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synodiporia_ooc2014-02-05 08:29 am
powersthatbe) wrote in synodiporia_ooc2014-02-05 08:29 am
Entry tags:
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.
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.
no subject
"Who knows?" The white sheet is pulled from his form now with a taut and considerable amount of force to let it float down onto the now empty slab the other had awoken on minutes before. His jacket is discolored with the fibers having bathed and absorbed the fluid, the fabric itself now left slightly stiff where it's been stained. "All I can say is they made a mess and didn't clean up."
That or he made quite the mess of someone and doesn't remember it. Souji's also not particularly concerned one way or the other—he hurts, and his shoulder does ache more than other places, but there's no restriction in his movements from what he's tested so far, which means he's still useful.
And the clock says time's ticking.
"Regardless, I won't be too upset if Hijikata-san says we should leave this creepy tomb soon to figure things out." Something about being in a morgue with a bunch of people he still doesn't really feel all that eager to trust and some of them looking a little unwell is not settling well in his mind, at all.
no subject
It already feels off (and isn't it funny that being human is what feels off now); there's none of the prickling of his senses that usually even the scantest amount of blood sets off, none of the sound of his pulse pounding in his ears and the hunger that follows.
There's just a thin line of blood, slowly deepening and showing no sign of closing up in itself, and the dull realization that as far as this world is concerned, he is - both of them are, he can only assume - normal.
He glances up, eyes locking onto Souji's, and finally favors that statement with an answer. Yes, of course they need to get a look outside and see what they can figure out, but -
"Carefully."
Okita Souji, if you get yourself cut to pieces because you're being a reckless little shit who thinks he can take it, he will goddamned make you wish you'd died and gotten it over with before letting him say anything about it.
no subject
Which means they can rely on two things: their own swords and the swords of the other.
Souji is silent, watching and waiting, steeling himself for something that never comes. And, somehow, it's ironic that there's a sense of weight in the letdown rather than relief because such a situation is not the time or place to be human. His gaze slips up when Hijikata's does, hearing that condition ( and every other that is left unsaid, too ).
He shifts, finally, turning in the direction of the stairs and only then once he's broken eye contact does his reply come and accept what's been set down as the rules. He knows what he's doing and what he can and can't tolerate, okay.
"Of course."
Because like hell he's going to get cut into pieces and then actually be so stupid as to live long enough to have to deal with Hijihen. Have some faith in him only screwing up once, at least, not expecting him to do it in twos ( all the while knowing this shit actually comes in threes, anyway ).
no subject
He takes one last, long look at the slab before him before he turns on his heel to follow Souji to the stairs. The tools used on them, the clock reading 3:01...he can't help but feel there's more to them than that, but he'll be damned if he can see any more pieces of the puzzle to put into place right there. Maybe that'll be more apparent when they return later.
If they can return later. Because as he stops next to Souji in front of the door, the efforts someone - they themselves? - have gone to to keep whatever's out there out aren't lost on him.
no subject
His eyes flicker, looking to the warning scratched out rather than focusing on all the pieces barricading them from accessing the ( apparently-incredibly-undesirable ) other. The message could be just about anything, really, and that was assuming it was even truthful. Taking into consideration it being a lie, for further thought? Well, that opens quite a few more possibilities to ponder, now doesn't it.
But, for all the reasons to doubt, one thing in particular catches his attention, causing him to tense a little at the implication.
"This time...?"
Not to mention, what the hell were they supposed to be waiting for?
no subject
They're missing a chunk of time, they don't remember how they got here. Something has to have happened in there, and that something, Hijikata's sure, is going to be what they need to figure out how to clean house here and move on.
"I get the feeling going out there is a one way trip."
Which won't necessarily stop them from making it, but it does mean that maybe another look around the morgue is in order, first.
no subject
Souji glances to Hijikata but words never come as he's cut off by the sound of that scream from somewhere on the other side of the door. And just as sharply as it broke into their hearing, it breaks down into sobs that are just still loud enough to be heard over everything else, just loud enough to cause unrest.
It's to be expected, any poor bastard stuck out there if this is what has been done to keep whatever lurks out there forever out and Souji can't say he's felt very much one way or another for a stranger suffering amidst a battlefield or even a massacre. But, is it a stranger? Or is it one of them? For all his distrust for most of the other travelers, the fact that they're (currently) comrades makes some difference (not enough for him to make any decisions or actions, but the anxiety of letting seconds pass on and that sobbing continuing while he stands still easily rising exponentially).
But, most of all, it feels like a bad case of deja vu—like he knows how this ends already and maybe they could finally try to do something to change. That's not possible, though... right?
"That's not. . ."
( it's one of them, isn't it. )
no subject
- and all he can hear, somewhere in the back of his memory, is Yamazaki urging him to think of what happens to himself, and what happens to anyone else if he's lost.
What happens to Souji?
