The Powers That Be ([personal profile] powersthatbe) wrote in [community profile] synodiporia_ooc2014-02-05 08:29 am
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Test Drive #0.

Welcome to the Synodiporia Test Drive Meme! Below the cut there are four prompts to get you started: the first is if you’d like to test what intro-ing a new character is like, the second if you’d like to just chat and get CR with other prospective players just before the game’s starting event takes place, and the third and fourth for threaders looking for more active challenges to play in the game’s backstory - a bit of a look at what getting involved in this game’s plot would look like.

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 than a forest of bare toplevels!

Before you start, we’d like you to please take a quick look at the game’s Concept, its Rules, and the Liminal Space & Previous Universes pages, just to give you the background, so you know what you’re getting into. And if you’re looking for more information, the Directory is here and the Reserves page is here.

Have fun!



Prompt #1: Liminal Space: New Arrivals

It seems to you that you’ve just stepped through a door, and you can feel the faint breeze of it blowing behind you.

You’ve just stepped into a mansion as imagined by MC Escher. This is the grand foyer, and zigzagging staircases with gilt balustrades curl impossibly along the corners, leading to a ballroom on the right wall, a theater on the left, or a fire-lit banqueting hall on the ceiling, far more rustic than the rest of the mansion looks. The far wall is a scattered collection of doors and windows facing all directions and opening who-knows where. Outside the windows you can see a beach, a mist-shrouded forest, and a starry sky. One door has a sheaf of papers nailed to it. Another has blood trickling out from beneath the doorframe.

When you look behind you, however, there is no door there. Nor, in fact, is there a wall in the traditional sense. Instead, there’s a marble-tiled bath-house.

In all of these places, whatever direction they happen to be facing with respect to tradition gravity, are people in strange clothing. Most of them seem to be looking relatively bored or restless, and only a very few seem at all bothered by the notion that the laws of physics seem to be being held in abeyance - mostly, the people standing nearest to you.

Most disturbing of all, beside the quiet murmur of conversation in your ears, you can also hear voices casually exchanging small talk inside your head.

After a moment, there’s a lull in most of the audible conversations, and a large portion of the room turns and looks your way. Someone -one of the voices in your head - says

Look at that. A new pack of Fools just arrived.




Prompt #2: Liminal Space: Everyone Else

This time, liminal space has manifested as a mansion as imagined by MC Escher. This is the grand foyer, and zigzagging staircases with gilt balustrades curl impossibly along the corners, leading to a ballroom on the right wall, a theater on the left, or a fire-lit banqueting hall on the ceiling, far more rustic than the rest of the mansion looks. The far wall is a scattered collection of doors and windows facing all directions and opening who-knows where. Outside the windows you can see a beach, a mist-shrouded forest, and a starry sky. One door has a sheaf of papers nailed to it. Another has blood trickling out from beneath the doorframe. Behind you, there’s a marble-tiled bath-house.

It’s up to you to find a way to amuse yourself. You’ve been here thirty-six hours, longer than any of your previous Jaunts between worlds has taken, and since the food in the banquet hall vanishes the moment it’s out of your sight (even if it’s inside you), you’re starting to get hungry. When is the portal going to appear?





Prompt #3: Alternities: Locked Rooms In Moebius

You wake up in a new world, but by now you’re familiar with that. Only… something’s wrong. You didn’t step through any portal. You’re lying on a cold surface with something draped over you, and you can hear confused murmuring coming from your left and your right, maybe above and below you too, and you hurt.

You sit up, shrugging off the dingy once-white cloth draped over you. You’re in a morgue. All the alcoves are open, and in many of them, other Travelers are stirring and waking up. Some of them are wild-eyed. Some are blood-spattered. Every last one is criss-crossed with unfamiliar white lines of scarring.

On the slab in the center of a room is a clock. The hands indicate that it is 3:01. A collection of bloody-edged tools - knives and separators and saw and scalpels - sits beside it.

There is one door out, up half a flight of stairs in one corner, and no windows. The door has been barred, and all around the edges doorstops have been jammed in - wedge-toed shoes, folded sheafs of paper, a length of rubber hosing - anything that will fit in the narrow gap between door and frame, used to create a seal.

Scratched into the paint on the door are the words In the name of Blessed Elua, listen to me this time and stay inside. Don’t go out there. Just wait. Please. -JV

Somewhere out there in the distance, close enough to be audible but far enough away to be quiet, barely audible over the hum of the fluorescent lights, there’s a loud, ragged scream, and then the distant voice begins to sob unevenly.





