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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...
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...
no subject
Maybe that's easier to swallow. It doesn't seem fair for him to keep blaming Shinjiro, not when he knows what he does now - but Shinji's insistence at it not being Ken's fault entirely does mean something now, too.
He always wanted what he thought was fair. He just wasn't looking hard enough to understand why it was fair.]
...yeah.
[Whether everyone else will see it that way...is a thought that makes him more nervous, even though on some level, he knows Shinji's right. They're not the kind of people who are just going to - write him off for this.]
no subject
It's why he reaches out, giving the other another quick hair ruffle. ]
You going to be alright then?
[ And.. well, even though it's tiny, he smiles. ]
Got high expectations for you, kid. Don't disappoint a dead guy or it might come back to haunt you.
no subject
Life is strange and he still isn't sure what the heck he's supposed to do with it.]
I still don't know what I'm supposed to do, though!
[He's not so set on dying anymore, but living is still a big question mark. What now?]
no subject
[ Don't think he didn't spot you watching while you thought no one else was looking, Ken!! It's like his cooking shows while he's cuddling with Koromaru on his lap deal. Nothing escapes anyone's notice in that dorm. ]
There's so much shit out there to do, don't tell me you can't think something up.
[ You know, like going to a horror game and getting his coat in your closet.
On second thought, don't do that. ]
no subject
and WOW RUDE excuse him while he casually uses that coat as a blanket every time he tries to ignore the horrors long enough to take a nap.]
...you noticed?
[Clearly his secret love for Featherman is the thing to focus on here. Clearly.]
no subject
Hm.
[ An affirmative, small sound. Look, he just didn't say anything since stuff was Tense between them. That, and he knows how much it sucks to be called out on embarrassing things like that. He gets it, unlike those others!! ]
You were watching a few times when I was trying to feed Koromaru.
no subject
The battlefield is one thing. That's expected, for all of them.
But stupid little things like what he's watching when he thinks nobody is looking...it makes him wonder what else Shinji noticed, in all that time Ken figured nobody was really looking that closely at what he was doing because they were probably just being nice to him because they had to, anyway.
What else any of them noticed.]