We're all in this train-gether 🚂

[adregem]

Who: OTA. If you’re a passenger with a ticket on this train, then you are most welcome here!
Where: Upper Music Car
When: Imagination 18, at around brunch.
What: Welcome to the train’s first ever community open forum. Come for the food, stay for the best discussions ever.
Warnings: Lots of top-levels for easy access to relevant topics to your characters, but apart from that, nothing right now! (Not a warning but a heads-up that one TL will be dedicated to the dissemination and discussion of the bonus trek during the last mission. For your OOC reference, please see here.)



Someway through the 18th of Imagination, an announcement for the already spoken for meeting is shared by the ICPs, giving people twenty minutes to come to the upper Music Carriage for the gathering. While the chairs mostly face the stage, they’ve been curved to allow people to face their fellow passengers too, so not to put the sole focus in one place.

This is a meeting for all, and everyone will have their chance to speak and be heard.

The promised snack table sits to one side of the room, and on the stage, the white board from the standard coach has been brought in, written on it bullet points for the planned topics. To assist in the flow of discussion, familiar moderators stand in place to help jot things down, carry conversation further should one idea end while another is ready to begin, among other such administrative tasks to organize the forum. Plus, the ICP’s are in constant use all throughout the meeting, with basic announcements about what’s being discussed now, and how more people are still welcome to catch up to the Music Car if they hear something that interests them.

Grab a plate, settle down, and let’s get to work.

(OOC: Specific top-levels will be set-up for ease of tagging. Select ‘Show Top-Level Comments Only’ if you would like to skip ahead! And as much as possible kindly keep to a single thread in that TL, unless a very special or private point has to be made with regards to the subject! :) Of course if you will be tagging the snacks table, the extra suggestions, or the meta-thread, this does not apply any longer.

Also, very important: Please see here for an example format of how documentation of missions can go! It is most relevant during the discussion on information gathering.)

Comments

[zechs_isonfire]

Likewise.

It is good that we are better focusing on our survival and to be less ... chaotic and haphazard during the missions.

But I doubt everyone here views this as an indefinite posting. We have to devote some resources to discovering how people can choose to leave or stay of their own free will.

[unfavorableinstigation]

We need to learn a lot more how tethering works, if we want to manage that.

[And - at least to Nita - ideally solve whatever's erasing entire worlds, since That Could Be A Problem For Everyone.]

We'd also need, at the least, a map of how this void works in relation to our worlds. Maybe even another voidcraft entirely, or at least access to one.

[Which the Voidtrecker Express has seemingly gone out of its way to avoid, if its reaction on the one world they'd visited that had a ministry outpost was any indication...

Not that many people had had energy to pick up on it, after that exhausting mission, but in retrospect it's one of the things that stuck out to her.]

I mean, bare minimum, we'd need to get the train to open up more about its situation if we want to resolve this whole thing faster anyway - but it pays to have backup plans, too.

[blitzcheer]

That tethering, [ Tidus will speak up, his energy oddly sombre (for him), ] it's what keeps us connected to the train. It's what people need to do, to void travel.

So, if we're gonna get out of this, it's either - going through the train, [ he says after a beat, head tipping towards Nita in acknowledgement, ] or figuring out what we can do. Or learn. We can't go anywhere if we're tethered to the train.

...so, [ to not just reiterate that solely, ] I guess the ways of figuring something out is... books, different tech? Finding out more about void rides and that.

[ He looks around. ]

Anyone else got any ideas?

[so_dark_a_road]

I myself have no plans to go home. I'd rather continue to travel the multiverse, and for the time being, that means remaining on the Voidtrecker Express. But I know very well that's not how everyone feels, and as for those who wish to return to their home worlds, I want them to have the opportunity to do so.

I agree with Nita and Tidus, we need to know more about how tethering works. And we also need to know more about the Void and it's relation to the universes it separates, and also how Void transports enter and leave the Void, and how they connect to the worlds they visit and collect passengers from. The Ministry of Void Travel is another subject we must know more about. And what about the rogue ships? We are one, and that has various advantages and disadvantages. We avoid being subject to Ministry interference, and having met the Void Inspectors, I, for one, can only be pleased with that. But if we are apprehended by the Ministry, we don't know what kinds of penalties we might pay for being the crew of a rogue ship.

