The Powers That Be ([personal profile] powersthatbe) wrote in [community profile] synodiporia_ooc2016-10-14 02:43 pm
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Test Drive #16

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.
wickedestwitch: Idina Menzel(?) (funny story that...)

[personal profile] wickedestwitch 2016-10-17 07:44 am (UTC)(link)
"The Trumps." Elphaba supplies, lowering her broom with a sigh. "Time is... not a restraint to when they take people. There is another Traveler among us who is from my homeland but many generations in to the future."

She rubs a bit at the tattoo on her finger, sighing.

"Time, place, even different world entirely. None of it is a boundary for them."
naturaltwohands: (quiet talk)

[personal profile] naturaltwohands 2016-10-17 11:53 am (UTC)(link)
After a long moment of watching the two other drow interact, Drizzt moves to Elphaba's side and slightly behind her, touching her shoulder as he speaks just to her. "He knows. I told him, but his thoughts rested entirely on Zaknafein. And they still do."

If Drizzt had any doubts that Jarlaxle and Zaknafein were friends, they are gone now. Not with the way that either of them is acting now, especially Jarlaxle. He knew that it was Zaknafein at first glance, just like Drizzt had. Jarlaxle's voice had emotion in it that Drizzt had never heard from the older drow.

Watching the two, Drizzt is at least now fairly convinced that he can trust Jarlaxle, and a holy convinced that he is not any sort of imposter. He cares about Zaknafein, and it also seems that he cares about Drizzt himself. It really does raise a number of questions, none of which Drizzt will ask right now. Not at this moment, when he feels like he is intruding.
Edited 2016-10-17 12:57 (UTC)
hiding_honor_in_darkness: (Zaknafein78)

[personal profile] hiding_honor_in_darkness 2016-10-19 04:28 am (UTC)(link)
Zaknafein's attention is now solely on the other drow. He can tell that Jarlaxle is older, that time has passed even without having Drizzt to tell him so. The weapon's master steps even closer, wanting to see him more clearly. Different yes, older yes, but still Jarlaxle. Somehow the brigand had managed to hold onto a deeper sense of self through the centuries than he'd ever been able to.

"Truthfully, I do not know the why, only that I was the first of us to be brought here." The truth of the when he'd been taken is hidden under his shirt, the frightful, twisted scar over his heart and those acquired as he'd been forced to endure well beyond his own death.

It honestly surprises him to see Jarlaxle so emotional, especially over him. He had retreated into his own, personal hell for so long he'd practically forgotten that once the other drow had actually cared when they were young, and there's part of him doesn't want to believe that Jarlaxle still could to such a degree.

He is such a fool.

"It is I, old friend. Not Zin'carla, or even the Weapons Master of House Do'Urden." He says softly, but with conviction. "For now I am just Zaknafein."
acheat: (A moment of thought)

[personal profile] acheat 2016-10-24 12:42 am (UTC)(link)
Sorry Elphaba. Sorry Drizzt. As far as Jarlaxle is concerned right now, it's just him and Zak.

He was emotional, much to his own surprise as well. It didn't happen often, he could count on one hand when he felt his heart rise into his throat like this. And most of those times had been due to Drizzt.

This, however, was different. He reached out, gently resting a hand on Zak's shoulder, peering at him with the one uncovered eye in slowly fading disbelief, and growing awe.

And hope.

"... Just Zaknafein... Is more than fine with me, my friend."
hiding_honor_in_darkness: (Zaknafein5)

[personal profile] hiding_honor_in_darkness 2016-10-28 01:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Zaknafein is not free from his demons, or that dark pit that had caused him to pull so far away from Jarlaxle in the first place, to put up a nearly impenetrable wall between him and all others. Drizzt had begun to pull him out all those years ago in Menzoberranzan, and the more he's around these surface folk, around Elphaba, the more free of it he fills. He still has a long road to travel, but he's not alone in it anymore.

So Jarlaxle will be able to see more of Zaknafein in his eyes and smile than has been there in centuries. The former weapons master lifts a hand to rest over the one on his shoulder, but then he surges forward to pull the other drow into a tight embrace.

"I am sorry." He says, still after all this time blaming himself for what happened between them. "For everything."