Council Meeting: Video/ Dining Car's ICP is Muted

[runs_on_batteries]

[ooc: Each header is different topic for the council members to discuss. Please tag as one group thread underneath. If you want, you can add new headers for additional conversations. Handwave Tony either bringing this up for your character or when he asks if there is any other business, your character presented the topic. Also OOC note, this was the best way I could come up with, so hopefully this works.]

[Following an announcement early that day, Tony let everyone know where the council meeting was being held and that they were going to have it over the ICP so everyone could see it. He promised at that time that there will be a chance for asking questions at the end.

Tony has rigged the ICP in the dining room to stay on video and it's angle is at one end of the long table and he is at the other. The volume on the ICP in the dining room has been disconnected, but everyone else can hear it.

For the council members, they will find a stack of agendas and pens when they arrive and at a side table there is coffee, tea, lemonade, and a few hor d'oeuvres prepared.

Tony is wearing his three piece suit instead of the usual train garb and greets everyone with a mildly friend smile.]

Welcome, please take a seat. Grab a refreshment if you'd like.

[Once everyone is settled..]

Thank you for coming to our first council meeting with our newly elected group. Congratulations, you just got handed a thankless job that everyone will have strong opinions about how you're screwing this up. That's politics and you need to be able to take some heat because of it. Fortunately, there's a majority on this train that believe you have shown great leadership skills and you've earned their trust. If we all do our best, then we can sleep with a clear conscience.

So here are the cards we've been dealt. We're a group of very different individuals from a myriad of backgrounds and skill sets who have been taken against our will from our lives, our family, our time, and our world. For some of us, this is a positive, but the majority it is not. We want to find a way to get people home who want to go back to their old lives. In the meantime, we're tasked by an unknown power to save worlds on the brink who badly need rescuing. We've been given a limited amount of resources to do that and everyone here could likely list a dozen or more things that should be here to complete those tasks that aren't. In fact, probably everyone here has their own set of goals that may or may not coincide with the ones the train has given us or our train-mates would be pleased about.

The goal of this council is obvious. We want everyone to be safe, healthy, and supported on this train. Exactly how we're going to achieve that is what's up for debate.

Comments

Election

[runs_on_batteries]

How frequently would we like to have elections? Was there anything specific about this past election that didn't work so well? What should be done about council members who leave/ vanish or worse, if their judgment turns out to be questionable to the point 'it's a problem'?

Re: Election

[mtsilver_conquor]

[Eva has both Lele and Roro out recording the entire meeting, the porygon2 sitting out of the way, but the Rotomi hovers around her. She's also making her own handwritten notes.]

Ideally, I'd like it every four months at least. It gives people time to get to know the council and it gives us time to do what we can.

Anything less is too short a time frame to really be effective, I think.

Re: Election

[unfavorableinstigation]

People not voting could get to be a problem, assuming they're not deliberately refraining and just forgot.

[Nita herself is also taking notes, mostly in her Manual (which is set to record), though she's got journals to copy text into with a spell when everything's done.]

Four months seems like a reasonable middle-ground, anyway.

Communication

[runs_on_batteries]

Is the welcome leaflet sufficient for new people? Should we continue to work on linking phones and other communication devices together after our last mission gave us that function?

[mtsilver_conquor]

As a very basic crash course, the welcome leaflet should be enough so we're not answering the same questions over and over again. We have to keep in mind that it can't cover everything, nor should it be expected to.

[tinkerheart]

The welcome leaflet is a life-saver. It is, however, a lot of text to read and I have seen some people, especially the younger ones, have trouble going through all of it at once.

It might be a good thing to provide a condensed summary at the very top of it. A sentence at most per each most common question.

[tinkerheart]

As much as I hate to admit it, given what happened on the last mission the SCAs are the only thing that is most likely, if not directly guaranteed, to work in all conditions.

I have a few phones from Garret and my intention was to link them to palantíri as those are already connected. Sadly, the moment we end on a world like the previous one where mind communication is suppressed this system fails.

I still think we need an alternative to SCAs.

[unfavorableinstigation]

Finding out the principles the SCAs are supposed to work on will go a long way towards setting up something in parallel.

