TEST DRIVE #24

[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 April 21-28. Our next Jaunt will be Digital Frontier: Legacy Mode, a return visit to the Grid, where investigation of the secrets held by a new computer system will be investigated. The jaunt will be accompanied by the walkabout Northern Lights, where a ski resort in Finland is subject to some unusual happenings during the longest night of the year.

Prompt #62 is a Liminal Space that offers a chance to get clean, if you can work with its quirks.
Prompt #63 gives players a taste of the exploration setup used on the Grid previously.

#62

Liminal Space is a laundromat - the rows of washers and dryers stretch into the distance, occasionally punctuated by the doors to Travelers’ private created spaces. If you’ve been looking for a chance to wash your clothes, you can even do that; there are stacks of odd gold coins marked with five-pointed stars around, apparently of a perfect size to slot into the machines.

Of course, first you have to free a machine of its resident hamsters.

They’re not true animals - instead, they’re made of cloth. One might be flannel, another denim, and so on. They’re all running endlessly in the washer and dryers like they’re hamster wheels, and the detergent and fabric softener dispensers in the Liminal Laundromat look more like a drip-feed water bottle you’d leave upended in an actual hamster’s cage.

#63

(For a quick rundown of the Grid’s various factions, see here. Automata are not on this short list, since their functions changed significantly after the last jaunt and we haven’t formally sorted out how yet.)

It took quite a bit of scanning, but the Defenders in this system are now satisfied that the Programs visiting from the Grid to help with their data reclamation didn’t come bearing new and unusual strains of corruption. Their wariness isn’t uncalled for, given that Programs come in one of two colors, and the Grid’s visitors apparently have another three to come to grips with.

With the conclusion of the quarantine protocol, all Programs are now free to explore the area and see what they can find. The task goes faster in groups of Programs, and a fair amount of work is required before a sector is considered fully processed. You might find nothing, or you might find something - or you might find danger, in the form of corrupted data.

Comments

Susan Sto Helit

[inthebone]

62

Susan - Duchess of Sto Helit and sixteen year-old-girl, currently dressed in the shapeless and unflattering nightgowns of the Quirm College for Young Ladies - stood amoung the rows and rows of...things. ‘Things’ was, she knew, an irritating vague term that did nothing at all to describe what was in front of her. But considering that, at the moment, despite all of Susan’s Education she didn’t have the foggest idea what they were...’Things’ was really the best term Susan had for them at present.

They were large, white boxes. They had circular windows in the front. Inside the windows, small creatures appeared to be spinning, for reasons and motives unknown. And all of it was very loud, the...things....shaking and making an awful lot of noise.

(She thought her Grandfather’s home hadn’t made any sense. But compared to this place, Death’s house was perfectly logical.)

Carefully, she inches towards one of the....things...and crouches down next to it, so that she can peer inside.

“Hello?” she says, tentatively, to the odd creatures running around in there. “Are you imps?” They didn’t look like any imps she’d even seen. But what else could they be? “What are you doing?”

[likescats]

Well Death recognizes that soul. Also the age...wait?

Either way, your grandfather is quick to locate you. Oh dear, this got quite a lot more complicated.

I DO NOT BELIEVE THEY ARE IMPS BUT THEY ARE CERTAINLY NOT FROM OUR WORLD.

Death meanwhile always looks the same so he might as well be from when you remember. ....and given the timeline thing he's technically from all of those at once but still, you try to focus on one moment. Either way, he looks the same as the last time you saw him.

HELLO, GRANDDAUGHTER.

[inthebone]

She stands, and turns to look at him.

Somehow, Susan's not surprised to find him here. Of course he's here. Wherever here is.

"Hello, Grandfather," she says. "If they're not from our world, where are they from?"

[likescats]

THIS ONE I SUSPECT. OR PERHAPS DRAWN IN BY THE BEINGS THE RUN THIS PLACE FROM ONE OF THE MANY OTHER WORLDS.

[inthebone]

“Drawn in by the what?” Susan says, staring at her grandfather. Unfortunately, as yet Susan hadn’t yet had the explanations for this. Or possibly that should be fortunately, considering what she was likely to think about it when she did. “What beings? What world? Grandfather, where are we?”

[likescats]

WE ARE NOT IN THE SAME UNIVERSE THE DISCWORLD IS.

And Death sounds utterly serious now. And there is a hint of annoyance to his voice. Okay more then a hint. You know it's serious when Death gets angry and the Arcana annoy him.

AS TO THE BEINGS. THEY CALL THEMSELVES ARCANA. LIKE THE CAROC CARDS BACK HOME BUT NOT WITH ALL THE SAME NAMES. WHATEVER THEY ARE, THEY ARE POWERFUL ENOUGH TO TAKE PEOPLE FROM THEIR WORLDS AND BRING THEM TO THIS PLACE. AND THEN SEND THEM TO OTHER WORLDS.

THEY ARE MORE POWERFUL BUT THEY ACT LIKE GODS. THIS IS ALL ONE BIG GAME TO THEM.

[inthebone]

"What?" Susan says, staring. "But...how? That's not possible! You can't just...kidnap people from one universe to another!" Susan pauses, and then adds, with less certainty: "...Can they?"

[likescats]

APPARENTLY THEY CAN. THEY SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO, BUT THEY CAN.

