Conversation Space: The Ultimax

[powersthatbe]

You feel as if you've stepped through a door.

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0. The Fool

[powersthatare]

In a seemingly endless tropical sea, with a warm, merry sun overhead, is a single small island, just enough for two palm trees to have a hammock slung between them. In the sand beside the hammock is a coconut, cut crosswise to have a “lid” of shell on top of it, and inside is a sweet-tasting milky beverage - a dulce de leche chocolate-coconut cocktail. The sand around the island is spotted with dog tracks, but there’s no sign of an actual dog.

[For your Traveler's initial introduction to Synodiporia with the Fool, please go here.]

Re: 0. The Fool

[otomechapilot]

Sara dresses in black for this: her divesuit uniform.

She just looks at her Marked palm and asks, “Would you like condolences for Tower?”

After Leonardo's Dungeon Rescue

[howexciting]

Leonardo knows that asking his 'patron' Arcana for anything - answers, help, advice - is an absolute waste of time. In this particular chess game, he is playing Black, because the option Not To Play has already been taken off the metaphorical table. And so he sits directly on the sand, with his arms tucked around his knees, watching the ocean horizon languidly. He won't move or act or even imitate breathing until his patron does first.

And that might be 'til sunset, but hey... Leonardo's got all the time in the World.

I. The Magician

[powersthatare]

On a stage, under bright spotlights, with an invisible audience, are a pair of chairs - plush black velvet, in the shape of an upturned tophat, cut in half down the middle. The coffee table between the chairs has a white-tipped black cane, a slender dueling saber, a silver buffalo-headed nickel the size of a saucer, and a bejeweled golden cup full of what looks like rich, dark red wine.

[For your Traveler's initial introduction to Synodiporia with the Magician, please go here.]

During Dawn Boulevard intro mingle

[breakaleginhalf]

Hopefully Rose doesn't mind Gil essentially kicking down her door with someone in tow again. Even if technically he was the one in tow last time, with Matthew. General principle still stands.

He turns his attention back to Raidou, and gives his boyfriend's hand a light squeeze. "We got this."

During the Vanity Fair intro

[awitchdidit]

Blowing in on the back of a breeze that didn't exist before now, a swarm of glowing golden butterflies coalesces into a bemused woman in a black dress. She blinks in the spotlight for just a second before realizing she's on a stage...and seeing the items on a table, and the way the tattoo on her left arm shines in the light, she instantly recognizes whose stage she's on now.

"Hmm? Oh, I'm back. Delightful, I was just starting to feel some wanderlust," Beatrice says, grinning and walking over to the chairs. She takes a seat before she sees ROSE, knowing that by being here, it means she's already been invited.

"How have you been, darling?"

After Market of the Vanities

[breakaleginhalf]

Someone's making a real habit of kicking down Magician's metaphorical door and inviting himself into her created space. This time, however, Gil's come solo. Hopefully she's not too offended.

Albion return mingle

[verdeleonessa]

Eventually Pidge gets rather tired of sulking and decides to ask for a meeting with Magician, her patron.

"Hey ROSE. Thanks for letting me come see you."

[awitchdidit]

Beatrice pauses, and blinks a couple of times as memories come back to her.

"Oh, it's this place again. Wonderful! Do you mind if I take a seat, ROSE?"

II. The High Priestess

[powersthatare]

This perfectly cubical room has walls of smooth, polished black stone, and on one side, a heavy veil of embroidered cloth with many narrow rainbow stripes in a repeating crosshatched pattern. There is one chair - flat and golden, with arms in the shape of kneeling humanlike figures with arms and wings stretched forward. What little light there is flickers like candles, coming from the other side of the veil.

Beside the chair is a silver chalice filled with red wine.

[For your Traveler's initial introduction to Synodiporia with the High Priestess, please go here.]

III. The Empress

[yourmeijesty]

The scene is a tea garden, an eclectic but elegant mixture of English and Chinese. English roses line the space's walls, just barely in bloom with gorgeous, large flowers in many shades. There is a neat walking path lined with bird fountains where sparrows will occasionally drink and cool down before flying away.

The path leads to a crystal-clear lake, where lily pads cluster in groups of three, and the banks are carefully shaded with weeping willows in full bloom. Koi fish in many different patterns and colors swim around lazily, enjoying the crisp, cool water and occasionally nibbling on the lily pads. There is a delicate path of stepping stones that cut across the lake, spaced just wide enough for the average person's step.

Inside an open-walled pagoda just past the lake's stepping stones is a beautiful woman, dressed in pink silks and wearing a jeweled headpiece that shifts the light in the room to delicate rainbows on the ceiling. She smiles at your approach, and begins to pour you tea. There is a very comfortable cushion on the floor waiting for you by the low tea table, across from the mystery woman.

[For your Traveler's initial introduction to Synodiporia with the Empress, please go here.]

