legionofmods | LEGION OF ECLIPSE TEST DRIVE.

Entry tags:

test drive

LEGION OF ECLIPSE TEST DRIVE.

"Your characters is forcibly recruited into the Legion of the Eclipse, a multiversal legion of supervillains. They've had their eye on you for a while, and now, they'd like to formally invite you to join them!

...The issue is that there are a great deal of you, and the Legion is a very exclusive club. So, you're offered a challenge: if you wish to make it into the legion, you must commit murder or avoid being murdered. But you can do that, can't you? You're a villain, after all!"

This is the official test drive for Legion of Eclipse, a villain-only murdergame. Characters who don't fit this criteria might be PMed by the mod and asked to remove their prompts, for consistency purposes. This test drive will remain open until the game itself opens, and comments from this may be used as part of your murdersheet. Please list your character's name and canon in your header, and please feel free to consult our FAQ if you have any questions. Reserves open on April 12th.

You may use your own prompts, or the example ones below:

1 - Meticulous Planning
Despite whatever plots and schemes you might have had going before, you will find yourself waking up here. The room's architecture is stunning, and captures the aesthetic of 1950's sci-fi futurism. Only problem is...is that you don't recognize it. Once you leave, you'll find that the rest of the place reflects that same aesthetic - and judging by the heat and that wall of lava that you can't reach, you're in a volcano. Fortunately for you, it seems as though everyone else here is just as confused...especially by the fact that the terminals scattered throughout the building seem to have comprehensive information on all of you.

The monitors mounted on the walls of just about every room of the building display the message "INFORMATION AT 12PM." Guess you're stuck until then.

2 - (We'll Have Food)
You'll find that despite your hosts' threats, it gets...rather boring around here. Fortunately, there is plenty to do. The kitchens are well-stocked with just about every food you can imagine, made to order on demand from a similar set of kiosks. Other features of The Volcano Lair include a room filled with sharks, a vehicle hanger filled with inoperable mechas and hovercars, a power plant, a fully-stocked bar, a music room, and a war room consisting of a very large table...and nothing else.

Feel free to add your own rooms in your prompts, and if we like them, you might just seem them in-game.

3 - Tenacity Spanning
Another week has gone by, and as per your hosts' threats, they've decided to release the secrets of everyone still alive. Each of the monitors in the building will display footage of you, revealing both devastating secrets and what exactly you were up to in your homeworld. If you haven't told everyone about this stuff yet, now's the time to do so.

4 - (We Repeat, Endless Meat)
Like it or not, they'll have their murders. You're either going to find a body, or you're going to be a body. Or, if you play your cards right, perhaps you'll be the one committing murder to begin with...any way you slice it, the game is afoot. Prepare yourself and react accordingly.

5 - Decades Of Denial
Trials are particularly devastating. You're sat across a large table with enough seats for all twenty of you, made to debate and accuse each other. Perhaps this could be your time to twist things in your favor, if you're so inclined...

6 - Is Simply Why I'll--
Wild card prompt. Go nuts.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

1 - Meticulous planning

[Liam has made a habit of ignoring the accusations against him - villain, genocider, warmonger - so long as he knew the truth: that he was a hero, and that his cause was verifiably just, blessed by the only true Gods themselves. But to have been recruited into a legion of supervillains, as though he were some moustache-twirling cartoon character? That stung, and the displeasure is plain on Liam's face. He was a hero; a liberator on the right side of history.

His complaints have fallen on deaf ears, and now he's certain there's no correcting this mistake. Fortunately, Liam has no intention of dying in such an idiotic way, and if he needs to kill to survive, he may as well choose a victim who deserved it. You'll catch Liam inspecting your rap sheet quite carefully. Any sins you'd like to defend - or boast of?]

3 - Tenacity Spanning (CONTENT WARNING: child death, non-graphic descriptions of gore)

[Now it's Liam's turn to own up to his sin.

