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

Re: Alfredo | Romeo's Blue Skies

[thornsofmundus]

She shakes her head. "Mom constructed me around a database when she created me and then she uploaded more information into me all the time. And of course I can teach myself things, but that's mainly been by doing--well, and sometimes talking.

"The Mundanes live on the Mundi--the Mundi are where I've been terraforming since I've been created. They're AI like me, but not nearly as sophisticated."

Re: Alfredo | Romeo's Blue Skies

[hisblueskies]

"A database..."

Alfredo looks confused, then considerate - then he moves on from the notion, shaking his head slightly.

"I can see how reading might not have come up too often."

As for the Mundanes, he supposes that makes sense.

"AI? Is that like a person?" He tilts his head. "Or just are people, I suppose."

He'd just known humans to be people, before - but this train is so different for that alone!

Re: Alfredo | Romeo's Blue Skies

[thornsofmundus]

"We are people!" she agrees. "We're people who were made by other people who're able to think for ourselves. That's what Artificial Intelligence--which is what AI stands for--means."

Re: Alfredo | Romeo's Blue Skies

[hisblueskies]

"Wow... that is amazing!"

No considerations of such creations being against God's wishes from him - people were still people, after all, worthy of many things.

Such as freedom.

"I've never met people made by other people before - unless children themselves count?"

Despite his medical knowledge, he's not very aware of those things as of yet.

Re: Alfredo | Romeo's Blue Skies

[thornsofmundus]

"Not in the same way," she explains. "When you make children, it's done completely by biological processes. Sperm fertilizes an ovum--that's the egg, humans have eggs but they don't have shells because they're inside people--and the fertilized egg is called a zygote. The egg then starts changing into a person. First it's an embryo, then it's something called a fetus, then instead of hatching, the child comes out of the person they've been growing inside. It's really quite fascinating.

"But, well, since it's all biological processes, it doesn't count as making people, like Mom made me, or the others on her team each made Flamma, Sylphan, Delvar, and Meredar. Or how they made all the others in our family together."

Re: Alfredo | Romeo's Blue Skies

[hisblueskies]

The biology lesson... definitely gets Alfredo's attention, though for the most part he just tucks the information away for when he's MUCH older later.

"It is, the way you describe it."

But as for the rest: "What are you made of, then? That isn't biological."

If that's how it's gonna be phrased, that's how he's going to phrase it from now on.