Gilded Sands 08 — Messidor

MESSIDOR was the eighth session of Gilded Sands, played on the 15th October 2020. It was Dodeka's fourth downtime. After a harrowing mission that left three out of the four squad members in dire straits, the squad spends most of their time recovering in Vedro, while continuing to bolster their strength in preparation for the future.

Cast

 * Iskra Garomedon, a reluctant hero. (she/her)
 * Nandi Tin, a conflicted scout. (she/her)
 * Skoryy Feldspar, a self-sacrificial schemer. (she/her)
 * Zoya Gabbro, a haunted infiltrator. (she/her)
 * Beryl Mask, a steadfast revolutionary. (they/them)
 * Senga Yang, a caring priest. (she/her)
 * Kaleidos Green, a grateful recluse. (he/they)
 * Dunyasha Sand, a bold community leader. (she/her)
 * Stem Tromara, a well-meaning biologist. (she/her)
 * Dora Tourmaline, a concerned confidant. (she/her)

Love Letters
This session began with each Dodeka pilot receiving a "love letter"—a short pre-written introduction to their current situation, written by Remi.

Iskra
Iskra,

''Were you conscious upon returning to Vedro, a tired-looking Captain Autumns would’ve brought you a sealed missive, deliberate ink strokes on real parchment, from your comrade in the beryl mask - word that they have things to discuss with you, and that they’ll embark for the city on the Mirror Sea within the next few days. It’s waiting on a small side table by your hospital bed when you awake, likely grogging from your wounds and the work of healing them. The voiceless of the Terrenon Dynasty need you, it urges - and indicates they’ve made contact with your old friend, Kai.''

Nandi
Nandi,

''As you wake from a deep sleep, your bandaged muscles aching, but moving better than they have in weeks, you notice the tell-tale blinking light of a message on your private terminal. Cool sea air tangles your locks as you pull up a chair; you blink away the last of your sleep as you read:''

Date: 00:00:00 00-00-0000

From: [SENDER NOT FOUND]

To: bearpaw@mailshrimp.ifv

Subject:

murderer.

Skoryy
Skoryy,

''It’s a sleepless night as your nerves, your injuries, and your worry over Zoya keep you wired for hours. Warm sunlight in the morning stirs you, frustratingly early, and what can only be described as a stress hangover washes over you as you force your eyes open. A sticky note sits on the outside of your locker, in an uncertain, shaky hand:''

''“You are a good person, Skoryy. I owe you.”''

Zoya
Zoya,

''Your dream roils, churning like a great ocean storm as you slip in and out of consciousness; Skoryy’s hands on your body, Skoryy’s breath in your lungs, being lashed with freezing rain, choking on hot dust, your heart fluttering like a wounded songbird. When you wake, you find you’v’e soaked through your sheets with cold sweat, and a breakfast of bland saltine crackers and thin tea - perfect for your delirious, uncertain appetite - sits on a small side table in your hospital room, along with a small scrap of paper. It reads:''

''“Zoya, you have my utmost thanks for saving me; I’m afraid I must now return the favor. You are sick, with something I can alleviate but not cure. Find me when you have the energy to walk - and eat those snacks slowly. I will do everything I can for you. Please try not to worry.”''

-Tromara

Iskra
Returning to base with severe wounds, Iskra has lost her left arm. She spends the majority of her downtime healing and recovering, and getting used to her new prosthetic arm. She's helped with acclimating to it by Stem Tromara, before joining Nandi (who also has a cybernetic arm) for some physical training that involves playing catch with a little orb drone that lets Nandi throw otherwise-impossible curveballs.

Once she's recovered a little, Iskra finds Beryl Mask, who's made their way to Vedro, as their missive in Iskra's love letter indicated. Beryl Mask wants Iskra's help with an operation to free some House Nessen serfs, which they hope will win over the Slag Knights to their side. Iskra is reluctant; she doesn't want to keep fighting, but Beryl Mask convinces her by telling her that if she doesn't, people will keep suffering.

Nandi
Having spent the last session bedridden from her injuries in GS05 – LUNAR CONJUNCTION, Nandi is finally up on her feet again. She begins her downtime by completing her project of building a testing facility. She finds a perfect spot, although it's already in use—but she makes a deal to share the space, and the squad is now able to much more efficiently enhance the abilities of their mechs.

