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wilderlogs2018-03-13 05:30 pm
wildermods) wrote in wilderlogs2018-03-13 05:30 pm
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THE SQUAD DOES AN INTRO: GROUP MEET UP - [modplot] [event] [free-for-all]
THE SQUAD DOES AN INTRO: GROUP MEET UP
The Green's binding spell finally works out its kinks and the entire group is teleported into the same area in the center of the city, near the statues of the Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, and Scarecrow.
Everyone in the group feels a tingling sensation as the magic sets in place and binds them. Anyone that tries to leave will now find themselves being teleported back if they wander too far. The group will have to try to stay together when it moves now.
They have a little bit of time to figure things out.
✦ Post in actionspam format. Plots and mod-run events in the game are meant to be in actionspam format to keep a brisk pace.
✦ Free-for-all Post. This event will be in "free-for-all" format, meaning that threadhopping is encouraged and that threading should be treated in the same conversational way as network posts.
✦ By now, the language magic should be fully in place. By now, everyone should have magically learned Sylvaen so that everyone can speak it fluently and understand each other.
no subject
You're shitting me.
[His laughter collapses into an almost giggle and he exhales deep.]
It's 2017 where I'm from. Two-thousand seventeen years since baby Jesus.
oops it's actually 21,097 (because THAT makes it less ridiculous)
The calendar I'm using dates from the founding of the Republic. Who's Jesus?
[She's pretty sure if they were important enough to have a calendar pinned to them, she'd at least recognize the name, though there's always the possibility the Council erased outside the lines here and there.]
no subject
He just stares at her a moment, a furrow kind of pulling his brow together, blinking, his jaw a little slack.]
Jesus Christ.
[It's less an explanation and more an expression of surprise, taking the name in vain, etcetera etcetera. He takes a deep breath.]
Jesus Christ. The son of God. Do your people not have Jesus Christ?
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[Revan asks sincerely, head cocked in curiosity. Jedi, being basically pantheists with tangible proof their beliefs are right or at least onto something, have at most an academic interest in other religions.]
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[It's not that Dixon hasn't heard of pantheistic religions, it's just that he's never run into anyone who actually believes in it. He's pretty sure he's met a few Jewish people, but never actually talked religion to them except to heckle.]
You ain't like a Hindu or something, are you?
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I'm a Jedi. I follow the Light Side of the Force and the teachings of the Jedi Order.
[Even if the Jedi Order doesn't seem to follow its own teachings most of the time.]
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[He has a feeling that when he explains this, it's going to either come out as offensive or incomprehensible.]
Okay, so, we know what Jedi are where I'm from. Except they're all just stories, things from movies and comic books. No one actually is a Jedi. No one ever was.
[Except maybe the ones who go to those weird furry conventions.]
So when I say Jedis aren't real it's because where I'm from you're just stories in movies for kids.
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I suppose asking you just how far out in the Unknown Regions this Earth of yours is wouldn't be helpful.
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[For the first time here, he doesn’t feel like an idiot for not having the answer. After lol, Revan didn’t know Jesus, so they all seem on the same blank page. It’s different than all the teenagers know each other and have their little clique, but most of them seem just as lost and coming from as many different angles as him and Revan.]
I don’t reckon your world has many stories about mine, just by what you don’t know.
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I don't know. Most adventure stories are set in the Unknown Regions--you know, explore new planets, meet new civilizations, shoot at each other until you realize it was all a misunderstanding, team up against the real threat.
[She's genre-savvy. The problem is she doesn't realize she herself has a genre.]
no subject
[Common ground is nice. He never expected he'd have common ground with a Jedi from another planet and maybe thousands of years from the future, but it feels like something more stable than an endless round of questions and answers.]
And sounds like we're in one now. How do you think we're going to hold up, trying to work as a unit?
[You know, after that disastrous first showing which wasn't totally partially Dixon's fault.]
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[Whether you believe that's a positive statement or not depends greatly on your view of (non-)human nature. Revan's still not sure. As for Dixon's question, she turns from him to the others milling around the ruined city square, but whatever she's seeing is light years away, and she doesn't answer for a long moment.]
The fate of the world's too heavy for any one person to carry. I think the only way not to be crushed is to have someone there to help with the load.
[She snorts and looks back at Dixon.]
That wasn't an answer, was it?
[Revan visibly pulls herself back to the here and now, and her smile is equal parts wry and rueful.]
The Force moves in everyone and everything. Nothing is impossible and anyone is capable of greatness...and I think it'll be a while before anyone will accuse us of greatness.
no subject
[It’s daunting, to say the least. They’ve already made a mess of their first day. He’s pretty sure half of them hate each other already, and he knows he’s supposed to let that go but calm, thought, etcetera, all these things Chief said he needed to get on that route to being a good man are elusive and difficult.]
You actually think that’s true? That anyone can be great? Some people I know would have to change a lot. [He’s talking about himself, but he’s not going to say that. But he waits for her answer like it’s very important, like it’s going to set the tone for his whole attitude as a member of this squad.]
no subject
There's no one so deep in darkness that the light can't reach them, Dixon.
[He's obviously talking about himself, but Revan's not so certain she is.]
The road's long and hard, but yes, I believe anyone can walk it.
