Test Drive Meme #29

[hadrielmods]

Welcome to Hadriel's test drive, and thank you again for your interest in the game! As always, our reserves page is here, and our applications page is here! Reserves open February 21st, and apps are open March 1st. Please remember that there is an app cap of 20 apps.

Two quick points here as well:

1. Any thread made in Hadriel's test drive will be accepted as the sole Action Log sample in the application.
2. All threads made in the test drive can be considered game canon, either through handwaving or through a shared mental experience while coming through the Door!

Test drives will be broken up into specific god mini-events, during which your characters can see how well they fare under the watchful eye of one of the gods. Choose wisely or just simply pick 'em all, and have fun!

F E A R

SCENARIO ONE: FRACTURED FUTURE?
[The Door brings in all that is chaotic and evil in the world. This may include you, may include the person next to you... and may include the monster behind you.

This time, the Door has decided to bring in some monsters who already have a taste of what it's like to win their war. Welcome to the Risen, from the Fire Emblem franchise!

Risen are reanimated corpses, dedicated to obeying their master's will. While they have some form of sentience, they cannot be dissuaded from their goal and attack all who oppose them with a singleminded desire to execute their purpose, which unfortunately for you is "killing indiscriminately". Still, they're not all bad and some of them may even be relieved to finally be put to death. Have fun!]

T R A N Q U I L I T Y

SCENARIO TWO: ONLY THE GOOD STUFF
[Tranquility has decided to take over Hope's food supply regimen and- well, if anyone thought he was a self righteous hipster before, this is probably what's going to seal the deal. All the food provided in the shops is now extremely vegan-only, from basic lettuce to the most bland fruit you can stand to look at.

None of it even tastes like anything, either- it's all like you're eating water. Maybe to Tranquility, this is a feast, but for you, it's difficult to register that you're even full. Better start prepping those salt mines- it's gonna be a long month.]

R A G E

SCENARIO THREE: YANDERE LIFE
[Unfortunately for you, you came at a time when Rage was very unhappy with everyone- and now you get to suffer for it. Is there anyone who catches your eye? Anyone who you might want to get to know a little better? Well, you're about to get to know them a lot better, because now you're obsessed with them.

It's not the innocent kind of obsession, either- this is a full speed ahead, breakdown, pull out the knives and rope kind of obsession, where your desire to be near someone is synonymous with stalking, being a creep, and overall just not really anything remotely approaching healthy.

Better look out and hope that nobody gets a crush on you either.

This is a mini version of our Kiss me Kill me event this month.]

Comments

Tranquility; because it was too good, I couldn't help it

[kingforboth]

Fortunately for this Christian, Kelson agreed with Ivar. He was none to happy about the food choices. It wasn't Lent, and even if it was, the castle fare was much more than this. Thankfully, Kelson didn't take Ivar's intended insult to heart. He didn't know what the man had against those of his faith but if the Christians he'd met had been anything like the magic-fearing church he'd had to go up against, Ivar, you had his sympathy.

Kelson was holding a head of lettuce, looking less than pleased with his dinner prospects. "Quite. This Christian most definitely had better food than this. I don't suppose there's anything we can hunt?" Because he was not having lettuce for dinner. Absolutely not. Call it his royal prerogative. Contrary to his mother's belief, fasting was not good for the soul.

He was eyeing where you spit, however. Manners. Honestly.

perfect!

[crippled]

Manners? What are those?

It's interesting, though. The non-reaction from this Christian, so Ivar actually stops glaring at his plain, steamed cauliflower and slides his whole attention over to Kelson. Probably unfortunate, honestly. Most people don't enjoy having his whole attention.

"I have not seen any animals," he says thoughtfully, after a moment of sharp observation. True that there are a small handful birds flying around that speak like men, but surely those are of Odin, somehow. Ivar would never shoot one out of the sky without knowing for sure. "Not even vermin, is that not strange?" Many things are strange here, though, so perhaps that is normal.

I live to serve!

