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
happily thumbs up
He blinks at the bow, not used to the gesture since his arrival out in the far reaches of space. Even back on Eos, he shouldered such formalities with no dearth of awkwardness, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.]
You don’t have to— [Do that, he wants to say, but lets the sentence die on his tongue. Duty and habit were hard to snuff out, and he’d rather focus on something else.
Such as, you know, stumbling upon someone else from his own world.]
Nyx, right? [There are a lot of questions that come bubbling up to the surface, but one feels more immediate than the rest.] What happened to you?
[Your face, dude.]
no subject
I had a few run-ins with your ancestors. Not exactly the kindest bunch of people I've ever met.
[Sorry, he still thinks it's all kind of shit, especially after being given the ultimatum of kill someone else for power, or be burned alive.]
There's... a lot more to that.
[Nyx's tone is sympathetic. The last 48 hours of his life, even right down to the last minute, were chaotic, to put it mildly. He still remembers the adrenaline wearing off, quicker than usual, his heart beat slowing down as the sun burned through the clouds, the dust and ash from his skin and the collapsed buildings.
Not now, though. His life was of no concern. It never had been.]
I'm glad the Ring made it to you. The princess kept her word.
[Though he had no doubt that she would. The little they'd known each other was enough for Nyx to know that she doggedly kept to promises and duties.]
no subject
"A lot more." Somehow, the words make him frown with their implications. Noct doesn't even know where to start, though he makes an attempt, opening his mouth to let the questions roll forth-
-when Nyx mentions the Ring and Luna, and something in his stomach sinks. A wave of sadness, flickering through his expression, one he tries to force down with little success.]
...Yeah. I guess she did.
[His gaze is cast to the side only momentarily, before returning to Nyx. A lot more to be said. Seems as if the feeling was mutual.]
We should find someplace less chaotic to talk. I think we both have some questions for each other right now.
no subject
Not to mention the casualties, the sacrifices... It was only when he was alone with the former King and the Princess Lunafreya did he realize the entire thing was a set up, just for the Prince to survive.
Time is a haze to him now. Clearly years had passed, but is this even real? He doesn't suppose the Kings would've granted him any kind of grace for his brash words and attitude, and he's already oddly at ease with death.
So, in spite of everything, there's two impossible options: he's alive, or he's dying and delirious.
Maybe it's both.
He catches the change in expression, but says nothing. He only nods.]
I'll trust you for that. I haven't been here very long. Looks like there's people crawling everywhere, though.
no subject
[Which Noctis feels might be highly necessary right now. He turns on his heel, waving for Nyx to follow.]
This way.
[Noctis leads him to a wide, open area. There are places for seating (benches, he supposes, though looking alien and unlike any seating he's ever seen), and the rare sight of alien flora rising up and allowing them shade from this planet's sun. It'd almost be peaceful, if not how strange a sight it was.
Still, there's less people. He imagines it's the equivalent of a park, though Noctis can't be sure.]
The last thing you remember... why don't we start with that?
no subject
Nothing so far indicates that this is something he could believe. Maybe that's why its acceptance comes that much easier: because none of this should be seen by him.
Nyx doesn't sit, can't sit, not yet.]
The sunrise.
[The Glaive gazes off. He has to pull apart the events, past the moment of calm he was allowed.]
The siege of Insomnia. Drautos. The rubble.
[Now his focus is again on the... King. He has to correct himself, even if mentally. King.]
I remember seeing the last of Insomnia, barely standing, with the sun coming up overhead. Drautos was dead behind me, and I was dying with him. Nothing was standing in the end. Just whoever managed to get out.
no subject
The siege of Insomnia. But more importantly-]
Drautos? [The last time he saw Drautos, he had told him to watch over his father as he was leaving the capital. A flippant remark at best, accompanied by an idle wave. Something sinks in the pit of his stomach, and he reaches out briefly to feel Nyx's emotions, as if the answer behind the implication will be there, waiting for him.
It doesn't help. Not really.]
What happened? [He pauses, finding that he can't help but eye the scarring around Nyx's face.] You mentioned the Ring.
no subject
Nyx hadn't realized his scars had spidered down to the nape of his neck, beyond his jaw. If he looks in a mirror, what sort of face would he see?]
