TEST DRIVE #9

[spoofer]

Test Drive Meme #9

Desires and dreams and powers

INTRODUCTION ⇄ FAQ ⇄ APPLICATIONS

CRASH LANDING

Exit one dimension, enter the next. It was chaos: pressure against your ears, light bending in an impossible, unimaginable way. The very molecules of your body vibrating against one another. If you have windows, the view outside makes no sense. Even if not, your hands, your face, your feet seem like an uncertain thing. It's the feel of reality itself tearing apart, reshaping, reconnecting, thread by thread.

And suddenly, there's a beach— or ocean, whichever you land in. Smoke. Fire. Salt water churning up, fizzing around, almost at odds with the thinning layer of snowmelt over everything.


Maybe you crash, in a ship wrecking into sand. Maybe you merely stumble out of a portal, a ragged wormhole in space. Or maybe you fall off the back of an incredible steed, some creature that carried you into this place. Either way, there's pandemonium around you. Incredibly, severe injuries are far and few between— nobody's screaming about the dead. But you might have to help pull someone free of wreckage, or move quickly to salvage burning belongings from the landing craft. Maybe it's the crafts themselves, that you're trying to salvage.

Likely, you don't know them, these other strangers who arrived here^[1]. Maybe you don't trust them— you just came out of a dying world, after all. But you all have one thing in common: you're here now.

When you get a second to breathe, maybe you'll see it. The winter-browned forest across the sand. Beyond that, the glint of a faraway city.

Power Problems

Your first week in Xistentia^[2] is punctuated by power outages. It seems ironic, considering the city's street lights gather emotional energy and nothing bugs people out like electrical blackouts! But there you go. Fortunately, your daemons don't completely stop functioning; however, they do get oddly slow and sleepy.

Maybe you'll be in the streets, handing out candles and flashlights. Or maybe you revel in the darkness, curled up around someone you care for. Sometimes, the other senses seem to get stronger in the dark; you could hear a lover's heartbeat going like a drum, or speak stories through the walls with your neighbors.

But the next moment, your powers go on the fritz, absurd and unexpected. One moment, you might be carrying a cup of coffee brewed at a cafe that utilizes a pyrokinesis in these dark times; the next moment, the cup is floating out of your hand with newfound telekinesis, and snow is blowing out of the coffee shop doorway. Powers might be reversed or nullified, or even amplified.

But maybe once you recover from the shock, you can have some fun with it.



Just watch out for accidental animal telepaths and their Disney Princess squirrel trains.

NETWORK

Xistentia now has its own 'friending app.' You can use it to make connections with new people! But beware, your daemon may well post without your permission, and things could get pretty embarrassing.

F.A.T.E.S. thought it was a pretty good pun: Synchr. Get it? Like sinker? Hook, line, and?


TEMPLATE
Select and copy the code below, paste into your comment. Please also keep in mind that this comment code is different to the entry code should you join the game! (The font is tiny for ease of copying!)

<raw-code><center><div style="background: url('https://i.imgur.com/LMmsp9R.jpg'); margin: auto; width: 300px; height: 500px; padding: 30px; border-radius: 20px;"><div style="font-family: Arial Narrow, sans serif; text-transform: uppercase; font-size: 28px; text-align: center; letter-spacing: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px; border-bottom-style: groove; border-bottom-color: #999; border-bottom-width: 1px; line-height: 16px" align="center"><i><b>synchr</b></i></div>

<div style="width: 275px; height: 275px; border: 5px solid #b7d1ae; border-radius: 170px; padding: 0px; margin: 15px auto"><div style="background: url('http://i.imgur.com/i0hSO7K.gif'); background-size: cover; width: 225px; height: 225px; border-radius: 180px; padding: 25px; background-position: center;"><div style="background: url('** YOUR PROFILE PICTURE URL HERE **'); background-size: auto 220px; border-radius: 130px; width: 223px; height: 223px; padding-top: 223px; border: 1px dotted #000"></div></div></div>
<div style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial Narrow, sans serif; text-transform: uppercase; margin-top: -10px; text-align: center; color: #000;"><b>NAME</b> ▐ AGE</div>

<div style="height: 120px; background: url('https://i.imgur.com/m5GzmXX.png'); overflow-y: auto; margin: 5px auto; border-radius: 6px; padding: 10px">
</raw-code>** INSERT YOUR PROFILE CODE HERE **

<raw-code></div></div>

<div style="clear: both"></div></div>
<br />
<center><table><tr><td style="text-align: center"><span style="font-family: times; font-size:40px; color:#2EB82E;">✓</span> </td><td style="text-align: center"><span style="font-family: times; font-size:40px; color:#CC0000;">✕</span></div></td></tr><tr><td style="text-align: center"><big><big><big><b>YES</big></big></big></b><br />
<textarea><span style="font-family: times; font-size:40px; color:#2EB82E;">✓</span></textarea></td><td style="text-align: center"><big><big><big><b>NO</big></big></big></b><br />
<textarea><span style="font-family: times; font-size:40px; color:#CC0000;">✕</span></textarea></td></tr></table></center></center></raw-code>

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE

hells yeah

Footnotes

1. Some of these can be nameless, plot-device NPCs to facilitate interactions! But even in this case, please avoid gore in describing their current state of being. Anyone dead or catastrophically injured will have disappeared by the time your characters make it to Xistentia. There are no corpses or dying here.
   
