The Powers That Be ([personal profile] powersthatbe) wrote in [community profile] synodiporia_ooc2017-03-24 12:01 am
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Test Drive #18

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 March 24th–April 1st. Our next Jaunt will be Olympus Upended: a classical myth and fantasy adventure, set in a Trojan War-era Greece full of gods, monsters, and titans. During the Jaunt, the Olympians and their chosen heroes must deal with the machinations of fate when their powers and domains begin to ebb and flow, faltering or in some cases transferring to others.

Prompt #47 features a liminal space where Travelers find themselves floating down the Tunnel of Love.
Prompt #48 features a liminal space with beds, balloons, and no ground to be seen.
Prompt #49 features a space walk set in the universe from the Escape From Junkworld jaunt. Having escaped the destruction of the prison planet Junkworld Gehenna, these refugees from the four major spacefaring races--crystalline Hecatites, psychic-but-prone-to-hallucination horned Diabolin; scaled Gorgons with their petrifying abilities and tentacled hair, and your bog-standard humans, newcomers to the stars--now finally have a moment where they can slow down.

#47

You find yourself in a boat in a long tunnel, light deliberately kept low. Oh, the sides and the ceiling glitter and sparkle and the dioramas you occasionally pass seem to glow with their own inner light, but unless you’re naturally adapted for low-light, it’s going to take your eyes a little while to adjust. Once they do--or perhaps even before they do--you’ll find that you’re not alone in the boat. There’s someone riding next to you. Maybe they’re a friend among the Travelers, maybe someone you’ve grown to love. Maybe they’re a perfect stranger. Maybe they’re even someone you hate. They’re still stuck in the boat with you.

Once your eyes have adjusted properly, you’ll see that the boat you’re both in is made of chocolate--white, dark, or milk--and carved in the shape of a swan. The ‘water’ it floats down is no such thing, but instead pink champagne. Those dioramas in the wall? They’re dramatizations of various moments of passion and romance in the love-lives of you and your fellow Travelers.

Just when it seems that you’ve been in the tunnel forever, it suddenly widens into a much larger room with a ceiling open to the sky, the underground waterway flowing through the center, constricted until there's barely water in the side, so that you can easily disembark from your swanboat during the minute it takes for the boat to glide through the room, which seems to be some sort of cafe. A ‘Group Date’ cafe, whatever that is, according to the sign. Instead of food on the menu board, there are instead lists of questions to ask your date. The floor is tiled with conversation hearts. The furniture, like the swan boats, is made of chocolate. Finally, the walls are made of valentine’s cards, addressed to initials and signed by Roman numerals, all in the same loopy pink cursive that makes up the questions menu.

#48

You find yourself in bed. In fact, each Traveler starts out in their own private bed, which is suspended from a floating hot air balloon (minus the gas burner) and both balloon and bed are decorated vaguely to the taste of the Traveler therein. It’s a lovely, comfortable bed, perfect for sleeping or just plain lazing around, and it allows a perfect view to all the other beds suspended in the sky--and the doors to created spaces as well, themselves suspended from balloons of their own.

There is no ground in this liminal space. Sky above, sky below, and the great crowd of balloons which are more or less level. Sometimes they drift close enough so that they bump together and you can easily move from one to the other, though of course they’ll soon drift away from each other.

Of course, this being liminal space, there’s no reason why you can’t walk through the thin air or even fly to the other balloons and doors, as long as you realize that’s an option. Just take care you don’t panic and forget you can, because once you forget you can fly the only thing you can do is fall. At least if you do fall into the endless sky, you’ll just have a few harrowing seconds to panic before you land right on your balloon bed again.

#49

It’s been a week since the Empress of Moths reached its destination. The planet below, with no official name, merely numerical designation referring to its star, is not exactly ideal. Its temperature is on the lower end of what humans will tolerate; its bedrock is not the best suited for Gorgon caves; there are few natural resources for the Diabolins to exploit; and its external geology isn’t quite to Hecatite tastes. It is, however, an M-type planet that will support intelligent life and has, in fact, supported a small smuggler’s base for quite some time.

