etrayalogs | MISSION 009

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MISSION 009

⏵ CAMP ETRAYA ⏴
On May 16th, Aurora and the companion bots direct those not heading off to Solmara to make their way to Camp Etraya.

Nestled away from everything else in a large clearing full of wildflowers and redwoods, Camp Etraya is a nostalgic summer camp experience put together just for it's residents! Cabins are assigned, scary stories are told around campfires, gossiping happens among friends on the trails surrounding the cabins - and don't be surprised when something goes awry. After all, this is still Etraya.

While the rest of Etraya is still accessible and will not be blocked off, characters are discouraged from venturing far from camp for too long: Aurora will specify that they are on a mission, and that missions do require participation, but she has intentionally left them the freedom to wander. Not sleeping in their assigned cabins, not participating in events, and staying away from Camp Etraya will end with her having to take more extensive security measures, so please be on your best behavior! The last thing she wants to do is start enforcing boundaries, but she will if she has to.

Camp is set up much like your generic summer camp! Each cabin is named, housing is assigned to characters as they arrive, there are camp counselors, and rotating daily tasks and chores. There are also multiple activities that characters are expected to participate in, and each activity is worth points that goes toward their camp graduation score. This score will be visible on their earpiece, and follows the A-F grading system. We are not be monitoring this, and are leaving character scores up to players. We do, however, ask that you please report your characters' camp grade HERE for rewards and demerits to be handed out after the mission itself.

Cabin assignments can be found here, which also has their roles, and chores assigned to that cabin. Those who are participating in Solmara have received an assigned cabin, too, but their absence toward the beginning will not harm the cabin's ability to compete given how spread out their assignments are.

⏵ WELCOME TO CAMP ⏴

Camp life is meant to instill a sense of belonging, connection with nature, encouragement towards the creative, all on top of a firm foundation of responsibility. Upon arriving, campers will be escorted towards a table of white t-shirts and countless buckets of dye!

Each Etrayan will be invited to make three Tie-Dyed shirts- as well as required to wear one as part of their summer uniform. Camp counselors must wear 80s basketball shorts or cut-off jeans. Campers may wear cargo shorts or a skort. For those with physical limitations to what they can wear, accommodations will be provided.

Here, bonding is the camp runners' priority. They will be pushed into various ice-breaker activities, such as trust falls, two truths and a lie, and Never have I Ever. As the sun goes down, there will be weenies roasting over the bonfire, followed by s’mores and a sing-a-long! With the stars well-visible, it’s off to bed with campers.

Each day after will start much the same: with the ringing of the bell and raising of the flag (Aurora, while unfamiliar with flag designs but an understanding of the concept, has chosen a rainbow flag for the camp. Rainbows make people happy, right?), followed by a meal at the Great Hall, morning assembly, activities with counselors, chores, free time, and then an evening winding down by the great fire. An hour after sun down, campers will be escorted back to their cabins for curfew. Camp Counselors are expected to keep track of their campers, and ensure they're all within their cabins for bedtime. This is part of their grade, too! Curfew lifts an hour before the first bell.

⏵ CAMP ACTIVITIES ⏴

As with most summer camps, Camp Etraya offers a wide variety of activities to participate in. While some of these activities may be mandatory, others are optional. We'll be leaving this up to individual player discretion: perhaps Viktor is mandated to report to arts and crafts, whilst it's optional for Silco to show. Silco, on the other hand, may be mandated to report to the archery contest. Characters are encouraged to participate in a minimum of one camp activity per day.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of camp activities.

