Test Drive #14

[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 April 24th-30th. Our next Jaunt, Neapolitan Beach Vacation, is a Roman-era romp with drama, comedy, and romance, a light-hearted chance for Travelers to catch their breath between metaplot-heavy, more serious events. Our next Walkabout (a more player-driven alternative event, for those not interested in the Jaunt) will be a survival/exploration event set on a ruined island Travelers visited in the distant past... Both Jaunt & Walkabout will begin May 7th & run for approximately four weeks.

Prompt #39 is set in a synaesthetic Liminal Space where sounds become shapes and motion becomes music.

Prompt #40 is set in the Marches of Purgatory Jaunt, a contested kingdom in the afterworld where Angels, Demons, and Sithen (immortal conscientious objectors) barter over sins, virtues, and lost souls.


Prompt #39

The floors in Liminal Space are paths made of keyboards and fretboards, or stepping-stones across prismatic pools made of drums and cymbals, and they make noise accordingly. The walls, colored liquid glass, vibrate with sound, creating patterns of jagged, angry exclamations (it was a rough Jaunt), smooth soothing waves of pastels, or, at particularly apt descriptions, dislodging bubbled sculptures of the pictures discussion paints. It’s almost impossible, no matter how hard one tries, to create something discordant - and equally impossible to create silence or bland color.


Prompt #40

The Vanity Fair is a day’s flight away from Melasurei and the burning river it bridges. In a field of gently-waving asphodel flowers, underneath an impressionistic sky with swirling stars and half a hundred waxing and waning moons, a galactic spiral of colored tents is centered around a gradient-shifting bonfire in which smoke-images flicker, curl, and disperse. Within the tents, hooded souls, undead immortals, and various celestial beings sell their services, Sins & Virtues, scraps of disconnected memory and personality, and other ephemera. There are fruit that can only been grown in tilled fields irrigated with tears, blessed or cursed objects, the indentured dead themselves, and then, of course, the bonfire itself, fueled by wood from Hell, grown on regrets, mistakes, and impure thoughts. Vendor or customer, everyone here wants something, and everything here is something someone wants.

Comments

Minerva McGonagall (Harry Potter) Promp 40

[haveabiscuit]

Minerva's received the entire spiel about blending in. But nothing anyone had told her in advance could possibly have prepared her for this marketplace. It's normal enough for plants to involve specific growing conditions. But needing tears was definitely in the realm of the Dark Arts. Selling memories. So much of this.

So she can't entirely resist shaking her head and clucking her tongue disapprovingly. This won't do at all.

[failgoyle]

"...I didn't do it." The response to being within earshot of that disapproving tongue-clicking is automatic, even if Jules for the moment looks like a really undersized demonic inhabitant of this place. Thanks, Mask, for breaking down and leaving him relatively naked in his normal Lurkglider state! A freaky purple gargoyle with undersized wings is just the sort of thing this place needs.

[haveabiscuit]

"I should hope not." Said in a tone that suggests that it would be most unpleasant if he had done it. Though she could believe he was part of all of this. He has a certain look, after all.

[failgoyle]

"And I'm not planning anything, honest," he finds himself adding as he wrings his tail a little nervously. He just doesn't need an old lady breathing down his neck, okay?

[haveabiscuit]

"That's a relief." There's something about him that just compels that teacher voice from her. He reminds her of someone, but she's not quite sure who yet.

"It seems there's enough going on here as it is." They're not here to stop this. But this is wrong.

[failgoyle]

"Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of it going on, alright." He seems a little agitated as he looks out at the chaos. "But there's a guy down there that's going on and on about selling virtues and vices, and it's kinda trippy. I don't trust it."

[haveabiscuit]

"As well you shouldn't. That sort of business is always dangerous." She wasn't entirely clear on what selling sins and virtues entailed. But she was quite certain about the dangerous aspect.

[failgoyle]

Well, at least someone here is agreeing with him on things being dangerous, even if it's in a sort of authoritative teacher kind of way that makes him squirm. "And here I thought goblin markets were bad..."

!!!! MCGOOGLES MY LOVE~

[lechiennoir]

Sirius, too, had received the spiel. That doesn't mean he's not going to look around as much as he can, however, even if most of these things probably do have to do with the Dark Arts. It gives him a bit of an odd feeling in his stomach, knowing that his parents probably have more than enough creepy old things like this lying around their house back in London.