[kingforboth]

How lovely, if Kelson realized that the other man was referring to him as this Christian instead of pondering if he had a name he would have been insulted. As for his attention, as long as you didn't mutilate his people and parade their heads inside court or church, he was a pretty damn tolerant man. But there were things he would not countenance. With any luck they could enjoy this conversation about food without their two cultures clashing terribly.

"Quite. I was hoping there might be some game further out." He held up the vegetable he was contemplating. "This is not a meal." He looked at his steamed cauliflower and nods, "And neither is that."

[crippled]

"Well," Ivar smiles, easy and light for now: Kelson has hardly said or done anything (other than being a Christian) to make him lash out, stranded as he is right now in this foreign land without allies. Kelson might look soft, but Ivar is still wary. Looks aren't everything: Harold Finehair looks soft as well sometimes, but he is certainly not. Ivar leans back only far enough as to indicate his legs with a sweep of his hand, tone lilting and wry when he continues. His limbs rest at an odd angle, and don't look... right, even though he's not actually walking (or crawling) anywhere. "I have not been out very far, myself."

He pushes his cauliflower away, more interested in conversation than in the impossibly bland food. "I've heard this is the doing of one of their gods." He always listens for news of gods. Will this Christian protest though, Ivar wonders? As the Bishop always did? There is only one god, heathen, on and on, always and tireless. Amusing, frankly: Ivar had kept him around for a multitude of reasons. "A trickster sort, obviously."

[kingforboth]

Kelson might look soft now, but it was good to be wary. He cultivated his appearance based on what he wanted to project; softness and understanding, king by divine right or brutality. He ran a hand through his braided hair, the plaits tucked under so they couldn't be grabbed. Did he leave his coronet back home? Not home. Just the place he was sleeping. Yes. Good. As if he couldn't feel the weight of it.

He looked at his legs as Ivar indicated, not the first time he'd seen such malady's and he wasn't sure even his own healers could have done something for the man, besides help ease any pain. But he wasn't a healer or a physician and had only studied enough medicine to know what a king should.

"It's too hot outside to go anywhere without good supplies. Or horses." He'd really rather have one or the other.

"No, not gods. Proclaiming yourself a god does not make you divine." Kelson's words are hard beneath the softness. Yes, this Christian objected to the idea of gods. Although Kelson believed that what was in your heart was between you and your personal deity, he'd seen too much magic to not believe these weren't gods, just different. And playing at a hurtful game.

"Whoever they are, they are playing a dangerous game here. Interfering with lives and foodstuffs." Likewise, Kelson abandoned his search for something he declared edible, this conversation much more interesting. "Besides, we've heard nothing of the native inhabitants. Most likely these are mortals with abilities beyond ours, playing at what they cannot be." Like a king who did not take care of his people, Kelson had no tolerance for those who would use others under pretense.

"What's your name?"

[crippled]

Ivar watches his fingers ghost around his head like there should be something there. Interesting, that: but there's a time to pry, and a time when prying tips the hand, so he just leans forward again.

"No, of course not." His tone lilts, amusement peaking out around its edges, unfiltered. In all honestly, he finds that he misses those little barbed talks, Christian to Viking. A whole faith built around just one god (invisible and untouchable at that) seems so ridiculous to him. Gods should be more real than that, and nothing had entertained him more than watching the Bishop's lip curl back in disgust at the very idea. But battles are battles, and things happen.

That's what he tells himself, anyway.

"Hmm... Ivar, the boneless." His epithet instead of any title. It has been a long time since he has had to make his own introductions: usually, his reputation (or his army) does that job for him. "And yours?" More polite than he'd usually be, if only because Kelson managed somehow to pique his interest.

And, because now he's genuinely curious: "So, what is it that makes a god?" If proclaiming it cannot do it, nor amazing powers, nor clearly, ability to alter a man's fate... How much more must there be to godhood?

[kingforboth]

Kelson, in all honestly, didn't miss these arguments. Not that he'd argued Christian to Viking, but religious debates, the nature of intrinsic evil and the ability of the mortal to interpret the divine, those he did not miss. Fighting against a Church which until recently taught that his kind and his beliefs were inherently evil wasn't exactly stress free. While he was sure Ivar and himself might not have as much in common, they did have that. Ivar it seemed just enjoyed it.

