TEST DRIVE #1

[onemind]

LET'S GET (meta)PHYSICAL WELCOME TO THE TEST DRIVE and thank you for your interest! Though the game hasn't started yet, we've put together a mini-mission with a few different goals for your characters to pursue. In the interest of flexibility and allowing players to experiment with the game mechanics, we invite you to pick your own broodmates, experiment with abilities and specializations, talk to each other and maybe make up some pre-established cr, and generally play around however you like. This test drive will not be game canon, so take this chance to go nuts! For the full experience, we strongly encourage players to write up a short blurb about what their fellow characters might know about them either through shared time on the Station or through the Nest mental link. Handy links can be found at the bottom of this entry if you have any questions or want to place a reserve.           HELINOS TOZ ...is the smallest galactic empire located in the second disk of the Silver Halo Galaxy. For thousands of years, the neighboring CONFEDERATE OF BAL and INIVIAL COR(P) have eaten away at Helinos Toz's territory and now have reduced the once-great empire to a single moon ruled by the Last Empress. Though she is a child who owns little in the way of property on the galactic stage, the Last Empress still holds a precious seat in the shrinking Galactic House of Chairs. From this seat she and her allies have managed to keep a stranglehold on the throats of Bal and Inivial’s expansion efforts into the fourth and fifth disks of the Halo. She has accomplished this task by viciously excising loopholes in galactic regulation. Paradoxical though it may sound, the outer rings view the Last Empress as one of the few remaining heroes for the common man against the absorption of either the Bal or Inivial, a symbol of the dangers the two great empires present and a name and a heritage that even today commands respect. While Bal and Inivial may have radically different galactic goals and famously spend their time hounding one another in the house of chairs, they can agree on one thing: the Last Empress and her tiny moon kingdom are a thorn in their side. In an effort to pluck it, Bal and Inivial have joined forces to do away with the Empress and her moon forever. While a direct attack on the ground empire moon would be an undeniable act of war, and would result in heavy sanctions which would only serve to set their goals back further, there are ways to destabilize the moon without actually putting boots on the ground. Inivial has decided to sacrifice one of their own assets to achieve this: the planet which the moon orbits. Helinos Prime is a cold, dead rock, without it's own atmosphere, as well as the site of a significant Inivial mining operation. It's this very operation that Invivial intends to utilize. By mining directly to the planet’s core, they will harvest a massive amount of heavy elements, cutting heavily into the planet's mass and degrading it's orbit in space-- making it a risk to surrounding inhabited worlds. Galactic regulation demands such a threat be absolutely absolved- by total destruction. Further, it states that these dangers must be dealt with in no more than eight hours, regardless of any other sanctions or treaties. The act itself is quite sterile: a beam weapon located in the first ring which is capable of destroying most planets in a single shot as long as alignment is correct. And once the planet goes, so too does the empire moon. But even getting rid of the empire’s last land holdings wouldn’t do away with the Empress herself, which is why the Confederate of Bal’s massive armada has opted to choose today for a sprawling training exercise in their space above the empire moon. As is their right under the Secrets and Sanctions treaty, they have refused the operation of any other space traffic in that sector until their exercise has been completed. The paperwork is filed, notarized, and finalized. Under the guise of the Bal and Inivial’s mutual animosity, the two super powers mean to trap the Last Empress with the very rules and regulations she’s spent her young life manipulating to keep them both muzzled. In summary: the Last Empress and what remains of her small royal envoy are stuck quite literally between a dissolving rock and the hard place of the Confederate of Bal’s guns with no diplomatic wiggle room. Should the empire of Helinos Toz fall, the majority of the house of chairs will turn in favor of expansion and it won’t be long before the Halo’s outer rings become the stage for a vicious war between Bal and Inivial. Those citizens of the outer rings will find their lives drastically changed as those two powers dash to make opportune land (and space) grabs. If the Last Empress can be saved, she might be able to successfully reveal this act of aggression for what it is, and use it as a way to rally the rest of the house of chairs, around her and the interests of the outer rings she stands for, against Bal and Inivial. YOUR MISSION is to help the Last Empress escape the empire moon before it can be vaporized by Inivial, and to slide her and as many of her retinue as possible through the lines of Bal’s armada undetected.           PROMPTS ONE • DEBRIEF: NOT AS SEXY AS IT SOUNDS You've been given your mission file (see above) and outfitted with the appropriate gear to see it through. Today that means thermal suits designed to withstand face melting temperatures and a small cadre of ships that seem awfully familiar... if you're not mistaken they're the same ships currently in formation above Helinos Toz. You can ask Prince where he got them or Cathaway for some flying advice, but you probably won't get answers that makes any sense. Hopefully some of you know how to fly. Hug your friends, say your prayers, and wave Station 72 goodbye because it's time to... TWO • HITTING ROCK BOTTOM ...sabotage a giant plasma drill! Down on Helinos Prime, Inivial's massive mining operation is a veritable labyrinth of tunnels and substations. Luckily you've been provided with schematics (if you feel like using them), and with some trial and error you should be able to navigate your way to key points in the mining operation. It won't be possible to completely stop the machine from coring the planet, but you just need to buy a little time. Suggested targets are the drill's targeting interface, its coolant systems, and its auxiliary stabilizer vents. How do you do that? Time to use your imagination. On the plus side, no one's around to stop you. Inivial already evacuated their on-site personnel which, come to think of it, might be a bad sign. THREE • HURRY UP AND WAIT With Inivial's drill momentarily on pause, it's time to rescue an Empress. Does she even know you're coming for her? Well, she'll find out eventually. There's room for six extra people on the ships provided, meaning you have exactly enough room to smuggle her and her closest advisers off of the empire moon. You've got six hours before you can (and really SHOULD) leave. Right now it looks like there's time to kill. Get to know the locals, the moon's bustling trade port, or its local population of cute dragonbirds. You have a collapsing planet below you and a veritable wasps nest of ships above you. Enjoy it while it lasts-- or bypass it all and wait for your window of opportunity with the Empress and her envoy. FOUR • INTO THE WILD BLACK YONDER The stealth ships can travel invisibly while in atmosphere, but there's no tricking the sensors of the Bal's ships. Luckily you fit right in-- almost. Pretending to be Bal ships might make the most sense, but what if someone notices you're out of drill formation? Even worse, what if someone detects you leaving the empire moon? No Bal ship is supposed to be down there. You could always try finding another ship to take into space, something with a little bit of stealth or maybe a harmless trading vessel. Then again, no one's supposed to be coming off the moon and into this space at all. Think fast, talk faster, or hope your pilot is really good. FIVE • WILDCARD Honestly? This is your show. Go surfing on some subterranean lava flows while stalling Inivial's mining efforts, try to take all the Empress's gold leaf dining room chairs with you when you evacuate the empire moon, or maybe you're done with this whole mission alltogether and want to try hijacking a ship from the Bal's armada and flying it out into space until this whole thing blows over. There's a whole galaxy out there; what else could be waiting for you?

