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.
apettythief: (03. I take a wee percentage)

[personal profile] apettythief 2017-03-28 07:45 pm (UTC)(link)
"I thought children liked sweets?"

If it's any consolation, Greirat doesn't want to be here either. He's got little interest in romance - not in general, and certainly not in a place as heavy handed as this. And that's not even touching on the obvious age discrepancy between the two of them. It's enough to make him wonder how they even got paired up in the first place.

Still, he's trying to make the best of it. He breaks off a piece of the back of his chair - it's made of milk chocolate, much like most of the things in this ludicrous place, and tosses it on the table between them.

"Everything in this bloody place is made of sweets. It's a madhouse - what's a thief supposed to do in a place like this?"
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: (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."
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.
apettythief: (07. What a guy)

[personal profile] apettythief 2017-03-29 02:32 am (UTC)(link)
Greirat tuts his tongue quietly at that, not believing a word the girl says. Given the fancy clothes she's wearing, and the fact that she's mentioning donations, he's fairly certain they have two very different definitions of 'living in poverty.'

Still, he isn't here to pick a fight with her. Truthfully, he's not sure why he's here at all, but it certainly isn't to argue with a child. Instead, he opts to humor her, albeit with a mildly amused tone to his voice.

"How dreadful to hear. And you say they made you do all the work? That hardly sounds fair.'
fantasy_heaven: ({BW} And that's why we should get drunk)

[personal profile] fantasy_heaven 2017-03-29 04:57 pm (UTC)(link)
"Right, exactly! Nobody even gives me a word of thanks, either. They just loiter around the shrine like they own the place, and I'm right back where I started."

You know what, Greirat? You're all right after all. You clearly understand how terrible Reimu's easygoing life is.