Session 136: Not Really Atma Best

Previously, Across the Horizon...
Since returning from their journey into the small sphere, the officers of the Starfall have been unusually quiet.
The manner in which the quiet manifested differed between them.
Linnet returned to the galley and set to work preparing a meal, peeling and chopping enough potatoes to feed the crew of half a dozen Starfalls. She welcomed company so long as no one pushed too heavily to learn what they saw or, more importantly, how she felt about it.
Orrey returned to his quarters to sketch, though he did not let anyone see the final product of his work, nor did he let anyone join him on the deck afterwards. Ivy told Holly that she thought she saw one of the holy symbols she gave him as a gift in his hand, but she could not explain the reason behind the tightness of his grip.
Yves returned to his quarters after taking a roundabout path through six other areas of the ship, including a second trip through what he understood to be the Pet Station and in actuality was just the washroom (Triscuit's fondness for warm laundry did not seem to be a biological necessity, but Yves was not one for half-measures). Anyone lingering by his quarters would have heard him making a round of introductions to a new friend, but they would have been at a loss to explain the ache they heard in the back of his throat.
Bast returned to the bridge to deliver the heading of their next journey to Marina, leaving her to translate "away from here" into an actual flight plan. From there he split his time between the captain's quarters and the engine room, no matter how often the crew assured him the ship flew with zero difficulty.
Luca, not being an officer on the Starfall, had no such qualms, and spent an hour telling Isara Marquez what they found and another hour repeating key parts, but slower this time, so Isara could write it all down.
When the officers entered the War Room upon receiving the summons, each assuming another one of them called for it, they found their secure defenses had been breached by an outsider...
**
"I didn't breach your defenses," Isara snorts. "I made myself a key and I opened the door."
"I just followed Luca and Isara in," Celeste offers, having shifted from innocent-bystander to innocent-relocater.
"I have no excuse whatsoever," Luca says.
There's a weight to the look Bast gives Luca before finally shifting over to Isara. "...so. What's this about?"
"You were probably taking notes on everything while we were at... you know, where we were," Yves suggests to Luca. "Mental notes," he amends. He looks somewhat underslept at the moment, despite the lack of an overnight since the trip. Maybe it's just that drug wearing off.
Linnet brought some prep work with her. She's quiet, but the sound of a knife going through a pile of onions and garlic fills any moments of silence quite nicely.
Isara looks coolly at the Captain of the Starfall, all casual swagger and stylish detachment. It holds for about three seconds. "I want to take this ship into fuckin' space, obviously."
"Not this week. We have rehearsal." Linnet doesn't even look up.
"Star-Crossed Lovers Crossing the Stars," Isara says, splashing a headline across the sky with her hands. "What I mean is, you said there's a ship up there that looks a lot like this one, and it's drifting in orbit around a cracked moon. I bet this one can go up there too."
"What do you want to do in space," Yves asks. More like a fervent statement than a question, actually.
Isara shifts her eyes around the world. "Drugs, honestly," she mutters.
"Oh," Yves says, enlightened, and relaxes fractionally. "That's fine then."
"You can do those on your own time. Next topic?" Chop, chop, chop, slide, chop.
"Hold on," Luca says. "That ship had like, doors and suits and really heavy windows and this one...does not? It doesn't, does it?"
"You're the ones who went up," Isara says. "What do you think the point is? Why did they make a ship like that? What's it doing up there? What's it still doing up there? Why did they make this one after it?" Isara gives Luca a familiar nod. "Asking the good questions. It doesn't right now. But I can put them in. Or -- or..." She trails off for a moment. "Or they could've made this ship for a different purpose, but one that complements the original."
"We haven't found any," Yves says, "which doesn't mean it doesn't have any, but it means either it doesn't have any, or they're somewhere we haven't opened up yet, or... pretty much just those, I don't think they're invisible or insubstantial or anything, though I guess maybe it could've had them and they were removed, or maybe they were going to get some but the Great Crystal broke before those could be added. Or it was just meant for something else."
Bast sighs, slumping slightly in his seat. "There's a room in the other one that would be just right for you. With some handy restraints." After rubbing his face slowly, he continues. "It's built differently. Atmosphere control, isolated sections, lots more in the way of walls. You want to test some ideas, try something that will keep you dry and alive underwater first."
