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

[theflyingone]

The accent was different, but he was not familiar enough with modern English to place it. For all he knew, his Infiltrator could be faking it. The Arcana's auto-translation obscured the rest. Desmond, however, might hear the familiar tones of twelfth century Arabic.

"You are not supposed to be here. You are supposed to be safe, at home. Everyone you see here is a prisoner."

His voice came from a different pocket of air each time he spoke. He was moving, never staying in the same spot. Already the helmet he'd stolen, which he had taken to calling the Cap of Invisibility after the myth, was sapping at his stamina, making him feel like he was sprinting despite only walking. He had a time limit within which to prevent a fight. He hoped the man would not think to use his other eyes to find him.

Altaïr could not take any chances. He did not want to die at the hands of a dangerous Infiltrator in the worst possible place. Dying in Liminal Space meant waking up from mortal injuries trapped in a cocoon with no light, no sound, no room to move, and no one to talk to save for the intermittent network messages from the man he'd killed at the same time. He had been trapped for a week, barely sleeping for the pain, despite the healing. No one had known what would happen, because it had been such a long time since someone had done it.

"You must return before the Arcana take a liking to you. How did you arrive? Did you follow someone through their..." he felt foolish saying it, but he said it anyway, "portal?"

[accommodated]

Old Arabic, telling him he should be safe at home-- ha, as if that were (or had been) even possible, and Desmond was far from an Infiltrator. He was from from a lot of things, like even thinking to use that second sight in the first place. There's still a lot he has to learn, and right now? Right now, all he wanted was for someone to just sit down, tell him what the hell was going on (or that the story he'd been fed was some kind of joke, maybe) and to just wake the hell up from whatever weird dream this was.

Of course, that wouldn't be happening. Sorry, Altaïr. Desmond's already as much of a prisoner as everyone else.

No going back.

Desmond decided trusting his eyes in the first place wasn't going to help, so he moved to just following the sound of the other Assassin. Listened for his quiet footfalls, the shift of robs, breathing, voice, turned with him anywhere Altaïr may move so that his back was never to him.

"Look, I just got here. I don't know what's going on past whoever these Arcana guys are, what they've told me, and I don't know how I got here." Sounding more than a little irritated, you bet. Can anyone really blame him right now? Give it a few hours and he'd chill, but right now was not the time it'd be happening. "What portal?"

As far as Desmond knew, he'd just... woken up, ready to step out of the Animus for some sleep or a good stretch.

[theflyingone]

The Infiltrator was tracking his movement, not closely enough to be using his other sight, but well enough to frustrate Altaïr. He knew he might be good enough to do so, but invisibility had been worth a try. What he said was also troubling. It seemed he was not brought here by accident.

"An entrance in the air, from one place to the next. But if you have already met the Arcana... it may not matter.

His voice darkened bleakly at the last, but he kept it level enough to be businesslike. He was used to dealing with dangerous, irritated men; he had grown up with them, even spent a good amount of time being the source of their irritation. He was a different man now.

"What did they say to you?"