applesaucedream | Encampment Under the Sea [Open to All]

Encampment Under the Sea [Open to All]

photo encampmentunderthesea_zps98ceddce.jpg

Since the dreamers of Manhattan had such a lovely time at the last vaguely-nautical-themed party, the Rift has decided to step things up a notch. Tonight, the dreamers will find themselves in what appears to be a city very much like the one they inhabit in the waking world, full of towering skyscrapers, neon signs, and heavy traffic. But there is one rather crucial difference: this city is located deep underwater, and the aforementioned traffic is mostly whales and fish, with the occasional submersible thrown into the mix.

The walls and windows are heavily reinforced to withstand the pressure of the water outside, and the people who dwell in these buildings seem to be doing rather well for themselves, for the most part. Buildings are connected by enclosed walkways, so barring any horrible accidents, the dreamers should have no problem getting around without getting too wet.

Much like the city they inhabit in the waking world, some areas are more obviously affluent than others, and the dreamers are as likely to stumble upon an upscale club as an underwater pub. But while the chances of a full structural breakdown are slim, there are definitely some areas that are on the leaky side, and a general sense of claustrophobia pervades the city wherever you might find yourself.

Explore. Or, if you're feeling particularly ambitious, attempt to escape. Either way, take care - it's hard to say what might be lurking in the darkness just beyond the city lights.

[ooc: Y'all know the drill. All characters are welcome, whether they are in the game or not. Characters can remember or forget the events of the dreaming at the player's discretion. And the party never stops - backtag into infinity!]

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"You died?" Now it's Andrew's turn to go squeaky. "Wait, wait, hold on -- was this before or after you stopped being entirely human? Because believe it or not, resurrection's not typical, present company excluded."

Sorry, Daniel, you brought it up. Andrew is never not going to be curious and nosy about it now.

Present company excluded?

Okay, so that's one thing Daniel never thought he'd have in common with anyone.

"Well the first few times nothing changed much, really," he stammers, entirely taken aback. "Other than the fact that I, uh, tended to do it a lot. Really a lot. It was only when, um, I was dying and I, I learned, er, I was taught how to Ascend. To, um. Another plane."

So much for not being forthright. But the mention of present company having some experience with death and then undeath has greatly reduced Daniel's already underused ability to think things through.

"What." Alright, so not regeneration, not eternal life through cloning. not even resuscitation, but ascension. "I've heard of people ascending, but not -- not humans. No offense. But you're -- we're -- you're not supposed to have the psychic capacity for it!"

No, that wasn't incredibly rude or anything, obviously. He's just being ~~brutally~~ honest, that's all.

"Well, I had some help," he admits, wincing a little. "Uh. Both times. Some of the Others - well, one Other, she helped me, uh...'open my mind'." No, really, that's how she put it. Several times, and usually with the help of obscure metaphors.

It's honestly a little surprising (no more so than anything else, Daniel supposes) that Andrew seems to know about it. He wasn't sure if the concept even existed in this universe.

"How do you know about Ascension?" he asks curiously, head to one side.

The way he just says that, all capital letters like it's A Thing in his universe, people just Ascend willy-nilly...it makes a shiver run up Andrew's spine. A frown tugs down the corners of his mouth; he's never actually met someone who 'ascended' and frankly never thought he'd much like to.

"It's...something my people wanted. Some of them wanted." His voice sounds oddly stilted now. "Talk about committing to your ivory tower -- but you can just come back?"

"Not exactly," Daniel replies darkly. "I didn't 'come back' so much as I was, uh, thrown out. And dropped on an alien planet. With my memories erased." And also naked, but that detail is hardly significant. "Initially I thought that by Ascending I could do more good on a higher plane."

He smirks bitterly at his feet, a self-deprecating twist to one side of his mouth.

"I was wrong." So very, very wrong on oh so many counts. "The Others weren't interested in helping lowers, or anyone else. And since I wouldn't stop interfering with the lower planes, they sort of unanimously decided I wasn't worth keeping around."

Andrew winces. "Ooh, that's never fun." Except the time the Doctor lived with those jellyfish people for a couple hundred years after forgetting who he was had actually been quite pleasant up until everything went wrong and all his friends died, so maybe sometimes it is sort of fun.

