spellgrinders | ( TDM #7 )

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&tdm

( TDM #7 )

TDMs can be used for anyone interested in the game and/or testing out a new muse.

Test Drive samples are encouraged to be used for your application sample, though they are NOT a requirement.

Feel free to use one prompt, multiple prompts or make up your own!

These threads can be considered game canon upon game opening if you so choose.

Telepathy and magic can be used at any point in time on the TDM, from Prompt A to your wildcard prompt. A specific prompt exists, however, that makes sure all characters have an equal chance to use this mechanic within the TDM. You're encouraged to have characters use telepathy and their magic accidentally or even purposefully on any TDM prompt.

If you aren't set on your character's power yet or want to try out a few, you're still able to use the test drive. Maybe your character is a late bloomer and hasn't fully unlocked their intuitive drive yet. In the case of multiple powers, only prompts that contain the power you choose for your application will count as potential game canon threads.

While only one character can be apped or reserved during a cycle, feel free to post with more than one character if you like! This is for those who are uncertain of their first choice or who would like to try out different characters within the setting.

IMPORTANT: This world is low-frequency. No canon powers or abilities are allowed! Also check out the setting information for more info about Shehui.

You blink and that's all it takes. At first, the picture doesn't come in clear, like you're waiting for a screen to fully load -- more aptly, it's like you're waiting for a camera to focus so you can find image clarity. Before you happened to rapidly close your eyes and open them, your life was normal...well, normal for you, anyway. Fighting an alien, making a quesadilla, dying. And then that blurry picture suddenly takes over.

There's a lot to take in here -- you feel weird, your surroundings are weird. Everything is just weird. For starters, there's that new piece of jewelry inserted in the space above your chest. That certainly wasn't there before you opened your eyes.

aren't

GAME NAVIGATION

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[ Emotion does not generally flow freely with transmitted thoughts, but it can. He's sloppier with that man (and to his gratification, did not slip alone), and had been moreso at the start. The learning curve a steep one, especially with relative disuse. There was enough in Gaelio's mind without inviting further, but the convenience of it and probable utility made education a necessity.

The point, here, that though he does not stand close enough to hear the sound of it, he feels the humor. A nice, wry thing. Yet, permits none of this own to carry over. Instead, dispassionate and ambiguous. ]

That would depend on the voice, I'd think. And the madness.

[ Fortunate in the former, before Qri, the steady thrum of Ein a known intensity, raw dedication to their end. Here, however... but permitting his mind to stray won't help with those answers. ]

As you can communicate like this, Qri took you. It will be hard to believe, but you'll believe it, because you haven't got a choice.

[ Plus, he assumes the shock of this city and the voices will help sell the truth. ]

[The tendency would be capricious with Orga, as he was occasionally wont to be—he'd taken great strives over the last few years to supplant a decent portion of his youthful brashness with more inclinations towards being thorough and well-thought out. It isn't to say such a transformation was complete or perfect, however. When you built your successes on one way of doing things, it was hard to completely overwrite, and those slightly impetuous decisions driven by little more than passion were certainly still a part of him.

Right now, at least, he's playing it mostly close to the chest. Because he doesn't have much of an idea of what he's dealing with.

He'd been joking; if he was to go mad, he thinks it would probably be down a different avenue than that one. But the disembodied voice accompanying his is oddly convincing, in a way.]

Fair point.

[He'll have to wait and see what this voice provides, then, to make that judgment.]

Given the last hour or so I've had, I'm just about ready to believe anything.

[There was a lot of weird shit between Mars and Earth, but nothing quite like this.]

Qri - [even through the mental link of thought, the word seems a little hesitant, as if he was unsure he was handling it correctly,] would you mind explaining that to me? That's what put me here? or, ah Us here?

What if I did mind?

[ He doesn't, really. Given the low crime rate (if purported), this particular job involves much more standing idle than the others. The question isn't breezy, but maybe enough inflection seeps through for it to read rhetorical, if not insincere.

Moving along, his tone shifts, matter-of-fact. ]

Qri, the elevated mage whose "existence is very vital to the sanctity of all universes." One of her servants ought to be giving you a letter to explain that, though it isn't much of an explanation. She's running out of energy, and if that happens, we're told every world might be endangered. So she expended enough energy to take us, grant us magic, and send us on cross-planetary quests to steal resources for her.

[ The long and short of it. ]

We haven't much more information than that. She generally doesn't communicate with us, but Genette, one of her servants, communicated her answers to a number of our questions about a month and a half back.

[ And at the close, Qri had spoken.

