roll call

[boldboimler]

[The man that's on screen doesn't look as uncomfortable as he could be. After all, the showers in the Cerritos are communal. But he sure is feeling vulnerable chilling here in only a sheet, in an area where only a short time ago there were monsters.]

[Every so often he arches his back slightly in discomfort at the itching, crawling sensation there. (This is worse than the Borg parts. Worse than even the implants on his face.)]

Okay, we should probably do a role call? Who's still here? What's your name?

Also, what skills do you have that could be useful here? We need to figure out what we need to survive. Delegate tasks. The supplies around here definitely seem to be thin on the ground. They're not going to last forever.

We should also probably share intel about anything useful we find as we look around. Or anything the AI shares with us.

Comments

[cadiastands]

[Having tentatively decided she can keep talking to 8 (at least for the moment) by virtue of his being from Terra, Mira softens, her expression shifting to tolerant amusement. There are trillions and trillions of people. Not everyone can live on the homeworld, kid.]

Yes, another planet. Far from Terra, I'm afraid, at the gate to the Eye of Terror. After Terra herself, we're the most heavily garrisoned place in the galaxy. I think we'd be indistinguishable from many other Civilised Worlds in the Imperium, if not for that.

[Mira has enough perspective to realize that ecologically speaking, Cadia's nice enough, but unremarkable. It just has the misfortune of the metaphorical next town over being non-metaphorical Hell.]

[memcake]

What's the Eye of Terror?

[It sounds...a few degrees removed from the Seven Rings. He's never been sure he believes in any kind of end-of-the-world prophecy, but...he's also seen pictures of those weird lights during the Big Runs in the Splatlands and it's hard to discount anything considering their current situation.]

[cadiastands]

It's...

[You really shoulda seen this coming, Mira.

She purses her lips, considering how to explain the Eye. They're far beyond any sort of secrecy at this point, official policy be damned, but she's not certain how you convey the horrors of the Warp to someone who, she's pretty sure, predates the Age of Strife.]

It's a tear in the fabric of reality. Beyond it lies the Warp...the realm of Chaos. Time and space cease to have any real meaning, and any horror you can imagine makes its home there.

[Quite literally, given that the Warp reflects the contents of living beings' minds, not that Mira really understands that part.]

After the Emperor and His [yeah you can hear the capital letter] loyal sons broke the back of the rebel Legions at Terra, the surviving traitors fled through the Eye, where their Dark Gods could protect them from the Emperor's justice.

[Emperor good, Chaos bad, apparently.]

A hundred centuries later, they're still there. They're constantly launching nuisance raids [what a Cadian considers a "nuisance raid" would be considered more of a "crime against humanity" in a sane society], and perhaps once a millennium or so, they manage to get past their squabbling to attack en masse and be defeated like they were before.

[This summary might contain some bias?]

[memcake]

Wow...and I thought Salmonid migrations were bad this year.

[That summary contains...a lot of things. A whole shell of a lot of things that Eight isn't even sure he understands completely.]

Wait, how can they live in a place without time or space...?

[It's OK if she can't answer, it was kind of a placeholder question for him to work through everything he heard.]

[cadiastands]

It's not that time and space don't exist, not exactly. It's that they become...inconstant? Malleable?

[Mira doesn't truly get it either, but growing up next door to Hell, you're forced to hear their shitty music when they throw a loud party, as it were, so she has more experience with the insanity involved than most people.]

It will drive a mortal mad. Even looking at the Eye is a bad idea.

[You know, like staring into the sun, if the sun told you to kill your parents as a sacrifice to the gods of Chaos.]