Prompt #4: Alternities: Extravehicular On The Spark

You’re standing on the curved, chrome-bright hull of a space station that stretches to the horizon in all directions - not a smooth horizon but a busy one, with shapes like distant cityscapes, mountain-ranges of conical turrets glowing faintly with violet light, and a faint if inaudible hum travelling upward through your feet, varying in strength and direction at the passage of distant traffic, scalloped domes sliding over the surface or small treaded runners like motor-trikes zipping by at much greater speeds. A white plastic belt around your waist puffs cool fog every few seconds, a black metal rod in your hand smells of ozone and seems glued to your palm, and your boots are heavy, steel-soled, and have a blinking generator at the heel - but otherwise, save for a pair of goggles tucked into one pocket, you’re wearing street clothes, just what you’d expect yourself to be wearing. Your hair moves around you in a cloud, and your stomach turns uneasily. Even though you seem to have both air and heat there is no gravity. You might as well be hanging from the underside of this craft, not standing on it.

Looking up - or down - anyway, away from the ship - you see a massive planet filling a quarter of the sky, covered in jade-banded rings of cloud that swirl and churn anxiously. Between you and the luminescent green world is suspended a miniscule shape, round, red, like a rough-edged droplet of blood. It and the planet above it appear to be slowly expanding as you watch.

You’re not alone. A group of other people, similarly equipped, stands around you, looking as confused as you feel. A startled expression crosses all their faces at the same moment as an excited, fast-talking voice enters your mind.

-- hacked the telepathic network and scrambled your heads! Bet the champs never thought that was possible! What does that tell you about -- never mind, it can wait. We’re live now, but only for a moment. We need to avoid any *further* psychic interference, so we’re going dark. Repeat, the network is going dark. They won’t be able to get into your heads again. The clock’s at seventy-two minutes at my mark, Fellow Travelers. Aaaand… Mark. Okay. Seventy-two minutes to bring down those engines, or we’re out of the World Series and you can all see how you like floating home! Let’s crash this sucker, kids! See you all on Sangre.

The voice vanishes. You have no idea who it was, and no memory of what it was talking about.
reachforthekey: (headache)

[personal profile] reachforthekey 2014-02-07 12:07 am (UTC)(link)
He's not the only one examining his scars in confusion. Eren still hasn't slid off the slab he's seated on, staring at his arms in confusion. They should be healing... that's not something he advertises, but it's clear in his expression that he's as baffled as he is disturbed to see scar tissue on his skin.

Looking up and noticing someone else in the same state, he speaks up, quickly and without any real thought.

"Hey. You, too?"
hakodate: we talk about it all the time, but i never see it. (i think i shall call his penis gatsby.)

[personal profile] hakodate 2014-02-07 12:37 am (UTC)(link)
"Yeah." He's not inclined to keep staring for any longer than necessary, though, so Hijikata's quick to get up, off that slab, and roll his sleeves back down and straighten himself up. Not knowing how it happened is unnerving - but staring isn't going to help him figure it out.

"Anything you can think of that explains it?" There are ways around his healing, after all - obscure enough that he wouldn't expect someone in a world that's never heard of rasetsu to stumble across by accident, but if that isn't the case for Eren - well, then it's easier to make the assumption that for whatever reason, his power just isn't going to work here, no matter what they hit him with.

And if his healing is really blocked, and he didn't just manage to forget about getting on the wrong side of a lot of silver -

Well, that'd be enough to tell him not to rely too much on anything else he usually has over the average joe, either.
reachforthekey: (crosslook)

[personal profile] reachforthekey 2014-02-07 06:57 am (UTC)(link)
"There's something I could try... but it's too early for that." Eren's voice goes from speculative to uneasy, and he too stands and starts prowling around the room. "Ah... actually, wait." Going over to the autopsy table, he produces a scalpel after a momentary search, absently wipes it clean on a corner of his shirt and returns to hand it to Hijikata.

"Try stabbing my finger with it."
hakodate: whoever it was sent "fuck you, you're adopted" to half the people on my contact list. (who had my phone last night?)

[personal profile] hakodate 2014-02-07 07:47 am (UTC)(link)
Hijikata takes it, quite casually, flipping it around in his hand to hold more comfortably and asks, also quite casually: "How hard?"

Look, it's a perfectly legitimate question.
reachforthekey: (Default)

[personal profile] reachforthekey 2014-02-07 08:43 pm (UTC)(link)
"Just enough to break the skin is fine." The question seems to surprise him, as if, among other things, it doesn't really matter.

He hesitates, just a moment, and grinds his teeth together, then adds, without explanation, "It's a bad idea for me to do it myself."
hakodate: and sex lives should EVER overlap. (i don't understand why your family)

[personal profile] hakodate 2014-02-08 05:58 am (UTC)(link)
Hijikata doesn't press for an explanation on that; it's not as though he's been straight up and forthcoming with the other travelers about his own abilities, after all. (And especially about the less useful side effects that come with them.)

