Test Drive 032

[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!

Culinary Containment

Every month, the train's stores are filled with crates of ingredients for use by its passengers. And every month, one ingredient is the focal point of all recipes. Potatoes, cinnamon, seaweed… but as the train pulls away from the station this month, there seems to have been a blip in the system when it comes to deciding on a biologically-appropriate foodstuff.

Spilling out from the storage carriage and into the kitchen are hundreds of live frogs. They're in the sinks, they're in the ovens, they're hopping alarmingly close to the transgates that link the area up to the sleepers...

Vote-Rigging

At the behest of its passengers, the train has instituted a voting system to allow for more carriage options and upgrades. Passengers are able to submit new ideas, or crowdfund those already suggested...

It's the night before platform, and all through the train, no one was stirring... Apart from your group, with your stockpile of a thousand points and the luminous voting panel you're all currently pouring them into. Bouncy castle carriage? Funded! Fishing carriage? Funded! Clocks? Eh... You have the points. Funded!

Then it's simply a matter of waiting for the morning, and seeing the chaos you've caused to the layout of the Voidtrecker Express. What new delights have you discovered?

Repo Train

The Void Ministry have another task for the Express: locating and repossessing the contents of a number of minor storage craft in an old mercantile zone. The coordinates are given, a small fleet of space-worthy craft and sufficient hazmat gear has been deposited at the meeting site for Voidtrecker use.

The main area is cushy enough, a round communal area surrounded by living pods renovated for basic Voidtrecker requirements. The hangar above allows for groups to head to the next assigned storage location, or to return with their piles of lawfully impounded gains.

Team One

High-risk storage locations are this team's priority. Potentially explosive material, artifacts or experiments without the requisite paperwork explaining how or why they were made, sometimes living creatures, the kind that shouldn't have been left in a large metal crate habitat for a decade. Opening these areas is a study in initiative and dealing with unpleasant surprises!

Team Two

This team are the back-up for the first group - once the artifacts, creatures or hazardous material has been made safe and brought back, they have to be recorded. Scanned. Studied, and compared to the extensive lists of potential contraband or lost goods. Sometimes, they're not quite as safe as you'd like.

Team Three

Some locations, rather than being used for the storage for which they were intended, have been repurposed by sapients who have developed within the system since the depot was created. Short, furred people with clever, webbed hands and high voices, they've turned crates and ships into cramped, partially-submerged warrens. This team is cleared to assess the damage done, and, if the current official owners of the stores will agree, process the change in ownership to the Su Samuru. Not all owners are happy with their squatters, however...

Comments

[betweenextremes]

She laughs, and this time the frogs don't even jiggle.

"I've never actually been there, just heard stories from travelers and traders, but that sounds like what I've heard. And yes, that's part of the code. It's just... a lot of the traditional Sith think that any use of the light side is a betrayal of the code. There was, apparently, even a purge by a Sith Lord that caused the founders to run away. And yes, finding the crystal is. I searched for two years. The original major source for them was destroyed a few years before I started my travels, and then I was keeping my head down. I don't really want the attention of the newest Jedi, even with the orthodox Sith supposedly gone."

A nod at his last comment. "Like being on a slow hyperspace trader. Not much to do between planets as long as the ship doesn't have any issues, but then if there is one, you're busier than a Gand low on methane."

[stabgremlin]

Purges sounded familiar enough. The Sith didn't like ordinary men like him poking their nose into their business, but some things bled over. A long time ago a man Aden hated had said that the people who worked for Intelligence were the sanitation workers of the Empire. In his new role, Aden was coming to accept that statement as being very true, given that he was constantly mopping up a mess left behind by someone who had more power in their little finger than he had in his entire body.

The discrepancies, he decided, were an issue for another day. Aden liked keeping his mind busy by fitting puzzle pieces together, but his mind was currently full up on mysterious circumstances and questions in need of answers. And for all his adaptable attitude, he was more inclined to be the secretive sort. That was just life in his line of work.

"Not keen on the endless strings of sanctimony, are we?" He asked, with a twitch of his lip up into something resembling a small smile. He understood why of course, he just couldn't resist poking fun at the Jedi, despite having worked with more than one that he actually could say he even liked.

"Something like that. Could also be the five years I spent in carbonite on some jackass's trophy shelf."

He shifted his grip on the stock pot, so he could free a hand to gently push a frog attempting to escape up the side back down. He had befriended said jackass later on, but that didn't change that his sense of the passage of time had changed somewhat in the aftermath, "Once you lose that amount of time, you're just never quite the same again."

[betweenextremes]

"Who really does like sanctimony when you're on the outside of it?"

More frogs float.

"I've heard of that. That sounds like a terrible thing to happen. I hope the side effects didn't last too long."

To explain the whole thing would require a lot more time and digressions that right now either has the time or interest in, but maybe they'll get to it later.

[stabgremlin]

"You've got a point there."

Who indeed. Certainly not him.

"I can't say I enjoyed it. Luckily I've got good friends who wouldn't let me stay a Chiss-cicle forever."

Just the five years had been plenty bad. Especially since his mind hadn't been entirely his own at the time. That was a long and complicated story though, bordering on unbelievable. One he wasn't inclined to tell, either. He himself was an entire hive of lies and secrets, after all, as any Intelligence operative should be. That didn't change just because the current circumstances were a bit unusual.

Whether or not it had been a terrible thing, though. Well. He was fine now, so he couldn't really complain.

"So these recipes... Are they a secret or can I pester you to share them with me?"

[betweenextremes]

“I don’t see why I can’t share them. My master said that being a teacher of the Force didn’t pay bills, so he was a chef, and made me learn it too. He also said it taught one focus, judgement, and timing. It all made sense when we started lessons on alchemy, but they’re not some kind of recipe you’d find in a holocron.”

The line of frogs ends.

“Now I find myself wondering about ancient Sith recipes for food, but I also wonder how many of them are just for poisoning enemies and living through it yourself. Galactic conquest sounds exhausting.”

[stabgremlin]

"How pragmatic."

It made sense. While plenty of Sith went on to find riches in their careers, it wasn't true for all of them. For those not traditionally aligned it would be even more complicated, he imagined. And with the inconsistencies between what he knew and what she seemed familiar with, well. He could imagine that the Force itself didn't pay the bills. Or even being Sith in and of itself, apparently.

His head tilted slightly to the side as he pondered Sith food and poisonings, and galactic conquest too, "I wouldn't be surprised. So far as conquest though, it makes sense. If you read peace is a lie literally, then trampling on the lives of others is a convenient way to ensure that there's always going to be strife, since living sentients aren't naturally inclined to politely bite the curb so some Sith with an ego the size of Coruscant can stomp them."

He gave a slight shrug of his shoulders, "Poison an enemy with your cooking, and that enemy's buddies will come running to get revenge for what they've lost. Same thing, really, if you look to strife in particular to be what brings strength, power, victory."

Aden was an outsider, of course. He only knew what he'd seen.

"I do find it ironic that some Sith seem so chained to the literal interpretation of a code that is supposed to free them, though. If I couldn't enjoy a simple meal without worrying about being poisoned, I don't think I'd ever consider myself free."