No Place Like Home: The Return

[voidtreckermods]

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NO PLACE LIKE HOME: THE RETURN

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a silence broken...

It's been a very difficult few days. Rocking and rolling into the void and out again. Watching their friends out of the window as they wander from world to world. Meanwhile those lost on worlds continue to wander unable to return to the train at all.

"All attempts at returning those who left have failed. This voidcraft cannot do it alone. It is lucky that unlike those that have left before them, I can still sense them.

But I cannot bring them back alone. This is perhaps too advanced for Voidtreckers, but you have done the improbable before. You say you wish to help. This is how you help."

Their SCA's light up with a message. Or rather, a series of instructions:

In the unlikely event a tether gets stranded on a liminal space platform or between their own world and the platform space, you should, in the first instance, contact the Void technicians who monitor their non-travelling self. However, in the case they cannot be reached or there is a mass displacement of tether, an anchoring procedure can be carried out.

Ideally, this will involve two fully tethered individuals to retrieve the lost tether. One should be a stationary anchor. They should be outside of their void craft, if possible, and in physical contact with it. The second should be a roaming anchor reaching to draw the tethers back. In situations of mass tether displacement the stationary anchor can hold mutiple roaming anchors but it is recommended to not exceed five. In this situation, it is recommended that anchors rotate between stationary and roaming.

To start an anchoring of this kind, those anchoring should activate their anchoring program. Those staying station should reach out to the tethers of those they plan to steady. This might cause some emotional upheaval, and they will need to stay steady, especially if connecting to more than one roaming tether. Roaming anchors then must hold the person they search for in their thoughts and move towards them. It is recommended that the lost tethers activate their emergency beacon to facilitate being found and returning but this is not a necessity.

Once the roaming anchor has found the lost tethers they must keep hold of them and guide them back towards their craft, the stationary tethers must draw them back, pulling them through.

There is an additional note at the end, in different font.

It is as Anan told you. Your minds should visualise it. Be strong Voidtreckers.

... a short-lived dream

The doors open and anyone who wishes to try this can leave onto the platform. It is empty, devoid of the figures they had seen before; and, beyond the fog, devoid of anything. But searching requires their SCAs, not a path, and as people get into teams, they can activate their anchors and begin.

For those who will roam, their minds become filled, visualising light, void, voices and chaos; their bodies feel less stable, like they might unravel if not careful. But for those who will stay, when they touch the Voidtrecker Express, they will feel more stable, grounded. The fog shifts, but the world moves around them without pulling them in.

Thinking of the person they wish to keep stable, a mental and emotional link will be established, and they will feel each other as the roaming anchor sets off to find their missing crew.

---

Outside the train...
For those that had left - either by choice or by strange happenings - they have found themselves back at their anchor point during Poi 26, regardless of where they were before. For those unfortunate enough not to have a world to return to, or those who were stuck between in the first place, they will find themselves alone, in a fog filled space where no matter how far they walk, nothing greets them.

All those in fog or back in their world receive the same message from their SCAs.

Hold fast. Press your evacuation button. Your friends come.

---

RETURNERS: FLEETING HAPPINESS

But it's likely before the message arrived, that something wrong has been noticed by those outside the void. More than the bizarre ability to travel between existences, an inability to move far from where they appear. Back at their anchor points, they may notice - in time - colours sometimes flash across the sky, streaking through clouds or making trails in a night sky. At first not much, something to be easily dismissed but it builds. People talk, wonder at what is happening.

For the colours aren't the only thing. Across worlds, in cities, kingdoms, villages, underworlds and space stations, people are dreaming. Bright colours, vivid dreams. Prophets spring from nowhere, people claim to know the future or to have seen the past. Some talk of places and worlds they could not have seen.

Perhaps at first it can be explained away, there are always such people. But more people talk, from urchin children to commanders, people dream and the colours dance.

ANCHORERS: A STEADY HAND

While the stationeries will feel grounded, they aren't blind to what's happening to their roamer. It's as if they're both linked, intimately, meshing together, and they will need to work to keep their feelings separate; hearing each other's thoughts, their feelings. Images of what the other thinks and memories shared between them.

And then there is the search for their teammates, amongst the multiple of realities. Existences move past the roamer, threatening to lose them in the mess, but they must persevere, keep their thoughts on the individual, their stationary anchor to help them. Until finally, they appear - in a world they perhaps know, don't, the kaleidoscope colours of the void faint above their heads.

Speak to each other, keep each other focused, certain, and find who you came to save.

BOTH: HOLDING ON

Searching for individuals, the anchorers will find themselves at a character's anchor point; if they haven't moved far from here or another world, it will be easy to locate them. Now is the time to convince them to come back, and then the eventual work of doing so.

