sail_ooc | TEST DRIVE MEME #1

1. now it's fun to wake up in a strange chateau

[you wake up.

it doesn't matter where you were before. going to bed? dying? opening the door to face a great evil? same result. you wake up in a soft bed with starched sheets in a cool, darkened room, sunlight peeking out from behind thick curtains. maybe you're alone; maybe you aren't. maybe you immediately notice the folded paper on the bedside table near your head. if you don't, you better fix that real quick: you won't be able to even open the door before you read it.

the note itself is written in a neat hand on white card stock; there is a stylized logo of a ship with the words SERENA ETERNA printed underneath. the note reads as follows:

Dear Passenger(s),

As your cruise director, it is my great honor to welcome you aboard the Serena Eterna, your destination for fun and adventure! We know you could have chosen any cruise line for your vacation, and we're very grateful you chose ours! On behalf of the Captain, I would like to assure each and every passenger that will we do whatever it takes to fulfill all your needs and desires during your journey with us.

At your earliest possible convenience, please attend the mandatory lifeboat drill by the end of the day. I'm sure everyone is very eager to get started on all the fun and sun, but safety always comes first! You can find your life jacket in your cabin's closet; carry it to your assigned muster station on deck one, where I will take you through the drill. If you can't find me in the crowd, just look for the gal with the winning smile!

See You Real Soon!

Sincerely,
Gal Friday

you walk to deck one. you have no other choice: every time you try to step in a direction some unseen being considers "not towards deck one," you find your legs no longer move, staying stock still, frozen. whether compelled quickly by curiosity, or delayed by pure stubbornness, the result is the same, and you are left milling around with other similarly curious or stubborn people.

you see someone in uniform near the front of the crowd. she seems to be a gal, but is missing the winning smile, along with most of her other features. she seems to see you, though, rushing to your side and placing a lei around your neck with great formality. a voice, cheery but artificial, sees to come from nowhere and everywhere.]

Welcome aboard! We're so glad to have you!

[you touch the lei. rooster feathers, lotus seeds, and a carved circle of something white and hard, linked onto a silk string.]

2. messing with my mind was fun at the time

[freshly lei'd, your legs are forced to lead out onto the deck and towards your muster station. the same woman is there, carrying a clipboard. this time, she introduces herself as Gal Friday, the cruise director, before immediately going into the muster drill spiel. it is very boring, and you are not allowed to move, except when you are required to show you know how to put your life vest on. you could try to not do this, but Friday will move to stand in front of you very closely and just. look in your direction until such a time that you decide to do it. and I'm sure your fellow passengers want you to just get on with it, too.

but, once it ends? she reiterates her desire to welcome you aboard. and, then, you're free.

well, free to move about the ship at your own leisure, of course. which is a kind of free, and probably the best one you can hope for. you could try to escape, maybe, if you have the means to; Friday certainly won't be one to stop you. that's what the barrier is for, after all.

but, wouldn't you much rather have fun?

the buffet is full. the pool is open. the casino jingles and chimes.

welcome aboard.]

3. lots of mystery in the history of the devils I knew

[you were never alone.

a few days have passed since you first arrived on the Serena Eterna. perhaps you've made yourself a little routine, and settled in a bit. or maybe you haven't done that at all. either way, you're here, and it looks like somebody is pretty pissed off about it.

it starts small. sometimes nearby plates skid off tables, or a pool chair upends while you're walking next to it. and sometimes that chair is aimed right at your head. objects are moving with quickly increasing frequency, and a wide variety of styles: some are dropped, or pushed, and others and others are tossed, but a few of the items are thrown, with great force and odd accuracy. if Friday is around during the lighter moments, she simply titters and cleans up whatever mess is made. if a pot of soup sails off the buffet line and nearly drenches you in boiling minestrone, she simply walks away.

and then there's the voices. hundreds, maybe thousands, calling out. not all are intelligible English, but you seem to understand them anyway. some sound scared, or angry. some are screams, others whispers. some sound entirely strange, while others are achingly familiar. and they're all saying the same exact thing:

Get Out.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"No, no, not the photo gallery--I'm a passenger here. The Independent City of Gallery. In Europe?"

