The Powers That Be ([personal profile] powersthatbe) wrote in [community profile] synodiporia_ooc2014-02-05 08:29 am
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Test Drive #0.

Welcome to the Synodiporia Test Drive Meme! Below the cut there are four prompts to get you started: the first is if you’d like to test what intro-ing a new character is like, the second if you’d like to just chat and get CR with other prospective players just before the game’s starting event takes place, and the third and fourth for threaders looking for more active challenges to play in the game’s backstory - a bit of a look at what getting involved in this game’s plot would look like.

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!

Before you start, we’d like you to please take a quick look at the game’s Concept, its Rules, and the Liminal Space & Previous Universes pages, just to give you the background, so you know what you’re getting into. And if you’re looking for more information, the Directory is here and the Reserves page is here.

Have fun!



Prompt #1: Liminal Space: New Arrivals

It seems to you that you’ve just stepped through a door, and you can feel the faint breeze of it blowing behind you.

You’ve just stepped into a mansion as imagined by MC Escher. This is the grand foyer, and zigzagging staircases with gilt balustrades curl impossibly along the corners, leading to a ballroom on the right wall, a theater on the left, or a fire-lit banqueting hall on the ceiling, far more rustic than the rest of the mansion looks. The far wall is a scattered collection of doors and windows facing all directions and opening who-knows where. Outside the windows you can see a beach, a mist-shrouded forest, and a starry sky. One door has a sheaf of papers nailed to it. Another has blood trickling out from beneath the doorframe.

When you look behind you, however, there is no door there. Nor, in fact, is there a wall in the traditional sense. Instead, there’s a marble-tiled bath-house.

In all of these places, whatever direction they happen to be facing with respect to tradition gravity, are people in strange clothing. Most of them seem to be looking relatively bored or restless, and only a very few seem at all bothered by the notion that the laws of physics seem to be being held in abeyance - mostly, the people standing nearest to you.

Most disturbing of all, beside the quiet murmur of conversation in your ears, you can also hear voices casually exchanging small talk inside your head.

After a moment, there’s a lull in most of the audible conversations, and a large portion of the room turns and looks your way. Someone -one of the voices in your head - says

Look at that. A new pack of Fools just arrived.




Prompt #2: Liminal Space: Everyone Else

This time, liminal space has manifested as a mansion as imagined by MC Escher. This is the grand foyer, and zigzagging staircases with gilt balustrades curl impossibly along the corners, leading to a ballroom on the right wall, a theater on the left, or a fire-lit banqueting hall on the ceiling, far more rustic than the rest of the mansion looks. The far wall is a scattered collection of doors and windows facing all directions and opening who-knows where. Outside the windows you can see a beach, a mist-shrouded forest, and a starry sky. One door has a sheaf of papers nailed to it. Another has blood trickling out from beneath the doorframe. Behind you, there’s a marble-tiled bath-house.

It’s up to you to find a way to amuse yourself. You’ve been here thirty-six hours, longer than any of your previous Jaunts between worlds has taken, and since the food in the banquet hall vanishes the moment it’s out of your sight (even if it’s inside you), you’re starting to get hungry. When is the portal going to appear?





Prompt #3: Alternities: Locked Rooms In Moebius

You wake up in a new world, but by now you’re familiar with that. Only… something’s wrong. You didn’t step through any portal. You’re lying on a cold surface with something draped over you, and you can hear confused murmuring coming from your left and your right, maybe above and below you too, and you hurt.

You sit up, shrugging off the dingy once-white cloth draped over you. You’re in a morgue. All the alcoves are open, and in many of them, other Travelers are stirring and waking up. Some of them are wild-eyed. Some are blood-spattered. Every last one is criss-crossed with unfamiliar white lines of scarring.

On the slab in the center of a room is a clock. The hands indicate that it is 3:01. A collection of bloody-edged tools - knives and separators and saw and scalpels - sits beside it.

There is one door out, up half a flight of stairs in one corner, and no windows. The door has been barred, and all around the edges doorstops have been jammed in - wedge-toed shoes, folded sheafs of paper, a length of rubber hosing - anything that will fit in the narrow gap between door and frame, used to create a seal.

Scratched into the paint on the door are the words In the name of Blessed Elua, listen to me this time and stay inside. Don’t go out there. Just wait. Please. -JV

Somewhere out there in the distance, close enough to be audible but far enough away to be quiet, barely audible over the hum of the fluorescent lights, there’s a loud, ragged scream, and then the distant voice begins to sob unevenly.





Prompt #4: Alternities: Extravehicular On The Spark

You’re standing on the curved, chrome-bright hull of a space station that stretches to the horizon in all directions - not a smooth horizon but a busy one, with shapes like distant cityscapes, mountain-ranges of conical turrets glowing faintly with violet light, and a faint if inaudible hum travelling upward through your feet, varying in strength and direction at the passage of distant traffic, scalloped domes sliding over the surface or small treaded runners like motor-trikes zipping by at much greater speeds. A white plastic belt around your waist puffs cool fog every few seconds, a black metal rod in your hand smells of ozone and seems glued to your palm, and your boots are heavy, steel-soled, and have a blinking generator at the heel - but otherwise, save for a pair of goggles tucked into one pocket, you’re wearing street clothes, just what you’d expect yourself to be wearing. Your hair moves around you in a cloud, and your stomach turns uneasily. Even though you seem to have both air and heat there is no gravity. You might as well be hanging from the underside of this craft, not standing on it.

