Test Drive Meme 002

[voidtreckermods]

Welcome to our Test Drive Meme! Here is the place to see how your character might fit the setting, grab some samples and start having fun!

1. Post with your character. I’ve written out some prompts but feel free to make up your own, you have a whole train to play with!

2. Assume they have been around long enough for threads to jump right into the action!

3. Have much fun!

Happy testing!

Luggage Handling

The last carriage of the train is full of luggage. It’s all empty but there sure is a lot of it. Suitcases, old fashioned travelling trunks, rucksacks. And they are scattered everywhere, a safety concern to be sure.

Or perhaps the most fun place on the train, if you are thinking about it right. These cases could be anything, a fort, a bunker. How many can you stack up until they are too high to reach or they tumble down on top of you?

Let out your inner child and relieve some of the boredom of being stuck on a train by creating the luggage castle of your dreams, or step in before disaster strikes and attempt to bring some organisation to this chaos.

Scavenger Hunt

You’ve found yourself on a world that seems to be one huge scrap yard. At least all the parts you can see are and you aren’t the only ones there. A small fighter craft has crash landed here and the pilot needs help fixing their craft to get out of here!

Team One The parts needed must be around here somewhere! This place has all sorts and so it’s just a matter of trying to sort through all the junk to find what you are looking for.

Team Two Some parts from the actual ship are salvageable but it’s going to take a team to get this thing sky worthy again. Fix what can be fixed and get the craft ready for the spare parts that will hopefully be found.

Team Three This planet is not without its nuisances. Most prominent are some strange cyborg rats that have a taste for wiring. Fend them off before they get into the craft and render all the hard work undone.

A picnic with a view

Heroes deserve rewards every now and again and after a few days of protecting a settlement from strange shape shifting alien blobs there is a moment to relax before boarding the train once more.

What a place to relax in. High up on a cliff overlooking a vast plain of crystal stalagmites. The light of two suns reflects of them creating a dazzling prism mirror effect of colour, it’s almost like hovering above a sea of rainbows.

A picnic has been provided by some grateful villagers, the food is strange but delicious and a perfect way to unwind after a stressful few days.

Comments

Obviously, it was a suitcase ambush!!! They did it out of MALICE.

[so_dark_a_road]

"Oh yes, the greatest of ideas," Curufin agrees. Although whoever those kids were, he can kind of identify with them, having been the same kind of kid himself in the far distant past.

"Yes, it's me, Curufin. I don't know how I got here, or how you got here, but here we are together!" He rejoices, even as he tries to free himself and his father from the tumble of heavy luggage and other weighty items. "Yes, I'm all right. Are you?"

He shoves a couple of extremely large and heavy suitcases off of himself and Fëanor. Daylight, or rather, carriage light, falls down on them.

They were plotting it from the very start! (im sorry for the late reply I totally lost it)

[tinkerheart]

Curufin That his son is here is enough to quench Feanor’s anger immediately.

“I’d say I can recall someone having a very similar idea. Though with less deadly construction materials.”

Mainly cushions but hey that was an architectural marvel... until it collapsed.

“I’m so glad to see you.” The mystery how did it happen they can investigate later. Right now he’s just happy. Curufin can ser his father is smiling when he digs them both from under the suitcases.

They absolutely were! They saw Feanor coming and jumped on him. (No problem about the late reply!)

[so_dark_a_road]

And Curufin is overjoyed to find his father again. He'd feared that they only way he'd ever see him again would be to surrender himself to Mandos and be thrown in an adjoining cell. The Void Trecker train is SUCH an improvement over that possibility!

And about that similar idea. . . . "Oh, you mean ME? All those tent cities I built in the sitting room with blankets from the bedrooms, or the couch cushion fortresses, or the book castles I built in the library?" Grin.

"Oh, Father! I cannot even tell you how happy I am to see you!" He redoubles his efforts, flinging suitcases right and left, and then they are free. He stands up and reaches out a hand to help his father up.

That's exactly what happened!

[tinkerheart]

Feanor laughs.

"I remember you declared the library your territory and was very adamant in that declaration."

Those were good times...

With no small help of Curufin he manages to get out from under the suitcases pile and stand up. Finally freed Feanor pulls his son into embrace.

"So am I. I missed you so much"

He missed them all but Curufin was always closest to him, shared most of his passions. In many things he resembled and understood his father the most. Feanor almost lost hope that he would see his son again.

Bad luggage, BAD luggage! /smacks them

[so_dark_a_road]

Curufin laughs too.

"So I did. But I had to fight for it! Caranthir was pretty determined, too. That's how I learned my wrestling and boxing techniques. Early experience." Grin.

He flings his arms around his father and hugs him tightly. "I thought I'd never see you again, ever! The sages said you were stuck in the Halls of Mandos and would never get out."

It was true that Curufin shared his father's passions. He learned to wield a forge hammer almost before he could walk, so eager was he to have the same skills as Fëanor did. They shared a love of the materials, iron and copper and tin and gold and silver, and all the gemstones, of course. And the tools, the anvil and hammer, the forge furnace, and the more delicate jewelers' tools. In their hands, the materials practically flowed into shapes of beauty and usefulness. Curufin brought nearly everything he made to his father before he showed it to anyone else. It was also true that Curufin looked like his father, except that his eyes were a darker gray, and in may ways their minds were similar.

[tinkerheart]

"They were not wrong. I thought so myself. I was told so. That I was to rot there until the end of the world." A frown crosses his face but it vanishes as soon as it appears. He can't really be angry right now.

"In kinder words, of course, but that was basically the meaning."

And yet here we are... Whoever freed him from this prison, for whatever reasons, has his gratitude.

