THE N E S T (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
onemind) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
emptynesters2017-04-04 08:54 am
onemind) wrote in emptynesters2017-04-04 08:54 am
Entry tags:
TEST DRIVE :003
TEST DRIVE :003
WELCOME to the test drive and thank you for your interest in Station 72! To allow players to experiment with game mechanics, flexibility and to account for the fact that our TDMs tend to span a number of months to make up for our low player turnover, we've put together a game-themes random scenario generator for you to play with. Mix and match prompts at will, 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 is not game canon, so take this chance to go nuts! Current in game players are also welcome to make top levels here and aren't beholden to their in-game characterizations (so if it makes more sense to be a broodmates of a character test driving, feel free to do so for the sake of these threads).
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 and APPLICATIONS are always open if you decide you'd like to jump into the game proper. If you're having trouble coming up with a symbiote ability for your character for use in either the TDM or for your application, we have an ability workshop post located HERE.
(Mix and match these prompts at will to create your own TDM scenario - there's no obligation to use something from every category. Feel free to make up anything that isn't covered in the prompt if it lends to your playing.)
THE PLACE
1. STATION 72 consists of massive, alien sprawl. While large sections of the Station might be mistaken for a Station manufactured for use by humanoid beings - the hangar is relatively standard other than its massive size, the Life Support deck with its series of living quarters seems normal enough (if you ignore the part where none of the rooms have doors on them), and there's even a Jai Alai court -, beyond the most well trod paths the Station quickly cedes to the utterly bizarre. Corridors twist and loop back in on themselves, great verandas overlook massive empty rooms, ramps because stairs which lead to dead ends. It's easy to get lost if you don't have a destination in mind. Strangely enough, if you do know where you want to be, the Station's twisting paths will eventually get you there as long as you keep your goal firmly in mind. Knowing that is another thing entirely.
2. THE MELTED WORLD was once beautiful. Then again, maybe it's always been a toughened old rock, but at some point the planet called Ojan was glassed in the throes of a brutal war. The planet's entire surface has become a twisted, mirror-like substance by whatever super hot biological weapon was poured into it. The material isn't actually that horrible, consuming black; it perfectly reflects the empty, quiet space that surrounds Ojan: a foreboding testament to a war long forgotten. But what lies below the surface of the desolated world?
3. THE SCEPTRE is a fabulous building structure suspended from an asteroid in orbit around a planet. The Sceptre pierces down through the atmosphere of the planet below and over the course of the asteroid's orbit, The Sceptre has an opportunity to pass through every habitat and climate the world below it has to offer. The Sceptre is sleek and beautiful (or it is? Maybe it's fallen into disrepair and only ghosts remain) and its massive windows look out onto a varied, verdant world (or do they? What state is the planet below in, exactly? Has it been so thoroughly paved over that the atmosphere is the only place left to build?).
4. PENTARA PRIME is the ancient, meandering capital of the lush garden world of Pentara. Unlike most cities, it is a large, verdant sprawl, made up eighteen clustered centers - groups of low, elegant stone buildings, strung together by winding roads populated with quietly humming pods moving people from spoke to spoke. The capital is built around leisure, not production and there are far more gardens and orchards than there are buildings. The sun is heavy and low, and the air is still and buzzes with the sounds of fat-bodied insects. It’s so still, so calm. It seems empty and there is something unsettling in the quiet. --Or is it? Maybe it's bustling with energy, just as vibrant and delightful as it seems on the surface.
5. CHORIUS is not quite a planet. Not anymore. Once long ago it was, but over time it has changed - been stripped clean of every valuable mineral, every scrap of rare metal, and eventually even of atmosphere. The core has cooled perceptibly and now even its rotation period has slowed dramatically. Now it is a made up of shaped carbon and steel that bridge over the stripped surface of the planet, pulsing with energies, shielded from the harshness of the sun by a webbed dome that keeps the electric scented air from escaping into the space around it. Here nothing is wasted. Everything - everyone - is recycled and reconstituted into new forms. Every one of the cities changes daily, reformatted to meet new goals and new needs. It is a dead world filled with the living. But whether it is thriving or dying is hard to say - and what the newest change will bring with it is even more difficult to guess.
6. SPACE, THE FINAL FRONTIER. There's a lot of it in every direction.
THE PEOPLE
1. THE OUTLANDERS consist of small bands of settlers and explorers who have quested out into the unknown, the remote, and the dessicated parts of this galaxy looking for either new opportunities or forgotten mysteries. They are mostly upright though only vaguely humanoid, remnants of a civilization driven from their own failing world, each group is bound only by their own codes and personal laws. They're traders and nomads, largely peaceful but wary of the harsh, dangerous environment and beings they've crossed paths with. Don't cross a deal with an Outlander - they'll make you regret it.
