Welcome to Gaia! ::

The camp was more of a small portable city than a temporary shelter. The portable respiblocks, each displaying the symbol of their queen, were neatly set in rows, forming orderly streets for trolls to travel between. In the center, larger buildings had been erected, with a huge portable hive towering in the center, watching over all the hustle below. The powerful artificial moonlight devices set up around almost made it possible to forget that the base was set underground, and even the faint twinkling of crystal set in the rock above mimicked distant stars.

Trolls had begun to arrive en masse now, responding to the royal 'plea' for help, shuttled in by pods and directed towards their designated sleeping areas. Blue and purplebloods towards the center, in the more spacious residential areas, with lowerbloods stacked together around the outer areas of the camp, of course. While volunteers were shown places where they could help out, in the kitchens, on guard, most of the work in the camp was carried out by drones and 'real' soldiers, adult trolls who knew what they were doing, and what their orders were. For the rest, they were expected to wait for further instructions, while causing minimal disturbance in the smoothly oiled gears of Alternias army.

The entire camp wasn't in stasis however, as parties of scouts regularly came and went, scouring the catacombs under the planet for any sign of the elusive lusus that was now so desperately needed. Rumour, passing through the camp like lightning, said that even the current Mother Grub had disappeared, dragging her dying body away from the brooding grounds and out of reach of even the troll physicians that had been tending to her. In an attempt to try and fight the upsetting nature of these rumours, and generally lighten the tense atmosphere, all trolls had been authorized to organize and run games, put on plays, and host open-mic nights. These met with some success, as no troll would pass up the opportunity to see battle harden soldiers with faces that were a patchwork of scars, standing in oversized pants and comedically floppy hats, reciting 'humorous' poetry. It was truly an education.


Training

Each night there are plenty of opportunities for your troll to receive training for the work to come. The army has set up the base camp as a sort of new recruit training school, and always has soldiers out training whoever they can get their hands on. Large screens have been set up throughout camp, showing the current offered 'courses' for trolls to join in.

Every day from April 8 till April 26 , you can have your troll choose one of the activities listed below, and write a short post of them completing the activity as well as rolling a d6. You will get points equal to the number rolled, and at the end your troll will be rewarded based on how many points you scored in total for each activity. You can get a maximum of 50 points in one activity. Feel free to roleplay two or more trolls participating in the same classes.

Survival 101
In any harsh climate the biggest factor to success of a mission is remaining healthy and safe while traversing the environment. Stamina training, climbing, swimming, and stealth training are emphasized in this course. Show up at the cavern wall east of the camp to participate.

Navigation 101
Preparing yourself for any situation is essential in combat and in life. Knowing your terrain is the key to preparation. Learn stellar navigation, tracking, mapping, and marking skills. With this skill set you will never be lost again. Ocean and stellar travel not covered. Meeting place for this course is at the pod docks. Trips to the surface will be made for stellar navigation.

Combat 101
To win a battle is to win in combat. An unprepared fighter will be cut down by a more experienced opponent. Do not become this troll. Learn to master your weapon, to read your opponents body language, and to keep your thoughts focused and centered in the heat of battle. Report to the training ring in the northwest section of the camp.

Medicine 101
Do you enjoy the gratitude of other trolls? Do you have a strong stomach? Then you might be suited to the career of a combat medic. Come to the medical tent and learn how to bandage, sew, and weld injured trolls back together. Trolls are advised to wear clothing that does not stain easily.

Tactics 101
Any troll can fight, but few do so with any real intelligence. Show up at the same training ring as the combat lessons to join us in observing their battles. We will be watching from the perspective of the loosing troll, and using tactical thinking to consider ways they might have been able to win the battle. We will then apply these techniques in combat training of our own.

Survival 101.

Yep, that sounded just right for a reluctant new recruit like Abrila. It wouldn't do her good to die for some stupid reason like being unable to swim. And that was the only reason she found herself in line to throw herself into the tepid, underground fluid that may or may not have been water.

She felt uncomfortably exposed without her sweater. Or without pants... at least in public. For once in her life she wished the line would go faster so she could remove her horrible excuse for swim gear and hopefully never, EVER see it again.

Finally, the next group was called forward and Abrila found her place. If she was going to learn, she had to NOW, so she gritted her teeth and prepared to dive in. A loud horn blared, and the rest of the trolls were in the water before Abrila even knew what was going on. Then someone pushed her. She hit the surface of the water, gasping a mouthful of it in surprise. Oh gog, she couldn't do this! She flailed around a while, feeling herself sinking deeper... deeper...

Oh. Her feet could touch the bottom. Well, THAT was stupid. She immediately ceased flailing and turned her movements into a sloppy front crawl. Yeah, she totally meant to do that. Even if her blazing orange cheeks suggested otherwise.

Tactics 101

Making short work of the lamp Minist slid down the pole. Stuffing her tools back to god knew where she kept them she looked around for something else to do. Maybe she could find more interesting devices to mess with? Instead her eyes fell on to one of the many screens set up around the base proclaiming the training schedule. It looked like tactics would be starting soon. That could be fun, watching some trolls beating the snot out of each other and then telling them what they did wrong. With a wicked grin she set off for the training ring.

