Test Drive #16

[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 October 25th–November 1st, but for once we’re breaking with tradition and instead of an upcoming Jaunt, we have a special, upcoming, multi-week Liminal Space event called Welcome to the World Series, which heralds the end of Phase Two and the start of Phase Three of the game of Synodiporia. Having chosen their Champions in Phase Two, the mysterious entities known as the Trumps are divvying up the rest of the Travelers--and in Phase Three they’re playing for keeps.

Prompt #43 is set in an agricultural-themed liminal space—with a bit of fabrics and crafts thrown in.

Prompt #44 is set in the dreaming realm known as Questing Country. Here, with the aid of their Animal Companions, young lucid dreamers from a variety of species (crystalline Hecatites, long-lived Elves, aquatic Vodyanoi, bone-spurred and four-armed Spartoi, scaled Gorgons with their petrifying abilities and tentacled hair, and your bog-standard humans) fight together as Champions against the monsters that arise from the collective unconscious of their species… for now, anyway. At least until they grow up, burn out, or go wrong.

Prompt #43

Right now, Liminal Space is a patchwork of farmland--a literal patchwork, as the ground under the Travelers’ feet is printed fabric, sewn together as if it were a quilt. One patch has a field of lettuce, another a printed field of corn and so on and so forth. Just about every crop is represented in quilted form, including ones that aren’t exactly… standard. Or legal.

Crocheted farm animals roam atop the fields, making needle-clicking sounds whenever they open their mouths, beaks, and snouts. Here and there lie irons, face down, luckily not at all hot. If you climb on top of one, it should be possible to ride it around like a tractor.

As for the farmhouse, barn, and silo? Travelers might be able to see the plush shape of them on the horizon, but no matter how long they travel in that direction, they’ll never get any closer.


Prompt #44

Whether Fire Mushrooms from Nuclear Winter, Men-in-Black from Conspiracy Country, Plague Vectors from the Softened Caverns, Horned Masters from the Stealing Ships, or any of the manifold Nightmares that haunt Questing Country and cause it to summon its Champions, there is one thing all these enemies have in common: they arise from the fears and worries of their world.

Some of these Nightmares are seasonal.

It’s Exam Season again on Hecate, the annual time during its longer-than-Earth year when the young people of that planet take the tests that will determine both their future careers and their very right to be regarded as adults in Hecatite society--as well as the annual practice exams to ready them for it. To be young and Hecatite during Exam Season is to be in a very stressful situation, no matter your capabilities. So much is riding on the results.

So it’s really not surprising that the twenty-foot-tall Test Proctors from the Hallowed Halls of Education positively swarm from the time that the tests begin until the day the results are posted. The Proctors work to corner any young person they can find, essaying volley after volley of exam questions at them until they fail or give up or attack the Proctor--and that’s when the Proctors get nasty.

Comments

[championofbolts]

Before the roar of protest can fully form, it cuts off, to what sounds like some kind of explosion. If Drizzt turns to look, the Proctor - this one, anyway - is gone, and there's what looks like a spray of molten glass on the ground, quickly cooling, and a figure that could easily be mistaken for a statue at first. Until she moves and, no, that's living rock.

This is Dee's least favorite time in Questing Country - least favorite recurring time, at least. The all-time worst was that time her mother nearly died. But really, she gets enough testing coprolith when she's awake; she doesn't need to be menaced by it when she's supposedly resting, too.

[naturaltwohands]

Drizzt turns around when the roar is suddenly silenced, and although he notices the statue to start with, it isn't more than a moment before his eyes fall onto the molten glass-like substance on the ground. He looks at it in horror, wondering what sort of spell could render a body into such a substance! The creature had only been shouting words at him, and had otherwise not been a threat.

The statue then moves, and Drizzt's scimitars come flashing into his hands, Guenhwyvar growling at his side, Twinkle glowing from the proximity of other Proctors. "Were you the one who did this?!"

[championofbolts]

Dee frowns slightly. "...It's a Nightmare," she says, like that explains everything.

To be fair, it does explain everything, to anyone who knows how Questing Country works, and it's been a while since she last encountered what Olivia calls 'newbies.'

[naturaltwohands]

"A Nightmare?" Drizzt isn't so easily convinced, and still not at all pleased, but he doesn't attack.

The way she said it made it sound as if these creatures were some sort of construct rather than any true living thing. Drizzt knew of such creatures, and had dealt with one such creature before himself. All he can do is hope that her explanation is something to that effect, because he'd rather not fight someone that is capable of doing... whatever just happened to that creature now.

In other words: yes, Drizzt is a little new to these things.

[championofbolts]

"...Right, you must be new. Sorry. Nightmares aren't actually living beings; they're manifestations of people's fears, and if they're allowed to run rampant here they can cause all kinds of trouble. And really, I'm getting enough of that nonsense at home."

[naturaltwohands]

It's an explanation that seems to temper his anger, allowing him to put some sort of leash on it. For now. He's still reserving judgment.

"Can you prove it?" Drizzt is not willing to take her word for it outright. "It seems too fantastical to believe."

