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.
canbebrave: (Well they tried to kill my brothers)

[personal profile] canbebrave 2014-04-04 04:24 am (UTC)(link)
Sansa had spent long enough inside the train cars, where most of her fellow Travelers had packed themselves into, enjoying the commodities they offered. Sansa had sat with the for a while- but only for the light that the cars offered. Things always seemed so dark, she had to bask in it while it lasted. But after a few hours, it began to feel unnatural, and she had to get out.

So she slides out of her seat without excusing herself from the conversations that were going on, and steps out of the car, breathing in the fresh air. She wishes she could stand here forever- eyes closed, breathing in the nights cool air and listening to the bugs. But she had other matters to attend to. Were the Gods watching her here too? Regardless, it seemed wrong not to pay her respects to them. They died for something.

Joscelin can probably hear her coming- she's a no better sneak than a liar, and her dress drags through the grass. But she still gets close enough to catch him reaching in to touch the bodies. Cue the pointed stare.
protect_and_serve: (bothered)

[personal profile] protect_and_serve 2014-04-04 04:54 am (UTC)(link)
He glances over, briefly, then lays his hand again on the shoulder of the nearest corpse, fingers splayed, and bows his head. He is not ashamed of what he was doing, but the appearance of it... he raises his voice, just slightly, speaking the words aloud rather than murmuring them.

"Cassiel, ward this soul from the gates of Hell, that his footsteps might lead him to Elua's country in the world beyond. Let this blood shed and life spent have meaning. Elua, as you love your protector, take in this lost soul, though he is not yours by birth."

It is not, precisely, one of the many funerary prayers Cassiline Brothers were taught to say in their role s priests, but an adaptation of one. He's had to adapt himself far more than he feels comfortable with, as a Traveler, but this is a change he doesn't regret.

He says the prayer again over the final body in the car, then swivels slowly to turn and look at Sansa.

"The way Liminal Space changes, they'll be gone in a few hours. Probably, back to vapor, but... Travelers have died on the Journey before, and not always returned. These might have been like us, decades ago."