Test Drive Meme #9

[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 May 24th, and apps are open June 1st.

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:
I'VE SEEN ENOUGH HENTAI TO KNOW WHERE THIS IS GOING
[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.

Watch out as you explore the streets of Hadriel, because you're not alone, and there's always something lurking in the shadows, waiting for the perfect chance to swarm around you and chow down. This time, the Door has brought in a group of malboro, from the Final Fantasy video game series.

These plant-like monsters are essentially comprised of long, tentacle-esque stalks- sometimes with eyes on the ends- and large, gaping mouths. Their breath can be poisonous and literally make you sick to your stomach, and- just your luck- they're carnivorous. Happy hunting!]


C O M B I N A T I O N

SCENARIO TWO: DREAM A LITTLE DREAM OF ME
[You're so tired- at least you've got a reasonably safe place to rest your head at while you recuperate, right? After all, nothing can go wrong when you're asleep.

Aaand that's where you're mistaken. For this event, all characters who fall asleep will either be Hosts or Visitors in their, or someone else's dreams. All dreams are inflicted by one of the four gods (Hope, Delight, Rage, or Fear), and will have their presence influencing the events within your dreams in order to harvest their desired emotion from you.

The sky is essentially the limit, so long as your dreams correspond with one of the four gods. Happy sleeping!

This is a mini version of our Dreamwalker event this month!]


D E L I G H T

SCENARIO THREE: JUST SAY NO
[On your kitchen table the next morning is a blue pill. Just the one pill, along with a glass of what seems to be water. There's a note in elegant script next to the pill that merely says 'TAKE ME'.

If taken, the pill can have a variety of effects. You can hallucinate, you can get uncontrollable giggles, you can feel drunk, you can feel like colors all have textures and shapes and the world is looking at you through a kaleidoscope! The drug can have whatever effect the player desires, as long as it's pleasurable or fun.

So: do you take it? Can you hear someone who already took the drug, stumbling down the street? You, uh, might want to help them, and do be careful. There's no telling what kinds of monsters are still out there.]

Comments

[verinumeri]

[ Happily(?), he and massive disappointment are old bedfellows. More practically, he hasn't a real expectation, more fleeting classifications. People are wont to label and sort, and Hermann's experience with children (including as a child) had tended to fall into one of two categories: miniature bullies and young geniuses. There were others, of course, those hardly being comprehensive, but in the main.

It's a sad thing, what she says, but not shocking. The sort of thing he could imagine Ranger Mori having said at a similar age. (Of course, Ranger Mori was certainly a prodigy in her own right.) There were many children in his world who likely would have preferred to worry only about a terrible teacher leaving a lifelong bad impression about maths. Rather than dead family, crushed cities, shattered economies, rationed food, an impending apocalypse. Not that it made them particularly nostalgic about maths. Not that he'd met many of them.

Now he gets a proper look at her. (Still thinking her, probably.) Serious looking; the sort he understands.

And interested (Rage might need take a backseat for Delight.) ]

Oh -- Well --

[ He stands up a touch straighter, jerking his cane proper-vertical as his mouth twitches toward a softer incline, and swipes his right hand along his blazer (streaking more chalk dust) before holding it out. ]

Dr. Gottlieb, at your service, miss...?

[whichend]

[ Doctor Gottlieb. Bruce is a doctor. Arya wonders if this Gottlieb does what Bruce does -- science, a little medicine, but mostly make people feel safe. Arya relaxes a little, and while she doesn't smile, she doesn't seem as tense or defensive. Arya still doesn't know much about doctors, but they seem to be good people.

Arya bites her lip at the introduction. She'll have to give her name too, and that's a complicated thing when a girl doesn't have a proper name. Just one that she's trying to take back.

She has to keep trying though, so she mumbles: ] Arya.

[ She shakes Gottlieb's hand tries for a smile. It seems that neither her nor the older man are especially good at it. It's kind of endearing. Besides, she's never heard anyone say "at your service" to her, specifically. ]

Good to meet you.

[ Look at that! Normal people manners! Arya is quite proud of herself. ]

[verinumeri]

[ Alas -- no. It had been something of a sore spot at Haven, of how little utility what he did was, of how much more useful he'd had been with some medicine. Newton with his biology could claim that, a little medicine. Hermann -- well, at least in this dream, it's before all that.

Though it colors him some. For example: despite the muck underfoot indicating otherwise, Newton doesn't seem to be about, sparing him a possible crowing, an entirely unnecessary and somewhat mortifying proclamation of amazement that he, Hermann (Dr. Gottlieb), had managed to say hello to a human. All on his own. It's an example because he has gotten better through sheer necessity.

...still. Perhaps he should be embarrassed that, at 36, he's also a bit proud of himself. His awkwardness also makes him a bit off in his read of Miss Arya -- not knowing what to expect of children or introductions with them, her pride is easily seen as happiness with the introduction. Which is rather gratifying. Newton's not near to make fun of him, so he can have this. It all makes him quite cheerful, really, when he answers -- ]

Likewise! Well met Miss Arya. Now then -- where should we start? Most of it's taken up by the, my, ah, latest predictive model. It's rather grim, but -- but at least accurate. I'm sure.

[whichend]

I'm no miss.

[ Arya points out, forcefully, but not unkindly. From what little she knows of that title, it's a lot like lady, and Arya was never a lady, not even when she was Arya Stark for true. The only person who was even allowed to call her that left, anyway, chose to be an outlaw because, for whatever reason, Arya wasn't good enough.