Realising that both she and Zoya are struggling with their own individual "ghosts", as it were, Nandi takes Zoya along to a meeting with Senga, a Taimu priestess running an orphanage in Vedro. It's Nandi's first time meeting another Taimu person face-to-face since Dipsos Root left her for dead. Nandi asks Senga for help with dealing with the vengeful spirit pursuing her—that is, the sender of the message she received in her love letter—and Senga does her best to help her. She tells her to eat a good meal and pray to Second Nephew Fadhili, the small god of compassion and forgiveness, and tells Nandi she can't deal with her ghosts until her own issues are dealt with.

Nandi has a meaningful talk with Skoryy about how she admires Skoryy's connection with the Ripshaw, wherein Skoryy explains her relationship with her mech as something formed over a long, long time of piloting, and how she sees herself as one with the Ripshaw. For Nandi, wanting this kind of relationship with Mama is why she's been pursuing a neural link with it, and the conversation affirms her wishes to go through with the link. Thanks to the completed testing facility, she's able to do just that, and—through a very elaborate startup sequence—she successfully hooks herself up to Mama.

Skoryy
After having one of her prosthetic legs destroyed in GS07 – BASTILLE DAY, Skoryy spends this downtime in a wheelchair, unable to have the special light materials she requires for her legs acquired in a timely manner by TT. She works herself thin on other projects, and is unable to heal her other injury as well, meaning she will not take part in the next mission.

First, Skoryy attempts to work on taking apart and studying a stolen Argent Canopy railgun with the help of TT and Zoya. However, even with all their efforts combined, they only make minimal progress—almost destroying the inscrutable thing in the process.

She follows up on the note left for her in her love letter; judging by its simple phrasing and uncertain hand, she figures it was sent by Kaleidos Green. She has to ask around to find where they've taken up residence, but makes her way there eventually. His room is spartan and undecorated, but for a hoard of simple foods. She insists that they don't owe her; they're even now, and Skoryy's guilt for kidnapping Tromara in GS01 – TORN PAGES is absolved. However, Kaleidos agrees he will be there to help with dealing with Toporik Jet. Skoryy tells Kaleidos to listen to their radio later—and teaches him how to use it.

Reaching out to Dunyasha next, Skoryy asks for an interview with her to be broadcast. Skoryy is made up to look more beat-up and exhausted than she is, and is asked a series of softball questions by Dunyasha, allowing Skoryy to air her grievances with Toporik Jet freely. Skoryy makes her intention to deal with Toporik clear, and her propaganda gets her in good graces with the Nadezhdan Exiles on Aureate.

Finally, Skoryy throws a small party in Dodeka's new living quarters in Vedro. Friends and acquanitances show up and throw a real rager, but Skoryy and Zoya (still ambiently sick with tehoma poisoning) both spend much of their time on a couch, unable to fully engage with the revelry. As the night dies down, only the two of them remain, and they have a heavy talk about what they mean to each other. Skoryy tells Zoya she's never had anyone like her since Ushel—who was something of a platonic soulmate to her, before they died in the event that became the catalyst for Skoryy's escape from the syndicate. She tells Zoya she can't be responsible for another death like that. Zoya echoes a similar sentiment; she understands Skoryy's pain, and wants nothing less than to see her waste her life throwing herself against Toporik to no avail. Skoryy thanks Zoya for being something she can come home to, and Zoya—lost for words—can only reply with a tearful "thank you too". They spend the rest of the night together in the privacy of a bedroom.

Zoya
When Zoya comes to at the beginning of downtime, she's in a bed next to Skoryy... again. While she wasn't injured in the last mission, she's being treated with dialysis for her tehoma poisoning. The two of them talk about their escape, and Skoryy's strange experience with piloting the Mimic, though they end up dancing around the topic of their mutual care for each other... for now. She begins to notice that she can pick up on the emotions of those near her, in a weak, muted sense.

