emptynesters | TEST DRIVE :003

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test drive

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 )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ matou sakura at first glance seems soft-spoken and timid, but beneath her mild veneer lies a depth of emotion she fears showing to others. sakura believes herself to be unworthy of love and is inherently fearful of disagreeing with others or putting her trust in them. as a result, she often puts up a mask of forced agreeableness in all but the most stressful of circumstances-- an excellent way to keep people at arm's length without seeming to at all. it's not uncommon for what she says and what she feels to not match up, or for her to try to shut people out. her symbiote ability she keeps well-hidden, afraid of the consequences.

any character who can sense life force or magic would be able to feel an uncomprehendingly large amount of it emanating from her, to the point that it should feel a little horrorterror-ish-- impossible and terrifying and nonsensical. ]

i. STATION 72 - get up

[ There are not one but three separate moments you might run into Sakura when she first arrives on the station.

The first is when silent tears well up in Sakura's eyes as she wakes up in the nesting pod, simultaneously aware of her situation and yet unwilling to process it. One hand stretches out in front of her automatically, as if reaching for something that isn't there anymore. Her eyes fall on the back of her outstretched hand, and though she's utterly silent on the outside, her mind is nothing but one long, loud scream.

The second is not long after waking. The next hour sees Sakura running frantically up and down the hallways of the station, out of breath and peering into every room as if looking for something specific. Maybe she peers into your room, or maybe she just runs past you in a dash. Her mind just feels like barely-suppressed panic. If your ears (or mind) are particularly attuned, you may be able to hear her mumbling-- ]

Chicken-- I need... a chicken... or an animal... a-anything...

[ The third is only shortly after that. Spoiler alert, we both know that Sakura isn't going to find any livestock on the station. Nevertheless, perhaps you find yourself drawn to a large emotional spike of distress sometime later. Which is to say, if you follow it, you'll find Sakura in an abandoned and out of the way room, covered in blood and kneeling over what looks like a large and intricate magic circle and crying. She does not want to get up. Not at all. ]

ii. PENTARA PRIME - exploring the marketplace

[ Sakura is as Sakura does, which means eventually she will settle in and adapt. And the first step to adapting, she knows, is settling in to a familiar routine. Stress cooking is very much a thing for her, but there aren't a lot of fresh ingredients to be had on the station, which means trips to the marketplace to see what she can bargain for. Of course, her first trip will find her absolutely swindled and talked into buying everything her small hands can possibly hold. It's not entirely her fault-- the food here is alien to her, she doesn't know what half these things even taste like, what their worth is, or even what food group they belong to, in some cases.

Perhaps you find her being hassled by a vendor trying to pressure her into buying some strange alien product while she unsuccessfully tries to find a graceful way to say no without being rude. "Oh, I don't know," she hedges awkwardly, trying desperately to catch someone's eye in the crowd to give her an out.

Or perhaps you find her staring with confusion at another stall, picking up all sorts of different products and then putting them down again, overwhelmed by all the strangeness. A vendor probably tells her off at one point for touching too many things, or perhaps you hear her wondering aloud what something tastes like. At some point she probably mumbles under her breath something like, "I just want to find some rice..."

Or perhaps you find her later on in the day, struggling to carry all her purchases, a truly staggering number of grocery bags hanging off each arm. Sakura is stronger than she looks. ]

iii. wildcard [ got an idea? have at it! if you want to hit me up or plot together you can find me at

exclamationmarks on plurk or emiri#3333 on discord! ]

「 Hey, Sakura. Sakura, that's certainly a lot of blood. That's so much blood.

What are you thinking, making a mess of this room? It's such an inconvenience. What were you hoping to accomplish, hm? 」

[ She's crying, and it's right that a girl like her is crying. After all, they're two peas in a pod - two negatively-driven creatures who've found their way to a strange place, full to bursting with strange people. Even this is a form of suffering, terrible and suitable for a Minus and -- well, her. Not quite a Minus, she's too likely to try and deny that of herself. But, he sees it in her, the same as he'd see it with any scum-of-the-earth child with a miserable fate. She's like him, if only she'd see that. Things wouldn't be better for them, but they'd be tolerable. ]

「 You see. It's just that if someone other than me were to see you like this -- they might think poorly of you. But, I won't. Nobody could think more poorly of you than you already do, I can tell. It's the only way to think. So, that is. Would you like some help? Is it the blood? I could bleed for you, if you don't have enough. It's the most a guy like me could do for a beautiful girl. 」

[ HE IS ABSOLUTELY THE TYPE THAT TALKS FOREVER YIKES MAKE HIM STOP ]

[ Sakura wipes her eyes and turns around to look at him, startled-- then instantly recoils, eyes wide and then turning avoidant. A strong feeling of please leave me alone radiates from her unconsciously.

There's something in this person that Sakura instantly recognises from years of living with Shinji. A person that takes joy in other people's pain. It sets her on high alert in a nanosecond. Danger, her mind screams at her. Danger danger danger.

And then her mental walls slam up. ]

... It's fine. I don't-- I don't need any help, thank you. I-It was just a mistake... I cut myself by accident, and it bled more than expected, that's all.

[ Her voice is shaky, and even if the mental link wasn't bleeding through screaming lie, lie, lie... it would be obvious even to a child. Instead of looking directly at him, she busies her shaking hands with tearing some strips from her long white skirt, intending to turn them into bandages. ]

[ It's not joy that he feels, it's kinship. Miserable people resonate with him far more than someone with the ability to self-determine their own fate; it's the sorrowful, the failures, the trauma-laden that he gravitates too. Sakura is heavy with it, she flinches from him -- and Kumagawa clutches at his chest. His mind radiates it: understanding, acceptance, acknowledgement. Is it any fault of his, if the urgency of those feelings come across with an undercurrent of maliciousness? How much of his nature is he meant to stifle, and how much CAN he hold back?

