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

34: Infiltrating

[what_do_you_see]

The redheaded young man across from Pitch doesn't seem like he's going to be much help in getting anything done, either. At least not on the 'positive' end of the emotional spectrum. His face seems set in a perpetually serious expression, and he's smaller than the vast majority of his classmates (though clearly in excellent shape, like a flyweight boxer).

"Not interested in failing," he says shortly, and at least he doesn't seem too effected by the sense of foreboding coming off Pitch. He's either very stoic, or used to such emotions.

[closetshark]

"Nobody ever is." Pitch shrugs, boney shoulders and gaunt frame just the wrong side of human to be right. "Though you are... certainly far more interesting than the rest of those rainbow vomiting twits." He adds, predatory gold eyes taking in the young man with mild interest as if taking note of something only he can see.

"You don't like them much, do you? Not that they like you either. Too angry, too... empty for them."

[what_do_you_see]

Walter doesn't smile at the 'rainbow vomiting twits' comment, but he does note the description and mull over it briefly. He has an eye for metaphor and perhaps more dramatic turns of phrase in description, and he can't decide if he likes that one or not. It certainly seems accurate, but it's a bit whimsical for his taste.

"Strange thing to say," he comments, brow furrowing slightly. Most people don't have much to say about emptiness, and while his bad temper has been commented on (and has gotten him in serious trouble more than once), he doesn't remember meeting Pitch before, so how would he know?

"Anyway, not a popularity contest. We have a job to do - get to it." The needle seems to be stuck somewhere in the middle, barely twitching.

[closetshark]

"Strange is something I do rather well." Pitch smirked, making a graceful gesture with a pale hand. Little eddies of glittering black form in the air behind his fingers, sand rather clearly not made of ground earth or stone.

"Of course it's a popularity contest; humans are such social creatures, you need the validation that the approval of others gives you. Denying it doesn't make you special, it makes you an easy sacrificial lamb."