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

[pionero]

(Not that Cal knows about it, but the Tyranny of George Washington was a hell of a trip.)

"Liminal Space?" That time, the repeated statement had a wisp of unbelieving laughter in it. Crazy. "What the fuck does that even mean?"

[claudiometer]

"It means it's between worlds. You know, in case the patchwork crops and moving crocheted animals didn't give it away. What, nobody gave you the rundown yet?"

[pionero]

The wisp of laughter quickly turned into a full blown chuckle. "Between worlds. Right. Because that makes perfect sense in a dream."

Which was more or less saying that he hadn't received the welcome package yet. In any case, it was better so far than waking up and finding yourself in a torture chamber that posed itself as a laboratory for the betterment of mankind.

[claudiometer]

"Sorry, not dreaming. Not that I'm clear on how to prove that at the moment." Short of them being unceremoniously dumped into a jaunt, anyway, but would even that really do it?

[pionero]

"This," a vague gesture made at the area around them, "Can't be real. Not unless reality changes inside the mind of an insane person." Who said it didn't?

At this rate, Aguilar would show up in his field of vision. Maybe even Maria too.

[claudiometer]

"Well, it's sure as hell not South Dakota. Or wherever you were before now."

This is veering into 'of course it's inside your head, but why would that make it not real?' territory, but that phrasing proooooobably won't help matters right now. Or at all.

[pionero]

He huffed. "London."

Not that it mattered where it was before this. Or, where his body might of been laying in an upright non-responsive manner. Because, to Cal, this was all it could be. Some reaction to the Bleeding Effect. Someplace he slipped in between his own memories and Aguilar's. Although, if he was finally gone to the world, at least the woman talking to him was less manipulative than Sophia Rikkin.

[claudiometer]

"Yeah, not London either. Besides, why would you dream up someone you've never met before?"

(This is probably more solid logic for anyone who hasn't been on the receiving end of what Cal's been through, but it's not like Claudia has any way of knowing that.)

[pionero]

"Dreams never make sense." Cal defended his theory. It was a weak defense, but it was what he had. "Especially the dreams of a crazy person."

He knows he isn't necessarily, even if it felt that way still sometimes. Or maybe he was. Having the potential to regress into memories of your ancestors at any time might just define the new crazy.

[claudiometer]

Claudia shrugs. "In this particular case, at least, you're not crazy. Can't speak for the rest of the time, though."

[pionero]

He laughed at that. He wasn't crazy. Well, that was the first time he had heard that recently. "And this place is what, exactly? A torture chamber? Some kind of elaborate virtual reality?"

[claudiometer]

"...Closer to the latter than the former, but not really either?"

Of course, 'torture chamber' depends on who you ask, really.

[pionero]

"Sounds great," Cal was hardly impressed. "Tell me how to disconnect."

Although something told him there was no leaving wherever he had found himself. VR, dream, stuck between his own memories and Aguilar's. Wherever he was? There was that sense that nothing was ever going to be the same again.

[claudiometer]

"If I knew that do you really think I'd be here?"

Look, Traveling's all right and all, and it's not that Claudia hasn't made meaningful connections here, but... her family's at home.

[pionero]

"It depends on how much of a masochist you are." He pointed out. "Some people like being trapped and held away from the rest of reality."

Usually because they felt guilty about something.

[claudiometer]

Claudia snorts. "Not so much of one as to want to be kept away from my family, buddy."

[pionero]

Cal shrugged. "I guess that means you don't feel guilty enough to put yourself in a prison. Good. That means you're normal."