[Nita points this out, propping her chin up with a pencil for a moment.]

We've got varying methods of mental or magical communication, but if we want something consistent we have to learn how our new tech does what it does.

Rules, Regulations, and Enforcement

[runs_on_batteries]

Is it time to create a set of agreed upon rules/ guidelines/ whatever we want to call them? What are our thoughts on how to deal with people doing harmful deeds?

[mtsilver_conquor]

Guidelines are good, yes, though, given we all come from very different worlds and cultures, each with their own moralities and ways to judge things, whatever we set, we must accept that the worlds and cultures we come from will inform us on how to deal with anyone who breaks them.

We also need to be ready to explain these guidelines if questioned, and if that means we have to play twenty questions in doing do to get a better understanding of why someone is asking, then so be it.

[usernamesarecool]

See, I've been thinking about that and I think it might be everyone's best interest for us to have some sort of introduction class on every new person day-that way they can explain a bit about the worlds or universes they're from and we'll have a better understanding of how they might react in certain situations.

And, as I was telling Tony, I think it'd be good to establish a train wide age that's considered adult. My personal vote it either nineteen or twenty-for humans anyway.

Defending the Train As A Whole

[runs_on_batteries]

After our second to last mission, should we focus on ways to reinforce the train in case we come under attack? What about if entities like the Inspectors come back? Ways to break our doors in case we're locked in again?

[blue_ice]

Absolutely. If we're overexposed to the void atmosphere, we'll likely die. A goal should be oxygen tanks in all the sleepers. As well as any other atmospheric life-sustaining gasses for those who don't breathe oxygen. It has to exist, we were given a supply to dive with. The train likes to keep those things in the dressing car, but if we're ever in a situation where we can't access it in time...we need to build our own supply.

I think we should have as many people scavenging a targeted list of materials from every mission planet as possible, barring space limitations.

Council Meetings

[runs_on_batteries]

Is having the ICP broadcast our meetings good enough? How do you want to handle the question and answer portion at the end of the meeting? How often should we meet?

[marriedanidiot]

"Goodness, I still don't know what people were thinking, voting me in for this! I've never been the sort for this sort of thing, my law-brother could tell you so, if he were here!"

She shrugs. "But it seems to me that if you wish to, as it were head things off, you want something that is both very accessible and also relatively frequent. I can tell you that Arafinwe saw complaints once a week, but we had a system already in place where the nobles took complaints from their leaseholders, and then brought them to court only when they could not be resolved otherwise. You could look to put something less complicated in place, as we are hardly a full city!"

Social Enrichment

[blue_ice]

Kaiba raises his hand at one point. He's written all of this down in his notebook under the first line 'buy more suits', but it's clear this isn't the most comfortable topic for him.

"So we're something of a militarized operation, drafted in a series of conflicts none of us signed up for. We need to emphasize that combat is always optional, and there's an escape route built in. Yes, it's for the greater good, and yes, we're providing training for those who want it in combat or mechanics, but none of us signed up for the draft or were aware there was going to be one. And war is an incredibly stressful situation."

He sighs and folds his hands.

"For a lot of us, this is unlike anything we've faced before. And that leads to explosions at some point if the tension isn't released. To that end...we need to continue to promote stress relief in healthy ways. Games, sports, gardening, and movies all help with that, but I'm thinking along the lines of more organized social events. Casino night. Potlucks. Is that something we can encourage?"

[mtsilver_conquor]

Eva nods in agreement, and when she speaks, her words are calm and collected, but they also hold the weight of a lifetime of experience. "Any kind of combat is stressful and if I may use my world for a moment, our reality was that of a monster ruled world. Even if you lived in one of the cities, monsters were a fact of daily life from the second you were born. But, it's what we did with that reality that mattered.

We often had social events -festivals, holidays - all manner of distractions that helped to foster the bond of communities so that when something major happened, we'd be there to support each other. From the moment we could talk, we never shied from talking about what we'd experienced either, and we need to encourage that as well."

She holds up a hand and sighs. "It's a sign of strength and trust to be able to talk like that. It's also about building up that support network so if you fall, you've got wings to catch you, and this is vital for the minors we've on board."

