Test Drive Meme

[melodiesmods]

Reservations will open on July 18th at 00:00 GMT and close on July 24th at 23:59 GMT
Applications will open on July 25th at 00:00 GMT and close on July 31st at 23:59 GMT
The game will open on August 3rd.

— Reply with a character you wish to test in the Melodies of Life's setting.
— Feel free to use one of the prompt below or make one of your own!
— Tag around! This is a panfandom RP, so don't hesitate to tag both castmates and non-castmates.
— Most importantly, have fun!

1/ Welcome to the world of Crystallis! You have seen reality shatter and collapse around you, in the depths of the void you found a Crystal and now you are in the city of Aqures Ixen, surrounded by Moogles and people as lost and confused as you are. On the bright side, everyone thinks you're a hero! On the downside, they expect you to save the world. Maybe their expectations are a bit too much. Thankfully, you're not abandoned to your fate as a Moogle explains to you everything you need to know. Maybe it's time to get to know your companions in misfortune. 2/ Do you like your new life? No? Well, either way, you better get used to it, to your new powers, to your new house, to the ball of fur that follows your every steps—Who knows, maybe you'll even make some friends here. Besides, even if everyone expects you to save the world, fighting isn't the only way to do so. Maybe you could open a shop to help and properly equip your friends who are actually eager to fight. Maybe you could try and gather people who think diplomacy can stop war, you could even start your own researches on the Crystals— Or you could make sure your house is the prettiest in all of Aqures Ixen. Anything is possible. 3/ Ukulele de Chocobo Upon arrival, your Moogle gave you a map of Crystallis. This world may be a bit big for you to explore, so why not go to the Chocobo Farm and ask for a Chocobo? These big birds can't fly, but they're much more efficient than horses when it comes to travelling. Maybe it's your first time riding a Chocobo; it might be a good idea to have someone with you in case something goes wrong. Or maybe the old man at the farm didn't have any Chocobos left and gave you some Chocobo-Bait© so you can go and capture your own. 4/ A thing called Mognet Hopefully you weren't used to Internet and cellphones back home. Otherwise, you might be a tiny bit confused when your Moogle returns to you with a stack of letters. Or maybe someone else's Moogle is coming to you with a voice message it learnt by heart and is now going to recite to you with a lot of Kupo. That's how the "network" works here. 5/ I believe I can fly~ You are on an Airship! Airships regularly depart from Aqures Ixen and stop by most major cities in the world, so they're the perfect means of transportation for you to go and explore this world. You can go anywhere in a matter of hours — One can only hope you don’t have motion sickness. 6/ Exploration Enough expository banter. Now is the time to explore. Maybe rather than spending most of your time in Aqures Ixen, you'd rather spend it living in Balicea, or betting on Chocobo Races in Trano Golsaucia. Or maybe you'd rather go and explore some ancient ruins that may hold some precious information. With Airships and Chocobos at your disposal, you can go nearly anywhere that isn't under imperial control; unless you have a death wish of course. 7/ Random Encounter You were minding your own business walking around, and suddenly monsters attacked you! Time to put to use the skills you've learned with your Jobs! Alternatively, maybe this encounter isn't random at all, and you have been sent on a mission to kick some imperial asses in the war confronting the Heran Empire and the Republic of Esdham. Good luck! 8/ Getting Jobs is hard It all started when you asked Jessie to give you a new Job. What could and should have been a formality, quickly turned into a trial. All you wanted was a Job, and here you are in the wild, hunting for a Malboro Vine. Or maybe you are in some ancient and decrepit ruins looking for an artifact. Or yet again, maybe she simply asked you to assist her in her researches on the Crystals. Getting new Jobs is not easy. Consider yourself happy though, at least you don't have to do that alone. 9/ The world is subject to unrelenting pain and suffering… This is why you should play a game. After all, there are things a lot more important than saving the world: Blitzball is one of them. Triple Triad is another. Why don't you take a break and do something different for once; anyone wanting to play Blitzball is given a special potion allowing them to breath underwater, whereas someone who wants to play Triple Triad should have no difficulties finding veterans more than happy to get rid of their low level cards. 10/ Wild Card Don't like the options offered here? Go crazy and choose what you want to do in this world!

Logs Community ♦ Mognet Community ♦ OOC Community ♦ Crack Community

Game	Players	World	Other
Premise	Applications	Jobs / Requests	Hospital
Rules	Reservations	Legends	Employment
FAQ	Taken Characters	NPCs / Contact	Races
Locations	Hiatus/Drop	Housing	Mod Contact
Mognet	Player Contact	Bestiary	Credits
Aqures Ixen	Player Plots	Eidolons

Comments

[adventurine]

She smiles at the Moogle and gives a wave back. Hers is just as friendly, waving and floating over to see about chatting with it while the silly humans have their conversation.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to insult you," Hazel says sincerely. The fact that he might be older than he appears isn't so far-fetched says a lot about her life. She thinks that's kind of sad. "I'm Hazel. What would you like me to call you?"