IV. The Emperor

[emperorsquared]

The room you find yourself in resembles nothing so much as a personal office or study. Maybe even a small personal library. It's windowless, although there is a fire in a fireplace off to the side. There are photos on the mantlepiece of the fireplace. One one end there's one with a regally dressed Asian couple, holding the hands of a small girl dressed in wisps of gauze. On the other end there's one with a black woman, a white man in a Hawaiian shirt, and a baby girl that looks like both of them. The frames between them are filled with headshots of various people you probably don't recognize. There's a blank frame near the center.

The floor of the office is dark, heavy wood with a red carpet laid on top of it, one that shows a series of mountain ridges. The walls are paneled in dark wood as well, at least up to waist-height. After that, there's bookshelves built into those walls, crammed with heavy and official-looking leather volumes.

The room is dominated by a immensely solid desk of the same black wood. In front of it is a wooden stool upholstered in black leather. Behind it is an almost throne-like office chair, facing away from you. There's a golden nameplate that reads Hakan Caesar. A pair of coffee mugs sit on coasters to the side of it, steaming away and smelling very high quality. One of the mugs has a cartoon ram on it. The other reads: Liminal Space's Best Emperor.

[For your Traveler's initial introduction to Synodiporia with the Emperor, please go here.]

VI. The Lovers

[cupidand]

You find yourself in a wide open pink space, with swirls of white, gold, and red drifting through the air currents. You can smell chocolate and sugar. When you breathe in, there's the sense that you're inhaling something intoxicating. You can taste the slightest hint of champagne on your tongue.

There is black-and-white checkered tile beneath your feet and bubbles floating around about a dozen or more feet above your head. Some of them glow. Closer to the ground where you are, there's a loveseat, with gilded wood, and pink and red upholstery. To one side of it is a white easel upon which rests a portrait painted of two Psyches in pretty dresses--one in white and one in black--flanking a heart, with white ribbons forming a border around the whole scene. To the other side is a table made of wrought iron enameled in white, with a radial design of hearts forming the surface. On it is a flute of bubbly pink champagne.

[For your Traveler's initial introduction to Synodiporia with the Lovers, please go here.]

VII. The Chariot

[swinglow]

You are sitting on top of a hollow tire with a plaid blanket thrown over it, in the back of a jostling pickup truck bed. The trucks is moving fast and the scenery around it keeps changing: cornfields, cliffs, the oceanside, the mountains, under water, over land, in the air, outer space. There's a cooler with an open lid next to you. Inside, nestled between the ice cubes, are cans of high-powered energy drinks. (The logo on them looks suspiciously like Red Bull, if instead of red bulls there were silver horses.)

[For your Traveler's initial introduction to Synodiporia with the Chariot, please go here.]

VIII. Strength

[giveme]

This space is an open field, surrounded by marigolds. If one were to look closely, it appears each marigold has exactly eight petals. In the middle of the open field is a sturdy wooden ottoman, carved delicately with the likenesses of lotuses. Next to it is a matching end table, with a steaming cup of masala chai sitting on a saucer with some tea biscuits.

[For your Traveler's initial introduction to Synodiporia with Strength, please go here.]

IX. The Hermit

[powersthatare]

The floor, walls, and ceiling are flat, black, and reflective - like LCD screens. In the center of the room, two yoga mats - matte black, slightly spongy, otherwise nondescript - face one another, and in between them is a floor lamp with a lime green LED bulb glowing softly, and a tray table with a single clear, cylindrical glass on it, filled to the halfway point with liquid that gives off its own faint cyan light.

[For your Traveler's initial introduction to Synodiporia with the Hermit, please go here.]

X. Wheel of Fortune

[favors_thebold]

The room is perfectly round, and ringed with shelves; the shelves are full of either games of chance or music media storage of all types. There’s one break in the shelving, and that’s for what looks like the command center of a broadcasting booth. Where it’s broadcasting to isn’t apparent, nor is whether it’s active at the moment. Items on the shelves tend to be in groups of three, seven or ten, and are predominantly red or blue.

A card table bisects the room, with two comfortable-looking armchairs on either side. On the side Travelers arrive in, there’s a mini-fridge, stocked with a completely random assortment of drinks.

[For your Traveler's initial introduction to Synodiporia with Fortune, please go here.]

Re: X. Wheel of Fortune

[tobodlygo]

Jim has been through some weird ass shit, he's sure. But arriving into this game and being told, 'Hey, Yeah! You've been picked by a god or something and now you gotta work for em to win this game' is a totally new level.

The set of of the room looks like something out of a kids rendition of a holo-deck, slightly out of place Card table and all, and for the moment it seems... empty?

He grabs a- A Fanta Lite, apparently, from the minibar and meanders his way over to the ancient looking comms console. It looks easy enough to get started, if there was any power to it, so he starts to flick switches and press buttons that look like they'll start up the thing. He sets his PADD out over the radio array and switches it to record.

"Captain's Log, Stardate 2262.6, probably, still. Man, I don't know," He cracks open the Fanta, "I have no idea where the hell I am or what I'm doing, but they're providing beverages and food, so I guess that's better than the Rorellian prison so far." He's too busy with monologing to realise that anyone has appeared in the room.

