Test Drive Meme 013

[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!

Training Gym

Fight club have finally gotten a gym to train in. Train carriages make strange gyms, long narrow spaces. But this has mats, balance beams, climbing apparatus. Pads and training dummies for punching. It also has large blocks that look a little like what you might find in a children's play centre but can be used to make obstacle courses or provide cover in training exercises.

Set up a course, practice fighting or try and learn how to throw a punch! There are plenty who will help, people who take training super seriously and let's face it, people who want to ambush others from behind oversized foam blocks.

Games

For those for whom fighting is not an idea of fun, or those wanting more relaxation, the games carriage has a whole collection of different games. Board games, card games, dice games. There are many games about trains but they aren't the only type.

There are low tables in the carriage to set a game up on and plenty of beanbags and cushions to sit on. Grab a game, grab a friend or a complete stranger and get playing!

Water Maze

The latest mission has taken the voidtreckers to an underwater maze. They have been given wet suits, helmets and breathing apparatus- lightweight boxes that strap to their back, connect to their helmet and filter air from the water. A powerful and dangerous artifact has been stolen and the race is on to get it back before it is used for ill.

Team One

Plenty of monsters and foes have been sent to try and retrieve the item. Giant crabs, strange eels. Even people with fish tails and the ability to breathe underwater. All are dangerous foes and fighting underwater is difficult.

But team one are the vanguard, keeping the monster levels low to allow team two to push on through the maze.

Team Two

Hopefully team one will deal with the monsters, but the odd one might sneak through. Team two's main job is to solve the maze, because the thief is in the centre in order to perform his ritual.

It's a race against time, the maze is made of coral and walls of seaweed that are impossible to cut through. Solving it requires a quick mind and some determined swimming.

Team Three

For those not wishing to brave the water, or those whose skills lie more in helping others. The island where the artefact was stolen from needs help. The temple was ransacked and some of the islanders were injured. Help them fix their homes, put the temple back to rights, tend to the injured.

Cleaning the temple is a big job, but hopefully by the time the artefact has been retrieved it will be able to be restored to it's rightful place.

Comments

Basilton Pitch | Simon Snow series | OTA

[kindlepitch]

a. Training Gym

Baz didn't know how to fight--with his body; with his wand he was brilliant. But he was in mixed company here and while sometimes pulling out his wand was alright, there were also Normals on board. The rules probably didn't matter here, but he'd grown up with them, and he didn't like taking chances with some things.

So, he didn't know how to fight, and his punches were clumsy, carefully controlling his strength so that he didn't knock the training dummy across the car, but he had a lot to work with. He just needed some guidance, someone to teach him how to actually fight. While swinging wildly would probably be effective against non-human combatants, it wouldn't help him too much against someone who actually knew what they were doing.

Speaking of swinging wildly, he made the mistake of letting his frustration get the best of him and one punch took the head off the training dummy, sending it rolling across the floor. Quickly, he looked around to see if anyone had witnessed what he'd done.

b. Books

The selection of books on the train was abysmally small. Adding to that, the books it did have were of almost no interest to him, and he shook his head at least once while looking through them.

"There must be someone to see about getting a proper library," he muttered to himself. His accent was English, a bit on the posh side.

c. Team Three

He hadn't liked the idea of being almost completely defenseless in the water, since spells very well couldn't work when you couldn't speak, so he'd decided to help elsewhere instead. Specifically, cleaning up the temple and fixing homes. He could be found working on either, now and then carefully making sure no one was watching him before murmuring spells under his breath to speed things along. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn't; he chalked it up to being far from home and a vast difference in general languages and phrasing.

Still, spotty magickal help was better than none at all, and if it helped repair a home or sweep away debris, he would accept and appreciate it. Maybe eventually he could adjust his magic to work better here, pick up more phrases used around the train. He could only hope to end up on worlds that spoke one of the languages he did.

d. Dining Car

Baz found a quiet corner of the dining car to tuck himself into before starting to eat his meal. Even then, he kept his head down and one hand over his mouth, glancing up now and then. In the future, he decided, it would be easier to eat somewhere else--maybe his room or the quiet carriage. Though it wasn't like he hadn't eaten like this more days than not when he'd been at Watford.

e. Wildcard

Come at me!

c, in magic ya gays without their boyfriend solidarity

[aluciner]

Being as the last time he was around a lot of water was . . . not great? It wasn't great, and he didn't leave a great first impression on Hennessy because of it, but that's neither here nor there. The main point is that Ronan? Doesn't want to be in water, which is how he also ends up helping to fix homes.