"Rather than taking this ship into space, let's use what we learned up there to see about improving this one. Starting with not getting ourselves blasted into crystalline shards if the engine goes slightly haywire." The sharp aroma of onions is beginning to fill the room.
"And maybe finding a better power source for the engine. A more... ethical power source," Yves says quietly. "If that's even possible."
"What do you think caused the deaths of the crew?" Celeste asks.
"Hubris?" Luca offers to Celeste.
"Figured it was whatever did the Crystal in, but after seeing where the ass end of Nox used to be...something like that doesn't get to the crew without making some holes on the way."
"It can't just be the Great Crystal breaking, or that would have happened to everyone with a Job crystal," Yves says, now clearly thinking through the problem. He stares towards a blank bit of the wall, frowning. "Unless it was a matter of range."
"This is a dumb question, but for someone more versed in recent history and less stuck in the classics...have we ever been to Nox? Like, real people? As opposed to shelves and shelves full of science fiction." Linnet whips up just enough of a breeze to keep the onion fumes out of everyone's eyes.
The noise Celeste makes at the mere idea of traveling to the moon sparks a series of sidelong glances. "No," she says once she remembers there are other people in the room. "But I dream of it."
Yves raises a hand. "What are the chances of us traveling to Nox and back and not breaking anything else? And yes I realize I'm the person asking this, which is weird, but given how many broken things of late have turned out to be people, I think it's worth asking."
"Help me out here. There are records of the fall of Alterna, right? Written at the time?" Bast asks.
"One of the first things I learned about Orrey is that he made an ancient temple fall into the ocean," Celeste says. "So the odds are pretty high you'd break something."
"I mean, written close to the time, yes. I have to assume that most of the primary sources kind of fell by the wayside, or into the cracks," Linnet answers.
"I can't imagine how there wouldn't be," Luca says, "it's the sort of thing that tends to get written down."
Yves points to Celeste. And then asks, a bit distractedly, "How many of the records survived? I mean, how much of anything survived? I feel like we would know a lot more already if a lot survived, but I don't know what's the loss of information, what was classified, and what's that I just didn't pay enough attention in the history class I took first semester."
Bast nods tersely to Luca. "Any of them mention Nox exploding? Doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would pass unnoticed. Or uncommented. But I've never heard of it."
"There are," Celeste answers Bast. "Written by the survivors. According to the most trustworthy accounts, the fighting raged inside the capital. The Great Crystal shattered, the city was wiped out, and most of it fell into the sea. Those records were written by people who were pretty far away from Alterna itself. There are rumored eyewitness accounts, but too many of them are disputed to really take them as fact. No one's ever said anything about the moon exploding."
"Well it was the backside, wasn't it?" Luca offers.
"It doesn't count if it's the back and not the front," Yves says.
"It's still big enough that there was probably debris and a flash and things you would notice." Chop, chop, chop.
"Unless it had already set." Luca looks thoughtful. "We don't have the time of day for the end of civilization, do we."
"Flaming chunks hurtling across the sky for weeks or longer, some of them maybe ending up down here. Not the sort of thing that escapes notice easily." Bast presses his hands flat on the table. "What I don't get at all is the connection between what happened down here and up there."
Yves makes a little shrugging motion. "There's a lot we don't know. How they took stars apart. How enough people decided that was okay to build entire machines to do it, and staff them, and just keep going..."
"Did it happen at the same time? Because if there's no word of it...I'd figure not."
"Would parts of the moon have fallen, or been blasted away from the planet?" Orrey asks, having been off in his mind for the start of the conversation.
"Like... maybe we--they blew up the moon before the Great Crystal even went? I sort of assumed. Uh. That it had to be the same. You know. That it went together." Yves looks a little queasy, and abruptly lurches upright. "I need coffee. Anyone else? I'm gonna bring back coffee."
"I'll take some," Isara says to Yves. "Black."
"Coffee's good." To Orrey, Bast replies: "Probably some of both? There might even be chunks still circling Ducorde, if we could look close enough."
Yves vanishes from the room with a haunted expression and a caffeine mission.
