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

[tailwhipping]

"True. Lots of you unfortunate soft ones here," the lizard remarks, absolutely deadpan. Her jaw parts slightly, tongue lolling out and back in with a deliberate motion. "But I'm used to that."

She backs off from the stove as he joins her on this side, gathering up all the dead frogs with a sweep of her tail and transferring them to the nearest worktop. She-- okay, she downs one more of them raw and whole, but even as she does that she's pulling a knife out of a sheathe on her leather belt.

Using both the knife and her claws, she starts cleaning the frogs to be cooked.

[smithandwesson]

You know what?

At least she agreed to start working. So the lizard had a habit of eating the rations before they were fully prepared for everyone. Whatever, Sanzo can get more. At least, unlike most, they seemed to have a mutual understanding of what needed to be done.

And so he observed, watching as she deliberately began to cut and clean through the carcasses with almost admirable precision.

"Not bad for someone who came to the kitchens to just mooch food from others."

[tailwhipping]

"I feed my pack, when we travel," she says, pushing the first couple of cleaned carcasses in his direction. "No kitchens on the road, no taverns in the wilds. Only forage and prey--"

Her head whips to the side. A twitch of her tail at the base amplifies to a whip-crack by the time it reaches the finger-width tip, and she snaps a jumping frog straight out of the air. About eight feet away.

It's a long tail.

"I don't mooch," she tells him, hands going back to work while her tail deposits this newest carcass alongside the others. "My guts are just stronger than yours."

[smithandwesson]

That was a scenario he understood all too well. Sanzo was perhaps far more familiar with such a lifestyle than any other human living in a better functioning society. Just himself, a few others, and the tremendous untamed wilds, simply getting by and surviving.

"Certainly eating enough of those before letting anyone else have any," He says with a bemused snark. Watching as she manages to grab yet another wayward frog who just happened to cross her tail's path. Well, that was one less frog to infest the cabins, he supposed. "Just 'cause I'm hunting these down for everyone to eat doesn't mean that you can start digging in before anyone else gets to them-- Ability to digest them raw or not."

With that, he looked down at her belt with interest.

"You have another knife?"

[tailwhipping]

Her jaw hangs open again, the skin around her eyes crinkling up a little. "I replaced the one I ate," she points out. Her voice is still deadpan but-- it's possible it's always that way? Certainly she hasn't been very emotive thus far.

She follows his gaze down to her belt, then looks back up with a flick of her tongue. "Dagger or throwing knife, yes. Working knife?" Which is what she's assuming he's asking about. "Only this one."

She plants the knife in her hand tip-down in the wooden work surface so that it stands upright. Long and thin-bladed, perfect for butchering, begins to revert to a more utilitarian size and shape.

[smithandwesson]

"Hmph," Of course, his own response back was mutually monotone and void of emotional tinge. Not that he was incapable. But this lizard-persons responses didn't seem unnecessary enough to bother him by any means. There was a bit of understanding in the way she reacted. "Pity. Guess most of the work is going to be on you then."

Not that he wasn't okay with that. He already put enough work into catching the damn things; it was nice to stand around and watch someone else do the job in his place.

Shame he didn't have anything to smoke as he observed.

"Ever cooked these things before?"