[tactlesstactician]

Soren stops reading for a moment at the apology and the introduction, glancing up at her. He studies her for a second or two, meets her eyes for another and then turns his eyes back to the page (though he's stopped actually reading it). His expression remains impassive, but inside he struggles between the impulse to tell her he wouldn't like her to call him anything can't she see he is busy and doing what he's fairly certain Ike would have wanted him to do. Namely, at least try not to completely isolate himself.

So in the end, he does at least give her his name (grudgingly): "... Soren."

[adventurine]

Hazel is pretty surprised to see that he has red eyes. Her own gold ones are a rare color, it's true, but she's never seen red before. Not that she's going to comment on them. That would be rude, she thinks. But...yeah, she is totally seeing a bit of her brother in this Soren character. That makes her pretty determined to try befriending him since he's obviously not the 'make friends willingly' type.

"Okay, Soren. You doin' alright without shade?" She is concerned about the poor guy getting heat exhaustion with those stuffy black robes on.

[tactlesstactician]

"I'm fine," he insists, though truth be told he's been so wrapped up in his book that he had neglected to notice when the sun rose higher in the sky and the shadow of a nearby building had ceased to shade him.

Still, a streak of pride and self-reliance won't let him admit that. If this were home, he might conjure a small wind current to cool himself off - without a tome, it wouldn't be particularly strong, but it would be enough for his purposes. Here, he supposes ice will have to do the trick. It's... bizarre the way magic works here. Similar to home and yet different enough to be disconcerting.

He shifts in his seat and pushes a stray lock of hair from his face, where it has stuck to his forehead. He's fine (thirsty, now that he thinks of it, and a little too warm, but he's not dying or in danger of passing out yet), but being reminded of the heat, he considers if he has enough control over blizzard or water to make them useful.

[adventurine]

Soren's insistence doesn't convince her. If anything, it just tells her that he's the opposite of 'fine.' It's a shame her own control over magic isn't all that great. It's fairly different from how magic works in her world, and even then she's still getting the hang of Greek/Roman magic.

Regardless, Hazel is going to dig her heels in.

"Maybe right now you are, but it's high noon and it's only gonna get hotter. It wouldn't hurt to see about findin' a place either indoors or more shady," she retorts. "Your health is way more important than what's in that book, especially to your friends."

[tactlesstactician]

Soren had begun to scowl at her, but that last remark instead draws forth a derisive scoff. "And my health is of no importance to a complete stranger."

Except it had been, once, and something about Hazel's insistence on caring reminds him of Ike, which only annoys him further. He marks his place in his book and carefully closes it, unwilling to risk damage to it for the sake of a satisfying snap.

[adventurine]

She crosses her arms, transforming into the perfect picture of a stubborn 13-year-old. It's her sole reaction to Soren's derisiveness. Although, Hazel does take some small satisfaction at him closing the book.

"To some strangers, maybe, but not me. Besides, we're not some nameless strangers off the street anymore, are we?"

[tactlesstactician]

"Nameless, no. Strangers off the street, yes."

He carefully sets the book beside him on the bench, lest he get it wet with what he is about to attempt to do. Holding his hands before him, palms facing each other, he begins to cast blizzard. Ice crystals coalesce in his hands, and the air definitely grows a little bit cooler around him. Without a staff, though, the spell seems a little unstable - like it might shatter any moment. (It doesn't help that this is only his second time casting it, and all forms of water magic still feel strange to him. Fire, Lightning - not quite so second-nature as wind but still they feel more familiar than blizzard and water.)

[adventurine]

Hazel refrains from speaking only because she doesn't want to break his concentration on what he's doing. The last thing she wants to do is to cause an accident and he gets hurt, though that might not be much of a problem. She does have a healing spell thanks to the Red Mage Job.

She also can't help glancing around at her surroundings. It's mostly out of habit, worried that mortals might take notice of supernatural things happening or that monsters will get attracted to the release of power. The other side of it is that her ADHD does kick in after a while, as much as she tries not to let it do that.

[tactlesstactician]

While her speaking wouldn't have helped, at this point it's a foregone conclusion what is about to happen, and Soren makes a frustrated noise as his attempts to hold the spell in check for the sake of simply creating a ball of ice for cooling off with fail. The spell is meant to be hurled at enemies where it freezes them and shatters - not to be held as a rudimentary form of air conditioning. And so here, with no target to be aimed at, the orb simply cracks and then shatters. The fragments quickly melt, but they do sting or leave small cuts where they hit bare skin.

Soren scowls and mutters a few choice curses (something about Ashera and Yune), glaring at Hazel as if it's all her fault. (It isn't. He knows it isn't. But she's there and he's frustrated. To go from having complete or near complete mastery over the elemental magic back home to being a mere novice here grates on him to no end.) Or perhaps he's simply daring her to comment. He wipes his hands off on his robes. The fabric is dark, so what's a little blood? Besides, the moogle had said something about having another Job available - white mage to this black mage. He can only presume healing is involved. Hope healing is involved, anyway, so he can deal with this on his own time.

