Wilderlands Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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wildermemes2018-05-10 02:57 pm
wildermods) wrote in wildermemes2018-05-10 02:57 pm
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TEST DRIVE ※ 3
TEST DRIVE ※ 3
The spirits of the Green need defenders but the game of fate they must play makes it so that their plans are like a garden, always in need of careful pruning. Only certain individuals are capable of living a life of adventure -- and even many who are capable may not be the heroes the Wilderlands needs.
The only way for the Green to be sure is by providing a test -- and as far as tests go, this one's a doozy, because the situation is real. There are countless conflicts all over the Wilderlands that are in need of intervention, so the Green tosses you head first into one of them with no warning or explanation. During it, you may perhaps run into others like yourself, thrown in over their heads -- or into others that came to the Wilderlands before you. Either way, your only chance of getting through it is to work together with whatever other unfortunates you find.
Welcome to the wilds, hero. It's time to put on your ruby slippers, pick up your vorpal sword, and carry that ring into Mordor.
The ruling government of the Wizarding World is the Ministry of Magic, nestled away in the confines of Magical London. Most of the Ministry's departments are what one might expect of a typical government, filled with offices and cubicles and the usual trappings of government bureaucracy. Magical or not, a ruling government still needs a metric fuckton of paperwork, apparently.
But one department isn't like the rest. One department is an agency that handles the most secret and sensitive parts of the Wizarding World: The Department of Mysteries. This Department is filled with magical items and secrets from the world over, gathered by the department's mysterious agents, the Unspeakables. Here, alongside the deepest secrets of magic, the Unspeakables study the intangible mysteries of the universe, like love, space, thought, time, and death. With the Wizarding World now part of the Wilderlands, the agents have extended their secret-gathering to include secrets from the other worlds now attached to the Wilderlands, too.
You've been teleported to the Department of Mysteries for some unknown reason. It's after hours, so the Department is eerily empty and dimly lit only by blue-white torches. The spirits of the Green wants you here for a reason, but all you have are their enigmatic whispers...
See the secrets in the room full of stars. Destroy the spheres before the masked ones take them.
Whether those two ideas are meant to be related is difficult to tell, but with the many odd dangers of this place, one thing is clear:
To find out, you're going to have to survive all kinds of weird-ass magical bullshit first.
A. WRANGLE MAGICAL CREATURES
Some of the most dangerous magical creatures in existence are kept in the Department of Mysteries for study, and even more are brought in every day so magizoologists can add more data to the Unspeakables' body of research. One section of the Department is filled with pens, cages, and magical indoor habitats that house creatures like brutish trolls, venomous acromantulas, screeching banshees, ravenous kappas, and shadowy and suffocating lethifolds. With the additional exposure to new lands caused by the formation of the Wilderlands, the Unspeakables have started to collect creatures that are native to other realms as well.B. AVOID OUT OF CONTROL MAGIC
Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, but today isn't a normal day. Someone has gone through the section and opened latches, shattered glass enclosures, and broken open cages. Now the Zoology Office of the Department of Mysteries is...well, a zoo. A lethal one, at that.
You may find yourself facing dangerous creatures, including deceptive ones like the tentacle monster that disguises itself as a statue in a water fountain, then drags its victims in to try to drown and eat them if they get too close.
Or you might have to face a boggart, a creature that bursts out of the wardrobe it hides in, taking on the form of someone's greatest fear. This can even include taking on the image of dead loved ones. The boggart can only be banished back into its wardrobe if the person facing it wills themselves to work past their fear and attacks it with magic or force to scare it back in.
Maybe the creature you face will come as a total surprise.
Whether you wrangle creatures just enough to escape them, or plan to valiantly try to put them back in their cages, you're guaranteed to have your hands full.
[ooc: Feel free to use any magical creature from anything with this prompt, as creatures from more worlds than the Harry Potter universe are kept here. If you want more information on a creature or want a random creature thrown your way, comment here.]
Even if your character avoids the wild creatures running loose other dangers can be found here. The Unspeakables have an entire area devoted to experimental magic, the experimental wand and staff room. Due to its security spells being disrupted, the wands are blasting magic all over the place, making it so someone that has misfortune to wander in may find themselves cursed, hexed, jinxed, or otherwise altered by a random spell.C. BEAN SOME BRAINS
Any effect could be caused by a spell, ranging from your legs turning to jelly, to your face getting covered in boils, to your hair being turned to worms.
[ooc: Again, feel free to make up any effect you want. If you'd like a random effect chosen by the mods comment here.]
