Test Drive for August 2014 Apps

[highseasmods]

Welcome to your monthly Test Drive for high_seas! Here is where new players can test out their characters' voices, old players can try out new muses, and everyone can help each other get some threads for their applications! Feel free to use one of the prompts below, or come up with something on your own! Comment around, have fun, and remember that any CR formed here does not carry over to the game!

See you during the application round!

♦ So you're new to this world and have just woken up in the Town Square. How do you react? What do you do?

♦ You're lost at sea. Maybe you got separated from your crew. Or perhaps you're on an abandoned island. You need help!

♦ "Pirates off the starboard bow!" It's an enemy ship! Attack!!

♦ You and your crew are hanging out on your ship. Just another day at sea!

♦ "LAND, HO!" Hey look, a new island! How about you go explore it? Tell us what you find!

♦ Arrr, here be buried treasure, but not all that glitters is gold! Will ye be telling your mateys what ye found, or keeping it for yourselves?

Comments

Hester Shaw | Mortal Engines

[facelesshunter]

[Hester's adapted to the pirate lifestyle with a frightening ease. And that's hardly the only thing frightening about her. There's the right half of her face, for instance, with its terrible scar, running large and jagged from brow to jawbone, curling her lip up in a permanent sneer. And her reputation, aided by the preceding and her evident joy in violence.

1: ...She heads straight for you when she enters the tavern, and everywhere you hear murmurs over mugs of ale: 'Scar' they say, or 'Two Face', captain of the Shrike . "I hear you're the man/woman I gotta go to..." She says.

2: ...But she's still human and can be beaten. Unable to rise from the ground, blood staining the sand she looks up at you defiantly, daring you to finish her off. Even though it's bound to hurt her more, she grabs for the end of your weapon....

3: ...Yet despite her fearsome appearance and abrasive as hell, snarky personality, she's not completely a jerkass. Sail with her a few months and don't judge her idiosyncratic ways and she might open up a teeeensy bit.

"'M bored. Tell me 'bout where you're from." She says, open mouthedly (she has no choice about that, really) munching on hardtack. The waves and moon slip by in the night, seemingly moving and not at the same time, ancient and peaceful, for the moment.]

C

[facelesshunter]

[Used as she is to wearing a lot of clothing to cover up her scarring and to the harsh climate of the Great Hunting Ground, Hester Shaw looks a little embarrassed at her shipmate's immodesty. Not that she'd ever admit it.]

What'sa point? It's like a hundred degrees out. You're just gonna start smelling bad again in hours.

Yasaburo Shimogamo | Uchouten Kazoku

[buttwarmed]

[1]

Yasaburo's favorite hobby is peoplewatching and his strange new sorroundings give him plenty of opportunity to do so. He's disguised himself as various objects around the island: a statue of Bravery Overcoming The Waves, a daruma in the shop, a hertefore unknown addition to the fountain, a pair of ugly curtains, a boulder.

And there he stay, watching dates meet up, deals go down, tall tales being told, confessions made to someone or noone, madmen muttering, merchants hawking their wares, crews returning boisterous with victory or sullen with disgrace.

[2]

Yasaburo's also quick to realize the information value of the tavern. Tongues tend to loosen with alcohol and stories come spilling off of them. Sometimes they're true and useful, clues that may lead to the shards. Sometimes they're outright horseshit. Yasaburo is fine with either, as he'll either learn something useful or be entertained either way.

The tanuki plies his companion with beer and the subtle probing and redirecting of someone used to dealing with drunks.

[restorebalance]

I want to.

[It's almost religious, her careful attention to her body with the water, soap, and then the oil. Especially the oil. Somewhere between sex and prayer, in its own way. Something innately personal and yet about so much more than the act itself.

She smiles just a little. An expression that says she has a secret.]

I will be done soon.

[facelesshunter]

[Poor Hester can't figure her out at all. As full of cruel secrets as she is, she can't fathom sharing something so intimate looking with the whole ship. But that's just because she's strangely sheltered in that way. Surviving in the outcountry and being raised by an undead cyborg isn't exactly conducive to finding a boy or girl friend. It's certainly a more interesting sight than endless waves over the bow though.]

Wasn't sayin' you had to hurry. Just don't get why you wanna.

[restorebalance]

[And there is a difference, to Talia, between baring skin and bearing the soul. Some view it as one and the same, but she is used to the former and barely has the latter. She can get what she wants -- either attention or invisibility -- by shedding most or all of her clothes. She can command a room depending on what she wears. Or disappear entirely.]

The oil keeps my skin from cracking, and the aroma is formulated to keep me calm but aware.

It is as much science as vanity.

[facelesshunter]

[With her self image as bound up in what happened to her skin as she is, it'll be a while before Hester learns that difference. She does have to give it to Talia though: she knows how to use her appearance. She'd make a good bounty hunter, she thinks, if paired with someone who can be her brawn.]

Keep you calm but aware? You extra sensitive to smell or is it chemistry?

[Chemistry: one of the arts the ancients used, a word from her childhood, passed down from her adventurer-scientist parents.]

[restorebalance]

[Talia's greatest secret is what lies beneath the polished skin and seeking gaze. The adder lies coiled very tightly, ever aware. It is ready at any moment to lash out and kill before hiding again. She has been likened to Kali in India, and it's a comparison she always liked.

But she keeps one face well hidden.

The only ones who've seen that are dead.]

Part chemistry, part mysticism. Superstition, in a way. But the mind is an amazing thing. If it believes something -- truly believes it -- it can be as good as true.

