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synodiporia_ooc2017-12-21 06:49 pm
powersthatbe) wrote in synodiporia_ooc2017-12-21 06:49 pm
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Test Drive #22
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 December 30–January 6. Our next Jaunt will be Ouroboros Retrograde: a return to the setting of our Questing Country Jaunt, in which lucid-dreaming magical warriors battle the nightmares of their various species. Here, the Travelers will find that the Champions and Oracles of the Dreaming Peoples are looking to help them escape the influence of the Arcana--but time has gone strangely out of joint and making an alliance is easier said than done.
Prompt #57 takes place in a previously unknown Jaunt to a desert world where people farm and harvest crystals to enhance their natural psionic powers.
Prompt #58 takes place in the magical-girl dreamland of Questing Country.
Prompt #59 is a liminal space setting from between Jaunts, in which everyone is getting an extra hour in theball pit snow globe sphere.
#57
The soil is loose enough to flow like water, and the people trudging through it sink in up to the calf - deeper, sometimes, when they find sinkholes that drop them down deep enough to swim, or drown. The air is crisp, cold, and dry, the sky is dark but crackling with auroral discharges that hide the stars. The goal of the veiled folk wading through the soil-sea lies on a cracked ridge a hundred yards distant - spars of crystal budding like fruit trees, ringing quietly in the wind. The gem harvest there is the prize - reverberant crystals that can enhance and weaponize telekinesis to shake apart objects, or structures - or people; archival crystals that can store experiences, feelings, and beliefs - and train others in them, even indoctrinate them -- sympathy crystals which magnify and broadcast thought and emotion, letting telepaths connect over long distances, or driving troops into killing rage or enemies to blind fear.
But between here and the ridge are a dozen things that could go wrong - sinkhole collapses could suck the raiders beneath the surface, or legless albino sandcrocs could be lurking in wait for a meal. Some of the crystals could be primed, energy stored within them to act as booby-traps, activating their functions on unauthorized contact. Or there could be guards - hidden berserkers with reverberant blades, guerropaths whose very thoughts are weapons, snipers who direct crystalline blades with the speed of thought and intensity of emotion.
#58
The Forest Pools are a very special place in Questing Country. Some of the trees are earthlike, some are massive fungi, some flowstone stalactites, some vibrant-colored wood whose branches and trunks twine and braid with themselves - the idea of ‘forest’ means different things in the dreams of half a dozen worlds, all represented here. The pools, too, are different - tidepools, mirror-bright rippling puddles, bubbling hot-springs - but each is fed by a fountain, whether lively or quiet, and each looks drinkable, desirable to the folk who recognize a given pool as belonging to their homeworld.
Mist hangs heavy over the trees and ‘trees’, but not just cloud-vapor; this is the glowing pearlescent dreamstuff that Questing Country breathes out its magic in. These pools are the places where many (perhaps most) new-woken Champions first meet their Spirit Companions, the mystical, mythical animal guides who speak with the voice of Questing Country; and where many young Champions also make their first friends. There are no nightmares in the forest; but there are sometimes free-spirited Adversaries (the selfish former Champions who use magic for their own gain) who seek to trick the young Champions - though those Adversaries must contend with the fact that in the Forest Pools, their own Spirit Companions are always mischievously turned against them.
#59
Liminal Space is up to its old surrealist shenanigans again and currently, it seems to be in the shape of a hollowed out sphere, with a radius the size of a football field. Gravity is localized to the “wall” of the sphere, and any traveler that is sure-footed enough can easily walk the circumference of it without even bothering to invoke special ways of liminal movement.
To call the sides of the sphere a “wall,” however, is somewhat inaccurate. To be a wall implies that a surface is all of one piece--or that the smaller pieces that make it up have been welded or cemented together. Instead the “walls” of the sphere are made of hundreds upon thousands of loosely packed balls that look like glass and feel like plastic. Inside these balls are tiny little models of various locations--some of which are recognizable as former Jaunts or Traveler homes, but many of which are places that are completely alien--and when one picks one up and shakes it, what looks like snow will start to swirl all around the tiny models inside. (Well. Many of the balls have snow. On occasion it’s glitter that swirls around or just colored or black flecks.)
Any attempt to burrow through these balls to reach the outside of the sphere will just result in the Traveler in question emerging from the balls elsewhere in the inside of the sphere.
Our upcoming app round runs December 30–January 6. Our next Jaunt will be Ouroboros Retrograde: a return to the setting of our Questing Country Jaunt, in which lucid-dreaming magical warriors battle the nightmares of their various species. Here, the Travelers will find that the Champions and Oracles of the Dreaming Peoples are looking to help them escape the influence of the Arcana--but time has gone strangely out of joint and making an alliance is easier said than done.
Prompt #57 takes place in a previously unknown Jaunt to a desert world where people farm and harvest crystals to enhance their natural psionic powers.
