TEST DRIVE MEME: SEPTEMBER

[ryslighelpers]

TDM: SEPTEMBER

Welcome to the Ryslig Test Drive Meme! Below are a few prompts to get you started, but you may make up any prompt you desire! Please take a look at the navigation page for rules, setting information, and links to reserves and apps. Have fun!

SCENARIO ONE

You wake up on the beach thoroughly drenched, with your mouth full of sand. The salt water is making all the cuts and scrapes on your skin sting and the sand isn't helping. The air is slightly humid, ruining any feeling of refreshment you might have gotten from your dip in the ocean.

There are lights in the distance, but the unfriendly scent of gunpowder fills the air. If you're lucky, you're alone. If not - you might find yourself staring up into a pair of monstrous eyes or down the barrel of a local's shotgun.

SCENARIO TWO

So you've just arrived, and already some of the natives are trying to get on your good side with offers of food, shelter and other luxuries in return for hoping you don't eat them. They even have some helpful pamphlets to share with you. "How To Deal With Changes", "Alternatives to Human Flesh", "What to Expect When You're Expecting (to turn into a monster)" are all on the more informative end of the scale. There's even some detailing certain monsters, and the changes they go through. Some of these seem to have been passed down from one monster to the next.

Among these however, are some... not so helpful ones. "Bunnyipyips And You", "Axe Thief Axehounds," and "So you're becoming a Fur Bearing Trout" among others. Sometimes they have marks on them from previous readers saying they're lies, or pointing out good "jokes."

Then there are the people who aren't happy to see you at all. Glares and silent, judging stares if you're lucky, torches and pitchforks attempting to drive you out of the town if you're not. You may need a friend to help you.

SCENARIO THREE

"Seek us out," the voice whispers in your head, and before you have time to question it you've found yourself in someplace entirely alien.

Maybe it's the Fog God's ghostly town of Dyster, where exultant followers dance around bonfires and sing their praises to the skies above. Maybe it's the Fourth God's arcade, with small robots wheeling about amidst the lights and colors of old pinball machines.

Only one thing is certain: you are not alone, in this sacred place.

SCENARIO FOUR

The time has come and you've found yourself becoming a monster. Is the change instant, or gradual? Are you familiar enough with monsters to know what's happening, or is it a complete shock? Feel free to pick any monster type for this prompt, but note that you may not get the same one in game.

Comments

[clonelord]

"A head doctor." Fabius knew the type, if anything, Saqqara and his Word-Bearing brethren had held close enough positions. If he was to examine someone's brain, he personally preferred a more hands-on approach.

Still, there isn't a complete lack of interest to his expression, flat as it's fallen; but it isn't until the mention of experimental medication, that his unruly brows raise and wrinkle his forehead deeply. Fabius sits forward, his own anatomy groaning against the movement that betrayed the way they had settled before.

"What kind of effects?" He chases after the knowledge dangled before him, his tongue darting over his lipless mouth in idle curiosity. It almost feels as if he's returned, briefly, to the Apothecarion—surrounded by practitioners of science and exploration, who see the beauty in using any means necessary for the sake of research.

[dr_feistus]

"Oh -" Paul's voice takes on a brief lilt, the discussion of his favorite subject lighting up his dark eyes. "That depends. Though I found a particularly useful chemical compound which increases awareness to the presence of magical power. And receptiveness to it, as well. Unfortunately, the young woman who was helping me test it is ... no longer with us. She turned out to be more useful for a much different purpose."

He paused, unsure how much else he was willing to divulge ... then realized that it didn't matter, because even in such a short time, he had been able to gather that the magic on the Peninsula was far different than the kind he knew. "I could also convert ley line energy into a pain deterrent, but that was simple enough to figure out once I had the proper resources and tools."

[clonelord]

Fabius' gaze narrows, and for a moment, the calculations run through his head. While he is ever-keen to rely on science before magic, he is well aware of its merit. The line is obfuscated, and even the science that kept him as he was—an immortal conscious—was built around the magic that lay untapped in the wraithbone infrastructure of ancient worlds. Idly, he leans his temple against the blunt, barely-there pads of his fingers, right where those wraithbone nodes that had transferred his mind to countless cloned suits of contaminated flesh had once been implanted.

"It is never unfortunate when subjects die. Dead bodies are still bodies worth keeping for experimentation." He says, with a matter-of-fact and casualness akin to speaking about the weather.

His pitted eyes, rimmed by dark flesh, fall half-lidded in their gaze. As comforting as it is to be speaking with someone of similar background, Fabius can feel the itch at the back of his mind, an impatience akin to an astrophysicist inspecting a middle school science project.

