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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
if you get in do you want to handwave that some equivalent of this conversation happened in game?
Well, the other guy from months back hadn't said he was 'the Doctor'--he hadn't even given his name to her, since he was too busy being a jerk--but that's what Matthew had said was the guy's name. But they did both have the same kind of dress sense and hair color, so... well. Thorne's seen a lot of sci-fi. She's got a pretty good idea what might be happening.
"I think I met your alternate universe counterpart once," she says. "But, um, I already like you better. My name's Thorne, with an 'E' on the end." The 'E' is important.
"Anyway, there's definitely more to it. Our part sort of started out as one giant space, but other people have learned to create their own smaller rooms inside of it? So we've got a couple restaurants and a boarding house and, like, two bars. And various other things. Do you want me to show you where you can get food?"
Yes, absolutely!
"Oh good grief. Little fellow? Or an older chap with a cane? Might have been a younger man with cricket whites? I'm afraid there have been a few of me that I've met that I can remember as it is, but it's never a good thing. It sounds like I might have visited here at some future point, but I haven't yet."
He chuckles and smiles again, "Food sounds like an excellent idea, Thorne. And... created smaller rooms? I've definitely found myself in an unfamiliar place."
Re: Yes, absolutely!
(Thorne herself has an American one--Californian specifically.)
"But, uh, yeah. People eventually learn how to make their own places inside of here, although it usually takes a little while. And, hm, I think the Aiya is closest?" She starts moving slowly and carefully across the globes. "And Kanji usually has a buffet out when he's not there. Uh, he's the kid that made the place. Although man, I think he's actually eighteen or nineteen now. I can't really call him a kid anymore."
Re: Yes, absolutely!
He moved to follow Thorne without losing much stride, showing a marked sure-footedness that belied his age.
His hands found the pockets of his jackets as he moved, and his eyes moved over the strange spheres underfoot as well as paying attention to what she was saying, and the mention of Kanji's age an apparent willingness to build what was needed made him smile even wider.
"He sounds quite the bright young builder, a remarkable young man in a very remarkable place. But why? This doesn't look or feel anything like a prison, more like a large station, or an..." he paused and snapped his fingers as a light seemed to dawn, "An intersection! That's what it reminds me of." He continued on, still looking here and there, though he did seem to tread noticably lighter than he had a moment earlier.
Re: Yes, absolutely!
And then she grins, glancing back over her shoulder at him. "And yeah! Yeah, that's totally what this place is. It's an intersection between worlds. God, it's great to have someone who doesn't immediately jump on calling this place a prison. Like, I get that's a legit spin to put on this? But for some of us, it just feels wrong to call it that, because our old lives felt more of a prison than this."
Re: Yes, absolutely!
The second remark had him looking around the place again "No. Definitely doesn't look or feel like a prison." He rubbed his neck and chuckled. "Not in the least. Far too many exits."
Re: Yes, absolutely!