[adventurine]

She ignores the glare, luckily, and instead focuses on the fact that he's slightly injured. Considering he probably won't appreciate her using magic to heal him, she instead rips a couple pieces of her already-torn shirt to use as makeshift bandages for his hands. Hazel steps toward him and holds out the purple cloth.

"They're clean, and they'll at least keep the dirt off of those cuts."

[tactlesstactician]

"I'm fine," he insists again, spurning the offering. But no - he does recognize the kindness in her gesture, even if he's too frustrated to totally acknowledge it, so he amends in a slightly less frosty tone: "They're not deep."

[adventurine]

Aha! There's something beneath that frostiness! She'll consider that a small victory. Hazel smiles at him.

"Even so, you wouldn't wanna get blood all over your book's pages, right?"

[tactlesstactician]

"..."

A fair point.

He sighs (grumpily) and finally takes the strips of cloth, winding them around his hands with the practiced movements of one well used to tending to injuries. He really should ask his moogle about the alternate job the fluffy thing had mentioned.Then there would be no need to bother with this, and in any case surely it couldn't be that different from using medic and heal staves.

[adventurine]

It makes Hazel happy to see him use them, even if she has to use the book to get her way, sort of. Speaking of which....

"What kinda book were you readin'?" she asks with genuine curiosity. It has to be a good one if he's as into it as he has been.

[tactlesstactician]

He looks sidelong at the book. "Practical and Theoretical Applications of Job Crystals with Particular Attention to Melding."

It's an overly stuffy title for a book that is primarily an introduction to the various known and theorized job crystals with long rambling anecdotal passages that are interesting but ... not entirely what Soren is looking for. Still, it has useful information about ideal pairings and pros and cons for specializing in one particular job. He feels most at home with magic, of course, but that doesn't mean there aren't other Jobs he might pursue for utility.

[adventurine]

Oh, dear, that sounds like it'll go way over her head.

"Sounds...complicated," Hazel comments, though she has no doubt Soren can probably figure it out. Although, she might want to remember it for Annabeth to puzzle through it, if she's here.

"You know if any of those books are in Latin?" That's an odd request, let her add on to that. "I'm dyslexic, so...readin' can be an exercise in patience and pushin' through headaches."

[tactlesstactician]

He blinks. "Latin?"

That is a language he is unfamiliar with, but the concept of having difficulty reading is not unfamiliar to him. He has no difficulty with it, of course, but he knows plenty who do.

[adventurine]

Explaining what Latin is, exactly, is something of a challenge. Hazel is sort of used to the whole idea that people from different...worlds...are here to do some Hero Thing, or not, the choice is theirs. But explaining things like this is a little...tricky, when everyone around her knew what she was talking about just by saying 'Latin.'

"It's a language and a culture. It was mostly used in Rome durin' ancient times where I'm from, but there's a modern version of it, too. My brain is hardwired to read and generally understand Latin. Any other language can be a real pain to read because of that."

Though, in fairness, she might be okay with other Romance languages.

[tactlesstactician]

"... I see." Like any other ancient language he supposes. More archaic grammar. Vocabulary. Perhaps even a differing alphabet. "I doubt it, then, if it's a language specific to your world. The books here are all in -- whatever the native languages are here."

He's self-aware enough to have realized he's not speaking the language he grew up with by now (though it was more reading that tipped him off than anything else and the moogle had confirmed it).

[adventurine]

"Yeah, and I haven't picked up a book yet to see if maybe the language barrier...I dunno, 'fixes,' for lack of a better word, my dyslexia," she comments with a slight frown. It'll be nice if it does, but she's not holding her breath for that.

Still, this talk of books does give Hazel an idea on sort of coercing Soren into getting into some shade. Oh, yes, she's still concerned over that....

"Is there a library around here?" the demigod asks.

[tactlesstactician]

Now that is a question he doesn't mind answering. "Yes, but it's poorly lit, and Makupopo refuses to stay still and let its -- antenna be used as a lamp."

Makupopo - his Moogle companion - breaks off from its conversation with Hazel's Moogle to make a face at Soren. "My pom-pom is not a tool!"

Soren's only acknowledgement of the comment is a roll of the eyes.

[adventurine]

Hazel has to bite her cheek to keep from giggling. She has a feeling that these two are going to be quite the pair. Tourmaline the Moogle is equally amused.

"No candles or lamps to use instead?" She almost suggests he ask his Moogle nicely, but decides against it. Hazel...admittedly also has no idea what's actually in a library other than books and someone to maintain them.

[tactlesstactician]

"There are lamps, but they tend to gutter. Poor quality wicks and very low oil reservoirs."

He had asked... relatively nicely. He didn't beg or anything, but Makupopo was just very touchy about his pom-pom!