Nacrine Tide 02 — Interlude 1

Interlude 1 was the second session of Nacrine Tide, played on the 3rd of October 2021. It was the first interlude, which included the first Conflict Turn, and the Muted Requiem's first Downtime.

Content warnings: Threatening with a gun.

Cast

 * C, a former cop in hiding. (they/she)
 * Danica Arkose, a spy of many faces. (she/her)
 * Meory Virgo, a self-taught tactician. (she/her)
 * Symbol, a mysterious Psalm. (she/her)
 * Pace Ouedraogo, an experienced commander. (she/her)
 * Lambros Fern, a gregarious mercenary. (they/them)
 * Laconia, a droning presence. (he/him)
 * Emilya Salt, an unlucky data thief. (she/her)
 * Florian Coral, a half-hearted mercenary. (they/he/ve)
 * Bite Killbite a punkish logistician. (it/its)
 * Static, a newly-promoted scout leader. (they/them)
 * Pulse, a traitor... or so Static thinks.
 * Desire Maraj, a Psalm in training. (any pronouns)
 * Clemency Patel, a priestess beneath the waves. (she/her)
 * Tieg, a reluctant priest. (he/him)
 * Deco Wolf, a runaway agent. (they/it)
 * Claret (she/her), Vermillion (they/them), Chestnut (they/them), and Red Raptor (he/him), covert agents for the Garnet Eye.
 * Two valiant agents for the Heaven in Blue.

Moving In (Prelude)
Not far off the shore of the eastern Nacrine Sea lies a rocky island, which houses the fortified research facility of Fort Murex. Across the waves from the town on the shore, a small fleet of boats appear with equipment and weapons, tailed in the sky by a helicopter. Agents of the Amber Hand step off the skiffs, clad in white and yellow with their hive insignias on their chests. They push aside the local Ivory Crown enforcement, citing orders from Prince Kazimir himself, and there's nothing that can be done: Fort Murex is the Hand's playground now.

Garbage Data (A Chase)
Up north in the Wolfram Taiga, an off-road truck crests a snowy rock at full speed. The owl/bear nadezhdan woman driving it is Emilya Salt, of the vigilante hackers known as the Copperjacks. While she steers, she nervously eyes a backpack below the passenger seat, as four hard drives clatter around uneasily. "Shit, shit, shit, shit," she mutters frantically as she has no choice but to brave the tangled woods ahead of her — it's not like she's going to stop, and let herself get caught by the pursuing mech, a strange flying machine comprised of sharp, triangular shapes. Its pilot, a large walrus/ox nadezhdan named Florian Coral, radios in to their station to confirm that they're in pursuit of the target.

Emilya punches the throttle as her wheels spin in the snow, searching for somewhere with more traction as she makes her escape. However, Florian deploys some kind of strange sonic weapon that begins to violently uproot the trees ahead of the truck, catching its axles and forcing it to a stop. Panting and sweating, Emilya grabs the bag of hard drives and quickly slides down a hill into a narrow ravine, where she knows she can escape a large vehicle like Florian's. With permission to land, though, he sets his mech down and begins to chase Emilya on foot through the ravine, yelling for her to stop so they can talk. "Fuck you!" she echoes back through the ravine as she escapes.

However, back at the Copperjacks' HQ, Emilya plugs the hard drives in, and discovers she recovered nothing but garbage data. They didn't break — but what she was looking for had deliberately been swapped out ahead of her visit. Meanwhile, at the Amber Hand facility, intelligence officers pore over a map, triangulating the Copperjack's location from the new data points Emilya has just given them.

Tehomic Bypass (An Unfurling Plan)
Among the southern islands of the Nacrine Sea is a humble Chorist church. In the back, behind its public area, is a meeting room, with a number of chairs arranged in a circle, around some kind of seemingly floating orb of water above it all. This is a meeting between the Chorist faction called the Obsidian Fermata, and the rust punks by the name of the Red Robins. The Fermata is represented by Psalm-in-training Desire Muraj, and a priestess by the name of Clemency Patel, who wears a diving suit wrapped in translucent cloth like some kind of cloak. From the Red Robins comes its logistics leader, Bite Killbite (a wolf/fox nadezhdan draped in vermillion) and the leader of its scouting party, by the name of Static. Hosting the meeting is a priest by the name of Tieg.

