Test Drive #18

[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 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.

Comments

Bernkastel, the Witch of Miracles || Umineko no NAku Koro Ni

[butthemiracleneverhappen]

(Endgame spoilers for Umineko Chiru and for Higurashi are likely in the comments.)

48

Bernkastel takes one look at this particular reality shard and then, without changing her bored expression, starts to clap.

"A lovely aesthetic," she says. "My compliments to whichever Arcana crafted this space."

She then steps off the edge and allows gravity to assert itself, seeing if there's anything below. When she grows tired of that, she floats up again and starts to inspect the other balloons, looking for anything that might hold her interest.

49

Another interesting fragment. And how sweet it is for things to be interesting again.

Outwardly, Bernkastel is a Diabolin - she checks herself in the mirror and smirks at her horns. Then she extends the senses of a Diabolin outwards, playing with the psionic empathy she now has in this role, and tasting the excitement of it's players.

And finds other Infiltrators. Maybe worth her time. She treads softly through the ship's corridors looking for fellow travellers.

48

[awitchdidit]

Beatrice just sighs when Bernkastel rises past the bed she's wound up on, looking up from her jotting down notes on the last Jaunt in a liminally conjured journal. "Ah, it's you. I had a feeling you'd end up here eventually, statistics being what they are. Care to have a seat?"

[butthemiracleneverhappen]

"Beatrice, the Golden," she says. Stiff, formal. "A seat, and tea, if you could be so kind."

For now, she sits on the bed.

"This Fragment does not seem like your work. I am unfamiliar with its author. If you know them, please convey my interest to them."

[awitchdidit]

"I'm sure one will speak to you eventually," she says, conjuring a tea set from nothing. It's elaborate, but she can't find herself putting her whole heart into making the tea, knowing Bernkastel will complain about the taste regardless unless she ruins it with some awful sour additive. "This place, and the game it represents, is a collaborative effort of about a dozen and a half powerful witches, calling themselves the Arcana. It's all very thematic."

She pours herself and Bernkastel a cup each of black tea. "Bringing other pieces in against their will seems to be their specialty. Did you come of your own volition, or have you finally gotten a taste of your own medicine?"

[butthemiracleneverhappen]

She doesn't dignify the crack about her own medicine with a direct answer, instead sipping her tea, frowning slightly, then letting it steep longer. "A definitive fantasy. Or worse, an allegory. I will see how much patience I have for it."

Okay, she does make one crack at the comment. "I doubt they will want to hold me indefinitely. I am troublesome to cage."

[awitchdidit]

Beatrice smirks, at least. "Many witches are. I hope to be inspired by their skill...although for my part, I've been spending my time examining the cage for now. It's impressively difficult. Did you notice we're not in any particular Fragment right now? Rather, this is the Sea between them."

She sips her drink. It's bland enough that she starts considering that even her passive-aggression can come back to her with the same alacrity as her actual aggression. "Or perhaps it's a Sea of Fragments within another, single, larger Fragment, but I leave that level of metaphysics to the experienced Voyager Witch."

[butthemiracleneverhappen]

"It would be possible to contain a Sea. I have managed," she says, nodding. "But it speaks to the impressive power and skill of the Arcana to infuse a sea to their tastes."

She tries her tea again, speaking of infusions. Oversteeping has brought out it's bitterness. It will do. "You have been journeying here at their behest for a considerable period of time, then?"

[awitchdidit]

"You and I both know that time is entirely in the eye of the observer," she says, "but from my subjective perspective, it's been almost a year and a half."

[butthemiracleneverhappen]

"Shorter than your time in the catbox, and I imagine far more pleasant. Or at least interesting."

She brings her steepled fingers up to her lips. "May I ask which of the Arcanoi claimed you? Or do I misunderstand how the process works?"

[awitchdidit]

"I sought one out, but I'm not so arrogant as to say I wasn't branded with Magician's Mark on her volition rather than mine," Beatrice says, rolling up a sleeve of her dress to the elbow to show off a stylized rendition of the first Arcana in the Rider-Waite deck, not to mention the fact that she has nothing else up it. "And I do believe the plural is Arcana."

[butthemiracleneverhappen]

"I'm sure they will be very upset that I got it wrong," Bernkastel says. "The Magician. Hmn. It is certainly fitting, to the point of being a little on the nose."

