comm 002

[scanninggaydis]

Who: Felix Gaeta
Broadcast: Yes
Action: SS Vanquish
When: Today!

[Felix's posture as he addresses the camera is a little stiff, a little formal. He's kind of in professional research mode, plus he's asking a favor of people so...this is the most comfortable thing. Formality. He's sitting down, with his hands clasped in front of him.]

I've noticed that at least a few other people here have encountered situations similar to this fleet and while I'm sure that someone, at some point, has made some attempt to collect data, it hasn't been public or recent.

[Translation: if it's happened at all (please tell him someone else has noticed this and done their research, come on guys) it's happened too far back for him to bother finding it in the logs of past broadcasts. Plus, he wants to ask his own questions anyway.]

So. If this isn't your first time being stuck in an interdimensional prison, essentially, I'd really appreciate it if you'd fill out the following survey for me. I promise it's short. Although I might want to ask follow up questions, if that's alright.

[There's a small pause, and then he drops the mask of professionalism just a smidge.]

And, I guess, if you want to know anything about an interdimesional prison masquerading as a summer camp, I can answer some questions. Even if you can't or don't feel like participating.

[Following the video, this text ends up on the network:]

1. What was the setting?
2. Was there a particular premise people were brought there under?
3. Was there an explanation of how people were brought there?
4. How long, to people's knowledge, had/have the abductions been taking place?
5. How long on average did people stay?
6. How long were you there?
7. How many transplantees were there at any one time, on average?
8. What kept people from leaving?
9. Did you notice any particular pattern in the type of people brought in?
10. Were there any particular quirks (i.e. augment malfunctions)?
11. Was there a resurrection system in place. If so, how did it function?
12. Additional remarks/anything of significance not covered?

Comments

Text;

[save_the_souls]

1. What was the setting?
It was magic sentient castle, called Cair Paradisa.

2. Was there a particular premise people were brought there under?
To be used as an energy source for the castle. When you arrived, you had something taken from you - memories, an ability, a special item. It varied from person to person.

3. Was there an explanation of how people were brought there?
No, we assumed it was magic.

4. How long, to people's knowledge?
At least eighty years, from the history we could recover. Probably longer. People are still there, last I heard.

5. How long on average did people stay?
Less than a year.

6. How long were you there?
Seven years. Yes, I know. It's a long time.

7. How many transplantees were there at any one time, on average?
A few hundred.

8. What kept people from leaving?
We were on a separate world. We could leave the castle, and some did, but if you went far enough out any powers and technology stopped working.

9. Did you notice any particular pattern in the type of people brought in?
Um, lots of people with powers? But I didn't really look into those things.

10. Were there any particular quirks (i.e. augment malfunctions)?
Yes. We called them "losses", I can't remember why. Sometimes people would turn into animals, children, another gender, be stuck in stupid outfits. And sometimes they'd lose control and start killing fellow residents. Losses were a bit more...eventful than augment malfunctions.

11. Was there a resurrection system in place. If so, how did it function?
People returned from the dead after 2 weeks. When they came back, they usually lost another thing on top of the thing you lost when you came back.

12. Additional remarks/anything of significance not covered?
People didn't age in Paradisa, physically.

[robitussin]

ohhhh here we go

first can i ask why you want to know? like apart from collecting data

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[ladybro]

...A summer camp?

[ because that's what she's taking from this, yep. ]

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[scanninggaydis]

Does that mean I missed something?

[It might be hard to tell, but he's a little professional over text. At least, it's meant to be a little bit more flippant.]

Mostly curiosity and a little boredom. Not necessarily planning to do anything with it, I just want to know.

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[scanninggaydis]

That's what they were claiming, anyway. It was kind of set up like one, adults got assigned...well, some jobs were sort of counselor-like. By the time I got there, the kid-to-adult ratio was a little off, though.

[It's okay, he mentioned it as an enticement for people to talk to him!]

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[ladybro]

...Was there singing?

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[robitussin]

hmmmmm

tell me yours first

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[scanninggaydis]

Thanks.

Eighty years, gods. Did you ever talk to anyone who had been there longer than longer than you?

[It definitely was a long time, but then again he knew someone who had been in Camp for seven, so it's not a surprise.]