Looking up - or down - anyway, away from the ship - you see a massive planet filling a quarter of the sky, covered in jade-banded rings of cloud that swirl and churn anxiously. Between you and the luminescent green world is suspended a miniscule shape, round, red, like a rough-edged droplet of blood. It and the planet above it appear to be slowly expanding as you watch.

You’re not alone. A group of other people, similarly equipped, stands around you, looking as confused as you feel. A startled expression crosses all their faces at the same moment as an excited, fast-talking voice enters your mind.

-- hacked the telepathic network and scrambled your heads! Bet the champs never thought that was possible! What does that tell you about -- never mind, it can wait. We’re live now, but only for a moment. We need to avoid any *further* psychic interference, so we’re going dark. Repeat, the network is going dark. They won’t be able to get into your heads again. The clock’s at seventy-two minutes at my mark, Fellow Travelers. Aaaand… Mark. Okay. Seventy-two minutes to bring down those engines, or we’re out of the World Series and you can all see how you like floating home! Let’s crash this sucker, kids! See you all on Sangre.

The voice vanishes. You have no idea who it was, and no memory of what it was talking about.
fridgeninja: (smirk)

[personal profile] fridgeninja 2014-02-05 08:27 pm (UTC)(link)
"It's a tradition here that every new arrival - some people call them Fools - gets a guide. Usually, it's someone who's been here a long time... but at the moment, I think it's particularly appropriate for it to be me." He let his smile show a little more. "You've never had a jaunt before, and I'm on my third... so if you're a Fool, that makes me an Empress. I think we'll work together well."
velvetempress: (Star | Pleased to make your acquaintance)

so souji is girl if empress now?

[personal profile] velvetempress 2014-02-05 09:09 pm (UTC)(link)
She couldn't help but chuckle again. Sorry Souji but you're more World than Empress material. It was cute of you to try anyway.

"So it's reversed then. This will be interesting."

Her eyes almost held a little bit of mischief in them at the thought. Well, at least it's her and not any of her siblings. Elizabeth would be a handful more than likely.
fridgeninja: (glasses check)

nope, just 3rd step on the Mystic Journey... ^_^

[personal profile] fridgeninja 2014-02-05 09:18 pm (UTC)(link)
"It hasn't bored me yet," he said, a mild admission, and lead the way to the stairs, unbothered by the ninety degree rotation at the landing, leading her along a switchbacked route to the banqueting hall on the ceiling and taking a seat at one of the tables there.

"You've been brought into what some people call the Mystic Journey, and some call the World Series. Dozens of us, from different times and different universes, have come here, where we're sent from world to world to intervene in complicated problems. Some people think we're solving them, and others think we're making things worse."
velvetempress: (Default)

[personal profile] velvetempress 2014-02-05 11:39 pm (UTC)(link)
Feeling restless already young guide? If it were anyone else, they would be disturbed by the setting or at least feel sick with all the turning. It was probably for the best that the attendant was put under his care than someone who was scared out of their minds. It was comforting, abit awkward being the one in the dark about this place.

Margaret listened carefully to Souji's explanation, making sense of it. So they travel to other realms to try and help them, maybe due to a higher reason why they were going to these odd worlds. But there was another question on her mind: if they pull others from different times and the young man mentioned that he had done this before...

"How long have you been here if I may ask?"
fridgeninja: (so that's it)

[personal profile] fridgeninja 2014-02-05 11:43 pm (UTC)(link)
"It's been about four months," he said, nodding. As expected, Margaret was able to adapt quickly enough to think of a question like that. "People can also come from different times within the same world, so it's also worthwhile to ask... when did you see me last?"
velvetempress: (Empress | A mystery)

[personal profile] velvetempress 2014-02-06 03:06 am (UTC)(link)
Four months? Time works strangely in this area indeed. It's something to take note and perhaps share with other potential guests if they were to about to partake in this journey.

"It was after our battle before I had arrived here."
fridgeninja: (taking it seriously)

[personal profile] fridgeninja 2014-02-06 07:05 pm (UTC)(link)
"Then there's even more of a disconnect. I had already completed my contract and left Inaba when I arrived here. So for me, it's been almost half a year since I've seen you."
velvetempress: (Default)

[personal profile] velvetempress 2014-02-07 05:15 am (UTC)(link)
Normal people would be surprised at that. Even if she was, Margaret never showed it on her face nor did her body expression change. Maybe a master of the poker face she is.

"Time is odd here indeed." she finally broke the silent thoughts before going back into more questioning. If Souji had more knowledge in this area than her, it would be wise to listen.

"You mentioned conflicts in different realms. What were some of them?"
fridgeninja: (glasses adjust)

[personal profile] fridgeninja 2014-02-07 05:47 am (UTC)(link)
"Most recently, we were in a place that... hmmm. Are you familiar with the song 'Hotel California?'"
velvetempress: (Magician | Smile meant for you)

[personal profile] velvetempress 2014-02-12 08:27 pm (UTC)(link)
"...that I'm not familiar with."

She may have more knowledge than her siblings when it comes to humans but there are things even she can get lost on.
fridgeninja: (glasses adjust)

[personal profile] fridgeninja 2014-02-13 02:56 am (UTC)(link)
"It's a song about a place that you can go to, but you can never leave."