The Powers That Be ([personal profile] powersthatbe) wrote in [community profile] synodiporia_ooc2014-03-29 03:05 pm
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Test Drive #2

Welcome to the Synodiporia Test Drive Meme! Below the cut there are twofour new prompts, here and here are the prompts from previous testdrives, which you’re still welcome to use here. 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!

Prompt #9 gives a look at what it's like for everyone to be stuck in Liminal Space, & Prompt #10 is a chance to try your hand at being an infiltrator in our upcoming Noir plot.

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, & Noir Plot pages, just to give you the background info you’ll need for some of these prompts. And if you’re looking for more information, the Directory is here and the Application page is here.

Prompts:



Prompt #9: Liminal Space

Today, if it's a day, Liminal Space has shifted again. It's twilight, and a moldering New Orleans graveyard, full of ornate gothic sepulchers, stretches in every direction, gray stone and wrought iron barriers sectioning it into smaller plots. Some of these mausoleums have been opened, and their insides don't match their outsides. Inside are well-appointed train compartments, dinner cars and sleeper cars and such, richly appointed and well lit, as if they come straight from the Orient Express. Out the windows, you can see the landspace whizzing by, although it's not the same landscape from one window to the next. You can feel the vibration of the train, the acceleration - but step out of the car and you're in a graveyard again, and inside the cars you can hear crickets and nightbirds singing and smell the rich aroma of flowering trees.

Also in the graveyard are a few scattered train-cars, but nobody's going into those - inside they're all dank spaces packed with decomposing bodies. There are small animals here and there outside - rabbits, birds, that kind of thing -- all of them dead, but none of them letting it keep them from their nightly routines. The crickets and nightjars are making train noises. Bemused travelers are finding comfortable spaces wherever they can.




Prompt #10: The Midnight Rose

It's half past nine and the joint is jumping. The shutters on the front window are down, the front door is locked, but there's a big mook with a shrewd look in his eye letting anybody with a black enameled rose pin on their lapel in through the delivery entrance, and the back room they're shown into doesn't look anything like a candy store. There's a small, dark bar in one corner, and in another corner six guys with strings and brass are making like they're the Duke Ellington orchestra. The floors are tiled parquet and a few couples are dancing, but most of the action's at the smoke-shrouded card tables where a dozen little private meetings are happening, gents and dames in pinstripes and fancy hats or beaded dresses and heels, but rarely both. There are card games and conversations going on, and who can say what's more high stakes? Tonight, this is the place to be, Bensonhurst outfit or Gravesend mob or anybody else who can pay the cover charge.

[personal profile] ex_nullification431 2014-04-01 01:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Darling wasn't a trained runner by any stretch of the imagination. Already her lungs had started to burn, a stitch creeping up her side and sweat causing her hair to stick to her brow, but the prospect of what lay behind her spurred her on, faster and faster. Gods help her if she tripped. However, with the first the mob fast on her heels and someone standing the doorway of the hotel waving her inside, she didn't dare slow down lest she be locked out.

She hauled ass.

Only once she'd crossed the threshold of the building and slammed into the foyer did she come to a stop, her breath coming out in a great heaves. Still, she didn't pause, not entirely, turning to face the person that had waved her inside (quite aggressively too) as she drank in the details of the lobby. The barricades were good - strong furniture blocking both doorways and windows - that would buy them some time, but not much.

Her fingers danced, expression grim despite the flush of her face from the exertion, "This will not hold long. Even if it does, they will set fire to the building to either burn it down or smoke us out." She did not have faith that reason would reassert itself upon the city's populace. Once a riot started only violence or the promise of loot would collapse it.

Aware that he likely would not understand her finger speech (even if she mouthed the words), she pantomimed a number of the actions, greatly exaggerating them.

Out from the openness of the street, Darling's collected disposition reasserted itself, the tall woman immediately moving to help close the door and block it. The furniture was heavy, and she gritted her teeth, lips pulled back into a grimace.

Between the efforts, she continued to sign, "This too room large to defend. Too many openings." She pointed to the number of windows, the various halls leading off from the lobby. The overturned furniture would slow the crowds, but it could not stop them and there were too few people within the hotel to guard every possible entryway. "We need a chokehold for once they breach it."

There was no question as to whether or not the crowd would break into the hotel - they would and likely faster than those trapped within expected - so the defenders needed to change the playing field to their advantage as much as possible.

"The stairs."

She made a climbing motion, her eyes upon the staircase behind her. That would be far more defensible, or at least would help alleviate the problem of the difference in numbers between those trapped and those rioting. It would be possible to continuously fall back upon the stairs, but once they reached the roof… Without reinforcements or some way to break the tide they would die.
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 2014-04-04 06:38 am (UTC)(link)
The finger speech meant nothing to him, but the pantomimes - in conjunction with the things he'd already harbored doubts about - were more than enough to get the message across.

His own expression was grim as he leaned in, shoved the last of the furniture into place. She was right about the room being indefensible, that was for sure; he enough experience at being the invading party rather than the defender to know exactly what he'd be doing, were he on the opposite side. If they had more people -

If they had people who could fight.

His gaze went across to the room, to the people who had remained in the lobby. Some were like the two of them, prepared to deal with this. The others here, though...

He caught her eye for a moment as she mimed climbing, nodded before he turned back to the rest of the room and barked at them to get upstairs, jabbing his hand in the direction of the stairs to make the point doubly clear. Most of them, at least, moved quickly.

Hijikata waited until all of them had done so before moving to bring up the rear. There weren't many here who he thought up to the task of holding the stairs, and when you wanted something done anyway, that just meant doing it yourself might be the only way to go.

"Are you armed?" He tapped the swords at his side as he asked.