She's not bitter. Really. Promise. She just doesn't want to bring up painful memories. ]

What does your model say?

[ Arya asks, genuinely curious. ]

I did not know numbers could say anything. I thought only words did that.

[verinumeri]

[ Hermann blinks, taken aback. It wasn't even rude, really, but he's not sure how to handle it, that is, what to call her. He likes titles. People tended toward such over and overt intimacy so quickly, so immediately, the rude over familiarity of the given name --

Everyone is something, he wants to say, should have some title. Perhaps she'd prefer a gender neutral variant? Mx or M?

Only, before he can fumble with the question, his attention's fixed on the model, and better yet, her wonderful choice of words. That numbers speak.

(So he'll probably slip and call her Miss again. Apologies in advance.) ]

Words! [ Scoffs! ] Oh, words, what do they say? Lies, that's what, my dear, they say whatever you want them to, they aren't the least bit trustworthy. Now, numbers, what can't they say? They--they describe the very universe. They are never wrong. Yes, they can be put together wrong, if you write, you know --

[ He glances at the board, sweeping his eyes before spotting a suitable bit of maths he can stand to erase. A second quick, enthusiastic scan, and he can't place the eraser, so Hermann simply steps over to the spot and wipes at it with his sleeve. ]

Of course something like, 1 + 1 = 3 is incorrect, that doesn't make the numbers wrong, because one and one will be two, it's simply been computed wrong or the symbols written incorrectly by fallible man. The right equation will tell you -- tell you, how fast, for example, something falls to the earth --

[ He lifts his cane and summarily drops it, allowing it to clatter to the floor, then turns to scribble the appropriate equation. ]

Or, the speed at which the Earth rotates, or -- or --

[ Or, a predictive model. He pauses, looking up at the boards once more, sobering. ]

The accelerating rate at which certain beasts will emerge from the breach, approximately when, and their number.

[whichend]

[ Arya doesn't argue with Gottlieb's pronunciation that words are lies. She agrees. Lies killed Lord Eddard Stark, and Lady, and so many others. Arya herself has been a lie -- first Arry, then Weasel, and a whole set of other false names. She learned how to spit lies from the kindly man and the waif, how to hear them, see them, feel them. The world runs on lies, and truly, what Arya has a hard time believing is that numbers are not a part of those lies, too.

Still. It's nice to maybe, possibly, be able to have a refuge from all that. ]

Then it is the men who lie, not the numbers. [ Arya stares at the false equation, then turns her gaze back to Gottlieb. ]

But you do the thinking, not the numbers. So how do you know which numbers to use? What if you use the wrong numbers, like the wrong words?

[ Gottlieb's explanation is starting to make less and less sense. "Beasts" sounds quite ominous, and Arya therefore needs to know more. ]

What is a breach?

1/2 sry arya you got him started

[verinumeri]

[ A profound statement. Very much a child of Ranger Mori's stock. It gives him pause only because of the understanding that agreeing -- as he must -- jeopardizes numbers as well. ]

Indeed. Very good -- yes, that is precisely the trick, the challenge, the quest, so to speak.

Men lie. Superficially, numbers and words serve similar functions. Mathematics and numbers, equations, theories, formula -- they cannot escape words, either. For example,

[ Scratching out, , then circling the R's, ]

R is Riemann's curvature, which you needn't worry about except for the necessity of symbols. Man must rely on them to interact with one another, with the world, to describe it -- just as we've decided these letters --

[ scratching "chalk" ]

represent this, [ holding the stick up ], the number 1 might represent the idea of a single stick of chalk. Yet, among other things, words, letters, are always arbitrary. It is wrong to say that what we know as grass is actually the sky, because we have decided that the word sky represents one thing and grass something else. In other languages, of course, they have different words for the same thing.

Numbers mathematical truths do not change from language to language. [ Well, with symbolic inconsistency -- the object that is grass is still that object -- regardless ] Words describe a simulation of reality, a way of understanding it, that we may change subject to -- subject to emotions and whims and politics. Numbers, though doomed to be inhibited by the limitations of man, describe, aim to describe reality as it is.

Unfortunately, as you say, men get it wrong, we use the wrong formulas, the wrong numbers. There are some who speculate that when we get it right, we do not actually think it up ourselves -- we discover it.

[ Oh, opportunity. He puffs up a bit. ]

Numbers -- Galileo, I should say, has the credit, said that mathematics is the language in which God wrote the universe. Numbers are as close as we can get to the handwriting of God. ...If we get it right, but we are ever limited by our tools and understanding. With new measurements come new things, but when we do understand... bridges, machines, words aren't what make it possible to navigate, to...

[ He sighs, taps his chin with the chalk, mutters, ] --ah, this has gotten rather more... philosophical than I'd intended, though it isn't inappropriate, really...

[verinumeri]

[ And, well, the breach.

Actually.

A useful connection. ]

The breach -- [ as it is a dream, her question confirms a suspicion that she is not of his world, yet though they should stand within it before all the rest happened, it doesn't confuse or stall him ] -- is essentially a wormhole, a portal between two worlds. Here -- speaking of machines made possible through maths --

[ Stooping to scoop up his cane, he hastens over to his holograph. Switching it on, he hooks up his cane and shoves his glasses onto his face. Reaching, he carefully pulls the throat of the breach down between the discs of their words. ]

To oversimplify, it opens up and out come the kaiju.