Test Drive #4

[felldenmods]

Welcome to the January test drive! We're so excited to have you with us!

A few things of note:

✦ Test drive threads can be considered game-canon if you choose. They're essentially in a shared dreamscape and take place between your character leaving their world and arriving in the audience hall with their faction leader.
✦ Reserves will open at 12:01 AM UTC on February 1st, and continue to be until 11:59 PM UTC on February 7th. This is to reserve a character, not an application slot.
✦ Applications will open at 12:01 AM UTC on the 8th, and remain open until 11:59 PM UTC on the 15th, or until all application slots have been filled. Once Activity Check ends, we will have an application slot number available on the application page. The IC & OOC intro logs will be posted two days later.
✦ We have added a Suitability section to the application. Check it out! We will be requiring this going forward as it not only helps players see if their character is a good fit for the game but it lets the mod team gather some ideas about direction for your character!
✦ Questions? We have a FAQ that's chock full of good information! If they are test drive specific, we have a top level thread below that allows for OOC questions to be posted.
✦ The network is available to use! No matter where your character is, their compass arrived on their person. Please feel free to include a network post in your top-levels! Once opened, the compass will display instructions on use, such as using voice-commands to activate it. Usernames are your characters first name or their most common nickname.
✦ Below will be a header for OOC questions as well as a request for Death or its Attendants if you risk placing a coin in their offering bowl.
✦ As in December, a secondary blessing will be available in February to those that tag others on the TDM!

All set? Perfect! Welcome to Fellden.

AS THE MOON RISES. You’ll find yourself just outside the Temple gates, which will be locked if you try to open them. A little rude, keeping you out after bringing you all this way, and the more you try to look up at the Temple structure the more insistent guards become in pushing you down the pathway to somewhere else. The thing is, you can hear a lot of commotion in the distance, and smoke rising from the center of a district; you may want to check that out. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire! Except the smoke is not at all something to be concerned over. Instead, people are gathered near a large bonfire in the decorated city square, drinking and carousing, singing songs of celebration; Moon saviors have arrived! War winners! The residents of the city laugh and sing and dance in pairs throughout the square, grateful for those who have come to aid them. Their merriment doesn’t dwindle as the sun begins to set on the horizon, twin moons rising in its place. When you (and other new arrivals) are finally noticed by the revelers, do not expect to be left alone! Chrysanthemums will be offered as brooches or corsages, food and drink placed into your hands, while live musicians play loud enough for the dead to hear — for this is a celebration dedicated to them. Several were lost in the battle held the previous weeks, and the Priestess has decreed a time of mourning through revelry. Spirits must be kept up, even in these dark times. You’ll be invited to dance, to drinking games, and offered food and flowers and other items of value. Some may cry when they look into your face, thanking you for becoming their champions during this long and exhaustive war. Hopefully you’re here to enjoy the festivities despite the pall that may hang over the town. Sneaking off is just fine, too, but don’t expect to be let go of quietly; the people of the Moon Temple are so happy to see you! Enjoy the celebration while it lasts long into the night. If you do manage to leave, a helpful citizen of the Temple will inform you of the nearby transport mirrors that will take you anywhere on the map, one of which they will provide to you.

THE SETTING STARS. You'll find upon your arrival that the castle is not accepting visitors as they prepare the interior for a solemn remembrance of those lost. Guards at the door will instead direct you to the center of the city where most of Starfolk have gathered to say their goodbyes and reminisce of memories past. Venturing there, you'll be greeted either by those who are serving food and drink from nearby taverns, or those with drawn faces tired from battle. Or perhaps you're a late arrival and the worst of the exhaustion has left the city, now imbued with laughter and happier memories! Those loyal to the Court of Stars greet the newcomers with guarded gratitude in their eyes and wary hesitance. How many more of these Otherworlders will betray them, they wonder out loud. If you try and take a seat with a party or three, chances are the conversation will halt as soon as you grow near, and the longer you stay the more uncomfortable the gathered people become. Trust is not easily gained in the Court of Stars; broken now as it is, the natives of this world fear the worst for their Emperor. Will you help us, or will you hurt us, they ask, wanting to believe they still have a chance at surviving this exhaustive war. Whether you choose to remain for the remembrance or wander off, one thing is certain: things must turn around for the Stars soon. If you do manage to sneak off, a hopeful citizen of the Court will inform you of the nearby transport mirrors that will take you anywhere on the map, one of which they will provide to you.

