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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
leo fitz | aos
ONE
So much for the Prime Directive.
[ The mission itself was bad enough: stealing an important relic that may or may not be a powerful weapon, because that's obviously not an overrused trope. Bringing down an entire underground temple in the process hadn't been on the official statement, but they're already well on their way to that one.
It takes a few cool seconds for the dust to settle in the wake of the corridor's collapse. Fitz dusts off his sleeve as he straightens up, then gives the flashlight in his hand a few taps with his palm as it starts to flicker. A few rapid-fire flashes of light and a few near-inaudible electric pops, then it blinks out. The darkness is as solid as it is abrupt.
There's a mild stirring of discomfort in the mental link, long-suffering. ]
What'd you say your ability was?
[ Please be a human flashlight. ]
TWO
[ There's something very rote about copying files onto a hard drive while someone watches the door. Fitz has done it a billion times, and that experience translates to a sort of calm, steady focus as he watches the screen and waits for it to finish, the edges of his cool only slightly ruffled by the fact that he's maybe half sure what he's looking at. Completion bars aren't multiversal concepts, apparently. ]
What's the— [ He speaks out of habit, stops, switches over. There's a delay in the process that feels like a hard wall, opaque silence followed by a less certain voice. ]
( What's the time? )
[ The ten minute count had started as soon as they'd rigged the door to open. The high-tech lock pick is still attached to the panel, red lights ticking down, a bit too far for him to make out clearly. ]
THREE
[ Wildcard stuff on the station, mental link, whatever! ]
one
[ ...is one way of putting it. That's how Luv thinks of it, though. Helping. She's designed to be helpful. She smooths the dust from her ponytail with a thwip in the dark. ]
The next doorway is three steps forward and one to your left. [ A flash of memory, clean and crisp as a photograph, accompanies the direction, though pushing it through their mental link isn't nearly so clear cut a process. The result is fleeting and distorted, but, well. She's trying. ] I was also built with more precise spatial awareness than a human being, [ she adds like an apology. So sorry for being inherently superior to you in every way. ]
May I ask what the Prime Directive is, please?
no subject
The word built registers like a whip crack across the link. Fitz' focus slams into a wall, splinters, then plummets into the kind of calm that feels more like cold water than comfort. Too deliberate, too cautious. He'd very much like his flashlight back. ]
It prohibits interfering with a planet's development. [ He says, and he thinks: AIDA, artificial, Ophelia. There's a vivid memory of a woman's face crackling into flames from the inside out; the same face, vibrant and alive and leaning in, the press of soft lips. ] Or cultural development. Or— [ A vague gesture with the dead flashlight in the dark, as if to say all of this. ] Culturally significant ruins, just as a completely hypothetical example.
no subject
Like-- [ Us, is the neatest analogy; it takes a beat for her to seize on an example relevant to a more primitive culture. ] Blinders on a horse.
[ When there were still real horses.
She steps ahead of him, smooth and sure despite the fact that even exquisite short-term recall does nothing to enlighten her to the shape of rooms she's never seen. There isn't time to dawdle, and there is less here that can damage her as can damage him. ]
What is the purpose of prohibiting this type of interference? [ The humanity she knows had no such rules. ]
no subject
Fitz can't help the small flinch when he feels her move past him in the dark. Synthetic means strong, generally; but he has no reason not to trust her. He focuses on the sound of her footsteps and follows, hand still braced against the wall, his footing far less certain. ]
The purpose is that it's none of our business. [ The explanation falls flat. He tries to content himself with it, fails, then reluctantly tries stumbling through a better one without letting his own guilt derail it. ] We can't just play god with other people's lives.
[ "People" is a loose term, obviously. Followed by the image of blueprints, of a synthetic skull opened up. Of bodies strapped down to tables, not synthetic at all — bleeding, charred, screaming. He's one to talk about not playing god. ]
no subject
But they're talking about playing god. It isn't an abstract concept for Luv, either. It's a hand heavy on her shoulder. It's uncomprehending despair on the face of the woman standing a few feet in front of her as the blood she's only just come to understand as her own drains from her body. It's the feeling of being watched six inches from the right side of your face, don't flinch, don't flinch, don't flinch, and in the dark, it's harder to keep track of what is happening and what isn't. Her steps pause like she's looking back at him. ]
Can't you? [ The you is specific. External. Humanity. Replicants certainly aren't playing god. ]
'Playing god' brought the human race to nine worlds, in the universe I came from. Averted famine and overpopulation. Would you say that they shouldn't have?
no subject
He stops a second after she does. Normally he'd seek out her face, try to get a read on her expression. That isn't an option, and the way he instinctively reaches out with the link is completely unintentional. It used to be that wishing he knew how someone felt wasn't something he could act on — not this directly, anyway. It's uncomfortable and invasive, and the prickle of his confusion at the edge of her senses is quickly withdrawn. ]
The Prime Directive would've. [ The distinction's a weak defense. He'd clearly meant what he'd said a moment ago. But reality doesn't exist in a vacuum, and every decision impacts someone else. The definition of playing god exists on a slippery slope. ] I don't know. I couldn't just stand by if there was something I could fix, but—
[ Building life out of nothing isn't helping. He can't say that to her, for obvious reasons. Fitz pauses, as distracted by the heaviness of the topic as he is by having a conversation with someone he can't see. ]
Would you say they shouldn't have?
