Test Drive 018

[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.

Happy testing!

Heated Debate

The spa carriage, the newest addition to the train, boasts sunlamps and loungers, massage tables stocked with fluffy towels and a variety of oils and lotions, an enclosed sauna… Soothing birdsong fills the warm, scented air, and the terminals offer several masseuse courses or a playlist of relaxing music.

In pride of place, a three-tiered heated bath in the centre of the room, each tier able to fit five people comfortably.

‘Comfortably’? Well, it could definitely fit more, but it might get a little awkward, depending on your feelings on personal space. Ditto with the sauna, really. But the important thing is, you got here first.

Didn’t you?

Getting Draughty In Here

The lower floor of this carriage is open and sprawling, with two wide, low tables and plenty of cushions and beanbags. The walls are lined with shelves and wooden chests, both filled with games. Board games, card games, you name it, though train themes feature heavily. On a shelf of its own sits a case of Duel Monsters cards.

The upper floor is split into two. One half has a pile of oversized games - lawn jenga, twister, giant connect4 - and the other, sectioned off with soft rope barriers, hosts a screen, a console, and a variety of video game controllers, including four VR headsets.

Perhaps you’re testing yourself in one of the VR Crisis simulators. Perhaps you’re learning the rules of a competitive card game a little too well, and your friendships are suffering accordingly. Perhaps you’ve convinced someone to play twister with you..?

Shiver Me Timbers

You are aboard the PNV Vexation, a first-rate ship accompanied by several escort vessels currently halfway through a voyage across the Sunsea of Yarra, AKA #59352110. The cargo she carries is of utmost importance, and must reach the Shining Port intact.

The pirates who sail the Sunsea have other plans.

Team One

The Vexation has several sloops in tow - the best of which are the Gemstone Heart, the Fallen Lord and the Duckling. Team One is split across the three sloops, and can use their greater speed to good effect in boarding actions. Your job is simple - sink every unmarked ship that approaches the Vexation. The captains are cooperative and daring, and happy to lend out boarding axes and pistols. The pirates are less happy.

Team Two

Back aboard the Vexation, it seems that either the crew are playing tricks, or something more sinister is going on - whispers of spirits roaming the deck at night, strange screams or whimpers in the hold. Lights off the starboard bow. The day holds no such terrors, and shipboard life is mostly ropes, deckwork and stints on the masts, but as the mission continues, the crew are getting more and more restless… Team Two needs to figure out the source of these strange events, before they incite the crew to mutiny.

Team Three

Unbeknownst to the crew, on the second day of the mission, the precious cargo is loaded onto the fourth and fastest of the Vexation’s escorts, the Sun’s Edge, and sent ahead, while the fleet remains as as a decoy. Team Three are sent aboard the Edge to crew the ship and keep the treasure - something sealed in a large, padded steel pyramid - safe. The pirates don’t notice the deception, but the sea serpents definitely do, and with just one serpent able to wrap its entire length around the Edge, the third day is a harrowing one.

Comments

[inquisitor_lavellan]

Zechs had definitely caught the elf's attention. Platinum blond hair and bright blue eyes wasn't the most common combination, so he'd reminded her initially of her brother.

But that was where the similarities had seemed to end, and she'd continued to study him because... what the fuck else was she supposed to do on this thing?

"Not really, no," Alley grunted. And then, because the guy hadn't seemed to react with too much surprise to being stared at, "Should there be?"

[zechs_isonfire]

"I would be surprised if there was," Zechs remarked dryly, and apparently small talk was a thing he did now, trapped on a train hurtling through the void. "You don't look like a person who I would've meet in passing, in the reality I was abducted from. So I doubt our paths have crossed before."

[inquisitor_lavellan]

"I know, I'm pretty memorable," Alley's rough tone couldn't be any drier if she tried. She folded her arms, after a little bit of a false start because one of those arms was... well. A bar.

Still not used to this.

"Don't take it personal, I've been staring at everyone. I want to know what kind of bullshit I'm dealing with."

[zechs_isonfire]

A soft snort. "You could say that."

His reality also didn't have ... was she an elf?

That really didn't matter.

Zechs' eyes narrowed slightly, but he's taking that seriously. "I assume you've already gotten the full explanation about our current prison. The people abducted can be even stranger. But it seems you're very capable of handling any threats tossed in your direction."

[inquisitor_lavellan]

"Any threats? That may be stretching it a bit," the scarred elf had no qualms admitting it. "I don't have my shield, or armor. A mace and a high pain tolerance can only do so much, and I'm the last person to pretend otherwise."

Gotta be realistic.

"But I'm not paranoid, either. If people on this contraption were prone to attacking one another over every little slight, I'd have seen it by now."

[zechs_isonfire]

A small smirk. "Fair enough. It was more a turn of phrase than a threat assessment. Though I will say, a stubborn will and high tolerance for pain does get a person pretty far, through my experience."

Zechs shrugged a little. "Depends on the slight. And the tools they have available. If someone's determined, I'm sure they'll quickly have another person here killed - but there's already been a murder which has caused more cautious people to try to limit the number of arms available."

His skeptical tone, mild though it was, said more about his opinion about that half-hearted measure than his actual words.

[inquisitor_lavellan]

Alley issued a noncommittal grunt to that, and reflexively dropped her right wrist to her opposite hip to make sure her mace was still hooked there. It was.

"Well, if I piss someone off enough to take a swing, they'd better get it done in one hit."

[zechs_isonfire]

"That single strike wouldn't be enough to spare them - you'd just regain consciousness in the luggage carriage," Zechs told her. "Death isn't permanent here, which I suppose eliminates a lot of people's motive to kill other passengers."

Unless they were into killing someone over and over again, but he did hope without much optimism they'd never get a sadist like that on this train.

[inquisitor_lavellan]

"Well, cyclical revenge-murder would at least pass the time."

That joke's so dry it might just blow away in a stiff breeze.

[zechs_isonfire]

It still got a soft snort and a smirk from Zechs. Not precisely a cheerful expression, but he was definitely amused by her sense of humor. Much like his own.

"I'd hope there would be at least some delay in revival, if I were involved," Zechs agreed in much the same tone. "Would only offer slightly more challenge, else you might both end up in the luggage carriage, repeatedly choking each other out."

[inquisitor_lavellan]

"That just sounds like any given night in Orlais."

Or at least, she'd wanted to choke a lot of people out, in that place.

[zechs_isonfire]

"I'm sure I'd appreciate that reference more, if I knew what kind of place Orlais was," Zechs noted, but not dismissively. He was a little curious.

It reinforced at least that she was from a completely foreign reality.

[inquisitor_lavellan]

"Stuffy nobles in masks all trying to outmaneuver each other in a big political Game," Alleyana had no qualms describing Orlais as exactly what it was, "and also competing to see who can fuck over the elves the hardest. They were in the middle of a civil war before I stepped in and smacked some sense into them, but I'm sure they'll go right back to it now that I'm not there to babysit."

Not even because she was on another world, either. She'd gotten what she needed from Orlais, versus Corypheus, and had left them to their devices since. Maybe everyone would get lucky and the gentry would all murder each other.

...Probably not, no one on Thedas was ever that lucky.

[zechs_isonfire]

Nobility in masks? One side of Zechs' mouth twitched slightly in an aborted smirk. Now, wasn't that familiar. But he judged she was being figurative more than literal, like most of Romefeller.

"From my experience," Zechs observed dryly, "internal upheaval can seem like the only way to bring about any change. Especially in a stagnant, inherently destructive system."

He paused for a moment. "That being said. I understand peace is often the ideal anyone would want to reach."

Himself included, as much as that warred with half of his nature.