Test Drive Meme 026

[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!

Stand Back

The long-awaited laboratory carriage is a place of many delights. And by delights, we mean 'unsafe thaumo-scientific practices'. Whether the chemistry stores, the machine shop and its welding station, the magitech benches sat right next to the physics research area... or the panic showers.

A strange, earthy smell is coming from the biology room. Green smoke is curling under the door of chemistry. The machine shop is eerily quiet, and within a metre of the physics room, things appear to be levitating. At least one of the showers is running, but who knows which room the erstwhile scientist came from? Dare ye investigate?

Autobiography

The library carriage is normally a place of quiet, two storeys of shelves and comfy seating. The shelves are normally a little empty, filled only with what the Voidtreckers have bought themselves... but today, every shelf is filled.

Some books are normal - that one novel you'd been thinking of last week, or the tome of old family recipes you wistfully mentioned to your friend. The lower shelves are replete with activity books for small children, covering topics such as anatomy (for kids! non-human kids, mostly!), holiday activities for familiar and unfamiliar national holidays, and an unnerving number of sticker books that bodes ill for the walls of the train.

Others are larger, gilt or bound in strange covers. Like this one, coloured in a familiar hue, its spine reading only your name.

Fools' Gold

The Voidtrecker Express has landed on the world of Pamsar. More specifically, it has stopped, floating and untraceable, above the mountains holding the castle and surrounding town of the Pale Marquess's march.

It would have landed, but the forests and gardens of the march have petrified. Trees are sweeping spikes and clusters of sharp, smooth jade. Gemstone flowers dot the meadows and twine up walls and around window frames. Mosses have taken on the rough texture of granite. Beautiful as it is, it threatens the march's survival.

Team One

What were cultivated fields of grain are now rows upon rows of pure gold. Blinding, shimmering in the morning light coming over the mountains, but useless for the people of the Pale March. Panic is spreading. This team is tasked with protecting the granaries and food stores from panicked citizens.

Team Two

When pressed, many people appear to know the source of their misfortune. Living at the frontier, the people of their march have grown envious of the palaces and styles of the inner kingdom, and their prayers the last year have been for wealth and prosperity above all else. A wandering deity granted these wishes, to the peoples' regret. This team is to locate the deity's temple in the outlands, and convince them to reverse the blessing. Or else find another of the outsider gods to repair the damage.

Team Three

The forests across the march are now gorgeous, sharped prison bars for the people and creatures that live within them. This team must ingress into the jade woodlands, and rescue those trapped within. For some, a discovery is made: living blood shed on the petrified plants slowly dispels the effect.

Comments

[thesnarkitect]

Through Emet-Selch's storied existence, he had thought he had run out of things that would surprise him. Having another person call him by name? That was surprising. The woman's aether was telling -- the distinctive hue of a Warrior of Light was undeniable... and yet this one wasn't his Warrior of Light.

"...ah, I see..." He remarked as he put two and two together. "...not only have we been pulled transdimensionally, but transtemporally as well. Such a design would be..." Ah. Wait. There was the Warrior of Light standing right there. That thought would have to wait. Moreover, how by her Twelve was she able to intuit his name? She could have been incredibly lucky, sure, but the tone expressed familiarity. There were only a handful of things that would permit this, and he could count on one hand the number of ways that would be good for him.

He shook his head, thinking quickly to direct the discussion away from his thoughts. "Of course you are disturbing me," he sighed. "The only thing worse than your questions is that grim fellow murdering me repeatedly with his eyes. So I suppose between him and you, I would indulge your burning inquiries. Perhaps the education would make you a better person for it."

[dragoonrouge]

Q'uila nods, "Aye, that seems to be the case. Neither you nor Elidibus are from the version of the Source and Shards I hail from. Although," She regards Emet intently, amber eyes piercing, "I wonder if the two of you are from the same universe or no... Anyroad, I am Q'uila Sunrise and there are some things we should probably clarify seeing as we are both currently stuck here."

Taking a seat nearby, Q'uila continues to watch Emet Selch closely, "'Tis likely that I come from a universe temporally further ahead than yours, so my first question would be; what is the last thing you remember before you ended up here?"

