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

[smithandwesson]

"I doubt there's much difference between our world and any other really, at least not at the core," At least, like this, he was able to keep up the facade that this wasn't affecting him. Not looking at the older monk made it easy to talk, easier to process. Instead, his eyes glazed over as he stared at no absolute thing in particular.

He was angrier at himself. Angry that something like this could affect him as it had been. It was easier to pretend it was in his head- to think he was going crazy. Or hell, perhaps this was some trial put on for him by some sick bastard out there that just wanted to fuck with him.

That was far easier than considering any other alternative.

"No place is utopia, much as no place is true hell. The worlds we live in are what we make of it."

It was as easy as that.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"And yet," Koumyou counters easily, as he puts out his half-smoked cigarette and tucks the rest of it back up his sleeve (he's never been a heavy smoker), "you can't let yourself face that I might be real. We're on a totally different world, in a totally different reality where trains fly through space and time, but the place we come from has made us who we are."

The older Sanzo stays on his side of the corner, folding his hands into his sleeves.

"Things that are too hard are brittle. I'm still figuring that out for myself, here in a reality where... love doesn't... always mean death," Koumyou has to pause after that line. It's still so hard for him, but he's still trying. Trying to use that word, to have a sliver of that most dangerous of four letter words: hope.

Hope, that 'love' doesn't spell 'doom'.

"And where the dead can walk, and talk, and smoke, and even guard a sutra."

[smithandwesson]

The last sentence had managed to perk his interest. Lifting his head with alert as he finally looked off in Koumyous direction.

"A sutra?" Bullshit. There was no way. There was no fucking way. He was already holding one of Koumyou Sanzo's sutras. It was right there, draped around his shoulders for anyone to see, just as he had always worn it. And the other one was back home, in enemy hands far to the west. At least, that's what so many people had told him. So how was it this man who sounded and acted like his old master could be carrying such a thing?

The doubt was painted plainly across his features, not that Koumyou could tell from where he stood. Genjo Sanzo could believe many things at face value. But to trust people's intentions by sight alone was difficult.

Sanzo needed proof.

"You want me to believe that you're carrying the legitimate thing?"

[its_dad_sanzo]

"I mean, I am, so you might as well."

Koumyou takes that as an invitation to step around the corner finally, hands still tucked into his opposite sleeves.

"I could show you, but I never used it around you before. Perhaps I should see if the Maten will still listen to me? From right where it is right now, of course."

He'd guarded Tenkai's Maten sutra for a few decades, after all, just as the small youkai had asked. His bond with it was never quite as strong as his bond is to the Seiten, but it's there.

"Frankly, that's how I know you're real. I haven't met an illusion yet that can fake the way one of these sutras feels. Any of them, really, but especially these two."

[smithandwesson]

Pushing himself from the wall, Sanzo flicked the remainder of his cigarette to the side before folding his arms into his sleeves. It didn't matter how often he looked directly at the man across from him. It still felt-- odd.

And yet this time, he did not avoid Koumyou. Instead, settling his eyes upon the older monk with intensity. The hesitance was still there in his gaze, but this time mixed with a resolve to see things through.

He was determined to understand who this man was. To see if what he said was true without raising his hopes too high.

He will never raise his hopes too high.

"All right. Do it."

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Remember," Koumyou tells him gently, as a warning not to jump out of his skin, "I've never needed to chant."

And then, the Maten stirs. A little sluggish, to Koumyou, but it had been even longer than his time on the train since he'd actually used it.

It stirs, and countless tendrils unfold from Genjo's back and float through the hall like seaweed in an ocean turned on its side. Turned on its side in multiple directions, somehow.

The paper glows that familiar violet, stronger and stronger, gradually, like a knob is being turned.

"Not a full firing, of course. We don't know what in this place might take an interest in that much power going off. I use mine like this a lot, these days. Though I usually don't dial it up enough for the light show."

He considers for a moment, then lets the Seiten on his own shoulders join in, its own light a gold that would turn white if he let it ramp up too high. The tendrils of Seiten float around the hallway with Maten, violet and gold.

"Because it's not a full firing for either, it's okay to wake them both up. I fired them both off one time before I found you, and it made my teeth buzz. And... reality buzzed a bit, too. Jikaku wasn't kidding when he told us not to set them off near each other, but I had to try it out for myself."