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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
johan liebert | monster
i. pentara prime
ii. the court
iii. rescue
iv. wildcard
rescue.
[ He looks nothing like a hostage, and everything like a pathetic, too-skinny savior.
The splatter of foreign blood on his face and hands, a baton clutched between his fingers that shows the wear and tear of an instrument used repeatedly on a number of very hard, very thick skulls. It's tossed to the side, useless now that he's found his "fellow hostage". The baton clatters, loud and metallic, across the floor, immediately lost in the depths of some corner of the room. Possibly down the nearest grate, never to be seen again, because he is just so unfortunately unlucky like that. It's a marvel he was even able to reach Johan, as unlucky as he is.
He bridges the gap between the door, bracing himself between the sliding panels to keep it propped open, dark eyes fixated on the battered form before him. ]
「 This is the worst. This is all wrong. You're the clever one, how come a degenerate like me gets to be your salvation?
Oh, wow. Are you missing any teeth? I can fix that - er, I think I can still fix that. 」
no subject
Am I not a degenerate? Are you saving me?
[He doesn't stand. Instead, he hooks his finger in his cheek and pulls his lips back, showing all his teeth. Bloody, some cracked, one missing. For inspection.]
How many of them did you kill?
no subject
They threw the first punch, I only retaliated. 」
[ There's a light in the depths of his eyes, something feverish and naturally wicked: you believe him, right? Somewhere underneath the mask of blood on his face, his nose wrinkles at the sight of those broken, missing teeth in Johan's face. Oh, his poor, pretty face. It doesn't deserve such treatment, he'll have to fix it. Erase it. Make it undone, if only the symbiote would allow him to access the full properties of his Minus, he'd be able to undo so many things that caused the nest problems. ]
「 -- that's so gross. You're gross. Can you walk? I'll erase your face, while we escape. 」
[ um that's not -- ]
no subject
[What does matter is--ah. The corners of his mouth turn down in a perfect moue of disappointment.]
I can still feel you. I'm so rarely a failure at anything . . . what do I do?
[He bends one knee experimentally; this fails to break him into pieces, so he stands up slowly, leaning heavily on the wall.]
How does it work, erasing a face?
no subject
[ Anybody who fails may freely offload their inability to succeed on him, their new broodmate. A Minus in nature, who only grows more empowered by suffering and tragedy. One who is defined by his status as a "loser" -- there is no winning for him.
He steps closer, both hands offered and extended, fearless. ]
「 Most likely in one of two ways - I've only done it once before, to be honest. I can use my Minus to unmake your face, or I could just tear it off. Oh. No, wait. I only need to unmake the damage! How silly of me, mixing those up. 」
i.
The question betrays what the younger man sees instead. ]
Home. Probably.
[ He shifts his eyes from his company back to the landscape sprawled before him, trying to borrow Johan's eyes to see the absence rather than the presence, note the spaces between people, the lack of. And he sees it, the uneasiness settling into his bones, and just the same he rejects it. ]
We should go. The others will worry if we get there late.
no subject
[But Tenma's presence is like . . . looking in a mirror and seeing everything exactly the same but precisely opposite, only it isn't a mirror, it's the world. Just the world, and yourself, backwards. Subtly wrong. It would bother him more if he were more of a person, and in this moment he's grateful--no--calmed by his own perpetual stasis. It could be worse. It could be significantly worse, he knows, if he had more to lose, the way Herr Doktor Tenma always did.]
[Still. There it is, the gratitude at companionship and focus on what is rather than what is not, not pushing against him but constantly in his periphery.]
[Johan's eyebrows draw together faintly. Home? he thinks, tying it to the others with a very uncertain question mark.]
You're worried about them worrying. [Also a question, kind of.]
no subject
Tenma shakes his head. ]
I'm not worried.
[ That isn't a lie. But the kind-of question is really why. ]
These little things add up. Showing up when you say you will, not making people worry. It shows them they matter to you.
[ Ugliness is in the little acts of everyday neglect, a slow chipping away at the bonds between people until there is nothing left to lose. If so, beauty is in the minute evidence of mundane sincerity. ]
no subject
[The look Tenma receives in return is one of deliberate blankness. A reminder. Not even a question--So?--but a fact: They don't.]
[A fact, more or less. There is a wing off the main hall of his mind that was never there before. If he isn't careful and turns in there, he discovers that perhaps this is untrue. They do, or they might; or at least the feeling is comparable to caring for one person, pouring all of his concern, meager as it is, into the nest.]
[He looks out at the emptiness. It smells like flowers--not roses, but wildflowers. It makes him obliquely, distantly homesick.]
Wherever you go, you are always the most reliable man around.
[This is wholly genuine and not at all a taunt, which is probably worse than if it were. He turns back to Tenma with a smile, leaving the question of figure-ground reversal in the dust for the moment.]
We can go, then. Since it's important to you--lead, and I'll follow.
no subject
He still doesn't have the answer to that.
He crouches low to gather all the satchels containing their supplies, fastidious even in this small task. These he slings over his shoulders before starting on his way, turning to see if Johan follows. ]
Tomorrow, we can watch the sunset again. We should have more time then.
ii. new bff
That is precisely the problem, for some of the nest. (Is she any better?) She is focused on their mission, however. She won't allow him to become distracted. If he's physically threatened, she will negate the threat. Isn't that all that's really necessary?
She wears her fantastical sculpture of a dress like she was built for it, a special edition Barbie in a gown sown to her waist and wrists, designed to be seen and not lived in. It isn't her favorite. But the absence of choice is familiar, as is this cavalier parade toward self-destruction. ]
( Is that not human nature? )
[ Human, through the lens of Luv's mind, being something external to herself. Lesser. Her baseline pleasantness doesn't waver. ]
hi bestie | ￣︶￣|o
[The answer comes without an instant of hesitation. Yes, it is--]
( For the most part. )
[His fingers lace together as he leans back a bit, half-turning on the bench to look at her with a soft smile on his face. Just for a moment, because of course staring at someone without speaking would be a major faux pas. Nobody here needs to know about the telepathic link; they already stand out enough. He only means to convey that he doesn't exactly disagree, only wants to clarify.]
[He doesn't really care if she gets upset with him, but it would be nice to keep talking to her. She's interesting.]
( On a grand scale--culturally--humanity tends always towards entropy. But on an individual level, it isn't always so simple. )
( Usually. But not always. )
no subject
( Individuals may lead. Inspire great change. )
[ The flash of a hand, caught in a broad gesture, slips unshielded across their bond. The grandiose pitch of a voice mid-speech. Longing. She looks to the crowd again, as if to steer her mind back to its approved track. ]
( Is that how you mean? )