NAVIGATION • PREMISE • FAQ • GLOSSARY • SYMBIOTIC SKILLS GUIDE • RESERVES

Comments

[forcevisions]

[ Turning a critical gaze on the man at her side, the fire in Rey's eyes tells a story of the vitriol she wants to fling at him, the doubt she wants to bog him in about his ability to actually use the controls he seizes. But there isn't time for that, nor would it benefit either of them. If he weren't sure of himself, he wouldn't reach for it in the first place: this much, she knows of Kylo Ren. Beyond that, he is a livewire that she would be better off without. ]

I hope you know what you're doing. [ She mutters it reluctantly, turning her attention back to flying, hoping the same of herself. The pursuing ships pick up pace, able to dart more seamlessly through the minefield of debris they find themselves caught in.

Not for the first time, she wish she had Han over her shoulder to coach her in this—he'd have no trouble, the Kessel Run made this cluster of dust look like peanuts—but instead all she has is his estranged and unrecognizable son.

Instead of dwelling on her frustration, she steels herself with the cool-headed resignation of necessity. If she fails, they die. It's an old, familiar fate that she grew to accept on Jakku when scavenging was the only way to seal her fate. That's the worst thing that can happen. If she accepts it as possible, then she's not afraid of it anymore, and it's an uphill climb to better outcomes.

So, when the Bal ships come up level beside them, Rey flies like she's already dead. She reverses the thrust of the engines, rocketing them backwards as the Bal ships zoom ahead to give Kylo Ren a clear shot of them. Finn would do a better job of it. She bites her tongue and dive-bombs the ship, plummeting downward with frightening speed and only slowly adjusting the angle to bring them back up. It cuts cleanly through the vacuum, no atmosphere to rumble the ship's suspension this far out.

Below them, the debris clumps together in larger parts, and Rey whips the ship around one of them to point them directly back at more of the pursuing ships. ]

[narcissithstic]

[Her stare burns where it falls, he feels it even without sparing a glance, attention fixed on the vast expanse ahead - the silhouettes of ships (massive behemoths, barely noticeable scouts and everything in between) that have already begun to take notice in addition to what few tail them now. He feels it.]

The Force will guide me.