Hijikata trusts the others to keep going if he isn't around to keep going with them, to finish whatever they're supposed to be accomplishing here and move on to the next world -
Hijikata doesn't trust anyone who isn't one of the Shinsengumi to keep an eye on Souji, and as much as Souji might resent the implication that he needs any kind of watching...he's had enough people on his life bail on him already.
They're all they have, here.
He grinds his teeth and tries not to let that sobbing in the distance get to him. (It's getting to him.) "If we walk straight into a deathtrap, we're not doing them any good. There's got to be something we're missing in here."
This time. This time. What are they waiting for? How many times have they been waiting for it?
no subject
Souji tolerates Hijikata's babysitting—like hell he's going to extend the same favor to anyone else here. Not now, not ever.
Besides, if Hijikata goes, Souji goes. He won't let the other leave him behind under any circumstances.
They really are all they have and they can't afford to trivialize it under any circumstances. Besides, Hijikata is always looking after everyone else, but who's looking after him? Kondou-san would never forgive him if he let something happen to the other ( and Souji would never forgive himself, either ) and that includes it occurring as consequence to any of their actions—singlehandedly or together.
"Do you think it's really a trap?" He doesn't want to be questioning this, he wants to shrug it off and turn and leave the doorway to go find whatever it is they should hopefully be able to find as an answer to their predicament, but his feet feel like lead and he's frozen in place, still staring at the door. This time. Wait.
. . . wait?
Something flickers in his eyes suddenly. "If what it says is true, we've done this before but all wrong, right?
He turns to look back down the stairs to the dim lighting coming form the single room they'd woken up with.
"This all occurred? So, did we stand here as we are now needing to make a choice?"
A pause, his voice dropping slightly in volume without realizing it.
"...Or was it me or you on the other side of the door the last time or the time before that?"
Because that? That would change everything.
no subject
...
It's a lot of things jammed into the doorframe, isn't it?
He moves past Souji to stand directly in front of the door, fingers reaching up to brush against some of the debris jammed into the cracks along the edges. "You'd think just barring the goddamned door would be enough, wouldn't you?" If the other side had an opposing army or just a vicious monster, keeping it out ought to be enough, and yet here someone - them? - has gone to great lengths to keep there from being even the smallest gap.
What could have scared them badly enough, been enough of a threat, to make that necessary?
no subject
Neither of them would care, either. So it's really just an accepted fact of how it works. The thing is that if they fail again because they are heeding this random message, will next time it actually be one of them out there?
There's the sound of his boot heel scuffing against the ground as he fidgets, letting his leg idly kick against the ground while he considers Hijikata's words and observes the door and all it's added 'decorations' from where he stands behind him.
"Those things aren't going to provide that much more strength to the door if it's an attempt to reinforce it. Wouldn't they have been better off piling things in here against the door if they could be moved around, instead?" Souji tilts his head slightly, his express remaining neutral. "Nothing's beating at the door, so I would assume our hiding spot is still hidden. Would any of that reduce the smell of us to a predator if it were like a dog or wolf?" He's not exactly sure, he's never really had to consider things with sense of smell with animals in his years but Hijkata's been around in his travels before he joined the dojo way back when, so he may have some experience with things like that. "...Or maybe the light?" He questions curiously, more to himself as he glances up, the thought passing suddenly through his mind.
However, it's all speculation, but it's obvious whoever did this spent a long time jamming things between the door. His eyes narrow slightly as he stares at the message once more from over Hijikata's shoulder.
". . .Or, maybe the extras aren't to try and further keep anything out, but to keep us in? We can get out relatively easy, but there's so many random pieces, it would cause an added delay to remove all of them. An attempted backup to make us 'wait' as suggested—wait long enough, for whatever it is they want us to wait for. The writer responsible makes it sound like they are not very confident we'd believe them when reading this. But, if that's so, wouldn't it have been common sense to write more detail in a message about what's going on instead of waste time? If we did this because we knew we were going to make the same mistake all over again and not remember, you'd think we would have been considerate enough to our-future-selves to at least provide the information we knew we would not have when seeing this."
Apparently, their past selves are a bunch of traumatized idiots too busy freaking out to bother to communicate to try and stop it from happening again. He wonders briefly if their past selves thought similar of their past self previously. In that case, Souji will at least be interested to know what it is that will change his opinion on this to be okay with a vague and ultimately useless warning being left, even if he's not the writer.
( he wouldn't have let someone leave that message thinking as he is. something must have changed his mind; or he never made it back with the ones that had the chance to return and write this. )
no subject
The more he speculates, the more it's starting to sound to him like whatever they were so worried about doesn't need the door to open in order to be a threat to them.
This situation is so fucked up.
His hand stops on one of the scraps of paper. Maybe this is a shitty idea, if there's anything legitimate to back up all this preparation, but -
He tugs the scrap free from the doorframe, carefully unfolding it and looking over both sides. Maybe they didn't have time to leave more of a message - or maybe there's more to it written somewhere else?
(Not on this piece, apparently.)