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Who: Everyone!
What: December's welcome log.
When: Dec 1st-7th
Where: The Merchant Dome/The Pools
Warnings:
Notes: This is your December welcome log. Come in, go nuts.

It’s the most wonderful (welcome) time of the year.

The Council knows that being a newb and not knowing anyone (especially when one might be living in close quarters to them in the very near future) can be a real pain in the ass. So, every month they throw a welcome party, the theme and location tend to vary. The theme for December is Holiday Cheer and this month’s party takes place in the Merchant dome. But it’s not the everyday appearance of the merchant dome. No, for the next five days the Merchant dome’s appearance has been altered to look like a sort of Bavarian Christmas Market. There are small clusters of tables every so often, so people can just sit and chat and eat and drunk.

Some enterprising person has even managed to make it snow through some unknown means. It’s not cold, but the snow is soft and steady and slowly building up.

The entire dome, all of the streets and all of the merchant stalls are practically glowing with white fairy lights that are strung everywhere. Vendors in their stalls gleefully cry out to paterons passing by, offering them free food or drinks. The food consists of the sort of things that one might expect to find in a place like this: sausages on buns and on sticks, pretzels, pizza, loads of cookies of every variety that one could think of, including elaborately decorated gingerbread, chocolates, fruits, french fries. Think winter fair food, and be as absurd and as complicated and extra as you want. It is a fair, after all. Go nuts. Drinks are also along the same line: hot cider, mulled wine, hot buttered rum, hot chocolate both with booze and without, as well as all the normal things: water, coffee, tea, milk, soda, and a variety of fruit juices that you’ve both heard of and not.

But food isn’t the only free thing that people are giving away! They’re also offering characters hats and gloves and scarves, small toys, books, delicate ornaments, perfumes, wine… it’s a giant welcome party after all, and these people are cheerful and happy. Even offering to pay just gets met with laughter and being told not to worry about it.

There are even some carnival rides set up! A medium sized ferris wheel, a carousel, a giant slide and ice skating ring are all along the outside of the stalls.

At the far end of the dome, the snow has fallen deeper and held to several inches. Wouldn’t you know it just happens to be perfect snowball snow! So, there of course needs to be a snowball fight! What did you think those free mittens and gloves and scarves are for after all? The snowball fight can be organized into teams, or one on one depending on the player’s choice. This is a friendly fight, of course, so no rocks or slush balls or anything. Well, probably not. No one in the Sphere is your mother.

However, the meeting isn’t just about socializing! the opposite end from the snowball fight, there are smaller tables set up with people sitting behind them. In front of the tables are homemade brightly colored signs that advertise things like jobs and clubs. The people and interests here in The Sphere are hugely varied and people are just so earnest to tell newcomers about them. They’re earnest to the point where they may just actually reach out and grab a person in order to force them to stop and to listen to whatever spiel they happen to be working on. Booths that are in attendance for jobs include: Agriculture: “help grow the food that feeds us all! Farming is life!”, The library: “No skill needed! We’ll teach you what you need to know!” The school system: “Teachers wanted! Education is the right of everyone!” Maintenance: “Help keep the domes clean!” As well as various restaurant booths looking for help for both servers and chefs.

For the hobbies involved they are even more varied. Book club: “we live in a multiverse, let’s read the books from it! With wine!” Garden club: “we want to grow stuff on our terms!” Sprinkled among are various skill learning clubs, among them: woodworking club, smithing, robotics, technology, first aid. It seems that despite the fact that no one is required to work in the City, people are still offering skills as needed.

If discrete enough inquiries are made, a passcode to the Black Market hidden behind some of the stalls is offered. The entrance is hidden enough that someone needs to be looking for it, and there is a rather large bouncer guarding the door and asking for the proper passcode. The passcode of the day happens to be gumdrops.

Inside the black market is large, but much more dimly lit than the regular market dome that the welcome party was held inside of. There are various pockets of people clustered under bright neon lights. The lights, someone confides to you, are code for what they’re offering. And nearly everything is on offer if a person has the ability to make a trade. Things from home, character skills and even favors tend to be the currency here, but watch out: the hawkers within are shrewd and sharp. If they make a deal with someone, it’s nearly always going to favor them. Eventually.

There’s also a large and loud party happening inside. Think of a rave with a large amount of people who happened to be a bit out of their minds. Drugs aren’t given freely here, they’re too valuable, but should someone want to figure out what they’re rolling on, eventually someone will ask or offer. The drug that they are currently using is called ‘self’ and it’s something that affects your character in an intensely personal way. For some, it’s an experience like your favorite cocktail mixed with a vicodin, and for others it’s just like being drunk. For still more people, it’s like ecstasy without the side effects.