[ Her answer matters more than any of his bullshit philosophical takes. She's the one who exists because of someone "playing god", not him. ]
crawls back here 10 years later like the terminator
I wouldn't say anything.
[ She isn't stupid. And she isn't a trouble-maker. She is well-behaved, the way martyrs are religious and soldiers patriotic, if soldiers or martyrs could be stripped down to those barest qualities and nothing more. It's a precarious sort of thing, to build a person on so narrow a base, but she has always had excellent balance. ]
If you're looking for a heretic, you'll have better luck with Officer KD6-3.7. [ Prim, as if their nest mate's full serial number is a mark of shame she'd just like to make sure everyone remembers. She isn't the only one who isn't real.
Her boot bumps dully against something solid. Hm. Light wouldn't hurt. ] Could I have the batteries from your flashlight, please?
one
I didn't, actually.
[ Thor knows full well that Fitz is referring to the abilities they were given as a welcoming gift. He's observed them in the other members of their company, but has unfortunately not uncovered his own. It stands to reason that the gift of a new power was to make up for the diminishing of his own, but even sight-unseen Thor finds it a poor trade. ]
Come. Give me the light.
[ There's a fifty-fifty chance that Thor can charge it's batter or implode it in his palm. Hope you like gambling, Fitz. ]
no bring back the romance
Do you know what it is?
[ Not mind reading, just an educated guess. It hadn't taken Fitz long to sort his out, but he's also more prone to panic attacks than the God of Thunder. Handing over the flashlight is a little iffy when he can't quite see who he's handing it to, made slightly easier by the fact that neither of them have moved much since the light went out. Still, just for clarity: ]
Here.
sorry fitz take him to dinner first b4 romance
Come. Towards the wall.
[ He folds the device in his palms, rattling it a bit like dice while he tries to drum up an appropriate crackle of electricity. ]
I don't, actually, to answer your question. I've been told that means I should be patient and wait for it to show itself.
[ Though whatever else Thor has to say about his powers are eclipsed by the small explosion between his palms. RIP flashlight. ]
hmmmmmm
Except for when he does, apparently. Fitz jumps at the sudden crack of light and noise, back hitting the wall and kicking up more dust. ] Shit—
[ Speaking of waiting for powers to show themselves. He can feel his trying to kick up in response to the surprise, like the distant tick of an old clock in the back of his head. ] Did you just blow up my flashlight.
[ He isn't trying to sound accusatory. Just an observation. ] Is that new?
no subject
[ Thor sounds annoyed. He turns his palms down and lets the remnants of the flashlight fall to the floor. He'd scatter them with his foot if he could. ]
Since I've arrived here, I've found my connection with the elements to be a bit...iffy.
[ Even as Thor explains, he second guesses himself. Perhaps he's in need of his hammer again. Is he lacking in focus now? Were the guardians who welcomed him mistaken in what they'd told him when he'd first slipped from his pod? ]
no subject
But you're still connected to them?
[ That's somehow more interesting than the 'iffy' part. They might not even be in the same universe, but Thor's still got some connection. Then again, Thor hadn't been from Earth in the first place. It tracks that he'd have some range.
They should keep moving. Fitz places a hand against the wall, trying to get a sense of the hallways around him so they can start their blind trek forward. His bemusement's clear in the connection. So is his hesitation, and he doesn't start off just yet. ]
no subject
[ Which can be taken to mean fortunately for the nest rather than fortunately for Thor, who doesn't want to be severed from the elements completely. He's already lost an eye, his ancestral home, and both his parents. He doesn't need to lose anything else in the shuffle. ]
But you're right, onwards we must go.
[ And thankfully, in the dark, no one can see that Thor attempted to clap Fitz on the shoulder and completely missed. ]
I'm sure there's a light down the hallway.
[ At which point he nearly steps on Fitz trying to go forward. Whoops. ]
no subject
Or they usually do. Hard to say where he'll land on it if they stay stranded in the dark for much longer. They're both clumsy enough with the connection at this point that he doesn't get a read on Thor's embarrassingly failed gesture, or a warning when he nearly steps right into him — Fitz takes a quick step back, lightly elbowing the wall in the process. ] Right— go right.
[ Because that's slightly away from him, and he'd also seen the hallway ahead for about two seconds before the flashlight gave up. Enough to know it turns, at least. And, as soon as it seems like Thor's vaguely on track: ]
So. [ Small talk with the god of thunder?? ????? Start small. ] How's Asgard doing these days?
no subject
Gone, as a matter of fact.
[ His tone is solemn, though speaking of this only reminds him that he has left his people leaderless and adrift in space. ]
How is Earth?
[ It's a very earnest follow up question, but Thor realizes a beat later that it's probably hard to follow up the death of Asgard with a casual inquiry about Earth. ]