3

[questionablewit]

Hawke lies back on the deck, staring up at the stars. None of the constellations are the ones she used to know. Not that she ever paid much attention to constellations, but you still pick up a few as you grow up, and it's strange to have them gone. One of the many small, jarring reminders that she's not where she should be. The big things are easier to cope with; it's the small ones that build up, like someone constantly poking her to be annoying.

"Oh, the usual," she says flippantly. Well, for her it's the usual sort of place. Hester's mileage may vary. "Lots of people, lots of taverns that serve piss-poor ale, the odd problem with demons and blood mage abominations and darkspawn wanting to kill you, an occasional war. Nothing terribly exciting."

If she sounds unenthused, it's because she doesn't particularly want to talk about it.

"What about you? What's it like where you're from?"

[facelesshunter]

That all sounds terribly interesting to her, really. But she recognizes sarcasm when she hears it so she knows she won't get too far tonight trying to coax entertainment out of her.

It takes her about half a minute, because really, how do you summarize Municipal Darwinism to someone who's seen nothing but static settlements? She's not a Historian (she misses Tom for a heartbreaking moment in that thirty seconds) and her formal education stopped at age ten. Well...

"...The cities there're...like the pirate ships here.

sorry for always this icon

[facelesshunter]

[Hester does not recognize the difference between chemistry and mysticism, so she cocks her head like a curious dog, causing the scarf over her jaw to shift a bit.]

You sound like a Switch Doctor.

[The itinerant shamans that served the smaller, more primitive mobile towns in the outcountry. Hester was skeptical herself. She had no problem believing in the supernatural, like the Sunless Country or electroghosts. But she'd been raised in a very material reality and seen a lot of people try to wish their way elsewhere, out of miserable circumstances.]

3

[yatteyanyo]

It honestly startled Tojiko a bit, the question coming so suddenly. Normally the crew didn't show a lot of interest in the details of the world Futo and Tojiko had come from, though they often spoke of it among themselves. Most of Captain Sasuke's interests, after all, were seated in what the two Taoists were capable of, not where they came from.

"Ah... I suppose I should ask if there's such a place as Japan where you come from, to start."

1

[yatteyanyo]

It could fool the eyes of most, to be sure... But someone from a more antiquated era? The zap came right past his nose. A warning shot. And the source didn't look too pleasant, in spite of her noble air.

"A youkai fiend hiding amongst civilized folk, hmm? I should hope you have not already dined on flesh. And even so, I cannot abide by a creature like yourself invading the place where humans are meant to dwell, monster!"

[yatteyanyo]

Now now, there's no need for that kind of talk. I doubt the captain is interested in payment. All he cares is if you can contribute. And I doubt you'd be carrying a weapon like that if you didn't know how to use it.

[buttwarmed]

Yasaburo smells the stink of singed fur in his nostrils and evaluates his options. He could run. He's pretty fast on his paws. But he's an even faster talker. And he has to admit he wants to know what kind of person can do that kind of thing here. He poofs into his natural state and stands on his hind legs, a move designed to show how harmless he is.

"Hey now, there's no need for prejudice. We tanuki are humble friends of humans."

[facelesshunter]

She shook her head. None of the old national boundaries meant anything anymore, outside of League territory.

[yatteyanyo]

A few things were working to the lad's disadvantage. One, that Tojiko was from the Asuka period. The alliance post-dated her. Secondly, her religion was very much anti-youkai regardless of that position. And thirdly, a tanuki happened to be one of her faction's enemy's allies.

"Such a treaty is no doubt forged in trickery, as is the way of your kind, rodent." So yeah. A lot of factors working against him.

[yatteyanyo]

"Hmm, well... I come from that nation, of course. Born to the noble house of Soga. Our clan was, for a long time, an influential force on the ruling of the nation. My father had arranged me marry the crown prince, for example." In all honesty, she hadn't seen a lot of the country, so she couldn't say too much about it.

[sarashi]

[She's not the most experienced with bandages, but she's still careful in what she's doing, grimacing a little at the sight of all the blood.]

This is gonna sting, just tough it out fer now. [Upon disinfecting the wound, she carefully wraps it up, making sure to do it as nice and neatly as possible.]

Try not t'put too much pressure on it, alright?

[buttwarmed]

Rodent?! He bristled internally. The classification of his species was quite clear! Which was the kind of thing his brother would say, getting him electrocuted in the process. Well, time to go on the passive-offensive.

"So I guess you're gonna eat me now, huh?"

[facelesshunter]

"You don't seem too good at the whole aristocrat thing." She said, grinning under her scarf. She had no love for the highly placed in society. But Soga seemed alright by their standards, so in a roundabout way, that was a compliment. She seemed too easy to rile and too crude (though nowhere near as crude as herself) for noble birth.

[yatteyanyo]

"Why would I eat a youkai?" That... threw her off pretty spectacularly.

[yatteyanyo]

Not exactly what she wanted to hear, even if it was right... "Be that as it may, that is my background. I lived that life for 19 years before my death... and then 1400 years I spent as a spirit awaiting the resurrection of my prince. From there, I had spent a brief year in Gensokyo working alongside Taishi-sama and Futo. And now Futo and I are here... without our prince. Thus we are seeking out the shards to rectify this crime."

[buttwarmed]

"Well, where I'm from..." and he poofs back into his human disguise, speaking of. "...it's humans that eat tanuki, not the other way around." He's so not above using that to gain sympathy points.

[facelesshunter]

Hester's eyes went a little wide. "You spent that long as a hungry ghost?" She laughed, harsh. "Didn't know you were an old lady too! So what're you gonna do when you get him?"