"Lower planes," he scoffs. "Doesn't that just say it all right there? That's exactly how it would have been if the Time Lords had managed it, too. How it already was, really."

"Yeah, they weren't very big on modesty." Andrew's use of the word "never" implies that something along the lines of mnemonic purging has happened to him before, which earns him yet another curious look. But that's not what seizes Daniel's attention the most.

"Time Lord," he repeats thoughtfully. "Is that you? Er, your, your race?"

Time Lords. Ancients. Who lets these aliens name themselves? Hopefully there's no relation. Though apparently there's a similarity in general attitude towards more "primitive" (Daniel always did hate the the Others' word for it) races. Thus far Andrew's been nothing but open and agreeable if a bit inquisitive, but Daniel himself is no better so he can hardly fault him for that.

"More or less," confirms Andrew in a too-casual voice that's also a bit too high on the register. The Doctor that shares his face is no longer about to make his life awkward, so like as not he can be spared revealing all the embarrassing details re: growing from a severed hand. "And you'll find that often as not with the older races -- aha! Will you look at that!"

He's looking up at what appears to be an escape hatch. There are ladder handholds in the wall and everything.

"Oh, thank god." Daniel's just a little too relieved to not be walking around in ankle-deep water in dark, ominous-looking tunnels anymore. Not that he's claustrophobic per sé, but short of a sewer-dwelling animal of some kind, who would enjoy walking around in ankle-deep water in a dark, ominous-looking tunnel?

So naturally Daniel doesn't hesitate to climb up and start working on getting the hatch open with very little consideration as to what may be on the other side. It looks like it leads up - up is good, right?

"More or less," he repeats, voice sounding slightly strained as he tries to muscle the thing open but it feels like it might be a bit rusted shut. It's a bit of a coping mechanism in any situation to just keep talking to maintain his calm, but it certainly helps that Daniel's just as fascinated with Andrew as Andrew appears to be with him. "So you're a bit like me then? Kind of a, a physiological gray area?"

With a grating squeal and a faint hiss of shifting air pressure, the hatch opens, swinging outward.

"That a good thing, you think?" he asks nervously, peering upward but not fully willing to go poking his head through the other side quite yet, a rare display of caution.

Andrew was having a good enough time, actually. Creepy tunnels and corridors are where you always meet the most interesting people, and tonight's no exception. Of course, there's no need to stick around and continue to get pruny feet, and he'll be just as happy to explore a new sort of space.

Of course, climbing a ladder in his condition won't be the easiest thing, so he stays on the floor and watches Daniel attack the hatch. If he had a torch he'd point it helpfully upward, but he doesn't so he just directs his gaze that way. "You could say that," he admits. "Not quite the same way as you're thinking, though. And we're not being crushed under a wall of water, so I'd say we're doing quite well, really. You going to go up?"

Edited 2014-11-01 01:54 (UTC)

"Yeah, um." Daniel looks up at the equally murky darkness that appears to wait on the other side and then down, brow knitted. "I'll check and see if everything's...safe, I guess."

In the midst of all the scientific rhetoric Daniel had forgotten that fifty percent of them were pregnant and therefore probably not in the best physical shape to go scrambling up and down ladders all over the place. If there's a chance this next destination is less damp and cold and creepy, Daniel will take it, but if it leads to someplace worse he won't make Andrew go to the trouble. He hesitates for another minute, debating on whether he should mention all this, but decides it won't matter if he gets eaten or anything unpleasant like that on the other side anyway. So, with his usual disregard for his personal well-being, up the hatch he goes. It opens onto a very lateral surface, a clear deviation from the curved walls of the tunnel.

It's very dark, at least at first. The floor Daniel hauls himself onto is flat, smooth, and cool but at least it doesn't feel slick with water like the tunnel below. He's going to call that an improvement, but he can't glean anything else about his surroundings on account of being unable to see. He stretches one hand in front of his eyes and brings it closer and closer until he can make out its vague outline in the gloom, until it's roughly three or four inches away from the tip of his nose. Fantastic.

He takes a few tentative steps forward and then, out of nowhere, the place flares to life. Quite literally. A ring of lamps actually ignite as he moves toward the center.