Despite all these shortcomings, it’s much preferable to the radioactive slag heap the refugees formerly called home. Now that arrangements have been made with the local smugglers, most of the refugees have left the ship on outrider shuttles and it’s immediately noticeable how much less crowded the Empress is--even with a few of the local smugglers aboard after the negotiations.

But then, not everyone plans to stay planetside. There’s a sizable contingent who want to keep flying with the Empress, finding work among the stars to support their newfound home. It’s why she still hovers over the planet, instead of coming to an undignified landing on the surface. And before the Empress leaves, her new crew and any visitors currently aboard (smugglers and Investigating Travelers alike) have the opportunity to undertake a space walk together. It’s time to don one’s space suit and helmet, attach one’s air supply, and take a step outside into the beautiful, cold vacuum of the sea of stars.
fantasy_heaven: ({BW} YOUKAI EXTERMINATION)

[personal profile] fantasy_heaven 2017-03-28 07:54 pm (UTC)(link)
"This Hallmark guys is a genius! I could bring in a whole tide of donations with just a tiny amount of extra work!"
fantasy_heaven: ({BW} Why do I bother having friends)

[personal profile] fantasy_heaven 2017-03-28 07:56 pm (UTC)(link)
Reimu makes a face. "I mean, it's nice that they gave us so much chocolate, I guess, but after that boat ride, I don't want to see any more chocolate for at least a month."
apettythief: (07. What a guy)

49

[personal profile] apettythief 2017-03-28 08:02 pm (UTC)(link)
Greirat is of a very similar mindset, when it comes to spacewalks. The thought is unnerving in and of itself. Something he'd never even dreamed of doing back in his own world - but when an opportunity like this presents itself, it's not exactly like he could turn it down, now could he?

"Don't rightfully know, kid. I'm as new to this as you are."

Newer, in fact. At least Kohaku was familiar with the concept of the vacuum of space. Greirat himself isn't much of a sturdy fixture to hold onto - he's short and slender and not at all an imposing figure. Still, when the teen grabs onto his arm, he does his best to steady himself and prepare for a jolt of some sort as the door opens.

It's stronger than he expects, and he loses his footing for a moment as the air is sucked out of the room all at once, but he maintains a firm grip on Kohaku with one hand, and places his other on the floor to steady himself. He's not gonna let some kid drift off into the void of space forever, if he can help it.

"I gotcha. You all right?"
apettythief: (04. but I'm not greedy.)

[personal profile] apettythief 2017-03-28 08:14 pm (UTC)(link)
That actually earns a laugh out of him.

"You're lucky to be so spoiled. Such things were very hard to come by, where I come from." He says, as he breaks off a smaller chunk and lifts it up into his hood and eats it, as he continues to glance around the cafe, looking for anything worth taking other than chocolate.

"When I was your age, I'd risk my life for far less decadence, you know."
otomechapilot: (ANIMa 05)

[personal profile] otomechapilot 2017-03-28 09:00 pm (UTC)(link)
"What's a lawyer? - wait, you mean someone who investigated crimes? Yeah a murder victim saying how they died could be pretty helpful. That's cool!"

Sara's grasp of the age before the world became a YA fiction dystopia is usually firmly at Xena, Warrior Princess levels of historical rigor.

To demonstrate the gun made of love, she calls on her ANIMa. A giant robot forms around her in a process that likely reminds Pearl of the Silver Samurai or the Pink Princess. There may be sparkles of blue fire.

The actual Lovegun doesn't actually appear, though, just the armor. Sara frowns - not that Pearl can see it, but Sara's annoyed noise implies it. "Guess I'm way too far away to actually call on Keenan, but I AM still Anchored," she guesses out loud.
fantasy_heaven: ({BW} So let me get this straight)

[personal profile] fantasy_heaven 2017-03-28 09:02 pm (UTC)(link)
Uuuuugh old people lecturing her about her lifestyle. One of the perks of living in the middle of nowhere was not having to put up with this.

"It's not like I had it easy back home either, you know. I got so few donations I was basically living in poverty, and everyone else still expected me to do all the work whenever there was any kind of crisis."

When being patronized, be sure to exaggerate your problems as much as possible.
otomechapilot: (:))

[personal profile] otomechapilot 2017-03-28 09:06 pm (UTC)(link)
You get a thumbs-up. She doesn't believe for a second that he invented and distributed datawear to the galaxy, but she'll buy that he did it on his homeworld. Which is both true and misleading.