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[save_the_souls]

A little. They mostly choose to live away from the castle in the "Dead Zone", and weren't too keen on talking to us very often.

[scanninggaydis]

You know, there was significantly less singing than you'd expect.

[He's clearly a lot more casual about this part of the conversation, leaning back in his seat.]

There wasn't an actual day-to-day camp structuring, either. We were pretty much left to our own devices.

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[passingthrough]

I've heard the question before, but it was a little more informal. [And she can't remember exactly where to send him to stalk it now anyway.]

I like that you call it an interdimensional prison masquerading as something else. Then again I was in that call itself a interdimensional prison and still thought it might really be something else.

[She's still working away at the official answers. All this typing. Bah.]

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[nowyouseeit]

1. at first it was a castle, then it was a snowy area with mountains and a forest and a field and a river and a giant clocktower. the setting changed while i was there

2. yup. everyone's worlds had been destroyed and our souls shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces. some queen named estelle managed to grab pieces of our soul and bring her to the world she created (which was the castle) to give us the change to rebuild our souls and, in turn, our destroyed worlds.

3. see above

4. around. . . two hundred and thirty days? dunno. i wasn't there from the very beginning, and it was easy to lose track of time.

5. depended. some people stayed only a few days, others had been there for the entire two hundred.

6. i was there for two hundred and nine days.

7. at most there were ninety four.

8. them not having worlds to return to? though a few people managed to finish rebuilding their souls and thus, their worlds were rebuilt and they managed to return home.

9. nope. had a pretty eclectic mix of people

10. ha. the whole system of us getting pieces of our soul back was pretty quirky, if you asked me. we had to play in "games" run by all-powerful creatures known as "echoes." if we won, then we'd get a piece of our soul back. sometimes those echoes would mess with us outside of games, just 'cause they could. think of the glitches people experience in their augments. it was similar.

11. yeah. the echoes were able to bring people back from the dead. happened all the time, actually. mostly 'cause a lot of people died in those stupid "games."

12. i wanna know more about your summer camp, actually

[ladybro]

All bunks and no marshmallows?

[feathery]

ok i gotta know the summer camp story
i havent heard about one like that yet

text;

[beathach]

1. Before it was changed, the setting was a castle. Then it became larger and snow-covered, with a clocktower at the center rather than the castle.

2. We were told our worlds had been destroyed and that, through magic, what remained of our soul was brought there so that we could rebuild both our souls, and that in turn would rebuild our worlds. In order to do that, we were placed on teams and forced to compete against each other in different types of competitions we called games, and the winners would receive a piece of their souls back.

3. Yes, we were aware of why we were there.

4. When I woke up there, it had been day 82; I left on day 176. I know it's been longer than that, but I don't know exactly how long.

5. It varied. Some had been there since the first day, and others would only be there a day or less and that was it. Either they would be taken by an Echo (the beings in charge) or they would end up in a pod/mirror. Sometimes people came back as well.

6. 94 days, but it felt like much longer than that.

7. A little under a hundred? Everyone was placed on a team, and teams were made up of 7 people at most. There were 12 in total, as well as a separate team. I don't remember how many were on that team, though. And things changed after I left.

8. That our worlds were allegedly destroyed. That and the place existed outside of everyone else's worlds.

9. It varied. Sometimes like-minded individuals would be placed on the same team, but a lot of the people there were on the younger side - teens, early 20s.

10. There were, and they were very similar to augment glitches. Sometimes it was because the beings in charged liked to mess with us. Other times they were punishments for losing a game.

11. There was, and it was through magic. A lot of the competitions were dangerous, and if someone died during it hey would be resurrected at the end.

12. The pieces of our soul were stored in a mirror; once that was completed, we were sent home. There would be a going away party with enough time to say goodbyes and so on. There's a number of us here who were in Kyriakos, if I missed anything I'm sure they'll be able to add to this. Like I said, there were changes after I left.

[scanninggaydis]

Did they give any reason for that?

[scanninggaydis]

Marshmallows, sometimes. In the Mess Hall. But very few campfires.

Not that I'm complaining, I think a true summer camp experience year round would be exhausting.

[ladybro]

I used to go to Interlochen every summer. Loved it. [ a beat. ] But I could see how that'd be less than great if you had no choice and it never ended.

