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

[crippled]

Ivar can't help the sharp laugh that snakes its way out of him, short but bitter. Would any of his brothers be happy to see him? Even Hvitserk who is, after all, on his side? Well, certainly not as happy as he will be to see them. They don't need him, they've all got legs.

But the less a Saxon prince knows of his family's troubles, the better. (The less that Ivar thinks about being the cause of all those troubles, the better as well.)

"I'm sure he will dance for joy." He tilts his head, like he's only just starting to turn the information over in his mind. "You two get along, hmm? I am surprised." A small shrug, only playing at casual, dismissive. "Considering the last time my brothers spoke with your lot." If it were him, Ivar would have held a grudge over that until his dying day. But perhaps that is why he is himself, and Hvitserk is Hvitserk.

[devilsandangels]

Alfred studies Ivar carefully again, the reaction to hearing Hvitserk's name is strange. Then again, Ivar is strange, strange even for a Viking, Alfred thinks. His experiences are admittedly rather limited, though, so perhaps Ragnar and Hvitserk and Ubbe are the oddities and Ivar is the the normal one (he rather doubts this is actually the case).

The mention of what had happened when Ubbe and Hvitserk came seeking peace causes Alfred's calm expression to falter slightly. It's not anger but regret and sadness. "What Bishop Heahmund and King Aethelwulf did was wrong. I wanted peace as much as your brothers did," Alfred said, and if nothing else his words are sincere and he does mean them.

"I was not yet King and I regret the dishonor that they committed all the same.It would have been one thing to reject the offer of peace but the violence shown during parlay is..." Alfred shakes his head. There were many things he had not agreed with Aethelwulf and even more so Bishop Heahmund, whom he considered very clearly a hypocrite.

[crippled]

The most absurd thing, Ivar thinks while watching what seems to him to be actual regret playing out on Alfred's face, is that he really does seem sincere. More sincere than Ecbert ever had been, anyway, even in those pathetic final hours hanging in his own cage from the ceiling.

Not that sincerity matters, of course. His brothers were fools to have expected anything else at all from the same Saxons who already slaughtered the settlers of the last gift of land they'd given up. That it hadn't ended in their own executions in the middle of the night was, as far as Ivar's huge ego was concerned, probably only because they knew better than to provoke another quest for revenge.

Still he blinks, like he doesn't know what to make of Alfred's unexpectedly sympathetic response to his admittedly smug needling... at least until: "King? You?" For once, he doesn't actually mean to sound as rude as he does now, he's just genuinely surprised. "What happened to your father?" King Aethelwulf was, by all accounts, quite a warrior. Despite the ease with which Ivar had run circles around him strategically, he'd wielded a sword well and had been more fierce than most of his fellow Saxons. Not someone Ivar ever respected, of course, but he thinks surely he would have heard the boasting of whichever viking had finally managed to fell him in the camps.

[devilsandangels]

Luckily, or not, Alfred doesn't find the question rude. After all, he can scarcely believe he is King. It has happened far before he expected it too. Not only did Aethelwulf die so unexpectedly but Aethelred is older and legitimate, it's an unexpected path to the throne for Alfred who did not hunger for power the way that many did. He wanted to make the change that his grandfather dreamed of but he also wanted to do more than that. He wanted his people to thrive, to learn and he wanted peace.

"He died unexpectedly," Alfred said. It's not a lie. He doesn't disclose the details immediately, perhaps concerned that Ivar would mock the manner of Aethelwulf's death and even if he had felt some frustration toward Aethelwulf, the man had never treated him badly when he had every right to. He had given Alfred legitimacy that he did not rightfully deserve by blood.

[crippled]

Maybe it's prudent. Ivar is certainly the type to mock such a ignominious death. Or maybe not: he's got a dead father of his own, after all. In the end, who knows? At best, his moods are capricious things. His ability to empathize... inconsistent.

"And your brother?" Here they are at the subject of brothers again. He finds himself wondering if Alfred had shoved his brother down as hard as he could to lift himself up, as Ivar had done to his own siblings. Knowing that nothing he did of his own merit could ever compare to the whole, healthy sons of Ragnar, not without making them smaller in the eyes of everyone else first. He hardly has the full measure of the king, not this new, older version of him, but somehow he still can't picture it. "Is he dead, too?"

[devilsandangels]

"He turned down the crown," Alfred answers simply because there's no need to talk about his mother's cajoling and plotting to Ivar. It doesn't matter much here anyway. Taking the crown had been nothing that he relished, especially in the way that it had happened. He pushes his hand through his hair there, the only outward sign that the line of questioning is starting to get under his skin a bit. He doesn't like to talk about Aethelwulf or Aethelred for that matter.

"I was brought here before I had much time to do anything with my position, anyway. It matters very little."

[crippled]

How strange these Christians are. Who turns down a crown? Certainly his own elder brothers had never given up any power to him without him having to cut it out from under them first, let alone handing off the prize of half of the English lands. Even Hvitserk, who Ivar can't imagine wanting to lead anyone, had resisted Ivar's ambitions for control of the great army until he'd already very publicly lost.

Granted, it had mostly been Ubbe's grievance, but Ivar never has been one to grant lenience even in his private thoughts.

