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emptynesters2017-04-04 08:54 am
onemind) wrote in emptynesters2017-04-04 08:54 am
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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
[ everything he did was always for Hyperion City. getting dragged away from it but still having that desperate need to put as much of himself into the work as ever, because without that what does he have — it makes him feel like he's spread too thin. he's lost sight of the goal here, and... yeah, maybe it does make him cut a few corners. he's a stubborn bastard, but. even Juno's motivation isn't a bottomless well. getting uprooted when he dug himself in so firmly means it's taking a while to find his footing.
Nureyev makes it a little easier though, whether because he's familiar or because the sharp sting of having him nearby pulls Juno out of his haze. he pushes against his eye harder, inhales, drops his hand. ]
Alright, alright, I'm — I'm paying attention. [ he knocks back the rest of his drink in one swallow, and then he seems to noticeably sharpen, his focus drawing taut. ] So tell me, Hadrian. Who should I be talking to?
[ there are pointed questions they'll need to ask, information they can only get through, ugh, socialising. narrowing things down before Juno's particular skills come in handy. he trusts Nureyev to have scoped out the social side of things without a word, because they work well together for a reason — and ha fucking ha, isn't that a riot. trusts Nureyev now, after everything, after proving that Nureyev has less reason to trust him than ever before. the spike of self-loathing goes up like a signal flare, hits him in the chest hard enough to wind him, and Juno doesn't even blink. business as usual. ]
no subject
If you don't mind.
[ and with a very soft brush, mental this time: ]
( Western most corner of the room, four compound eyes, rather stunning beak. Wearing the chartreuse. )
[ peter is explicit about it with his words, soft and close leaning in like it's simply delightful party conversation. while he doesn't want to be anywhere near juno's mind where perhaps he... isn't wanted, he does leave him the impression of her. tall and willowy, skin almost feathers and scales all at once with those eyes and a shining black beak like jet. ]
( I listened in for just a bit. Emissary from half a system away who is apparently very ruffled with the local Empress' most recent cease and desist policies on the intergalactic transport and trade of some substance called [ hold this sound in your head Juno, it's practically unintelligible, too many consonants and a couple of strangely-placed glottal stops ]. )
[ he pulls up a bit and takes a drink from his glass a moment, looking very much the image of unconcerned, but he continues nevertheless. ]
( Supposedly it's a big to-do, highly addictive stuff but very "in" these days, causing all kinds of riots due to a massive shortage. Supply, demand, pricing. It's made things positively Vesuvian. She's quite displeased at the Empress' decision. )
[ start there, see if anyone else is displeased. peter might peer around the room for other sources of even greater displeasure with their royal mark. peter's presence in his mind wanes a little further as he closes it up, almost like the brushing of palms against one another, dusting them off. he'll be out in a moment, but this is for privacy's sake, juno. ]
( She has to make it past the end of tonight or we'll have war on our hands, or so I'm told. )
no subject
no, Juno doesn't react there. what does get a rise out of him is the voice that brushes up against his mind, a presence that left too deep a mark on him when it was the only warm thing he had to latch onto at the bottom of a grave. at the first touch, Juno seems to mentally flinch, curling up like an anemone — and then reaching back with the quietest tendrils of thought, and hesitating shy of the distance Nureyev keeps between them. ]
( Of course we will. ) [ the bitterness of his thoughts is why he tries to keep this kind of communication to a minimum; it's not pleasant for anyone, he knows. bad enough to deal with his bullshit out loud, nobody wants the sharp edges of it scraping against their mind. ] ( Just another everyday run-of-the-mill mission, then. Got it. Hey, have I ever mentioned that I'm a detective, not a spy? )
[ he feels Nureyev pulling back, gently closing a door between them, and he reaches out too quickly to catch the coattails of his attention. he doesn't have a good reason for it. the awkwardness sits there as plain as if he'd caught Nureyev's wrist and then realised he couldn't come up with an excuse. so he just adds, pathetically: ]
( When I start sounding like an idiot, just kick me in the shin. )
[ sure, that works. and it's probably going to be necessary too. he shrinks back from Nureyev's mind with guilt, leaving that gulf of neutral space between them and turning his attention away to start moving towards the woman Nureyev pointed out. there's no sense picking at a scab, even if that's what Juno does best. ]
no subject
( That won't be necessary. )
[ he adds softly, as if he doesn't quite want it to end at that, a finger up, leaning in. ]
( It isn't as if I'd let you go alone. I am quite the resource after all. This whole thing is very open book, with our conversant being the exam, and I your reference material should you need it. )
[ the space between them remains slightly ajar: two people, seated at the bottom of the jamb on opposite sides speaking in hushed tones, but for the most part indulging (or suffering, maybe) in silence.
it's unspoken.
despite what happened.
we don't get to be alone anymore. alone isn't something attainable this... close, as far as you pull from it, as detached as nureyev tries to be, in the end, juno's gravity is painfully good, crushing. enough to leave his fingertips on his elbow as they move together now. ]
no subject
he's gotten good at keeping those feelings in the back of his mind even when he's the only one occupying it, though, so it doesn't throw him off, no more than that distinct laugh he's missed more than he'd admit. this isn't flirtation anymore; Juno had that and he drained it dry. they're just working together. it does help to have Nureyev on his arm, if only because he knows his own inevitable mistakes might be salvageable.
subtle approaches aren't a part of his repertoire, but the best thing to do seems to be take it slow — a conversation, not an interrogation, right? and it leaves gaps for Nureyev to fill, if he needs to. when he needs to. ]
Excuse me, ma'am. [ his tone of voice is light, friendly enough. only the people that know him would hear it as sharp, his usual false-cheer choice for sarcastic bullshit. ] You mind if we join you? I don't recognize too many faces here, and god, you know how awkward it is to try and cut in on a conversation where everyone knows each other already.
[ he gives Nureyev a little mental tap, the sensation of looking for approval. a wordless question of am i doing it right. the last time he did something like this was with Vicky, and he didn't have to play nice at all; everyone was looking to talk, they were reporters. but this is delicate and he doesn't want to screw it up. ]