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

[nastygram]

Backlit, Elliot takes on a weird halo. Elliot. Darlene stares up at him without comprehending, getting it but not getting it at the same time.

"Jesus," she says, and then Elliot grabs her up and Darlene grabs back, puts her face against his shoulder and her arms around him, her weird stupid brother who is here, who is real, and she is very real against him too. Little details, like the frightened beating of her heart and the hitch of her breath and the way her hair smells. Her hands don't shake when she presses them against his back. Something firm and real and familiar.

"Oh my god, Elliot--" Her voice is rough; she swallows, hard. Do not address the question, you're real, do not even go there right now. "What the fuck."

What is happening, is where she could start, what is this, is it real, are you real, and Darlene squeezes her eyes shut and tries to pull in a good breath instead of her short half-assed ones. Stop. Stop. Stop.

"What the fuck," she says, again, instead, and then she pulls back so she can look him in the face. Careful to keep hold of him by the arms, like if she keeps hands on him, she will-- what? Be present and real for her own part. Her eyes narrow, glittering in the sparse light from the hallway behind him and from the honeycomb balconies up the wall behind her. She'll be angry again in a moment, right after she chills. She has got to chill. Please chill.

[raw]

-- What the fuck, echoes Mr Robot, Do you think you're doing.

It's been a while since he's done anything except lurk malignant, keeping somehow tight-shielded and out of sight no matter how much of Elliot spills out into the Nest. But he's here now, pacing in agitation the moment Elliot reaches for the symbiotic connection and with it, his power.

He hasn't used it much, hates the way it makes him feel. But this is Darlene, and he can't take it when she gets like this, upset and hyperventilating. Elliot isn't immune to that big brother protective urge, especially when he knows exactly how fucking dire a panic attack can be, so he ignores he flickering presence of Mr Robot circling them, holds tight to her forearms, ducking her head to really try for eye contact in a way he doesn't, usually.

"Hey. Hey. Look at me. Let me help you. Let me in, Darlene." Because instead of platitudes and telling her to breathe deep he's pressing his mind forward. It tastes ozone-metallic and sounds like late night television static, or maybe that's just a feedback loop from her own state of mind. But it's also Elliot, just in the way that she is really solidly Darlene, the messy whirlwind that is her brother's psyche requesting a LAN connection, probing for a backdoor, thinking in code.

She can shake him off, if she wants — more importantly, she can shake off the blanket of calm he sends her. Symbiote-to-symbiote it has to be consensual, he doesnt have the strength to force this sensation on anyone. But it's a pleasant feeling, like a Xanax kicking in, emotions dulled and affect blunted, heart rate slowing, a warm and enveloping calm that comes over her like a hush.

[nastygram]

For a moment, white-noise filtered-out calm is all pervasive, and Darlene lets herself sink into it. She can feel Elliot's hands on her arms, still, and she can see him, in front of her--not on that, she can feel him, in a way she can't put to words--and everything else kind of tunes out.

It feels good. Suspiciously good. Darlene gets a hand around the feeling of panic that flutters erratically in her chest, a half-dead bird beating itself senseless against the bars of its cage. Catches her breath. Loosens up that tight exercise band wound around her organs and stuff. In Darlene's ears, there is a sound like staying up past bedtime: static, white noise. Sleepovers, TV in the den. Crawling into Elliot's bed. Old shit. And the feeling makes her want to go boneless. That moment right when you trip, when your meds hit, when you swoop the upswing and start feeling that chemical chill.

And there's Elliot. And.

And.

And she is feeling much less like she's BSoD'ing, Darlene squeezes her eyes shut, pulls in another breath. Less of a shudder this time. There's a weird taste at the back of her throat, a little like a licked battery.

Let me in.

"What the fuck," she says again, quieter this time, and she completes the thought, "is this? Is this-- you?"

[raw]

The cortisol response is immediate and Elliot is swamped by a tsunami of adrenaline, his pupils contracting as mania and anxiety do a one-two punch upon his system, and he goes tense, fights the reflexive urge to snatch his hands or his mind back.

