Test Drive #11.

[powersthatbe]

Welcome to the Synodiporia Test Drive Meme! Below the cuts there are two new prompts, and here are the prompts from previous test-drives, which you’re still welcome to use in this post. When you comment, be sure you specify what prompt you want to play with, and please put up your own threadstarter - it makes for a much more friendly environment that a forest of bare toplevels! OCs are especially welcome! Please take a quick look at our Directory & familiarize yourself with the concept and setting of the game before you jump in.

Our upcoming app round runs September 1st-7th. Our next Jaunt, The Lightning Age, a postcolonial steampunk romp with a hunt for a fugitive disordering a peaceful flying city, will run September 12th-October 19th, and an alternate player-driven setting, or Walkabout, will be available (but the specific setting has yet to be voted upon).

Prompt #33 is set in the sometimes Mad-Max like post-apocalyptic academia of the Ivory Tower jaunt, where an isolated school works to restore civilization decades after a brutal war destroyed it. But off-campus, things can get a little rougher…

Prompt #34 is set in the world of Heartbreak Academy, a shoujo high school world where Social Technology, or S. Tech, allows the physical conjuration of emotions - sparkles, roses, soundtracks, emotes and rainclouds. Heartbreak Academy teaches elite students how to better master their S. Tech - and as you could imagine, this makes practical exams… very interesting...


Prompt #33: Pop Quiz.

There are chlorine bombs in the library, and snipers outside.

To be more specific, the library is an open-air market set up in a suburban French high-rise parking garage, one of the few buildings on this side of the city to survive intact, and a good place for gatherings that might need a quick getaway. Academics from across Europe use it as a trading post - bringing old books, or bringing computer printouts collected in three-ring binders, driving up in dune buggies or armored trucks, landing on the ceiling in helicopters, conducting a rapid swap of the valuables, and leaving.

But this time, the warlords knew they were coming. On each floor, among the parked cars, there’s a truck or van with deflated tires and an empty gas tank, in which an oil-drum and a detonator have been mounted. It’s overkill, but worse is the fact that in half-demolished buildings to either side are snipers. To the west, they only have crossbows, but the raider on the northeast has some sort of pre-War antimateriel rifle, and he’s already scragged a buggy in the exit ramp and shot a chopper pilot on the roof.

So now, it’s up to the academics. Those who study environmental sciences are trying to find ways to neutralize the chemicals. Engineers are working to disarm the detonators or fix the vehicles enough to safely transport the bombs. The history and humanities students are given the job of finding some way to stop the snipers, and stop raiders from getting in to steal any of their texts or other resources.

And some, of course, are caught in the fine traditions of academic debate, and may need Travelers to steer them to more decisive action… but of course, there might be Travelers among the raiders, too.


Prompt #34 Partner Exercise

The exam is simple. Each of you’s been given a spare, teacher-monitored Moe-Meter and left alone in the exam hall. Using S. Tech - not just fancy manifestations, but your words and actions, your persuasive skill and acting ability, all the skills that make you effective with S. Tech - you and your partner for this exam have to bury the needle. The problem is, you have to do it in both directions - positive emotion, maxing things out with cuteness, fondness, or warm feelings - and negative emotion, hitting empty on the meter through sadness, anger, or fear. Any sort of against-the-rules physical contact is an automatic F (if your partner reports it), but apart from that, it’s up to your imagination. You have fifteen minutes - that’s like Seven Minutes In Heaven and Seven in Hell, with one minute of cooldown in between.

Comments

[timelessinventor]

Prompt 34: Infiltrating

Helena Wells, Transfer student from England is the talk of the school. Beautiful, confident, and with the most brilliantly creative mind that anyone has seen in a while, making her S. Tech usage absolutely brilliant.

Sitting down and waiting for her partner, she crosses her legs primly and smiles, somewhere between beatific and predatory. When someone sits down, she nods. "Hello, darling. Shall we start this little exercise?"

Prompt 26: Garden of Images

This particular Liminal Space is more than a bit unsettling. Everywhere Helena turns, there is something she'd rather not see. Charles, Christina, Victorian England show in flashes here and there.

However, in this particular moment, she happens to be watching a 1950s couple hide behind a car while a loud noise plays in the background. "Oh, for heaven's sake. That damned trumpet finally came down?"

26

[bypartisan]

[Byerly had been lured over by the noise. That is to say, he'd wanted to know what the devil had been making it. He hadn't been surprised to see it had come from one of the vid screens.]