[awitchdidit]

"Ahaha, well, Devil would have been rather more so, wouldn't it?" Beatrice says, taking another sip of tea. "Out of all of us Witches, I am the one who instigated the game, aren't I? I take Magician's favor as indicating that specific tendency, not my more general abilities. You, on the other hand, are more of a Hanged Man or, again, the Devil. Or Death, once you're actually motivated into acting."

One more sip of tea, and she settles down to be a bit more somber. "It's too bad about the Wheel of Fortune. Then again, if she was around we may have been on the same team, you for your Miracles and me for my Roulette, and I'm not sure if I could quite absorb that idea."

[butthemiracleneverhappen]

"That's the nature of cartomancy, isn't it? Almost all of them might apply, if you search for connections. It's the act of looking for the connections that creates them. I am certain you can appreciate the idea of a self-creating story."

Privately, she considers the Hanged Man to be right on her fuzzy pink nose, though she disagrees with the Devil or Death.

"Has the Wheel of Fortune been mislain, then? How curious... that they would allow you to know they can be defeated."

49

[sees_red]

Jason's suited up - this is a space ship, after all, and he doesn't really trust it to stay in one piece, with everything he's heard - he's found an auxiliary control station and is tapping buttons on the panels, without any real understanding, trying to figure out what any of the displays mean.

"Come on... oh, come on, give me something here!"

[butthemiracleneverhappen]

"Do you know what you're doing, or are you just trying random combinations of button-presses hoping to chance on the right one?"

Curious. She's familiar with the idea of a sentai Ranger, so the armor is familiar to her in concept. She looks over at the displays and can't make heads or tails of them either.

"These are beyond my understanding, at least for now."

[sees_red]

"Uh... random," he admits, and shrugs. "But not pushing buttons wasn't going to get me anywhere."

[butthemiracleneverhappen]

"Were I in your shoes, I would not be randomly pressing buttons on a space-going vessel. One might open the door accidentally."

She's not familiar with the idea of a cycling airlock, Krauss's adventures in Moon Tourism to the contrary.

"Perhaps we could find someone on the ship to direct us? Assuming they think we're supposed to be here."

Hey, Jason, have you noticed the horns yet? They were a little obscured by her more standard vaccsuit's helmet, but they're there on this version of her. And there's a tail too.

[sees_red]

"Why would they even have a button that does that?"

But he stops, immediately, and looks over - and does a double-take at the horns and tail. "Whoa. Extreme makeover."

48 (do you want to handwave a similar first meeting should Bern get in?)

[thornsofmalkav]

Bernkastel has almost certainly never seen the young Latina sitting on the patchwork quilt before, but the woman recognizes her. "Oh Jesus," she says. "It's getting to be a fucking Walpurgis Night of witches in here."

(does a witch cackle at incompetence? of course I do)

[butthemiracleneverhappen]

"My reputation precedes me," Bernkastel says. "Beatrice becomes notorious wherever she goes, I presume. Although the term is a regular coven of witches; I can't remember the last Walpurgisnicht I've observed."

She curls up one hand into a paw. "Nipaah~ni. And who are you?"

Re: (does a witch cackle at incompetence? of course I do)

[thornsofmalkav]

"Thorne," she replies, her street clothes reconfiguring themselves to a frilled dress. "Witch of Humanity and second student of Beatrice the Golden."

Technically all you need to do to be a Witch is understand the magic of Beatrice's world and declare yourself to be a Witch, so Thorne figures she's within her rights for this.

that was a bit too much cackle

[butthemiracleneverhappen]

Oh that's just precious. You've earned yourself a cackle.

"Beatrice does love to take on apprentices, doesn't she?"

Re: that was a bit too much cackle

[thornsofmalkav]

That's certainly a wonderful cackle. Too bad it comes from such a slippery character as Bernkastel.

"I've learned a lot from her. And with MARIA having been promoted to full witch, Beatrice has had time to help me."

At some point she really ought to tell Beatrice she's been representing herself as a formal student of hers instead of someone who learned from watching her and got a witch's title almost offhand... but Bernkastel needs to know none of this.

[butthemiracleneverhappen]

"HAS Maria been promoted? Well. They've certainly been under the thumb of the Arcana for a long time, then, subjectively speaking. Well, a long time for a human."

[thornsofmalkav]

"Last summer, I believe," Thorne replies, with a little rolling shrug. "You'd have to ask Bea for the details."