[That path runs in both directions, but Dixon doesn't need to hear about the road to hell right now, no matter how much it's on her mind.
How do you give someone hope when you're not sure you have any for yourself?]
You climb a mountain one step at a time. Anybody can take one step.
no subject
He's also very much sober by now. After a while to mull that over he looks over at her as if he's sizing her up for the first time, in a conversation instead of a bizarre meeting post-teleportation.]
So. You speaking from experience or just faith?
no subject
Jedi who fall to the dark side have been redeemed, and trust me, a dark Jedi can work atrocities most genocidal dictators can only dream of. But still, some return to the light. I was traveling with one just before I arrived here.
[If you ask Revan, Juhani barely counted as a threat to a youngling picnic outing, never mind placing in the genocidal dictator league, but it was good enough for the Jedi Council, so it's good enough for Dixon.]
She attempted to kill her master and fled into the wilds, where she turned the creatures there against the planet's settlers...but she made the choice to return, to face the Order...and to be forgiven.
[A choice they never gave Revan, and her solemnity has nothing to do with Juhani's story, save for the contrast.]
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And damn, he thinks, all he did was throw an innocent person out a window because he was having a bad day.
He kind of sprawls sideways and rests his head on his hand.]
My mama'd watch a TV show about that and call it unrealistic. [He shakes his head. He thinks of Revan's life as some kind of opaque mystery, shrouded and impenetrable by the sheer breadth of difference from his considerably more mundane and sheltered existence.] Things aren't really life and death where I'm from. Well, I mean, they are, but not like that. We shot all our genocidal dictators.
[He really doesn't watch international news.]
no subject
Not everyone will have to make life and death decisions, but everyone can choose to be kind rather than cruel.
[She remembers that poor desperate widow on Tatooine, how five minutes of Revan's time brokering a sale had changed that despair to hope, the joy blooming in the other woman like a flower over a few hundred credits. In the horrid days since she found out her true identity, Revan's clung to little moments like that. In the long watches of the ship's night, she thinks they might be all that's keeping her from being swept away by the howling darkness.
But Dixon doesn't need to hear that. He wants Revan to play the Jedi Knight, calm and collected and dispensing wisdom. Fine, she can do that.]
Small things matter. A gentle word today could be what gives someone the strength to endure a tragedy tomorrow. An angry one might be just enough to drive them to despair in the face of that same tragedy. Every action you take ripples out through the universe, like stones dropped into a pond. You can't know exactly how the ripples will spread, but you can choose which rocks to throw--
[Wait. Revan purses her lips.]
Okay, that metaphor got away from me.
no subject
Little bit.
[He's felt scrambled since the fire, and her words tilt his unsteady feelings about good and evil on an axis. He doesn't usually interpret it as kindness and cruelty, more justice and injustice, innocent and guilty. That's why this morning he was getting in a car to go kill someone he didn't even know in the name of trying to be a better man.
And, hell, why he's even a little energized to go fight on some quest to save the forest or whatever. It's a clear way ahead that doesn't involve the weird calculus of kind and cruel, gentle and vicious, righteous and just plain vindictive. There's just an easy right option to take, no actual decision-making required.]
But let's go with it. Do you always choose the right rocks?
[Whatever her answer, he's going to keep shoving her up on that moral authority pedestal. That "tell me what to do so I don't have to think about it" throne.]
no subject
[Dixon, you don't even know.]
Of course not. Nobody does. Not me, not my crew, not the Jedi Council.
[Really not the Jedi Council lately.]
No one's perfect. We're always going to fall short somewhere, and insisting on perfection just gives you an excuse not to try. Progress is the goal. Be a little better tomorrow than you were today.
[Jedi will talk endlessly about this sort of thing, but Revan didn't have Dixon pegged for a deep thinker. She wonders what happened to him recently that's making these questions of morality so important.]
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He's been in a Oscar-bait Flannery O'Connor homage is what happened.][It's a good answer. Airtight. He purses his lips a little and nods. A little better now than before is a pretty low bar. Don't throw people out windows for looking at you funny. Maybe don't torture people because you're pissed off. That seems straightforward.
It's just where to go from there that's tricky.
Calm. Calm.]
I'm betting some of the people in this group [ahem] weren't heroes on a quest to save jack before they came here, so that seems like a step up over yesterday.
[He absently moves his fingers over the engravings on the front of his shield, which he has half-lying on his knee. It's about then that he notices that the front of the shield is an oversized version of the Ebbing Police Department badge, and he feels his stomach tighten to the point of nausea.
He can't explain to her the whole sordid story; in a way he's still trying to endear himself to her, having now positioned her in his mind as someone whose opinion merits some weight and consideration. She sounds like she has the secret to inner peace. She makes it sound easy, even as she says it's hard and imperfect.
Even aside from that, he's enjoyed the conversation, the fact that it hasn't rapidly descended into hostility like so many of his other interactions with people here.]
I gotta go. [This small, group, everyone-in-the-same-boat setting makes coming up with an actual excuse unlikely, so he hopes that just sounding brusque and a little inexplicably angry will cut short any questions about why he suddenly gets up and takes off.]
no subject
May the Force be with you.
[He's going to need it. They all will.]