"Cool. You should be able to download some diagnostics. We have a lot of white and grey-hat hackers here making sure that's safe, but run the files through your own firewalls just to be sure; can't be too careful with all the tinpot Empires running around."
otomechapilot: (Default)

[personal profile] otomechapilot 2017-03-28 09:10 pm (UTC)(link)
"Probably. Which-ugh, means I have to be nice to them or my armor goes up in smoke. Greaaat."

She shakes her head. "You have to be a lucid dreamer and a little bit psychic to be a Pilot. That's not all it is, but it's important. We try to learn traditional soldier stuff too so our dream-fighting is more vivid."
not_the_question: Magician's Apprentice (sunglasses)

[personal profile] not_the_question 2017-03-28 09:18 pm (UTC)(link)
Then she'd be surprised, given the age of the Time Lords... Bygones.

"Don't need to download them. Already processing them."

Kind of happens automatically when he puts the Shades on.
otomechapilot: (:D)

49

[personal profile] otomechapilot 2017-03-28 09:22 pm (UTC)(link)
"Want the good news or the bad news about that first?"

Sara is grinning. She doesn't usually get to play science teacher.
butthemiracleneverhappen: (:smug)

[personal profile] butthemiracleneverhappen 2017-03-28 09:28 pm (UTC)(link)
"I am certainly from at least one Earth. As I said, it was a passingly unlikely one."
butthemiracleneverhappen: (:smug)

48

[personal profile] butthemiracleneverhappen 2017-03-28 09:35 pm (UTC)(link)
That earns a laugh. Well, more of a cackle, really.

"Tragically, air mattresses are usually much more prosaic. I wonder if the Arcana who made this realm deliberately set up that pun?"
runs: (forward and ahead)

[personal profile] runs 2017-03-28 09:37 pm (UTC)(link)
"What do I get if I let you up?"

She grins and gets comfortable on top of him. He's obviously okay with playing with a kid, so she's visibly relaxed, not expecting him to attack her in any way but perhaps playfully.
haremtrap: (Hat)

[personal profile] haremtrap 2017-03-28 09:48 pm (UTC)(link)
"Donations? Are you in to charity work now?"
butthemiracleneverhappen: (:blank)

[personal profile] butthemiracleneverhappen 2017-03-28 09:51 pm (UTC)(link)
"For those of us placed on the board with our memory intact... we would have to quickly ascertain what genre we're in," she muses. "So we can draw the story to a thematically satisfying conclusion... for a given arcana's themes."

She puts the konpeito in her mouth just to be contrary, crushing it as soon as it's brittle enough.

"Being relegated to a pawn must be tiresome, but I have no doubt as to a Witch's ability to receive a field promotion. And I of all people should know how likely that is."

Not very, but the woman she used to be was counting on it, and it worked out well enough for her.
toweard: (pic#11130972)

kitty winter | elementary | can do action or prose

[personal profile] toweard 2017-03-28 09:53 pm (UTC)(link)
( #47 )

[ ooc: kitty is a kidnapping and rape victim, which is kind of referenced here and the reason for her panic. ]

The realization she's somewhere unfamiliar is almost instant, as is the paranoia and panic that creep into her thoughts. Her eyes opened and she sat straight up. Everything was dark. It was just like before, just like it had been with him. Without hesitation, she started to feel around for her bag, somewhere she had to have her singlestick or her switchblade or something. Her breaths were becoming rapid, and all she could do to not fall into full blown panic was to keep feeling around. Maybe she could find a weapon, maybe she could figure out where she was. She wasn't about to let any of this happen again, she couldn't let it happen again. She continued to feel around as her eyes became more adjusted to the dark. Was it him? Had he come for her again? Thoughts swirl around and she has to tell herself to focus, to do what Sherlock taught her. Instead, she tries to focus on the fact that wherever she is it feels... odd, it's also rocking. A boat? As if an answer to her question there is a flicker of low light. She was in a boat and she wasn't alone.

Kitty turned her attention to the person next to her. She didn't know them and she isn't sure if that's a good thing or not. Her bag definitely wasn't there, neither were either of her go to self-defense weapons. Maybe she'd have to look into getting something that would be more readily accessible.

