The Powers That Be ([personal profile] powersthatbe) wrote in [community profile] synodiporia_ooc2014-12-26 04:17 pm
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Test Drive #6

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...
brushitoff: (05)

[personal profile] brushitoff 2014-12-31 12:11 am (UTC)(link)
That's good.

[The surroundings are not. She thinks she understands why Elizabeth described it the way she did; she recognizes this forest as the one in which she fought to recover Rin. She just doesn't think it isn't actively malevolent.]

Me, I'm trying to figure something out. "Trick of the imagination," you say? You're sure?
skjalf: (Default)

[personal profile] skjalf 2015-01-03 05:54 am (UTC)(link)
What are you attempting to figure out? ( is there some sort of riddle to do with this forest of which she is unaware? hm.

she lifts her shoulders in a small but graceful shrug. )


Such illusions are commonplace of late in my experience. This one seems much like another I endured several months past.
brushitoff: (11)

[personal profile] brushitoff 2015-01-03 07:32 pm (UTC)(link)
How I got here. [No falling into a hole, nothing. Whatever had happened, it had been thorough. Doesn't feel like her memory's been tampered with, either. And there's the issue of the forest expanding every time she walks.]

How'd you get out the other times?
skjalf: (Default)

[personal profile] skjalf 2015-01-05 07:19 am (UTC)(link)
The ship is known to cause such illusions. ( and she thinks they're both on it, still. she remembers that labyrinth, comprising of each passenger's personal hell and home, both. it is not precisely the same, now, but enough like it for it not to have occurred to elizabeth that they are elsewhere.

though it may be beginning to, a little. something about this place doesn't ring familiar in the least. )


I was rescued. But I fear that shall not be the case this time. We should search, and locate an exit. There must be one.
brushitoff: (10)

[personal profile] brushitoff 2015-01-05 09:23 pm (UTC)(link)
Great minds think alike.

[She holds up her hands, and orange sigils appear in a little circle around them. In response, a piece of forest adjacent to the both of them rustles, and the trees and plants lean aside, making a path. She drops her hands.]

Looks like that way's safe. [Of course, it doesn't occur to her to wonder why the spell only worked on her side—or that it might merely be responding to her imagination only.]

I'm Jabi. Shall we proceed?
skjalf: (Default)

[personal profile] skjalf 2015-01-07 09:53 am (UTC)(link)
Happily so, in fact.

( elizabeth widens her eyes at the woman's impressive display of magic, starting in surprise. she could bend illusion to her will? now that was power.

who was this woman? her curiosity was now fully engaged, and she wished to know. a smile crossed her face, and she nodded to her. )


I thank you, and am pleased to meet you. I am Elizabeth. Please, let us press onward.

( and she moved to stride forward, feeling secure in her current company. )