MARKETS OF THE COAST. The coastal city of Kyst is abuzz with an extra amount of people who sought refuge here during the attack on the Moon Temple. Some calm had finally started to settle but now the foundation has once more been shaken. Newcomers will be welcomed with smiling faces from merchants as they look to try to sell their wares. Tavern owners and barkeeps will beckon with the promise of warm food and delightful drinks, a place by the fire, and information to help you find your bearings. The air is rife with the scent of the coastline, fishermen bringing in their haul from the day. Perhaps if you pay enough attention, you'll hear or smell something you recognize from your home; as Fellden is the beginning of all worlds, it wouldn't be an impossible likelihood! Those looking for something more exciting will find closer to the northern border of Kyst a rather curious bi-pedal cat bouncing on its back legs. It flags you down with a wave of its paw, asking excitedly if you'd like to flex your claws into a juicy quest. You're just the hunter for the job! Purr-fect in every way! Out in the wild lands there's a great beast in a deep river, and it's bothering all the people who live in the nearby town! They can't get fresh water or fish for their meals; it's furr-ightening! If you agree to help, the cat will explain that the creature is a Nokken that has been luring many a brave fisher to their untimely death. It must be removed either by force or by convincing it to leave! Help them, Hero-wan Kenobi, you're their meownly hope!

BEYOND THE CITIES. In the distance from Kyst, a large forest looms, the Gods Wood imposing even from this distance. Should you travel there, everyone you encounter will urge you to be respectful while within the forest. There, people can be found visiting intricately decorated shrines, and leaving offerings for their passed. If you catch their eye, they will beg of you to pay respects as well, and press a gold coin into your palm. Offer a wish or a happy memory to who you miss and place the coin into Death's offering bowl and there's a chance someone will be there to speak with you. Be mindful of your actions though; those that show disrespect will be forcibly removed from the Gods Wood by the trees. If the forest is too intimidating, Terebellum is open for semester registration, and the grounds are even more regal with a light dusting of snow all around. Students of all branches of magic can be found exploring the campus and practicing their craft. If you're lucky, perhaps you can find a teacher who will explain what is offered here at the University. But ah, there's a catch! Tuition is extremely expensive, so you must impress your faction leaders if you wish to widen your breadth of knowledge within these walls!

Comments

[bathrobed]

( And there it is, that momentary flicker of fondness that Loki knows—that he knows that no trick or illusion would ever be able to emulate. While it isn't something he'd readily admit (least of all to the man in question), Thor is a far more complex individual than the majority of his peers seem to realise. Frigga knew, and he suspects that Odin knew as well, for all he preferred to channel his attention into hammering Thor into the shape of a leader. His brother feels deeply, loves wholly, and hides his pain behind big, broad smiles. )

He must be very wise. ( He says dryly, a thin smile curving his lips. ) And probably very handsome, too.

( Loki, on the other hand, hides his feelings behind smart little quips and easy distractions. The confirmation that he is Thor—that he's really here—hits him like a punch to the gut, leaving hairline cracks in the dam he'd cobbled together to keep his emotions from rushing in too quickly. He wanted the facts first, didn't he? Now he has them. Thor isn't dead, but his arrival at Fellden means Asgard is now as vulnerable as if he were, and there's yet another person to shield from the majority of his plans.

Fantastic.