It's a long story. You might... you might want to sit for it. I don't know how much the King told you before the siege.
[Had the prince known that it was all a ruse? That the attacks were foreseen, and still King Regis let them happen, just to safeguard his son and the Ring? War was, is a messy business.
Nyx doesn't know if it's his place to tell the story, if at all, but who else was left of the Glaive, besides Libertus? Who else knew of the conspiracy, besides himself, his best friend, and Princess Lunafreya?]
Drautos had been working with the Empire. I don't know for how long but long enough to be behind the siege, at least in part. [And no doubt many other attacks, and failed campaigns, now that he thinks on it.] The Ring nearly didn't make it out of the city. I... used it, for a little while, to buy the princess some time to get out of the city to meet with you. She took the Ring with her, after I made some deals with your ancestors.
[Best to not mention quite yet how that conversation went.]
no subject
But the news of Drautos' betrayal lances through him, cutting away at all of these inclinations. The Captain of the Kingsglaive, a traitor? He hadn't known the man well, but he had trusted him based on his title alone; for a brief moment, Noctis feels foolish, naive.
He sits.]
I... [It's funny, in a way that it isn't at all; it had been so long since the siege that Nyx was talking about. Too much had happened since then. Ten years of darkness separated them. But Noctis still feels the sting of Insomnia's fall as if it were yesterday.
Eyes forward, jaw set, he pushes past the grief for now. There were still questions to ask.]
What do you mean you used the ring? [He lifts his gaze to look at the man once more.]
no subject
Nyx can't help the sigh he lets out.]
I'd seen what the ring could do. Two people had put it on. Ravus, the princess's brother, had been one of them. But I didn't have anything to lose.
[Besides, haven't you heard? I'm the hero.
Legs shot out, useless on his back, he faced judgment eternal, and so he'll likely pass on as a pain in the ass who was found wanting save for King Regis.]
Something happened while I was there, with all of the old kings and queens. I knew without the ring, the power would be lost. It's all they cared about. [And it still stung, knowing that all the kings and queens of bygone days really only cared about their own lineage continuing, that war was considered petty. Thousands of innocent lives lost, all for the sake of power.] Your father, King Regis, he vouched for me. If I could secure the future of the ring, the power of the Lucii, I could fight with all the magic left in the city. So I did.
[A beat. He'd said as much he wasn't fighting for Insomnia anymore. He was fighting for the future. Maybe he never really fought for Eos. Maybe it was always fighting for the day where brothers and sisters don't have to see each other die and see their homes destroyed utterly.] The ring was the only chance anyone had left to stop the Empire. I had to take the risk. With the Old Wall backing me to fight the daemon they set on the city, I fought to the end. I took down Drautos. But he'd taken already so many of us.
[He shakes his head.]
He didn't understand it was Nifelheim that took everything. [Eos was no paradise found for the refugees, either, but there was real hope and possibility there. He had been given the chance to do something after he was useless.] Him and some others in the Glaive had allied themselves because the Empire had promised them something better.
no subject
He had seen the consequences of an Empire too hungry for power, after all. An open door for others with twisted, underlying motivations to waltz on in, utilizing deception at every turn; Ardyn using the Empire to further his own agenda.
The hands in his lap slowly clench into fists, and Noctis looks at Nyx with an expression beyond serious.]
Everything gets worse better it gets better. [A sliver of bitterness there, but Noct thinks he's allowed to sound at least that much.] The Ring did find its way to me. [That much is obvious, at least. He hesitates, then:] Luna gave her life to make sure of it.
no subject
Still, it cuts him. The only visible emotion is the briefest of flickers in those blue-gray eyes of his.
More blood. More death. Someone he'd been tasked to rescue only for her to lose her life anyway. Hadn't the King said he'd wished another life for her?]
That ring is fueled by death and blood, your highness. You already know that.
[It's all he can say. He'd been on the front lines for over a decade. He'd seen what the armies became. He saw soldiers twisted, then soldiers replaced by hollow suits.
Then he saw the harnessed daemons, turned far worse than the fiends of the darkness.]
She nearly gave her life while I was with her. She'd rather be dead than stay a captive in the Empire's hands. Better dead than to give them any way to use the ring and the crystal. I'm sorry for your loss.