❪ test drive: #1 ❫

[natha]

OVERFLOW POST

YOUR STORY BEGINS     The Storm came. You only remember darkness, but you don't remember much after that. All you know, perhaps, is that it was cold as you slept. You don't know for how long you slept, but the dreams were short, at least. You remember the expanse of stars and the universe that came in view. Every world and solar system ever known was displayed in your dreams in careful, pristine detail. You have also witnessed The Storm, which has devoured a fair portion of these galaxies. It was a dark, thick smog; ominous in appearance and ever foreboding. Your Earth and similar planets were immersed in The Storm. Somehow, you knew it would be the last you'd see of it. That was when she told you what happened, and how you can help. You knew that you'll be living somewhere new, even though you never asked for it. The details here weren't clear, but you knew you'd made a deal with Darma. Not long after, you'll wake at Thesa Station — Your body is still cold. It was all a dream, but somehow, you knew it wasn't — now, will you keep that promise you made to Darma? PROMPT: THE MESS HALL     It's fascinating to the Orbiters how such a dull room can be turned around so completely with people in it. All meals are served by Roman, and while all the food is delicious, some of it is a bit odd. Is that neon green soup? That’s hideous. If you happen to be in the mess hall at a particularly unlucky time, you and the food will suddenly begin to drift. Someone’s got jokes, and they’ve turned off the gravity control. Now it’s just you, your fellow refugees, and the floating sea of food. Wait, did that person just chuck a pie in your direction? PROMPT: TRAINING MODULES     While it’s all nice and well to familiarize oneself with Thesa Station, it is most advised that new arrivals venture out a bit. Not physically. No one is quite prepared for that yet. However, there will be several virtual reality training programs set for those who dare to be adventurous. For those who aren’t and don’t dare, well— good luck, all the same. Be advised, however, that participating in one of the training modules will start you off favorably with the Natha Orbiters’ in terms of REPUTATION. Once seated and appropriately strapped in, the system will automatically whir to life and the dense foliage and forestry of a section of El Nysa will open up. According to one’s map registry, it clear to see that it’s miles from the outer gates of Olympia, but not as far enough to venture into any other territories. So, in that sense, you’re safe. 1. Or you could have been, but unfortunately the wilderness is home to various types of beasts and monsters hailing from different universes and galaxies. On the bright side, perhaps one of them will be oddly familiar to you. Or maybe someone else who is currently synced is willing to give you that extra helping hand. Fortunately, if you’re powerless, there are options. From telekinesis to flight, there are strange abilities one can adopt and “test” out in the virtual reality. Granted, you’re only limited to one at a time. They say in the near future, some of you may be granted these abilities under certain conditions. But, please practice some caution. You aren’t alone in the system, after all. 2.. Who do you fight for, the VR system will ask you individually before you enter the module. The righteous Olympians, or the free-spirited Wyvers? Whatever your choice, when you enter El Nysa, you will wholly and truly believe your allegiance. A. Working together: You now have to suffer the consequences of your choice, as you and your partner have been captured by guards of the opposite faction. Now jailed and soon-to-be tortured, you must find some way to negotiate your release. Perhaps you’ll find some means to escape without detection. Maybe you’re the “fight your way out” sort of people. B. Facing your enemy: That person you stepped into the VR with? They’re out to capture you. Or maybe you seek to capture them. 3. When you enter the virtual reality, things aren’t exactly how they’re supposed to be. Maybe that’s natural, especially if this is your first time, but the problems here seem a bit more fundamental. Maybe you find yourself under a parental safety lock, and you’re suddenly censored. Exposed back? Censored. Body suit? Censored. Or replaced with a mascot costume. Worst of all? You can’t sign out. Not right now, at least. Regardless, whatever it is— ridiculous filters, body alterations, or even body swaps with other users... you are assured it’ll all be fixed with due time. Zasere sends his humblest apologies and promises no more wire chewing, or so the announcement states. PROMPT: STASIS UNIT     You have found the massive section of Thesa known as the Stasis Unit. There’s no special access required to access this part of Thesa Station, but refugees are warned that it may not be for the faint of heart. Here, in large pods that nearly cover every square inch of the space, are all of the people the Orbiters have managed to rescue. Your loved ones, your greatest enemy, your next door neighbor— you might find them here. These people are in a state of deep cryosleep. Due to the damaging effects of The Storm, their bodies are not yet ready to be awoken. PROMPT: HANGAR STATION     You find your way to the hangar station. Here rests are a factory worth of docked mobile suits. You recall how the Orbiters had previously spoken of a "space frontier," but only after seeing this you realize how real their words are. Most machinery have marks of wear and tear, assurance that they have indeed been used before, and an assembly of others are going through repairs and maintenance. No one seems to care that you've just strolled in. In fact, there seems to be a couple of the aircraft that beckon you to take a closer look. Maybe you’ll only look on the outside, maybe you'll be greeted by the hand of a mobile suit extending toward you and welcoming you to its cockpit. You go out and explore SPACE!!! Unfortunately, that mobile suit should have warned you it only had 20 minutes of flight time left in its system. Or, perhaps, you’re a particularly ambitious pilot and you’ve strayed past the designated perimeter. Either way, the HUD display is now blinking with errors, cropping up with a single message: DISTRESS SIGNAL. 1. You’re the poor sap who happened to chill around the Observation Deck. Unfortunately, everyone seems busy with the influx of mobile suits out and about, and the only one who can answer this distress signal is on the Navigation System, well, you. Hope you can figure out the controls fast enough. Guide the pilot back to the safety of the hangar using the most efficient route possible. Keen Navigators will find an instruction manual that provides a shortcut to automatically return a suit back to base. 2. You’re actually sitting in a two-seater mobile suit. Funny how that works, isn’t it? Maybe you were unwittingly dropped down a hatch, or dragged along for a joyride by your ambitious co-pilot. Either way, it looks like help is going to take some time... PROMPT: OMAGE     Upon receiving your mobile phone, you will be asked to set a username. Voila, you can now access the network! You can choose to send a message to the entire network, specific usernames, or you can try out the Orbiters’ service, Omage, which connects you to a random user. They thought this might be a good way for their new guests to make friends with each other... Connecting to server... Looking for someone you can chat with... You’re now chatting with [username]... Say hi! PROMPT: WILDCARD     You are welcome to write any scenarios in Thesa Station! Characters have been granted temporary access to the Observation Room, and are encouraged to study it carefully. FINAL OOC NOTE     These threads may be carried over as game canon if players choose! Players are encouraged to submit TDM threads as application samples, but they are not required. Please direct any OOC questions to the questions thread below! A Training Module thread of AC length on the TDM may be submitted for 1 NATHA ORBITER REPUTATION POINT after acceptance. QUICK NAV premise ● faq ● world ● map ● reputation ● npcs taken ● reserves ● application calendar ● hiatus/drops ● modbox [ FULL NAVIGATION ] elnysa nysalogs nysaisles nysaooc elnyan

