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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.
Re: prompt #4 (canon point: Retrace XC)
He slides closer, having accidentally worked out that their magnetized boots could function almost like rollerblades on the metal surface of the spacecraft, until he can look over and meet the young man's gaze. There are a lot of pieces to put together, and almost inevitably, it will be faster to do it together than separately. He wants to pause and stare at the stars and the planets, to marvel at the situation... but whatever else he questions, he doesn't doubt that one thing the psychic voice told them is true. They're on the clock.
no subject
But he puts aside his grumbling, for now, at least - because if he's being told but not compelled, that's better than it could be, and if he's supposed to be crashing engines as opposed to shooting the wrong people then that's much better than it could be, and -
Well, the more he looks around, the less appealing floating home sounds, if that's the alternative to whatever they're supposed to be doing.
He gives his hand a shake, watching the rod stay curiously stuck there. "What does this do?"
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He put a hand briefly on the belt, still slowly puffing mist into the air around him. "This is probably what's giving us air. The boots keep us from floating away. But something still has to be keeping us from boiling and exploding in vaccuum..."
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Boiling and exploding in vacuum?
The look on Gilbert's face suggests that some parts of that statement might as well be in Chinese, and he's sorry he asked, because if they have to worry about something spontaneously going wrong and making them boil and explode, that's just one more distraction they really don't need right now.
He lifts one leg experimentally - tugging a little harder and frowning with exertion until whatever about those boots is holding them down gives way and his foot finally pops free - and then after a moment of flailing for balance that's perhaps not necessary in zero gravity, but still quite reflexive - he puts his foot down again.
no subject
Souji continues to look around, exploring their surroundings, until he finally notices the glasses tucked into his pocket - black plastic frames and tinted blue lenses. Or, at least, the lenses are tinted from the outside - from the inside, they look clear.
Curiously, he slips them on, and after a moment a slight smile tugs at the corners of his mouth.
"...It's called a magnetic umbrella, and it keeps the pressure in. And... if we decide that we're interested, the glowing metal volcanoes in the distance over there seem to be the engines."
no subject
...well, as weird as this entire set-up is, he's not sure he wants to rely on that going exactly the way it's supposed to.
"If it's that or floating home, we'd probably better be interested." And oh, does he wish that weren't the case, whether out of deep distrust of strange voices in his head and the consequences of listening to them, or just out of sheer petulance at them for being there in the first place.
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One winter, over a decade ago, when it had gotten cold enough and Oscar had insisted on dragging them all out -
It isn't something Gil thinks about much, though, considering there isn't much to speak of aside from Oz skating circles around him and a lot of falling on his butt and the ice at the south end of the pond being a little thinner than anyone had expected -
But okay, technically that does mean he knows how. Kind of.
"Once."
no subject
Souji moves towards him, reaching out to take his wrist but stopping an inch or two before making contact, making eye contact and waiting for at least tacit permission.
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(And given enough time in the World Series, well. He learned to trust Break. Maybe some of these guys won't be so far behind.)
He nods - though he looks like he'd probably be grumbling, if he weren't keeping his mouth shut.
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"we'regonnacrashwe'regonnacrashwe'regonnacrash -"
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Souji turned back to him, looking away from their direction of travel, a question obvious on his face even before he spoke.
"The one on the left seems to be going our way. Are you up for taking a risk?"
no subject
"Aren't we already doing that?!"
But despite the frantic edge in his voice and the barely controlled body language that suggests the only thing keeping him from wild flailing is the fact that it'll probably just throw them off balance and make this whole ride even worse -
"Fine, just - don't crash!"
There's still that time limit to think about...and Gil has a disturbingly good track record of walking off should-be-fatal injuries.
no subject
He aims them right at the side of the vehicle, waiting until the last moment possible before pushing off with both feet, coming unstuck - for a queasy moment, his only anchor is the grip on Gilbert's arm, before he successfully plants his boots on the armored side of the mammoth vehicle. As soon as he's sure he's attached, he shouts.
"Now!"
no subject
And he's got a good sense of combat timing - good enough to swallow his (numerous) doubts and jump right on time.