Especially not to him, or her, or the other Death here.

YOU ARE GOING TO DISLIKE THIS PLACE A GREAT DEAL. IT MAKES EVEN LESS SENSE THEN THE THINGS YOU FIND SILLY IN OUR WORLD.

[inthebone]

"But I...I'm not going to be staying here, am I, Grandfather?" Susan asks. She couldn't be stuck here, surely. "I'll be going home. Won't I?"

[likescats]

Oh he really wishes he could send her home. Even if he had to stay. Especially Susan at this age. Instead he looks at her. So there can be no mistaking it for a joke, not that he'd joke about something like this. But he's very serious.

SUSAN. I DO NOT HAVE THE POWER TO LEAVE THIS PLACE. IF I HAD ANY SORT OF POWER OVER THIS PLACE I WOULD HAVE SHUT IT DOWN THE MOMENT I ARRIVED.

THE BEINGS THAT CONTROL THIS PLACE... THEY ARE PLAYING GAMES. WITH PEOPLE AS THE PIECES. HOWEVER THEY ARE POWERFUL ENOUGH THAT NO ONE BROUGHT HERE HAS BEEN ABLE TO STOP THEM.

[inthebone]

"But...you're Death," she says, in a small voice.

They haven't always gotten along. Mostly, in fact, their relationship - at least from what Susan has experienced so far - has been, well, difficult. It's not exactly smooth sailing, after all, when you started off resenting your Grandfather for not preventing your parent's deaths. The Duty hasn't always been something Susan understood. When she's older, it'll be better, although she's not older yet.

But he's still Death. And Susan knows that that means that he shouldn't be something that can be...trapped. Sure, the wizards did it, but they were wizards. The one that had summoned her had let her out, and given her breakfast. She'd never thought the wizard could have kept her there forever.

What kind if being could keep Death trapped forever?!

[likescats]

Oh Susan.... and it's probably best that she doesn't know that He can appear outside the wizard's summoning circles and mostly stays in them to be polite. Because that would just raise even more, how powerful are these people questions.

YES. BUT THERE ARE PEOPLE FROM OTHER UNIVERSES HERE. ONE OF WHICH IS THE DEATH FROM ANOTHER WORLD. AND SHE IS TRAPPED HERE AS WELL. WHATEVER POWER THESE ARCANA HAVE IS APPARENTLY REAL ENOUGH TO TRAP EVEN BEING LIKE US.

[inthebone]

“But I can’t stay here!” Susan protests. “I’ve got...” She pauses. Yes, well, she did have classes tomorrow, but she’d already learned that time was a much more flexible concept in that regard. “I’ve got things I’d rather do than be stuck here! And...what happens if you’re not home?”

[runs]

A black kitten wanders over and sits down next to her.

"Whatever the Arcana that made this thought would be fun."

[inthebone]

"Oh, wonderful," Susan says, in a tone of voice that suggests the exact opposite of 'wonderful'. "Now there's talking cats?" Weren't talking ravens enough? Now she had to deal with talking cats too? "If you're going to talk, cat, you should at least make sense."

Because nothing in that sentence made any sense at all to Susan.

[runs]

Rude.

The kitten gives Susan the most indignant look of censure that a fluffy adolescent of cuteness can manage and points out:

"If you were looking for sense, you came to the wrong place. Sense isn't exactly the logic this place runs on."

[inthebone]

"I didn't choose to come here at all!" Susan protests, her hands on her hips. "Wherever...here even is..."

(At least when she went to Death's House, she knew how she got there. But Binky never brought her here..."

[runs]

"They call it Liminal.

It's ruled by Gentry that call themselves Arcana. Of course you don't know how you got here, They never ask before they abduct you."

Sorry, Susan, this won't get any better the more you learn.

[inthebone]

"That doesn't tell me anything," Susan says, scowling. She never thought this would be possible, but he's beginning to think that she prefer's talking to the raven. "You're just giving me a lot of words without saying anything about what they actually mean! What is liminal? What are Gentry? What are Arcana? You haven't explained any of that at all!"

[runs]

"Because I'm not the explanation bear, I'm a cat."

She doesn't get paid to be helpful past what she feels like being helpful.

After a moment, she deigns to explain a bit, anyway. Perhaps not in the best way, but... "Liminal is this place. It changes every week. The doors lead to rooms that belong to individual travellers. Travellers being the people that were abducted to this place."

[inthebone]

“Changes? Changes how?” She says, frowning. “And if people - if we’re being kidnapped, why are we being called ‘travellers’? That doesn’t seem like a very good word for it. If you’re kdinapped, you don’t get to travel around the place, do you?”

[runs]

"We get to go where they send us, and nowhere else." That's how. She could add more, but the newbie already seems confused, so she'll not mention the whole 'and sometimes they lock you up inside someone else' thing.

"And... let me show you." And suddenly, Susan will have images of various Liminal spaces streamed directly into her head.

[inthebone]

“I...stop that!” Susan says, stepping back at sudden influx of images. She didn’t know what was happening, or how the cat was able to put images in her mind, but it was unfamiliar and strange and terrifying, and she didn’t like it.

[runs]

The influx of pictures stops, and the cat now just sits there, head tipped to the side, watching her.

[inthebone]

"...Thank you," Susan says.

See, at least one of them is capable of common courtesy.