onlinedragonsgame | Test Drive Meme #0

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Legend has it that the god Henir endured Ragnarok, and afterwards created a place where there is no limitation of time and space. Here, she is able to see the rise and fall of the world. Should you reach this place, by Henir's force, you are bound to face the enemies you have met in the past and those you are destined to meet in the future.

Henir's Time And Space

You awake into darkness, surrounded by impossible geometry and an unnerving thrum that fills the cold air. Strange shapes move in the distance, drifting between labyrinthine paths that bend and twist into an endless, senseless maze. Gravity seems to be merely a suggestion, and you'll quickly find that any surface is fine for walking on—sideways, upsidedown, it doesn't matter as long as you're not thinking too hard about it. In a world of raw chaos, the only rule that matters is your willingness to press on. Just don't step too carelessly—one wrong move, and you could end up spinning down (up?) into an endless abyss, lost forever in time and space.

The air is cold, and the longer you stay here the more it feels like that chill will never leave... this isn't a place where mortals should be. Regardless of how you arrived in this place, you'd best make your way back out soon.

... but you're not alone in this alien world. There are others here like yourself, and it never hurts to have a few allies in a strange place like this.

There are also a number of strange... objects? Creatures? Monsters? Whatever you want to call them, they're not terribly friendly and "speak" only in terrifying, unnatural screeches. They seem territorial, which is a problem in a world where space itself follows no logical sense. At least they seem to lose interest once a target it out of their sights(?), and they can be killed(??) if you hit them enough times with something sharp or heavy... if you can't defend yourself, it's better to just keep your distance. There's a lot of sharp edges on those weird things, they seem to be fully aware of that fact.

Somewhere off in the distance you can hear a whale-like cry, followed by a giant shadow that flies past too quickly to see... that one, you probably shouldn't try to fight.

Walking In Circles, Squares And Triangles

No matter which way you go, you never seem to make any progress in finding a way out... and eventually, even the senseless scenery starts to look familiar again. You're not going to get anywhere just by looking around.

But it's on this second pass through that you finally stumble upon something new. Seated comfortably in the middle of the path is a strange man in an iron mask, bound in rusted chains. He is holding... a very dainty tea cup, which appears to be completely empty. He looks up as you approach, waving in a friendly manner.

Mysterious Masked Man

Ah, there you are! I was starting to wonder if you'd died already. Come, come, take a seat. You must be tired from all that running around!

You're an adventurer, aren't you? Yes? No? Ah, well, it's never too late to start! Don't worry about the details. Hmm, let me try a different question... you want to leave this place, don't you? Henir's Time and Space isn't exactly friendly to ones like yourself. Besides, it's starting to get a little... crowded, one might say. I think it'd be beneficial to all of us if you and your little friends went somewhere else, don't you agree?

Kukuku, that's more like it. Why don't we make a deal? You do something for me, and I'll see to it that you can escape this place in one piece. That's fair, don't you think?

Hmm? Who am I? Oh, no one important! Not anymore, that is. You can call me Glave. Come find me again when you're ready. I'll gladly put you to work.

Introduce yourself to the locals!

"You see those shape-like creatures over there? They're not the best for conversation, but you could say they're the natives of this world. The long ones are called Chaos Triangle, and the ones that spin in place are Chaos Circle and Chaos Square. Why don't you start by introducing yourself? Of course, they respond best to acts of extreme violence, so you'd best go in prepared. When you're done playing, bring me back the core of each one and I'll give you something good."
• Defeat Chaos Triangle, Chaos Circle and Chaos Square.
• They're not the toughest of enemies to fight... but they can still smack you pretty hard, they have sharp edges, and they don't like strangers. You can't reason with them and they don't seem to understand speech. Also, the Triangles skitter. It's kind of creepy.
• After striking the final blow, the Chaos creatures will collapse into their polygonal components and leave behind their core (a sphere, cube, or pyramid). Bring back one of each to Glave to complete this quest.

I didn't lose my marbles, but...

"You're not much of a fighter, are you? Or maybe you're just pretending so you can get the easier job... kukuku, who am I to judge? Very well, not everything requires brute force to accomplish. Let's see... well, I did happen to drop something earlier. A pair of blue cubes, about an inch across each side. I think it was somewhere... oh, maybe over there? I'm busy at the moment, so how about you find them for me?"
• Find Glave's two missing cubes.
• His directions are awful to the point of being useless, and they blend in with all the other glowing blue surfaces around here. This might actually be impossible, but try your best.
• Was this a trick to make you go away while he bothered someone else? ... maybe! But hey, it wouldn't hurt to try, right? There's tons of blue cubes just floating around, so maybe you can just find a pair that's almost the same...

To submit quest results, please leave a comment here.

Lamp Oil? Rope? Bombs?

Glave's offer is tempting, if suspicious, but he's not the only one who seems familiar with this place. Somewhere deeper in the endless maze is another such person, standing at the centre of a wide platform bereft of monsters or chaos-creatures... a rest area, if you will. The woman smiles, checking something off on the long scroll in her hands.

Mysterious Woman

Welcome! I'm Helen. We sell necessities for travellers... oh, I'm sorry. Normally I only sell items for ED, but these are trying times. It's alright, let me see what you have and we'll work something out.

Leaving this place? I'm afraid that's outside of my control. I'm just a simple travelling merchant. You'd be better off trying to convince someone like Glave. He can be a bit troublesome, but he's not so bad once you get to know him.

Who would say no to free samples?

