Test Drive #6

[powersthatbe]

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!

Our upcoming app round runs January 1st-7th, after which we’ll have a Victorian Cosmic Horror Jaunt - the madness of the Cthulhu Mythos in rural 1800s England. With that in mind, here are some darker prompts, to catch the feel of how your characters react in troubling times...

Prompt #20 is a flashback to the Cursed Kingdom jaunt, where werewolves hunted, deadly magical creatures roamed, and magical curses and traps struck without warning. Feel free to play an investigator, a werewolf, or simply a citizen of the magical kingdom who’s become unfortunately lost...

Prompt #21 is a glimpse of a Jaunt, either far in the past or sometime in the future. In the mining village of Enterrado, a gang has taken control of the flow of silver into and out of town, and the only folks with the hope of running them out are a vengeful band of vigilantes and outlaws. With half the Travelers brainwashed into believing they belong to one gang or another, friends are ready to kill friends, and it doesn’t seem like the few sane folks remaining can stop the bloodshed...

Prompt #22 is set in Liminal Space, during a time of instability, where buildings are collapsing and re-forming, and the worst fears or greatest desires of Travelers are appearing (and vanishing again) like all-too-solid mirages. What would your character imagine, and what kind of threat would it present… ?


Prompt #20: Dark Forest
The trees are too thick to let in any hint of sunlight, if there is any, but more likely the world is just as dark everywhere else by now. Tendrils of mist wind between the trees - most of them harmless, but every now and then one will latch onto a passerby like a leech and begin to turn pink as it drains blood. In the open hollows between the trees, shallow puddles of brackish green water contain hidden sinkholes, or startling arcane visions of the dead. Slowly, snakelike, briars grow and slither like a cage from tree to tree, enclosing anyone too slow and cautious in a pointed hedge-maze. And somewhere nearby, a wolf howls...



Prompt #21: Wild West
They've taken to calling the tavern at the end of the street the Bastille. Its windows have been shot out and barricaded, and some of the tables inside have been upturned for cover. But still, despite the tension, people come in to drink. For all that the miners and the vigilantes have exchanged fire in the streets, and three men have been shot dead in this very saloon in the last day, it's the closest thing left to neutral territory. Desperate bargains and parleys are discussed, struck, and abandoned. Drinks are downed in quantity, and it's almost true that nobody gives a damn any more who's cheating at poker. If you're looking for an old friend, or one of the mad strangers from out of town, or even for someone to draw down on, you won't get better terms anywhere else than you will in the Bastille. Come for the whiskey, stay for the knife-fights.



Prompt #22: Chaos Given Shape
Liminal Space bends and drips like a Dali painting, one landscape sagging into another, buildings settling, leaking water or dirt from whatever alien environment is above them; walls collapsing only to reveal something new on the other side, like a caterpillar molting into a butterfly. Calm meditation and focus by Travelers seems to stabilize the environment briefly, but if one person exerts too much mental influence, the surroundings begin to resemble the territory inside their heads. Old fears and nightmares, lost loves, desperate desires all form out of the fluidic landscape - and that's enough to break almost anyone's calm. But two people, working together, can sometimes strike a safe equilibrium...

Comments

[stophamatime]

[He's eleven and three whole months he does not need babysitting!!]

I guess it's easier not to if you never have to walk anywhere.

[This is not at all a politely passive-aggressive way of saying that people with wings don't get to judge him.]

[capital_punishment]

[Keep telling yourself that, small human.]

I guess somebody has to crawl around in the muck.

...Speaking of which, you should probably go stand somewhere else before you sink in completely.

[stophamatime]

...

[He totally knows what he's doing, gosh.

...but it is a fair point, enough for him to put other thoughts on hold and back up a few paces, to a spot that's well contained on the solid tiles of not-quite-Tartarus.]

What are you?

[Too comprehensible to be a Shadow, that much is for sure...and while she reminds him a bit of some of Minato's Personas, he's definitely sure he's never seen Minato summon something precisely like her.]

[capital_punishment]

[It would be really great if Raidou managed to find her soon. Then he could deal with the small human and Moh Shuvuu could... well... do something that didn't involve paying attention to the small human. She's pretty sure he's looking for her; she just hopes he didn't manage to get himself in trouble while doing so. Like getting ambushed by a stray Fiend - not that she's seen any of those lately, outside of Pale Rider and... her. She really doesn't know why Raidou puts up with her and her "I'm so sad and lonely please let me kill you sob sob sob" routine, although she thinks it probably has to do with those other two weird demons...]

[...Oh. The small human is talking to her again. She should probably pay attention to that.]

You can't tell?

[stophamatime]

...not exactly.

You remind me of something, but if you were that, you wouldn't be here by yourself.

[It's more a pop up, cast a spell, vanish until the next time your user shoots themselves in the head kind of deal with Personas, after all.]

[capital_punishment]

...Oh. You're one of those humans?

[But hopefully not one of those humans too. He's pretty young-looking himself, so it's not too likely, but humans are weird.]

[stophamatime]

Doesn't that depend on what you mean by "those" humans?

[capital_punishment]

You know - those humans. The ones with the fake demons in their heads.

[stophamatime]

Personas?

[That's...a funny way of putting it.]

I've never heard anyone call them fake demons before.

[capital_punishment]

[Whatever. She doesn't really care what they're called.]

Where do you think they got those forms?

[stophamatime]

I didn't really think about it.

[There were more important things than "why is my inner self a weird buzzsaw monster. Like "that other guy used his weird not-buzzsaw monster to kill my mom" and "maybe i could use my weird buzzsaw monster to kill him."]

[capital_punishment]

What a surprise.

[Granted, in Moh Shuvuu's experience, most humans don't think about things like that, so this one isn't terribly unique in that regard.]

[stophamatime]

[Revenge is Really Important and all-consuming, okay!]

So they look like demons?

[capital_punishment]

[Whatever you say, small human.]

Obviously.

[stophamatime]

There isn't any reason it would be obvious to someone who's never met a demon.

[capital_punishment]

Well, we must exist somewhere wherever you come from, or people wouldn't be summoning fake versions of us all over the place.

[stophamatime]

Mitsuru-san never said anything about it, and she knew more than most of us about where everything came from. We had Shadows, but...those didn't seem much like you at all.

[capital_punishment]

Aren't Shadows supposed to be weird versions of you humans?

[stophamatime]

They just looked like weird monsters to me. And it's not like they could talk or anything.

[capital_punishment]

That's not what the humans here have said.

[stophamatime]

The ones we fought in Tartarus weren't like that.

[capital_punishment]

Maybe they were defective.

[Not that she really cares either way.]

[stophamatime]

I can only say what we saw.

[capital_punishment]

[She waves a hand dismissively.]

Whatever. I don't really care.

[stophamatime]

You're the one who asked!