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synodiporia_ooc2019-07-02 10:56 pm
powersthatbe) wrote in synodiporia_ooc2019-07-02 10:56 pm
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Test Drive #29
Welcome to the Synodiporia Test Drive Meme! Below the cuts there are three 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 current app round runs through July 10th. The July-August jaunt will be Paramo Riconquista, in which the pirates, mermaids, and ninjas of Crownbreaker Isle travel to the island city-state of Paramo during Li Festivale Di Riconquista, a raucous local holiday, on a mission of undercover - not to mention undersea - piracy; the Walkabout will be Majesty’s House Cup, a return visit to a school for the magical arts.
Prompt #73 is from the beginning of the Paramo Riconquista jaunt: with mermaid Sirens singing the Litany of Breath, they and their pirate companions travel through the shoals near Paramo - underwater.
Prompt #74 features a rather quiet iteration of Liminal Space.
#73
The shoals near Paramo are a marvel for human and mermaid alike - but for opposite reasons. With their ship beached gently in a lagoon thirty miles from land, they’d taken to the waves ten hours ago, doing their best to stick to the shadows, the crevasses, the depths and murky waters where no-one on the surface will see them. That had worked - then. Now, still three miles from shore, they’re passing through the reefs, with clear water no more than five fathoms deep, and sea traffic growing more common - fishing boats, pleasure schooners, the occasional hulking dreadnaught carving across the waves, canons out and pennants flying bright.
Most of the pirates have had a chance to swim in the shoals around Crownbreaker Isle, where the reefs are three times thicker than those here. But the labyrinthine shoals around Crownbreaker don’t have flotillas of pearlescent blue sea-lilies, or the massive whirling clouds of flickering, multicolored minnows like rainbow-tinted storms beneath the waves, and not nearly as many seals and porpoises coming to nose about the swimmers and play. They’re scavengers, all - they know that where humans are, there’s food discarded in the water, food the humans think is waste.
That isn’t what’s marvelous to the merfolk.
Still three miles out, they’re passing beneath stilted houses that hang above the waves, cross-shaped wharves and piers extending out from them. There are discarded anchors everywhere, wave-softened drifts of glass that were once goblets, pleasure-boats with lacquered bands of color across their copper-plated keels. And there are pops and booms of thunder, followed by distorted bursts of color - fireworks. The big festival displays haven’t begun yet, but every trader, fisherman, or petty aristocrat with the coin to spare has purchased a few from the trade-ships from En Zhenming, and they can’t resist showing off to their neighbors, setting them off over the waters like amateur cannon-fire with dyed smoke drifting low over the waves.
It’s very beautiful, and very dangerous. Because if even one Thalassian mermaid is spotted in these waters - if anyone dives underwater close enough to hear Siren Song - then come the patrol-ships and the harpoons. Everyone knows mermaids are dangerous cannibals and witches, every one of them (everyone except anyone who’s actually spoken to a mermaid).
You’re at the center of the map. Here be humans.
#74
The walls are lava.
Well, no. The walls are certainly glowing, shifting colors not unlike a lava lamp taking shapes that hold some sort of meaning to whoever’s looking at them. Whether that meaning is good or bad is in the eye of the beholder. But the walls of this cave-like Liminal Space, to the touch, feel like nothing so much as warm wax, and the stalactites and stalagmites peppered throughout look like dribbly candles.
It’s quiet here, the waxy texture of the space absorbing all but the nearest sounds, so you have to be quite close indeed to someone else to make conversation.
Our current app round runs through July 10th. The July-August jaunt will be Paramo Riconquista, in which the pirates, mermaids, and ninjas of Crownbreaker Isle travel to the island city-state of Paramo during Li Festivale Di Riconquista, a raucous local holiday, on a mission of undercover - not to mention undersea - piracy; the Walkabout will be Majesty’s House Cup, a return visit to a school for the magical arts.
Prompt #73 is from the beginning of the Paramo Riconquista jaunt: with mermaid Sirens singing the Litany of Breath, they and their pirate companions travel through the shoals near Paramo - underwater.
Prompt #74 features a rather quiet iteration of Liminal Space.
#73
The shoals near Paramo are a marvel for human and mermaid alike - but for opposite reasons. With their ship beached gently in a lagoon thirty miles from land, they’d taken to the waves ten hours ago, doing their best to stick to the shadows, the crevasses, the depths and murky waters where no-one on the surface will see them. That had worked - then. Now, still three miles from shore, they’re passing through the reefs, with clear water no more than five fathoms deep, and sea traffic growing more common - fishing boats, pleasure schooners, the occasional hulking dreadnaught carving across the waves, canons out and pennants flying bright.
Most of the pirates have had a chance to swim in the shoals around Crownbreaker Isle, where the reefs are three times thicker than those here. But the labyrinthine shoals around Crownbreaker don’t have flotillas of pearlescent blue sea-lilies, or the massive whirling clouds of flickering, multicolored minnows like rainbow-tinted storms beneath the waves, and not nearly as many seals and porpoises coming to nose about the swimmers and play. They’re scavengers, all - they know that where humans are, there’s food discarded in the water, food the humans think is waste.