"Yeah," he manages, breathless and hoarse.

He only keeps going for as long as it takes for the calm to really stick, but he still has a nosebleed by the time he withdraws gently, eyes closing as his hands drop to his sides. His teeth clench — all of him feels clenched, and emotional, and wired. But he's getting better at coping with that too. Takes a slow breath, runs a hand through his hair. Shit.

"I can't do much cool shit," he admits. "Not compared to a lot of people here. But I can do that."

[nastygram]

Darlene makes quick study of Elliot's face when he pulls away. Does not reach to wipe the little trickle of blood from his nose, because that's not who she is, because Elliot doesn't like to be touched unexpectedly, because she doesn't know how to be familiar and casual and intimate in small ways with anyone. But she marks the blood and thinks, shit, in a sisterly way. It's not like she sits around worrying about Elliot, but come on. He's her brother. More fucked up than she is.

Altruistic thought is a sign that Darlene is way more chill than she was a second ago, or else she'd be stuck in her own panic loop. She knows the story here. Is not sure how to feel about the story here. Steeped in mistrust. At least she can put it together now.

"Yeah," she says, "and it makes your nose bleed. Real cool."

She points at her own, in case he forgot what a nose is or where it is on his face. It might sound like a critique, but it should be a reassurance. If Darlene is being mean, she's being herself. She undercuts it when she sighs, looks over his shoulder, back the way he just came.

"Jesus, Elliot. Look, I just saw you, okay. And now you're here, and you're-- what do you even call that? Chill mind freak?"

Compared implies he's had time to compare. Not that it would take Elliot very long, consummate observer that he is. Darlene can feel people, other people, outside the Alderson loop they've got going on here. She doesn't like it. Like, fuck, she wasn't exactly stoked about whatever Elliot did, but at least it was helpful, and at least it was only Elliot. Also at the same time: it was Elliot. He is mostly whitelisted with Darlene. Doesn't mean she wants him working her or whatever.

[raw]

It's not like nosebleeds are new to Elliot, thank you morphine habit, so he just swipes the back of his wrist across it, blood smearing over the skin on the back of his hand and his upper lip, staining the sleeve of his Station jumpsuit, but no longer threatening to drip.

"Yeah, yeah, I know." That this is a huge big deal, that the powers and the mind shit are all fuckin' weird, that time is— well, he agreed to the symbiote, went into a coma with a bullet injury and woke up with a scar in space so he is well aware! that shit is fucked up!

Okay. Okay. He has to chill, find his chill. It only feels like a lot to process because he just did the things for Darlene, and if he freaks out he'll just get her panicking all over again. "What do you know," he says, to stall. "Has anyone told you about any of this stuff? The Nest? It's sci-fi bullshit but." He scrubs his bloody hand on the fabric of his trousers. "It's happening."

[nastygram]

Darlene, not known for her empathy, has the weathervane sensitivity of anyone who grew up walking on eggshells. You have to read the room when she-beast Mom could at any moment lash out like a king fucking cobra. You have to know when to hide. You have to know when to run away. You have to know when your brother could start bugging out, and that's the vibe right now, like Elliot is close, not there yet but hovering close to the threshold. And this time, Darlene really feels it, an under-the-skin sensation like a bad high.

She makes another quick and careful study of Elliot's face and decides she will not freak if it means that he will not freak, if that's what this connection means, if she can keep him from tipping into something sick dark like he is poised to do.

"I know it's sci-fi bullshit." She swallows, and because she's not going to hug him again, yet, she folds her arms in close and hunches a little. Kind of gets at the feeling. "I know New York is probably pretty much burned. And I'm supposed to be helping to save the goddamn multiverse and basically live some comic book wet dream fantasy as my brain webs itself into everyone else's brain, and I am supposed to lap up those pearls of truth like some fucking brainless cumdumpster. Does that track with your intel or did I miss something."

That's Darlene. Being mad about her panic. Digging in under her panic to be mad. It is grounding, to be mad. It is easier to be mad. It is easier to use everything possible like a weapon so you can forget to be hurt or scared or whatever.