Test Drive #13.

[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 December 18th-31st. Our next Jaunt, Escape from Junkworld, is a space opera romp where humans, aliens, and androids work together on mysterious scavenged, malfunctioning ships to outrun an interstellar disaster. Our next Walkabout (a more casual alternative event, for those not interested in the Jaunt) will revisit Heartbreak Academy, a shoujo anime setting where high-schoolers use Social Technology to bring shoujo special effects to life, from glitter to roses, transformation sequences to sad rainclouds, these cartoony powers are at the height of education for those who want a career in media or diplomacy, or some other means of big-stage self-expression. Both Jaunt & Walkabout will begin January 7th & run for approximately six weeks.

Prompt #37 is set in the Escape from Junkworld jaunt, as an advance taste of the fun available there.

Prompt #38 is set in a created landscape within the Telepathic Network all Travelers can access, and features characters facing their inner demons and traumatic memories together.


Prompt #37

The Coronation's coolant system has sprung a leak somewhere in its kilometers of pressurized tubing - near enough to the diagnostic centers to short out the readouts, meaning half the crew is up to their elbows in the decking, ceramic floor plates scattered along the corridors like loose shingles, making traveling between workstations like a game of holy grail hopscotch between the tiles and the potholes they left.

Besides that, the leak leaves the entirety of the ship smelling like a cross between pond scum and burned espresso, and set the radiation alarms to a distracting buzz - not enough for klaxons, just a constant, low-level warning that set the teeth on edge.

In the ship’s simulator chambers, anyone visored and gloved to work in virtual space can ignore it - but the computer environment may experience glitches in its programs, whether functional or recreational. On the bridge, other systems are experiencing occasional failures - from sensor shadows hinting at unreal pursuit and activating automated combat routines, to the translators in the comm system shorting out and creating a momentary babel.

Meanwhile, between evacuating irradiated areas, crawling through the conduits looking for the problem to fix, or quietly shooing smuggler-snails full of contraband out of the way of the search parties, there’s something for everyone to be doing...


Prompt #38


Sometimes someone’s issues lead to them being swallowed by a dungeon in Liminal Space and forced to confront their darker side, their repressed issues - but you can’t always wait for an arbitrary interdimensional force to kidnap you. Here in the Mind Palace, the world is simply a vast, blank white space, and glittering glass cubes float in the air, each holding within it a freeze-framed memory of a traumatic moment, something you’ve chosen to face here together with your companions. Maybe only one of you is going through this gauntlet, or maybe you’ve opted to face your fears together, but whatever this captive image is, you’ll have to explain it or let it play out, and come to grips with what it means to you - whether a happy memory you’ve lost, something that makes you sad or afraid or angry, or even a piece of your past that had been buried or forgotten until now - there it is, in front of you, waiting.

What happens next?

Comments

[pseudologist]

Varric eyes the cube, head tipped back so he can clearly see the image - eye level for a qunari is, after all, rather above his own eye level. He runs a thumb idly over Bianca's stock, tracing the old, familiar wear patterns left by long years of not pretty.

"Inquisitor, if what's in there manages to be uglier than the shit we saw at Adamant, I'll owe you a whole year of rounds at the Herald's Rest."

[galvanizer]

"And we wouldn't want that to happen. You might need to actually deal with the Merchant's Guild to get your money back," she snorts, glancing back at him with a smirk.

"... I also doubt anything will be uglier than Adamant anyway."

[pseudologist]

"It would be a tragedy," Varric agrees, the corners of his mouth turned down in feigned horror at the thought. Mostly feigned, at least.

He glances back towards the cube, and lifts one hand to bid her onward with a showman's flourish. "Lead on, Your Inquisitorialness."

[galvanizer]

Smiling still, she looks back at the cube and takes a breath before activating it, shielding her eyes as blinding white light bursts out from it to transform their surroundings to the trapped memory.

As the light fades, freezing cold starts in, biting at their exposed skin while wind whips at their hair and clothes. It's the dead of night, and the scent of smoke is faintly mixed in with the fresh chill of snow. Before them is a bleeding and bruised Asaraanda, limping through the snow with her staff as a walking stick. She moves stubbornly even though the only noise is the shrieking wind and her own quiet chattering teeth.