Prompt #58 takes place in the magical-girl dreamland of Questing Country.
Prompt #59 is a liminal space setting from between Jaunts, in which everyone is getting an extra hour in the
#57
The soil is loose enough to flow like water, and the people trudging through it sink in up to the calf - deeper, sometimes, when they find sinkholes that drop them down deep enough to swim, or drown. The air is crisp, cold, and dry, the sky is dark but crackling with auroral discharges that hide the stars. The goal of the veiled folk wading through the soil-sea lies on a cracked ridge a hundred yards distant - spars of crystal budding like fruit trees, ringing quietly in the wind. The gem harvest there is the prize - reverberant crystals that can enhance and weaponize telekinesis to shake apart objects, or structures - or people; archival crystals that can store experiences, feelings, and beliefs - and train others in them, even indoctrinate them -- sympathy crystals which magnify and broadcast thought and emotion, letting telepaths connect over long distances, or driving troops into killing rage or enemies to blind fear.
But between here and the ridge are a dozen things that could go wrong - sinkhole collapses could suck the raiders beneath the surface, or legless albino sandcrocs could be lurking in wait for a meal. Some of the crystals could be primed, energy stored within them to act as booby-traps, activating their functions on unauthorized contact. Or there could be guards - hidden berserkers with reverberant blades, guerropaths whose very thoughts are weapons, snipers who direct crystalline blades with the speed of thought and intensity of emotion.
#58
The Forest Pools are a very special place in Questing Country. Some of the trees are earthlike, some are massive fungi, some flowstone stalactites, some vibrant-colored wood whose branches and trunks twine and braid with themselves - the idea of ‘forest’ means different things in the dreams of half a dozen worlds, all represented here. The pools, too, are different - tidepools, mirror-bright rippling puddles, bubbling hot-springs - but each is fed by a fountain, whether lively or quiet, and each looks drinkable, desirable to the folk who recognize a given pool as belonging to their homeworld.
Mist hangs heavy over the trees and ‘trees’, but not just cloud-vapor; this is the glowing pearlescent dreamstuff that Questing Country breathes out its magic in. These pools are the places where many (perhaps most) new-woken Champions first meet their Spirit Companions, the mystical, mythical animal guides who speak with the voice of Questing Country; and where many young Champions also make their first friends. There are no nightmares in the forest; but there are sometimes free-spirited Adversaries (the selfish former Champions who use magic for their own gain) who seek to trick the young Champions - though those Adversaries must contend with the fact that in the Forest Pools, their own Spirit Companions are always mischievously turned against them.
#59
Liminal Space is up to its old surrealist shenanigans again and currently, it seems to be in the shape of a hollowed out sphere, with a radius the size of a football field. Gravity is localized to the “wall” of the sphere, and any traveler that is sure-footed enough can easily walk the circumference of it without even bothering to invoke special ways of liminal movement.
To call the sides of the sphere a “wall,” however, is somewhat inaccurate. To be a wall implies that a surface is all of one piece--or that the smaller pieces that make it up have been welded or cemented together. Instead the “walls” of the sphere are made of hundreds upon thousands of loosely packed balls that look like glass and feel like plastic. Inside these balls are tiny little models of various locations--some of which are recognizable as former Jaunts or Traveler homes, but many of which are places that are completely alien--and when one picks one up and shakes it, what looks like snow will start to swirl all around the tiny models inside. (Well. Many of the balls have snow. On occasion it’s glitter that swirls around or just colored or black flecks.)
Any attempt to burrow through these balls to reach the outside of the sphere will just result in the Traveler in question emerging from the balls elsewhere in the inside of the sphere.
Re: 59 (Run)
"What is this place?" he asks, almost more of a complaint than a question.
no subject
She gestures outward, indicating the spheres. "The larger area you find yourself in is called Liminal Space, which is a bit like a larger, more metaphysical doorway that you've stopped in. It is a place between places, nowhere and everywhere simultaneously. An existence that can't be observed from the outside, but it is still there, like the empty space in a picture frame before it's filled with a painting."
She looks at him to see if he's following any of this. "Or it's an alternate dimension where weird shit happens, if you want the layman's terms."
no subject
He shivers, looking down and away for a moment, right hand twitching. Is that what happened to him? Before he came here? He thought, maybe, that he'd died...
no subject
She shrugs. "I'm more of a liberal arts sort of girl. I prefer to think of where we are as...the margins, or perhaps the air between the pages of a story being written. Several stories, actually, that we exist in simultaneously and yet still have a "Liminal" existence outside of."
"I suppose I could get into Plato from here, but I'd have to invite you in first so you could have a seat and I could have a smoke. Would you care to come in, since I'm on the subject?"
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"Um, if you're sure that would be all right..."
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She thinks for a moment as she leads him further in. "Good on you for asking 'why' immediately, though. A lot of new people just throw their hands up and let things happen. Knowing how to question things is important here."
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