A trumpet? Is that what that sound was? It sounded more like the dying cries of some sort of primeval goose.

[timelessinventor]

[Helena laughs, a bright, cheerful sound.]

It rather does sound somewhat like a goose, doesn't it? It's what is called a 'shofar', an ancient Hebrew ram's horn trumpet. This particular one was used at the battle of Jericho to bring the walls down. It vaporizes everything in its path. Certainly not something you want to get in the way of.

[bypartisan]

No, indeed. [Byerly is slightly boggled at the explanation, but takes care not to show it, not wishing to appear provincial. And really, what was a vaporizing horn to the entire Jaunt system. "More things in heaven and earth" etc.]

Jericho... that was an ancient city on Old Earth, right? I'm afraid I don't know much about Hebrews. Much before my time.

[timelessinventor]

It was quite a while before my time as well, darling.

Yes. It was a legendary city in what is called Biblical Times. To make a long, legendary story short, an attacking force used this horn to destroy a powerful city's walls and take it over.

There was some nonsense about God telling them, but it was simply an Artifact.

[She pauses, thinking.]

An Artifact, darling, is an ordinary object, such as that horn, which has unexplained properties.

[bypartisan]

[Biblical Times... oh right. They'd read some of that Bible in translation in one of his literature classes, back before he'd left university and the west.]

Not the standard definition of the word, I'm quite sure, but never mind that. I can positively hear the capital there.

I take it you deal in them? At least in some capacity.

[The image on the screen has switched to that of an amazingly ugly, windowless building being swallowed by the ground. Byerly recognizes it all too well.]

[timelessinventor]

I do. I work for an organization that collects and contains Artifacts such as the trumpet I mentioned. It is quite the exciting profession, let me tell you, darling. I have seen some wonderous, and, to be blunt, some terrible things as well.

[A bit of a sad look crosses her face, and she glances up towards the screen.]

Oh, my.

[bypartisan]

It sounds absolutely fascinating. [He's not lying. He is fascinated. All the exciting bits, none of the acting like a parody of yourself while attending parties held by people you stopped enjoying the company of years ago.

He glances up to see what she's looking at.]

Ah. That would be one of mine. Well, not the building, that abomination unto architecture is the fault of someone much higher--of perhaps lower?--in the family tree. But the memory's mine.

[timelessinventor]

Oh, it is, darling. There are so many stories I could tell you, things beyond even my wildest imagination.

[She smirks, then makes a bit of a face.]

Ah. That is an absolutely ghastly looking building, I must admit. What is going on, if it is not too intrusive to ask?

[bypartisan]

Ah, that would be the planet Barrayar swallowing the Imperial Security building whole. I admit, I was given a very thorough explanation to the physics of it at one point, complete with vid reconstruction of the events, but as it came at a point rather earlier than the hours I prefer to maintain consciousness, I rather doubt I could explain it to your satisfaction. Something about excessive tunneling turning the ground into a sponge?

[He shrugs.]

My in-laws did it.

[Technically the Arquas aren't his in-laws, but functionally they are.]

[timelessinventor]

Oh, dear. That sounds like quite the problem.

[She giggles a bit in spite of herself.]

Although, if they were not taking enough care to keep the Imperial security building safe, I dare say everyone had it coming to them.

[bypartisan]

Oh, it was. I ended up having to leave the planet in quite a rush because of it.

[Another shrug.]

You really can't blame ImpSec too much in this case. Granted, they did have a problem with moles [There's a slight smirk playing on his lips at the word 'moles.'] but most of the damage came from an experimental biological pipe-laying fungus that my grandmother-in-law, in her esteemed centenarian wisdom, decided to introduce to the soil.

[Moira ghem Estif: the creator of so many complications in By's life. He was still recovering from the affair of the biospore brooch.]

[timelessinventor]

Ah, but what kind of moles, darling? The small animals, or the human sort? It sounds like they had some of both.

[She blinks a few times.]

A pipe-laying fungus? How on Earth does that work?

[bypartisan]

Sadly, the science of the mycober went entirely over my head. Something about it digesting the soil and excreting some rubbery stuff to function as tunnel walls as it went along. That's really all I can tell you.

And those moles were entirely human, I'm afraid.

[Including the former Head of ImpSec, rather terrifyingly enough.]

34 - investigating

[claudiometer]

Claudia looks up when someone approaches--



...And, eventually, manages to close her mouth. She's probably the only person here who understands the full impact of this, and boy is Helena going to be a mess afterward.

"Might as well."