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

[finalizes]

"I didn't grow up like a human, no." As a human. But he isn't human, so even if he was homid he wouldn't strictly have grown up as a human, just like one. Sometimes he cares quite a lot about the fine distinctions because they're the lines along which he navigates his ideological opinions and judgements.

"But I've heard stories about school." His alpha's family demands that she at least try to finish her formal education, so he's even tagged along a few times.

[exactwords]

"Ah. A Lupine, then? A born wolf?" he asks. "Most of the ones I've met promptly attempted to drink a satyr under the table, but then the kind who would seek out a changeling would."

[finalizes]

"Garou. Yeah."

He huffs at that description in amusement because really, it is true. "They like to poison themselves. It also means they're really hard to poison, though." Not worth it, in his opinion, but to each their own. Fianna would be a different world if not... well, he's born and raised Irish (as much as that matters for a wolf), spent his first weeks as a Garou at a Fianna sept, and spent very crucially formative weeks practically joint at the hip with one. He can deal with them better than most other Talons.

[exactwords]

"Most medicine is poison in large enough doses," he points out, mostly to be contrary. "I always stayed out of those drinking contests. I'm not of age in human terms, and it was far more amusing for me to be the one who told them what they did while too drunk to remember."

So. There's that. "As far as I know, the Fiona and the Fianna have... temperament and being excessively Celtic in common. I wouldn't know much more about your loup-Garou, certainly not enough to speculate further. But they were e'er friends to the Seelie Courts."

[finalizes]

"Some poison is never medicine, though." And he's pretty sure that alcohol falls in that category.

It's good that there is a friendly tie there, apparently, even if it doesn't strictly apply to him. "We've always gotten along fine with those of yours that we encountered." Probably in part due to their pack totem, and then plain luck.

So this guy is essentially a Fiann who isn't a werewolf? Yeah, he could see that.