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

Elixer Shoppe: this is NOT a gagtag. He's actually like this.

[extrasaltypotato]

Hikaru senses a golden opportunity under a silver cloche to be a shitty memelord, and so immediately strides to Yon Elixer Shoppe:

"Potion seller, I am going into battle and require your strongest potions," he says, somehow managing to keep a straight face.

Also, he's curious about this similarly medieval stranger. He doubts that this is a Mundane Koboldt... but she may be a kobold.

Re: Elixer Shoppe: this is NOT a gagtag. He's actually like this.

[dralchemist]

[... ok, for a moment, she could buy that this bobbit was a Torceran local. But then he pulled out that specific line, with that specific cadence. Here is an important thing about Izzy's world: memes exist, they've been canonized. Sure, maybe this one came from an improvisatory troupe where 4 of the 5 members were out sick and the last man thought he could do a one-man show, and... well... the rest is history.]

My potions are too strong for you, traveller. [She's trying to hold a grin back, but with her long snoot, it's easy to see a smile creeping into the corners.]

[extrasaltypotato]

"Ah. I see you, too, are an individual of culture."

He bows. "Forgive me, I didn't realize you had taken the same ride over. How is business... and does the word 'Mundane' signify anything other than the ordinary to you?"

[dralchemist]

I mean, calling "memes" "culture" is a wild stretch, but yeah. I came in on the train. [Izzy grins, falling into a more casual stance.] What, did you think I'd gone native? Had to check with a call-and-response?

[Seems like this... tiny mage, bobbit, fellow train passenger, whoever has an agenda. She has to tap her chin. Mundane... mundane...] Nah. Nothing specific. Why?

[extrasaltypotato]

"So is calling yon meat on a stick food, but neither is wrong," he says, smiling, mostly to be contrary. "And not a sign and countersign so much as my having what fun I can where I can - though it was useful for that, wasn't it?"

He sighs. "A pity. For a moment I thought you were from my world - or my second one, at least. Would the accurate name for your kith be 'kobold?'"

"...Hikaru Aosora, pixie evoker, at your service," he amends with a friendly outstretched hand once he realizes he (as per usual) forgot to.

[dralchemist]

[oooooh, sore spot hit. Izzy's grin immediately disappears at the word 'kobold', arms crossing over her disguising cloak.] Nope. 'Dragonkin' or 'dragonborn' is preferred. Kobolds are a different species entirely.

[It's a touchy subject with her, already having been the runt of her entire family. Spending a lot of her travels with an Actual Kobold has not helped things. But... this bobbit pixie? couldn't have known, they don't quite seem right there on her own uptake. So, reluctantly, she does shake Hikaru's hand. It's curt, perfunctory, and her scowl hasn't left her face.]

Pleasure to meet you. Izzy d'Oro, part time alchemist and full time chef. I'd ask you what you mean about 'second world', but I have a feeling that here and now is neither the place nor time for it, aye?

[extrasaltypotato]

It's best discussed after the tourney, yes. And dragonborn - cheerfully corrected, Izzy. I know how many guess 'hobbit' or even 'lalafell' for me - whatever that last one is.

[He's not going to make the same mistake again - or dwell on it. Preferred terms of address are important to him. Still, the way he put it might fairly be considered brusque.]

I can honestly see alchemy and cooking being related fields. Both chemical transmutation of the sort you don't need Pneuma to empower - at least not one's own.

Although I am now legitimately curious as to what your strongest potions - the ones I cannot handle - entail...

[dralchemist]

That answer is much easier to field: vials of near-pure capsaicin isomers combined with volatile fire-aetherical compounds to create Weaponized Hot Sauce. A really, really bad idea to drink, but very handy to throw in the faces of anybody or anything that's trying to menace ya.

[She doesn't know what 'pneuma' is, but considering that already Hikaru is working on something close to, but not quite, what she knows, she files it away under 'aether-analogue'. Maybe if and/or when she runs into Hikaru again on the train, she can dig a little further. A meeting of the minds, mayhaps.]

[extrasaltypotato]

[ding ding ding. Same root meaning, too; it always comes back to breathing in the end.]

...You know, that's the same chemical base as a nonmagical defense weapon at home - or as used by unscrupulous, hmn, guardsmen to suppress angry citizens. I'd hate to get a whole bottle in my face, especially after it's been properly fire-aspected and Pneuma-infused.

[Color him impressed, in other words. And a little scared.]

[dralchemist]

Yeah. So don't make yourself a target, I guess. [She means it more like "just watch your step", but kinda misses the part where it could be misheard as a threat. Oops.] Or at least, don't have made yourself a target in a place where I could actually manufacture them.

[A sigh.] Don't tip off the locals, but most of this is just herbs and alcohol. If I had access to my lab, you'd be seeing some miracles. But they'll have to be content with snake oil.

[extrasaltypotato]

Friendly threat cheerfully acknowledged.

[He doubts it was more than a slip of the tongue anyway. Hikaru always tries to cut people slack, sometimes more than they deserve.]

Consider rebranding them as refreshing drinks or salad dressings?

[dralchemist]

Nah, nah, that'd be too easy. Peddling them as cures means that people are going to be talking about their troubles. Which is a wonderfully sneaky way to gather gossip.

If I was just gonna open up a lemonade stand or whatever, the locals wouldn't be so keen to stick around and gab, y'know?

[extrasaltypotato]

...Clever. Especially if you're adept at Intuition plus Empa... erm. At cold reading, anyway.

["Memo to me: stop talking in game terms."]

[dralchemist]

Eh... six of one, half dozen of another? You work front of house long enough, you get good at reading people. Especially customers. Being able to tell the ones with legitimate complaints versus the ones that just want a free meal is crucial.

[extrasaltypotato]

That tracks with my companions experience working at Tote-Em-Snax, yes. I suppose you'd call it a grocery store with an attached... calling it a restaurant seems vaguely insulting to your profession.

[dralchemist]

'Convenience store with convenience food'. The world I came from might not be exactly yours, but there are enough parallels that I know what you're talking about.

In this case, at least. [Start talking about any kind of modern tech, though, and she's going to deliberately tone Hikaru out.]

[extrasaltypotato]

Exactly so. Jules commented that she felt safer fighting monsters on Mundus than on fighting muggers demanding all of the petty cash and three taquitos, at gunpoint.

Remind me to teach you some of Jules recipes. The people of the Philippines back on my true home were between at least four empires, and absorbed the lessons of each of their cooks into abject glorification of the pig, shoyu, rice, bananas and coconut. I think I was still eating their lumpia from last Christmas when I departed for Mundus.

[dralchemist]

... damn, that sounds real good. I think Bart talked about food like that on The Reach, but we never got to experience that.

I'd be more than glad to hear whatever culinary secrets you've got, Hikaru. Never anything wrong with expanding my internal cookbook.