The shimmer starts at his fingertips—a greenish glow that Thor may very well only associate with one person in all of the Nine Realms. Loki doesn't turn to look at him until the spell begins to unravel across his face: the same sharp features, the same blue eyes, his hair ever so slightly longer at his shoulders. He's swapped his armour for throat-to-floor black robes that skim the ground as he moves, and there's a brooch set with white gems representing a smattering of stars sitting at the front of his throat. )

... Brother.

( He folds his arms. )

I'd wondered whether you might end up here, but then I suppose you've never passed up on the opportunity to play the hero.

( And the tail-end of an eyebrow lifts a little way as he looks his brother up and down, his expression caught somewhere between exasperated and impressed. )

Although leaving Asgard to that miserable witch was a bold move for the mighty Thor. What were you thinking?

( No, seriously. Is there a plan? Loki's the one who does the running away, not Thor. )

[vegvisir]

[Thor's good humor has been rare these last few months, coming in fleeting glimmers that find themselves chased away far too quickly to be able to find a true foothold more often than not, but with the stranger's words Thor finds himself letting loose the sort of loud, full, warm-bellied laugh he hasn't heard from himself in far too long.] If he had his way, no one would dare disagree.

[There are no words, no vocabulary in any language across the universe, to express how deeply Thor misses his Loki. For all their differences, all of their troubles and misunderstandings, it's an undeniable fact that life is more bleak without Loki's wild chaos to set it alight. No matter how often they'd crashed together and rebounded apart, their paths long since diverged despite his best efforts, Thor never truly believed he would have to face a world without his brother in it. That this stranger could give him even one blessed moment to remember Loki with bright joy instead of the dark sorrow he's been plagued by? It's a gift Thor could never be rich enough to repay in kind.

But when he turns to say as much, the achingly familiar flash and flicker of golden green magic leaves any words he meant to part with dying upon his tongue.

It's a cruel trick. It must be, he's nearly convinced of it, because the sight being revealed before his eyes could have no other explanation. Loki was dead. Thor had watched him draw his last breath, had his dreams haunted time and time again by the echoing crack of Loki's neck giving out under Thanos' grip before the life drained from his eyes, and no plea, no amount of desperate bargaining with any God that would listen, could change the cold finality Thor found when he cradled his brother's broken body to himself one last time.

And yet here he stands before Thor all the same, laying a pathway of easy mockery and flippant criticisms between them as if nothing has changed, and Thor has to resist the urge to irrational urge to hold his breath as if one wrong move would see the illusion in front of him dissolve to nothing. He looks nothing like Thor's last memories of him. Gone are his battle-ruined leathers. Gone is the soot and the blood from the pale angles of his face, the blood bursts in eyes that are no longer glassy, empty shells of their former selves, and Thor feels his own eyes stinging with the violent surge of emotion that swells inside of him to see Loki looking so whole. So alive.

So much of Thor's life has been ruled by it, directed by the strength of his fury or halted by cloying weight of grief, and it would be so easy to drown under the maelstrom of shame and joy and regret and relief that threatens to grow beyond his control the longer he finds himself frozen in place before the man in front of him. He can't parse the entirety of Loki's words over the rushing in his ears, wouldn't be able to find his voice to respond even if he could, and Thor is only distantly aware of the tremors rolling through his body as he lifts an unsteady hand to Loki's face as though caught in a trance.

He expects this to be a lie right up to the moment his fingers meet the sharp rise of Loki's cheek and it's only as Thor feels the firm smoothness of it under his touch rather than the empty air he'd been braced to find does he finally let go the breath locked inside his chest in a great, shuddering exhale. He feels weak, the force of his shock and disbelief and relief nearly enough to bring him to his knees, and there's wetness on his face that Thor is blind to as he drags Loki tightly against himself in a crushing hug, his voice a ruin when he finds the one word he can manage:] Brother.

[bathrobed]

( Thor certainly looks vaguely ensorcelled, his expression slack and his eyes fixed on Loki as if in the presence of a spectre. It's more than a little worrying: Loki has seen his brother grieving, seen him beaten, seen him banished to Midgard without his powers, but the pain wracking his frame as he stands there before him is nothing short of shocking. )

Thor ...