   
2. If you decide to join the game, this prompt may be patched over into the upcoming event, which may result in new powers for your character. Please keep an eye out for a mod announcement soon!

Comments

Vrenille | Guild Wars 2 (OC)

[cryfrustration]

Crash Landing
It's easy to celebrate to soon. That's the lesson Vrenille is going to take from this mess: don't celebrate too soon. Because less than two days ago he was listening to a certain Commander declare victory in the fight against Balthazar before the people of Amnoon, touting success in killing the rogue God of War. Not two days ago, the city Vrenille had been in was one big open air party, which was definitely not the apocalypse.

Then the brandstorm came. (Turns out there are some consequences when you hand an elder dragon the power of a god.)

It wouldn't really be possible to talk about a normal brandstorm nor to differentiate it from an "abnormal" one. Not amidst all the chaos and the wyverns, the dragon lieutenants and the rain of purple crystals hurling through the sky. Certainly red didn't really fit in with the general color scheme though.

All Vrenille really knows for sure is that one moment he was scrambling along with a group of refugees, trying to point them to safety and to smash as many branding crystals as he could manage along the way. He had allies with him, a sense of their places in the battle. And then he dodged the strike of an elemental, saw the shimmer of a strange red glow, felt his body contort impossibly as if someone had just turned him inside out like a glove...and now has stumbled, reeling, onto the beach.

Dizzy, he staggers, knees hitting the sand. He's dressed for the heat of the desert and the water here is cold enough to sting like needles as it laps up over his legs. He can't think about that now though, because even through the shock of his arrival there's still the inevitable panic: Where the hell are his comrades?? Are they safe? Are they here? Are they dead? ...Is he dead?

"Kyinnlen?" He pushes himself up, ignoring how he's shivering as he spins round to try and find his friends. Pretty soon he's just shouting their names. "Sesyria! Hakkyuu?!"

Power Problems
A few days in, Vrenille is adjusting. He's not doing great but he's adjusting, trying to refocus all his worried energy into the idea that what he does here should--will, he resolutely tells himself--ultimately save the people he loves. He can work with that. Things are (kind of) ok.

Or so he thinks right up to the point where everything's going a bit wonky: he wanders bleary-eyed into the kitchen one morning, makes himself a nice cup of tea, and then accidentally knocks the milk over because he can't see his own hand.

He does know how to cast invisibility spells. The invisibility part itself isn't the problem (under regular circumstances, that is, when he knows that it's coming and can usually see through his own illusion so as not to lose track of where he's putting his limbs). The fact that he didn't intend to do it is the problem. A few seconds later, it passes though, and he chalks it up to an odd glitch, has his breakfast, and goes out to start his day.

Unfortunately, he hasn't noticed that it's happened again as he's stepping out the door and rounding the corner. He doesn't notice anything at all, in fact, until someone walking the other way runs unceremoniously smack into him with a solid thud. Can't really blame them though, since no part of him is visible, not even his clothes or his shoes.

Wild Card
[[Hit me up with whatevs. Happy to switch from prose to brackets if you'd like.]]

power problems;

[servomotor]

[It's kind of funny. Well, it's probably funny if you aren't Tony Stark, who was walking around the green-treed boulevards, preoccupied with a wireless audio conversation with his daemon, which is currently trying to record notes about his latest hovercraft design. He's being rather serious, actually, talking about equilibrium and output and waste heat ventilation, when suddenly

whumpf

and he ends up dropping his coffee all over the pavement. His eyebrows go way up. He wheels around, comically, his eyes snapping up down, left right. And then automatically, he reaches up at about the height of the average human's face, and tries to crabclaw his hand shut around it.]

[cryfrustration]

Shit. [Vrenille staggers a step back with the impact. By a chance of small luck (hey, everyone is due a little), the majority of that coffee does not end up splashing on him. This is a fact that Vrenille has to appreciate by feel though, because it's when he looks down at himself that he realizes there's nothing there of him to see. Again. That's actually more upsetting than running into some poor guy on the street like a clumsy ass.] Shit!

