The Powers That Be (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
powersthatbe) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
synodiporia_ooc2017-03-24 12:01 am
powersthatbe) wrote in synodiporia_ooc2017-03-24 12:01 am
Entry tags:
Test Drive #18
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 March 24th–April 1st. Our next Jaunt will be Olympus Upended: a classical myth and fantasy adventure, set in a Trojan War-era Greece full of gods, monsters, and titans. During the Jaunt, the Olympians and their chosen heroes must deal with the machinations of fate when their powers and domains begin to ebb and flow, faltering or in some cases transferring to others.
Prompt #47 features a liminal space where Travelers find themselves floating down the Tunnel of Love.
Prompt #48 features a liminal space with beds, balloons, and no ground to be seen.
Prompt #49 features a space walk set in the universe from the Escape From Junkworld jaunt. Having escaped the destruction of the prison planet Junkworld Gehenna, these refugees from the four major spacefaring races--crystalline Hecatites, psychic-but-prone-to-hallucination horned Diabolin; scaled Gorgons with their petrifying abilities and tentacled hair, and your bog-standard humans, newcomers to the stars--now finally have a moment where they can slow down.
#47
You find yourself in a boat in a long tunnel, light deliberately kept low. Oh, the sides and the ceiling glitter and sparkle and the dioramas you occasionally pass seem to glow with their own inner light, but unless you’re naturally adapted for low-light, it’s going to take your eyes a little while to adjust. Once they do--or perhaps even before they do--you’ll find that you’re not alone in the boat. There’s someone riding next to you. Maybe they’re a friend among the Travelers, maybe someone you’ve grown to love. Maybe they’re a perfect stranger. Maybe they’re even someone you hate. They’re still stuck in the boat with you.
Once your eyes have adjusted properly, you’ll see that the boat you’re both in is made of chocolate--white, dark, or milk--and carved in the shape of a swan. The ‘water’ it floats down is no such thing, but instead pink champagne. Those dioramas in the wall? They’re dramatizations of various moments of passion and romance in the love-lives of you and your fellow Travelers.
Just when it seems that you’ve been in the tunnel forever, it suddenly widens into a much larger room with a ceiling open to the sky, the underground waterway flowing through the center, constricted until there's barely water in the side, so that you can easily disembark from your swanboat during the minute it takes for the boat to glide through the room, which seems to be some sort of cafe. A ‘Group Date’ cafe, whatever that is, according to the sign. Instead of food on the menu board, there are instead lists of questions to ask your date. The floor is tiled with conversation hearts. The furniture, like the swan boats, is made of chocolate. Finally, the walls are made of valentine’s cards, addressed to initials and signed by Roman numerals, all in the same loopy pink cursive that makes up the questions menu.
#48
You find yourself in bed. In fact, each Traveler starts out in their own private bed, which is suspended from a floating hot air balloon (minus the gas burner) and both balloon and bed are decorated vaguely to the taste of the Traveler therein. It’s a lovely, comfortable bed, perfect for sleeping or just plain lazing around, and it allows a perfect view to all the other beds suspended in the sky--and the doors to created spaces as well, themselves suspended from balloons of their own.
There is no ground in this liminal space. Sky above, sky below, and the great crowd of balloons which are more or less level. Sometimes they drift close enough so that they bump together and you can easily move from one to the other, though of course they’ll soon drift away from each other.
Of course, this being liminal space, there’s no reason why you can’t walk through the thin air or even fly to the other balloons and doors, as long as you realize that’s an option. Just take care you don’t panic and forget you can, because once you forget you can fly the only thing you can do is fall. At least if you do fall into the endless sky, you’ll just have a few harrowing seconds to panic before you land right on your balloon bed again.
#49
It’s been a week since the Empress of Moths reached its destination. The planet below, with no official name, merely numerical designation referring to its star, is not exactly ideal. Its temperature is on the lower end of what humans will tolerate; its bedrock is not the best suited for Gorgon caves; there are few natural resources for the Diabolins to exploit; and its external geology isn’t quite to Hecatite tastes. It is, however, an M-type planet that will support intelligent life and has, in fact, supported a small smuggler’s base for quite some time.