The monitor displays footage of a much younger version of the man standing before you, protected in the safety of a space suit as he opens the release valve of a bioweapon on a lush, earth-like planet. The children of his unsuspecting victims die first, brutally and quickly in flowering, fungal husks, soon followed by the elderly and frail. In a matter of days, the entire planet is infected, their numbers dropping in an exponential decay. On a spaceship above, a hero faces Liam, fighting tooth and nail for the only antidote. After felling his enemy, the hero releases the antidote to Liam's shock and horror before making his escape into interstellar space.

In the next clip, 20 years later, the Liam of today finds the man who stopped him and shoots him point-blank. The hero's head explodes in an almost comical burst of brain matter and fluids. In the immediate present, Liam shakes his head in frustration, bowing his chin to gaze at the monitor in a fixed, glowering stare.]

No. I had my reasons.

This does not make me like the rest of you.

[He's quite adamant that he does not belong here, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.]

Edited 2019-03-28 00:38 (UTC)

[Hey, Liam. You'll find a rather short scientist trying to peer over your shoulder at the rap sheet you're looking at, which happens to list off the "achievements" of a Dr. Saira Bellum.

The things that probably leap out most to him is that she's one of the chief board members and chief of science of an imports-exports company called VILE (though no explanation on the acronym is given), she teaches at a school for thieves, and that she has several hundred war crimes under her belt. The most recent one seems to say something about trying to cause a worldwide hunger crisis by using genetically-modified spores to eat rice crops.]

Ah, yes. Although my fellow VILE members are more interested in obtaining valuable imports, I was tasked with managing more the business side of things. Not that I mind very much--a perk is that I can allocate as many funds as I would like towards my own research that benefits the overall company.

[Why, yes, she's trying to assert herself as one of the top villains in this place without even realizing why she's here. She assumes this was just a board meeting she organized and then forgot about.]

[Now here's a history that is unquestionably monstrous. Liam's expression hardens as he reads it, unsympathetic to pure evil - in particular, he was quite intimate with the pain of starvation, as well as how it felt to be utterly helpless in the face of a megacorporation. In a moment of vanity, he rages against the fact that he is being compared- however indirectly- to a person like this. After all, there was a big difference between cruel, unfeeling capitalism and the completely justifiable genocide of a planet... right? ...Regardless, he rounds on her, expression hard:]

Dr. Bellum, I presume?

[There's no warmth in his greeting, and he won't bother to offer to shake her hand. Trying to fit in with these people wasn't Liam's game, at the same time, but he knew better than to cut himself off from them entirely. Going in guns-blazing without all of the facts did not suit him. His tone is dry and irreverent, though his words leave some room for ambiguity:]

Exactly the person I'd been hoping to find. Please, do tell me more about this... "VILE", and your research.

[She grins in a slightly unsettling manner, tucking her arm behind her back. If this man hasn't heard of VILE, he's clearly just small fry. Better keep to the front they present to most people who aren't worthy of knowing the true name just yet.]

Correct. VILE, or "Valuable Imports, Lavish Exports", is an import-export company that deals mostly with stolen goods from all corners of the globe. [She gestures to herself with a gloved hand.] I work mostly with technology and outfitting our agents with the best tools for the job. Of course, if you wanted to join our talent network, you'd need to apply and go through a rigorous screening process.

[She peers up at Liam, adjusting her goggles slightly.] What do you specialize in, exactly? Arson? Larceny? Murder? Art history? Interdisciplinary studies?

[Liam has no reason to suspect that Dr. Bellum isn't telling the truth, given that many capitalists justified their evil deeds by their dollar value. He can't help but smile in disbelief at how unfalteringly committed she is to this business. Join their talent network, indeed...]

Revolution. Insurrection. [He gestures to the cybernetic implant embedded in his temples.] Cyberwarfare. Looking for the right cause to fight for, presently.

[Those details alone don't necessarily reveal his hand, but it does protect him against blaspheming against his beliefs.]

Now where exactly do war crimes and global famine fit in with your company mandate...?

Doesn't everyone always "have their reasons?"

[COOL MOTIVE still mass murder]

I must say-- and, trust me, I'm not the type to admit it when I'm bested by a human-- your planetary genocide looks much more fun than mine was. [beat] Of course, I enjoyed mine immensely, but yours looks like it had such exquisitely painful deaths!