Says the drow ranger with a panther companion from the Astral Plane.

[championofbolts]

Dee snorts. "Exam proctors, terrifying a spectre though they may be, aren't usually seven meters tall. And the questions are presented on datapad, not by someone shouting at you."

[naturaltwohands]

"I would not know," Drizzt confesses after several long moments, and he finally makes a slow of sliding his scimitars away. "I cannot understand how reality is distorted if I have not seen it in the first place."

He is still wary, but for now, he's tentatively accepting the explanation.

[championofbolts]

"Fair enough. It's been a while since the last time I ran into someone new." That might have been Olivia, come to think of it.

"As for the proctors... unfortunately, you can trust me on this one. I'm not even sure if I'll see the back of them this year."

[naturaltwohands]

"And I must admit that I am quite new to this place. I will simply have to take your word on all of this." Drizzt holds his hands out wide in a helpless shrug. "None of this makes sense to what I know."

[championofbolts]

"Questing Country's usually like that, at first. I was lucky enough to have a little context, but even that was only because my mother wrote a novel about it." Even then, Dee didn't know a whole lot when she started.

Probably because her mother got chipped off the planet for writing subversive literature when Dee was barely more than a pebble.

"Did your spirit companion not explain?"

[naturaltwohands]

Drizzt was not nearly so lucky to have context, obviously. It's the next question that takes him completely off-guard.

"My spirit companion? You mean Guenhwyvar? She cannot speak." Drizzt looks down to Guenhwyvar then, and is startled to see the panther's ears go down as she crouches low, almost in--guilt? "Guenhwyvar?"

[championofbolts]

"Maybe they came in together," another voice says, rather lower to the ground. It turns out to be a much smaller cat, this one a gray tabby. (Pyewacket's mainly been washing himself up to now. His Champion had things under control.)

Dee frowns. That seems to be happening a lot today. "That can happen?"

"Rarely, but there's precedent. Ask in the right circles and you'll hear about the annoying flying thing that fended off anyone trying to get to the Champion of Truth, back in the day. It's also possible she hasn't had anything worth saying yet."

"Fair enough, I suppose. But Questing Country is the entirety of my experience with cats."

(Look, for all she knows they all talk.)

[naturaltwohands]

Drizzt looks between all three; he's heard talking animals before, so it's not completely surprising to hear the other cat talk. It isn't long before his gaze locks on Guenhwyvar again. Yup, that's a guilty looking cat.

"... Can you speak, then?"

Guehwyvar tenses, but she nods, an uncharacteristic motion for her--and then speaks in a clearly woman's voice. "Yes."

Drizzt stares at her, stunned. "Have you always--?"

She shakes her head, the movement seeming unnatural. "Liminal Space...."

"Changed you," Drizzt can sense her unease, and he kneels to her to run his hands through her fur. "It's why you can stay with me safely, isn't it?"

"Yes," Guenwhyvar speaks softly. "But I do not like words."

The ranger stares at her for a long moment; there's many questions he wishes he could ask her, now that she can talk. But he supposes that being able to talk after perhaps centuries of not needing it would be very awkward. Drizzt can tell she's quite disturbed by the matter.

"Then you do not need to speak, my dearest friend," Drizzt wraps his arms around her neck, and she rubs her head against him.

[championofbolts]

Dee shrugs. "Well, whatever works for the two of you."

[naturaltwohands]

Drizzt can't help but laugh a bit, looking up from Guenhwyvar's fur. "It is what works for us."

And that's when she rolls onto her side, the same side that Drizzt is kneeled against, and pins him to the ground lazily to his protests. "Guenhwyvar!"

[championofbolts]

Dee doesn't try to hide her own amusement. She's glad Pye can't do that to her - at least, not without teaming up with everyone else's companions.

"Since you're new, welcome to Questing Country, though I wish you'd gotten a better one than the cracking Proctors. Running away is definitely a valid strategy, but it won't actually get rid of them - they'll just find someone else to torment."

[naturaltwohands]

Guenhwyvar seems tempted to literally just nap here on Drizzt. It's been a while since she's messed with him, and really, after being made to speak when she didn't want to, she needs something to take her mind off of it. Have a 600 pound black panther become a sudden dead weight on you, Drizzt.

"I can fight--Guenhwyvar, get off," Drizzt is trying to retain some dignity, here, and trying vainly to push the panther off. "I am skilled with dual scimitars. I just did not want to kill a reasoning being unnecessarily."

And then Guenhwyvar shifts, and Drizzt lets out a grunt as his arms are pinned up against his chest, no longer able to move them. He tries to shift out from under him, but no dice. Drizzt is well and truly stuck.

[championofbolts]

"They're not reasoning beings, just questioning. Endlessly questioning. Sometimes I wonder if that's true of the genuine articles as well." And she's really not the only one, or Questing Country wouldn't regularly be plagued with these things.

"I think she intends to keep you there for a while."

*ou t from under her, whoops

[naturaltwohands]

"Speech is usually reserved for--" Drizzt's voice is cut off with a grunt as Guenhwyvar leans fully on him, and he's breathless even as he protests. "Guenhwyvar!"