Test Drive #21

[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 than 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 September 16th–26th. Our next Jaunt will be Night Falls on Yensid, a fantasy Jaunt taking place in a formerly magic kingdom whose history went awry when other Travelers failed to properly complete a previous Jaunt there, one of the many forgotten Jaunts from before Synodiporia properly began as a Dreamwidth game. There will be no Walkabout run alongside this Jaunt.

Prompt #55 takes place in a punishment Liminal Space for a Jaunt that the Travelers failed to solve.
Prompt #56 takes place during the first Jaunt the Travelers made to the Kingdom of Yensid, during its Golden Age.

#55

It’s difficult to make out the shape of this Liminal Space, at first, thanks to the decor; it’s somehow both pitch black and eye-searingly bright at the same time, the pulsing rainbow patterns cutting through the darkness making it all but impossible to properly judge distance. The truly persistent, or those who manage to abuse Liminal ‘down is relative’ gravity without hitting a pitfall for long enough, may eventually determine that it seems to be a giant egg. More so than many iterations of Liminal Space, it’s completely closed off.

Unfortunately, that’s going to be very difficult indeed to figure out. It’s not just the impossible coloration that makes navigation difficult; there’s a terrible storm raging, and the whipping winds and cracking thunder make it all too easy to stumble into a pitfall by accident. And those pitfalls don’t exactly want to let go of anyone they ensnare, either. Errant Travelers may find themselves supporting an impossibly heavy overhead weight, or pushing a boulder eternally uphill, or trying to catch an ever-lowering drink of water, or pouring water into a tub riddled with gaping cracks, or any number of other seemingly endless, pointless tasks. They can be escaped with help from another Traveler, or one person can be released from the task when another stumbles in.

The only respite from this - the colors, the storm, the punishments - is in the form of Travelers’ created spaces, but those are as difficult to get to right now as everything else. Good luck.

#56

It's a chaotic time for the Kingdom of Yensid. The Amulet of Yensid, that fabled magical artifact that must be rejoined each lunar year so that the kingdom's three races can continue their peaceful magical coexistence, has gone missing. Two-thirds of it, the humans' fragment and the Forest Folk's fragment, are nowhere to be found. The capital city is just as bustling as ever despite this, with reptilian Stonefolk flitting from place to place in their usual parkour-like fashion, small animal-like Forest Folk hawking various potions and crafts, and humans making all sorts of deals.

There's an undercurrent of urgency to the day's business. Small groups of three or four of various species move through the city with enchanted mirrors, dowsing rods, fishing lures, and all other manner of magical items designed to aid in the act of finding something, but so far, no one's turned up anything solid yet. A few of the stronger magicked items are leading their owners out towards the foreboding Birdlime Mountains, but that's the most promising lead anyone has.

Comments

[hatefuldays]

"Sorry, sorry!" Quieter this time. Apologetic look. "I know, I just got really excited and kind of forgot in the heat of the moment..."

[conspiraciiiiiiiiiiiiies]

"Those moments are what get us in trouble or killed. Or worse." There are reasons why rules aimed at hiding who they are exist.

"...So you've never been on this side of an atmosphere? Why?"

[hatefuldays]

"I was born in space, I've never even been near a planet. I know the basics, but this is my first time standing on one."

[conspiraciiiiiiiiiiiiies]

"...why were you born in space?" She tends to have a good level of distrust towards space, and everything that comes with it, and no amount of travelling has managed to change that yet. She keeps it out of her voice, though.

[hatefuldays]

"Uh... because my parents were in space when I was born?" She's not sure quite how to parse this question. "We were on the Mugunghwa, a colony ship headed for another planet. That's like a three thousand year trip, though, so I was never gonna come close to seeing the far end of it."

[conspiraciiiiiiiiiiiiies]

"...That's very far out there." She knows that there are different complications and different danger levels when leaving Earth in the different universes, but her kneejerk reaction still is way too far. "Were you supposed to live lives of regular length on that ship until your descendants would arrive?"

[hatefuldays]

*Hyun-ae hesitated a bit, sensing some vague hostility from the woman. "Yeah, that was basically the idea. I wasn't ever really expecting to see anything beyond the ship's walls in my lifetime, but... well, here I am, I guess."

"Hey, uh, is everything all right?"

[conspiraciiiiiiiiiiiiies]

"Where I am from, venturing that far out away from Earth would be an incredibly bad idea. Especially for regular humans." She can explain that much without an issue. It should be sufficient to explain her reaction too, in her opinion.

[hatefuldays]

"Oh." On reflection, that seems like it turned out to be true in her case, too, but it probably wasn't the same thing.

"Is that because of physiological or psychological problems, or just because of aliens or something?"

[conspiraciiiiiiiiiiiiies]

"All of those." Even going out past the sphere of Earth's influence causes issues, and going past the boundaries of the solar system...

"Some idiots may still try, but that's a different issue."

[hatefuldays]

"Yikes." So that must mean that Earth is the only place where there's any human presence in her universe.

"I guess I can't really say much about what you're missing, but leaving Earth didn't exactly work out too well for the ship I'm from, either."

[conspiraciiiiiiiiiiiiies]

"I'm missing a lot of bullshit."

She has opinions about Void Engineers and Dreamspeakers. Seriously, why would you even.

"Why did the ship you're on leave in the first place?"

[hatefuldays]

"I guess the idea was to establish new colonies on other planets and explore the galaxy? The ship left long before I was born, so the details never really seemed that important at the time. Also, I mean..."

Lots of bad memories flicker through her head. She pauses for a second to quietly suppress them.

"...In the end, it doesn't really matter, because none of the passengers survived the trip."

[conspiraciiiiiiiiiiiiies]

Unsurprisingly, she thinks, but aloud she says: "What happened?

...and does that mean that you arrived from close to your death?"

[hatefuldays]

"That's... complicated..." *Hyun-ae breaks eye contact, clearly uncomfortable. "Sorry, I don't think I can talk about it right now."

It's true, both for the reason she suggests and because it would be a bit much to explain what happened on that ship to someone with no context for it and expect them to understand where she was coming from. So, a change of subject. "Is it all right if we talk about Earth instead? What kind of place are you from?"

[conspiraciiiiiiiiiiiiies]

She makes a note about it in her mind (more literally so than others would, she does keep a notebook of trained eidetic memory in a corner of her mind to submit useful bits and pieces to - much more useful than when people just have it untrained, really, because she can let all the useless things flow past) and then nods.

"Well, that's a bit hard to say in detail because I've been around so much, but let's say I'm from the UK for the purpose of this." Keeping some backdoors open, but making it the easiest on herself. She can pretend to be Canadian without anyone batting an eyelash, but it's effort.