Comments

iii.

[unprays]

She, too, is there to watch the faces she loves the most, faces she has not seen for far too long: Bran, Arya. She spends hours cataloguing the smallest differences in their features, the signs that her siblings are far more grown now than she remembers, that she has missed it all.

But they are safe, and that is what truly matters.

Still — not all the faces are as welcome, as well loved. Sansa is not alone, and the woman, with her light hair and innate grace, draws her closer even before she speaks, her voice cold as wind that speaks of winter. Her question goes ignored, as Sansa looks into the pods, her body stilling, her expression shutting off.

"I wish they had died in the Storm," she says instead of answering, her eyes fixed on Cersei's face.

[jelmazmo]

Had she grown up in Westeros, she would have recognized the girl's features at once as those of a Tully of Riverrun. All the stories in the world and she's still painfully ill-prepared to meet with someone from her homeland. It bristles at her, that she'd been forced to stay away this long. That she should know every face to match every name. Alas she does not for now, though she is given a helpful hint as those blue eyes linger over the pods containing children with long faces and dark colouring; the hallmark of the Starks of Winterfell, Tyrion had mentioned.

Violet eyes watch her carefully, she not at all put off by just how much taller the girl is than she.

Then she turns her head and almost as one, they gaze upon the visage of Cersei Lannister. To know her fury is shared is as a sort of vindication as it sparks in her eyes, which narrow in a gaze of utter disgust. This woman's husband had felled her brother at the Trident. Her brother, next to her, had killed her father. Her father had cared nothing when her sister-in-law, nice and nephew had been slain. And now, if she could, she would command Drogon to render her asunder with dragonfire.

The fate she deserves. Her knuckles turn white, and she shakes her head. "That would have been more of a mercy than she deserves. Which is none."

[unprays]

Daenerys does not recognize her, but the moment Sansa looks at her, truly looks, her blue meeting violet, her eyes widen and she looks down. The hair alone would have been enough, but the eyes, piercing, bright like jewels, leave no questions to be asked.

It is no surprise, for a Targaryen to hate the Lannisters.

"No... she doesn't. Will you give her none, once she wakes, Your Grace?" she asks, her eyes still firmly fixed on the pod — but Sansa is no fool. Only those still living have been saved from the Storm, and across the sea, only one Targaryen was rumored to be alive.