Three-Legged Race - You and a partner are tied together at your ankles, and you must race others to the finish line. Those with abilities that would give them an advantage will find that the rope that ties them together hinders those abilities from functioning.
Archery - This can be more traditional, magical, or include moving targets! If you're particularly unlucky, your target may even shoot back.
Softball - What instills a sense of camaraderie better than a bit of team sports? Games will be held on Wednesdays, the field is otherwise available for practice.
Dodge Ball - Standing diametrically opposed to Softball is dodge ball, the bully’s sport. This is a great opportunity to claim dominance or be sent to the Nurse’s Office.
Obstacle Course - You are directed into a large maze with multiple obstacles for them to overcome, such as rock climbing walls, ramps, tires, and nets.
Capture the Flag - Small teams are put together in order to take the flag from a particular bot, whose entire goal is to avoid being caught.
Canoe Race - Canoes are placed into the rivers just off of the camp, and characters must race to the finish line.
Chocobo Riding - Learn how to care for and ride these magnificent birds! Newbies will be taken around the corral, whereas more experienced riders can take the trail around the lake.
Arts and Crafts - Make friendship bracelets, bead lizards, paint rocks, learn origami! Or perhaps you're tasked with putting together an enchanted necklace. Don't know how to do enchantments? Now is as good of a time as any to learn.
Campfire stories - Share scary stories amongst yourselves around the campfire late into the night. If you're particularly unlucky, you may just hear the thing you were just warning others about..

⏵ NIGHT TIME ⏴

Once campers have been put to bed, the counselors can still stay up. Unwind with hidden beers and the strumming of a guitar. Don’t get too comfortable, though, since without supervision, no one is keeping the campers in bed.

After dark, should campers evade their counselors, they can go exploring in the dark. Eerie lights glimmer from the lake. There’s rumors of a headless spectre walking from the archery field to the edge of the forest. Should you behave, you still might hear a scratching at your bunk house window.

And on the very last night of camp, there will be a talent show. Show off your hidden talent and bask in the excitement of wowing your fellow campers!

⏵ NOTES ⏴

Welcome to Camp Etraya! Please enjoy the s'mores and campfire songs. :)

Camp will last approximately two weeks, going from May 16th to May 30th.

For all questions relating to this mission, please refer to the plotting post. All other questions can be directed to the FAQ.

⏵FULL NAVIGATION⏴

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Barbara isn't enthused about the notion of being here—and this place sent back home the one person who could have taken that vague crack of willingness to try regardless, that's always in Barbara and blown it bright, wide open. As is, sans Dick, and even plus Haley, she less than inclined to try. At least when one of her family members isn't around. The only reason she is doing her mandatory assignments and cabin chores, is because she still needs the mission points to turn on the third of the three massive computer systems her family has in this place.

That's her real job, even if it requires doing these jobs.

She's not going out of her way to join into things, though occasionally, she does wander around, out of sheer restlessness and an instinctual reaction to the level of shrieking (that has everything to do with almost colliding canoes causing laughter and not people attacking each other in the streets), when she spots Harold—sitting alone. Not far off from the same sight. ]

Considering making your big splash, Harold?

Not even close.

[ He answers immediately, without having to think about it, though there is a trace of ruefulness to his apply. Harold isn't comfortable talking about it even at the best of times, but he is more than self-aware enough to realize what his limitations are. Long ago were the days he'd take a quick break from coding to do a mile on the treadmill.

The rest of this mission is banal enough that he's willing to play ball, engage in order to get points -- he just isn't going to exert himself all that much. The truth is, he hasn't tried swimming since he got these injuries, and he absolutely isn't going to try in a semi-public setting like this. ]

I like to keep my incidents of public humiliation to a minimum, or at least engage in them for more worthy causes than this.

[ Barbara is—if not quite entirely used to, then—at least not unexpecting the razor edge of directness in Harold's rebuff. She could understand why people might assume it was acerbic. Still, she's come around to the fact that it's how Harold directly confronts things, even pretty general topics, when he has a decided opinion about them.

He's not the first man in her life to be as such. And in the end, he's far less brusque than Bruce can be. Barbara has a faintly amused smile as she takes a seat on the log bench beside him. She can't imagine he wanted to leave his tower and library much more than she wanted to leave hers. ]

They don't look like they're embarrassing themselves that much, do they?

[ Harold won't be rude even in dire circumstances, generally speaking, but he does see directness as a form of respect. With people he likes, he doesn't hold himself back. He takes rebuttal well and can give and take without escalating in tone. ]

Them, no. Me doing the same activity? [ He sounds incredulous, even a little scornful. Harold doesn't explain anything about his injuries to anyone, but occasionally he's tempted. This is only the last few years, he'd say. I used to be an avid jogger, can you imagine?