It can be in agreement, or force. Taking a hold of the person, the anchorer can pull them into the mass of chaos. Just like when they helped the guests return to their worlds from the false Diagad, all parties become battered by images, voices. Voices like sirens; 'Just stay,' the voices encourage. 'Just let go and drift into the chaos. It will be easier.'

But they must be strong, move towards their anchor and towards the craft. The crossing doesn't take too long, perhaps ten minutes each way, and once they get to the craft the person they are rescuing glows gold and vanishes. The anchors will know instinctively that they are safe on the train.

And indeed, the rescued will find themselves within the luggage carriage - exhausted, but safe.

TRAIN: AN INEVITABLE RETURN

Exhaustion is something all parties will experience, once everyone is returned to the train and the adrenaline wears off. Those who anchored will be hit with a total exhaustion, leaving them unable to do much more than eat and sleep for a few days. Those rescued won't be as bad, but if they decide to join in with the efforts, they'll too face the soul-tiring experience that other anchorers are.

There's likely to be efforts, to help soothe people over this time. And as people return to their life on the train, they will see the marks of the last few days for those who stayed behind. Broken ceramics, books out of order in the library; the ICPs in the standard coach, storage, sports and games carriages broken, and some damage to furniture.

But for the scars brought on by this event, surely, they will heal - eventually.

OOC NOTES

OOC post. Ask questions here. New second part OOC post here.

First phase of the event took place during Poi 22 to 25; the second phase takes place during Poi 26 to 28 (20-25th February).

VISITING WORLDS: While during Poi 26, it will be possible to go back to wherever they were, or other spaces. However, they will have increasing difficulty doing this, and will feel themselves getting more lost if they try world hopping too much over the next 3 (void) days. It's like something is trying to pull them back, or pull them, but into nowhere.

SCAs: The SCA's comms will not be active at this time.

Comments

[weifinder]

Another squeeze of his hands around hers, and he started walking. Around them, the fog that'd been within the trees, that strangeness of dancing coloured lights weaving through, the sensations of emotions and memories, became stifling.

He held on and walked, anchored back to the train and allowing his determination to flow both directions, compartmentalising everything else away. Nell could feel along that connection, be aware of them being grounded to the train, feel whatever Wei Wuxian was letting himself feel, but it meant she was open to: that when the voices called for her not to go, when they asked why she would leave, why fight, why not let go, they were in voices she knew, familiarities of hers.

Wei Wuxian didn't have to speak, though he still did. "You leave to come back later, in the right way. Don't forget why you need to truly be home. Not like this, a spirit outside your body."

Onward he walked, trusting in that anchored sense of himself, wondering what it really meant when quite likely this was a projection of spirit, rather than his spirit, doing all this collecting of her. Just how fragile were their tethers in present circumstance?

[nell_of_soulwood]

She walked with him, feeling his determination and only getting glimpses of other emotions through the connection. Her woods called to her as she went, pulling at her, not wanting to lose her again and she could feel the tears running down her face as their pull tugged at her heart as well.

How could she leave them again? How could she go away?

She knew she had to leave, knew her presence was disrupting them and the world around them. She knew her body was lying unconscious in a hospital and could almost feel it through whatever this was.

It took everything she had to close her eyes and stumble along with Wei Wuxian, trusting him to lead her, forcing her way along even as her heart broke. But she went.

[weifinder]

Reassurance, and he mourned with her, the grief of partings, the way one is caretaker of a land, that one is to stand with a place and make it better, stronger, to purge it of a century of ills and let it live again. A mixing of Yiling, the Burial Grounds within his past, and her woods, and their love for her.

Warmth, affection, support: what he can send her way as he walked them onward, through the chaos that was the void, until the Voidtrecker Express gained a sense of visibility, a sense of destination, inevitable.

Foot on steel, or some other metal, and then they're there: the train, the two of them, and someone else, but for Nell it wasn't meant to be a lingering impression. Spirit returned to its tether midpoint, everything faded to golden light, before she would be standing in the luggage carriage, perhaps around others recently regained, perhaps alone.

Her woods, a world away, hundreds of worlds distant, would wait, even as her heart broke, even as it wept with a forest's ancient means, cast in shadow.

[nell_of_soulwood]

She clung tighter to his hand as it all pulled at her, trying to demand her attention, break her focus, keep her here. His calm and reassurance, the light of his spirit, led her as she walked blindly, afraid to open her eyes to the movement in the woods.

And then she was tripping on metal, on the platform, barely keeping her footing, sensing the train and Wei Wuxian with his edges suddenly crisp again and someone else she couldn't quite put a finger on.

A step, a breath, and suddenly she was standing in the luggage carriage - dazed and confused with a vague sense of others further down the carriage. Her legs went right out from under her and she let herself sink to the floor, crying again. She didn't know if the tears were from the loss of her Soulwood or the relief of being safe on the train and no longer damaging her world.

Either way, for now she was just going to sit with her head in her hands and give herself the time to pull herself back together a little.