"Since you're helping Glave, why don't you take a couple of my potions? It's bad for business if my customers get hurt. If you give one of them to someone else, I'll consider that a favour to myself. Let me know how it goes, and I'll see what I can do to make Glave see reason."
• Find a traveller in need and give them a healing potion! It tastes like Tylenol, but it sure does work.
• Or just lie. Drink both of them yourself! What's the worst that could happen?
• Show Helen that everyone is working hard to escape and she'll knock some sense into Glave.

You can't go to Elrios without a bit of whaling.

"Actually... there is something else you could help me with. I run a fishing business on the side, you see, and I've heard tales of a great Leviathan that roams this space. I've always wondered if other fish might've ended up here as well. I'll let you have this rod, and if you find anything that looks like a fish, let me know."
• Go fishing... in space!!
• There is no water here, it only kind of looks stupid.
• If you keep at it for long enough, you might actually fish something up... or maybe you'll just hook one of the Chaos creatures. Try not to get killed!
• What is that whale sound, anyway? Maybe you can bait it out...?

To submit quest results, please leave a comment here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Too soon to say Arha can trust Chiaki with her life, huh? She pouts a little at this, but doesn't keep insisting on it. ]

Are you sure they can't be made with something else? What about those things roaming around here? They're shiny, and look kind of like crystals.

"Perhaps something similar could be made with the cores, if one had the technology for it," Arha said thoughtfully, "but it wouldn't be exactly the same. The crystals in my lightsabers have a certain resonance that Force-sensitive people in my universe can feel and react to — and they take years of practise to work with effectively. They aren't, well, just weapons and they certainly aren't toys to be played with."

Lightsabers were serious business. If held wrong they could result in severe injury, even the amputation of limbs, or death if you didn't know what you were doing with them. The fact that the blade part of the weapon was so light was a huge factor in accidents. There was a very careful style and method one had to learn when it came to wielding a lightsaber. It was why Younglings studied so hard with special training lightsabers before they were allowed to train with regular ones.

"Designing a weapon like a lightsaber could certainly work, though, on a theoretical basis. But I would have to work in safeguards for training. For now, I haven't seen anything to support such a design. Perhaps somewhere else, we'll have access to more technology."

Hmmm...

[ Hmmmmmmmmmm /:
Well, nothing she can do about any of that, even if she claims that she's great at baseball and a laser sword is almost the same thing. ]

Well, you go work on that, then. I'm looking for a way out of here. Can you tell anything more about this place?

"There's nothing to work on if I don't have components to work with," Arha says quietly. "But getting out of this place definitely takes priority."

She stretched out her senses, probing with the Force for a while and then let out a soft huff of a sigh.

"All I can tell is that it's devoid of anything I'd call life aside from a few people here and there. I can't sense a great many, anyway, nothing sentient save for you and a few others. I don't know if there are any other rifts, but that's what we ought to be looking for, rifts in space a time. Tears in the fabric that make up this world. Doorways, even, if it's stable enough. I just got here, myself, I'm as new to this place as you are."

[ She can also hunt down some of those Things and gather up some cores, maybe find a way to collect the ??carapace?? without it disintegrating upon death. Wires, metal, whatever else Arha would need... Chiaki honestly has no idea, but that's why Arha is the expert. ]

Doors, huh? I dunno too much about rifts in space and time, but is that something we can make ourselves?

[ Like, if they punch the ground hard enough or something? ]

"They must be occurring here if we found our way through them," she said softly. "Rips in space and time, hmm. I doubt without the correct technology we could make them ourselves. I certainly don't possess that sort of knowledge myself. Do you remember where you came through? I remember falling, so mine must have been from fairly high up. Thankfully, I had the Force with me to slow my fall or I would have been injured on impact."

[ Huh. She didn't think it was something that'd require technology, honestly imagining herself ripping apart reality with her bare hands. But again, not her area of expertise. ]

Yeah. I was heading upstairs to the clocktower to spy on a senpai. That's also pretty high up... I bet we need to find someplace high up here to rip a hole back home.

"I don't know that we can actually rip a hole ourselves, unless that's something in your skillset. I certainly can't, but the fact that we both went through what seemed to me to be cracks in space and time gives me hope that they're a natural phenomenon in the universe. The one to my universe is probably lost, now." Given that her universe isn't exactly safe for her right now, that's not too much of a loss at the moment and she'd rather get the girl back home if she can.

"But I guess we can look at where you came from and see if that will help use get somewhere, well," her eyes crinkled slightly as she thought, "less hostile."

She can see they're not alone what with those strange hostile shapes lurking about. Those she wants to avoid as much as possible in order to save her strength and protect this odd child.

[ Chiaki doesn't think that just because something happened to the both of them, that means it's a natural phenomenon— coincidence is more likely, and orchestrated even more. She's going to have a word with her dad when she gets home. ]

Too bad I got no clue where I came from! Everything starts to look the same after a bit, so I wouldn't be able to tell you. But if we can find other people, we'd be able to learn a whole lot more, I'm sure!

She nodded, scanning their surroundings as they walked. A prickle of her senses said there were other people, ones they'd come across sooner or later. They just needed to walk in the right direction to find them.

"We should definitely head in that direction," Arha pointed where she felt she could sense the most people in an area, "though if we want to find more people. The more we can learn about this place the better off we'll be. I know I've never seen anything like these triangle things before. If we can avoid those, I think that's for the best. But if we stumble upon some, let me handle them. I've been trained for combat. I'll make sure you're safe."

Test Drive Meme #0

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