All of this being more than he tends to say, mentally or orally, unless that man's involved. A pause as he considers, then adds. ]

Theoretically, once she's glutted, she'll send us back. Work hard.

[ Oh -- ]

Though, she's missing at the moment.

[The obvious answer to the rhetorical question was that there wasn't a whole hell of a lot he could do if that was the case; nothing more than he'd been able to do, trying to extract information from the citizens of this city in a way that had felt reminiscent of trying to draw blood from stone. With the other party in this conversation not even present, there wasn't even any room to strong-arm him, so...

He's fortunate, then, that he's more forthcoming with answers.

Orga needs only make himself comfortable, trying to open his mind for as much information as he can handle in one sitting. With his trajectory from upstart, de facto leader of a group of unruly kids for hire to boss of a mercenary company serving as military adviser of one of the main economic blocs of Earth, he's gotten better at such things, but... well, there's still a saturation point.

At first the only response Gaelio would receive is a drawn-out sigh.]

Alright. [Middle finger and thumb draw across his closed eyes, pinching at the bridge of his nose. What a headache.] So we're glorified errand-runners for this only-somewhat-all-powerful magical woman who, despite her power, seems to have misplaced herself.

[It's not a vote of confidence for the situation he's suddenly been thrust into.]

And despite that, the deal is still on?

[Hmph.

Because he knows if, say, "that man" were to suddenly edge out of the deal that they had worked out recently, he wouldn't waste any time in cutting loose and going through efforts to recoup lost time and resources.]

What a mess.

[ An experience in that, still aberrant. Something of synesthesia. As though he could hear the sigh, vibrations by audio, though it never left his mind. By what signal or wave did these messages travel?

Connected to the signet -- more than speculation, and more than only her trackers. They had seared within skin, nestled in bone and sinew, before the day when dreams blurred and thoughts spilled. If merely a form of energy, as all things must be, reducible to something measurable -- but that thought trail he might save, as proper words come. ]

You're here, aren't you?

[ Tinged wry. ]

She's clever or cruel, worrying her maidens while maintaining her appetite.

[ "Mess" did describe it sufficiently, if too euphemistic for Gaelio's tastes. At this juncture, having summarized, he would cut the conversation without more to say -- or without an introduction, as he pays those relatively little mind these days, even among the coven.

But it really is a tedious job, whatever his new reservoirs of patience. ]

Reach out to Genette for her letter. We haven't much time left here, so you might want to work for that as well, and stock up. The island to which we'll return is less comfortable.

[ What else... Half-apathetic, reflecting on his first day, the concerns of others. Prompto and "Ray" -- ]

Despite what the odds should be, it isn't impossible that you know someone here. I don't know everyone, but...

[Orga wasn't so unfamiliar to something foreign embedded beneath the skin, infusing the body with capacities it otherwise wouldn't have available to it. It'd been something so routine with the kids who had eventually risen up to call themselves Tekkadan it'd almost been rote when it had just been them, though a nasty thing to turn around and bite when exposed to the prejudices of others. How dissimilar were the two? The Alaya-Vijnana extended your mental awareness to encompass multiple complicated machine processes natively, something which took some time and practice to get used to. In comparison to that, people occasionally beaming thoughts directly into your head seemed almost banal.

Hmm.]

Fair point.

[Though you could be left adrift in the leeway of a deal gone awry. He's got some small experience with that, and the rest was all cautionary tales from Naze.

He's unwilling to put such modifiers on this as-yet faceless yet incredibly powerful entity, though he's willing to pick out some descriptors. They're similarly unflattering, though. Orga just isn't fond of being pulled around by the nose - he'd gone through enough to get himself out of such situations.

He wouldn't have minded his disembodied mentor going back to whatever he'd been doing; it was certainly information enough to move forward on, and that's all Orga needed to continue to function without complaint. But he continues, with a little more specificity this time, and he's grateful for it. Even if some of the details get a little lost, just due to a slight lack of context.

It isn't impossible you know someone here. He looks up a little bit at this, sitting on the knife's edge of hope but not wanting to get too wrapped up in it.]

...Thanks. I'll look into all that.

[He slowly picks himself up from the bench he'd been resting on throughout the entire unspoken conversation.

He continues, cognitive tone tinged with humor:]

So, what name should I make out the gift to, when I find the means to thank my telepathic guide for his time?

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( TDM #7 )

he knows your face, anyway...

too bad i can't say orga knows anything about you... lol

i'm sorry for destroying your blissful ignorance orga.. it's better not to know

alas...

unless ya caught a nice televised funeral or w/e

i think he might've been too busy around the time that might've happened...