Ivar, the boneless. That sounded like a rather unpleasant name. Shame on whoever gave him that. Unkind. Unless Ivar chose to own it. "Kelson." He left off...well...everything. Names, titles, they made you a target. And until he had more of a handle on this person and where he was, he certainly didn't need anyone screaming 'GO KILL THE KING'.

"I certainly am not exactly privy to the thought process of the divine, just like I cannot predict if ones actions will catapult him into sainthood. I would say that what makes a god is honestly between you and your god, but I have never met anyone claiming to be divinity and actually proving it. Abilities do not make you divine, although I'd be hard pressed to define divinity."

And he certainly wasn't going to admit to just anyone he had a lovely personal relationship with a heretical saint. Thank God no one from the Church heard him say that.

"Are you in that much of a rush to be disloyal to your faith?" Kelson couldn't understand Ivar, that he might be looking to place faith in the gods around him rather than the ones he was raised believing, chosing to adopt and be mindful of the 'gods' here than keeping with his own faith. He didn't understand, but that didn't matter. He wasn't Ivar, and everyone's faith was their own, dammit.

[crippled]

Ivar laughs, the sound of genuine surprise somewhere at the start of it. Of all his brothers, Ivar has always been the most pious... piety just happens to look very different in a viking than in a Christian. "My gods are not so jealous that if I should see what is in front of me they will become offended!" The accusation is there, that my gods are better than your god for it, because Ivar is nothing if not That Petty. "Do I love and honor them any less, if I know they are not alone? Odin, the All-Father, is not the one who might curse a man out of his home for biting at the fruit of knowledge."

Ivar might have only listened to the silly little Christian fables so he'd have something to sneer into Bishop Heahmund's face about on particularly slow days when he stopped wanting to talk and started wanting to squabble, true, but that doesn't make them any less remembered. And he does not sneer now, entirely, if the vague attempt at a placating, dismissive hand gesture is anything to go by. This is not an argument, it is a friendly conversation. (Ivar is, perhaps, a little bit bad at friendly conversations.)

"What is a saint, then? Huh?" He'd encountered some talk of saints, usually in the babbling of terrified priests, in the impotent prayers of men and women dying in their churches, but it wasn't a tenet of the Bishop's faith that he'd gotten around to questioning yet, before the end. It hadn't been a particularly heavy burden on his mind or anything, but Ivar is still curious, always. Know your enemy, isn't that right? "I've heard the word before."

[kingforboth]

Kelson made a face. That was one tale he was not that fond off, no matter how true it may be. At first, growing up he didn't mind it, but all too often ignorant priests would try and push their own agenda. Or his superstition-blinded mother who ate it all up and spent her days starving herself and begging forgiveness for the accident of her birth. Magic--and knowledge of how to use it--was not evil.

Still, listening to Ivar, Kelson cocked his head. "I would say one God is more than enough to love, but who am I to judge what is in your heart?" Well, technically he was king, he just wasn't Ivar's, and while he could use his abilities to see what was truly in Ivar's heart, he wouldn't. He'd like to think Ivar would tell him the truth, without him having to read if he was lying. Besides, this wasn't a bad conversation. It could have gone worse.

"So you believe the individuals here gods. Tell me why. And tell me of your gods. As for your saints," he paused, trying to think of a good definition, a way to explain something he so intrinsically knew. He supposed someone had told him once, when he was younger, but he couldn't for the life of him remember those priests words. "I suppose they're individuals who have attained holy status, whose actions or in actions have catapulted them into divine presence. Not God. But still holy. Usually saints are canonized through the Church." And some saints had their sainthood rescinded. But that didn't make them any less.

"Surely you have something similar?"He had no idea what this man believed, besides multiple deities. And he wasn't about to change that. Maybe loving multiple gods was a little like loving children. You didn't have to play favorites. Not that he had any experience with his own children, but he supposed maybe it was similar. God, Duncan was going to get one interesting confession when he got back. Although Duncan, being a priest, had studied a bit of other religions. Maybe he heard of whatever Ivar's was. Maybe he could explain it better.