The room, it turns out, is less of a room and more of a sphere. Huge and globular and made of glass with what appear to be old-fashioned gas lamps arranged in an azithumal configuration around the circumference of the room-globe-thing, the sources of the unexpected light.

Everywhere, above and around and on every side except the floor - is water.

Daniel shivers. He can't even see a surface. And he doesn't like glass. It's too fragile, too unstable, too easily broken or shattered or cracked. And the thought of all that water pressure pressing down on this groaning structure, however sturdy it may seem? He's not particularly a fan. Still, Andrew might prefer it to the cheerless cramped little passageway they've been making their way through this whole night.

He shakes himself out of his reaction of fascinated horror long enough to flatten himself to the ground and poke his head through the hatch.

"Looks like some kind of observation sphere," he calls down. "Complete dead end, and get this - we're underwater. Like, completely."

"Really?" Andrew doesn't sound nearly as worried by that as a sane man should. In fact, the news has him on the ladder and waddle-climbing his way up in a flash, eager to join Daniel and see what he means by 'observation sphere' as well as what they might be able to observe from said sphere. It's slower going for him than it was for Daniel, and when he reaches the top of the ladder there's a lot of grunting and huffing as he hauls himself up through the hole.

And then...and then. Andrew doesn't even get to his feet before he sees it, just stays seated on the floor and cranes his neck up and around and back and back down to take it all in. "Oh, but this is gorgeous!" he exclaims, apparently not sharing Daniel's apprehensions. "View's not the best, but this hardware -- very steampunk. Very stylish. Gas lamps in an underwater observatory, can you imagine?"

He's barely had enough time to sit back on his heels before Andrew is shooting up the ladder, moving far faster than a pregnant person should. Daniel opens his mouth to offer help but Andrew makes the entire journey solo before he even has the chance.

And unlike Daniel, he seems completely taken with the room. If one could call it a room. Daniel doesn't know how else to define it other than "sphere" so he's going to stick with that.

"Sure," he answers, pulling out the word tentatively. Daniel would ordinarily be thrilled to study this...bizarrely anachronistic internal building layout and discern what its purpose could possibly be (other than to, well, observe) but the amount of glass sets him on edge. More specifically, it's how much of this building's structure seems to rely on the glass and if it were to break -

Daniel is not going to think about what might happen if it were to break. He does not like glass. Or trust it. At all. It just takes a few shots from a Beretta and a quick dive through the window to separate one from their own slow, painful, electromagnetic disintegration.

"Doesn't seem particularly, erm, safe," he offers, now eying the lamps with an equal amount of distrust. "Whoever engineered this place had some interesting tastes."

"Oh, it's not," agrees Andrew, apparently unbothered. They can't exactly help that they're in an unsound structure, and it's holding up at the moment -- but he does notice Daniel's discomfort with the idea. "If they're really gas. It's easy enough to fake, but from what I've seen of this place I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they were daft enough to run gas lines through here."

He wants to stand and get a better look ~~and poke around at all that glass because really, wow~~. This time he actually looks for help, wordlessly holding a hand up in expectation that Daniel will take it and help haul him to his feet.

He pushes himself to his feet and, noticing the wordless hint a tad belatedly, quickly grasps Andrew's hand to assist him in doing the same.

"Who designed this place, anyway?" he muses aloud, very carefully not looking at the glass dome they're both in but focusing on the lamps and the floor and really everywhere else. "It feels, I dunno, temporally displaced, maybe. The layout and construction don't look modern at all but the engineering required to get this place underwater definitely is, I mean, it's like a, a metachronistic mess."

"Or someone was feeling terribly retro," points out Andrew. "Or we're not on Earth at all; you can never be sure how technology will progress in different cultures. Or regress, as the case may be here."

He toddles toward one of the lamps in question, though he quickly finds himself trekking up the inside of the sphere to reach it. "This definitely looks like a gas line," he muses, leaning on the glass wall of the sphere and looking up at the pipe feeding the lamp above him. "Not the best idea in the world, really."

All right, so Andrew's got a fair point there. Daniel's seen more than enough planets in various stages of pre-modern day Earth technological advancement. But the gas combined with the glass isn't just poor building design, it's really, really setting all of Daniel's nerves on edge.