And if it isn't going to take much for Eren to figure his own problems out, Hijikata has ample reasons for wanting to keep less blood on the air in a small, enclosed space, himself. So he simply nods and leans in close enough to see what he's doing (and no closer), pressing the blade lightly against Eren's finger.
reachforthekey: (Default)

[personal profile] reachforthekey 2014-02-09 04:50 am (UTC)(link)
He doesn't flinch in the least when the skin parts and blood wicks across the scalpel, but he does pull his finger back and study it for a moment, face growing gradually troubled.

"It isn't working..."
hakodate: but you insist i be conscious for sex. whatever. i really think your priorities are out of whack. (you don't care if i shave my legs)

[personal profile] hakodate 2014-02-09 06:56 am (UTC)(link)
It's not much blood; a small amount like that, Hijikata can't smell, would hardly notice if he weren't looking right at it.

And given how much his perception of such things has changed, since he drank the ochimizu, how even those few drops should've been enough to draw his attention before his eyes even set on them - between this and the scars, he has to suppose that means he's human again.

He's not sure that's such a good thing, here.

"Looks like this world wants us to play by the rules."
reachforthekey: (Default)

[personal profile] reachforthekey 2014-02-09 09:51 pm (UTC)(link)
"Shit."

The anger and disgust in his voice is probably not more than the situation calls for, but it's direct and uncensored, making no effort to politely hold back his feelings.

"By their rules, are any of us meant to make it out of this alive?"
hakodate: but you insist i be conscious for sex. whatever. i really think your priorities are out of whack. (you don't care if i shave my legs)

[personal profile] hakodate 2014-02-11 07:48 am (UTC)(link)
"Probably not. But you can't always get what you want."

And even if it's more bravado than anything, before they have even an inkling of what they're actually up against (aside from "a world that can block them from regenerating"), he'll be damned before he lets whatever governs this world have its way with them.
reachforthekey: (Default)

[personal profile] reachforthekey 2014-02-12 01:03 am (UTC)(link)
"Ha. You're right. We can still show them why nobody messes with us, healing or not." There's a lot of energy in his voice, not so much confidence as sheer momentum.
hakodate: he may take you up on it. (do not try to play hump the great dane.)

[personal profile] hakodate 2014-02-13 06:18 am (UTC)(link)
He knew he liked the kid's attitude for a reason. Satisfied with that, he wanders far enough across the room to toss the scalpel back on the table where it came from, casting a quick glance over the tools laid out there. Obviously what was used on them, but nothing else aside from that really stands out, which means if they're going to figure out what comes next, the obvious point is -

"You see any way out other than that door?"

He's pretty sure he knows what the answer is going to be, but waking up missing a headful of memories and after some kind of impromptu surgery is unbalancing enough that he wouldn't be surprised if everyone isn't thinking at their most clear, himself included.
reachforthekey: (skeptibrow)

[personal profile] reachforthekey 2014-02-14 03:56 am (UTC)(link)
"No, there's no other way. Except... if someone's waiting for us, and we use the door, we'll just get picked off on the way out."

He gritted his teeth, frustrated, taking a few impatient paces, and then freezing, suddenly, as if the tension had reached critical mass.

Very quietly, he said "Maybe there is another way out."
hakodate: all of the money i would have spent on condoms and put a kid through college. (i could probably save)

[personal profile] hakodate 2014-02-14 06:58 am (UTC)(link)
"...what're you thinking of, kid?"

Because that posture and that tone are just a little bit ominous.
reachforthekey: (skeptibrow)

[personal profile] reachforthekey 2014-02-16 03:13 am (UTC)(link)
"I might be able to break through the wall and give us another way out. But if it goes wrong... everyone might be at risk. And I don't know if it will work."
hakodate: but you insist i be conscious for sex. whatever. i really think your priorities are out of whack. (you don't care if i shave my legs)

[personal profile] hakodate 2014-02-18 07:23 am (UTC)(link)
...yeah, that's a dilemma. Hijikata takes a glance around the room, considering, and -

"Save it for now. Might be we hit a point of no return here pretty quick, but there's no sense in doing what we can't reverse until we've gotten as much a look at what's here as we're able to manage."

For all he knows, there won't be a single goddamned clue of any real use in here, but if there is and they leave it to languish undeduced under a pile of rubble, well, better safe than sorry.
reachforthekey: (Default)

[personal profile] reachforthekey 2014-02-21 04:22 am (UTC)(link)
"Right. ... Where... should we start looking?"

Eren's very determined, but also deeply unimaginative, and he knows it.
hakodate: whoever it was sent "fuck you, you're adopted" to half the people on my contact list. (who had my phone last night?)

[personal profile] hakodate 2014-02-22 04:26 am (UTC)(link)
There are a few places, even in a space as tight as this one, but one place stands out as the obvious first resort, in Hijikata's mind.

"Let's see what's around the door, first."

The only obvious exit - which almost certainly means there's something wrong with it.