"Hey," she moves so she's sitting on the back of her legs. "Wake up." Her voice is strong, maybe a bit harsh. There wasn't time to be nice though. Wait... was the boat a swan?!

( #49 )

There is a part of her that almost feels guilty for being so excited over this. She should be focusing on finding a way to getting back home. She should have been trying to get word to Sherlock or Watson. Instead she was in an airlock, wearing a space suit. She had never paid much attention to the stars, other than the occasional wish on them when she was a child. How could she not feel excited though, she was actually going to do a space walk.

She double checked her helmet, then her air supply. There was no harm in taking precautions. Kitty didn't smile much, but right now she was having a hard time not keeping the grin off her face. If only Sherlock and Watson were here with her. Watson would be full of awe and wonder and Sherlock, for once probably would be dumbstruck (not for long though).

After one more check, she took a deep breath and pressed the release for the air lock. Then she stepped out onto the stars.
not_the_question: Empress of Mars (whispering)

[personal profile] not_the_question 2017-03-28 10:09 pm (UTC)(link)
He's doing quite well now. "Seems to me your entire universe is unlikely."
haremtrap: (Hat)

[personal profile] haremtrap 2017-03-28 10:09 pm (UTC)(link)
"Y...yeah..."

That wasn't so bad. She wasn't worried so anymore now that the door was open and she wasn't tumbling through the depths of space. She let go of Greirat's arm in favor of staring in wonder out of the ship. Stars never got that bright on Earth.

"...I'm gonna try stepping outside."

[OOC: btw using they/them pronouns was an experiment for the character that I decided I didn't actually like, so from here on I'm using she/her. She still looks pretty boyish, though. Especially through a figure concealing spacesuit]
butthemiracleneverhappen: (Default)

[personal profile] butthemiracleneverhappen 2017-03-28 10:20 pm (UTC)(link)
"My position makes me keenly aware of that fact. I do have very good relations and regular contact with the Witch of the Certain, who presides over likelier worlds than mine."
not_the_question: The Pilot (Default)

[personal profile] not_the_question 2017-03-28 10:23 pm (UTC)(link)
"Witches of the Certain. What are those?"

Because just the titles makes them sound suspiciously like Time Lords.
butthemiracleneverhappen: (:smug)

[personal profile] butthemiracleneverhappen 2017-03-28 10:27 pm (UTC)(link)
"There is only one, as a Witch cannot share a title, and her name is Lambdadelta." She pronounces it as two greek letters slurred into one word. "Her powers govern the likely, the probable, the inevitable, the 99% chance. Mine govern the black swan taking flight, the million-to-one chance, the virtual impossibility. The Miraculous."

She smiles. "There are other Witches with other purviews, but Lambda and I are counted senior among their ranks."
not_the_question: Death in Heaven (cupping mouth)

[personal profile] not_the_question 2017-03-28 10:30 pm (UTC)(link)
"I see."

He pauses in thought.

"Well, that explains a great deal. You all think you're gods."
butthemiracleneverhappen: (:easymoudo)

[personal profile] butthemiracleneverhappen 2017-03-28 10:34 pm (UTC)(link)
She cackles.

"There are similarities, aren't there? Occasionally we're responsive to prayers and wishes, if they're audacious enough. Mostly we try to keep ourselves from becoming bored."

And the Doctor has proven entertaining so far.
not_the_question: Extremis (sitting vault)

47

[personal profile] not_the_question 2017-03-28 10:35 pm (UTC)(link)
[ooc: about the only way the Doctor might survive this option.]

The Doctor groaned and rubbed at his head when he heard someone demanding that he wake up. He slowly sat up. His gruff Scottish accent was pretty easy to hear when he spoke.

"Where am I? River?"

He'd been dreaming. Of course he knew he had sent River to her death. He just couldn't quite believe he had uttered her name.
not_the_question: Robots of Sherwood (f you)

[personal profile] not_the_question 2017-03-28 10:37 pm (UTC)(link)
"Well, good, then the table have been turned on you. Now you are the entertainment play-thing of someone else."

Mostly because he's not sure if he likes any of this, but he really didn't like that cackle.

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