(She had asked, in the ship sailing to the Eyrie, if the rumors of the Targaryen queen were true, and why no one had expressed concern about a queen with real dragons. Why do you think no one concerns themselves with winter until it is upon us? Lord Baelish had responded, and Sansa understood.

And remembered.)

Daenerys Targaryen may not have been a queen, here, at least not a queen with lands to govern — but Sansa would not risk offense.

[jelmazmo]

Tension draws the line of her body tauter than a bowstring as she looks up into the face of her enemy with a quiet rage burning in her eyes. A good thing the pod separates them. Unable to reach her and thus do more than wish for her end, she is left to seethe instead.

A moment passes, and then violet meets blue as their gazes lock and hold.

This girl has been wronged by Cersei, and deeply. Daenerys inclines her head, attention focused intently upon her companion rather than the pod. "She will rue the day she wakes. Would you be by my side should it ever come?" Vengeance, then, would not be hers alone to exact nor bear. Her advisors slumber peacefully in pods of their own, and so, she finds herself lacking in that sort of camaraderie.

Her identity is no secret to her. A thing she had marked, and now rewards with a small smile. A faint shadow of the warmth of which she is capable. Red hair and a loathing of Cersei give away her companion's just as easily.

"We meet at last, Lady Sansa. My Hand has told me a little about you. From what I've heard, it is your right to be there when this woman meets her end."

[unprays]

It stills her, the recognition. For someone who may have passed for a statue moments prior, she ceases in all movement, even breath, though only for a moment. (How can she know me? My name?) Then, she breathes, jerks her head into a nod, both hasty and uncertain.

"I would be honoured, Your Grace." It is the expected response, yet a certain fire still burns underneath the agreement, a wish no high-born lady like her should express, the desire to seek vengeance. But Sansa has been a victim for too long.

She does not smile, and one might wonder from her features if perhaps it has been so long since she has truly smiled that she has forgotten the motion — her eyes battle between the wariness she can't yet shake and the curiosity she can no better hide.

"Your Hand?" she asks, unable to hold it back, as she only knows the bare minimum of what she has heard in rumors, about this dragon queen; to hear it is not the same for her companion fills her with surprise.

[jelmazmo]

Had a certain dwarf never been smuggled out of King's Landing in a crate, there would never have been any recognition to be had. And she would have been the poorer for it in more ways than one. Tyrion has proven himself to be worth more than any value might possibly quantify. Looking up into the piercing blue eyes of the woman he'd said had been his wife, she can see a little of why he had admired her.

"Good." That steel in her is so familiar that it might as well be a bosom friend. Once, she'd been meek and pliant, soft. Weak. A thing she is averse to feeling at all now, let alone allowing herself to betray to others. This girl may be similar to her in that she'd not been born this way. Life has made them as they are.

Dany notices the lack of a smile, but keeps her wondering to herself. Commenting on it would serve no purpose.

"Yes, someone you are familiar with as I've heard it told. Tyrion Lannister." Truly, she is finding this web of Houses and their various allegiances and enmities to be precisely as complex as he'd warned her they'd be. This, then, is what the Wheel does to her people when left unchecked.

It is a sobering thing to witness with her own eyes.

[unprays]

As Sansa looks at the Targaryen queen, she doesn't see even a glimpse of weakness, not anything that would give away just how similar they had once been — yet now both carry steel in place of their skin, one burning hot and dangerous like dragonfire, the other cold as winter.

Life has not been kind to either, but perhaps thinking life had kindness to give had been where Sansa had been mistaken, once. In life, monsters win.

"Lord Tyrion?" She cannot hide the way her eyes widen, upon hearing the name of her once-husband. She is swift to look down, to let her tone be only soft, the only emotion bleeding through that of relief.

"... I see. I'm glad to hear my Lord lives and is well." Truly, a part of her means the words, is gladdened to hear Tyrion made it out of King's Landing alive and well, that he has found himself a better queen to serve. A better purpose. But another part of her, the part that had whispered to never trust a Lannister again, is petrified. She knows, better now than ever, that Tyrion was only ever kind to her. And yet —

[jelmazmo]

One could say that standing side by side as they are, both women represent two sides of the same coin. So alike, and yet opposed. Just now, it is what they share in common which overrides all else. Loss, betrayal, all begun by House Lannister. Should either the Kingslayer or his sister ever awaken, they will not be long for this world.

For they will know justice, even if their own world has burned to ash. They remain, and so they will be avenged.

"Apparently, Varys recommend me quite highly to him." There is a touch of warmth to her tone, now. He has not failed her since he'd been brought before her in the fighting pit. She dare not wonder what she will do without him here until he joins them.

Dany can see no small amount of hesitation in Sansa, and gazes upon her for a long moment. "As I am, as well. Does his presence trouble you?"

She knows only that which she has been told, yet. There is much she needs to learn.