The present Asa cocks her head and watches herself come upon an abandoned fireplace, the way she slumps on discovering it's stone cold and whoever lit it long gone.

"I never asked how the escape from Haven was for all of you."

[pseudologist]

Though his body's no more than a psychic construct here, just as the cold itself is, Varric shivers and hunches his shoulders against the wind that tugs at his collar. His expression tightens a little as he watches the memory-Asa limping towards the long-dead fire; though he knows already how this particular excursion ended, it's all too easy to recall the concern that turned slowly towards despair as the hours of the storm raged on with no sign of her.

"Curly and the Seeker kept everyone moving," he replies. "We lost a few people to the storms, but they kept the red templar stragglers off our backs. I might have to change that part in the book - flight through a winter storm in the Frostbacks might be harrowing, but it's not an exciting read."

[galvanizer]

"Oh, I don't know," she answers, keeping her voice dry despite feeling that barely forgotten fear of being lost forever in the storm she'd experienced- that her memory self is experiencing before them. "It gives the readers a chance to breathe between my death-defying acts, right?"

The past Asa now steels herself visibly and resumes her slow trek through the storm, hand up to shield her eyes from the snow.

"... I'm sorry," she adds quietly, moving herself now to keep pace with her past self. "If only I'd pushed harder to find out who the 'Elder One' was instead of brushing it off..."

[pseudologist]

"If only I hadn't led Hawke to that carta fortress, there might not have been an Elder One in the first place," Varric replies, voice lifting to be heard over the howl of the wind. Even with the real, current Asa moving at a speed meant to keep pace with her weary and injured counterpart, he has to hustle a little to keep up through the drifting snow.

"There are probably a few hundred places where things could have turned out differently if someone had picked up on some clue that only seems obvious because we know the answer. Taking the demon-spitting hole in the sky more seriously than yet another wacky cult was the reasonable choice."

[galvanizer]

The qunari sighs and shakes her head. "It just feels like this whole mess could have been avoided if we'd just paid attention... but you're right. The hole in the sky was pretty distracting." She flashes him a wry smile and adds, "Must've been all the green."

Up ahead, Asa stumbles with a weak shout and rolls part way down the hill, shivering as she rights herself and brushes the snow off as well she can before doggedly continuing her trek. Wincing at the sight, the real Inquisitor rubs the back of her neck. "Not my most graceful moment."

[pseudologist]

"I'll leave that part out of the book," Varric assures, though the abrupt checked movement in past-Asa's direction when she falls makes a lie of his easy tone. It's just a memory, but that knowledge doesn't make it any easier to watch without trying to interfere.

"We sent out search parties," he adds after a moment's silence, and there's something just a little apologetic in his voice, that out of everyone who'd escaped from Haven, none of them had found her in the cold and the storms. She'd stumbled across their path in the end, on her own.

[galvanizer]

"... We made it out okay though," she says, putting a hand to Varric's shoulder and giving it a squeeze. No apologies needed. Ever. "I almost lost my staff on the way though. Good thing I didn't, or Harritt might not have spoken to me ever again."

[pseudologist]

Varric lifts his hand to briefly cover hers, solidarity and gratitude both, and allows himself a low chuckle at the thought of the smith's likely displeasure at the loss of one of his designs. "Now, Inquisitor," he says. "He'd have to talk to you at least once. Have you ever tried to yell in pantomime?"

[galvanizer]

"... I'd give good gold to see that," she says with a grin. "He might hurt himself if we put Dagna in front of him though."

[pseudologist]

"She'd probably just give pointers," Varric notes, not without a hint of fondness in his voice. Dagna might be prone to delving into the weirdest corners of magic possible, but her knack for artificing and her willingness to leave Orzammar behind her make her all right in his books.

"We might actually see the first ever case of a human spouting lava without having been possessed by a rage demon first."

[galvanizer]

"He'd never need to light a fire in his forge ever again," she adds. "We'd just have to get him angry enough and he'd be off!"