[Where little else in the universe is a certainty to his mind, that, at least, he believes: from birth it was with him, came coiled with echoing whispers - the sound of Snoke's voice, drawing him ever closer to his destiny. It led him to her as well, though that is-- in his own eyes-- not necessarily a benefit. The Supreme Leader had but one apprentice, forged from the bond between the darkness and the light. That she, a scavenger, untrained and unshaped, could turn his own strength against him, there might be no limit to her potential. He would pale in her shadow. He would outlive his use.

Like a cut thread he wills the thought away. Focus. There is a more immediate situation at hand than the wreckage they left behind, and no path that would see him returned to it.

also he left his My Chemical Romance CD at home and what's even the point of brooding without a good soundtrack or a line of grandpa's ashes

The first wave-- a combination of her abrupt, aggressive maneuvering and his driven reflexes-- collapses easily. He fosters no joy for it (neither does she, if what the symbiotic link projects is clear) only the quick spark of adrenaline in his veins. That she then peels the ship around grants him the opportunity for a glancing blow: a wide hit, catching something along their adversaries' starboard side, electric and crackling but not fatal. The two that remain are quick to dip low, skirting beneath their shared eyeline and likely hoping to blind her ability to accurately track them. A practiced formation.

He could reach out, dip into their thoughts. It would leave him incapable of maintaining his current task as a gunner - it would mean he might be too slow to react should they need to divert their shields. The idea, should she leave herself open to it, is not one he fails to broadcast.]

[forcevisions]

[ Each felled ship provokes a slightly higher pulse of adrenal optimism in her veins that she quells with concentration alone. She can't rejoice before the battle's over, or she'll have lost it already. Survival, that's all she can focus on right now. Not the shadow of the gunner at her side or the crackling tension within the cockpit brought on by the intrinsic wrongness of working in seamless concert with Han Solo's murderer. That gets pushed down as well.

A veritable fleet forms around them, threatening with its towering strength, keying into their presence in waves, and Rey misses the sight of her knuckles turning white on the yoke because her eyes are too wide and fixed on the expanse of space before them or the monitors that display the rear of the ship. A lump forms in her throat, and she tries to swallow it down.

His thoughts press with steady insistence on the edge of her awareness, an unwelcome intrusion that hardly qualifies as what it once was now that they are all linked to the collective. It still summons up unpleasant memories, and tension flashes through her jaw. She wishes he wouldn't do it: that telegraphs easily, her frustration and its source, but she doesn't give it words. ]

And once you're in their heads, [ despite her silence on the issue of his great unwelcome in her mind, she speaks aloud to make it clearer, ] What will you do? Turn them on one another to catch them off guard? Call their forces off?

[ More frightening is his belief—no, confidence. Complete confidence—that he can get into their minds from this far off. Ships floating through space. No wonder he'd been able to brutally invade her mind from within the same room, stripping her to her loneliest insecurities. ]

[narcissithstic]

[Before, perhaps. How simple it would have been to reach so far in but a single breath the way he had during FN-2187's escape, or Rey's flight on Takodana. Here, now, the Force maintains its hold, but so too does the living tie to his newfound brood: it muddies his clarity of thought, it has turned his way of life into something infinitely more taxing. He masters it again, step by single step, as the days pass on. Too many steps, too many days.

Behind his mask he thins his lips, flexes his hand against the yoke. In that moment he feels fifteen years younger, limited by more than his own willpower.] That would take more time than we presently have.

I can tell you what their formation will be. Where they will direct their assault before they move to attack.

[A beat, before he adds, carefully:] I can show you.

[She would know it like her own fingers were there, curled at their collective temples. Her tie to the Force was strong enough, and coupled with their shared bond...

He expects she will refuse; he primes the rear shields for that reason alone.]

[forcevisions]

[ Each second threatens the sanity of his plan, allowing the fleet to close in around them while she tries to weave through debris and find something large enough to provide cover from their pursuers.

Slowly, uneasily, her gaze shifts over to him, the light of her eyes swallowed by the void created by the smooth black curves of his helmet. It dries out the back of her throat, and she hastily redirects her attention outward.

The offer tempts her on its own, not only for the efficiency it would provide in dispatching the enemies that threaten their mission, but for the understanding it would lend her of her own abilities in the absence of another teacher. His offer hasn't gone forgotten, and she's certain it's no mystery that he guides her to recalling it now.

But whatever in it tempts her does so for all the same reasons that one downward slice of Luke Skywalker's lightsaber might have seemed a tempting way to solve her problems and externalize her anger and misery on Starkiller Base. Killing Kylo Ren would not have made her feel better, regardless of what the shadows licking at the corner of her mind encouraged her to believe. It would not have brought Han Solo back any more than it would have ensured Finn's safe recovery.

This, though, this plan of his might promise them an important victory, the chance to escape with their lives, and it sticks in the back of her mind like gristle in her teeth, persistently at the edge of her awareness, unable to be dismissed. Yet it feels like courting the dark side all the same for reasons that she attributes entirely to her copilot.