Interactions with the Train

[unfavorableinstigation]

[Nita shows some level of reluctance of taking the conversational helm before she 'thinks' she should, but when she does she looks calm, organized.

Hopefully a lot less stressed than she feels!]

Like the Doctor mentioned on the Network before the last platform, we've all got good reason to believe the train is alive and has a mind of its own. Whether it's in charge of its own operations, however, is still up for debate as long as it keeps its thoughts to itself.

We know there are some ways - the announcements on platform days, the permanent Feedback post on the ICPs - that it will consistently inform or interact with us, but there are other ways to attempt communication.

For those who remember him, Will Stanton once asked the engine wall its history, and got a series of visions in return; those who interacted with the wall-

[Mostly by punching it, some with more creative methods.]

And a remnant of a memory, someone who hasn't been on the train in all the time we've been here; someone in Orange Team, with tattoos on her arms and a large book in her lap, sitting up against the wall.

Then there are the actual visions the precogs among us receive, usually a day before each mission begins. Thanks to the nature of the last world we're pretty sure these visions come from the train itself, not an outside party stationed elsewhere, but we can't rule out that there is someone or something who scouts worlds in danger and broadcasts the nature of their troubles.

What other ways have you heard, seen, or used to interact with the train, and what were you able to learn from them?

[She has a few she still needs to mention just for completion's sake, but she'll let other people have their turn now]

Re: Interactions with the Train

[runs_on_batteries]

I can't think of anyone who might fit that description. Evie had her sister's spellbook, but she was on the purple team. There was a girl who Zetta and Romeo knew and said was a goddess.. Hibiki Shikyoin, I believe the name was. She was on the orange team but.. does anyone know if she had tattoos or had a book like that?

Ombudsman/ Train Advocate

[runs_on_batteries]

An idea came up that there should be someone or someones appointed as an ombudsman.

To quote them, 'There was a person who was not in a position of power, but who [has] access to those who were, who was not in the pay of any of them either, whose job it was to...well, to be perfectly blunt, to keep us honest. They operate outside of the councils, but have the ear of the council, and if someone say, had an issue with you [meaning me, Tony, as an example], and therefore did not want to come to you directly, they could go to this non-biased third party to say, "hey, there is an issue." The Ombudsman would check the facts and if they felt there was justification, they would then take that to the board.'

Do we want to pursue this idea?

[mtsilver_conquor]

Yes, I'd rather we did. Back home, such roles are always given to telepaths given their abilities to read minds and determine the truth of the matter and see both sides that way.

But we don't have one with us that I know of. That said, I can already think of a few people I'd consider for the role.

Q&A: After the meeting concludes and everyone gets a quick break.

[runs_on_batteries]

[OOC- Please reply here with any questions! We'll try to work out how these decisions get made IC.]

[IC: Tony and whoever wants to, return to the room when the meeting concludes and with a little finagling gets the volume to work again on the ICP for the dining room.]

Thanks for being patient. We'll now take your questions.

[stillnewatthis]

[Orisa sticks up her hand.]

Hello! Might I ask, could you please proceed very carefully with questions of age? I am only a few months old but I possess a fully-realized AI and numerous defensive and offensive protocols, so it concerns me that an absolute and universal age of majority would prevent me from my primary directive.

[blitzcheer]

Is this how meetings usually go?

[ Hello, one voice of a sports jock here. Since he spoke up when that whole mess went down about allowing people to chip in on meetings... thought he might as well! ]

Re: Q&A: After the meeting concludes and everyone gets a quick break.

[laurefindil]

My reply is in regards to the same question as Orisa. There are elves on this Train that do not come from my world, and may have a different age of majority. Also, do we not have at least one emancipated minor on the board?

Also, looks aren't a reliable reference for age. For example, Joss looks 10. Physically he is. Mentally, however...

There are still few enough of us that having a method by which someone who is under the age we choose, but who has needed to mature at a more rapid rate due to life experience can easily contest and receive an exception might be a good compromise.

For those deemed Not Adults, it also might be good to record who has volunteered to see to their health and wellbeing?