[Open Broadcast]

[protect_and_serve]

Who: Everyone on the telepathic network (which is everyone)
When: Just after the new arrivals show up.
What: Joscelin attempting to get things organized.

[There’s a lot of chatter going on, literally making it hard to hear yourself think, between veterans gossipping and speculating what the new wave of Travelers means, and accidental broadcasts by panicked new arrivals, until one hard-edged thought cuts through it all.]

Enough.

You all need to stop this before we drive ourselves insane.

Anyone with experience on the Network, I want a few organized broadcasts offering help and information to newcomers. We don’t call them Fools.

If you’re new, stay calm. No-one can overhear you unless you’re projecting. Try to divide yourselves as evenly as you can between the people giving you answers. That much is instinctive, you won’t have trouble as long as you can imagine it.

Anyone who’s been here longer and wants to speculate? Don’t do it publicly. Find your own little corners, or keep it off the network.

New telepaths. You’ll need to find someone more experienced more than anyone else does.

And everyone be ready for a new Jaunt.

Comments

[protect_and_serve]

It's happened to us all. Be thankful it wasn't more embarrassing.

[moredakka]

Oh yeah. I really am. [She knows herself after all.]

Uh, was it just you or could everybody hear that just now including that guy...

[protect_and_serve]

Who did you imagine hearing it?

[moredakka]

Well, you're the one I'm talking to but I guess I was answering him so also him...

Crap.

[protect_and_serve]

It's probably good for him.

[moredakka]

Isn't he going to be angry?

[protect_and_serve]

Still good for him.

[moredakka]

Why does he have to be like that anyway! We only just got here. It makes sense that we don't know anything!

[protect_and_serve]

'Fool' is what some people call anyone who hasn't completed their first Jaunt. It's the first card in a fortune-teller's deck.

[moredakka]

So it's some sort of rank? Like 'cadet'?

[protect_and_serve]

To someone like him, yes. I'd rather not start by insulting people I have to work with.

[moredakka]

Cadet sounds much nicer than Fool...

Though if he's a superior officer I guess he can just call us whatever he wants.

[protect_and_serve]

We're not military, we don't keep ranks. Lucky for him, or I'd outrank him.

[moredakka]

But someone is in charge, right? I mean someone's got to be.

[protect_and_serve]

No. No-one gives us orders. There's one rule - Travelers don't turn on each other. I enforce that. But I'm not in command.

[moredakka]

Uh, but aren't we supposed to do missions? Someone's told me that we investigate things. So we can't just do whatever we feel like.

[protect_and_serve]

We cooperate. Mostly. There are... factions.

[moredakka]

[Oh shit. Politics. She is really bad at politics.]

... that doesn't sound very effective.

[protect_and_serve]

Then I'm describing it well.

[moredakka]

What about the people who recruited us? Don't they care that things don't get done?

[protect_and_serve]

We've never seen them, so it's difficult to ask. But they do... punish us... for being rebellious.

[moredakka]

I really don't like the sound of that.

[protect_and_serve]

Three days ago, there were forty veterans.

[moredakka]

[For once, rather than more flailing, there is a drawn silence.]

Did they all... die?

[protect_and_serve]

More likely, they were left behind when the Jaunt ended, or sent through a different Portal. We had a bad time of it, and they... gave up. And declared they gave up.