Mac's Tale

After quite a while of very minimal time in EU I heard about Cyrene and was intrigued enough to look into it a bit. After reading some of the fiction I was inspired enough to write a little RP something about making my way to the new planet from Calypso.

It’s been way to long since my muse last visited me so I’m probably more than a bit rusty.

Here goes anyhow:
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Something had died in my mouth. My tongue had grown some sort of cross between hair and mold. A trox was gnawing on my skull from the inside.

I got up anyhow and went to splash cold water on my face. Some made its way into my mouth and managed to feel good so I ended up guzzling down a half gallon. Probably needed it. Thought about eating something and quickly changed my mind when my stomach promised to eject its contents if I did so much as whiff an egg. While staring into the mirror and contemplating a fist shaped bruise on my left check I felt a thought in the back of my mind that was having more trouble getting going than I was. I played back last night’s events in my head as I dressed and performed some maintenance on my firearms. Cleaning the KK’s helped clear my mind a bit.


It was pretty typical night in a typical dive and I was getting typically drunk. This was the kind of place that drinkers go to. Not the kind where people go to party. It’s dimly lit, has a big gutted hairy bartender whose clothing can be mistaken for being a camouflaged pattern in poor light and has lots of cheap booze. It also has a low resolution video monitor with scratchy sound that’s usually turned down to just a murmur in the background. There’s a sturdy mesh over it to protect it from damage.

I had sat in my usual booth while the bartender kept me supplied with beer to go with the bottle I was pouring from that night. He considered me to be a good customer in that I didn’t cause problems and had a prepaid bar tab. As was the norm I was alternating between glass and bottle while staring at the monitor and not watching it. As usual there was nothing on it but advertising. The standard group of patrons was in so it was pretty quiet for most of the night.

Well after midnight a small group came in and hit the bar. It was obvious they had been making the rounds as they were unsteady in their walk and were being louder than they had to be—as though that would make up for slurred language. They proceeded to continue their binge while the rest of us pretty well ignored them.

As another beer hit my table the volume on the new patrons went up as one of them started going on about someone I knew. It wasn’t nice stuff they were saying. Normally I don’t pay attention to that kind of drunken talk but the person they were speaking of was someone I liked and admired. I tossed back my glass, downed my beer and stood up. I signaled the bartender to give the men a round of shots on my tab and walked up to them as he poured. They saluted me and threw back the drinks.

“Gentlemen, the statements you made are about a friend of mine and in complete error.” Sure, I hadn’t been in touch with her in a few years. Sure, I parted ways because I felt we butted heads far too much. That didn’t mean I cared to listen to their drivel. I got the witty response of blank looks from three of them and a “Huh?” from the loud-mouth.

“You some sort of perfesser ya feff-turd?” Loud-mouth said as the shot glasses hit the bar top. “What the hell you mean anyhow?” The bartend shot me a look that said don’t and I shrugged an apology back.

“It means you’re full of shit.” I elucidated. The four stood up and the merriment commenced.

Maybe it was the new brand of hooch, perhaps it was the run of luck I’d been having on the hunt or maybe I was just bored. Probably all the above as I don’t ever start fights. This one was a good one and quickly expanded as the other patrons were…disturbed. The bar has weapons check up front but that’s really more for fire arms: As events escalated small blades, truncheons and e-fists came out.

Soon after the bar’s area stunners were used. The bartender woke me first due to my good standing and sent me on my way home. “Mac, your tab's filled. You’ll need to start a new one when you come back.” He told me as I headed to the door. “In a few months.” He finished as I went through it.


I put my weapons in their holsters and thought about hitting the wilds again. I could stand to try increasing my funds. The idea fell flat, I just wasn’t inspired. That’s when that hidden thought came forward. I was bored with Calypso--Done. It was time to move on.

Arkadia sounded good I figured. There were also some tidbits I’d heard about another planet that was soon to be opened up. I would have to check that one out as well. If nothing else there’d be new bars with new types of hooch.

There’s always a bar.

 

Drivel, eh? Nicely done Mac, and thanks for posting it. Quite a bit has changed.

 

More filler leading to my avi getting to Cyrene. Pretty much I’m just RPing getting from Caly to Arky. As I had not gone into space (in game) before I figured I’d act that out as well—that part of this section is pretty much how it really went.

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I can sit around dithering about what to do and then making a mental to-do-list that is sometimes used. Or, on occasion, I just move on an idea I get. This was one of those times.

There was very little for me to take care of in the leaving of Calypso. Dumping my stock-pile of trade goods went quickly. Getting a Quad and getting it space worthy was soon done. Packing my gear took the longest. Thankfully I didn’t have a heck of a lot: A few different armor sets, guns and some melee weapons as well as the equipment for the various trade skills that I’d gathered over the years. My meager wardrobe completed the list.

My paint-can collection would stay on Caly.

Guess I should’ve done more than lightly skim through the manual for the quad before setting out. The vehicle definitely flew differently when out of the atmosphere but I managed to get a handle on it before anything too catastrophic happened. I didn’t mind a minor dent in my ship and the antenna array that I knocked off the space station didn’t look badly damaged and could be easily reattached. I’d likely get a bill though…

If I’d remembered to leave a forwarding address. Oops.

While not immune to beautiful vistas; I had been born and raised on an orbital habitat back in the Sol system so the sight-seeing and star-gazing didn’t last long. This was good thing as this meant that I figured out that I’d gotten lost much sooner than other-wise. I’d briefly visited a couple of other planets before the inter-planetary teleports went unstable and had to be shut down but had never actually navigated in space before.

After some scrambling and digging I found the quad’s user manual. I rediscovered why I’d only skimmed through it before setting out. It wasn’t all that informative but I did manage to figure out how to set the navigation way-point. After that it was just a matter of staying away from any direct routes that may have pirates and countering travel-boredom.

There was plenty of boredom—the trip took long enough. I was glad to see Arkaidia’s point of light grow into a planetary sphere and looked forward to making planet-fall.

 

What fun ... keep it going, this will be interesting to read.

 

Arkadia in view.

Another blue marble with white swirls across it. I looked on as the disk expanded and decided to bypass the orbital station. It was in the middle of a gulp of coffee that I found out that I couldn’t bypass the station entirely. With a shrug of the shoulders I paid the port fee, set the mug in its holder and headed in.

The only thing of note in the approach to the planet was a long staccato squeal of static coming across the all band scanner. I was just hitting atmosphere and had hull ionization starting to build so I let the recorders handle it. It was my first planet-fall after all so I stayed focus on landing—I could check it out after.

I set down at Celeste Harbor South and while waiting for the quad to cool a bit I played back that squelch of static. I managed to catch something about some poor guy stuck in space and running low on supplies. Running the rest through various filters didn’t help clear up the rest of the transmission very much. I got a bit about a mysterious new planet which was interesting as it sorta dove-tailed with what I’d heard on Calypso. The rest made little sense to me and I wrote it off as being too garbled for recovery with the skills and equipment I had. I saved the recording to disk, set foot on the planet and the quad in storage.

Someday I might know more—I rather hoped I would. I mean, come on…Egyptian hippogriffs talking about scabs on a sun? No way that could be right.

I put it out of my mind and walked about the port a bit. As I had predicted there was a bar. It was a nice looking place; rather touristy. Probably well stocked with sweet tasting trendy drinks and imported beers. Wasn’t the type of place I’d pick for serious drinkin’. While I was curious about the local hooch I was not interested in a drink at the moment—I had a new planet to explore.


I did say there’s always a bar though.