( It shifts into an uneasy clench of concern when Thor lifts his hand to his cheek. How long has it been, he wonders, since they touched one another in anything vaguely resembling camaraderie? How long has it been since they clasped arms as bothers, embraced as friends, or shared the childish closeness of their youth? Loki can't pinpoint when he decided that comfort was a sign of weakness, nor when he began rejecting Thor's attempts to help him see otherwise, but the touch to his cheek throws into sharp relief just how long it's been since he chose to simply feel. Any other time he'd have leant away from a hug—maybe even swatted at his hand with some sharp quip about keeping his distance—but this time? The intensity of Thor's expression keeps Loki rooted to the spot. Something isn't right. )

For pity's sake, Thor—

( But Loki barely has time to unfold his arms before Thor pulls him into a hug that grinds at his very bones, his cheeks wet with tears and his shoulders shaking with deep tremors of emotion. A frown pinches his brow. Is this what Hela has left behind? Gods, is there even an Asgard left for them to return to? Loki stiffens in his arms as increasingly traumatising worst case scenarios tear across the back of his mind. His plans, his deal with the Emperor, all of it hinges on Asgard being salvageable, and if it isn't ...

... Well, that's something for him to consider in private. It's becoming increasingly apparent that Thor isn't about to let up any time soon: the grip he has on him is tight—far too tight for him to extricate himself from it without resorting to some kind of violence—and the state he's in at the moment? No. Now isn't the time to push. Loki sighs heavily as he settles his arms around Thor's waist in a careful embrace, his lips pressing to a thin line as he feels his heart begin to stutter against his ribs. In truth, watching Thor suffer isn't any fun when he hasn't had a hand in it.

In truth, Loki just wants to make somebody pay. )

Let me guess: you've realised that refusing to visit me during my imprisonment was excessively cold of you.

( He says sardonically, determined to maintain the pretence of his distance. He won't let himself think about how long it's been since he held Thor. He can't let himself think about it, not right now, and so he turns his thoughts to the variety of ways he might be able to rend Hela limb from limb. )

Or has your precious Midgardian finally ended it once and for all? I wouldn't worry, we can always find you another mortal to pine over.

[vegvisir]

[Would Thor be surprised if Loki had fought his embrace? If he'd chosen offense and upset and insisted on clawing back the distance that had grown so heavily between them? No, he wouldn't. Thor doesn't need to understand the reasons why bold displays of emotion only seem to see Loki feeling more and more uneasy as time goes on to have long since accepted that the affection he would gladly shower upon his brother might always remain unwelcome.

But that Loki doesn't immediately pull away? That he doesn't disappear out from under the desperate cage of Thor's arms but instead settles his own around Thor in-- resignation? Acceptance? He's not sure it matters when it's already more than he thought he'd ever be allowed again and Thor's hold around Loki tightens just a fraction more for it.]

I've missed you.

[He says as if it explains everything and he tries to laugh-- at how foolish he must look, at the bite of Loki's words and the undercurrent of blame his brother always finds a way to angle in Thor's direction whether it's deserved or not, at his own near childish hopefulness that this could truly be real-- but the sound gets lost along the way, caught in his throat until it breaks out of him far closer to a sob than he ever intended.

Loki's right no matter how Thor wishes he wasn't. It was cold of Thor to refuse him then. Possibly even cruel, and while at the time Thor felt his reasons to do so made sense, that he had little choice to do anything else, it's impossible to look back that time now without feeling regret in the places where vindication once lived. How much time had they wasted holding onto anger? To spite and pettiness? How many moments have they missed because they allowed their brotherhood to be strained by things that mattered so little in the end?