"There's no ley lines here." It's casual, because Ronan is fine with casually talking about magic, at least. Dreaming's still a little touch and go. "Might be why you're having trouble."

Not everyone uses magic the same way, Ronan's learned, but anyone doing proper spellwork is probably more on the end of magic that Ronan's familiar with. Not the kind he does, exactly, but the kind he knows. His personal brand of magic is a little different, even if it relies on the same ley lines that more regular magic does, but so far he hasn't been able to easily do things that would have been so, so easy back home.

Aw yea

[kindlepitch]

Baz frowned, glancing over at Ronan as he tucked his wand into his sleeve. Ronan didn't seem surprised, or any of the various reactions Baz had come to expect from a Normal, but he was still wary. It was practically second nature after everything he'd experienced in America, dealing with Normals and vampires.

"I'm not sure that's the issue," he said smoothly, not bothering to elaborate on what he thought the problem might actually be. "Are you having trouble?" It seemed like a safe enough question.

[aluciner]

"It takes more intention to do things the way you want on the train." There is, maybe, a gap between what Ronan means when he says that and what Simon will hear in it. Ronan can't trust magic will form itself into something workable when he demands fix this in this place without ley lines. Everything he does here is from a specific intention. "Out here's not much better here, otherwise I wouldn't be wasting my time doing this manually."

"This" is the wall that Ronan has been steadfastly repairing. It would be so easy to dream it right, if he could spare the energy to push at the edges of what he's been reduced to. The larger an object it, the worse it is to dream here, which is ironic after he dreamed an entire forest into being. Repairing walls is something he knows how to do with his own hands, so he doesn't bother trying to replicate a thing he didn't even see while it was standing. He can't copy things he's never seen, after all. Not when magic will fill in the blanks however it pleases.

[kindlepitch]

More intention. Baz mulled over that for a moment. Maybe that applied to him, too, in some way or another. Intention, inflection, pronunciation--it was all important in magic. He knew it didn't work quite the same for everyone, that each magician worked their magic slightly differently, but the basics were still the same.

"I think it's the language they speak here," he admitted. Or, more specifically, the phrases they used, the way they talked. "I've had this kind of trouble before." But he'd worked around it then, so he was (fairly) confident that he could work around it here.

[aluciner]

"Oh, you're a words person." Ronan pauses before rifling through the pockets of his pants and, eventually, holding out what looks like an incredibly standard voice recorder. "Here, anti-translation device. There's a weird translation magic on everyone here so we can understand each other, and it's probably twisting your words."

The object Ronan is holding is magical in nature, that much is clear. What's less clear is why it's magic, because it looks exactly like the type of voice recorder any reporter would have except for the fact that it's the same orange as the hoodie Ronan is wearing.

[kindlepitch]

It reminded him entirely too much of the device he'd almost used on Snow in the past, so he was a little reluctant to take it, turning it over in his hands. It looked normal enough, orangeness aside, but he knew that looks could be deceiving.

"So, it stops the magic translating what I'm saying?" Was he understanding that right? He hadn't even considered that whatever helped them all understand each other might interfere with his magic.

[aluciner]

"It actually just disrupts the magic entirely for the person holding it when it's on." He made it to be used in the cinema, for people learning about the train's language, so it seemed easier to just temporarily disrupt the entire process. "So you won't be able to understand anyone not speaking languages you know while it's on either."

Ronan shrugs. There's no technical answer for how it works, because Ronan's magic almost entirely runs on "it works because I say it does," and this object in particular was just created with the intent of lifting the translation effect. It's orange just because that way people remember what team to return it to. It's a voice recorder just because that was the first shape that came to mind for what he wanted.

[kindlepitch]

"Efficient," he remarked. Much better than an either or sort of deal. He wasn't very concerned about not being able to understand anyone, potentially, while it was on, assuming it didn't break.

Turning on the device, he glanced around as if he expected something visible to change. When nothing did, he slid his wand out of his sleeve and murmured another spell. It worked...marginally better than his previous attempts. His problem was probably not speaking the same language as the islanders, but he didn't have the time to learn, and this had been worth a shot either way.

"I guess there's more than translation magic messing things up," he said with a frown.