Ever since the Muted Requiem attacked the train going between Zandroost and the Heather Pass, the Ivory Crown has been cracking down on travelers. Now the news have come in that they're planning to set up a blockade in the Heather Pass, which is going to make travel and assistance of refugees a big problem. The four discuss a plan that involves setting up a pathway through the Singing Deep, with one end point in the Nacrine Sea and another in the large body of water at the Napitok Dam. The repurposing of a Melody Gate is suggested. Static is eager to commit their scouting unit in full force to the effort, but notes to Bite after the meeting that they suspect Pulse, a member of their unit, may be a spy. Tieg asks the group to explain why this is for the benefit of the people, and Desire and Clemency argue for freedom of movement and for the ability to bring refugees into the fold much easier. In the end, everybody comes to an agreement, and the tehomic bypass project is started.

As it's constructed over the following weeks, we see strange alien barnacles suddenly appear on structures on both sides, accompanied by a tehomic discharge. Someone even notes some fish that have somehow crossed over through the Deep, despite their lack of insulation against tehoma.

Fade to Blue (A Covert Op)
Down a beige cobbled alleyway in the great fortified city of Apollimir, an escaped former Wolfram agent attempts to look casual as they make their way together with two members of the radical art movement Heaven in Blue. Deco Wolf, a tyranon person with blue feather-hair that naturally grows in the shape of a mohawk, was once part of a scouting & requisitions group working for the Garnet Eye. Back then, their callsign was Sanguine, but they're turning a new leaf. All they need to do now, flanked by a huge Chorist piscine man and a small Taimu wildtype woman, is get to the safehouse, then make their way to the Cerberus — a stolen and modified Talon unit, painted with art deco flourishes, with its lupine head transformed into a trio of wolf-and-owl heads. It's not far.

In pursuit is Deco's old squad: Claret, Vermillion, Chestnut, and Red Raptor. Claret, the leader, nervously surveys the scene as she moves in pursuit. She taps Vermillion for decoy duty, and they fall in line with Deco, greeting them like an old friend. Deco's eyes widen, its reply caught in its throat — but the large piscine man steps in front of it, beckoning Deco and their other escort to run for it while Vermillion yells at them, chewing them out as they escape. While they make their way up a staircase leading into somebody's apartment, Chestnut strikes from the shadows, incapacitating the guard. Business as always, Chestnut dutifully ties up the knocked-out guard and leaves him behind a dumpster.

Deco Wolf and its escort run across blue-green shingled rooftops, headed for the secret entrance to their safehouse. The end is in sight, but suddenly they come face to face with Red Raptor, pointing a gun at them. Trembling, Deco's partner (or is it ex-partner now? it must be.) lets them know they'd better not see them here again, ever. And with that, they escape. Somewhere else, far away, we see Deco Wolf staring wistfully out a window as its new comrades in Blue drink and smoke and laugh through the night. And as for the covert squad... well, despite Red Raptor's best efforts (or perhaps thanks to rumours spread by other Heaven in Blue agents), their disgraceful failure goes public. The Garnet Eye becomes known as a division that can't keep its own in line — and if they can't, how are they supposed to uphold the values of Wolfram culture? This, and much more, is on the lips of the citizens of Apollimir that night.

Planning the Approach (Briefing Room)
As the news of the Amber Hand's annexing of Fort Murex spread, it's becoming clear that this is a situation the Nacrine Tide is obligated to intervene in — and it should be a perfect job for the Muted Requiem's strike team. Danica takes it upon herself to lay out a plan of attack together with Captain Pace, poring over maps and deciding an aerial approach is likely too risky. There's normally a ferry that runs from the shoreside town out to Fort Murex, but Pace expects it to be under heavy surveillance by Wolfram at the moment. As they ponder over further weaknesses to exploit, one of Danica's agents informs her that an old ex-Wolfram contact of hers is currently residing in the town, and has the ability to dispense either a guaranteed safehouse or a convenient storage point for their mechs, as an advantageous staging point for their attack.

C helps out with planning by combing over data in the Intelligence Room, leveraging her experience as having been part of the Ivory Crown. Finally, Danica also reports on having secured new parts for the Red Robins, as they'd been running low after beginning the tehomic tunnel project.