If yours were half as justifiable, I'd be very happy to hear them.

[Completely self-assured, Liam shrugs off the accusation that he is even a little bit like this monster, who would take such unabashed delight in death. So certain is he that there is no evidence, he has invited him to prove him wrong.]

That's the beauty of Xeno-Medusea, actually - the victim loses all nociception and awareness before death takes them. I'm no monster. If humans must be removed from the equation, I would rather those that need to be exterminated vanish quickly and painlessly than over generations of ceaseless agony.

[Lore's assessment isn't incorrect - Liam is indeed human, but the sort who has long turned on his own kind.]

They took me apart, all out of their own jealousy. Whatever surely horrific pain being consumed by the Entity must entail, they deserved every sparking nerve fiber.

[a grin] You're thinking too narrowly! The victim isn't just the dying human; it's all the other ones watching their loved ones die. That's the real beauty of your scene.

[Whatever smugness Liam had won in knowing that he was right - that this creature's motivations were built on revenge, which served no one - vanishes the instant Lore touches on his sorest regret. The mental block Liam had carefully constructed prevented him from grieving over what he had done, but that was, without a doubt, the most difficult piece of his plan to justify. As it stood, though his plan had been toppled, all the young and vulnerable still did die in front of their caregivers. In no observable universe would Liam-Ferohn Gau and the last generation of Gactus VII coexist.

Liam hardens his resolve and fires back:]

You misunderstand. My target was the planet that played the largest role in alien slavery. At any time, the humans I targeted could have cried out for forgiveness, demonstrated even the slightest hint of regret, and I would have given them their loved ones. They did not. They were not even capable of that much empathy.

[Liam does not think he is capable of convincing this being that they were not the same, but if he can remove his perverse joy from his observations, that would be enough.]

Edited (word choice) 2019-03-28 23:06 (UTC)

[dryly] Biologicals rarely are. At least, not for anything that's too unlike themselves.

You don't have to convince anyone here that killing an entire planet worth of humans, for any reason, is completely justified. You just seem to be having some trouble convincing yourself.

[On his first point, Liam might agree - if he weren't under the impression alien species were inherently better than humans. And on his second, Liam won't allow himself to reflect on whether Lore is right, lest he find a new crack in his determination that hadn't been there before.]

I'm certain I did the right thing - well and truly above the standards of anyone here. That much is not in question.

[But that wasn't what this conversation was about, was it? These people were playing a game with their lives on the line. They were looking for weaknesses, and by incriminating himself, Liam had given them the shovel to bury him with.]

I am trying to explain that I have no interest in any sort of Legion that takes pleasure in atrocity. This game is of no benefit to me.

Though, I do not intend to lose. I suppose you do not, either.

[If he truly has failed to convince their moderator that he should not be here, he may as well be sure that the others know he will not take it lying down.]

I'm not entirely interested in their offer, either-- not for any silly "moral" [physically does air quotes] reasons like you, of course. I just don't "work well with others." [does it again]

I have a bit of a knack for turning equal partnerships into much more favorable arrangements, though, so once I inevitably outlast all of you biologicals? I'll be fine.

Weird.

[Dennis watches the monitor, arms akimbo, trying to mentally place what appears to be a sci-fi movie into his understanding of reality. These are, apparently, his peers. Dennis always knew he was destined for something greater than the atrophy of being a middle-aged bartender, that the coffin of a boring life he was breathing stale air from wasn't the tomb of a corpse but the resting place of some sort of vampire. He likes that, the idea of being a vampire. Nice and erotic. He's always knows there was some cord running through him, through the hole where his sense of purpose should go, and that he just had to wait for destiny to pull it and tug him close.

(Underneath this all there's a thrum of panic, the knowledge that he's in way out of his depth, but none of this feels real yet, so he manages to tamp that down.)]

I would have gone with something that had a little more panache. [He preens, already impressed at the hypothetical version of himself besting Liam.]

Like, the vial of poison I get. That's impressive. It's the gun, though. [He clicks the corner of his smile.] The gun's pedestrian. If you really want to get to know someone before you kill them, you need to use something silent. That way you can hear their last gasp for breath in your ear. Ahh...