That isn’t what’s marvelous to the merfolk.
Still three miles out, they’re passing beneath stilted houses that hang above the waves, cross-shaped wharves and piers extending out from them. There are discarded anchors everywhere, wave-softened drifts of glass that were once goblets, pleasure-boats with lacquered bands of color across their copper-plated keels. And there are pops and booms of thunder, followed by distorted bursts of color - fireworks. The big festival displays haven’t begun yet, but every trader, fisherman, or petty aristocrat with the coin to spare has purchased a few from the trade-ships from En Zhenming, and they can’t resist showing off to their neighbors, setting them off over the waters like amateur cannon-fire with dyed smoke drifting low over the waves.
It’s very beautiful, and very dangerous. Because if even one Thalassian mermaid is spotted in these waters - if anyone dives underwater close enough to hear Siren Song - then come the patrol-ships and the harpoons. Everyone knows mermaids are dangerous cannibals and witches, every one of them (everyone except anyone who’s actually spoken to a mermaid).
You’re at the center of the map. Here be humans.
#74
The walls are lava.
Well, no. The walls are certainly glowing, shifting colors not unlike a lava lamp taking shapes that hold some sort of meaning to whoever’s looking at them. Whether that meaning is good or bad is in the eye of the beholder. But the walls of this cave-like Liminal Space, to the touch, feel like nothing so much as warm wax, and the stalactites and stalagmites peppered throughout look like dribbly candles.
It’s quiet here, the waxy texture of the space absorbing all but the nearest sounds, so you have to be quite close indeed to someone else to make conversation.
no subject
Silent-Death is staying far away from the hubub of the festival. Why, really, would anyone in their good mind opt to be where the ships and lanterns and all that gross human stuff is when you can be here, far away from it, enjoying a nice fishy snack and not being disturbed by human existence?
Any good reasons?
No, she thought so. So there's a mermaid hanging out far away from the festival, perched in a nice little nook somewhere, nomming on a fish, and discarding the bones out into the open water when she's done.
She's not checking if the fishbone hits someone first or not.
74
She has no idea what this new place is.
It's definitely not the spaceship that she should be on board of.
It's... okay. It's an improvement all right. It may not look natural, but it doesn't look technological, and that makes a huge difference.
She wanders, after a while reaching out tentatively to touch the wall, and once she's figured out that it is safe to touch, she starts walking with her hand running along the warm walls, her head tilted to the side in confusion. She continues to look at the wall instead of looking ahead, so she might run into someone.
73
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Well, if that's not nice. Someone who decided to not join the urrah human trash eaters who all went out towards the ships, either. Too bad she potentially pissed him off.
"I thought everyone was out where the humans are."
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Human food is terribly tainted, and on top of that - what self respecting person eats such a tainted people's trash?
"They will return once the humans stop being loud and bright."
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They destroy the places that they come to, and they destroy the minds and hearts of those they come in contact with."
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A bit stiffly, and clearly implied is that she can, but she'd rather not.
"It does not matter if it is your goal. It is in human nature. Or human lack of nature, rather."
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73
So, naturally, instead of doing that he's just chosen to to pretend like he's opted to hang around this quiet little nook, watching everyone else swishing about the waters like he definitely doesn't care that he can't do the same. He isn't sulking; he's monitoring the perimeter and acting as a sentry. It's a good, respectable task to take upon oneself.
Less good, and less respectable, are the stripped fish bones that have drifted down and snagged in his hair. He hadn't even noticed them until another bone had floated down in front of him like rather macabre confetti, and despite his attempts his new
sea slugfishy hands aren't dexterous enough to be able to remove them himself.This is why Silent-Death is going to have the dubious honor of watching as he slowly, slowly, floats upwards to appear before her with all the speed of an image loading on a dial-up connection; arms crossed, bones tangled in his floating hair, and clear look of dissatisfaction on his face.
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So she's not the only one who stayed behind.
She watches him watch her in return, pausing with her feeding for a bit while she does so and jamming the half-eaten fish into a crack of the rock so it won't float off before she can get back to it.
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"You should be more mindful," he advises sternly. She surely didn't intend on this outcome, so he'll let her off easy. (It isn't like he's discovered Bob up here deliberately tossing discarded remains at people - now that would be an argument.)
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Why does this slug want to fight her.
But if it does hey, she's gonna fight it no problem.
"I am mindful."
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"More mindful of discarding your scraps," he corrects himself. In case she's actually unaware. She does seem to be staring quite intently; is she having trouble focusing, maybe? He doesn't let up on his own disapproving stare, to give her the opportunity to be able to see it. "You can't just let the waters take them."
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Next time define better what she should be mindful of, Yakumo.
"Letting the waters take them is natural.
They are not human trash. They will return to being useful."
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"There are better ways," he insists sharply. A few of his wriggly... limbs? Appendages? --A few of his wriggly bits wriggle in annoyance, boosting himself just the tiniest few centimeters up in the water. "Discarding them recklessly causes problems for others."
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"What kinds of problems?"