Droning Bell (Listening Post)
Somewhere along the northern shore of the Nacrine Sea sits a gigantic mech nicknamed Radio Head. Its primary purpose is to act as a moving surveillance platform that intercepts radio signals from the Wolfram Union. Symbol and Meory are there, meeting up with delegates from the Obsidian Fermata and the Red Robins, who tell them about the currently-in-progress tehomic tunnel between here and the Napitok Dam. Secondarily, they're also here to inspect Radio Head, to make sure it's working correctly. As Symbol goes over its controls, she decides to try and listen in to some Wolfram radio signals. She doesn't get much, until she finally tunes in to one of the Amber Hand's stations, before its automatic encryption seems to kick in. The only phrase she hears is "...we're expecting Captain Laconia by 1400 hours tomorrow..."

As the name Laconia echoes in Symbol's mind, the Song at the periphery of her senses is suddenly drowned out by a deafining, monotonous, droning tone of a bell. She feels herself prickle up with goosebumps, until the drone slowly dissipates, leaving the radio waves crackling warmly with the melody of the Song—her song. Somewhere else, in a cockpit lit by blue light, a silhouetted figure hears the bitcrushed cry of Deeds in his ears.

Eventually, Symbol confides in Meory that she felt the presence of what she understands to be another Psalm, and Meory helps her get a grip on the situation by putting her tactical mind to work.

Divination Game (Fade)
Back at the Requiem, Meory puts down a card from her divination deck in front of her, and eyes Symbol, sitting across from her in Stella's cozy, candle-lit cockpit. Symbol plays a card in return, then Meory, and Symbol retorts by inverting one of Meory's cards. They're playing a game of sorts using cards normally meant for divination, and between them, they hold a conversation using only the meaning of their card plays.

As the day passes, Captain Pace Ouedraogo comes by Meory as well, and plays a game with her. She's impressed by Meory's decoration of her cockpit, and suggests she should pay her to redecorate her quarters. While Pace isn't as well versed in the game as Symbol is, something in the way she plays her cards makes Meory realise something. She sees an urgency in the cards — whether Pace knows it or not, her plays have told Meory she needs to act fast in the strike team's upcoming mission.

Symbol's Sermon (Social Space)
As she does every week, Symbol holds a sermon for the Chorist members of the crew of the Requiem, Danica included. Elsewhere, in C's quarters, they receive an ominous text from a number they don't recognise. Filled with dread about this, C is going to head into the next conflict with a lot on her mind.

Workshop Day (Hangar)
In the hangar, C is fixing up the AQA. It's laying flat, suspended in the air, as they replace and reinforce its shattered armour with new pieces. They're also starting a new project, attempting to weave ablative shielding into its transforming arm. Thankfully, with it being a limb specifically made for customisation, it'll likely be a quick project.

Similarly, Symbol is attempting to build something to improve Deeds' functionality. While Symbol washed up on shore inside of Deeds, the bell that makes up its physical form is not really a machine well suited to aquatic navigation. Rather than wholly modifying Deeds, however, Symbol decides to try and make a frame for it that will enable it to "swim" and dive deep below water while equipped with it, with the hopes that they can eventually investigate what lies at the bottom of the Nacrine Sea — something unknown, but very powerful.

Danica is also here, in the weapons workshop attached to the hangar. As someone trained in assassination, Danica decides she needs a weapon that can really do the job, when it becomes necessary. She's attempting to make herself a set of 'sonic claws', intended as a concealable weapon for self-defence and making decisive strikes. She spots Symbol, and heads over to chat about what she's working on. In the conversation, Symbol ends up opening up to Danica (a fellow Chorist) about being part of the Church of People's Spirit. She shows her the ring around Deeds' neck, and the ring on her collar, noting that they're forged from silver and tempered in tehoma. Danica asks to touch Symbol's ring, and she lets her, before asking her to come to her next sermon.

As the conversation comes to an end, we see a shot of Lambros Fern, who piloted the Pseudoceros against the strike team in their last sortie. They're standing on the deck of an enormous flying, dreadnought, thousands of miles above ground, blanketed by clouds. They can barely see past the clouds, save for a spot of desert far, far away. They narrow their eyes, thinking, before they suddenly seem struck with an idea, and run down into the hangar. They turn a few dials and levers by the vat where the Pseudoceros is kept, emptying the liquid it lays dormant in before hopping in themself and getting to work on a new upgrade.

Back in the hangar of the Muted Requiem, Meory fires up Stella's engines. To everybody's surprise, she takes off all alone, her trajectory set for Fort Murex. Whatever she saw in the cards, the time to act on it is now.