His eyes drifted down to Ivar's leg briefly, contemplating. No, he couldn't risk it. Ivar would have to live with the pain, until Kelson knew it was safe. Or Ivar was asleep or drugged senseless.

[crippled]

Ivar tries to imagine how inaction could possibly make anyone glorious enough to be in a divine presence, but it's not as though he doesn't know that these Christians and their god are strange creatures indeed. As for anything similar, a look of genuine consideration crosses his face.

"Odin takes the best warriors slain in battle to his great hall, so they can fight to the death every day. When the sun falls they rise up again and go to his tables to feast with him every night." To him, that sort of endless bloodshed and battle-glory is the holiest thing he can imagine, the highest honor to be granted to mortal men, the closest to godliness they might ever become. To kill and die screaming for the gods, every single day, to paint the fields of Valhalla red with the blood of enemies and friends and brothers: it's all that he aspires to, after he has carved out his fame and fortune and glory in this life. Everything that no one thought he would ever achieve, considering his... shortcomings.

When Kelson looks down at his legs, Ivar looks down as well, the half-smile he'd been wearing freezing there like brittle ice on his face as he misinterprets the look as pity, or derision, or whatever else—certainly, he doesn't imagine it to actually be the look of someone contemplating his ability to help. He'd pointed the lame limbs out himself earlier, but there's still something that stirs hot anger in his chest every time he catches someone noticing that he's only half a man on their own, when he's not the one directing their gaze, controlling the narrative. He swallows that down, as he has been forced to do all his life, but his fingers tighten hard enough for the leather of his gauntlets to go creaky in his fists regardless. "And there are many gods, how long will you sit here? Hm? They walk the realm when it suits them to go about some business, they are not so haughty as your god. Odin himself came to my brothers and I when our father died." Which seems like a good enough place to start, if not only because Odin is the one Ivar worships most fervently, the one his father had always claimed as kin, the one who demands the human sacrifices that he so loves. Odin, who starts wars even between friends and neighbors when there is too much peace, to populate his halls in preparation for the final battle that will take his life. (Of course Ivar loves him best.) "He plucked out his own eye to trade for a sip of the wisdom granting waters of Mimir's well, and sacrificed himself to himself by hanging from the great branches of Yggdrasil for nine days and nine nights in order to comprehend the sacred runes."

There might be something absurd about how comfortable in the truth of all of that Ivar sounds. But it is true, he thinks: the gods are how the gods are, and sometimes they do strange things, that's all. "As for these gods here, I do not know them, I haven't been to their temples or heard of their deeds. But how else would you explain anything in this place?" The strange devices in the homes, the monsters, the magic of being whisked away from his own realm, from his battle camp while surrounded by his warriors without even noticing it until he was already here... "If not gods, then what?"

[kingforboth]

Kelson watches the other man, listening to him explain his faith, or at least part of his faith. He's not ignorant enough to believe that's all there is to it. It was so different than what he knew, although he was sure Father Duncan would find it quite interesting. Some of it, the fighting, the willful bloodshed, was something Kelson himself wasn't that comfortable with. He knew violence was a fact of life, a necessary one, but it wasn't one he enjoyed or even liked. He'd done everything possible to avoid war, and in the end, it simply wasn't possible. But he felt a little better knowing he tried, even if that trying had made the death toll that much higher.

"Is it fighting in general or fighting for something specific that makes it great? What makes a warrior the best? Their skill in battle? Or what they choose fight for?" Death for the sake of dying, fighting just for fighting? It was a rather foreign concept.

