xistentiaooc | TEST DRIVE MEME #11

Test Drive Meme #11

To men that mix and meet her from many times and lands

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, reaching toward a brilliant blue sky.

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 rich, green forest across the sand. Beyond that, the glint of a faraway city.

"Chance" Encounters

Your first week in Xistentia^[2], it's obvious you arrived just after a crisis. The shield above the glinting green city is flickering erratically, shifting strange shadows across the ground. You see a few hazardous waste disposal bins here or there, and clear, glassy orbs that seem to match the bin slots.

But spirits seem high. People greet you in the streets, and you bear witness to a profoundly weird, sudden uptick of public wedding proposals that can't possibly end well? Still.

That's when your daemon starts acting funny. Whether by "GPS" routing you with wrong directions to wherever you had originally intended to go, or by physically pulling you off-course, your personal assistant seems bound to drive you right into the path of another passer-by.

You don't know them yet. But whether it's coffee spilled downy our front, an armload of groceries that goes rolling, or the fact that there's a bird visibly about to take a dump on their head&mdahs; you're about to.

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

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.
If you decide to join the game, this prompt may be patched over into the upcoming event, which involves a welcome party that comes under attack.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ the absurdity of tony's actions is enough to confuse him for a few moments, time enough for the human to offer an explanation and curb ain's urge to just walk away. winning the war is important, after all - something that's enough to get his attention. ]

Magic.

[ he folds his arms and the projection field turns fully translucent, an oval that outlines his body and carves out a good amount of personal space. it appears to be some sort of polyhedron with over a hundred faces, glittering in various translucent shades of pale blue. ]

You are looking to replicate it?

[The numerous facets of the forcefield are unlike anything that Tony has yet seen. He twists his head, looking for any variation in the gradient or geometry of light, the possibility that it's being emitted from something on the man's person. Clothing? Jewelry.]

Replicate some aspect. Understand the principle. Why does it refract light in this pattern?

[Finally, he steps back. Motions over his shoulder. In the distance, his own daemon is coming up, a lumbering gait. An android woman, all grey steel.] I'm Tony Stark, [he adds.] What's your wizard name?

[ so, the human is impressed? that's good, at least. such magic was at least partly designed to impress. ]

The Goddess who grants this blessing wills it to take on elegant geometry.

[ SO ACTUALLY, IT HAS NO REASON. the projection field appears to be a shell, and the various faces of the polyhedron refract light at different angles. it's very beautiful (?). ]

Ainchase Ishmael. You may call me Ain. I am not a wizard, I am a priest.

[ that's a distinction he has to make. Ms. Wizard is one, he is not. His magic is granted by divinity. ]

[It is beautiful. Tony finds beauty in many things, even if he's never the type to talk about it in such terms. He'd much sooner make some vaguely wise-ass compliment. Rich white boy irony. It works in his own homeworld, after all.]

Goddess, [he mutters under his breath. Another tap-tap-tap against the facet he had been messing with, and then he lets his hand fall.]

Nice to meet you, Ain. [There's a twitch of his jaw. He's resisting making some other smart-ass remark-- not a compliment.] Tony Stark. I'm a mechanic. No chance you arriving in this place has thrown you into an existential tailspin and crisis of faith, that your religious power has miraculously survived? [In other words, how much of a goddess do you really need for sparkle fractal fields? TELL US.]

[ he regards tony with the same icy gaze, chin tilting just the slightest sliver upward - haughty, perhaps, but there's a level of self-assurance too that might be attributed to unwavering, unceasing faith. ]

Of course not. The Goddess is with me always.

[ ain lets the projection field fade back into transparency, so that they are talking without being obstructed by a light wall. it's not the answer that tony is looking for, sadly - for his field is sourced from his inhuman nature, and he's not about to tell the truth about that one. ]

[Tony is not incredibly good at recognizing unwavering, unceasing faith, but it's somewhat familiar to him. He's spent an awful lot of time with marines, for whom questioning their leadership was a foreign thought, often punishable with treason.]

We should meet some time. Let me run some tests. [Science meets religion— a tale as old as time. Tony's mind is fundamentally skeptical, but when he's faced with something as tangible as a glimmering crystalline forcefield, his initial thought isn't: it isn't happening. A beat. It occurs to him that 'let me run some tests' doesn't sound particularly engaging for a man of-- fanatical faith?]

Or learn about Her-- Holy Word. As. One does. [He gestures abstractly.]

[ it's quite evident that tony probably isn't interested in hearing about the goddess Ishmael - perhaps a good thing that She did not run off scriptures but instead a code of conduct, related to the preservation of the world. so by coming here and acquiescing to tony's request, he would still be following Her wishes.

even if it's not something he wants to do, personally. ]

This is for the expansion of defense, yes? I will allow it.

[ there is some merit working with a human who can acknowledge the fact that his pride isn't entirely unfounded ]

[What, are you saying that Tony's act of religious curiosity isn't convincing?! I mean fair enough. But there is legitimately something to be said for provable, empirical consequences to acts of faith. Scientifically as well as, one imagines, philosophically.]

Perfect.

[Tony offers the other man his best or worst smile.] What's your daemon's name? I'll shoot you the directions to my workshop. Maybe we'll save your goddess, and you'll get into your Bible.

[ it's rare to work with a human who knows what he's doing, so he'll give tony the due respect for his abilities. most other humans end up asking irrelevant questions. ]

We will save her.

[ and he says it with full conviction, as if the alternative has never occurred to him in the first place. ]

Eid. When do you wish to meet?

TEST DRIVE MEME #11

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