"A pain deterrent imbued with magic is simple." He begins, "but your era is likely primitive by my standards, so for that, you've earned my scholarly interest. It sounds to me you used a psyker as a conduit?"

[dr_feistus]

"I admit, my biological knowledge and training was limited to the living." He says it with a twinge of regret: though the thought of his own death absolutely terrifies him, he knows that progress can always be gained in any arena by careful study of whatever you wish to avoid as much as what you wish to obtain.

When Fabius mentions a difference in era, Feistus sees opportunities of his own, innumerable ones. "We seem not only different in era, but in terminology. I'm afraid in my decades of study, I've never heard of a psyker, but I can infer that it may have something to do with a psychological link. The means I use for collecting and transferring power is far more crude, unfortunately: I had the good fortune to come across someone willing to sell me a rare red spinel orb which collects ley line power and stores it for other applications. I simply distill the essence it collects into my tinctures. It's ... tedious and rudimentary at best, and requires repeated application on a regular basis, but one works with the meager materials at hand. I've found it works even better when augmented with the power and essence of other souls, particularly highly gifted ones."

[clonelord]

"A shame." His words are flat as he settles back into his chair, subconsciously noting where aching bones whimpered.

For a moment, Fabius finds himself thankful that this new, entirely human body no longer endures the stabbing pains of degeneration. He also takes that moment to find a way to sit that's comfortable for his hips, before folding his hands in front of him, with his elbows propped against the armrests.

"You would guess correct. Though it is unfortunate that you did not have the perfect tools at your disposal. Your era sounds to me, archaic, though the reality of the dimension we occupy now would be considered ancient by my terms. Though I doubt your mind can fathom it, I come from the 41st millennium." He pauses as he carefully choses his words.

His gaze as black and iridescent as the Eye of Terror itself settles on the man's hands, as the thought of just what potential lay within them with right breeding grounds for innovation.

"Though it is commendable that you were able to decoct raw power with the crude tools available to you, if anything, it speaks of your tenacity. I too have meddled with powers primeval, the secret knowledge locked within akin to finding a precious jewel embedded within the bedrock." Fabius waves a hand in idle gesture, "as acquainted with magic as you are, doctor, I wonder... what is your take on the powers that be of this space?"

[dr_feistus]

Those black eyes are captivating, and in their dark depths, Paul does not see fear and endless horror, as so many of Fabius' victims and patients must have. He sees the sort of black pool one scrys in for answers, a void of potential with messages that simply have not floated to the light.

"It's only just turned the twenty-first, where I am from," he remarks softly, his mind just barely beginning to grasp the depth of what he's just heard. How many advances must have been made? Surely the cure for Hawkings had been found by then ... perhaps even by his future self. Where most men's greed caught a shine at the mention of money or fame, his lights on power and knowledge - and his conversational companion has inferred that there is plenty of both to be gained.

"Most of what I have heard is of a Fog God, the being which brought us here from our own particular domiciles and will enact whatever monstrous transformations on our bodies She sees fit." He pats the stack of pamphlets at his side. "But ... these tiny missives are of negligible use. The gossip of the humans tripping over themselves to serve us is considerably more robust. From them, I've gleaned that they are hoping to gain our favor because even as we have arrived, people who came before us are changing. The cycles overlap. So whatever this Fog is - if She is, indeed, a God, and not simply someone with far more power than Her peers - there is enough power and control in Her domicile to handle more than one momentous outpouring of magic at once."

[clonelord]

At the mention of gods, Fabius' gaunt expression sours. What curiosity he had held is discarded and replaced with a look of disdain that trenches every wrinkle across his aged and sagging skin. Those umbral pools of knowledge that composed his gaze darkens further, as if his brooding stare could even encompass the void of the Eye of Terror itself.

"There are no such things as gods, and I would hope a man of your background—21st millennium or not—would understand that." The words are spat with a weak venom, as if it was a tired truth he spoke of and nothing more. "Vast primordial power, yes, but to claim it the doing of a god would lend intelligence to an existence that is not."

Fabius pauses, his tongue darting over thin, pinched lips to wet them, as his head tilts towards a passing waitress. "Bring me coffee." A command more than a request, before his gaze falls back onto the man sitting across from him.

He's silent for a few dry, ragged breaths, until finally his lips part again. "Magic is real, and it is tangible—that much is known. We know that it can be harvested, studied, and employed. The men of this era are blind to its possibilities, their knowledge of their own world primitive. But, we are here now. Two men of science from the future, with capability that surpasses what has ever been present on this peninsula. We can study it, and we can make it ours."