reallybadeggs | Test Drive for September 2013 Apps

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Test Drive for September 2013 Apps

Welcome to our first Test Drive for

high_seas! Here is where players can test out their characters' voices, 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!

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It couldn't have been too peckish, since Descry didn't stop and demand that they find a tavern first. That was perfectly fine with Skulduggery. Many saw food as a potential for luxury, but since his death, Skulduggery hadn't seen it as anything more than a mildly distracting and annoying necessity. It was amazing how many more hours in the day there were when no physical necessity held you back.

Descry's question was so unusual as to be surreal. Only Valkyrie had ever known the truth. Valkyrie was the only one Skulduggery had ever discussed the details with - and even then, he held back far more than she was aware of.

"Because the Necromancers found their Death Bringer," he answered, and if the subject matter hadn't been so serious, you might have thought he was making a remark on the weather. "She grew too powerful too fast, and there was no other way to stop her."

It wasn't often that Descry simply didn't know what to say. Most of the time, he chose not to say anything because there was no need, or the other person in the conversation wouldn't have been served by his speaking. Right now, it was because he had no way to articulate what he was feeling.

One part anger, one part incredulity, one part grief, one part acceptance. Skulduggery knew what Lord Vile had cost everyone. He wouldn't have made that choice unless what he was saying was accurate: that there was no other way. But he was also holding back from details, and while Skulduggery had always been one to hold back details if he felt they were too personal, irrelevant or obvious, in this case that wasn't a good sign.

He hadn't held back details from Descry. It had taken a while to get to that point, but he'd stopped, save the big one, and even that had been obvious in Skulduggery's own way. Obvious enough that Descry hadn't felt the need to mention it.

"Ghastly still doesn't know, does he?" Descry said quietly.

And that was from where the anger came. Descry just wasn't sure if it was all for Skulduggery.

Skeletons may not have needed to breathe, but Skulduggery exhaled a long breath from between his teeth anyway. "No," he answered simply. "He doesn't."

Nor had Ghastly ever suspected. Not once. To Skulduggery's knowledge, none of them had, apart from perhaps Saracen due to the nature of his magic. And Saracen was young enough that his not asking was understandable. Justifiable, even.

Skulduggery didn't mean to add anything else, because there shouldn't have been anything else to add. But before he could think about it too thoroughly, Skulduggery turned his head toward Descry. "Why didn't you ever say anything?"

Of course Ghastly didn't. Of course he didn't, because throughout the century Descry had known, he had never once given Skulduggery cause to believe he wasn't alone in having to struggle with his burden. The redhead exhaled slowly and pressed his hand over his eyes, and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his knuckles.

He couldn't have told anyone in the beginning. Descry knew that. But he should have told someone afterward, after Skulduggery had had the chance to recover his equilibrium. Now Skulduggery was a century later, and still alone the way he should never be.

"It wouldn't have helped you," Descry said simply, with only the crunch of their footsteps and the whisper of distant minds as their backdrop. "If you'd known someone knew, your guilt would have driven you to leave again. That's not what you needed, to come back properly. You needed to know you had an anchor to stop you from wanting that power all over again."

Now he wasn't even sure it had worked. Oh, it had for a century, but Lord Vile. That kind of power--it was an addiction. Descry had wrestled with addictions once or twice in the past, before the war, when he'd finally had reason to train his magic instead of deny it and all the minds in the world had grown too much. Even one lapse, for a former addict, could be dangerous.

How much was the memory of that power, and the fact that this time he'd controlled it, weighing on Skulduggery's mind and soul?

"Dexter knows," he said, with just enough of a pause to make it seem like an afterthought. "He found out after that mission at the pass, the one you insisted we should undertake in spite of Vile's threat. I had a nightmare and said some things I couldn't help. He agreed to wait, to let you find your footing."

The redhead didn't exactly look over, but he turned his head just enough to look at Skulduggery sidelong. "Saracen knows too. He came to me during that wild goose chase when someone claimed they'd seen Vile on a battlefield and Meritorious sent us to confirm the truth. I asked him not to say anything either."

Descry had a very unique perspective on the way the human mind worked. That was why Skulduggery didn't generally question decisions Descry made regarding someone's mental health - never had, and never would. But the idea that Descry had known about Vile, and couldn't have known for sure that Skulduggery was stable, and still decided not to tell anyone?

Objectively, it made practical sense. It was what the Dead Men always did, dismantling threats before they even became threats. Objectively, it had less to do with Skulduggery himself and more to do with making sure Lord Vile never entered the picture again.

So why did he get the feeling Descry's reasons were much more personal than that?