There's no intent to harm her, though his exuberance in-and-of-itself could be harmful. ]

「 What an accident, that you were able to compose such an INTERESTING looking mark on the floor. What's it for? Are you a witch? I'm very much into schoolgirl witches, I think you'd fit perfectly on the hallowed pages of Ultra Jump for a seasonal piece on schoolgirl witches. You'd be the cutest of them all, Sakura. 」

[ He stops, only to breathe, and then crouches nearby -- out of her reach, which means she's out of his. ]

「 I just want to help you. I promise. 」

[ Distress upon more distress. It's palpable in the air and even on her face-- she can't stop it. She failed at her summoning, she's here all alone, everyone she loves might be dead and it might be her fault, and there's some idiot here rambling about witches and manga and it's too much-- ]

I'm not a witch!

[ That has a ring of truth to it, at least. There's a distinction between a witch and a magus, in Sakura's mind at least. ]

I-- I don't want help.

[ I don't want your help, is what she really means. ]

「 Ah. 」

[ The degree to which her distress fills the connection between them is dumbfounding - how fast she escalates, how badly he seems to have shaken her. He doesn't recognize it, as it happens. He recognizes it now, and turns his palms up. Placating. ]

「 Then, won't you have to clean all of this up alone? Nobody should have to be alone right now. 」

[ None of them ARE alone, for that matter. They're all tangled up, mind-to-mind. ]

[ Sakura pauses for a moment, clearly dithering. Nothing about this person seems good, but having someone help her clean up would be. ]

... I'm used to it.

[ Which is true-- both being alone and doing a lot of cleaning-- but she also doesn't sound wholly convinced. ]

But... if you know where I can find some first aid and cleaning supplies, I'd be happy with that.

[ Asuka can feel the emotion throbbing through the link. Despair and distress and sadness and - well. It's giving her a bit of a headache and she's curious, so she follows the threads, picking her way through the Station as she tries to find whatever (whoever) it is that's having such a hard time. Her footsteps echo in the hallway and then - she finds her. A girl crying in a corner, covered in blood, and apparently trying to open a portal to hell. ]

What is going on in here? Are you OK?

[ For once, she's not being abrasive. She's just... shocked. ]

[ Sakura starts with surprise, and a series of very rapid emotions flash through her mind in an instant-- she hasn't quite learned how to seal them off yet, not properly. Alarm at being discovered. (She thought she chose a place hidden enough?) Fear of reprisal for involving a non-magus. (Does it count if you're not in your own world anymore?) Embarrassment for someone else seeing her like this, emotional and upset. She suddenly remembers to wipe her eyes with her arm. I wasn't crying. It's followed then by swift appraisal of Asuka, trying to work out what out what sort of person she is and how she should tailor her response. "Concerned" and "female" are positive indicators, but she's still an unknown entity.

Eventually, Sakura averts her eyes and starts trying to scrub the magic circle off the floor with a spare rag vigorously, looking at the ground and letting her hair fall down over her eyes so she can better school her emotions. ]

I-I'm fine. I just-- my hand slipped.

[ Well, there is a knife in the background, but ... that seems ... unlikely ...

Sakura is a terrible liar, also. ]

Edited 2018-01-17 06:58 (UTC)

[ Asuka gets bits and pieces of the emotions, but not quite any of the concepts that go with them. Her own emotions are pretty all over the place - a desire to just leave and forget she saw anything, a desire to actually help (maybe a little), because she's been there and even if she doesn't particularly like people, there's still a kernel of sympathy for another girl. The silence that falls between them as Sakura starts to scrub at the weird demon design on the floor brings some of her irritation back to the forefront, though. She steps over, trying to get a better look at the splattered design. ]

Your hand slipped. Right. And you just happened to bleed out a beautiful picture.

[ Asuka huffs. ]

Do you think I'm stupid or something?

[ Something in Asuka's choice of words, her tone, sends twin spikes of fear and anger through Sakura-- though her face remains avoidant as she continues scrubbing. ]

... I don't even know you ...

I know it's obviously an excuse. A polite person would accept it.

[ It's a surprisingly bold response, for Sakura at least. ]

Edited 2018-01-17 07:21 (UTC)

Right. A polite person is just gonna ignore that you're bleeding and you drew weird symbols all over the floor. Guess I'm rude.

[ Ugh. Asuka rolls her eyes and falls into a crouch next to Sakura. ]

What makes you think I'd just give up like that?

( Most people do. )

[ The thought comes unbidden from her mind before she can stop it, and it hardly even sounds accusatory. More like a simple statement of fact.

Outwardly, her face gives no indication that she said anything, impassive as ever. No hint of the bitterness or resentment towards the world that Asuka's simple question stirs within her. Probably, she isn't even aware. ]

... Nothing in particular.

[ A calculated answer, an answer deliberately chosen with the hopes that it gives the recipient nothing to hold on to. Not apologetic but not accusatory either, simply purposefully bland as possible. The safe option. ]

Edited (omg i'm so sorry this thread is edit city, i'm normally not this bad) 2018-01-18 00:38 (UTC)

matou sakura | fate/stay night

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s72 - get up, get up, get out there ( 2 )

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