"When we first found them, I was thinking it was the end of the Crystal in Alterna that...reached out to the ship somehow and ended everyone there. In a way that we haven't seen or heard of down here, as if the rest of it wasn't strange enough. Not like we have a good idea of how that ship works or what exactly it was for, still."
"I mean, I have an idea," Luca says. "But no one's mentioned it yet and that makes me think my assumptions are wrong, because honestly Yves was not that easy to follow when he was trying to bring me up to speed. Though I did appreciate the effort."
"It was for adding power to the Great Crystal by sacrificing Espers. Trapping them, 'pacifying' them, and exploiting them." Orrey says, hoping somehow it's not true.
(Somewhere off in the kitchen, Yves is filling a carafe with coffee and probably congratulating himself on his excellent exposition work of late.)
"Right," Luca says, gesturing to Orrey. "Sort of...condensing them down. And I think something happened to turn that effect on the crew."
"A prison break." Orrey says.
"Luca, please, any semi-sensible idea is welcome. Not counting the whole "let's take this ship to space" plan." Linnet scrapes the well-minced onions and garlic into a bowl, switches knives and boards, and starts plowing through bunches of fresh herbs. None of you saw her bring all this equipment into the room. "I'd be inclined to break out too, if I knew someone was sapping my essence to turn it into skill crystals."
Orrey nods in agreement with Linnet.
"Something like that machine Linnet ran, but for the whole ship?" Bast thinks for a moment. "Orrey, did you notice anything similar between the crystal we got from it and the ones from the crew?"
Yves kicks the door open. Well, pushes it open with his foot briskly, anyway, since he's trying to carry two full coffee carafes, enough mugs for everyone, a little pitcher of creamer, and a sugar bowl. Plus about a dozen spoons. Probably he should've used, like, a tray. Cart. Bag. Something. It is either skill or sheer luck that gets him to the table without spilling any of the above, to start deploying coffee options at everyone.
Orrey raises an eyebrow. "I wasn't looking at them for anything like that..."
"That's probably the part that stuck with me the most out of this. It's a Farmer crystal. The machine created a freaking Farmer crystal." Linnet slams a knife down into a bundle of mint that did nothing to deserve this. "Had they forgotten how to farm by whatever super-advanced level of society they were when they built the ship? Is farming really so damned complicated that you can't learn it by practice and reading? Were they so damned lazy that they couldn't be bothered to learn to farm for themselves? Or were they so damned lackadaisical that they were just running every captured entity through the machine to see what came out?" This is more "damn"s than Linnet generally utters in a year; her usual wind-based swears have fallen by the wayside. Her braid is starting to move of its own accord. Yves pours Linnet a cup of coffee, and slides empty cups towards other people. ".......yeah."
Luca looks mildly perplexed. "You know I've never really thought about the difference between someone who farms and a Farmer. I know the difference for fighting, obviously."
Bast nods thanks to Yves, accepting a cup. "Well, it's faster with one of these, I suppose. And easier to control, if you're in charge."
Bast nods thanks to Yves, accepting a cup. "Well, it's faster with one of these, I suppose. And easier to control, if you're in charge. Was every crystal Alterna handed out squeezed from an Esper, though?" "Where else would they have come from?" Luca asks, not rhetorically.
"Maybe they had some way of making copies. Like a foundry with a mold."
Yves remembers the request for black coffee; beyond that, he's just sort of pouring haphazardly and letting other people cream-and-sugar as they please. The spoons lie in a heap in the center of the table. "Where do Job crystals come from now?" he asks quietly.
"Somehow chipped off the Great Crystal? Grown? Mined? There was this cool trick with some special salt, except it works better if you don't leave the experiment out for a couple of weeks where a cat can get to it." Linnet blinks. "Sorry, those were all ideas, not an answer to you, Yves. Sylphs are born with ours, but I never got a very good explanation as to how, and that's separate anyway. I assume this was back in the period of history where we weren't considered "people" yet." The knife resumes its angry progress through the mint. This had better be something pesto-like, because it's too finely chopped for much else.
Yves sits back down at his own chair, huddling over his cup of coffee. "What if we're still drawing on them? Somehow?"