The drug has no physically addicting properties.

But seriously though who cares about Christmas?

While the welcome party rages on in the merchant dome, people have made a smaller party in one of the recreation domes. Around the pools, as a matter of fact. There’s almost like a small barbecue clustered around the largest of the three pools, and the light is constant and sunny here. The large pool is olympic sized, and is a sparkling blue. It’s fresh water, and probably clean enough to drink. I still wouldn’t drink it. The second pool is slightly smaller and more kidney shaped with a gradual sand mound at one end of it. This pool is salt water and looks a bit more like a beach than a pool. The third pool is a kiddie pool, complete with a splash pad, that’s running. Buckets drop, it’s got one of those mushroom things, and sprinkler jets. There aren’t any kids though, so people are welcome to go nuts.

Bathing suits and towels are provided in the changing rooms. There’s frozen and fruity drinks flowing freely, along with finger food and snacks. Loud music is playing from a local band that’s just generally of a pop sort. There’s people dancing rather in a rather haphazard fashion, but the dance floor is there and present!

Wildcard
Go nuts, choose your own adventure!

Inspiration images

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Frowning, Alex doesn't say anything for a moment, but her nose is drawn up a bit in annoyance. "Of course I've been on a ferris wheel before. Back you know home and not at the bottom of the Mariana Trench and going close to the top of a giant glass dome that feels really, really fragile when you think about it being close enough to touch the machinery of the ride." Alex gestures upwards, where the top of the metal framework really doesn't seem like it's all that far from the top of the dome.

That said, a school of bioluminescent fish darts close to the dome, perhaps drawn by the lights below it. "It's beautiful though, even if it's more than a little terrifying."

"It's really no different from when I lived on a space station. Some of the walls were just giant windows. We had an orbit of corpses because the CEO was...eh, how do I put this politely? Psychotic?" He chuckles a little nervously. Maybe morbid humor would help her relax a little?

He does have to agree, though. The luminescent creatures he's seen frequently swimming by the domes are pretty.

"As far down as we are, if the glass really was fragile, it'd be cracking, or...Well, it wouldn't have even survived construction," he offers with a shrug. "You're safe~"

Okay, there's a fair amount to parse there, and even Alex isn't entirely certain where to start from. Well, at least she's not freaking out about the ferris wheel any longer. But her eyes are wide when she picks a place to begin. "Wait, you're from a space station? Like are you from there in your world or did you end up in another place like this before here?" But of course she couldn't let the part about the corpses pass.

"Seriously? Jesus." Okay, her brow is arched up towards her hairline, and then she remembers that this is the first time that she's met this man. "Sorry. Reporter, it's kinda a reflex to ask questions about weird things like that." Because honestly weird things had been happening for the last three years, and showed no signs of stopping if being in the dome was any indication.

That...is a lot of questions. Then again, Rhys is used to people shooting first and asking questions never. This place is certainly nicer than Pandora.

"Well, I worked for a company whose base was a space station. It orbited Pandora, a planet on the border of our galaxy. And, yeah, seriously. If Handsome Jack got angry, people got vented through the airlock. I..." he trails off awkwardly, not wanting to spill his entire life's story to this woman so suddenly. "Let's just say I happened upon a much better opportunity. I got to relocate to Pandora's surface and now I'm the CEO of my own company." He shrugs, as if it's a normal chain of events.

"You said you were a reporter? Is that why you're down here?"

Alex is quite good at getting people to tell her things that they don't particularly want to. Other than empathy, it's probably Alex Reagan's superpower. So she's not at all surprised by the fact that he does it, only at what it is that he's actually telling her. "God, that's terrible." Because it was. Alex has dealt with some sketchy things over the past several years, but at least no one was being launched out of an airlock to orbit around the space station where she lived. At least not yet anyway! Hopefully something like that was well beyond Warren's grasp.

The question surprises her, that much is certain, and Alex just frowns for a moment while she considers her response. "No, I don't think so. There's some other people here from home who are definitely not reporters and they're here too."

"It was. But he's dead. Killed by vault hunters." He shrugs again. It had been a big deal to him back then, because he'd lost his hero. Now that he knows...something of the real man, he's not too upset by it.

Never meet your heroes.

Her answer to his question is a shock. "There are others from your home?" That could mean Vaughn might be here. Or the girls. Even August would be a welcome face in this strange place. "How'd you find them? Were you transported together?"

Once upon a time, Alex might have been a little horrified with herself to think that she was glad that someone was dead but the last three years had changed that and she knew the value that could be in the death of someone who was doing that much damage to a place. The man in question wasn’t as bad as Thomas Warren but he still seemed pretty terrible nonetheless. So it was a good thing that the man was dead. Not that she’d ever say so, but it was etched into her face when he said that; Alex was expressive and she couldn’t hide it.

