Test Drive Meme 023

[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!

Dio's Legacy

In an alternate almost exactly like the one inhabited by the Voidtrecker Express, fate went another direction. Instead of the first addition to the train's structure being the games carriage, this train's passengers voted differently.

What makes them happy?

Crocodiles.

The Crocodile carriage isn't a misnomer. It's teeming with reptiles of various sizes, basking under sunlamps or floating lazily in the raised tank built across half of the available space. To be even better for morale, they're all perfectly tame, and unnervingly friendly; it's rare that a passenger is able to cross the carriage without being accosted by some crocodile or gharial looking for attention.

Harvest Void

The greenhouse is a surprisingly bright room, its vaulted ceiling made of a transparent, incredibly tough material that shows the light of the Void along the entire length of the room. The single metal support beam is bedecked in roses. The aisle of grass running through the centre of the carriage is riotous with strange plants and flowers, small stone paths leading off to this patch or that of vegetables or closely clustered fruit trees.

And all of them are laden with produce. Whether a stray spell or a particularly good mood from one of the resident forces of nature, every plant in the carriage has matured at once. Shrubs overflow with berries, rows of stalks groan under beans and tomatoes, apples threaten to fall from overhead branches at any moment.

You may not normally be a gardener, but today it's all hands on deck!

Cold Iron, Warm Hearts

The duchy of Yipre is one of several close-knit factions on one continent, known for both her expansive clockworks and strong links to the Fey. Central to the capital is the Clocktower, the palace home to both the Duchess Stomen and her court of scholars, diplomats and engineers. Home also to a key point in the Ley, where the mundane world and the Fey intersect just enough that one may cross from one to the other.


But the Clocktower is sundered, entire sections of iron and brass sheared away in a great earthquake, and neither world is faring well in the aftermath.

Team One

The gear sprites of the Clocktower are missing, running amok in the streets and squares of the duchy. They're tiny things, fluff, metal filings and dust made quicksilver-fast, with small, glowing eyes and bell-like voices. While normally they keep the machinery of their home running, they aren't nearly as talented with anything else, and are causing general chaos with all devices and machinery they run across. Find them, and herd them back to the Tower. Maybe get them out of the typewriter first.

Team Two

The gateway to the Fey realm is torn, and dreaming magic is spilling out from the Clocktower. Finding the Voidtreckers' minds fertile grounds for its taking, imagined creatures and realms are conjured forth from all kinds of worlds and all kinds of lives. There are many ways to combat these - play them through until the magic is satisfied, for example, or find the Voidtrecker whose mind is the source, and stop them dreaming. It's up to the Voidtreckers on this team to decide.

Team Three

The Clocktower isn't quite in ruins, but large sections are crumpled like tin foil. In other places, steam and magic spill out into the air in a chaotic mix, burning and twisting the air into glittering leaves or long ropes of thorn. And through this, those that called the palace home fight to free themselves from the wreckage. Courtiers, servants, engineers… and, somewhere, the Duchess herself. Help who you can, but find her.

Comments

Harvest

[springforth]

Persephone had slept in today, a blissful rare occurrence that involves ignoring the sudden wakefulness and burying under a blanket until the room cleared. Which is why she's still in pajamas at this late hour, hair mussed from sleep, blinking in the bright light of the greenhouse.

Well, her and a good handful of beings. In every corner was evidence of growth, every plant in its prime, the branches weighed heavy with vegetables and fruit. Huh. Persephone slapped her cheeks. Nope, awake.

"Did I do this?" She frowns, floating over to the tomato beside Hecate. She had been several train cars away but... She guesses it's not impossible? Others have control over plants, but none quite so much as her.

"If it was me, what was I dreaming about?"

[officedragon]

"I haven't the foggiest," Hecate admitted with a shrug. She couldn't help but smile a little at her young friend's disheveled appearance. Nor could Hecate resist tousling Persephone's hair a little. "It doesn't exactly feel like something you've done? But it doesn't not, either. And I'm really the wrong type to notice this sort of thing."

Considering her usual influence was in the Underworld, in any case...

"Don't worry too much about it. In the long run, I suspect this will be remembered as a good thing, honestly. I can't think anyone will be upset about a plethora of new food choices!" She certainly wouldn't complain.

[springforth]

The fussing with her hair reminds her so vividly of her mother that she almost reaches to bat at her hands. Persephone stops herself just in time, fixing her haphazard bangs instead and smiling crookedly.

"Eventually. Even if someone else did it, it is kind of my thing." She gestures, then gives the plants a dirty look, "It would just be a whole new fun problem if I start doing things like this in my sleep. Here's hoping one of those plant mages just got out of hand."

[officedragon]

Hecate gave a slight snort of a chuckle at that. "I'd almost see about taking the credit. It's going to be good, it surely couldn't hurt you." She'd probably do it in a heartbeat herself, if this had been anything she could spin as her doing. Sadly, it wasn't.