I want to know more about the history of the Voidtrecker Express and how it came to be a rogue ship. And anything we can find out about those shadow-beings that ate the train's original world and one of our mission worlds. And I want to know exactly what the Inspectors meant when they called us anomalies. Captain Halo said some very interesting things before she died, things that suggest that maybe Void transports can jump between alternative realities and maybe even between parts of the time line. Maybe we're anomalies because the Voidtrecker is not in it's original reality, but in an alternate one, or is out of its own time. These are things I'd love to know. The train may or may not be willing to ever discuss these topics with us. It certainly has been reticent in the past. If it won't talk to us, and even if it will, we might have to go to work to figure out the answers to some of these questions ourselves. Maybe a combination of science work and detective work?

[reluctantjinrou]

I don't particularly care about your circumstances that make you want to remain here, I went through a lot of trouble to be dead and this train ride is a major inconvenience to me.

You try exploding yourself to find it didn't take and now you're stuck on a train against your will.

That aside, we have no agency at all. Does that not bother you?

[so_dark_a_road]

Then you are one of the people who needs to have a choice about remaining here or going elsewhere. I completely support your right to make that choice.

Lack of agency does bother me. It bothered me in my own world and in the other worlds I lived in after my own demise. And it bothers me here on the Voidtrecker Express, though I have to say that these are better circumstances than some I have experienced. But yes, as I said, lack of agency bothers me. That's why I want to have more choices and I want others to have them as well.

[firewalled]

Then that's great, but we need some sort of idea on how to actually get that agency.

[Rich leans in, clearly focused on this topic.]

The minute I got here, everyone started telling me that it was impossible for me to get home. That I couldn't get off the train and I shouldn't bother trying. That seems way unfair to me. I was just trying to get my shit in order back home, and it's not fair to just expect me to put that on hold. I don't really care about these missions or whatever, I care about focusing on getting out of here.

[adregem]

[ Curufin is here too, so he knows there's someone else to talk about what they found out that day. But all this talk about agency and choice and decisions - and he wishes he had all of his too - it's starting to dull the conversation somewhere else. Somewhere chaotic, that no one would be able to pull back. So he raises a hand before crossing it back against his chest, rising to stand. ]

Everyone, please. Let's keep to the discussion on going home. [ He withholds a sigh, but acknowledges a new face he hasn't seen before - Rich - with a careful nod. ] I'm sorry about that. Allow me to reassure you that nothing is impossible if we all work together. No one has the right to tell you to stop trying to find a way to leave, and I implore that you continue to lend us your aid wherever and however you can.

[ But back to the topic, and something that has to be said. ]

But unfortunately, because we are tethered to this voidcraft's existence, complying with its base request of saving worlds on missions is tantamount to finding a way back to our own homes. We don't know what this train can do to all of us if we stop playing its game or giving it what it wants. And it's not just one life on the line. It's everyone's. Including yours. [ His brows furrow, surveying the room seriously, sternly. ] I'm not happy about it either, trust me. But it's integral that we're united on this until we find more answers. Since the last mission, I've placed orders on books for the void ministry, void travel, multiverses, alternate realities, and voidcrafts. I'm not sure what I'll receive, but if you have points to spare, please consider investing in such resources for us to study as a community.

[ He looks about, before sitting down. ] Apart from that, what else can we explore? Does anyone have any idea on what to touch on for interdimensional travel?

[ And the floor is back on. ]

[so_dark_a_road]

[ Curufin nods. ]

Back to the topic of going home.

I'm inclined to agree with Roland that things that seem impossible to achieve are achievable if we all work together. A part of working together is listening to one another and trying to understand others' points of view, even if we don't agree. And another part is using our intelligence and ingenuity and never giving up.

We really don't know what the train is thinking or intending. It may not tolerate a refusal to go along with its goals, but then, as I said, we really don't know. But meantime, I think we do need to continue the missions at the same time as we continue other efforts. We must get more information, whether it is from books or from our mission experiences or from the train itself. By the way, Roland, I'll spend some points on the kinds of books you mention.

And as for interdimensional travel, I'm still thinking about what Captain Halo said, and putting that together with other evidence. I'd really like to ask my questions to the train. I haven't given up on that idea.

[blitzcheer]

[ Tidus rubs the back of his head. All this talk of ideas... ]

We're really gonna need some kind of tech, aren't we? If we can make something with magic or...wires. [ Okay, he knows that sounds dumb the second it comes out of his mouth, and he's waving a hand, hurrying: ] Whatever makes it run! I mean, the big thing is, we need some other kind of ride to tether to. None of us are getting back home unless we void travel. Right?

Unless we find a way to take over this train. [ Said with a shrug, hands lifting. He doesn't know. Can they? ]