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

[saveas]

[It doesn't really matter. If he gets killed by some ghost, well, he probably had it coming. Still, he brushes himself off and glances around the deck again.]

Yeah. I was born in the Underground.

[And, well - he doesn't want to talk about the one time he left it. It'd been daytime then anyway.]

There's a few holes, but you can't really see out of them very well.

[consider8]

[It would matter to more people that you realize, Asriel!]

[She sets the bucket against her hip as she listens. She knows now that there are more worlds that his experience was probably not the same as hers, but still.]

I was born in an Octarian dome. They're these hollowed out half-circles deep under the earth. We weren't allowed to go outside, but we could the inside of the domes would be large screens that would project what it would look like up top.

[Her eyes raise to the heavens that Asriel was seeing.] Poor substitution.

[saveas]

Gosh, that sounds neat...

[Sort of like something out of a comic. He wonders if they ever could have done anything like that - but back in his day, the scientists were all working on the Core, and then, well. Alphys. The point is, they were doing other stuff. Maybe making a fake sky would've been better; maybe not. He follows her gaze upward again.]

There was a part of the Underground with all these blue gemstones in the ceiling. Everybody said they looked like stars, so monsters made wishes on them. But it wasn't really like this.

[.....]

You're not...a monster, are you?

[consider8]

[Nervous chuckle.] I'm sure there are some here and on my world that would call me that.

[She shook her head.] No. I wouldn't call myself a monster. I'm an Octarian Octoling.

But that still doesn't mean we can't be friends.

[saveas]

[Asriel blinks, before - right. Chara had mentioned, how humans use the word "monster". They'd been furious; he can't really bring himself to care.]

Oh. Ha, no, that's just what we're called. I'm a monster.

[Which doesn't actually clarify anything, in his case. That's funny.

It's good she isn't a monster, anyway. She wouldn't know anything about him at all. He already knew he hadn't met her before, of course, but there was a pretty long time before he woke up again.]

My name's Asriel. [.....] Asriel Dreemurr.

[consider8]

[Eight nodded. She wasn't even going to question it. This was a land where humans were still around, demon books led penguin minions, and some claiming to be gods. So he's a monster. No big deal.]

[Suffice it was to say, the meaning of the last name was also lost on her.]

I'm called Eight.

[saveas]

[yeah that's really for the best]

That's an interesting name. It's nice to meet you, Eight.

[.....oh come on, Asriel, you know how to talk to people. Except maybe he never really did, he kinda only ever did have one friend. Maybe two. Frisk doesn't exactly count, he only had like one real conversation with them and he has no idea why they were so nice to him anyway.]

Do you think there really is something here? Like a ghost? We have...ghost monsters, at home, but that's not the same thing.

[consider8]

[Eight give the matter a long think.] Perhaps. Perhaps not. If it is something supernatural, we will have to decide how to handle it then. It may also be someone trying to cause trouble, and we're only making it harder for them by patrolling. Or it could just be some misheard sound by a drunken idiot.

Between the two of us, it usually the last two, 90% of the time.

[saveas]

[Asriel snickers a little, mostly just oddly pleased to be included. His parents never would have mentioned "drunken idiots" in his earshot.]

Yeah. They all seem way too scared.

[It's a tiny bit mean, and he feels a little bad afterwards. Would he, before, have said that? But at the same time - well, it's just some noises at night. He's too old to be scared of that now.]

[consider8]

It's strange, though. [Eight was thinking out loud.] If it was someone that was intentionally causing trouble, then they would either cause damage to things or the sailors would have an idea of who might be doing this.

And this is recent.

So we should probably be on alert. There really may be something out there...

[Whether that thing is a ghost or not remains to be seen...]

[saveas]

[Or they're just idiots scaring themselves with ghost stories.

...he shouldn't say that.]

...maybe. Here...

[Just...just be helpful for once, okay? Asriel cups his paws, and makes a bullet - a little rainbow star that casts a gently shifting multicolored light. He could do fire; maybe he should do fire. That's what his parents taught him. All the stars-and-rainbows stuff is...well, the nicest thing you could say is that it's kinda self-taught.

He likes it, though. And it's not...it can still be okay, right?]

[consider8]

[It's enough to catch Eight's attention. Though she doesn't know what the bullet is exactly, she could tell that is an expression of the heart. Its form seemed designed to be eye catching and spectacular... yet, it also somehow felt a little distant and lonely?]

A light source?

[She's not trying to diminish, but she was curious what made him create this in the first place.]

[saveas]

[Shrug.]

It's just a bullet. Maybe it won't even come if it thinks we can see it. Stuff like that doesn't want to be seen.

[Asriel knows a little bit about causing problems from the shadows.]

[consider8]

[That was a bullet?]

What happens if something touches it...?

[She's used to unusual weaponry, but that's one of the more interesting.]

[saveas]

.....it depends. It can do damage, if I want it to. Some can do healing magic instead, but I don't know how to make those.

[There's the kind monsters use to communicate, too, not meant to hurt anyone. But it's been so long. Asriel feels like he might just not be able to, anymore - and who'd want to touch anything that came from his soul, anyway?

There's no other monsters here, anyway. It doesn't matter.]

[consider8]

[She of course knows none of that, and is instead looking transfixed at it.]

So, it's like magic?

[Magic too is a thing she had no real understanding of. Oh sure she had projectile ink, but that was more of a manifestation of her own physicality than it was an extension of her SOUL.]

[saveas]

[Asriel blinks at her for a second. Maybe he should've started a little more basic.]

Oh, yeah. All monsters can do magic. We use it to fight, or show our feelings.

[consider8]

[Eight nods.]

There are a few humans that know how to use magic. I never quite understood it. But it's always impresses me whenever I see it.

[She does offer a consolatory smile.] But I guess that also proves that I'm not a monster. I'm sorry.

[saveas]

[Despite himself, Asriel snorts a little. Yeah, it makes sense that she'd think he'd want to see another one. And it's kinda even true - he just knows it's better this way. Maybe if they didn't know he was on the train too, or something, it'd be okay...but that wouldn't work.]

That's okay. It's fun meeting different kinds of people, too.