Alfred running a hand through his hair distracts him from all that, though. An uncomfortable fidget. Telling, but of what exactly? Alfred is not as simple to figure out as he'd like: Ragnar had impressed upon him the importance of learning everything about an enemy, so now Ivar watches. Always watches. "Oh, I don't know. Some men think a crown means a lot, hmm? Even if it is just a bit of metal without all the people and the lands."

[devilsandangels]

"I don't think that it does, not here," Alfred says and he has left his crown and the other ceremonial garb that he had come through with to the side and has been wearing much plainer clothes and a simple weapon and nothing to denote that he might be a Prince or a King of any sort. It's not that he's hiding it but people here... it's not nearly the same.

"You do not have your army here, things are different for everyone." Alfred smiles briefly and he lifts a shoulder. After all, here, he and Hvitserk have become friends, though Alfred could have seen that as possible in some ways back home too had things gone slightly different.

[crippled]

A scowl flicks across Ivar's mouth before he can stop it, there and then gone, because he's furiously displeased by the reminder of his lack of army. He hadn't forgotten on his own, of course, but there's something intensely uncomfortable about being one, lone cripple in a foreign land. Again.

He resists the urge to threaten I don't need an army, I am still viking, but only just by the skin of his teeth. Use your anger intelligently, Ragnar had said back then. There's nothing to be gained from biting at every hand to stray close enough to him like a wild dog.

Even though he wants to. He always wants to.

"We all must make do, yes," he murmurs, lips catching upwards again in a smile before he reaches back to his plate for the first time since the conversation started, tearing off a chunk of the firm heel of tasteless bread that he's almost certain had been conjured up without the use of any grain at all. Somehow. "My brother said he ate a man, when he went raiding on the sea with no tides. So there is still meat after all, huh?" He sounds playful, now. He wants to see if this new king will balk. "If you get tired of making do."

[devilsandangels]

Alfred does not miss the scowl but he doesn't dwell on it either. Ivar is tempermental, he's picked that up already. Hvitserk's hinted at it before in their conversations. He seemed surprised at how Alfred had described his recollections of Ivar and Ragnar -- fondly. He knows that perhaps his interactions with Ivar had been a ruse on ivar's part but Alfred had quite enjoyed playing with him even so briefly and Ragnar's kindness had been something he would never forget. It is the closest he has ever been to his father, he thinks.

Something that has not changed is Alfred has never seen Ivar as just a cripple. Ivar had been smart and clever before and he remains so. Alfred would not think to treat him as anything less than an equal, although he hardly expects the same respect.

Alfred's eyes furrowed at the idea of someone eating a man. It sounds positively barbaric but it does not seem like something that no one would do. He tilts his head and the way the other sounded is almost concerning but he refuses to let it show.

"I do not think that anyone is at such a depraved deprivation here. I have lived humbly before"

And he imagines that his father had too but he doesn't say that out loud.

[crippled]

Ironic that perhaps the only one who ever looked at Ivar the Boneless and saw a man first, not a cripple, is his enemy. That the person who gives him the one thing he's wanted the most for his entire life is also the one who might one day contribute to his downfall.

Terribly ironic. Or maybe it's just a cruelty. Maybe instead it's a kindness. Who can say?

Regardless, there is a small flicker of respect that goes through him unexpectedly: Alfred's measured response shows he has more steel in his spine than Ivar might have initially guessed. "Well, we will see how long this lasts, won't we." How long the people here will tolerate the deprivation. With perhaps a worrying amount of consideration in his tone, he adds: "Or maybe it is a test. What are these gods here like?" Would they ask the people to prove themselves, to take like vikings and earn their rewards in this life, or to live in the misery like meek Christians, hoping for it to come after death?

Not that a bit of bad food is as dramatic as all that, but it's still interesting to Ivar to think about.

[devilsandangels]

The corner of Alfred's mouth turns up in a bit of a smile. "I do not think it is a test," he says thoughtfully. "These gods are very different. I'm not sure what to think of them yet but I do not find them to be the sort to push tests the way that, at least, I have been accustomed to. This is probably not even meant to be much of a burden."

The gods here are odd, Alfred's found and he doesn't trust them very much. Hvitserk had wanted to talk to them and such but Alfred has been reluctant about such things and finding himself uncomfortable with their existence but it is not as if their being is something he can deny when he has seen all this himself, after all. "They do not seem outright vindictive or intent on causing the people here harm."

[crippled]

"None of them?" It seems strange. Even Odin incites many wars, turning neighbors against each other, looking to pick the best of the fallen out of them for his own halls. Though Ivar would hardly call that vindictive, considering what he's been raised to value.

He wonders if there can be gods who don't cause harm. He doesn't know many Christian tales, but he does know that even their god was not so kind to them. "Hm. Tell me what you know of them." He should probably say please but he's only done that maybe 5 times in his entire life, why start now? And taking the council of an enemy over whom you hold nothing isn't ideal, exactly, but Alfred must know more about them than him, as he'd just arrived.

[devilsandangels]

"None of them that I have seen," But, admittedly, Alfred has not paid so much attention to this as Hvitserk has. Hvitserk is the one who wants to speak with them and learn more. He contemplates the Viking's request, or perhaps it's more of a command in all honesty.

"I do not know very much. Your brother is more interested in them but from what I can see they are not particularly dangerous. They seem to need us and so they cannot cause too much harm or they are harming an asset."