2. A VERITABLE MELTING POT, the beings of this metropolis are as vibrant and diverse as is imaginable. These are a people developed by a myriad of cultural influences, technological insights, overlapping interests and clashing societal norms shaken up and spit out into something that more or less works as long as there's a whole lot of bureaucracy to keep it in order. And boy is there a lot of that. Mind your p's and q's - someone might haul you in for questioning if you cause too much of an uproar.
3. A RUINED GHOST is all that remains of this ancient civilization. Once there were people here leading brilliant or lives, or quiet ones, but all that's left are their ruined structures, old half-functional consoles and signs of lives abruptly arrested. What destroyed these people is initially unclear, but their extinction appears to have been absolute. --Or was it?
4. THE COURT is elegant and beautiful and perfect. Every being is shrouded in delicate, gauzy fabrics layered so densely as to obscure their elongated squirming bodies from head to toe. Each step sounds like a bell ringing from the the small metal plates at the bottom of their soft slippers; every gloved finger glints with small golden threads. The queens sweep through their secret insect gardens and their royal technomancers walk the halls with the glitter of hologlyphs sparkling at their fingertips and in the wake of their sweeping robes.
5. THE GREAT MILITARY is larger even than it’s name suggests. Every member of their civilization plays some part in it, every person has a rank, every family an insignia. The structure is rigid and inflexible and all-encompassing, and it has made them into ferocious enemies. They have been at war for as long as they have been a people, and their battle will never end, because if it did, they would go with it. The harshness of their life is painted on the sharp planes of their grey faces, but there is an indomitability and a pride to them that is hidden by their stern, unchanging expressions.
6. SCUM ALWAYS LIVES at the edge of the universe. Beware the dark of the space and the seedier underbelly of cities or the shadows of forgotten planet - pirates make their living there and these are desperate times, friend.
THE OBJECTIVE
1. GET UP from where you've fallen. Or get up from the nesting deck pod where you've just woken up on the Station. Or get up to Level 672 where there's a ship waiting for you. Or get up from the knee you've taken before this alien queen. Get up.
2. THE RESCUE might be saving a city from a disaster engineered by an enemy force, playing bodyguard for a government official, or liberating a rare artifact from a crumbling structure.
3. IT'S A RACE AGAINST TIME to collect the relic you've been sent to retrieve from the collapsing ruin. Or to make your way free of the military blockade. Or to make your escape from a crumbling world.
4. THE MASQUERADE is all a cover - for an assassination. For a heist. For a political coup.
5. INFILTRATE you know what you need. And you know who has it. With a little help you’ll be able to break into the place no one is supposed to go. You could sneak in… or smash in. Or maybe just talk your way past every little problem.
6. COME ON AND SLAM and welcome to the jam. It’s a ritual or maybe it’s just a pastime, but whichever it is there are rules and there is a goal. There’s probably even points. If you’re lucky, you just might score one. Avoid the spiky pits? Or maybe the thrown fruit. Or perhaps just the other team...
6. EXPLORE and uncover the secrets this place have to offer. There’s a mystery here if you know where to find it. And all you have to do is look.
7. DON'T DIE is easy to say and hard to do when you're under the guns of an armada. Or when you're trying to outwit spies. Or when the ground is literally crumbling under your feet.
INSPIRATION
no subject
Nasu stepped past a nesting pod, and slipped a slender black object into her pocket as she did so. It felt good to carry it in her hand, but someone might misinterpret it as a threat. ]
All right. No one's told us not to, after all.
[ Although even if they had, would she let that stop her? Probably not. ]
These holes look empty...
no subject
This is so weird. It looks like there should be a ton more people down here, all hooked up to this... stuff. Whatever it is.
[ She frowns. ]
This feels like some kind of horrible movie.
no subject
[ Or it's possible that something happened to the rest, since one didn't tend to build a facility with this sort of capacity unless one planned to use it. Nasu picked her way carefully along, clasping her right arm behind her at the elbow.]
And it feels too real to be a dream. I don't think I could have made this up, anyway.
...Do you remember seeing any darkness? Before you woke up here, that is.
no subject
[ She doesn't bother to discuss the oblivion that sandwiched her experience on the beach between it and her unconsciousness prior to waking up here. Why worry about Instrumentality or being dead? She's here now. At least, that's what she tells herself. ]
This place must be huge-
[ She steps out into the hall. It doesn't look like any facility she's ever been in before. ]
no subject
[ It didn't really look human-made to her, this place, though of course there were all sorts of different people across all sorts of different worlds.