Text;

[onlyanapple]

Add another one onto the creepy castle thing, because I'm not spending my time writing out what Allen's already said. Better things to do with my time, and all that.

I was there for six years, personally.

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[lord_wizard]

Consider all of my answers marked (*) an addendum to Allen's answers. The rest has been omitted.

1. What was the setting?
(*) The world itself was known as Nostos, though the castle was usually the only part new people were pulled to.

2. Was there a particular premise people were brought there under?
(*) Soul energy, to be precise. It seemed to rely particularly on our emotions.

6. How long were you there?
Almost 5 years

7. How many transplantees were there at any one time, on average?
(*) It fell to a mere few dozen for a year, but otherwise a few hundred is accurate.

8. What kept people from leaving?
(*) People possessing the magic or technology necessary to travel worlds still found it impossible to leave the world. There seemed to be a barrier around the world as a whole, evidenced by a spaceship that entered too far into the atmosphere and lost power, leading to it crashing. In regards to the castle, it also exhibited a particular subtle draw on residents to turn back.

10. Were there any particular quirks (i.e. augment malfunctions)?
(*) It also allowed us to "wish". Spoken or written desires would be granted within limit, though there was a credible theory that excessive wishing and losses were connected.

11. Was there a resurrection system in place. If so, how did it function?
(*) As I understand it, the body once regenerated where it was left, leading to some incidents with burial early on. The castle took to transporting them to their room for the duration later on, probably to prevent that.

12. Additional remarks/anything of significance not covered?
(*) The castle had a penchant for re-arranging itself but also transporting the entire lot of us to different locations - tropical islands, schools, a summer camp, and often functioning replicas of entire Earth cities. We once believed this was a massive transformation of the castle itself, but later expeditions into the rest of the continent proved that these cities were replicated on the world itself, though not populated when we were not sent there.

[save_the_souls]

Not really. They weren't very keen on talking to us.

[scanninggaydis]

I guess making my own information public is fair play.

1. A summer camp, as I stated. While I was there it was somewhere in France, according to some speculation. Previous to that, it had been in the middle of a swamp, and the middle of a cornfield.

2. Something about the camp director's fiancee being murdered.

3. Not that I'm aware of.

4. 11 years in total. They actually let us go, though.

5. About a year, I think.

6. Roughly 3.

7. When I first got there, I think probably around 100, although towards the end more people were allowed to leave and less and less were brought in.

8. Other than the fact that they still wouldn't have been home, there was an invisible dome over the camp.

9. A large number of people from Earth, or some version of it.

10. Yes. It was kind of ridiculous. There were things like the augment malfunctions (turning into a child or the opposite sex, etc.) but a lot of bizarre things happened. It would sometimes rain blood or knives or popcorn. It was incredibly common to have nights where people were transported into other people's beds. A lot of forced socialization. Flowers that displayed your memories to other people. An emphasis on revealing negative or embarrassing information about people, or presenting things out of context to make people look bad.

11. Yes. The way it functioned was complicated. On the surface, you would interact with these small bear-like creatures that supposedly "saved" you/your data (I guess). Like a video game. If you died, you would be brought back exactly as you had been the last time you "saved". I think the period between death and resurrection was short, maybe an hour or two. But the system still functioned even if you didn't choose to "save". More flawed though, and it took longer to work.

12. At the end of every year, we were allowed to leave the camp for a short period of time. You got one day for every year you had been in Camp. Sex was banned for a long time, you would turn into (generally) a small, cute animal if you tried to do anything with another person.

[...It all sounds way more ridiculous when he writes it down.]

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[scanninggaydis]

I'm very serious about formality.

[...He says, as he leans back in his chair, not very formal at all. He did the Thing, now he gets to go back to gentle sarcasm and flippantness.]

And, I mean, I'm not sure what else to call it, it clearly wasn't actually a summer camp. And they were holding us against our will. I didn't ask last time if you had any theories about what yours really was.

[Why not distract your survey taker from actually filling out their survey? It's such a solid plan.]

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[scanninggaydis]

Thanks for your response.

[Is it sarcasm? It's so hard to tell with text, isn't it? (It's...not? Mostly.)]

So, three for the "creepy castle thing", then.

[scanninggaydis]

I guess that would make it hard to get information on why they didn't want to talk to you.

[Humor!]