Test Drive Meme 021

[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!

Spring Cleaning

Chores aren’t for everyone. And, as the morning reaches a close, it turns out that they are especially not for wizards.

That is to say, someone may have cast a spell animating all of the mops, brooms and dishcloths on-board, which are now sweeping their way up and down the carriages, cleaning everything - and everyone - they can reach. And animating anything else they can find, for maximum efficiency. Books, clothing, cutlery-

This isn’t so bad in the bathrooms. In the library, however? The armory? Bang, and the dirt is gone.

Open Mic

The ground floor of the music carriage is usually a mess of instruments, but tonight they’ve all been tucked away neatly at one end of the room. Chairs from the upper floor have been carried down en masse, all facing towards the jukeboxes and screens at the other end.

You might not be entirely sure who rigged them for karaoke, but you know one thing: you’re here now, a drink in one hand and a list of popular (by someone’s standards) songs in the other. If people aren’t singing or waiting to sing, they’re cheering friends on, or skulking and trying everything in their power not to be called up, or even escaping upstairs to talk more comfortably.

’Til Death Do Us Part

The world of Abarranz is ruled by the Undying Lords, and has been for almost two thousand years. The civilisation has stagnated - not only due to the immortal council, but also because the majority of its citizens are undead. Some, the rich, the powerful, are able to undergo great rituals to maintain their consciousness and skill even in death; others are unfortunate enough to be dragged into death with neither, and exist as shells of themselves. The greatest necromancers of the planet are harnessing the death of a minor star in the system to fuel a mass conversion of the remaining populace, but the remaining living citizens are those who have already refused the change. Voidtreckers, they cannot resist alone.

Team One

Pockets of the living survive in hiding, but are split off from one another and unable to unify under the overwhelming forces surrounding their enclaves. This first team is tasked with clearing the mindless hordes threatening them, so that they might establish communications, venture out, and join the fight.

Team Two

The best way to escape the ritual is to remove the remaining living to another colony in the system - but the rituals and spells able to do so are all jealously guarded by the eternal council in their libraries and vaults. A viable target has been identified - the treasure rooms of the Viscount Eldermann holds a tome rumoured to contain a mass teleportation ritual. Infiltrating and securing this tome is this team’s task, and while the mission is possible, the traps and guards won’t make it easy.

Team Three

Even with these plans in motion, every second counts. This third team is given the role of saboteur - to interrupt, delay or otherwise slow the Grand Ritual of a Star’s Demise from within the stronghold of the Undying Lords. The dressing carriage - and their SCA wristbands - are at their disposal, the former for appropriate Abarranz costume and pallor, the latter to hide the telltale signs of life, should they have any.

Comments

1

[trivialization]

"What am I supposed to do with copper ingots on a train, huh?"

Eva looks around the shop, brow tight with the casual disdain she wears as her more or less permanent cloak. Of course, the real question on her mind is: what is a caster - or Caster, if she must deign to allow the implicit claims of status and competence that seem to hang from the capital C - powerful enough to alter a space to this degree doing selling common trade goods? She picks at the threads of the magic with a dubious air, as though expecting the entire shop to collapse on itself at any moment.

But while Eva knows her magic inside and out, she doesn't exactly have much life experience with saleswomen, for all her years. Else she'd know better than to open her mouth at all.

[shitcopper]

"What are you supposed to do with copper ingots? Copper ingots of this quality?" Caster taps the stack of ingots with all the care of a used car salesman slapping the roof of a car in front of an unwary mark. "I could barely even begin to describe the number of uses!"

She siiiidles over closer, grinning like a shark. "Let me tell you, this copper comes straight from an age where Mystery still ruled the world. Any magus with an ounce of magic will feel the difference using this for their magic rituals, implements, items, or components. You can slap some of this copper on an amulet and get double, no triple your mana input! But surely you knew that much already, right?"

[trivialization]

Eva didn't trust grins on general principle. Grinning was something idiots did. The kind of girls who wore bells in their hair. She eyed the ingots suspiciously, her distrust and general common sense warring with the narcissistic need to defend what went for her magic cred.

"Yeah I don't need to be lectured by some clerk about what makes a good amulet." Evangeline Athanasia Karen McDowell, everyone.

"Well, when you get to my level you don't bother too much with anything less than a major artifact. I wouldn't need anything like that except for messing around. And lately I mostly work on dioramas anyway."

She oh-so-casually dropped a mention of her favorite magecraft hobby, shrinking landscapes down into glass spheres for convenient transportation.

[shitcopper]

"A discerning eye and expert talent! What an amazing" mark "customer!" Caster drifts over to the other ingots, showing off the silver and gold. She's learned, in modern times, that these two are generally considered to be 'higher-class' than copper, and she is more than willing to accommodate in order to make her mark feel better.

"Then perhaps you should look at these metals. Uncorrupted by modern science! One-hundred percent pure! Metal of this quality was used to forge Excalibur the Sword of Kings!" This is, of course, a lie. "If you're looking for something worthy of an artifact, look no further! And, of course, if you'd rather pursue other magecraft hobbies with it, it will serve beyond adequately in any capacity."

[trivialization]

"Excalibur?" Eva snorts. That may have been a claim too far. "Fine then. Let's have an order worthy if legend. I'll take the footfall of a cat, the breath of a fish, and a nail from the true cross."

She gave Caster a leering, triumphant look, expecting her to be appropriately cowed in the face of her overreach.

1/2

[shitcopper]

"What do you think this is, an apothecary? I'm a wares merchant, kid. You want magical reagents, you go get them yourself if you're worth even half a shit."

[shitcopper]

And then all smiles again! "Now if you want the kind of metal used in the greatest of legendary items, then you've come to the right merchant! The King of Heroes has used my copper in the Gates of Babylon" don't ask, it blew up, "and the Black Witch has used my copper in her magical implements!" Don't ask, that also blew up.

"But if you really want me to collect that piddling amount of magical ingredients instead, you can pay up front and I'll gather 'em."

[trivialization]

Eva ground her teeth at the retort, then bared them in an intensely annoyed smile that only merited the name by the broadest definition.

"You've got a lot of nerve, passing yourself off as a purveyor of great magics when you're just a two-bit trader."

Okay, so technically Ea-Nasir had never claimed she was hawking more than metal. But that wasn't going to stop Eva from running her mouth.

And yet, somehow, the confrontation seemed to bend in the merchant's favor, as Eva sought for a real test to prove who was the real connoisseur here.

"Pure quartz. If you're a real dealer, you can at least provide that much for a mage's project."