[thesnarkitect]

His eyes roll at providing her name. He never was one for particulars until it was important. He chooses to remember despite his presented indifference. The tidbit of information that Elidius himself may also be from a different time and place was worthy enough consideration to at least keep the name.

His posture doesn't straighten when she sits, the same appraising gaze considering both the words she says and the meaning of the words that she says. "What do I remember indeed." An Exarch, unveiled. A plan, ruined. The Lightwardens, slain. An aspirant, failed. A home, retreated. "It would seem that you are the one with the advantage over me in this regard."

His gloved hands steeples and draws close to his face. "May I also observe that you yourself are looking hale and hearty."

[dragoonrouge]

Rather than any effect that Emet might have wanted, Q'uila instead grins in the face of his eternal eye rolling choosing the route of being disgustingly positive. The comment about her health gives more away to her than many of the vague yet double-meaning statements that Q'uila had been expecting Emet to come out with.

And wasn't it honestly like the man to cause more problems than he solve?

Her ears flick in annoyance, she was going to have to talk with Elidibus and renegotiate their agreement. And how long would it last? All it would take was a closer inspection of her aether or for Emet to note the distinctive aether of Azem's soulstone on her person to tell the story of how his future might proceed.

"Yes, I suppose the state we placed ourselves in did not look the most positive. Though surely you accounted for our sheer stubbornness, especially after stealing a dear friend in the midst of a reunion many years in the making." She shrugs, slow and exaggerated, a clear parody of Emet's own manner.

"What path was there left to me but to follow into the depths? I will say that your artistry certainly made the long swim worth it, Amaurot is beautiful."

[thesnarkitect]

A sharp inhalation of breath, as his face softens if but a moment. "...indeed. It was."

Before his tone turns bitter and cold. "I do recall I asked for a monster..." he repeats a line he himself didn't know he made. "...but, tell me..." His eyes narrow.

"...how did you manage to kill me?"

[dragoonrouge]

Q'uila sighs, well if he was just going to come out and ask.

"Since when have I ever given you what you desire, Hades? In short, I had a rather illuminating conversation with Hythlodaeus when jumping through bureaucratic hoops. Tell me, Hades, what do you see when you regard my aether?"

[thesnarkitect]

"Indeed." Emet snarls at the mention of the shade of Hythlodaeus. He really did spend too much attention to detail...

"If this is some sort of test, then it is a rather poor one..." Emet bent forward to give her aether a closer inspection. "Naught but a broken husk..." He stares dismissively. "...eight times reforged."

Oho... what is that on her person...? He notices that something familiar is there but makes no effort to let her know that he did.

[dragoonrouge]

"I would not be so angry at Hythalodeus, afterall, he noticed something you either have not realised or do not want to realise about the aether of the Warrior of Light, and he seemed surprised himself that you had not seen it."

The urge to either poke him on the nose or just push his face away is nearly overwhelming when he leans forward, Q'uila had never minded her relatively small stature even if she was tall for a Miqo'te but the Emet Selch of her world had seemed to take some form of amusement from it and even now it annoyed her but she does acknowledge his accuracy with a mod.

"The first time he approached me in Amaurot 'twas not the state of my aether he commented on, 'twas the familiarity of its hue."

[thesnarkitect]

That would be low hanging fruit, as that all but the tallest roegadyn would be shorter than him. Regardless, she hears her words and chiseled frown forms. While she may implicitly remind him of someone... he wasn't going to permit himself to remember. Perhaps it was his continuing sense of duty that would be compromised if he found "them". Perhaps it was because Zodiark that prevented him for its own purposes. Regardless, this line of inquiry only further increased his irritation.

"If you have a point, pray get to it. These sort of games are more in keeping with the more clandestine of my order... unless you have decided to join us?"

[dragoonrouge]

"Come now, I thought as a fan of The Arts you would appreciate the build up suspense!" Q'uila's teasing is gentle but fleeting, an attempt at some small measure of levity in the midst of such a serious conversation.

"Oft had I wondered what caused such stubbornness from you in the face of my aether; Zodiark mayhaps or the weight of the many millenia but the you I crossed weapons with did see it, even if he denied it in the moment, and it was such that Hythalodeus, my 'new, old friend' to use his words, entrusted me with thirteen crystals to pass on...and a fourteenth to keep in my possession."