However that moved to confusion for a moment, but she understood why he asked. After all if she was here she would want to know how to find out if Richard was if no one else. Her voice is soft and she just gives him a compassionate smile. “With my partner, he was there when I woke up. With my friend I just happened to find him in the merchant dome eating things honestly. Have you tried talking to one of the councilors? Annie’s nice, I spoke to her. She seems to know a lot.” And she was nicer than Max for certain.

He's grateful that she doesn't keep asking about Jack. He probably shouldn't have brought that up. What's done is done, though. Jack and the AI were gone and he'd swore to Vaughn he wouldn't try to revive either one. Besides, Rhys was on a much better career path now. Maybe even a better life path.

"Lucky you, huh~? So, is he, like, your work partner?" Not that Rhys is interested. The line seems to be moving slowly and he's still pretty awkward in the presence of cute girls. He runs his cybernetic hand through his hair. "I honestly thought if my best bro was here, he would've tried contacting me. Of course, I've got no EchoNet signal here, so...that seems pretty dumb. Guess I'll go find a councilor after this. Or maybe in the morning? I dunno, I'm having fun with this welcome party."

The thing with Alex is that while she' not asking questions at the moment it definitely doesn't mean that they're not going to end up coming eventually. They nearly always did because with Alex, asking questions was sometimes even easier for her than breathing and she rarely forgot one even when she attempted to play it off that she did. But for now, because she doesn't know him that well, she's letting it go. Call it growth or whatever, but she's not digging for his secrets yet.

Or maybe because he distracts her, and the mention of her being lucky makes a smile bloom across her face that she honestly can't help even if she wanted to. "It may have started out like that, with him being my work partner," only there was no maybe about it, Strand had been before and of course so much more than that even before the two of them had gone and made things official between them. "But no, he's my boyfriend now." She laughed softly before she added, "of course he'd hate that title but it's what he is."

And while Alex was ignoring questions about the man who had killed all those people, there were some that she just couldn't keep inside, so she found herself asking: "EchoNet? Is that what they call the internet where you're from?"

Talking about something so mundane as the girl's relationship really puts Rhys at ease. Despite the welcoming atmosphere, he is in a foreign place, and with his recent track record, he can't help being on edge.

"Well, whatever label you put on it, what matters is that you're on the same page," he says. "Being stuck in the awkward limbo of not knowing sucks." He clears his throat before addressing her next questions.

"I guess, yeah. EchoNet stretches across the whole galaxy. So, even though Pandora is way out on the fringe, I could still contact my parents in the inner systems." He holds his robotic hand palm-up and a hologram flickers to life. There's a vaguely militaristic compound surrounded by desert, with a cracked moon hanging in the sky behind it, despite it being daytime in the picture. "This is where I'm from. Er...Well, where I've been living recently. This is Pandora."

"Oh god," she sighed softly, but it was a long one of agreement. "You have no idea." Three months of the two of them not being in a relationship while also having a whole lot of the parts of a relationship had been a lot for Alex and she was sure that it was a lot for Richard too. After all, she was sleeping on his couch nearly every night, and he was making coffee for her nearly every morning, and yet they definitely weren't together then. It was awkward.

But Rhys did something that was entirely going to capture Alex's attention in a big way, and she was no longer sparing her boyfriend a second thought. Instead, her gaze fixated on the hologram for a long moment before she extended her hand as if she was going to touch it and only caught herself and stopped doing it at the last moment. There was an apologetic smile as she drew her hand back from touching him, and she gave a quick "sorry. We don't have things like that at all were I come from. Well, definitely not so advanced and something that you can see without a really expensive headset."

Rhys chuckles, preening at the attention. "I built this myself. So really, no one has anything like it. But back at my old job, I scored a bonus for setting up a sweet mining deal, so I used it to get a prototype arm and eye~" He loves showing off. Of course, he isn't going to go into why he had to build this one himself. She can just assume it was a pet project.

Rather than pull up more pictures, though, he shuts the hologram off and keeps his arm held out. "You can check it out if you want."

"Wow. That's really impressive." Alex isn't blowing smoke, not in the slightest, she's being incredibly sincere and that's all there on her face as she watches him holding his hand out. Her fingers brushed along the arm delicately, just brushing against how it looks simply. "Did you take a class in it, or do you have a natural proclivity for it?" She considered for a second, before she added, "because honestly, it's really cool. Do you think that it would work with how the domes work? Like could you get inside of it?"