While Skoryy leaves to take care of her own business, Zoya heads out to find Tromara, as per the instructions in the note she left for her in her love letter. Tromara takes her down a set of stairs, to the waterline below one of the platforms that make up Vedro, where she explains what is happening to her. Zoya is familiar with the sickening feeling of unsafe exposure to tehoma, but requests help figuring out what is going on in her head—why she's able to connect with the feelings and emotions of others around her, and why her thoughts feel pulled in certain unfamiliar directions. Tromara tells her that she's hearing the Song of the Singing Deep, an alien hum that cannot be tuned out, that compels one to further propagate the Song. At hearing this, Zoya breaks down—being infected with the Song was exactly why she escaped Hymn well over a decade ago; it was the thing standing between her and a happy, peaceful life. Tromara attempts to calm her down by talking about her own positive experiences with being a chorist—how it's something that unites her people, and how not even Dodona managed to take the Song out of her, despite their best efforts. Zoya refuses to take her positivity at face value, unable to see it as faith, only a parasite. However, Tromara says that if she doesn't like the Song she's hearing, she can sing a different one. She gives Zoya a thermos of skyberry tea—a drink made from extremely hard-to-cultivate berries from Faraway, whose roots grow into the Deep—and tells her to drink some to calm the Song for a little.

Later, Zoya takes to Vow again for another attempt at seeking out Pasha Marble. This time she knows where to look and who to ask, though she needs Nandi's help to keep her safe and on track, as wandering through the wartime streets of Vow overloads her senses with distressing emotional residue. Eventually, however, she finds that Pasha keeps an office above the Aureate Grande, the Toporik casino in the undercity, and she pulls some strings to get her name put on the waiting list for a meeting with them. Pasha seems to be known around these parts for granting "wishes" to the desperate.

After coming back from her excursion to Vow, Zoya joins Nandi as she goes to meet Senga. The meeting is strange for Zoya, as she's normally very uncomfortable in religious settings, but the emotional residue in the orphanage lets her glimpse what it might be like to find value and happiness in faith. While Nandi is talking to Senga, Senga hands Nandi a Nadezhdan wolf-bird baby to hold, but—being very uncomfortable with the idea of holding them—she hands them to Zoya, who spends a while trying to placate and talk with them, while feeling very emotional about this responsibility.

Still very apprehensive at the thought of piloting the Mimic again after it poisoned her, Zoya neglects to fix it up after the last mission. Instead, she asks Dora Tourmaline for help with trading for a temporary vehicle she can use in its place, and they end up finding a Lowborn Machinist's Guild Mole, a banged-up Terrenon mining mech. Before Dora hands Zoya the keys to it, however, she corners her for a serious talk. She urges Zoya to do what she did once Peschinka Logistics fell apart; put away her mech, stop fighting, live a boring life. Zoya confesses that she wishes she could do something simple like spend the rest of her days growing akakafi beans, she's afraid Skoryy will get herself killed without Zoya's presence. Now that Dora understands the stakes better, she accepts this motive, though she gives her a hard time about making sure they both come home alive.

Mechanical Notes

 * Nandi gains a belief with Skoryy: "Skoryy's not competition".
 * Skoryy gains a belief with Nandi: "Nandi has a lot at stake."
 * Skoryy and Zoya fill out their respective belief clocks with each other, and each take 1 XP.
 * Skoryy checks her belief, "Zoya just wants something good": it's true.
 * Zoya checks her belief, "Skoryy is going to get herself killed if I'm not there for her": it's true.
 * Zoya's XP gain lets her fill out her playbook XP track, and she takes the Empath move Carry That Weight.
 * Skoryy gains a new belief with Zoya: "Zoya has my back."
 * Zoya gains a new belief with Skoryy: " ". (tba)
 * Nandi completes her long term project "Build a Testing Facility".
 * Dodeka gains the Testing Facility FOB upgrade.
 * Skoryy starts a new 8-step Long Term Project: "Reverse Engineer Rail Tech".
 * Zoya starts a new 4-step Long Term Project: "Meet with Pasha Marble".
 * Skoryy declares Toporik Jet as her rival.
 * Dodeka's relationship with the Toporik Syndicate reduced to –1 ("upstart").
 * Nandi fills out her Enhance track, and Mama gains the Quirk "Neural Link".
 * Dodeka's relationship with Kaleidos Green is reset to 0, as Skoryy cashes it in for a drive clock tick (justified by the fact that they're "even" now).
 * Dodeka's relationship with the Nadezhdan Exiles went up to +1, after Skoryy's interview.
 * Skoryy gained a drive clock tick for the interview.
 * Iskra gained a drive clock tick, and now has a full clock.
 * Nandi's drive changed to "Make Mama worthy of her name."