But he doesn't want pity. Not when he can still walk and Nathan died. ]

I notice you aren't throwing yourself into the lake either. [ Please let them not talk about his own impairments. ]

"I'm feeling far less inclined toward obedient compliance after they sent my boyfriend home."

It's been a month. Mostly. And some change. Maybe that's made it easier to say. Or maybe it's easier to say both blithely—the happenstance and her easy regretlessness toward rebellion at such a slight in a calm, even tone—because Harold is not one of her family. Someone complicated under the same constraint of adjusting to the absence of the boy who holds the center of their family.

"Summer camps weren't something my childhood had as a regular feature."

Even if she can admit, "Though they do look like they are having fun."

(Dick would have been at the heart of that, hamming it up, too.)

He's sympathetic to what this must mean for her, but Harold doesn't know her well enough to offer more than trite condolences, so he doesn't. She's clearly trying to breeze past it in a way he can understand. He just files the piece of information away.

"Do we know that was deliberate?" he wonders, drawn into speculation almost despite himself. At least he's used to thinking critically about their mysterious invisible overlord while going about some ridiculous task, whether that's Samaritan or Echo. "We've really had very little evidence about Echo's true character. They could be less of a mastermind and more of a hapless annoyance with too much power.

"I'm leaning toward the latter given our present mission," he finishes dryly.

Barbara isn't sure just what she was expecting to be the reaction to those words—the magnitude of a bomb dropped with all the calm aplomb of sharing what the front page news story was, before folding it and returning it to dinner—but he doesn't apologize. And he doesn't fawn. Or correct her. Or touch on it specifically to the word.

(And, maybe, just maybe, she likes Harold just the slightest bit more.

In a way that has so little to do with not having a single reason to dislike him before. But maybe because there's an edge room to breathe around just saying it, without having to justify it—or justify herself, like a font style or code string equation, better to suit the person next to hers feelings about it, or feelings about how they feel she should be feeling or dealing with those feelings.)

"No. We don't." Maybe she's careful with just how she decides to answer it. But that's normal. She always knows too much, in too many ways. "Any number of people get new memories of their lives here, but an almost negligible two to three have returned after vanishing entirely. There are a lot of free variables, even after being here over a year."

There's just been so many shocks in Harold's life by now, so many metaphorical bombs of various magnitudes, that he's started to take them with equanimity. Or maybe that's the complex PTSD and trauma speaking. Regardless, he won't insist someone else air out their emotions for his consumption. He certainly never offers to do that.

Loss is private, and to be respected, and Harold would never presume that someone else should share it with him.

"I agree," he muses, finding this topic far preferable to the absurdity of adult summer camp. "Have you been tracking disappearances and reappearances? I'm not sure we can extrapolate much from such a small sample size, but it's anecdotally interesting."

He pauses, considers his next words. Something like empathy lines his tone despite the utterly practical nature of what he says. Empathy can be offered subtly, without demand.

"I'm cooperative because accruing mission points means accruing resources, but I am not credulous about our ostensible purpose."

"When I can." It's a light enough admission to be both inadmissibly an understandable 'shortcoming' and obliquely honest—when someone doesn't know just what Barbara can do, and does nothing short of that ever. Refuses to stop where that line ends. Ever. As though it's a personal necessity to always the line. She tracks so much of what's happened here. Enough to know the data is as interesting as it is, often still inconclusive. Just as much as the number of people she can fully discuss that with is still at a minimum, even so long later into it.

There's still so much they don't know.

She appreciates the pragmatism of his words. Most of her family set themselves to it long ago—though none of them quite at the same level as her; and most, beause, you only need to look to Damian's menagerie to know where some of them out it—and she'd think most people here would, as well, but most people aren't trained the way they are. She hasn't stopped accruing points and using them for just that reason.

"But not cooperative enough to brave a lake."
It's more light ribbing than it is anything else.

A lightness to her voice even as it feels oddly, and not uncommonly, like she's having a completely different conversation with herself and this place right below it. Staring out to the water, and the shrieking people, but just as much seeing them as not at all. She knows, on some level, she's sulking, as much as one can be without it having more than the outward appearance of that one sentence said, and it won't help her with what hasn't changed, that she still needs to do. But maybe she's giving herself the day. After all, she is still here.