Clearly, clearly you ought to have heart of it, Constantine. He's almost offended. And then he's befuddled, as he catches up to the rest of what he said. "Exorcist? Demonologist? What, are you some charlatan who'll 'purify' old buildings to milk grannies out of their pensions?"

"I fucked me way across Europe. Never 'eard of 'Gallery'. What country's it in?" Unless Constantine's misheard and he'd said Galilee or something similar. Israel's sort of Europe.

"Well what do you think threw the coconut? An invisible granny with a big pension account?"

He decides he's only going to be confused about one thing at a time, and right now, the fact that someone can 'fuck he way across Europe' and never even hear of Gallery is it.

"Gallery's an independent city-state. It was founded after the Platinum Wars--it's between France, Italy and Switzerland. How have you not heard of it?"

He's fucked his way across every continent excluding Antarctica and he would be more than happy to share his escapades maybe after they've dealt with their little ghostly problem?

"You're talking about Geneva mate. Not heard of the 'Platinum Wars' either. Metals are getting more expensive though..." Something something, supply chain problems something. He's a warlock, not an economist. He only knows the prices when he goes to buy these things for his spells.

"Anyway, if you're not staff, you busy tonight?" Someone's planning on fucking his way across the ship too and he's not wasting any time.

"I hardly know you. You hardly know me." Which he knows doesn't matter to some people, but he's not very free with who he lets touch him.

"You're Johnny from Gallery. I'm John, from Liverpool." That should have been obvious enough with the accent, but he makes it clear anyway. "Anything else you'd like to know, we could talk about over a few drinks," Constantine offers with a shrug.

Otherwise he's just going to poke his nose where it isn't wanted, try and dig a little deeper into the menaces that are upsetting life on the cruiseship. But how he's going to end up spending tonight doesn't seem to bother him at all with his easy come, easy go attitude.

"Oh, I'll gladly do drinks, but I don't traipse off to bed with anyone right away." He pauses, before continuing more quietly. "I have some scars I don't like to show anyone until I trust them a bit."

"Alright then. Drinks it is." Constantine's got scars of his own to contend with, but he's probably a little too comfortable in his own skin to have too many hang-ups about them. He's perfectly happy drinking too much and potentially waking up somewhere else come tomorrow morning.

"You can buy me the first round, stranger. If we don't get murdered by invisible grannies with big pension funds, eh?"

"No, no, the grannies are the ones you're scheming by telling them you'll exorcise their attics. Keep up." But this is said with good humor. "Honestly, I've never heard of ghosts really being a thing. They're just stories you tell to spook your little sister."

"I'm a real warlock, oi. Most o' me spells work like a charm." Granted, many of them don't, and the ones that do can be questionably ethical. But he's done a few good deeds in his time, or so he'd like to think.

"I only deal with real ghosts. None of that 'woowoo' shite."

"So where you're from never had the Platinum Wars, and doesn't have Gallery, but it has warlocks. I wonder what else is different."

A thought occurs to him.

"What was the date, where you were before?"

"Not many warlocks. It's a niche calling." If it can be called that. There are far more tax accountants and lawyers and policemen than there are warlocks, that's for sure.

"That's a wee bit complicated. I was travelling on a ship back and forth in time. But it was 2020 or so." He's sort of lost track also, but he's pretty sure the first half of 2020 is where he's supposed to be.

Johnny's visibly stunned at hearing that. The date, not the part about the ship traveling in time. His mouth opens and closes a couple times without words happening, before he manages an "oh."

"What?" Was it something he said? He said a lot of things so he's not sure if it's the ship or the warlock thing or what's bothering Johnny right now.

"I prefer to travel alone, but it's not so bad. Seen some mad shite, mate, and I wasn't even sloshed."

“I thought our times might be out of sync. But I didn’t expect it to be by more than a century. That’s all.”

But it sure feels big to him.

“I need a smoke. Can I convince you to come to Tauva for that drink?”

After a few timebending trips on the Waverider, Constantine isn't fazed at all meeting people from a completely different place and time. Maybe this boat is just someone else's oversized haunted Waverider.

"Thought you'd never ask. Need a smoke meself. Lead the way."

TEST DRIVE MEME #1

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