crystalclods | Test Drive Meme | August-September 2016


TEST DRIVE MEME
Welcome to the Cosmographia Test Drive Meme! This is a place for you to test out any characters you've been considering for the game or just to splash around in the waters and see what's right for you. Give our infopages a glance over and use the prompts below as a jumping off point! Threads from prompt A and B can be made canon for the game so long as both parties agree to it! Prompts C and D, unfortunately, cannot, as they take their cues from events and Excursions already run in Cosmographia. In short - pick a character, write up a starter and have a blast!
PROMPT A - ARRIVAL
You don't remember getting in this hole but you definitely remember falling out of it. You go tumbling out into the heart of a cavernous temple. Sparkling Gems suspended in bubbles float lazily about the ceiling, just a little out of reach. There's a greenish glow cast over the room by the huge crystal looming before you in the center. It's... curiously heart shaped, now you think to take a closer look at it. If you're curious enough to touch it, you'll get some basic answers about your situation... but then again, there's no guarantee you're just going to walk up to a giant weird thing in the middle of a giant weird room and touch it, right? Why not take a look around and see for yourself what kind of place this is? Perhaps you'll run into someone in the same predicament as you, or perhaps you'll run into someone who can help explain why there's a weird rock now affixed to your body?
PROMPT B - THE FARMER'S MARKET
It's Thursday in Waverly Bay, and that can mean only one thing: the weekly Farmer's Market is here again! The town plaza is all abuzz with activity today. Stalls not only from farmers on the outskirts of town but from crafty residents with interesting homemade items to sell, and businesses looking to attract the Market's crowd are all here! The weather's a little chilly but it's still an excellent place to spend the day, so long as you've got some money to spend. Are you shopping for a good deal on vegetables for dinner? Or perhaps you're getting a feel for the residents, having recently arrived? Or, perhaps, are you an industrious gem who's looking to set up shop? Either way, you're bound to run into somebody in this bustling, busy place.
PROMPT C - INVESTIGATION
Now that you're starting to get a hold of your powers, you've been sent through the warp pads on some kind of mission to the Gem Observatory. From the sounds of things, there's an ancient relic here somewhere that could serve useful for the Gems in the Temple and someone has to go out and find it. ... the only problem is that you're not exactly sure where you should start looking in this place. And on top of that, it's a complete mess. Junk and debris and books and papers everywhere with no clue where this relic could be. You're going to have to do some serious digging to find this thing. And on top of that, you might find that when you try to go back the warp pad you took here has managed to stop working in between your arrival and now. Maybe something went wrong back in the control room? Or the pad itself needs fixing? You'll have to poke around in the guts of the machine to try and figure this one out.
PROMPT D - COMBAT
Uh-oh! Looks like you've run into a monster! These critters can pop up anywhere around Waverly Bay so it doesn't really matter where you were before or what you were up to. All you know now is that you need to buckle down and beat this thing! *Giant Mothwing* - With broad wings that shed scales on the wind, this corrupted Gem bears a striking resemblance to a large moth or butterfly. The body between its wings is no beauty, though - it usually stays rolled into a wheel-like spiral to protect its flat, pinkish gem, but when it uncurls to attack it looks more like a worm with teeth. Yikes! Loud noises make it lash out in agitation. Even when it's not attacking, it flies around restlessly, shedding sharp, glasslike scales that can leave nasty cuts as they whiz past. It'll be hard to get close to it unless it's lured down out of the sky. *Chameleoid* - The shape of this monster's body is more like a tardigrade than a lizard, but its camouflage ability and long, sticky tongue are worth commemorating. The Chameleoid can flatten and expand its body, and change the color and texture of its outer hide to blend in seamlessly with its surroundings, and it uses this ability to duck in and out of battle. Keep an eye out for suspicious movement when it vanishes from view. The Chameleoid shoots out its 20-foot-long tongue to disarm, trip up, and gross out Gems, but it's not averse to eating any small objects it might grab. The inside of its mouth looks softer than the rest of it, so maybe you can turn that to your advantage...? *Strawberry Spider* - Though its long, spindly legs holding it off the ground make it look like a spider, this monster is actually mostly made up of plant material. Trees and strawberry plants are rooted in the corrupted Gem's featureless, geometric body, forming woody legs and blanketing the monster in foliage and strawberries. Its aroma may be sweet, but the Strawberry Spider is ruthless and very, very perturbed. It stands 15 feet tall and 25 feet wide, and its skittering feet move fast to stomp on attacking Gems. Thinking of cutting off a leg? Try it, and hundreds of strawberry runners will immediately sprout from the stump to ensnare you. The strawberries are hungry, and they've got a "taste for blood"... Damaging the plants living on it won't actually hurt the corrupted Gem, and they grow back fast. This will be a tough monster to defeat. *Wildcard Option* - Make your own! You know by now that you've got some special powers just from being a Gem. Apparently, from what little you've heard, you can shapeshift into things and pull a weapon from your gem, and you have some sort of unique special power. But maybe you don't know what it is yet, or you're still not used to using it? Guess you're going to have to learn on the job. Don't leave your fellow gems hanging if you see them fighting one of these little guys either! You're going to need each other to take 'em down!
PROMPT E - WILDCARD
Not into any of these prompts? Thought of something more fun? Go for it!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Let's walk. The exit's not that far."

