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

[loyalrebel]

By the christian calendar, yes.

[He's not shitting you.]

I have no reason to lie to you, just as you have no reason to believe me. Either way, I will not force you to listen or to believe me. The truth shall be sorted out sooner or later.

I am Malik.

[pionero]

As opposed to what calendar? Dreamspace?

[ However, he is expecting high levels of bullshit. Namely because of The Rikkins. ]

The truth. That's something that seems to change depending on who says it.

...Cal.

[loyalrebel]

Islam, Hebrew, they both follow different counts than the christians.

[There's a thin smile at that.]

Nothing is true, and everything is permitted. That holds even truer here than wherever home was, Cal.

[pionero]

Most people tend to follow the Christian calendar by my time.

[ There's a sigh and Cal looks away until Malik says those words. It makes him relax a little. He wonders what it was that gave him away--besides the obvious comment about truth. ]

Still working in the dark. [ It's more of an amusing comment than anything. ] Even if the bike brings attention to you.

[ Not that Malik looks like an Assassin right now. Cal is just a smartass. ]

[loyalrebel]

[ It's also something that Malik just says sometimes, because it can be interpreted so many different ways while also being the secret code phrase.]

To serve the light, yes.

[Malik actually laughs.]

And the metal arm does not? The lightcycle is not the strangest thing around here, nor am I the strangest person even with all the abilities I have picked up over the years here.

[pionero]

[ The laugh makes Cal just smirk a bit. ]

Prosthetic limbs are more common in my time. It doesn't stick out as much as the rest of the image. [ Which is a man from the 1100s on a lightcycle on a quiet looking ground. ] I take it that those abilities aren't just special knives.

[loyalrebel]

I somehow doubt they are quite as dexterous as this is, but I have not seen anything but this and the ones made solely for appearances out of wood.

[The only thing it can't do is relay a sense of touch.]

I know how to use the special knives very well, but I had that down long before coming here. I can give lists and demonstrations of the rest later, telling you alone proves nothing.

There is much to discuss and I do not know how long we will have until our hosts thrust us in to the next contest of theirs.

[pionero]

Most of them are electronic. Though there are the plastic ones people can use to run with now.

[ It is definitely not a conversation that he thought he'd ever have. Cal shakes his head with a bit of a smile. It's almost surreal. ]

Even with the metal arm? I'm impressed. [ Still, Cal takes the cautious steps up to the lightcycle. Nothing is telling him not to trust the Assassin with the metal arm and science fiction bike. It's just his usual mistrust of people. ] Meaning we need leave sooner rather than later.

[loyalrebel]

Even before the metal arm.

[ There's a faint smirk of pride at Cal being impressed anyway though. ]

Leaving outright is not something any of us can do willingly yet, but the Workshop and my office do have food and access to all the information us Travelers have collected.

[pionero]

I'd hope so.

[ He half shrugs. ]

Of course it isn't. We wouldn't want to think we're actually free of anything. [ Prisons, Abstergo, now inter-dimensional travel. He almost feels the needs to punch a wall out of the frustration of it all. ] It looks like you're playing tour guide now. After you.

[loyalrebel]

I spent five years right handed.

[ Give or take a few months anyway.]

Of course not, that would be foolish. [He gestures to the back of the lightcycle with a thumb.] Get on, I promise not to... what is the word? Dump the bike?

[pionero]

They say that it's only an illusion anyways.

[ Instead he slowly sits himself on the back of the bike. He just expects he'll wake up eventually and it can be as if it's all been a crazy dream. ]

I'll take you not crashing it.

[loyalrebel]

Just hold on, this thing can go faster than a horse.

[ Sadly, Malik's about the only thing to hold on to when he sets the lightcycle in to motion. He's pretty solidly built if on the wiry side, and there's the hard handles of a few throwing knives hidden under his shirt. Malik doesn't leave his office unarmed.

It doesn't take long for them to get to the wooden latticed hatch in the fabric of the ground where Malik stops.]

Here we are.

[pionero]

[ The comment makes him chuckle. ] Obviously. It has a motor.

[ He awkwardly takes hold of Malik as the lightcycle kicks into gear. It's good to see that the fellow Assassin carries some weapons on him, despite the modern appearance. He can recall looking at Moussa strangely as the descendant of voodoo practicing turned Templar slid the hidden blade down his throat to hide it from detection.

When the cycle stops, Cal looks around. His eyes eventually settle on the wooden hatch on the ground. He gives Malik and inquisitive look before sliding off the lightcycle. He walks around the edge of it, his eyebrows raised.

The last hideout he saw was more or less a castle in the middle of Spain. Though he figures that might be too obvious of an entrance now. ]

You built it underground.

[loyalrebel]

Technically, I think the ground built itself around the entrance. Even then, it is only because there are no rooftops to put it on.