Skulduggery froze, digging one foot a little deeper into the gravel than he meant to and accidentally kicking a stone a short distance up the slope. Dexter had known since the pass? Known, and done nothing? For close to a century? Saracen, at least, had gone to Descry - but he hadn't been there when Ghastly's mother was killed. Dexter was. Hadn't he promised Ghastly revenge? Hadn't he been just as terrified by the prospect of Vile as the others?

Dexter and Saracen had each called him separately within a few days after he killed Serpine. Skulduggery had found it strange at the time. Now, he knew why.

Skulduggery didn't stumble. He was a skeleton, he had far less weight than anyone had to worry about, and perfect control over his form without any hiccups to be caused by biological processes. For Skulduggery, kicking a stone across the way without meaning to was a stumble.

Descry didn't pause, or even look over. The skeleton's silence said more than his evasive chatter could. That was okay. Descry didn't need him to talk.

So he talked instead. Quietly, but in that steady way he had when he knew things no one else could.

"We're a family, Skulduggery. You can't go through the things we did and not be. Of course I wasn't going to say anything. You spent five years as Lord Vile and then you came back. Our family had a hole in it, and then it was filled up again. If I'd thought it would help, I would have told someone, but it wouldn't have."

If he'd had to feel Ghastly's anger and betrayal, or Anton's fury, or Corrival's cold purpose, Descry honestly wasn't sure if he'd been strong enough to stand in Skulduggery's defence. Not so soon after everything had happened. Dexter was the only one Descry could have trusted to maintain the secret, and even then the mind-reader knew how close Dexter had gotten to telling Corrival.

"But that was a century ago," he continued. "A century is a long time, Skulduggery. Even for us." A century was more than long enough to see sweeping social changes. Even sorcerers noticed the passing of a century.

Now he knew what he was feeling. Not just anger, not just incredulity. He was disappointed. He never thought he'd have cause to feel disappointed in one of the Dead Men before; they'd saved his life and sanity more times than he could count. How could he be disappointed in people to whom he owed everything?

He stopped and laid a hand on Skulduggery's arm to stop him as well, looking into the skeleton's empty sockets. "You should have told him by now, Skulduggery. He's had enough time to grieve, and enough time with you back as you were before your death, to handle it. You owe it to him."

A family during the war, maybe. But Descry died before that war ended, and he had no idea what happened since then. Ghastly was the only one Skulduggery still kept in regular contact with, and that was generally only when he needed something - like a new suit, or an extra pair of fists. No one would take a sudden confession of horrific war crimes well.

Then again, it wasn't a matter of taking anything well. Descry had a point. It had been a century. Most sorcerers already knew Lord Vile was back in some capacity anyway; if the Council knew the truth, there would be a measure of relief knowing that one potential threat wasn't as much of a threat as they were fearing.

The fallout, among old friends, would come later.

Descry's disappointment didn't come as a surprise. At this point, it barely fazed him. Skulduggery was just surprised it wasn't anything worse - anger, rage, flat out rejection. "Tell you what." He broke Descry's eye contact and kept walking. "If we manage to find a way out of here, I'll give it some serious thought."

Skulduggery obfuscated with words. When he said he'd give something serious thought, it usually meant serious thought into refusing advice--whatever that advice was. But right now, there was nothing either of them could do. Ghastly wasn't here. None of the other Dead Men were here. At least, not as far as either of them knew. And there was a note of sincerity in Skulduggery's voice which allowed Descry to accept his words--for now.

"That's quite a condition," Descry murmured, following. "What if he arrives here first?" His tone, initially, was the same mild tone as before. "What if we establish a multiversal link between universes? What if someone discovers the interdimensional phone service?"

He glanced sidelong as Skulduggery, not exactly smiling--at least not in any fashion with his mouth. But his eyes had a faint twinkle. "What if you, God forbid, lose your brain?"

An interdimensional phone service? That wasn't a bad idea, but it still amused Skulduggery that Descry knew the term. He must have read it from the mind of someone else brought here against their will for this game, this challenge, someone with a phone on their person that wasn't getting a signal. He'd often wondered what Descry might have made of things like mobile phones, or the internet - the ability to communicate with someone before knowing their minds inside and out. He'd assumed he would never know, but maybe that conclusion was a bit premature.

"I've already lost that," Skulduggery countered with a faint amusement of his own, "so that's one down. If any of those others happens first, you can rest easy in the knowledge that you'll get to chaperone again. You believe we're in a different universe altogether, rather than just an alternate reality?"

"Oh, good." Descry's humour came more strongly now, still in his eyes more than anything else. "No guarantees that I'll stop Ghastly from breaking something, but I'll try to make sure it isn't your bones. Or at least not too many of them, anyway."

He might have to get punched once or twice himself, as if that was going to be worse than having to feel Ghastly's fury and betrayal, but it would be worth it. A century. Skulduggery had held Lord Vile at bay for more than a century.