Harold takes it as it's meant, that she tries when it's practicable but has not made a concerted effort to do so. It makes sense, and is the same for him. Information is power, but statistics are deceiving. Humanity can't be drilled down to numbers. Harold will use every scrap of logic available to him but will ultimately defer to the complete illogic of the privilege of being.

Whether one or two people go and come back and remember, himself included, doesn't imply anything for the rest of them. They each need to make their own choices, and they should be respected.

"We can only judge for ourselves where practicality ends for us and dignity begins," Harold answers with an equally deceptive lightness, gazing out across the water at the other Etrayans enjoying themselves and garnering participation points at the same time. There's no threat to their dignity the way there would be for him.

"Don't you think, Ms. Gordon?"

If she wants to sulk in her grief, he won't judge her. They each need to make their own choices, and they should be respected. That might as well be his personal mantra.

There are several people here on the campgrounds who would be glad to extend the same mercy, but Barbara's not looking for it. Or, perhaps, she's not looking for it in the way people expect her to, or expect her to exhibit it. There's a cooler logic to it than Jason wants, and of the others, the next person—the first person—would have been Dick, and he's proved time and time again, after all these years, he'd hardly need the words even when she doesn't want to say them.

(Somehow, being Dick Grayson, he'd find a way to coax them out despite that, too.)

He'd be out there. Balancing like it was no business of his, that gravity or the oscillation of waves happened to be part of the equation not everyone else could skate right over. But Harold's response pulls her back, and she looks over at him again. The faintest raise of brows above her glasses is the only hint of the words that come out at a tilted angle.

"I think it's still surprising your dignity has deigned to wear tie-dye."
Could not everything, perhaps, be an option outside his fastidious suits?

"That was a near thing," he retorts dryly, "but it did end up landing on the side of practicality for me."

Harold ultimately decided he preferred the points and the lack of confrontation with his cabin counselor. It was, though, a very near thing.

"The mission points," Barbara nods, returning to what he'd said only minutes earlier. It's the whole having been here for over a year that makes her feel less inclined to be pinched by the fact that she might get less out of this sunnyside campout catastrophe this month.

(Unless she decides to finally ask for the supplies to make more of the space station communicators. Except that it is still more unwieldy than the delicacy and anonymity of use she likes to put into the pieces she makes for her family and teammates back home.)

"If it's not prying too much, what are you planning for some of your next uses of them?"

Harold is not a hoarder per se but he absolutely believes it's impossible to be too prepared, and in that respect he will accumulate points assiduously. What if five people die at once and he needs to anonymously pay their death prices? He'd just like to be ready.

Conveniently, he's already purchased most of his immediate needs -- secure residence in the library, at least a basic computer set up, and John had gotten him his wardrobe -- so he can answer her question honestly.

"I'd like to keep some in reserve in the event that someone dies. Losing a memory is not an acceptable outcome to me. And having a get out of jail free card ready for a mission can't hurt, either."

It's a smart plan, and one not as many have taken up. One that's in the deck she continues to plot out, but there's so much she still needs first, even a year in. To complete for her family. For the reach across this place. And the potential for dying in the line of duty? They've been facing that for their whole lives. That it only happens here about every two months is almost a bizarre break (if one were to forget the whole kidnapping part).

But it raises a question in the wake of his words, near immediately—some curiosity, but it's far more serious than anything else. A calm question, with a deferential lightness, as the topic isn't the easiest to broach when people have encountered it in the worst ways.

"Have you dealt with that happening with any of your people so far?"

For someone who likes his creature comforts as much as Harold does, he really doesn't need very much to feel satisfied with what he has. Beyond appreciating art, material possessions tend to be transient in his life, with only a few rare exceptions like the photograph he keeps of himself and Nathan.

The way she says any of your people is interesting, but he supposes that's a valid question to ask of anyone, framed that way.

"Not yet," he answers, not counting John's very real death at home as it wasn't something that happened here. And he isn't about to discuss it, in any case. "Since this barely feels like it qualifies as a mission, however, I'm expecting our next one to be significantly more demanding."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

MISSION 009

Closed: Harold { you don't have to change a thing

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