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.
runs: (what the heck)

47

[personal profile] runs 2017-03-24 06:27 pm (UTC)(link)
"You mean gross."

There is only one place where being all lovey-dovey and making out are appropriate, in her opinion, and that is when it distracts the people in question so she can sneak past them.
pearlyspirit: (Pearl [Determined])

[personal profile] pearlyspirit 2017-03-25 12:16 am (UTC)(link)
"No, I don't! Love is very important!" Pearl is very insistent on this. "I-- I'm going to look for a picture of Mr. Nick and Mystic Maya! And if there isn't one I'll draw one for them!"
runs: (duh)

[personal profile] runs 2017-03-28 12:52 pm (UTC)(link)
"You can love people without kissing them. And most people who kiss each other don't do it because they're in love but because one or both of them get paid for it." Her view of this might be just slightly skewed by the people that she does and doesn't run into due to her job.

"And it's gross."
pearlyspirit: (Pearl [Determined])

[personal profile] pearlyspirit 2017-03-28 01:18 pm (UTC)(link)
Kitty please don't teach Pearl about prostitution..... "That's not true at all!!! Most people kiss each other because of love, not money!" She believes this deep in her soul. "I mean, it's true that you don't have to kiss the people you love but it's different... it's a different kind of love!"
runs: (duh)

[personal profile] runs 2017-03-28 01:59 pm (UTC)(link)
"...Maybe rich people." After all people who kiss others for money usually are poor or at least at the lower end of the social spectrum. "And it's a better kind of love. Because you don't have to do gross things and you can't get pregnant from it."
pearlyspirit: (Pearl [Unsure])

[personal profile] pearlyspirit 2017-03-29 10:42 pm (UTC)(link)
"I'm pretty sure Mr. Nick isn't rich..." He certainly complains about money enough. "No, they're just different! Both are wonderful, and very special!"
runs: (duh)

[personal profile] runs 2017-04-08 08:10 pm (UTC)(link)
"Pretty sure means that you don't actually know. Maybe he just doesn't want to share and is hiding his money." She raises an eyebrow. "And how exactly is the kissy kind wonderful?" Neither her meagre real life knowledge of it nor what she sees in media seems to suggest that it is a good thing, especially not after you've been together for a while. It's only trouble.
pearlyspirit: (Pearl [Determined])

[personal profile] pearlyspirit 2017-04-09 01:18 pm (UTC)(link)
"Mr. Nick is a nice person! He wouldn't lie!" Now Pearl's starting to get pretty mad. "A-and it's good because that means they'll stay together forever and take care of each other and won't leave each other behind...!"
runs: (what the heck)

[personal profile] runs 2017-04-11 08:58 pm (UTC)(link)
She shrugs at that former assertion. She doesn't know the guy and holds no stake in this, so whatever, believe what you will, it's not something she's curious enough about to poke at.

"...That's not how it works." Seriously, what the hell. That's not how it works at all. "Most of the time they separate again after some time and it's a lot more dramatic than if it'd been some other kind of love and they are really dramatic and hate each other and don't talk to each other anymore and can't work together anymore, either. It's bad when two people in any kind of unit fall in kissy because of that because when they break up or fight it'll be dangerous for everyone."
pearlyspirit: (Pearl [Guilty])

[personal profile] pearlyspirit 2017-04-12 12:50 am (UTC)(link)
"I..." Pearl deflates a little, looking away. "I know that's how it works sometimes." She's seen it- her father isn't around anymore for a reason, after all. "But I still believe for some people it's the most beautiful thing in the world! I know it is!"
runs: (considering all that)

[personal profile] runs 2017-04-12 06:45 am (UTC)(link)
"When it's new, I guess it is." She can admit that much. Why would people do kissy love, otherwise?

She has however no idea why some people stay together, especially since so many of those who do seem to not particularly like each other any more, from what she's seen. It's probably some kind of deal of necessity or regulation.