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.
thornsofmalkav: (yelling)

Re: Amanda Ramirez | New World of Darkness OC | OTA

[personal profile] thornsofmalkav 2016-10-17 11:29 pm (UTC)(link)
"Touch of Madness!"

And suddenly the Proctor thing just... stops. A woman who looks a few years older than Amanda darts in between its legs and grabs her hand. "Come with me if you want to live," she says in a bad Austrian accent and she starts running, pulling Amanda along. She's got weird shadowy butterfly wings, a dress that looks like it's made of red butterfly wings, and a pink rabbit flying alongside her whose ears are (you guessed it) butterfly wings.

"Seriously, though," the woman says, "we really do need to haul ass. Touch of Madness only lasts so long."
hazardlight: (cause we just don't know how to take it)

[personal profile] hazardlight 2016-10-19 12:08 am (UTC)(link)
Amanda's startled enough by the sudden grab that her initial response completely bypasses any of the logical responses to the situation, and she blurts out, "Seriously? You're going for the T-2 reference and not the original?" as she scrambles to keep up. What's wrong with the second movie? I like the second movie. That truck crash? Great scene, even if it was special effects, Roadrash objects inaudibly, and Amanda ignores him. She can keep up with the chick with the serious commitment to the butterfly aesthetic and keep track of what's going on around them, or she can argue with her geist about the relative merits of various installments of a movie franchise, and she's not so far up herself that she's conflicted as to which is more useful right now.
thornsofmalkav: (enthusiasm)

[personal profile] thornsofmalkav 2016-10-20 11:55 am (UTC)(link)
"I like doing stupid accents," the butterfly woman says as if that explains everything--and maybe it does. "So, uh, is this your first time in Questing Country as a Dreamer? Because this is either my first or second, depending if you count alternate universe rock me."
hazardlight: (another link in the chain getting rusty)

[personal profile] hazardlight 2016-10-20 10:46 pm (UTC)(link)
"Yeah, no, this is new shit to me," Amanda replies, a little out of breath, but not particularly upset. It's about the weirdest new shit she's seen in a while, and coming from her, that's saying something. It's great. "Wait. Alternate universe rock you?"
thornsofmalkav: (opinions)

[personal profile] thornsofmalkav 2016-10-21 02:05 am (UTC)(link)
"Yeah," the butterfly woman says. "But, like, I'm not entirely sure when we yet, so I don't want to screw this up by impersonating her when she's still got friends and possibly a husband around. So, like, I'm all brown and squishy now instead of hard and purple."
hazardlight: (it's another case of finding your place)

[personal profile] hazardlight 2016-10-22 05:34 am (UTC)(link)
"You're still way ahead of me in the having a clue department," Amanda admits. She sneaks a glance over her shoulder at the Proctor, reassuring herself that it's not chasing them - yet, anyway. If the other woman says her magic bullshit won't last long, Amanda's willing to accept that claim. "Amanda, by the way."
thornsofmalkav: (enthusiasm)

[personal profile] thornsofmalkav 2016-10-22 07:23 am (UTC)(link)
"Thorne," the woman says. "With a gratuitous yet essential 'E' at the end. Pleased to meetcha. Congrats, you're in Questing Country. Basically, you end up here when you fall asleep and 'cause you're here it's your duty and job to fight the monsters that haunt the collective unconscious of, like, six different species, only one of which is human. Pretty soon your spirit animal is gonna show up and help you figure out what the shit is up with your powers."
hazardlight: (cheated and excited and afraid)

[personal profile] hazardlight 2016-10-23 12:35 am (UTC)(link)
Roadrash mutters something about spirit roadkill, more like, and Amanda spares a very brief scowl at him; last thing she needs is the geist getting jealous of something that's actually going to be helpful. "Like... when we say 'spirit' how 'spirity' are we talking?" she asks her rescuer. "Are we talking like... 'a thing that can interact with ghosts' spirity? Just as an example. Since you clearly are on round two for this particular shit."
thornsofmalkav: (enthusiasm)

amanda's girlfriend probably watches magical girl shows a lot (including kiddy stuff like precure)

[personal profile] thornsofmalkav 2016-10-23 12:15 pm (UTC)(link)
"More like the friendly small animal who teaches you to use your powers in a magical girl anime," Thorne says. "Uh, hm, has anime become popular in America by your time period? Your clothes look like they're from the 2010s but I dunno, you might just be hella prescient in your fashion choices."

(Yes, she did say 'hella.')
hazardlight: (and it's here with the litter)

of course she does

[personal profile] hazardlight 2016-10-24 02:18 am (UTC)(link)
"Twenty-sixteen, yeah," she replies, a little distractedly - she's already back on the subject of the spirit animals, and also while nothing Roadrash is muttering is remotely useful or relevant, he's still a little hard to tune out. "But like, benevolent friendly small animal and not secretly wants to eat your soul small animal?"
thornsofmalkav: (!selene)

Re: of course she does

[personal profile] thornsofmalkav 2016-10-24 03:40 am (UTC)(link)
"Oh hey, I'm from twenty-fourteen," Thorne says. "Do we have hoverboards yet? And yeah, they're the benevolent kind. Isn't that right, Selene?"

"Benevolence is a relative concept," the pink bunnyfly following after them says, with an Mid-Atlantic accent straight out of an old movie. "What you or I might see as benevolence could be seen by others as condescension or pity."

Thorne shakes her head. "Sorry about her," she tells Amanda. "I think Spirit Animals are required to be cryptic--or at least to ramble philosophically instead of give straight answers."
Edited 2016-10-24 03:40 (UTC)
hazardlight: (and they're never gonna go away)

[personal profile] hazardlight 2016-10-24 07:14 am (UTC)(link)
"Uh. Shit. I can't remember were the kind of 'hoverboards' that are actually just segways without handles that catch on fire randomly out a couple years ago?" Amanda asks. "'Cause, like, we got those. I'm pretty sure that was a rhetorical question but. We got things that don't hover and also they catch on fire and we call them hoverboards."

She frowns, and adds, "Really, a kinda disturbing amount of the future is on fire. Uh. I digress? Yeah."

The question of hoverboards and fire addressed for the moment, she turns her attention to the pink rabbit, and shrugs. "I don't really care 'bout the exact definition as long as no one's trying to eat my soul," she admits.
thornsofmalkav: (wtf)

[personal profile] thornsofmalkav 2016-10-24 07:42 am (UTC)(link)
"... suddenly I'm really glad I'm not in the future," Thorne says. "Jesus."
hazardlight: (cause we just don't know how to take it)

[personal profile] hazardlight 2016-10-26 12:40 am (UTC)(link)
"Yeah, this year took a weird turn," Amanda says. "Donald Trump's running for president. I mean, that's not why everything's on fire. It's its own thing. Just. Also awful."
thornsofmalkav: (wtf)

[personal profile] thornsofmalkav 2016-10-26 03:25 am (UTC)(link)
"... oh my god," she says. "Seriously? Mr. Show Me The Birth Certificate? The You're Fired Guy? Is he, like, the twenty-first century Ross Perot?" She frowns. "I think that's the dude's name. He happened when I was, like, super tiny."