"...thank you for that cheery thought, Thunderbun."
Yves smiles shakily over his mug, and drinks.
Bast's mouth curves up in an edged sort of smile.
"Job crystals dictate a person's life. They go to Alterna to get them from the Great Crystal." Isara drinks more coffee in one go than is healthy. "You find crystals being made from a machine up in the ship. Seems like a lot of work to ferry crystals back and forth between Alterna and orbit."
"Is it a lot of work?" Yves asks. "Maybe it is. Maybe they... I don't know, zap them down to the surface as easily as we got zapped to the other ship. Or there could be... lots of those ships... all taking apart people, and then coming down to drop of the load when they're... full..." If he doesn't have a hangover, he looks like he's experiencing a pretty similar level of physical distress.
"Well, probably easier if you can shift between this ship and that one as much as you like. But if they were needed on the regular, it would make sense to have the extraction done in Alterna, not in the ship scouting for more."
"I think bast's idea of using the distillated crystals to...I don't know, infuse someone else's job crystal might be the way of it?" Orrey asks.
"Maybe it was for people who weren't ever planning to go to Alterna? I mean, the world's a pretty big place; no way everyone in the entire world could go to Alterna, no matter what that voice in the museum was telling us."
"Well, who's ever been past the mountains?" Luca asks. "Maybe we are the entire world?"
"I think Yves' grandma might have something to say about that," Linnet retorts.
"If no one has ever been past the mountains, maybe we should go past the mountains and see." Orrey says.
"Oh? Can we ask her?" Luca asks.
Yves spreads his hands, one still holding the mug. "Capture the stars and do... something... in the ship to make them... disassemble-able, then deliver those to Alterna for the final process? I don't know." Then to Luca, "I can drop a letter to her off at a place where it might get to her, but asking her questions immediately might, uh, take a while? She mostly stops by when she's in the mood, or if we're both attacking the same government facility simultaneously for completely different reasons, you know?"
During the conversation, Celeste's face shifts increasingly quizzical, until she finally speaks up. "How many Great Crystals are we talking about here?"
Bast pauses mixing the third spoon of sugar into his coffee. "I have no idea anymore."
Yves opens his mouth. Closes it again. Makes a distressed sound. Drinks his coffee.
"Alterna, at least, claimed there was one. I think we can all take Alternan narratives with generous helpings of salt. Speaking of which..." Linnet pats her pockets and looks around for the salt.
"'Great' has a certain...singularity to it," Luca notes.
“Alterna did control the narrative. Maybe they called theirs The Great One.” Orrey suggests.
"For us to be the extent of the world, there'd have to be an awful lot of empty space on the other side. Twelve below, I wish I had something more recent to draw on than archival narratives." Linnet finally finds the salt under a bundle of parsley and shakes it generously over the onions and garlic, and slightly over the table and floor.
"Better than those other Crystals, for sure," Luca suggests.
"There's the one in Alterna, the one everyone came to for their Job. The one that exploded and wiped out the Empire. But you all found signs of a much larger one in the moon, that also blew up, at the same time?" Celeste wrinkles her brow. "Were they connected?"
Yves keeps adding more coffee, cream, and sugar, in various quantities, as the level in his mug drops. It is no longer clear how much coffee he's consumed.
"It would make a lot of sense for them to be, through some wibbly wobbly magicky-wagicky arcane nonsense." The parsley, freed of its salty companion, is being thoughtfully minced rather than angrily ground under the knife.
"Same Crystal, both places. The stress of trying to be in two places at once was too much, boom." Luca appears to be completely serious with this suggestion.
"Well, you can adjust the power output of the engines on this ship by moving a dial on the bridge without having to set foot in the engine room. Just need the right level of engineering set up beforehand," Isara says dismissively. "Alterna had some pretty killer tech before they ate it. Just need to figure out what the connective tissue between the two crystals was."
"Two or more crystals, alike in dignity, lack of ethics, and structural integrity..." Yves is muttering into his coffee.
“All of us are connected to our crystals.” Orrey says speculatively.
"A very unevenly divided boom, in that case. Leaving buildings standing and all on this side." Bast takes a sip of his coffee, reconsiders, and reaches for the creamer.