"Maybe we, uh," he shuffles to the middle of the room, eying the lamps with serious trepidation, "shouldn't stick around. What if something...?" He gestures vaguely upward to indicate a failure in building stability, or the glass collapsing under the water pressure and drowning them both, or any of the innumerable bad things that could happen with this much glass in the room.

Andrew looks over his shoulder, finally seeming to take note of Daniel's discomfort. "Cracks?" he suggests mischievously. "Or explodes?"

That's not very kind, though, and he knows it. "Alright," he sighs, abandoning his exploration to join him back at the hatch. "With any luck we'll find something a bit less dead-endy up ahead."

Cracks, yes. Daniel would very much not like to deal with cracking or breaking glass or anything. He...would not like that. He does not like the glass. He stopped liking glass years ago. He doesn't trust it. It's flimsy, hardly a good foundation for an underwater structure.

He does not like the glass.

Andrew's arch verbalization of his fear does nothing to alleviate the jangling nerves. Tight-jawed, wordless, he scrambles back down the hatch as quickly as he can and offers a hand to Andrew to help him down.

Andrew is starting to catch on that Daniel does not like the glass, and from there it isn't a great leap to make the connection with his comments about dying several times over. He can empathize; he'd harbored a fear of heights for a while after that incident with the radio tower.

So he clambers back down the ladder, slower than Daniel and slower than he'd like, conscientiously closing the hatch behind them as if it will make any difference. Andrew accepts the hand down and gives it a little squeeze before letting go, though his cavalier attitude doesn't seem to change. "Well," he says, "That was a bust. At least we know a little more now than we did before."

"In that this place is apparently underwater and also not very well-maintained?" Daniel relaxes visibly, ridiculously, once they're both safely down. On some rational level he's aware of how pointless a relief that is; if the glass upstairs were to fail as he fears, one small hatch wouldn't do much in terms of protection. But the visible reminder is gone, at least, so Daniel will take it. "And also not great in terms of a floor plan. Who'd want to walk this far to get to an observation deck?" And in a thoroughly creepy, poorly lit tunnel, no less.

Still, that might be a sign they're getting closer to civilization. Or at least a more pleasant place than this.

"Keep going, do you think?"

"It could be a sign we're close to something bigger," Andrew points out with a nod. "Or it might be there's something worth seeing there that we didn't notice. Either way, I think I'd like to find somewhere a little bit drier; the last thing I need is a cold."

Not that colds work that way, but having wet feet is really starting to make him miserable. More miserable than a heavily pregnant man normally is, even.

"Right, that -" It's a little jarring for Daniel to keep reminding himself that Andrew is pregnant, and of course all the associated discomforts would just as easily apply. "Good point. Sorry."

Apologizing seems to be the thing to do, however Andrew chooses to interpret it, whether for dragging him out of the first dry area they've seen since they got here or for the sake of conversational social norms or for...whatever reason, really. Daniel slogs ahead doggedly in search for another passage or hatch.

It's not long before they find one. Just like before, a small ladder leads up to an innocuous little metal hatch angled upward. He pauses and rests a hand on the bottommost rung and considers the likelihood that this will just lead to another observation deck or whatever that place was supposed to be. Not much to be gained in wondering, he starts up the ladder hesitantly to start wrenching open the hatch, hoping there isn't a pressing mass of water on the other side.

Andrew watches the proceedings with a keen eye, though he's practically lounging against the wall as Daniel works at opening the hatch. He's looking for moisture where there shouldn't be any, listening for ominous creaking, that sort of thing. There's no sign from down here that there's water bearing down on the hatch, though, and anyway it opens upward and Daniel would have to do a pretty fantastic job of breaking it to get it open should there be water pressure working against him.

When Daniel does get it open, what comes flooding into the tunnel is not water, but light. Andrew breaks into a wide grin, though he can't see much beyond Daniel's silhouette. There's glass between them and the dark ocean outside again, but this time the lamps are already lit and they reveal an almost airy (and blissfully dry) walkway in much better condition than the tunnel in which they've been walking. It stretches off perpendicular to the passage below, terminating at a door to a building at each end not far away.

"Let there be light," grins Andrew, unaware that they've got the same problem as before, more or less.

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