Test Drive Meme 015

[voidtreckermods]

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

1. Post with your character, including their name and series in the subject. We’ve written out some prompts but feel free to make up your own, you have a whole train to play with!

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

3. Have lots of fun. Mandatory, mod-sanctioned fun.

Happy testing!

A Quiet Place

A double carriage with a staircase at each end, the quiet coach has five booths on each floor. With frosted glass doors, locks on the inside, and a pair of comfy benches each, they’re luxuriously private on a train that’s anything but. There are no ICP screens, and each booth is completely soundproof.



Granted, two of the rooms downstairs have been merged in an act of vandalism and are now a workshop-slash-forge, but that has its own attraction. Plenty of things to mess with, plenty of boxes of scraps. The main tinkerer’s not home. Hey, isn’t that a welding torch?



No? Well, you were early enough to snag a room for yourself. Perhaps you’re not alone, or you’re expecting company. Or maybe you forgot to lock the door, and now someone’s in here with you. Awkward.

Too Many Cooks

Once a single room, the kitchen now sprawls over two floors. Banks of industrial electric ovens, a long, steel countertop facing them. Cupboards full of oven trays and pans, racks of implements and appliances. On the first floor, sinks and modern appliances, and cupboards full of crockery.



This month, the month of Harrow, the recipes are centred around chocolate. Chicken Mole, chocolate ravioli, cocoa chilli… it may begin to taste a little sickly sweet after the first week. Fortunately, there’s plenty of room for experimentation as people start to beg for other meals. And a lot of chocolate going spare.



And when the preparation is finished, and the meals have been sent over to the dining carriage… there are stacks, and stacks, and stacks of plates. Pots. Cutlery. And no dishwashers.



Well, no, that’s not strictly true. You’re there.

Allegorical Devices and Other Foes

The world of Torcera, designation #450720816. With a civilisation level roughly equivalent to the medieval ages, the train has deposited its Voidtreckers in a castle town, in which several kingdoms have assembled for an annual tournament. Banners fly from every roof, chattering squires and servants tug mounts this way and that. Some resemble horses with trailing antlers and four lidded eyes, others great flightless birds, and a third popular choice is a species of lanky winged dogs, albeit for the sake of fairness their wings are strapped loosely to their saddles. As a world ignorant of Void travel, you have all been given access to the dressing car’s voluminous stores. Dresses, chainmail, jerkins, or even a few suits of full plate… and plenty of hooded capes. Evil is afoot at the tournament, and you are to root it out.

Team One

Courtiers and their adjutants have travelled from all corners of the planet to assemble for the tournament; the empress herself is said to be participating, and stakes are high. Your team has been tasked with determining the identity of the empress in the tourney, and the identity of her foes, so that Team Two can move in. To this end, you are to mingle with the court and, if necessary, break into personal quarters. Brief instruction in protocol will not be provided.

Team Two

Once you know the identity of the Empress, you can move to defend her - you’re relatively sure she’s either the helmed hedge knight of the crested monlion, or the masked outrider with the seagoose crest and a mount with plumage of deepest blue. But you can’t be sure, and until you are, you’re to sign up for the tourney and look for troublemakers. The melee will be held in the afternoon, and tomorrow the individual lists. Mounts are available, as are a staggering number of weapons. Ideally, the final round would be a number of Voidtreckers, and the Empress. How to arrange that?

Team Three

Team One is in the court. Team Two in the lists. And you, Team Three, are amongst the common folk. Rumours abound, the atmosphere is festive, and several events are open to ordinary citizens on the second day, including one bohort with a single wish of the Empress as the prize. No great problem, perhaps... if not for the tales of a younger brother, long lost, looking to usurp the throne. Unrest is stirring in the town behind the colourful stalls and laughing children, and it's up to you to determine where, and why.

Comments

[unfavorableinstigation]

"Think you can help dry?"

The sinks being nearby could still serve a purpose, but putting Gen near those filled with soapy water seemed like a recipe for disaster.

Drying was the lesser of two evils, so to speak.

[fun_thementalist]

"... Yeah, I think I can manage that," Gen agreed with a little forced cheer, and went to move closer so he could grab a towel, and take dishes from this rather charitable person.

He did recognize he wasn't perhaps the most helpful in this state. "Thank you for your patience, my dear."

[unfavorableinstigation]

"Hey," Nita said, wry smile on her face as she kept washing.

