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_ooc2015-08-28 06:41 pm
powersthatbe) wrote in synodiporia_ooc2015-08-28 06:41 pm
Entry tags:
Test Drive #11.
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.
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.
Byerly Vorrutyer | The Vorkosigan Saga
You'd think being the man who alerted the professors to the situation--thanks to an overheard conversation at the coffee shop--would have meant By could stay well out of the fray. Hadn't he already done his part? But no, thanks to (nominally) being a member of the humanities department, here By was, trying to sneak up on one of the snipers and... well, incapacitate them somehow. Possibly clonk them on the head.
All right, fine, he'd volunteered to help, but if By let it be known to anyone that he'd done something useful voluntarily it would be quite the blow to his reputation, so he was just going to pretend he hadn't and no one would be any the wiser.
He glances over his shoulder and motions to his assigned partner to follow him.
34: Investigating
"My," Byerly drawls, "this is delightfully outre. They certainly didn't go for assignments like these at my last school."
Of course, his last school had been a none-too-glorified District University back on Barrayar that had been the only thing his father had been willing to shell out for in lieu of the Imperial Service Academy that By had quite deliberately flubbed the exam to attend--and he'd even had to drop out of that one once he'd been disinherited, nigh on twenty years ago. But details.
Despite his remarks, By does hope that his partner doesn't expect him to break the physical contact rules for this assignment. Ganymede Syndrome may have given him the body of his adolescence back, but he's still thirty-eight inside and there was something a bit creepy about a man his age engaging in that sort of thing with a teenager, whether or not they're also an adult faking it.
Investigating! Also omg YOUR CANON BLESS YOUR SOUL
She stands with her back pressed to the wall near the doorway, which she does not dare open because they are supposed to be blending in damnit this is a mission she is doing the mission. The anxious awkward alone is already making semi-transparent bright red exclamation marks hover around her, bouncing a little up and down like a little shoal of fish about their entirely unwilling mistress. Victim. Victim sounds better. She turns the most miserable gaze on Byerly.
"Um," she says. It is a very expressive um.
YOU'RE WELCOME! I HOPE BY IS HOLDING UP
"Well," he says briskly, "that does decide things, doesn't it?" And it does, if not quite in the way his partner is supposed to assume. "I've never been kicked out of a school for failing a class before, but I suppose one has to start somewhere. Do you have anyplace to stay that isn't in the dormitories, by the by? It would be quite dreadful if we end up on the streets thanks to this. I don't think my reputation would recover."
HE IS HILARIOUS ROCK ON FRAND
Or maybe she should, would that be good for the test? Damnit, why can't someone else do the wibbling here...
"N-no way, it's just one test..." she tries to counter, if only to be able to tell herself that she didn't go down easily. Hah. "I mean there's no reason to panic just yet...!"
EXCELLENT! APOLOGIES FOR HIS DICKISHNESS
His drawling voice drips with poison and scorn.
No worries, he is Vor after all~~~
She is also pretty sure that she would much rather fail the test than to get into a wibblefest in front of him. This might cause some problems.
"A-and, anyway, they didn't say which of us is supposed to be doing the emotions thing!" Surely this is a triumphant argument. She is totally capable of meanietude. Just give her a chance.
yes he is that
"Do you really think you can upset me?" Byerly replies with a sniff. "I've been chewed out by Lady Alys Vorpatril on multiple occasions. I am thoroughly immune to being caused distress by any lesser woman."
It occurs to him a second after he says this that he doesn't actually know if Russia had an aristocracy in this time period or its equivalent, but hopefully his partner won't know either.
no subject
"Maybe we can start with the... uh... non-upsetting part?" Sio has absolutely zero idea about Russian anythings barring their military history, by which she is thrilled, being her slightly mad self. She doesn't really question that this guy from that country that regularly uses its weather as a weapon of mass destruction can out-upset her, though it might have less to do with him being Russian and more with him, unlike her, having better social adjustment than a wet cardboard box.
"It'd be more of a challenge, right? Because I'm..." she waves a helpless hands at the exclamation marks, which have not yet paused in their little ohmygod dance all around her.
no subject
He shrugs. "If you wish."
He'd still trying to attempt to bury the needle negatively before he tries to build her back up, but hopefully this current round of being a jerk is enough. He does feel sorry for her.
no subject
"Yeah, I suck, right?" she mumbles. "We're gonna fail and, and they'll kick us out and we'll be useless for the Jaunt and everyone will be disappointed in us..."
Bad grades don't really phase you anymore when you've fought off an alien invasion, but not being able to Protect Everyone? Gets her every time.
no subject
"Hey," he says in a soft voice, suddenly gentle. "I didn't mean it. Prevarications and slander, all of it. We've got the first half done already. You did it, Sio."
He's sparkling now, using the S.Tech and his expression is no longer harsh, nor even his usual smarmy little smirk... but oddly kind.
33
Regardless, the man follows Byerly, his inward monologue much more active than anything his facial expression reveals. Academic, intellectuals, all useless. Will have to keep this one out of the way when we get to the sniper. Just dead weight - why saddle me with him? Have to see if he has hidden talents.
Re: 33
By stops in his tracks and gestures to the man to go forward. After you.