TEST DRIVE :003

[onemind]

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

NAVIGATION • PREMISE • FAQ • RULES • GLOSSARY • APPLICATIONS • SYMBIOTIC SKILLS • ABILITY POINTS

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

[iuno]

[ the way Bakugo's mind lashes out at him leaves Juno reeling. he's not all that attached to the link himself, but it's getting to be automatic with how often he's forced to use it anyway, and he feels like he just reached out and put his hand down on a stovetop. his mental discipline isn't usually good enough to keep walls up between himself and the rest of the Nest; with this, as soon as he gets burned, Juno shuts down everything. no anger. his head goes cold and empty. ]

Fine. [ he's not happy about this, but when is he ever happy about anything. ] Let's get going.

[ the Theia didn't really get what they need, but it got enough to be useful and probably all they're going to find, so Juno abandons the datapad and the various papers, and he heads for the door — holds it open for Bakugo with a sarcastic flourish. if it were anyone else with him, this might be the time to split up, someone to keep digging for information and someone to see what they can pry out of the potential victim; not with Bakugo. Juno lives off the guilt for his own mistakes, but he hates cleaning up someone else's, and he doesn't believe that sending Bakugo out to investigate alone wouldn't end in a mess.

at times like this, he misses Rita more than anything, like a phantom limb. she would have had an answer for him from just a name and the right framing of all the vague details he could offer. ]

Look, I have to ask, should I be worried about how eager you are to interrogate someone? We're not going to have to play good cop/bad cop, are we? Because my good cop credentials got revoked when I left the force.

[ got himself kicked off the force and everyone knows it, but whatever. ]

[incinerates]

[ heroes aren't taught police procedure. they're brought up as engines with a two-fold goal: fight villains, save people. crimes that require investigation, mysteries that need to be unfolded or puzzles that need to be solved go to the rank-and-file of the mundane world. the fact that right now, Juno is forcing him to do legwork that he doesn't see the point of, that he wasn't raised to understand rankles at him. like a little sharp thing, digging up into his ribs -- telling him: look how much smarter he is, look at how well-prepared he is, he has the upper hand here.

for a boy like Bakugo, it's a slow, ugly chokehold. ] Who the fuck do you think I am.

[ he stops in the doorway, heedless of how sarcastically the lady is holding the door for him; glances back, over his shoulder. his mind is a simmering thing, ready to boil over at the slightest provocation and his resentment of Juno Steel is a vibrant, raw creature unto itself. there's a root to it, somewhere in the depths of his mental chaos. some internalized reason he can handle Juno when he's angry, but not when he's condescending. or when Bakugo perceives him as being condescending, to be fair. which. is how he views most people. ]

My job's to save people and stop bad guys and I haven't forgotten that, just 'cause I got you living in the back of my brain with your baggage. I know what I'm doing -- I'm not a cop, I'm a Hero. [ lbh you should always be worried about Bakugo, but he's just radiating a non-verbal dare: question him again on his intentions, pal ]

He'll talk. No need to play games like children.

[ he's a little too close for comfort, maybe, when he lifts a clenched fist - unfurling his fingers to display several small bursts of flame and force. ]

-- you didn't have to ask. [ out the door, into the hall. he barely looks back, slouching further and further from Juno as he makes for the door instead of facing him down. the ( thrum; hiss; static bright ) sensation of a dull ache, somewhere centered around his heart drifting back towards his ( stupid; stupid; stupid ) mission partner. ]

[iuno]

[ he doesn't know what to do with Bakugo. he does everything he can to avoid reflecting on himself as a child, and making a real effort to understand someone this close to who he was would be too much alike. instead, they just have this: discontent and banked violence vibrating down the line between them, the connection they can't get rid of reacting to them like two magnets of the same pole.

so he ignores that resentment (swallows it, internalises it) and the threats and the things he knows exist at the heart of Bakugo that he doesn't want to see. he's the adult here and the actual detective. which won't do much to soften the condescending edge of his attitude. ]

Yeah, I did. [ he slams the door behind him and follows Bakugo at a brisk pace, pretending not to notice any of the feelings that reach him. ] Whether we like it or not, we're working together on this, so I need to know what you're thinking. [ he pauses; realises how that sounds, given their situation. ] Not the— not through the Nest. I mean just, out loud.

[ the line between interrogation and torture is one that moves for different people, and it's easier to cross for some than others. it's not a matter of thinking badly of Bakugo, it's— Juno does things his way. even when he's improvising, it works because the pressure is all on him and anything that might be a variable is just part of the obstacles he has to get around. having to account for someone else disrupts that. he's not good at considering others. ]

Don't take it personally. You're not the first partner I haven't trusted.

[ Nureyev could definitely vouch for how much worse Juno can be on a case as a partner — and with that thought comes the telltale emotional spike from Juno, the sharp burst of guilt and love and longing that everyone in the Nest is getting fairly familiar with and tired of. sometimes accompanied by Hadrian Black, his face, his voice, the heartbeat click of his heels. Juno's presence in the link is usually a deep dark pit, so his thoughts about Nureyev stand out like a signal flare. ]