his cancer stick.

"I imagine it would be, yes. When I first arrived, I thought this was just some sort of reincarnation limbo, so I didn't take anything particularly seriously."

Hunk's not terribly fond of smoking but also not passionately against it, in that fairly average way of his, so he just blinks up at Koumyou lighting up and just figures the train must have a pretty good filtration system or something if there's no policy against it. Good to know.

"Reincarnation limbo is a lot grander than I would have come up with. I thought I was dreaming for like, two minutes."

Because he could have been, but it was also just as likely he'd end up teleported to a magic location. But, even if the 'cat' is giant now, he absently reaches to rub her cheek.

Oh, Hunk. That's perilously close to philosophy... with a life-long Buddhist monk in the conversation. Koumyou takes a long draw of his cigarette, contemplating him as he does, and then blows the smoke politely away from him.

"How do you know you're not?"

Wiggles is fine with this development. There's a lot more of her to pet, now.

"I don't... not really. But I've been on different planes of existence before, and generally if I need to feed myself or sleep or if I'm gonna bleed or feel pain? Maybe I should try to take care of himself."

But it does work in a way to make himself wonder if he should be trying to wake up.

"My expertise is engineering and cooking." Both very reality based. He doesn't have much esoteric religious knowledge.

"A good answer," Koumyou says cheerfully, and then, just as cheerfully, "my expertise is being a priest and killing. And I'm really only good at one of them."

He gestures at the train as a whole, with his cigarette. "And really, only one of them is useful now. On missions, that is."

Where, you know, he prays for his enemies like a good, pious holy man.

Woops. Okay, smoking murder priest? "....Uhhhh...." He pauses for a bit, wondering how to follow that up. 'Cause... like...

"I'm going to assume the killing is the part good for a mission but... why is being a priest not useful for one, too? I guess that depends on what kind of priest though..."

But even then, shouldn't a priest be useful for... he doesn't know. Most religion seems to be about helping people find a personal peace of mind. Hunk's not very religious but people from scared situations need peace of mind.

He looks to Wiggles and uses both his hands to scrub her massive cheeks.

"There hasn't been much need for me to be all priest-y, which is probably a good thing since I'm bad at it."

He's really not, but that's what he believes. "So, my fiance has an exo back on his world that's used for search and rescue. What do you do with your big robot cat?"

"I fought evil alien tyrants and their invading forces." He says it very casually, even if the expression on his face says yeah, he knows it's kind of unbelievable.

"You don't seem that bad at it. I mean, part of the reason I get sick is when I'm stressed out my motion sickness? So much worse. But you came by and let me pet your cat and talked to me about other stuff, so I don't feel that sick anymore. That's what Priests do, ease minds, right?"

He really doesn't seem all that bad at it.

"Oh! A lot of our missions are like that! You'll be a total pro!"

Just casually stepping riiiight on past the strange praise of his priesting.

"That's the kind of stuff we do, different worlds in different dimensions have something go horribly wrong, and we go try to fix it. Sometimes it involves a lot of invading forces."

Which is where the killing comes in handy.

"I'll probably still focus on fixing things where I can. Fighting is stressful."

Which is... the real heart of the matter. He likes to preserve life where he can but he doesn't really have a big moral struggle against killing if the person needs to be taken down.

"There's that too, right? People said there was some of that. Even if I have to go with another team to do it..."

"Orange," Koumyou nods, after letting out another lungful of smoke off away from Hunk, "but thankfully we're not locked in with our team colors."

Which he seems to know, but you know, confirming. Guy just got here, after all.

"Sometimes you're not even locked in during the mission. I think I managed to help all four teams on my first one, roaming around doing whatever I ran into. That type of mission is nice."

"See, being able to pick and choose isn't so bad. I kind of like a little of what each team does. ...Well, maybe Red sounds more like it's Kieth's thing but the other three come with their own bonuses."

He's not all that into fighting, but as a purple maybe he could be there to save some lives.

"I'm like that too," the priest says cheerfully, "except orange is the one I'm not good for. Unless it's guarding people who are doing the sciency or repair-y stuff, I've done that before."

Not a lot of scienc-y or repair-y stuff in his background. The Seiten can restore an inanimate thing, but only when he understands what it's fixing. He's its limiter, which is the whole reason the sutras were given to the mortals to begin with.

"You really should meet my fiance, Devero. You're both pilots and he also likes working with ah, hardware? He fixes things and tinkers sometimes! We even have a spot in the lab car that's good for that stuff!"

Edited 2022-03-14 11:13 (UTC)

"I got to see the lab earlier! My friend would have loved it... I really miss her right now. She would have had a great time with all the robots. I mean, I would too, but she was good with AI. I'm more a hardware guy."

He assumes like this Devero person. Maybe he will meet him eventually. He kind of wants to meet a lot of these people. They seem like they're at least interesting to know.

Koumyou doesn't realize they're from the same world, but Hunk's description makes him think of one particular passenger of the past anyway.

"We had someone like that for a little while. Her hair was super cool!"

"So you know one of those people too, huh? Pidge was the youngest one of us though. I mean, she was my best friend while we were out there, but she was never that worried about making friends. As long as she found her family. She was good people, though."

And if he was sick, it's forgotten. If the cat was scary earlier, it's been forgotten too. A wave of nostalgia washed that all away.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A New Platform [Intro Post March]

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