Despite all these shortcomings, it’s much preferable to the radioactive slag heap the refugees formerly called home. Now that arrangements have been made with the local smugglers, most of the refugees have left the ship on outrider shuttles and it’s immediately noticeable how much less crowded the Empress is--even with a few of the local smugglers aboard after the negotiations.
But then, not everyone plans to stay planetside. There’s a sizable contingent who want to keep flying with the Empress, finding work among the stars to support their newfound home. It’s why she still hovers over the planet, instead of coming to an undignified landing on the surface. And before the Empress leaves, her new crew and any visitors currently aboard (smugglers and Investigating Travelers alike) have the opportunity to undertake a space walk together. It’s time to don one’s space suit and helmet, attach one’s air supply, and take a step outside into the beautiful, cold vacuum of the sea of stars.
Our upcoming app round runs March 24th–April 1st. Our next Jaunt will be Olympus Upended: a classical myth and fantasy adventure, set in a Trojan War-era Greece full of gods, monsters, and titans. During the Jaunt, the Olympians and their chosen heroes must deal with the machinations of fate when their powers and domains begin to ebb and flow, faltering or in some cases transferring to others.
Prompt #47 features a liminal space where Travelers find themselves floating down the Tunnel of Love.
Prompt #48 features a liminal space with beds, balloons, and no ground to be seen.
Prompt #49 features a space walk set in the universe from the Escape From Junkworld jaunt. Having escaped the destruction of the prison planet Junkworld Gehenna, these refugees from the four major spacefaring races--crystalline Hecatites, psychic-but-prone-to-hallucination horned Diabolin; scaled Gorgons with their petrifying abilities and tentacled hair, and your bog-standard humans, newcomers to the stars--now finally have a moment where they can slow down.
#47
You find yourself in a boat in a long tunnel, light deliberately kept low. Oh, the sides and the ceiling glitter and sparkle and the dioramas you occasionally pass seem to glow with their own inner light, but unless you’re naturally adapted for low-light, it’s going to take your eyes a little while to adjust. Once they do--or perhaps even before they do--you’ll find that you’re not alone in the boat. There’s someone riding next to you. Maybe they’re a friend among the Travelers, maybe someone you’ve grown to love. Maybe they’re a perfect stranger. Maybe they’re even someone you hate. They’re still stuck in the boat with you.
Once your eyes have adjusted properly, you’ll see that the boat you’re both in is made of chocolate--white, dark, or milk--and carved in the shape of a swan. The ‘water’ it floats down is no such thing, but instead pink champagne. Those dioramas in the wall? They’re dramatizations of various moments of passion and romance in the love-lives of you and your fellow Travelers.
Just when it seems that you’ve been in the tunnel forever, it suddenly widens into a much larger room with a ceiling open to the sky, the underground waterway flowing through the center, constricted until there's barely water in the side, so that you can easily disembark from your swanboat during the minute it takes for the boat to glide through the room, which seems to be some sort of cafe. A ‘Group Date’ cafe, whatever that is, according to the sign. Instead of food on the menu board, there are instead lists of questions to ask your date. The floor is tiled with conversation hearts. The furniture, like the swan boats, is made of chocolate. Finally, the walls are made of valentine’s cards, addressed to initials and signed by Roman numerals, all in the same loopy pink cursive that makes up the questions menu.
#48
You find yourself in bed. In fact, each Traveler starts out in their own private bed, which is suspended from a floating hot air balloon (minus the gas burner) and both balloon and bed are decorated vaguely to the taste of the Traveler therein. It’s a lovely, comfortable bed, perfect for sleeping or just plain lazing around, and it allows a perfect view to all the other beds suspended in the sky--and the doors to created spaces as well, themselves suspended from balloons of their own.
There is no ground in this liminal space. Sky above, sky below, and the great crowd of balloons which are more or less level. Sometimes they drift close enough so that they bump together and you can easily move from one to the other, though of course they’ll soon drift away from each other.
Of course, this being liminal space, there’s no reason why you can’t walk through the thin air or even fly to the other balloons and doors, as long as you realize that’s an option. Just take care you don’t panic and forget you can, because once you forget you can fly the only thing you can do is fall. At least if you do fall into the endless sky, you’ll just have a few harrowing seconds to panic before you land right on your balloon bed again.