"It's not fair to you if we're all hard on you all the time. And most of us know what it's like to overindulge."

If not necessarily on the same things, then with similar consequences.

[fun_thementalist]

It seemed that he'd managed to earn her sympathy, which was really the best outcome of this encounter. Gen didn't want to overplay that hand, though, no matter how genuinely it might have been given.

"I believe most people, however, especially having overindulged in their past, would see this as a learning experience," Gen noted with a bit of self-depreciating humor. He grinned at her. "And perhaps I should've known better already."

[unfavorableinstigation]

"This is just reconfirming the lesson, then," Nita said, snickering herself.

"Don't let your eyes get bigger than your stomach!"

Clink, clink, went another round of utensils, as she set them aside to be dried.

"Five minute break," she muttered, eyeing what was left of the dishes. There was quite a bit more of them than there had been silverware...

[fun_thementalist]

Gen did seem to fare better with his physical discomfort having something simple to focus on, utensils weren't exactly difficult to dry, and he set them down stacked within their mates when the water was wicked away.

But he did look at the looming stack with apprehension.

"Perhaps it's best to let those soak, to return to tackle them at a later time," Gen suggested, perhaps someone else would take care of them?

[unfavorableinstigation]

"As long as we don't wander far," Nita concluded.

"Can't set a bad example by sleeping on the job."

Which was more a jab at herself than Gen, really.

"... What do you know about photography? We can at least talk for a while," she explained.

"There's something this train does I've been trying to get to the bottom of for a while."

[fun_thementalist]

It seemed like Nita wouldn't let him slack off. Oh well. She did make a good point about setting an example, though he had no idea who'd look to a relative newcomer like him as one.

"Photography?" Gen mused aloud. "I know which is my best side. I know that the equipment can be expensive in the modern world. And I've seen one built from scratch pretty much. I can take decent photos, but my true artistry lies elsewhere."

[unfavorableinstigation]

"It's more... how does the train get pictures of us, and of the worlds we're on?"

She's no photographer herself; they'd have to talk to Prompto about that.

"I'll have to show you the stereoscope sometime, but there's pictures of what seems to be all the worlds it's visited. What could it be using to take them?"

[fun_thementalist]

"Ah ..." Gen hadn't thought much about that, but. It was another thing now he'd be considering, as if he wasn't paranoid enough already. Were they being spied on for years?

But he considered the question seriously. "I suppose it depends on the angle. If they're aerial photographs, some kind of drone would be likely, wouldn't it? Or if they're at eye-level, someone's taken the time to hide small, perhaps fish-eye camera lenses within our worlds. Which only invites further questions in either hypothetical, doesn't it?"

[unfavorableinstigation]

"We haven't found this train using drones before," Nita reasoned.

"They're all taken at a distance, but not all that high off the ground. And they're taken in the direction of the train, not facing away."

So a definite 'yes' to the presence of questions!

[fun_thementalist]

"That operates under the assumption that the train is singular. That it has no support from ... a central location. We know nothing about who operates it beyond what we've been told. This could even be piloted remotely, and someone - many someones - with further equipment and intelligence-gathering power could exist elsewhere," Gen proposed.

"Or, it can all be simple," he offered a counter-theory. "It could defy logical explanation, because our very kidnappings defied logical explanation."

[unfavorableinstigation]

Nita snorted. "What, like 'magic A is magic A'?"

Wizardry, in her experience, did not work quite like that - you could bend physics and talk them around to your way of thinking, but there was usually more detail behind it all than that!

In some ways, though, how the Powers worked was similar to how this train functioned - only They did less kidnapping, generally.

"I can't fault consistency, but not being able to get answers simply because we're not supposed to or whatever is frustrating, y'know?"

[fun_thementalist]

"I'm limited by rather logical thinking, forgive me, since the world I was taken from didn't have actual magic," Gen told her a bit ruefully. "I'm not even a scientist, but I've been conditioned to think like one with the company I keep. If this happens, then that happens, would be easier to understand."

Gen smiled sympathetically, "Incredibly frustrating. I'm not someone who is good at being told, 'don't look,' 'don't ask,' 'don't touch'. I was the naughty child who opened his presents early."

[unfavorableinstigation]

Nita sighed, then shook her head. "I know what you mean, don't worry. Effects should have causes; first this, then that."

Of course, when you knew beings that existed out of Time, it got a little more complicated...

Then she snickered, and finally began letting herself consider the dishes again.

"Ever got caught doing it, though?"