But thinking back to the hole she'd woken up in, it had seemed to her more like an animal's bolt-hole, or a compartment in a hive. She reached her hand back into her pocket and slid her fingers along the side of the Trigger there.]
...Do you hear that?
no subject
[ Nasu's exclamation makes her pull up short, head jerking to one side, then the other as she searches for some sort of a threat. She grimaces and her fingers flex against her leg and then she rounds on Nasu, voice sounding a bit strained. ]
Hear what? I don't know what you're talking about!
no subject
[ It wasn't with her ears that Nasu perceived this sound, as crazy as it sounded. She shook her head, as if to clear it. ]
You really don't feel it?
no subject
I - yeah, actually. What the Hell is that?
[ She doesn't know. She's not sure she wants to know. The last time something got into her head it hadn't gone well. ]
no subject
Well, at least I'm not going crazy, then. I've heard of this sort of thing, but I've never experienced it for myself. It doesn't seem... dangerous, for the moment.
[ She scanned the area briefly. ]
Maybe we should keep going.
no subject
[ She knows where, in the pit of her stomach. There's an insistent tug. A whisper that doesn't want to be ignored. She just doesn't want to acknowledge it. She reluctantly puts one foot in front of the other, starting to walk -- albeit slowly. ]
This whole place is probably abandoned and we're all just going to die.
no subject
[ Well, the being abandoned part. Not the dying part. Nasu wasn't so sure she wanted to know what was in front of them, either, but she did know that she had to go. Not because of the pull, but because the alternative was huddling in place, waiting for the ax to fall.
She continued forward, also slowly, while she thought it over. ]
But I don't think whoever it was would have brought us here for no reason. They want something, I'm sure. I've heard that Neighbors usually treat their captives well for that very reason.
no subject
[ She might as well focus on that. It distracts her from the very uncomfortable situation she's in. She doesn't know why she's here yet, there are whispers in her head, and this whole station is just creepy. ]
no subject
It's for their Trion glands. Have you heard of them? Trion is seen as an extremely valuable resource, or so I understand. Nations are constantly trying to steal from each other -- so a big, juicy population center that can't guard all its citizens is a very tempting target, indeed.
If that's what's happened, and they've kept us alive for this long, I think it would be more advantageous for them to treat us well.
no subject
I don't even know what a Trion gland is! Did you hit your head or something when you got out of your pod? Because none of that makes any sense.
no subject
[ But hey, what the hell. ]
Would you like to see proof?
no subject
[ Asuka's voice rises in a sharp yell and with it comes a tide of brittle frustration that sweeps over and around her, drowning out the distant voices. If only for a few moments. ]
no subject
[ But she supposed she had no choice. Nasu removed the small black, handle-like item from her pocket and showed it briefly to Asuka, then activated it. A flurry of light particles seemed to radiate from her form as a white Border agent uniform seemed to transposed onto her in place of her old clothing. A small, glowing green cube of light appeared just above her palm. ]
This cube is made of Trion. It's a type of energy, which all human beings naturally produce.
no subject
Wait, wait - Trion? Like I just said, I've never heard of the stuff! And I was in the military!
[ So clearly she should've heard of it if it existed. ]
Where are you from? How much energy does that tiny little thing even hold on to?
no subject
[ Maybe it had simply not been deemed 'need-to-know'? ]
I'm from Japan -- Mikado City. Have you heard of it? There was a big... terrorist attack there about four years ago, but I don't think the rest of the world pays much attention any more.
[ Oh, right, the other question. ]
There's a decent amount of energy in even a small cube like this. But I suppose that's why people want it.
no subject
[ Asuka's irritated and confused and stuck in a strange place. The urge to take it all out on Nasu is incredibly high and she's not inclined to just try and burn it out productively. ]
No! I've never heard of Miakdo City! I was in Tokyo-3! You have to have heard of that, right? Even if you're from some city out in the sticks!
no subject
[ This was becoming very strange indeed. A foreign country, sure. But anyone living in Japan should have known about the mass incursion. ]
...When you mentioned the military before, did you mean the Japan Self-Defense Forces?
no subject
[ Oh my God, what is with this girl? ]
No! I was with the German military first, then NERV! I was never a part of the JSDF!
no subject
[ This was troubling. She'd never heard of an incident like this happening. It was possible that this girl was trying to deceive her, but... ]
...If what you're saying is true, then we have much more to worry about than I thought.
no subject
[ Then again, Asuka's not so sure on her own reality, so she really shouldn't be pointing fingers. ]
no subject
[ However, Nasu wasn't quite ready to start entertaining parallel universe theories, and they were burning time here talking. ]
Either way, let's keep moving. Whatever has happened, I'd like to get a better idea of our situation.
(no subject)