It didn't prevent her from encouraging Persephone to do it, though!

"I don't think you've started to do things in your sleep, though. That doesn't sound like you at all. I wouldn't put too much thought into it." Hecate paused, then. "Unless it happens again. If it does, I'll help you get to the bottom of it--and if it's you or one of these other mages around getting out of control. That is my purview, after all."

[springforth]

"We have plenty of magic users for you to corral, I'm sure. Just what you always desired, I'm sure."

Persephone stops fussing, at least a little relaxed by Hecate's dismissal of her fears. Sure, it could be her or it could be the the various magic users or it could even be the void itself. Sometimes, it really did feel like the train was messing with them.

"I have to say, whoever did it did a good job. Not easy to pull all these things into the peak of harvest if it isn't your area of expertise. It's very impressive for a mortal." Persephone starts plucking off handfuls of tomatoes and one goes in her mouth. She hasn't eaten yet after all.

[officedragon]

She gave another low chuckle at that. "I'm sure they'll love it." It might not be what Hecate had always desired, but she certainly wasn't against teasing mortal magic users.

Or putting the fear of a goddess in them, if that was what it took to keep them a bit subdued! She loved chaos, Hecate did, but there were times when too much was too much, and she did pride herself on knowing when to corral her impulses.

Most of the time.

"Are you trying to take the blame or the credit?" Though Hecate is grinning at Persephone, brows arched. "I suppose you could take both, but I don't really suggest it!"

[springforth]

"Neither! I just find it impressive, as one who practices the same...craft?" Is that the right word? For every dozen things she picks, one is going in her mouth. She'd never shirk the work but she will take advantage of it.

"You know what I mean. I've always found mortals to be interesting in their own ways. And you get used to their limitations after living with them for months. It's been...very different. Kind of have to think like one sometimes." Persephone shrugs, "So this--wouldn't be that hard for me or mom, but for a mortal, impressive!"

A strawberry dangles from her fingertips, poised to be eaten, as she pauses.

"I never thought I'd be friends with mortals. Took me two months to decide if I was going to be open about being a goddess at all. You know how humans get about things."

[officedragon]

"For such short lives, they overthink so much," Hecate sighed. Even as she enjoyed toying with mortals at times, she also felt sorry for them. They got themselves all worked up for the most inexplicable reasons--inexplicable to her, at least.

Which she also found odd, considering how long she'd been around...

"I do think I get your meaning, though. Some of the magic users here do things so...backwards? They really accomplish amazing things through such convoluted ways. Things that I'd find as easily as...say, breathing?"

Half of her wanted to try to teach them easier methods, while the other half wanted to see how they managed without it.

[springforth]

"I think I have that in common with them sometimes."

Persephone picks a few more handfuls, humming to herself, then pauses, "The overthinking, not the convoluted ways of doing things. Obviously. You can't hold them to your standards though. It is, literally, what you do."

She dumps a few peppers in Hecate's hands, since she's nearer that particular basket and grins, "I was honestly a little surprised you were picking these by hand. Trying to fit in?"

[officedragon]

"Well, compared to many of us, you're a lot younger. Not that I'm trying to lord that over you or anything--we both know you're incredibly talented, and wise for your years. You have an easygoing way about you that puts people, mortal or not, at ease with you. It's a skill, and not always one that's easily learned. I don't have it, as an example!"

Not that Hecate didn't have talent to handle people, or she wouldn't have been where she was at Underworld Corp. She didn't put them at ease, however--disturbing the complacent and comforting the disturbed was where her skills tended to lay. Or, perhaps, the boot to a posterior that needed it.

"Oh, well. Maybe a little. There's a time and a place, you know. There are plenty of folk with powers here, so it surely wouldn't be out of place, but here there's no one to really call me out for doing it, either. Though you just did." Hecate only laughed at that, though. Persephone was one of the people who could get away with doing it!

[springforth]

It's never really felt like a skill. For all she envies those with natural leadership and self assurance, it never occurs to her that other would feel the same about her. Honestly, Hecate has never really felt like she struggles with people but it's probably a little different to be a boss. Different skillsets.

"Thank you but--really, I envy how at ease you are at work. Or really any position" Persephone lifts both hands to the room around them, full of people at work and chatter. "You never really seem phased. "

[officedragon]

And here, Hecate just gives Persephone a smile. A tired one, and perhaps a little on the weak side.

"You've just never seen me phased, really. Trust me, there are times I'm phased." A good number of them involved Minthe, and Hades himself, and a lot of their conduct (or misconduct, as the case might actually be), but it's activity that it's Hecate's job to also keep under wraps. So the details, such as they are, are not forthcoming.

"Then again, that's also why I keep a fridge full of beer, so when I relax after work, I really can unwind--and then do my best to keep my head, you realize." Maybe she didn't, but Hecate was willing to explain that much.