[Has Dennis ever killed anyone? He absolutely hasn't. Has he fantasized about it? Oh yeah.]

[To know the worst of humankind was agony; each spectacle of indifference wore against the thin restraint that held Liam from throwing himself into martyrdom. Once in awhile, the paltry few thousand who made up Liam's sympathizers managed to convince him that humanity as a whole was not a lost cause, that there were still men and women capable of empathy and compassion - then people like this came along to drain him of that hope. In some way, Dennis Reynolds is a gift: a needed reminder that if he has made humankind his enemy, then he has done the right thing.

Liam hasn't heard such outright callousness since he listened through the slats of Irving's torture chamber, and beholds Dennis in a thoughtful silence, trying to think of a single point of comparison he and this man must share to have both been brought here. He arrives at the conclusion that there must be none - that his suspicion that he does not belong here must be true, after all. Hoping that allowing him to elaborate will bolster his delusion, Liam hands Dennis the proverbial noose to hang himself with, and waits for the proof he needs:]

I must say, I am impressed. After many decades of killing, I have never once managed to find joy in human suffering.

However have you built up such a talent?

Oh, it's not human suffering that's enjoyable. [Whenever Dennis taps into these power fantasies, his voice tends to get arch, as if there's an entirely-concocted British accent lurking in the darker corners of his vowels. His bearing becomes very affected, and his eyes seem to fix in his head.] It's the power. You could take their fear away if you wanted to. You could let them live. But you won't. Not unless you want to.

[This is veering into territory that's unsettling Dennis' delicate system, but he can't show that right now, in front of this person who has, according to these monitors, done some pretty intense stuff. It's not just ego stoking Dennis' braggadocio; it's also fear, the sense that the ground is unsteady under his feet, that any second now he could just plummet through the floor.

The best way to avoid that fall is to talk down to someone, even if you have to make it up. Even, especially if, it's becoming increasingly obvious that this person could kill you very quickly and wouldn't even take the time to make it artful. All the murders in Dennis' head are artful. Reality sits outside him, bundled and disheveled, but as soon as it enters his eyes and ears and mouth it has to take off its grubby coat and make itself presentable.

It's the only way to get by.]

Now, you said decades? That's a long time to do something you don't like.

[Gods have mercy - or don't, in fact, for it would be immensely satisfying to watch them smite this psychopath. Liam nods as though he were accepting sage advice, catching his expression from slipping into anger for the sake of maintaining this charade. What does one even say to someone so far gone? Fortunately, Liam is given an out.]

I like what I do. But it's not power I'm after. [He tells himself this, as though his hunger to prove himself a better leader than the oligarchs who built the universe hasn't smoldered in his stomach for thirty years.]

I'm a revolutionary. I want to set history on the right course. [Liam thinks he knows Dennis' type - if he's going to get anything else, he'll have to concede on one thing:] I admit that it can... [For just an instant, he's able to conjure his envy of someone who enjoyed making sacrifices] lack satisfaction. At least, compared to what you seem to get out of your work.

[Power. Dennis told his not-dad once that he wanted power, then backtracked and talked about how it was really only the illusion of power he needed. It was true. After a while the illusion of power becomes a power of its own, only without the responsibility, which means it's power with an escape hatch built into the floor. It's the best kind.

And it's right within grasp here. If he just plays it right, and God, this guy is buying it! He's talking to a 'revolutionary' who apparently bugbombed a race, and he's got him on the fishing line! It's an aphrodisiac rush. Dennis feels his chest sweat. He doesn't know what to do with himself; his palms are getting uncomfortably clammy.]

Well, we all want to set history on the right course, right? [Dennis laughs, but it's half a puff of air through his nose, nervous.] I mean, that's what we higher powers do.

[Calling himself a "higher power" feels so right when there's no one around to snicker at him.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

LEGION OF ECLIPSE TEST DRIVE.

Liam Ferohn-Gau | Gods Will Be Watching (Final Chapter)

1

no subject

no subject

no subject

3

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject