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

43

[papacerberus]

Lupa is patrolling the area as he usually does. The animals are strange, but they're always strange in Liminal. He watches them with bemused looks mostly, but doesn't interfere with whatever they wish to do. A few sheep have taken to following him around, roaming ahead and behind, and Lupa has no idea what to make of that really, so he just steps carefully so that they don't get underfoot.

That careful attention is seriously strained when he sees familiar armor. It isn't Sera, or Gale (he knows where Gale is, a comforting presence at the edge of his senses), but it is still someone from the Junkyard. From... home.

He comes closer as quickly as he can surrounded by sheep and raises one hand in greeting. "Hello."

Maribel, and more than that. "...Jinana? When did you arrive?"

Lupa doesn't look incredibly changed, but there are a few small ones. He is wearing his armor jacket, but the lower body armor has been replaced with a pair of dove gray jeans, through the belt-loops of which he's strung his usual strand of Tag Rings. The white streaks on his jacket have been lined with a thin line of Embryon orange, and there's an orange tattoo visible on his chest, half hidden under the edge of the jacket.

[suchbeautifulwords]

Ah.
Now there's interesting.
She might have known he was here, but ... knowing isn't seeing (or sensing, or smelling...). It isn't hard to notice the modifications to his appearance, either - two Tribes' colours together... Even with the alliance going as it had, the idea is almost as disconcerting as anything else.

Still, he's a fellow Leader, regardless (no, this isn't the time to wonder if she still is one) and one who she can respect as such - so he gets a long polite nod. "Not long ago, as far as I can tell," she says.

[papacerberus]

Lupa nods, coming to a stop. His pose is relaxed, as far as that goes. Alert, still, always and forever alert to threats, but there's no tension in the way he composes himself.

"This is a strange place, but it can be a good one. If you need anything explained, I will do my best. Gale is also here, if you would prefer to talk to him."

[suchbeautifulwords]

"A good place... yes." She looks around for a moment, at the scene that as strange as it might be has clearly never been touched by conflict. Still unused to the words, as much as she might be hiding it: "Thank you. How long have you been here? And Gale?"

[papacerberus]

"There are things about this place that make it difficult to determine the passage of time. I would guess... a year, at least. Gale arrived later. A few months, I think," Lupa takes a deep breath and bows his head for a moment as he continues, "Sera was here as well, before me. She is gone right now, but we are waiting her return."

[suchbeautifulwords]

"I see. ...That is a shame," she says, looking downwards briefly. "I would have ... liked to meet her." After everything she'd heard... to come so close and yet so far? Unfortunate. Very unfortunate. But at least what company she seems to have is reliable. "And there is ... no conflict here?"

[papacerberus]

"You will see her again eventually. We believe Sera has gotten lost in a dungeon--a place that is influenced by one's mind to make them face things about themselves--and as soon as we find the location of the entrance, we will band together to get her out."

Lupa sounds very sure of that, because he won't let himself even think of the other options. He hesitates a moment before answering that question.

"There is conflict, but it is not never-ending. Much can be solved with discussion or investigating why conflict started rather than fighting. I've had to transform and do battle more often to help people get out of dungeons than for anything else."