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

[tiltings]

[ He reminds her too much, too often of her knight masters for her to most days ever question his wisdom, a life time of training that kicks in when she's barked at, she responds to her orders quickly. His gruffness, sharp words are a comfort, when she's being honest, because as much as there is a comfort to being in her brood, it didn't make this place less alien to her.

But never more so, than with this. He talks of it like they had the kraken, the steady haul of war in it's encompassing, unforgiving nature. Something that can't be understood, until it happens. It's a fair warning. She feels too keenly the suffering others, takes too much responsibility for others. It's being a commander, by it's nature, and what made her a good one, what had her once win the respect of others below her. Despite being the girl, and so green she might have been a sapling. She feels green, right now, all over again. Asking an aged soldier with the wide eyes of a young recruit what such a thing must be like.

So there's a warning in what he says, that if she has any sense, she would heed it. But she suspects this too is like war - there is no understanding until it's upon them. ]

Do you ever recover from it?

[regalled]

[The question is personal as much as it is not. But his experiences, as isolated as he is from the majority of the Nest, are not his own. It is one of the costs of being what he is. The responsibility he has been tasked with and has taken for his own required sacrifice. Not the way it once had, rarely anymore does it require blood from him. But with each new batch of Hosts he gives parts of himself. That is what it is to teach.

So he is quiet only because he is considering. Eyes only on her, thoughts only within his own mind, awareness centered.]

Have you ever seen a warrior with one arm? You don't recover. You adapt.

[That's what it was. As well as he can explain it without opening himself to her. It's something he might be capable of, but which he wouldn't do. Cathaway, perhaps, would, but it would be different. Duller. Scattered.

It didn't matter either way. He would not give her pain that wasn't hers.]

[tiltings]

[ Any where else, in another conversation, she might shy away from the attention being fixed solely on her. She hasn't ever liked it, she only ever wanted to do her work and get on with it. But this is too important, this was going to be something she needed to hear - if not now, then later. Remember the look on his face when she tried to stitch herself back together. Pain, she knows, pain was coming back to her camp, and finding half her people butchered, and the children all missing, to a far worse fate. It's a mindless clawing to try and move forward. Some bit of her never recovered from it then, either. ]

I'll try to put off learning that lesson as long as I can then.

[ But it might just kill her slower because of it. ]

[regalled]

[From this distance, with his focus, it doesn't matter much that she is carefully guarded. The depth of loss still sings quietly up the tenuous thread between them, and it is more of a comfort than the serious look on her face or her reassuring words. It wasn't the same, in the end, but it left him with little doubt she would take this seriously. Experience had worth. Another lesson hard-learned.]

I would advise it.

[He speaks with nothing more than his usual, low, neutral tone. No sign of any greater understanding. No attempt at comfort. To do so, to press upon a connection she had not asked for, would be a violation.]

In the meantime, stay focused, and be mindful of your limits.

[More serious words, more advice. The only thing he has to offer with minutes before they were to send the newest of their wards into the fray.]

[tiltings]

[ Still hasn't learned how to speak of it - to know what to say if he did broach the others that sit there, the pain of it. She needs the out right then, so she takes what he gives her. Because otherwise - it doesn't take much to be there again. The smell of the bodies ripped open and the filth of the stormwings that had rolled in their corpses. It turned her gut all over again. But she had gotten them back, it was alright because she had seen it through, finished the task she had been charged with. Then she hadn't allowed her mind to go to anything else but getting them back. She wouldn't allow anything else to cloud her mind now, either.

I am water, I am stone. I will let my mind be clear. Instead of saying anything else, she scrunches her nose up at the reminder. Forgetting them wasn't exactly pleasant, forgetting had thrown her shoulder out, ripped up her back. Laid her out flat for longer than she liked. ]

Of course I will. Would I ever try otherwise? [ Utterly bland, like there wasn't a thought in her head to otherwise. Never mind he's much too experienced to be foiled. ]

[regalled]

I don't know. [There is nothing but honesty to the words. It isn't that that he questions her or doubts her. It isn't meant to shake her confidence. But he doesn't know. Hosts surprised him, at times. He had not been doing this so long as to imagine he has seen everything there is to see. And need could drive people to do things even they did not think themselves capable of.

It is a warning, then. It usually is.]

May fortune walk beside you.

[It is a saying which was common enough to be thoughtless on the planet from which he hails, but from him it is not. And although there is no great show of emotion to accompany them, no grand gestures, the words he speaks are genuine enough. He very rarely says anything he doesn't mean, rarely wastes his words on niceties, which is a fact that, by this point, should be clear. Whether she took them to heart or not was her decision.]

[tiltings]

[ This time, she bends properly from the waist, hands straight by her side, the short crop of her hair falling in front of her face. The strict respect of a soldier to commander, but more than that. Thanks. She appreciates the words, the warning, and that she was treated with the respect of being able to handle hearing it. A lot of teachers wouldn't, lean too soft, not care, or say it mean just to scare new recruits. Even if maybe learning about this should be done more gently, but she'd rather know the worst of it to come off the first. He'd given her that, whatever else happened.

After all, she knows too well, that there is no fairness sometimes, to who the Black God takes, this is easy a first good bye as it could be a last. Before any fight, there was no certainty. She knew so many things she didn't before that had changed her to certain degrees, but this? This never changed. Green still, but not a fool. ]

May Mithros and the Great Mother guide and keep you.

[ Said as she straightens, adjusting her kit back up her shoulder, as she turns to go. Off to find the heat cutters and loose herself into the mill of others getting prepared. Switching her mind directly into gear, straight back to preparation. ]

[regalled]

[His face remains set as she bows, and he waits until she's straightened to return it in part, a simple dip of his head and his right hand coming up rest palm-up in front of the center of his chest. It matters very little to him that he didn't know of her gods or beliefs or myths, the meaning was clear enough and he appreciated the gesture of it, even if she would do better to bring their attentions to her, her brood, their fellow young Hosts.

And then she is gone, and he is set back to waiting for more questions, more demands. For the minute the ships were pulled from the deck and the din quieted and he knew nothing of their state. Until he could only wait and see.]