#49
It’s been a week since the Empress of Moths reached its destination. The planet below, with no official name, merely numerical designation referring to its star, is not exactly ideal. Its temperature is on the lower end of what humans will tolerate; its bedrock is not the best suited for Gorgon caves; there are few natural resources for the Diabolins to exploit; and its external geology isn’t quite to Hecatite tastes. It is, however, an M-type planet that will support intelligent life and has, in fact, supported a small smuggler’s base for quite some time.
Despite all these shortcomings, it’s much preferable to the radioactive slag heap the refugees formerly called home. Now that arrangements have been made with the local smugglers, most of the refugees have left the ship on outrider shuttles and it’s immediately noticeable how much less crowded the Empress is--even with a few of the local smugglers aboard after the negotiations.
But then, not everyone plans to stay planetside. There’s a sizable contingent who want to keep flying with the Empress, finding work among the stars to support their newfound home. It’s why she still hovers over the planet, instead of coming to an undignified landing on the surface. And before the Empress leaves, her new crew and any visitors currently aboard (smugglers and Investigating Travelers alike) have the opportunity to undertake a space walk together. It’s time to don one’s space suit and helmet, attach one’s air supply, and take a step outside into the beautiful, cold vacuum of the sea of stars.
Kohaku Yuhara | OC
Kohaku leans back in their seat on the boat, legs kicked up on the bow, eyes closed. The darkness held no secrets from them, but they kind of wish it did. Stupid supercharged senses meant they could read out every sordid detail on the walls of the tunnel.
Oddly, Kohaku's side is almost completely bare of imagery. A few stylized childhood crushes, but beyond that...just blank wall.
"I hope you don't mind if I just take a nap? Wake me up when this is less a waste of my time."
-49-
Kohaku stood in the airlock, nervously. On one hand, the concept of being surrounded by hard vacuum that could killer them in seconds were it not for a few thin layers of space suit was fairly unnerving. On the other hand, what kind of person could be offered the chance to walk around in freaking outer space and say "Nah, I'd rather hang out on this semi-barren ball of rock down below me"?
They'd triple checked every step of putting the suit on, but they were still unnerved.
"I'm not, like, gonna get sucked out into space when the door opens, am I? Should I be holding on to something? I'm gonna hold on to something."
Awkwardly, the only other thing to hold on to in arm's reach right now is the other person in here. Kohaku hesitated in just grabbing onto another person just long enough for the outer door to open and all the air to get sucked into space.
-46-
Kohaku adjusted their toga self-consciously and eyed the games the men were playing. They could sort of pass for a kind of effeminate boy. Maybe they could get away with getting in there and showing all these dudes a thing or two.
They quietly slipped on to the one side of the ball game. Their rather slim figure got a few odd glances, but they insisted that they were a boy. Maybe some good exercise would put some meat on their bones, some of the more traditionally minded men grumbled.
Then the game started, and Kohaku was a sight to behold in motion. The normally reserved youth leaped into motion with frankly unbelievable grace and precision. They weren't really much faster than anyone else, but they seemed to almost react to things before they happened, and somehow always could pick out that tiny weak spot in the opposing team's formation that just BARELY had room to slip through.
46
no subject
no subject
"Man, where'd you learn to kick like that?"
no subject
"I've never really thought about it before. You just need to know where you are, where the other people are, and where the ball is."
[OOC: btw using they/them pronouns was an experiment for the character that I decided I didn't actually like, so from here on I'm using she/her. She still looks pretty boyish, though.]
no subject
no subject
She stretched, with a smug grin on her face. No need to share the information about the alien symbiote speeding up her reflexes and sensory acuity just yet. Let her have this.
no subject
no subject
She shrugged, wandering away from the game with Nira before anyone looked too closely at her. "I didn't have a lot of time for sports, really. Too busy with school."
no subject
She nods, before looking confused. "You didn't have a gym class or anything?"
no subject
Kohaku looked thoughtful. "I guess I didn't really go to a very normal school. It's got a, well, an unusual curriculum."
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
49
"What's the matter, Kohaku? Scared?" She snorted, a little amused. "You'd better not think about grabbing onto me." She gave Kohaku a playful shove towards the door, which for her is worth about ten grown mens' worth of playful shoving, and then some.