Sor-- [Well, he was going to apologize, but considering there's a hand reaching out to grab his face, he's just going to put that on the back burner in favor of dodging out of its way. Trying to at least. He doesn't really manage it, but he does duck to the side just enough that Tony will end up grabbing his ear and a handful of hair instead of his nose or (worse) sticking a finger in his eye. Still,] Fucking ow!

[servomotor]

[Tony has experienced a great many peculiar things in his forty-odd years of life. He's flown in a man-shaped tin can. He's fallen in love. He's carried a nuclear bomb through a hole in the fabric of space, and fought a veritable Norse god and survived.

But he's never grasped an invisible ear that started yelling vulgarities at him. Possibly at the situation, rather than he himself. One sympathizes. It's a very strange situation, and Tony is (remarkably, problematically) good at not taking things personally.]

Hey. Quick question-- [smithing-callused fingers pinched around Vrenille's earlobe grind together. Not with strenuous force, not really trying to hurt him, just trying to figure out what it is he really has ahold of here.] Why do you feel cartliginous? Theories welcome.

[cryfrustration]

[Tony pinches, Vrenille twists and pulls as he swats at Tony's hand.]

Man, would you [whap] let go [whap] of my damn ear! [whap whap. The words tumble out in a quick stream, and then he huffs.]

I'm not cartilaginous, I'm invisible! [Which, of course, doesn't also preclude his also being cartilaginous, but shhh.]

[servomotor]

[It would seem that the invisible force at least, doesn't discharge invisible tazers, neurotoxins, that kind of thing. If it did, Tony would be experiencing a lot more regrets. He hangs on for another moment, craning his head, trying to tell if there are at least air ripple distortions around the entity he's managed to grab...

...but eventually he lets go. It's fine. A little underwhelming if it's just an ear. Alas.] Your ear feels like standard human biology, [he informs the invisible man.] The rest of you, on the other hand. Is it a suit?

[inevitably, the next thing that happens is a poke to the middle of vrenille's chest.]

[cryfrustration]

Yeah, standard issue human, thanks. Good to know I didn't turn invisible and become a charr.

[As far as invisible men's voices go, this one sounds just a little bit put out. He's not annoyed per se, but this really isn't how he was planning for his day to go. Hell, this isn't how he was planning for his whole life to go. But as they say, when life hands you bloodstone dust...don't try and turn it into food because there are absolutely no culinary applications for that shit.

Anyway, Tony's hand is poking his chest, and Vrenille is (pointlessly) looking down at it where it's hitting. By feel it must be right at the center of his shirt--a perfectly ordinary, cotton shirt with a little bit of embroidery just below the collar.

Suit? What? Was he supposed to get dressed up for something? He watches the hand coming up against the invisible barrier of his body in bemusement.]

You get any more handsy with my 'biology' and you're gonna have to buy me dinner, friend.

[servomotor]

[Tony's still trying to see him, but only half-heartedly now. A lot of staring, cocking his head, tracing what he presumes would be the edges of the other man's frame-- maybe his hair?— under the glare of sunlight. It's a long few seconds before he gives up, his eyebrows kinking low with amusement.] That would be the dinner getting way too intimate for my innocent mechanic's eyes, [he says.] Assuming it'd stay visible, and I'd be over here watching it take sausage form in your intestines.

Not really my area of specialty, although I could obtain a Ph.D. equivalent with the right incentive. [He shrugs, finally letting drop his hand.] Not a suit. Magic? Did someone cast a spell on you? Things like this kind of. Happen, in this world. Somebody should've warned you.

[cryfrustration]

[Sausage form, what? Who even thinks of shit like that?? Right, no, focus, Vrenille.] Ok, first off: ew.

Second: I'm pretty sure I cast the spell on me. Just...without knowing I did it? Not sure how that's possible, but-- Gimme a second here.

[He closes his eyes, exhales a deep steadying breath, and focuses on what it feels like when an invisibility spell ends, trying to make himself appear again. It takes a few moments, but it does work, and in the span of a heartbeat, suddenly he is standing right there, as visible and solid as any normal person. Opening his eyes, he's fairly relieved to see his hands held out in front of him. Alright, so good start.]

This is the second time today with this shit. You're saying this is normal? I'm just gonna have to get used to it? [Because wow, that sucks.]

mild powerpose lmk if not ok

[servomotor]

I'm saying random crap happening like this is normal, [Tony answers the other man. He's no longer staring at him though, turning aside instead to touch the base of one of the trees growing roadside.] This specific crap is a first-timer for all of us.

[And with that, he abruptly lifts up a handful of nice brown soil, and unloads it into around Vrenille's chest area. He definitely isn't aiming straight for the man's face. Paff!]

Think of it as a firewall. New patches all the time.