Tension keeps her shoulders stiff enough that she maneuvers the ship too widely, loses precision for all the distraction that wages in her mind. ]

Tell me. [ The correction is tight, a line drawn. She won't accept the monopolization of any mental bond that he might abuse, knows he can't be trusted anywhere near her mind, let alone diving deeper into it than strictly necessary, no matter how alluring the prospect of a broader understanding of those abilities might be. ] Figure out their formation and find us a path out of here.

[ She doesn't like it. Feels a chill in her bones to be complicit in it, worsened by the fact that he hesitated enough to defer to her decision-making rather than simply allowing her to take the reins while he did it regardless. But she doesn't retract her statement. ]

[narcissithstic]

[Like reeling back for a strike, he draws himself down to the marrow in his bones: the barest functions, the near absence of himself, bracing against what is to come. It's a simplicity that would otherwise be blissful, were it unmarred by the creature that keeps him so tethered and tuned-in to the girl beside him, their broodmates huddled near the aft of the ship.

Regardless, it is short lived, as it must be in those vital seconds where his fingers fall away from the yoke to grip the metal paneling before him. The only thing left to ground him as the Force seeps in, shattering his perception so keenly - a thousand sensations, a flood of emotion, compounded and uncontrolled. He strains against the overwhelming tide and it bleeds-- against reason or want-- into that symbiotic bond. Not as potent (he acts, with effort, as a buffer for her) but present all the same.

That he finds his footing (breathless, motionless, locked up somewhere distant outside his own body) is akin to grasping at a lifeline in a hurricane-- managed more through determination than any amount of sense, logic or ability: he sees the ships, slight, glinting silver against the stars they reflect, he sees their faces, the quickness of their coordination. Simple, trained thoughts. They're so close, so fully attuned that he-- ]

They flank us on either side. The leftmost one will soon increase its speed to herd us towards the other ship. [The words are clipped for obvious reasons; he's taxed, preoccupied.] If you cut the engines once they make their assault--

[forcevisions]

[ A steady rush of emotions pours from him into her through a connection that, symbiote-directed though it may be, is seamlessly tinged with the Force. For an instant, Rey chokes on it, and then Kylo has the sense to buffer it out and control it again and it's gone, but not before a tear rolls out of her cheek in visceral reply to how the weight of the wave overwhelms her.

And there he sits, unflinching, and she feels all the more a fool for her response. Quickly, she takes one hand off the yoke to rub at the redness of her cheek and smear the single tear away into her hair, joining with stains of engine grease.

Her hand flies back to the yoke quickly, then pushes forward to begin flipping switches and whittling the fuel mixture down in quick response before Kylo even makes his suggestion. She knows what to do when flanked, be it through instinctive connection to the guiding light of the Force or experience. ]

We'll be sitting ducks like this if you don't get back here and man the turret. [ It'll shake the ships nearby and give them a chance to loop back towards the planet until they can pick up at lightspeed and skip past the fleet for a long journey over the scenic route back to base. All the better, for it would help them shake any reconnaissance ships that managed to follow them.

Her eyes flicked to the scanning equipment, waiting for the blips representing enemy ships to draw closer on the screen, one hand steady on the final switch to kill the engines. Fully powering down would tax the life support systems during their reboot in deep space, strain the engine, leave them adrift and altogether helpless, but it would offer them something they desperately needed: time. The mere fact of surprise would ensure that. She only hoped it would be enough time. ] Engines going out … Now.

[ Her palms thrusts down against the button and the cockpit lighting switches instantly from bright white to the dull, throbbing red of emergency conditions. A display on the instrument panel sprawling before them reminded her of the life support level sin various area of the ship. ]

[narcissithstic]

[She cannot see beyond the mask; if she could, she would likely not feel so foolish for being shaken to her core. His eyes are damp at the corners, limned with burning red that stings when he blinks, but her demand draws him away from the way he fights to mentally hold his ground, doing what he can to muddy the thoughts of their adversaries.

One second, one breath, and he's back, fingers shaking.

She is the anchor for his thoughts as he comes back to his own senses, rather than spiralling out of control. Lays out the objective before him and he finds it-- hands cinched tight again around the controls-- systems swapped to reserve power and maintain efficiency once the engine has been stopped. It takes no more than a few seconds for her to pinpoint the exact opportunity they'd been waiting for, and as the ship lights snap down into a deep, ruddy red, he catches the bright glint of the other ships streaking ahead, momentum sweeping them clear in that single instant.

He was right to trust her ability.]

They are still tracking us. [Distant fear prickles at the back of his neck - the passengers they carry are in a state of unrest.] We have less than a minute to respond and make our escape.