Linnet ponders Isara's word choice. "Ew. Awfully organic, that idea."
Isara considers it. "Yeah, that's pretty grisly."
“Are Espers connected to crystals? Is that what the masks are?” asks Orrey.
"Don't you start," Luca warns Isara, unseriously.
Isara smiles sweetly, which fits her incredibly poorly.
Yves makes some more distressed noises, and pours half the remaining cream into his mug.
Bast gives Isara an inscrutable look while stirring his cup of mostly-coffee.
"The odds of it being an organic link are probably pretty low, though," Isara says, though she flicks her eyes around the room to make sure someone agrees with her.
"If we mean 'organic' in the chemistry sense, I'd agree. If we mean 'organic' in the colloquial sense..." Yves trails off into more distressed mumbling into his mug.
"I suppose the chemistry sense also factors into the "how did all the people turn into piles of crystals" bit."
“Might mean we’re not that different from Espers.” Orrey says. “Everyone can be crystallized.”
"Yves?" Celeste asks tentatively. Nothing pleasant seems to be happening in Yves's head as of late. "Do you have a theory?"
"That actually reminds me of something. More than I'd like." Bast slowly drains his cup in one long sip, setting it down with a definitive clink before continuing. "Sabik isn't quite dead, you see."
"Oh, fuck." Linnet sets down the knife, gingerly. "You think he was the one being crystallized when we were there?"
"Doubt it. I think they were drawing power for the ship from him, somehow. But if I'm right on how what's left of him is set up there...the other half of him is somewhere in Alterna, and they're connected through the Heart. And speaking of organic connections." Bast grimaces slightly. "If there's anything left of what he used to be, besides a husk Alterna was harvesting, I think it'd be in the Heart."
Linnet's braid snaps straight down, and her hands fly to her mouth. Then she makes a face, spits out a bit of parsley stem, wipes her hands on her jeans, and takes a deep breath. "Bast, you have a dire imagination. I am so afraid you're right. ...and in that case, what do we do about it." She gnaws on her lower lip while scraping the chopped herbs into a smaller bowl.
"Could be something in Castle Atma." Orrey says. "Related to this Atma Weapon." "Wait," Luca says. "That means going back to Alterna?" They look at Isara.
Isara sighs. "I'm still not sure what deactivated the Luminous Engine. If we go back, there's no guarantee it won't shut off again, and if those Espers want you dead, they might be better set up to stop you this time."
"Or we could take another look at the book." Orrey says. "Maybe do that first."
"That seems easier," Luca agrees.
"Oh!" Celeste remembers. "Speaking of things to do first, two messages wound up in the suggestion box while you were away. I checked them, because Isa had me checking them for her before she..." Celeste clears her throat. "Anyway, I can share them when you're ready."
"And we might want to have the Speaker" - Bast nods to Yves - "take a closer look at the Heart. Anything urgent?"
"Not urgent," Celeste answers the Captain. "One potential job, one potential windfall."
"Well, let's review them so we have something less existentially horrifying to think about." Linnet pulls a towel from the belt loop of her jeans and begins cleaning her knives.
"Something more positive and more grounded sounds like a nice change of pace." Orrey says.
"Grounded is good," Yves mumbles over the rim of his mug.
"When you were on the Seventh Dawn, you found a really old board game there, that Orrey brought back. Before the excitement, I'd learned that it looks like the only surviving copy of Alba & Ater, an old Alternan game that we only know about through reference in old novels. There's a Triad collector offering 250,000 gil for it if anyone can find a copy, but I know the Nanab Foundation would grant basically any request if it were to be donated to them." The last time Celeste interacted with the Nanab Foundation, she was the target of a pair of assassination attempts because of her map to the Forgotten City, which maybe put a damper on her admission to the Foundation as a full member, but the thought has never strayed far from her mind.
Linnet looks at Celeste. "You sure you want to go back there? What with the destroyed office and attempted murder and all."
"The other suggestion box entry came originally from Decker Avant, the... notary-slash-bounty hunter guy in Thalatte? The guy you did a job for, Robb Hourne, has requested you all specifically for a job again. Something about a missing village."
"...people, buildings, or scenery?"