[He's not really sure entirely how it works other than 'it does'. He's gonna be a moment to get off the lightcycle and transform it back in to a baton.]

It will open for you, the drop down is only little farther than you are tall.

[pionero]

Let me guess. This place just changes at will too.

[ Everything is sarcastic in Cal's book.

He watches the cycle turn into a baton and rolls his eyes at himself. There is a ghost of a laugh as he kneels down and flips the hatch open. After a glance upwards at Malik, almost as if to make sure the younger man is going to follow him, he slips down into the Workshop.

The moment Cal stands up he feels like he is somewhere else. Not whatever kind of Workshop Malik says, but a place with incenses burning and the sound of metal clanging in the distance. The low light from torches bouncing off the stone walls, and below him on the stairs stood several hooded people around a table. No, not just people, his future brothers and sisters. All at the same time he heard the chanting of the others behind him: "Laa shay'a waqi'un moutlaq bale koulon moumkine."

It isn't until he realizes Malik is there that Cal is able to snap out of the memory. Not his memory, but Aguilar de Nerha's. The day he became an Assassin. The day he took the oath, uttered the words, and had his finger removed to prove his dedication to the Creed.

Cal reaches up and pinches the bridge of his nose lightly. ]

[loyalrebel]

Yes, but not our will.

[Malik drops down behind him in to the 'bureau', ready to say something but concern over Cal's apparent pain takes precidence. He reaches, gently putting his hand on his fellow Assassin's shoulder.]

Are you well, Brother?

[ He knows that suddenly finding oneself in what looks to be the narrow garden of a 12th century mapmaker's studio-come-archivist's office might be a little disorienting. It isn't the Workshop proper, only Malik's personal created rooms that mostly serve as an office.]

[pionero]

We usually don't impose our will on things, from what I can tell.

[ Cal takes in a shaky breath before looking back at Malik from underneath the black hood. The 12th Century. Maybe telling him about the Animus and Abstergo would be too much. Even then, he's not sure he's ready to share that much information. Not until he finds out how trustworthy his new "Brother" is. That's something he'll have to learn - trust. ]

Memories, that's all.

[ He glances forward at the hallway ahead of the bureau - not the Workshop - and wonders if all hallways are this narrow. Maybe it's just he is used to the size of Abstergo hallways, or things this old always felt narrow and tight. With a deep breath to settle his shaking left hand, recalling the pain Aguilar had been in when his finger was removed, he reaches up and removes the hood from his head. ]

[loyalrebel]

This place is different, if you have the will to do you you can mold liminal space to whatever you decide it should be.

[He nods at the explanation, something like sorrow crossing his face for a brief moment.]

I know that pain well enough, I will listen should you wish to speak on them but I will not pry. When did you last eat properly, I always have enough to share with a Brother no matter how near or far they have come from.

[pionero]

Just what I'd want.

[ Meaning he doesn't want to get comfortable enough to actually be able to craft space to his will. Although he has the feeling if he voiced it? Malik would tell him it wasn't realistic. What about his life felt realistic.

His question makes Cal laugh softly. ]

I couldn't tell you. Probably a few days. [ Even then he didn't really eat. Not before his head split open from a headache. ]

[loyalrebel]

[ that just gets the BIGGEST SIGH EVER. ]

Sit. I will bring you food.

[ He slips off towards the archway in the back of the main chamber, dissappearing for a few minutes. It's long enough for Cal to poke about at things if he wishes to. There's certainly enough littering the worktop.]

[pionero]

[ Which Cal does investigate. He doesn't necessarily touch anything, but he does take all the details in. The books, the worktop, the wood. It feels familiar only because it reminds him of the things in Aguilar's day. The decor was certainly from a time frame before that, but it still stirred more memories than he wanted it to.

Although he does take off his hidden blade. ]

[loyalrebel]

[ There are more modern books among the old tomes; Shakespeare, Poe, other poets from the early 20th century, Tolkein, all of the 13th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, among others. There are other anacronisms as well, brightly colored sticky notes peek out of the edges of some of the journals and there is an array of finely crafted fountain pens alongside the tools of a medieval levantine mapmaker.

Then the smell of fresh bread and roasted lamb herald Malik's return with a few dishes balanced on his arms. ]

I do not know what you wanted to drink, but ask and if I know it I can provide for you.

[Which sadly means no soda. Sorry.]

[pionero]

[ The sticky notes take him by surprise. He tilts his head slightly to look over what each note says. At least they're organized. There is a moment where he has to stop and remind himself that it is happening. Everything since Abstergo is real. He's an Assassin, he did see his parents, and now he's talking to another Assassin from the 12th Century.

The fresh smell hits him, and Cal realizes how much his stomach hurts. That was the one good thing about prison: three meals a day.]

Water is fine. [ It isn't like he really got much of anything from his last two places of residence. Cal turns then to look at Malik then the food. He offers his hand out to help the man with the plates. ]