In one empty room, there's an enormous glass tank of dark green liquid. In it, there are usually pearly white brains floating around -- usually -- but because the tank has been broken, the brains are on the loose, wandering the halls of the Department. Whenever they find people, they reach out and grab them with tendrils of glowing thought and memory that unravel like rolls of film.D. SEE THE DANCING OF THE SPHERES
If a brain captures you and someone else at the same time in its tentacles, you'll each see each a random memory from the other person's mind. The longer you're trapped, the more memories you'll both share, and the more intense they'll get.
It's possible to escape from the grip of one of the brains, but you'll have to fight your way free with the help of whoever you're ensnared with.
The Space Room is what the Unspeakables use to try to uncover the physical nature of the universe. This is the room full of stars that the Green wanted you to see. Here, the entire multiverse is visible, little universes floating in the starry void. The images swirl and zoom in on little worlds within those universes and show worlds getting...dismantled? Strips of land are shown getting ripped off and transplanted on to a shimmering, shifting impossible Frankenstein of a world that keeps expanding in size.E. DODGE DEATH EATERS
The dimensionally strip-mined planets that are left behind? Apparently, they cave in on themselves and crumble in a mess of fiery molten lava and earthquakes that burn away what's left of the surface, making it uninhabitable. The peoples whose lands have been transplanted to the Wilderlands have long had questions about the parts of their worlds that have been left behind and apparently the answers aren't pretty.
Even worse? Your world is visible here, too. When you think of it or wonder about it, it suddenly appears and the Frankenstein planet that is the Wilderlands is shown next to it, its magic tugging at your homeworld's skin, which is slowly starting to unravel and reach ever so slightly towards it.
The magic creating the Wilderlands is strong and before long, it won't just be fantasy worlds that un-spool and become a part of it - if the Unspeakables' projections are right, perhaps it's just a matter of time before all worlds have chunks pulled into the Wilderlands - with only disasters, calamity, and mass extinction events happening to the chunks that are left behind.
This is the other place you're needed, a massive hall filled with racks upon racks of blue globes. These globes have shimmering, moving images inside them, recorded memories of prophets and oracles relating their prophecies.F. FREESTYLE
You must destroy some of these prophecies, because the "masked ones" have come. Death Eaters - once servants of the Dark Lord Voldemort, now servants of the Unfinished Princess - have descended on the Department of Mysteries. In fact, they're the source of all the security breaches and magical creatures being sprung loose. These robed and masked wizards start flinging colorful spells and curses your way, cackling sadistically, as they chase you between the different racks of prophecies.
The Green whispers its reminder: Destroy the spheres before the masked ones take them.
The Green has enchanted you with several gifts. One is a special vision that lets you see what you need to see; the spheres they want you to destroy glow with a gentle light the same color as new plant shoots so that you can find them. The other gift is an immunity to the enchantment around the spheres. Normally, people who try to take a prophecy that isn't labeled with their name are cursed to go insane. But the Green has made it so you can pick up any prophecy you want.
Some of the ones they want you to destroy are labeled with the names of people that are leaders and people of influence in this universe: Tiffany Aching, Aragorn, Harry Potter, Aang, and others. Some of the globes may perhaps be labeled with your name or the names of those you just met in the Department of Mysteries who have been in the Wilderlands longer. Unfortunately, even if your name is labeled on a globe, you don't have time to view the prophecy within and if you hesitate the Green reassures you there are other ways to find out what's prophesied:
There are other prophets, other ways to see.
You cannot hesitate. The Death Eaters have found an immunity to the curse that protects the globes, too. You must fight the Death Eaters and destroy them first, before they fall into the wrong hands.
The Department can hold all kinds of weirdness and secrets. Feel free to make up a strange scenario or an entire section whole-cloth if you want!
✦ Feel free to play around with powers. If your character has powers from canon you want to play around, go for it. If you'd like to test out possibilities for game powers, also go for it.
✦ All the technology is broke. The magic of the Wilderlands messes up technology so that it doesn't work. Any weapons beyond the level of a crossbow will suddenly cease to function, including guns. Repair is impossible, as they'll seem to be in functional condition and still not work.
✦ This TDM is open to everyone. However, top-levels should be made for potential new characters only. Characters currently in the game should only tag top-levels.
✦ Potential players may use test drive threads as their log samples. However, at least one post in their thread must fit the requirements for apps, both in length (200 words) and in quality. If you do plan on using a thread as a sample, please make sure the writing throughout your threads is a good example of your writing skills and has some solid examples of the character's voice.