Still, he listened, trying to find a similarity between their two faiths, some connection, besides just fervent belief. "So Odin sacrificed for knowledge. While the outcome was not exile, perhaps there must always be a price for it." Pulling out a medallion from inside his tunic, and because there was no one here from Gwynedd to see him do it and scream that the king was a heretic. "Saint Camber. Technically his sainthood was rescinded by the Church, but I don't think anyone told him that. He seems to have a.....fondness for my family." Far be it for him to tell anyone that they couldn't have a personal relationship with their deity when Camber himself had came to Kelson's aid three times. No Ivar, the state of your soul was between you and your god. If that was Odin, do him proud. "While I may judge a great many people Ivar, I have no right nor any desire to judge your faith. Although I am glad it brings you such comfort." If Camber could appear to Kelson, who was he to say that Odin could not appear to Ivar? Although you would be hard pressed to get him to agree Odin was divine.

Rather than answer Ivar directly about his question regarding these so called gods, he side stepped, gathering more information. "What do you think of magic?" Because if Ivar's faith was against it--like much of Gwynedd was, hard to be a magic wielding king when 3/4 of your country was convinced it might damn you. No, best to ask first.

[crippled]

Ivar looks surprised at the question. Like he'd never once considered that fighting for nothing more than the sake of it wouldn't automatically be enough. "A warrior is great because of their skill. Though, failing that, their courage." He spares a moment to huff in amusement, before his brow crinkles again. "Who cares why a man fights? Huh? Isn't the outcome the same whether it was for fame, or love, or boredom? As long as he does it well he honors the gods, that is what matters."

He looks curiously to the medallion when Kelson brings it out, fingers inching up of their own accord to touch it because Ivar has always been the type to look with his hands, although he'll stop if Kelson pulls it back. It doesn't inspire the same visceral reaction of hate in him that the cross does, after a lifetime learning at Floki's feet, so he's more free to simply look upon something new to him. "You are a strange one," he laughs, like tolerance is new enough to him to sound like a joke. "What did your saint do that the Church turned on him, hm?" He wonders how glad this Christian would be if he knew the things Ivar had done to Christian churches in the name of his faith. To the foolish worshipers within them.

Not so glad, he thinks: he licks his lips and entertains explaining himself just to watch disgust bloom across the man's soft face, to see anger burn over it and replace the cautious kindness that he finds a touch unnerving. Ivar always did like to drag things down into the dirt with him, to pull them kicking and screaming onto his level.

But the question is enough to derail him, for now. "My mother was völva," he says by way of an explanation, honest purely on a whim. He has a habit of being more truthful with enemies than with allies of late, it seems. Clarifying: "A witch, a seer. In the end, it didn't bring her any joy." There is a touch of reverence for the way he speaks about it, though, and her. Certainly, there's no condemnation there.

[kingforboth]

That was strange to Kelson, not caring why a warrior must fight. "But your gods don't care if there's a reason? What if it's for a dishonorable reason? I would think you would have to care. There would have to be a reason for fighting beyond simple violence. Something that propels you through, to carry you. Simple skill is good to have, without it a man will get killed, but if you're dedicated a fight to your gods, wouldn't you want to have a good reason to do it?" He didn't want to call Ivar's faith strange, he just really didn't understand how that could be acceptable. How he could not even have considered it.

"I would say a reason makes a very hard impact on the outcome. Man has to be more than just simple animals.

And yes, if Kelson knew the things Ivar had done to churches and those in them he would probably have him hanged. Don't give him any rope. While he may not have met any of Ivar's faith before, he was well acquainted with those who might plunder, murder and profane sacred houses. Be grateful he did not know. Such things Kelson would not tolerate.

But he didn't know, and Kelson did not jerk away when Ivar put his fingers to the medal. "He had the audacity to be born with magic. The Church came to view those with it..." Kelson paused momentarily between words, trying to come up with the most diplomatic words. "With distrust. It's political." As was everything in his life. "A few committed atrocities, and so every one born to that race must be punished accordingly." He shook his head, he was working on it. But changing belief and fear so entrenched was hard.

The fact that his mother seemed like she could work magic wasn't something that Kelson expected. Nor was it enough for him to share his own. No, he'd spent years using his abilities in ways that wouldn't scare people, that he could claim Divine Right rather than inherent magic, even if they knew his lineage. It wasn't a secret. He just downplayed it. "I'm sorry for your mother then. Did she not pass it down to you?"