Probably best to walk out, given his size. She leads him out the heart room, through the residence halls, and from there, out onto the beach...

It's a big place, already larger than the Deepwood, that central hub of arrivals in Arda. Also, possibly nicer, though the woods aren't as picturesque.

Outside Julien raises his head. "I hear... cars? And that's gotta be a plane. There's technology here?"

Having bird ears he can pick up on deep sounds humans are unaware of, which carry a long ways.

Deepwood must be tiny. Waverly Bay wasn't that big a town... by modern standards at any rate.

"Yep. Plenty of technology around... but it's a bit behind in this town."

"Oooh. Well, there's cars and electricity, so they've got something going for them anyway." He's pretty sure Arda natives would look with great suspicion on a windmill, even.

The curve of the sea and the sky is lovely. That lighthouse! "It looks nice."

"It's certainly more advanced than Gensokyo I must say." She spread her wings, ready to fly up into the air, because why not show him around from the sky?

Julien's a little bit envious of people who can fly without sacrificing their arms. His wings can do a lot of what his arms could, but he misses them, sometimes.

"All right. You take off first." When he flies he has to create a powerful downdraft. Always better not to do that too near anyone.

The ex-vampire uses both her levitation ability and her wings to take off quickly into the air... She's not as fast as she once was, but even now, she is quick.

Edited 2016-08-23 10:38 (UTC)

Julien takes off with a thumping of white wings, more loudly than he's used to. He's pretty fast himself, but unable to hover.

"You have to admit... flying is fun! Now, let me show you Waverly Bay." Better pay attention, birdie. She's rather not repeat herself. Though, if there's places he wants to stay other than the temple, she can make a few suggestions...

Julien can feel the sun on his back, and on his, well, gem. It's more sensitive than the feather-muffled skin around it. Not in an unpleasant way though, it seems like.

"Has anyone ever doubted flying's fun, unless they're scared of heights?" He has to raise his voice a little over the wind. "Go ahead!"

"There's a cottage called the bird house... Nobody lives there now, and I doubt anyone would care if you moved in. There's an old farm if you want to try the agrarian life..."

"Despite how I look, I'm not actually a bird!" He'd moved himself into a house built into a tree, in Arda after Aaron disappeared. The place where they'd lived before had too many memories.

That was a cave, and that temple there had caves, but they're different enough, it'll be fine. Options are nice, though. "Are you staying back there or somewhere out here, Remilia?"

"Oh, it's just a name. I think a bird lady lived there, hence the name..."

She soared through the sky...

"I have a room in the temple. You'll have your own there... if you so choose."

Ah. "Is this another place where people disappear as suddenly as they appeared?"

Maybe it was better not to set up anything too permanent. Or think of anyone like they were there to stay. That had been the nice thing about being in Locke during troubled times; when someone disappeared there was a reason and it had been treated with alarm as something to act on.

Well, her mind immediately went to Amethyst dealing with her family from home being sent back... "...It can happen... occasionally."

"Yeah," he says, and a sigh is lost to the wind. Finding an upwelling of warm air over the beach Julien turns in a spiral upwards, riding the thermal. "And nothing can be done to prevent it, or follow them, right? I know how this kind of thing works."

"I'm afraid not. That makes me wonder what sort of place you were in before..." Remi follows, because... might as well.

Without the ability to hover or levitate, climbing higher means putting forth more wing power or using updrafts. Far below his increasingly pale tiny-seeming shadow flickers and glides across the sand.

"I was born somewhere where if anyone disappeared it was because someone made them disappear, or they decided to disappear themselves. Then my best friend and I ended up somewhere with different rules, where the whole population of the world just vanished for no reason any of us could see," he tells her distantly. "I hate that kind of thing."

It was fun, though, to fly 'normally' like he was for a few moments...

"That sounds rather... mysterious."

This was probably high enough. Julien could hear the coast extending along beneath him, curving out there before and behind until the sound of surf on land blurred. There were mountains out there that the wind keened against, and storms rumbling as they rolled across the world. He could see the roads parting fields, and little gray roofs, and the dainty shapes of people going about their business.

It was beautiful here. If nothing else, it was beautiful.

"Yeah. So, then. These people down there, what are they like? What do they think about people like you and me?"

Edited 2016-08-25 02:34 (UTC)

One thing she quickly learned about this town was that its people were friendly and welcoming, despite problems popping up that were caused by gems.

"They... actually appreciate us being around. I've never felt unwelcome here."

"...What, really?" That was hard for him to get his head around. The way public opinion turned against the Numbered still stuck with him. The sole people on Arda who weren't weirdly, mechanically hostile orcs were the Corsairs, who were impossibly insular and absolutely focused on profit. "How long have 'we' been here then?"

"I'm guessing it wasn't like that where you're from. There's a native gem that's been here for thousands of years... or so I hear."

Test Drive Meme | August-September 2016

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