[so_dark_a_road]

Curufin sighs. "I cannot bear the thought of you siting in that darkness with nothing to do, nothing to make, no way to be involved in the events of the world. I refused the summon myself, because I feared the same thing would happen to me, and I had to have a part in solving the problems of Arda. I thought that I would eventually figure out how to get a message to you, but I hadn't solved that problem yet, and suddenly I was whisked away into another universe. And then another. And now I am here, and we are together again!"

He hugs his father again.

"But there'll be plenty of interesting things to do in this universe! I'm sure we'll find a use for our skills."

[tinkerheart]

"That sounds like quite a journey, you must tell me all about it."

He wasn't exactly sitting, incorporeal being that he was, but that's just details. What matters is that Curufin is spot on what were some of the sources of Feanor's greatest anguish. Not only that he saw all the evil and the suffering but that he could do nothing about it.
He smiles hearing that his son was trying to get the message to him. That's exactly what he would do himself. Now there's a new world open for them to explore. A whole collection of worlds if he was to believe the void train's announcements.

"I certainly hope so, I stayed idle far too long."

Danger, danger! Long post advisory. XD

[so_dark_a_road]

And what a long story that would be! "Well, the synopsis would be as follows. I refused the summons of Mandos and wandered as a spirit, which was not quite as the Valar would have us believe. I grieved for my life and for the lives of all whom I had loved, but I was not in complete despair, and I began to heal on my own. And I also attempted to re-embody myself without the help of the Valar. When I was younger, I read some of the sage's books that grandfather had in his library, and some of those sages speculated that it was possible, that the body still exists in the love and memory of the spirit, and it can be rebuilt. Because after all, body is simply condensed spirit. I was having some success, and I rejoiced that soon I would be able to enter the world again and take an active part. But suddenly I was seized by a power greater than that of the Valar, and to my surprise. . . ."

He smiles. He still finds this funny. "I was snatched into a universe that must have been a variation of ours, for it looked like Middle-earth, except that the only people who inhabited it were the ones that power had snatched from other universes. That power was Eru, or at least the Eru of that universe, which was called Arda Marred. Beleriand and the isle of Numenor had both risen from the great Sea. I stayed there for a couple of years, in the village of Deepwood in the Ered Luin, working had to make improvement to the area and trying to help the inhabitants. Maglor was there, and Finrod and Galadriel, and Mother was there as well, for a little while. And, unfortunately, Morgoth and Sauron. But those two did not have the power they had had in the original universe, and they could make mischief but not destroy the world or any part of it. Anyway, long story. The place began to empty out until there were only four of us left, and we all departed."

He shakes his head a little; he had felt good about being there and was sad to leave.

"Next thing I knew, I was in a city called Hadriel. It was ruled by a pantheon of gods, but they weren't really gods, they were just very powerful energy parasites. They would stage events that were intended to evoke emotions from us, and emotional energy was their food. The task there was to survive all the dangers, survive the predations of the gods, and try to build community. Some of our family were there as well, and I made friends and worked on projects and created an organization called the Fire Brigade. After two years, I was sad to leave the people but not the place. It was time for me to resume my journey."

He laughs again. "And here I am on a train expedition through the Void! I'm happy to be here, and I am entertained by the whole situation. And I'm sure that your skills will be needed and appreciated, Father!"

"But tell me, are you free of the Oath? Because I am. I foreswore it shortly before I died, and it hasn't bothered me since. I'm wondering if death automatically frees us from it."

What a glorious wall of text...I love those

[tinkerheart]

Feanor nods as he listens to recollection of his adventures. He openly smiles when Curufin declares his continued defiance of whatever Mandos, or any other Valar, would want of him. He's glad that his son resisted. The Halls are a sad place, they'd have dampened even his enthusiasm and this would simply be a crime.

How he missed the sound of that laughter...

It is the last sentence of that tales of tales that hits him with the weight of a mountain. The very fact that it is exactly Void, even if not The Void, they are traveling through right now made Feanor assume his own curse is still well in effect. What if it's not? What if he's free?
It takes a couple of minutes before the worst of the shock passes and he's able to say anything. Even if it's not the most coherent question.

"You are?! How?!"

Thank you! XD

[so_dark_a_road]

Curufin chuckles to see that smile. They have this in common: they don't hate the Valar, but they don't love them enough to believe them implicitly, and they don't want to spend all of eternity under their rule.

He is sad to have missed him father's company and that of his other relatives, but he is not sad to have missed the Halls. But how wonderful it is to see his father again, and to know they'll be together for an indefinite period of time. The VoidTrecker Express may be be traveling through the Void, but how funny, if it's the same Void as in Arda! A train traveling through it and picking up passengers is hilarious! Even if it were true that they were thrown into the Void for not fulfilling the Oath, then this is even funnier!

And he sobers a little in order to answer the question. "When I was dying in the lowest level of Menegroth, I had to make a choice. Caranthir and I had succeeded in killing Dior after he mortally wounded Celegorm. The two of us were wounded, too, and even we couldn't have survived our injuries. I was the last one left conscious, and I had very little strength left. I could have searched Dior's body for the Silmaril, which at that point I was still pretty sure he had. Or I could have crawled to Caranthir and Celegorm and said my last goodbyes, and held their hands. In other words, I could choose hate, or I could choose love. I knew I didn't have enough time or strength left to do both. I crawled to my brothers and lay down beside them. I chose love."

He gazes into his father's beloved face.

"The Oath was nagging at me, but I told it to go to hell, I was busy. And I felt the strangest thing -- I felt myself and it part ways. I can't be sure that it was entirely due to my foreswearing the Oath; because maybe my approaching death had something to do with it. But I feel as though it was me, my intentions, my will. And most of all, my love."