Right as the airlock opened and the air got sucked out into space.
"...Whoops."
no subject
They also started screaming. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH TOYO YOU CRAZY MOTHERFUCKER!"
no subject
"Don't worry! I'll say a prayer for your soul to find peace in the afterlife!"
Bye Kohaku. It was. Nice knowing you.
no subject
"WHAT!? NO! EMERGENCY TETHER GUN! BY DOOR!"
no subject
And so she heads over to the tether gun, pulls it off of the wall, and.... pulls the entire mechanism out of the wall as well. "....Did they make this place out of paper mache or something?"
No time for what-ifs or could-have-beens, though. She rips the tether out of the now-defunct gun, shoves one end handily into the wall, and then leaps out into space holding the other end. "Grab on, Kohaku!" She reached out a hand for her, uh, friend.
no subject
JUST barely catches it. They gripped Toyo's hand for all they were worth while focusing on not hyperventilating anymore. Not going to die. Not today. Not because of something that stupid.
"FUCK. Jesus."
49
Jason's confident of his strength; more confident when he's suited up. This thing is kind of like a space suit, anyway - it's got its own air supply, its own atmospheric pressure. This is a good chance to test it. He holds out a forearm for Kohaku to clasp and braces himself as the door begins to open and there's the hiss of escaping atmosphere around them.
no subject
Fortunately, a distraction arrived in the form of the airlock outer door opening. There was a brief wind as the air rushed out, but honestly nothing so strong as to send either of them tumbling into space, even if Kohaku hadn't been holding on. Her hand drifted loose as she stared in wonder out into the depths of space.
[OOC: btw using they/them pronouns was an experiment for the character that I decided I didn't actually like, so from here on I'm using she/her. She still looks pretty androgynous, though. Especially in the space suit.]
no subject
"Whoa." His voice crackles over the suit communications, watching as the stars suddenly stop twinkling without any atmosphere in the way. He keeps his arm steady, and after a moment of staring, he's ready and eager to get out there.
"Ready to go?"
no subject
Looking at this guy, in his sci-fi looking bright red custom space suit, Kohaku came to the quite incorrect conclusion that he must be a veteran for whom this kind of thing was just an every day occurrence.
"Sorry, I just never thought I'd actually be, like, in space."
49
"Don't rightfully know, kid. I'm as new to this as you are."
Newer, in fact. At least Kohaku was familiar with the concept of the vacuum of space. Greirat himself isn't much of a sturdy fixture to hold onto - he's short and slender and not at all an imposing figure. Still, when the teen grabs onto his arm, he does his best to steady himself and prepare for a jolt of some sort as the door opens.
It's stronger than he expects, and he loses his footing for a moment as the air is sucked out of the room all at once, but he maintains a firm grip on Kohaku with one hand, and places his other on the floor to steady himself. He's not gonna let some kid drift off into the void of space forever, if he can help it.
"I gotcha. You all right?"
no subject
That wasn't so bad. She wasn't worried so anymore now that the door was open and she wasn't tumbling through the depths of space. She let go of Greirat's arm in favor of staring in wonder out of the ship. Stars never got that bright on Earth.
"...I'm gonna try stepping outside."
[OOC: btw using they/them pronouns was an experiment for the character that I decided I didn't actually like, so from here on I'm using she/her. She still looks pretty boyish, though. Especially through a figure concealing spacesuit]
no subject
As soon as Kohaku releases her grip on his arm, Greirat lets her go in turn. He's just as much in awe of the view as she is from up here - he's never seen anything like it on his own planet.
He only returns his attention to the girl when she speaks of stepping outside.
"Very well, then. I'll wait back here for a few moments, in case there's anything out there that wishes to snack on us."
That was a joke, of course. He's joking. Mostly.
no subject
Kohaku flashed him a thumbs up. She was either also joking, or was totally comfortable with the idea of going first to fend off any bug-eyed alien monsters clinging to the outside of the ship, and it really wasn't clear which.
She stepped outside and almost lost her balance as her orientation changed ninety degrees from standing inside the airlock to standing on the ship's hull via mag-boots.