"I've been coding since junior high. Majored in computer sciences with a minor in business for university. As for robotics, that's just something I picked up at Hyperion. I wanted to learn about what I'd just bought, see, so I talked to the team that built my first arm and eye," he explains. "If it's gonna be permanently attached to me, I should at least know how to take care of minor repairs, right?"

Before answering that last part, Rhys stops and sighs. "I...I've been trying to find an in with the system. If I can find that, I'm sure my hardware will work with the domes. It's pretty advanced, though. I'm thinking maybe if I talk to someone on the council, they'll help me out."

"That's really smart of you, honestly. I probably wouldn't have thought about doing it. I mean it took me breaking my glasses like three times before I remembered to buy a glass repair kit in case it happened when I was in the middle of nowhere." Alex approves of people being prepared, if only because someone needed to be and she definitely tended not to be that person. So, if he could fix himself, that definitely gave him more bonus points in her book.

"What would an in in the system look like?" She asked the words softly, because they were for him and just him. "I've been investigating a little, and if I spot something, maybe I could let you know? But I've not seen anything that seems to like scream 'control panel' or whatever." And she had been looking, even if she didn't have the ability to get into such things herself.

He can't help chuckling a bit at her little anecdote. It's kind of cute. He doesn't comment on it, though. Instead, he moves on to her other questions. Any help he can get will be appreciated.

"I...I'm not sure. It would be a weakness in the coding, most likely. An override I could exploit, or a breach in their security. I could use that as something of a back door." He shrugs. "Having a manual would be better, though. Or talking to someone in the Sphere's IT department. Do you think they have one? They have to have one, right? Somebody has to be in charge of the tech here."

Alex just frowned for a moment before she pulled out a small moleskin notebook that’s nearly full, and she flips towards the end of it, tucking the pen that had bee hooked to the elastic ribbon that closed it and putting it into her hair.

“I haven’t really spoken to anyone who claims to be in tech support or that seems to like... be in the know about it either. And the books in the library that seem to be from whenever the city is? They don’t seem to translate in the same way that everything else does.”

"Yeah, this city doesn't really seem to operate on any society any of us know of. It's...almost like we've been pulled into some alien research bubble." It sounds ridiculous when he says it out loud, but his opinion is out there now.

Alex doesn’t judge him for his opinion, instead she just inclined her head and gave him a bit of a smile for it. “I know. This place definitely has ‘we’re in a movie’ written all over it, doesn’t it?” After a minute, she just looks around and then gestures upwards. "This, all of it, it just kinda makes me feel like I'm stuck somewhere and I don't know my lines, you know?"

He nods along. "It definitely feels that way. Why didn't we get scripts?" he says with a little nervous laugh. At least the line finally seems to be moving. Maybe they'll get the same car. He's still having fun. "You think they'll ever tell us more?"

Alex looked around for a moment, and hung back a little, in order to make certain that the two of them did get into the same car. Clearly her response was one that required a little bit of privacy, even if it was only in her mind. Giving the attendant a smile, Alex just closed the door to the cart after he got in, so that it would just be the two of them for the rotations that the wheel made. Once the cart started to swing, and the forward momentum of the wheel carried them off the platform, Alex leaned forward and answered the question honestly. "I don't know if they will tell us more or not, but I'm not waiting around for them to decide to share that information. I'm already looking into things."

The way Alex ensures they're alone is so conspiratorial, Rhys gets a little chill down his spine. It almost feels like he's back at Hyperion, plotting with his friends to screw someone else over. He doesn't know who he can trust, but Alex seems like a safe bet.

"They probably won't. What are you looking into and how can I help?"

"Honestly?" Alex sighs, softly, and she just looks around and up towards the top of the dome as if she would find some sort of answers there. Of course they're weren't any, just like in all of the other places that she'd looked for them while she's been here. It's... frustrating and maddening and yet is also a familiar place for her to be in. So, at least there's that.

However she does know how she sounds, so she's bracing more than a little bit for the reaction as soon as the words come out. "I don't know. But every instinct that I have is telling me that there's something wrong going on here. It's just too... I don't know. Stepford maybe?"

"I, uh...What's a Stepford? I'm guessing it's something that seems a little too perfect. Am I right?"

Because that's what he feels like he's seeing. Everyone seems so welcoming, so nice, so perfect. This little celebration alone seems too good to be true.

"We can both do a little sleuthing, maybe someone will slip up and say a little too much, or we'll find a secret meeting place."

"Yeah, that's exactly what it is. It's a movie and a book where powerful men are controlling their wives into this really impractical and outdated idea of like femininity and obedience and stuff."

Alex just nods for a moment before she adds, "I'm actually pretty good at getting people to slip up actually."