✦ Current players can count TDMs towards AC. They can only count towards comment-based AC proofs.
✦ Potential players can opt to keep these threads as game canon when they app in, or start over fresh, based on preference. The magic bringing them to the game universe can fog their memories, if players don't want their character to remember TDM threads when introing into the game.
✦ The game has limited slots. Please keep this in mind! As of this post 23 of 30 player slots have been filled, with one app still pending. This means 6 player slots are currently open.
D
[Trance's footsteps are equally quiet, making it easy enough for her to slip into the room behind the man. Her words don't sound like any sort of censure or criticism, so much as a statement of fact.
She seems less in awe of their surroundings, as well, reaching out to brush fingers through some of the projections as she passes them. If anything, she appears practically at home here in this magical projection of worlds. No particular planet appears before her.]
It's nice, sometimes, but then when you want a place to be special... Is Ristopa your home?
no subject
A person in the room makes him try to school his expression, to get some of the fear off his face. He keeps looking between her and the bright desert city floating before him, as though if he looks away it might crumble once and for all.]
Not just my home. [Though that first and foremost, the only place in the world he's ever been. Until now.] I mean-- it is. But it's under contract.
[Of course it all comes out perfectly coherent in the common tongue they've both been speaking. But he speaks with his hands, as well-- every third word has a fluid gesture attached to it, a layer of connotation that spoken words can't convey in his native language. The gesture that attaches to contract is one with a hundred subtle meanings, implying something old and binding and holy. Not one of the ten thousand small contracts people make every day. Something bigger than that.]
To allow it to suffer such harm would be to breach the agreement. The gods wouldn't-- they couldn't. [He's inviting her to find this as absurd as he does, the edge of an uncertain laugh in his voice.]
no subject
If his world believes in devils as well as gods, though, she might also look a bit like that.]
Are gods real, where you're from?
[She's watching his hands more than the planets, now. She's seen races that speak with their hands before, but none quite like that. Her voice implies polite curiosity but no agreement. If gods existed, she imagines they could renege on deals just as well as anyone else.]
no subject
I— [Not so human as he’d first assumed, now the light’s properly on her. He takes a wary step back, fear showing on his face. Ristopa’s devils don’t wear faces, in the stories— but no one in any story, or walking the earth, looks like that.]
Contracts are real. [He can’t answer her question directly with confidence, so he sidesteps it to answer a slightly different one.] The contract is real. And what more is there—? If the gods made the contract or the contract made the gods, it hardly matters— the contract is no less real. [There’s a note of imploring. Like she has the authority to rule on this, like he needs her confirmation to believe it with his city being swallowed up by the sand in front of his eyes.
He swallows.] —Do you belong to this place?
no subject
I guess that makes sense. I've never heard of contracts with gods, real or otherwise, so you probably know more about it than I do. What was this contract supposed to do?
[The universe is a big, big place, after all. She can imagine stranger things than magic strong enough to invent a god to enforce it.
His question makes her laugh, a little. Maybe not the best reaction, considering he's already wary of her, but he's just so... cute and earnest and reminds her a bit of people she used to know. Her laugh isn't derisive or cruel, just amused. Nothing is trying to kill either of them at the moment, so amusement seems safe for once.]
Oh, no. The Green brought me here, just like it did you, I think. [She points out the strange, eclectic world busily trying to eat everything it passes by.] I'm from very far away.
no subject
Ristopan cosmology has room for only one world. Neffa has never felt so small.]
...What the contract does, [he says with pointed emphasis,] is-- well. It's-- the backbone, isn't it? [Inviting her to agree with an expansive gesture, even knowing she has no reason to know.] As the poets say-- All things named and all names not yet given. All delineations: the line between river and earth, between earth and sky. The line on which the gods have set their binding marks.
[He drops his hands. The silence hangs a second. He'd fallen into declaiming. He feels briefly uncertain; waves the silence out of the air and goes on.]
The point being: The territory that comprises Ristopa is already claimed. It is spoken for, eternally. It-- the contract has never been renegotiated. This place cannot take it over, because it has no bargaining power.
[If sheer vocal conviction could make something true, the ugly hodgepodge world would spit out the city right then and there.]
no subject
This contract sounds very pretty. [Her voice lilts up hopefully, like this should be some sort of peace offering. She can't really agree, both because she doesn't know enough and also because she just straight up doesn't agree, but she can compliment the entire structure. It would be very nice if the worlds were governed by poetry instead of, well, everything else.] But does no one ever break contracts on Ristopa?