Even so, a curious hand is stretching out for some of those wares -- at least until he hears a familiar noise. Then he's standing straight as he can, looking as innocent as the day is long. "I dunno who did it, professor, but Bellatrix started it."

[haveabiscuit]

Minerva raises an eyebrow at him. She's seen that look from so very many students, and from Sirius Black himself far too often. Though not lately. Not for a long time, from Sirius Black. It's almost comforting.

"This looks rather large for her to have started." Since for once that cluck was not actually directed at Mr Black.

[darkhourdear]

"Something wrong?"

It's a young voice behind her, and should Minerva direct her attention towards it she'll see a young-ish looking boy, with the marked addition of pale yellow wings and pointed ears. He's watching her curiously, but adding nothing else for the moment.

[haveabiscuit]

The boy's unusual appearance at least reminds her of where she is and what the expectations are. So she shouldn't say what is actually wrong, since it's the entire marketplace. "These claims seem rather hard to prove."

Counterfeiting is a concern for any brand of magic, to the undiscerning, after all.

[darkhourdear]

Phillip laughs, quietly- that is part of the trick, isn't it? But he's nothing if not helpful, so he'll move to look at the display in front of her. "Which ones in particular?"

[haveabiscuit]

"Largely the ones that involve the history of the item." A blessing or curse, well, those were enchantments. It was fairly simple to know whether something was enchanted. Though she was concerned about cursed objects for an altogether different reason.

[darkhourdear]

"Yes, that is rather hard to prove..." Phillip leans over to examine one such piece in particular, claiming to be a piece of wood from the original Ark, "...but how much you should worry over it probably depends on how much value the genuine article would hold to you."

[haveabiscuit]

"There's always value in honestly." Which was the teacher in her talking again, of course. She's heard far too many ludicrous explanations for why homework wasn't completed. Which were not, of course, to be confused with all the assignments that were left undone due to Death Eater interference. But if owls actually did have a taste for parchment they wouldn't be used for mail delivery.

Re: Minerva McGonagall (Harry Potter) Promp 40

[highsteaks]

Oh crap. A teacher.

Okay, sure, maybe she was just some weird old white lady in a witch costume, but Chie was pretty sure she could recognize a teacher when she saw one and this old lady was definitely a teacher. (And, like, considering that Sofue-sensei taught all her classes in an Egyptian headdress, was a witch hat teacher really that weird?)

"I really don't think you can give them detention," she mutters under her breath, not really realizing that the teacher can probably hear her.

[haveabiscuit]

She's a teacher. She hears everything. Or at least, that's what she lets the young Gryffindors think. It's not so terribly far from the truth after having dealt with two generations of young Gryffindors.

"A pity." Clearly no one involved in this had been set on the right life path. Some cleaning would do them good.

[highsteaks]

The teacher heard her. Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap.

"... you can't give me detention either," Chie points out to be safe. "Since, uh, I don't think you teach at Yasogami High School... do you?"

(Considering their hiring standards, it's always good to check these things.)

[haveabiscuit]

"I teach at a school in Scotland." That was usually the best answer to give. Less detail, less to explain. "Were you planning to do something worthy of detention?"

[highsteaks]

"Nooooooooo. Definitely not. I'm a good kid. No detentions here."

(Oh man, Chie hopes she's buying it.)

[truerevelation]

"I know." This coming from a youthful-looking man with colourful wings like stained glass or patchwork, arms folded, with a faint smile on his face. He glances at one of the stalls - "Bought some supplies from there once - tch. Never again. The dreams're all cut with surreal crap, not even the prophetic type, and the blessings on the statues fall off if you sneeze on them. Some folks think they can get away with anything."

[haveabiscuit]

At least he had given her a believable reason for her disapproval. She was hardly going to argue when it was likely to expose the Travellers. "Real prophecy is rather hard to come by. It's not the sort of thing you'd find in an open marketplace."

At least if prophecy here was anything like home. Divination was so fuzzy because of it.

[truerevelation]

"Especially not for this cheap." He gives a slight snort. "Hard to find a good source, sometimes, but ... eh, ain't like ya go shopping for it every day." Sure, he's had his share of dealings with fortune and fate in the past, but ... it's not his favourite material to work with, that's for sure.

[haveabiscuit]

"I find it best to just not get involved with prophecy rather than sort through all the balderdash." She might like Sybil well enough on a personal level, but that was as far as it went. One real prophecy does not make the discipline any more necessary to teach on that scale.