"Yes," Descry said with that absolute certainty. "I've spoken to one or two of the others brought in, and gotten close enough to read some more." He looked at Skulduggery with something approaching bemusement in his eyes once more. "One of them was a pony. A sorcerer pony. Who could talk. And another one was apparently some kind of demigod." He shook his head. "There are too many differences. Mentality might be similar, general circumstances might be similar, but the hidden and unhidden societies, the way magic works ... they don't match ours."

He looked ahead again, and even though he'd been disappointed not long ago--and still was in some ways--he couldn't deny it was the only thing he felt. "If you're a century after my death, then you've rejected Vile for upwards of a hundred and seventy years." He let that sink in for a moment. "I'm proud of you for that."

"I'm glad someone is."

It wasn't a bitter tone, or an entitled one. Not after everything that happened, not after everything Skulduggery had felt and done. It was more of a resigned tone, a subject-ending tone. Resignation with the idea that of course Descry would be proud regardless of how undeserved that pride was, that nothing would change his mind, and that maybe - when all was said and done - he had a point. After all, he usually did.

"Talking sorcerer ponies and demigods." Skulduggery shook his head as he walked. "That stretches the point of disbelief, even for me. But, fair enough. This means we have no way of knowing how we were taken, or by whom."

Far from his voice growing bleak or his attitude drooping, Skulduggery almost seemed to grow brighter with the words. "It's been a long time since I struck out with such little information. I'm looking forward to a challenge."

"Someone has to be," Descry said simply. Skulduggery had earned more than he believed he did, because he had resisted and he was taking responsibility in the best way he could. It was just that, after that span of time, what he was doing wasn't enough. He did owe it to Ghastly, at the very least, to tell him what had happened. There was only so many years he could wait before the needed distance turned into a plateau.

And he needed to know it was worth coming back from that guilt.

"You didn't have to read their minds," Descry pointed out. "You didn't have to feel firsthand what it's like to be a magical pony. A magical pony unicorn." He shook his head. "You know, I wouldn't be surprised if this was the afterlife and it's just God's way of keeping me entertained. I'm probably hallucinating you. You're the only person I've never been able to read."

"True," Skulduggery nodded. "And hallucinations are always a distinct possibility. There's one flaw in your theory, however, and that's me. I'm impossible to hallucinate. I cannot be recreated as a simple figment of anyone's imagination."

He slid easily past the comment about magical pony unicorns with only an invisible Look at Descry. He wouldn't put it past the mind-reader to be exaggerating for effect.

"Of course," he mused after only a second or two of silence, "my imagination is easily brilliant enough to handle the complexity. I could be hallucinating all of this. Better yet, I could be dreaming."

"You're impossible to hallucinate?" Descry lifted an eyebrow at him. "You're aware you're talking to a man with countless people in his head, including the one who knows you best of all?" That's what it amounted to, over time. It was necessary to Descry's sanity to compartmentalise the thoughts of each person into some kind of mental box.

"I think you're underestimating me again, Skulduggery," he said. "I think I should be insulted. I also think you've spent too long without someone around to burst your swelled head." He reached out and prodded the side of Skulduggery's skull, far less exuberantly than Rover ever would have and yet in an echo of his mannerism.

"See? I can practically touch it from a foot away. We'll have to work on that." He dropped his hand, and didn't stop walking.

It was such a Larrikin-esque gesture that Skulduggery had to laugh, his head tilting forward in an admittance of Descry's point. An admittance, of course, that didn't stop him from arguing. "Or," he said, "if I can offer up an opposing theory, maybe the people I currently associate with recognise my genius enough not to try and burst it."

He had saved the world no less than seven times, after all. And that wasn't including all the minor arrests of evil people who could certainly have gone on to threaten the entire planet, if he hadn't put an early stop to their ambitions. Maybe people were just finally starting to listen to him.

"Just because they recognise your genius doesn't mean they can't burst your head," Descry pointed out. "Especially if they want to try and gain some themselves. Why wouldn't they burst your head? Maybe it would carry some of the genius over. And at the very least it would be entertaining."

They were coming to the edge of the town now, close enough to the woods that the buildings began to peter out into dusty road. Descry hadn't really meant to ask anything specific, at least not at this point, but there was still one thing Skulduggery hadn't explained. "Who is Valkyrie?"

"You have a very disturbing definition of 'entertaining,'" Skulduggery informed him.

As well as an interesting opinion about how the world worked. Skulduggery had been around plenty of people trying to take him down a peg for years. None of them had become geniuses.

"My new partner," he answered, and not without a hint of pride. "Valkyrie Cain. One of the most stubborn people I know, and I knew you. She still has a long way to go, but she matches me stride for stride, and that's more than many can say."

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Test Drive for September 2013 Apps

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