They had been supplied some paper and pencils to make notes of the battles they watched. Minist just used it to doodle. Who wanted to take notes? Right when her mind was wandering, however, she snapped back to reality at the sound of someone yelling. Looking around she spied a soldier telling off some other cadet. Seeing his shocked face she snickered and noted the keytar, probably the source of the soldier's anger. Oh look, now he was tripping over himself. As funny as it was to watch Minist felt the eyes of another soldier on her and returned her focus to the battle she was supposed to be analyzing. As boring as it was it did prove to be a constructive mental exercise. Something better than vandalizing army property.

Tactics 101

"There's no way that we can each hope to become proficient in everything," Hazzan explained to her friends as they arrived at base. She was carrying herself in a way that said I'm the brains in this outfit. Chin up, shoulders back, gut sucked in as thin as it would go. Eyes sparkling, she made a cursory glance around the training hall before alighting on the tactics course. Learning how to get inside someone else's head sounded like a brilliant idea to her!

"I'm going to start with tactics," she proclaimed to Frossa and Alifax. "You two should pick up something useful, too! I'll catch up with you closer to morning."

With a final wave of encouragement, Hazzan strode off to find the tactics lesson. Although it got off to a rocky start (some idiot purple-blood seemed to think this was a sing along), she listened to the instructor with desperate intensity and took careful notes. It seemed that her experience flarping was going to be of some service here, although not as much as she would have hoped.

You had to learn from the ground up, she supposed. That was just what being a recruit was all about. But so long as the enlistment was temporary and Hazzan was getting some useful skills out if it, she didn't see any reason to worry - even when the instructor seized a handful of her gut and berated her for being some kind of chubby insult to trollmanity.

Hazzan swallowed the lump in her throat and dug her quill into her paper, cutting neat incisions in the shape of letters. She was going to make it to the top of the class - she was determined. Between herelf, Frossa, and Alifax, they were going to be the best team ever.

xx
xxxx

Combat 101

Frossa grimaced when Hazzan brought up splitting up. That wasn't part of the plan! The whole reason she had even agreed to sign up for all of this in the first place was because Hazzan had promised the most delicious FLARPs ever. The highblood had agreed that the temptation of playing in the caverns was great; but she never agreed to do classes or any extra work. Frossa much rather would have gone to one of the plays or games hosted by the remaining adults, but Hazzan seemed determined and Combat 101 didn't sound too terrible. An excuse to smash around a few lowbloods was always a good excuse!

"Alright, fine..." Frossa pointed at the screen displaying information for the Combat training. "I'll go to that one." She said with a faint pout, briefly saying her goodbyes to her lowerblooded friends before heading off to the northwest part of the camp.

Somewhat to her dismay, this specific class didn't involve sparring- as her greenblooded instructor barked, they were far too inexperienced to just go whacking each other around. The majority of the class was spent listening to their teacher's lecture, which Frossa remained silent for the duration of- albeit her drooped eyelids and downturned lips suggested she was highly unamused.

xxxx
xx

Combat 101

Nelgan really didn't know which one to pick. He already had basic training before, but he hadn't really learned much of anything. The army wasn't going to waste its good instructors on a bunch of drone, but here they had really brought in some knowledgeable instructors. But which one should he choose? All of the options seemed helpful in one way or another.

The problem was, Nelgan didn't really care. Tactics seemed like too much thinking, Medicine, too much blood, and Navigation too boring. He supposed it might be helpful to learn how to fight better, and he'd never get this kind of chance at a drone camp. Besides, better fighters had a better chance of staying alive, right? Nelgan made his way over to the training ring, which, thankfully, all that had happened so far was an instructor beginning a lecture about "proper combat" or some drivel like that. Nelgan snuck behind some other trolls, glad his status as a drone granted him the ability to be unnoticeable. He hoped they wouldn't have to spar during the training; not only was he pretty terrible at actually fighting one-on-one, but very few trolls held back (like they were supposed to at training) when going up against a drone.

Navigation 101

Maihue stared at the list of options to choose from and frowned. She... didn't like any of these. She kept reading from top to bottom over and over again and then finally decided to choose Navigation. If she was going to head into these caves, may as well learn her way around them and not feel so helpless.

As she walked into the room, she saw a group of trolls waiting for the soldier to speak. Maihue quickly took the seat closest to her and waited as well.

After no one else had come in for a few minutes, the troll started to announce what they'd be doing, very loudly. So loudly... Maihue looked down at her desk and waited to start taking notes. When the soldier stopped speaking, she looked up and saw words up on a board about the stellar navigation. She started writing quickly, hoping the words wouldn't disappear too fast. She was determined to remember this. Every star location, every constellation, everything. She did not plan on getting lost in those caves... Even if the stars weren't there. Well at least she'd be able to locate the caves, right? Yeah... That's right. Maihue started to smile a bit as she wrote.