The Powers That Be ([personal profile] powersthatbe) wrote in [community profile] synodiporia_ooc2014-11-21 06:44 pm
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Test Drive #5.

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 that a forest of bare toplevels! OCs are especially welcome!

Prompt #17 is set in an unknown location, probably Liminal Space, where Travelers have little except their imagination to guide them. Confusion is expected, but what would you do, if you were floating in the shadows of the night sky, surrounded by unseen strangers and animate constellations?

Prompt #18 is an example of a steampunk jaunt, either far in the game’s past or somewhere in its unknowable future. Improvising Infiltrator backstory and playing out diplomacy, intrigue, or mad science in the skies above the Takla Makan desert is greatly encouraged!

Prompt #19 is a popular Liminal Space the travelers have visited before, a look at the dream-logic and nonsensical whimsy Travelers are trapped in during their downtime - though it can also be a source of clues they desperately need, the only form of communication from the Trumps they ever get. What does it all mean? If anything.


Prompt #17: Starry Night

You are floating in a weightless, lightless space, slightly chill. In the distance, motes of light forming abstract shapes move, jerky, robotic perambulations as they circle, but the light is too dim to show anything but the phosphor-dots itself. Whenever you speak, stardust spills from your mouth, illuminating, for just a moment, the lower portion of the speaker’s face, and there are other twinkles of stardust in the distance, but the cool air feels thick, and the light does not travel far before dissipating. What do you do, here in the dark?



Prompt #18: A Zeppelin called Zeitgeist

You’re on the observation deck of a luxury zeppelin. It's a rocky ride, the craft being buffeted below by a swirling sandstorm, but perhaps of more interest to most inside are the furnishings. A steam-powered calliope plays music in the corner. The bar, an elegant contraption of brass and stained glass, is automated and coin-operated, a rube-goldbergian series of chutes and levers clicking and unlocking bottle and glass, pouring and mixing as the coins slide down through the mechanism and click the right counterweights into place. And scattered across the floor is a late gentleman of similar composition, six spiderlike telescoping arms connected to pneumatic pumps; his face a marble mask, but his tuxedo is torn and the arachno-mechanical marvel was apparently dismantled by repeated collisions with sharp objects.

Anyone who finds the scene familiar will remember that this airship, the Zeitgeist, is the Flying Cossacks' primary exploration craft, now taking one last tour over the Golden Khanate before being mothballed. A diplomatic voyage, it's been marked so far with a number of dangerous assassins striking at the envoys aboard... it's the summer of 1896, if you're an undercover agent of the Vatican (Vatican librarians being among the most fearsome and well-informed secret agents in the world); or 1314 if, like most of Europe, you're a Sufi and part of the Ummah Caliphate. Steam power rules the world, although clockwork is fast catching up. And you might be on some sort of mission yourself…



Prompt #19: The Bouncy Castle

Color is everywhere in Liminal Space. A giant moon-bounce castle dominates the landscape, surrounded by a ball-pit moat. The sky beyond is very obviously a matte painting and not a real sky; turning slowly above them, the sun and moon as tinted spotlights. Gummy fish jump and swim in the moat, and balloon animals wander the halls, gliding along the walls thanks to helium and friction.

There are a number of more remote locations - the dungeons, accessible down a slide in one corner. The gatehouse, which has floors which are entirely trampolines, with no pretense, nothing to mitigate the bounciness - and cushioned ceilings. The cistern, a dark little room in one corner which has its own deep, round pool of multicolored balls. These places, at least, are a little more private, for anyone looking for peace and quiet amidst the rainbow extravaganza.
fridgeninja: (sideglance)

[personal profile] fridgeninja 2014-12-01 09:55 pm (UTC)(link)
"A place like where we are now, but less pleasant, and you can't get out. But it's not... common. And we might be misunderstanding."
darkhourdear: (Pharos [idk my bff Minako?])

[personal profile] darkhourdear 2014-12-01 10:00 pm (UTC)(link)
"How can you misunderstand a dungeon?" That seems pretty straightforward to him. But if people don't tell them anything... hm. This isn't making him like this more.
fridgeninja: (hmmm?)

[personal profile] fridgeninja 2014-12-01 10:03 pm (UTC)(link)
"Plenty of people don't do what the Trumps want, and nothing happens to them. And sometimes people who don't have a problem following their orders vanish the same way. So it might not be a punishment after all. I wouldn't want to jump to conclusions."

Despite being subject to it himself.
darkhourdear: (Pharos [The end is coming])

[personal profile] darkhourdear 2014-12-01 10:05 pm (UTC)(link)
"The Trumps?" That's probably the people in charge, though... there's another word in there. "Vanish? What... do you mean?"
fridgeninja: (taking it seriously)

[personal profile] fridgeninja 2014-12-01 10:08 pm (UTC)(link)
"They open and close portals between places. So when someone goes to a dungeon, it isn't that a person comes to take them away. A portal opens around them, and suddenly they're elsewhere. It can take a while to notice who's disappeared."
darkhourdear: (Pharos [The end is coming])

[personal profile] darkhourdear 2014-12-01 10:48 pm (UTC)(link)
"But... people can get out, right?" Phillip is actually kind of familiar with portals, sort of (teleporters count right?), so that doesn't both him. But if people are getting dragged places and then can't even get themselves out...