Too many, he thinks, and Thor knows he should let go of Loki before his brother's patience runs out, but he can't quite bring himself to loosen his grip. Loki is a warm, solid weight against him, pressed so closely together that Thor could count each breath he takes if he wanted to, and it's hard to ignore the irrational voice in the back of his mind certain that if he ends this embrace he'll wake from whatever dream he's found himself in. When he can finally manage it, it happens in achingly slow degrees, his arms reluctantly relaxing as though Thor is in battle with himself over whether or not to actually allow it to happen, and even when he releases Loki completely he can't seem to resist the urge to touch him. Thor reaches out to clasp Loki's shoulder with a grip that likely tips just over the line of too tight for all that it's full of warm affection and swallows past the thick lump in his throat as he takes Loki in.]

You look well.

[bathrobed]

( Loki can't say he isn't glad for it when Thor finally lets him go. Holding him, being held by him, it stirs up too much of their past, and he can already feel the warring sides of his feelings for Thor beginning to stir into action. There's the side that desperately wants to be able to go back to how things were when they were young, but it's been centuries since it hasn't been swiftly overshadowed by dark clouds of jealousy. Thor is vulnerable, Loki thinks, and he could use that to advantage—but then he hates himself all the more for letting such pettiness into the back of his mind in the first place.

It's exhausting.

When he feels Thor's arms begin to slacken around him Loki has to make a real effort not to sag in relief. The stress is much easier to deal with when he isn't in direct contact with Thor—who seems unable to truly let him go, at the moment, because all of a sudden there's a hand clasping at his shoulder to keep them steadily united. Loki raises an eyebrow, looking long and hard at his brother before shrugging him off with an irritable sigh. It hurts, but it has to be done. )

I am well, no thanks to you.

( And you know? He's just going to work around the part when he claims to have missed him, as well as the part where he lists all the ways in which Thor looks the very opposite of well. His brown eye? His roughly cropped hair? The heaviness in his expression—in his very bones? Loki presses the coin back into the Thor's hand and makes a gesture towards Death's bowl: )

Make the offering. It might seem trivial now, but you may come to regret it if you don't.

( It'll give them both something to focus on outside of the fact that Thor seems on the edge of some kind of emotional collapse. Loki turns from him to look towards the shrine and clasps his hands before himself; a pensive stance, the sentiment of which is reflected in the glassiness that settles over his eyes. He's going to have to do the thinking for the both of them, isn't he?

Some things will never change. )

... Asgard?

[vegvisir]

[This had been easy once, hadn't it? Didn't Thor know once that he could embrace Loki at a whim, that Loki's palpable frustration with it or his endless grousing would be betrayed by the warm beacon of fondness shining through in his eyes? Wasn't there a time where they were each other's greatest confidants, trading secrets under the safe blanket of nightfall when the rest of the palace had long since settled to sleep, secure in the knowledge that a bond such as their was near unbreakable? 

Sometimes it's hard for Thor to wrap his mind around how far from that they've found themselves. As much as part of Thor had been waiting for Loki to reestablish the distance he's demanded more and more of inside of the last few years it still stings to have his hand shrugged away as if Loki couldn't free himself from Thor's touch quickly enough, and he swallows hard against the fresh wave of guilt Loki's words leave washing up the back of his throat like bile as he turns away towards the bowl. The coin feels no less heavy in his hands for having Loki back with him, not when it still represents so much loss he's responsible for. He worries it with his thumb, his thumb rubbing idle circles into the metal as he thinks of Heimdall, of all the Asgardian blood spilt because he couldn't protect their people like they deserved, of the countless lives lost across the universe because of the choices he's made, and Thor's heart has never been heavier than when he releases the coin to join the others already given in a desperate bid for their safe passage to whatever the afterlife may hold for them. He opens his mouth to pray, the words right on his tongue--

Until Loki's question trips him up. Thor looks to him, his brow creased heavily in confusion, and all at once Loki's words from earlier filter back into the forefront of his mind. Although leaving Asgard to that miserable witch was a bold move for the mighty Thor.

He didn't know it was possible, but his heart sinks even further.]

What happened before you were brought here?