"...that he wants us to put back, or make stay missing?"
"It was only attempted murder," Yves says. "More importantly, they disrupted an entire academic conference panel, which I have not forgotten. Or forgiven." He drags his attention back to the matters at hand. "Missing village sounds weird. Interesting weird."
The Robb Hourne job saw the party dive into the sea northeast of Thalatte in search of the Errant Signal, and specifically the chest Robb Hourne lost in its cargo. The people aboard the ship lay frozen in their moment of death, and the damaged chest intrigued everyone greatly before Isa overruled the desire for investigation and stressed the importance of completing the job. Yves, in particular, noted that the chest was made from the same wood as Golem's forest.
"He wants to find out what happened to it," Celeste answers. "The message doesn't say why."
"If I misplaced an entire village, I would want to know the reason too," Yves says. "Even if it was just a mapping error."
"Mm. Well, I have no preferences, other than "don't go to space in our current ship." I'd like to bring Sabik to some sort of conclusion, but if that involves going back into Alterna, we really need to update the Starfall somehow, and I will leave the how of that to the engineering people."
"I'll figure the Engine out. Nothing else, I'll duck up to this Atma and strip it for parts." Isara is pleased at the idea.
"Just make sure the parts aren't people first," Yves says woefully.
"Getting there was easy," Luca points out, "getting back not so much. Don't get stuck in space."
Linnet yells back "you can't just DUCK UP TO SPACE" but continues walking the other way. (Shula, in the hallway, gives her a very weird look. "Trust me, don't ask.")
Isara playfully jabs Luca on the arm. "I'm sure we'll manage, won't we? In the meantime, I'll go draft the two need-to-be-fuckbuddies and put them on refit duty. They're bright kids, they can dig through the data and find out if the shutdown was external or internal and see if we can rout around it." Isara stands up. "Anyone needs me, I'll be in the engine room."
"No scavenging the spaceship until there's nothing left for us to learn up there", Bast grumbles in the middle of reaching for the coffee again.
In the galley, Linnet explains to today's prep cooks what's needed for a layered potato omelet and hands them her bowls of stress relief. Then she tracks down Shula again. "Hey - brief mission for you and company. I need you, Apoc, and two others of your choosing to do a midnight stakeout in the next few days. Camp on deck for the night and tell me if the moon looks any weirder than usual." Shula's expression illustrates just how weird a request this is. "I know, but just humor me, all right? I'll explain the next day." (To be fair, this is on the weirder side of requests Linnet has made of the crew, but nowhere near the top.) Yves is just pouring more and more coffee into his mug, drinking, and staring into the distance. This will end well.
(On her way back to the meeting room, Linnet grabs a bottle of brandy.)
"I'd prefer the game to end up where more people can see it, and not in some private collection, closed off to the public." Orrey says. "Any objections to that?"
Bast's spoon clinks faintly as he takes a moment to respond. "I wasn't too impressed with the Foundation last time we were there. What could they do for us?"
Linnet returns and plunks the bottle of brandy besides Yves' coffee mug. "Let's at least reach out and see if they have a more solid offer than 'grant any favor.' I'm not wild on the idea of a private collector nutkining away treasure either, but it'd be nice to know where it's going and what the foundation wants for it."
"I would like to know if the village disappeared, moved, got blitzed, was just slightly misfiled..." Yves adds the brandy to the cream-with-coffee.
Luca takes the bottle after Yves has poured his measure, and splashes a good amount into a mug that has never held coffee. "I know I don't get a vote, but I just want to say I am all for doing something that doesn't undermine my entire worldview in less than six hours."
"So...anything other than what we just did?"
Yves raises his mug toward Luca in a salute. "Now you're really getting into the flow of how it works around here."
Luca tips their own mug in response. "And hey, Thalatte is nice. Good seafood."
"Maybe we could even take a break and hang out on a beach for a few days." Orrey suggests.
"Probably no one trying to kill us as soon as we land their, either," Yves says encouragingly, and has a big swig of his concoction. "Who knows, maybe we'll just find the whole village took a beach day too. Easy job."
"Ooh, hey, beach date sounds like a welcome break. Bast? You in?"
Bast, silently, reaches for the bottle of brandy.