XI. Justice

[adastraea]

The wood in this room is old and well-polished; the lemon scent of the wax lingers in the air. The walls are white-washed clean. A judge's bench is against one wall, although there is no witness' stand beside it. No gallery, either, or seats for the jury, and there is only one table that faces the bench instead of the usual two you might find in a courtroom. Is this a courtroom? There's a bronze medallion of a scale crossed with a sword on the front of the judges' bench.

On the table facing the bench there's a glass of clear, sweet water and a pitcher to refill it. No matter how much water is drunk, there will always be more in the pitcher.

[For your Traveler's initial introduction to Synodiporia with Justice, please go here.]

[insidegalra]

Thace is not nearly as tense as the last time he was in Justice's space, although he's still very alert. Also very still, at peace with himself for the moment, and willing to be patient. If he's here, Justice will show up eventually.

He suspects he's been away from Liminal longer than it feels like, so gathering information on what's happened is his first priority. Gathering multiple points of view is always useful for comparison's sake, and besides, he'd made a promise to Shiro, last time they'd talked. (How long has it been? Perhaps that should be the first question.)

XII. Hanged Man

[pendingjudgement]

The entire room is upside-down.

Travelers who drop in here land on the exposed wooden beams of the ceiling, with simple hanging lights stretching up toward the floor, where a rug, table and chair rest just beyond easy reach. The scenery past the dusty windows is a confusing mess of floating platforms on large balloons, many of which have accidentally pulled from their mooring island and flipped over in a tangle of ropes, making them useless to anyone.

One can reach the table and chair with a bit of effort; all they have to do is let go of their attachment to the gravity they came in with, and they can hop to the floor easily. (Whether they’ll think of that right away, or indeed at all, is another matter entirely.) There’s a glass on the table, filled with some kind of fizzy soda pop - but it is upside down on a crystalline coaster. If anyone wanted to drink it, they'd have to flip it over with the coaster on top.

[For your Traveler's initial introduction to Synodiporia with Hanged Man, please go here.]

XIII. Death

[indeathputable]

You find yourself in a triskaidekaphobic's nightmare. But other than that, it's remarkably pleasant.

It is an old-fashioned drawing room, the wooden furniture a little worn and dinged up, but passable. There are chairs and settees galore to sit upon - thirteen, to be exact - all of them comfortable. There is a small table filled with a variety of assorted liquors and sodas to mix them with, placed right next to a (clean) ashtray. Thirteen glasses are stacked carefully next to the bottles. An antique grandfather clock gently ticks away the hours... thirteen of them, if the clock's face is to be believed.

The walls themselves are a pleasant yellow, studded with white thirteen-petaled flowers barely in bloom. On each side of the mantelpiece are bouquets of roses in chipped vases, each one holding thirteen fresh white roses in the center of thirteen dying roses. The mantelpiece itself holds thirteen pieces of art, twelve small, and the one in the center a rather well-known painting. The fire is warm, but does not burn when touched, and does not set fire to the ornamental rug which has been mended a few times, covering worn but cared-for wooden floorboards.

[For your Traveler's initial introduction to Synodiporia with Death, please go here.]

[seasoflight]

There are many things he needs to speak to Death about, especially regarding the entire chaos about Fortune returning from the dead. But before he even gets to speaking about such a giant hurdle, he starts with a much smaller one instead, to get his foot in the door with regards to the topic at hand.

He sits, and ignores the various Death-themed paraphernalia in the room, and simply starts with, "Why aren't the rabbits staying dead when we hunt them?"

One would think him still a kit, for the pout on his face.

XV. The Devil

[powersthatare]

The room is circular, carved out of polished basalt, and around the circumference of the room is a boundary of crystalline firepits giving off faint blue flame. Distant subsonic noise thrums unsettlingly throughout the space, setting teeth on edge and putting the hair on the back of your neck on end. A brushed steel coffee table supported by an empty cage sits in the middle of the room, and beside it is an bronze chair cast from the image of one fetal, kneeling person as the seat, and one arched and contorted human form as the back and arms. A reservoir glass half-full of green, licorice-scented liquid and a silver absinthe spoon sit on the coffee table.

[For your Traveler's initial introduction to Synodiporia with the Devil, please go here.]

XVI. The Tower

[powersthatare]

You are standing on a rope bridge, swaying uneasily over a chasm, in the midst of a torrential rainstorm. Except for the occasional distant flicker of lightning - the thunder is drowned out by the continuous roar of frigid water - there is absolutely no light.

[For your Traveler's initial introduction to Synodiporia with the Tower, please go here.]

XVIII. The Moon

[iseethe]

You are in a round pavilion, gauzy mist-grey curtains hanging between the silver columns that outline the shape of the pavilion. They flutter and sway in the night breeze. The floors of the pavilion are silver polished to a mirror finish. Should you look down at your feet, you will see yourself--but not yourself. Instead, you will see you as how you've wished to be or perhaps how you fear you are. If you look up at the high domed ceiling, you will see the night sky, the moon hanging impossibly large overhead.

There is a reclining couch in the center of the pavilion, upholstered in dark grey velvet. In front of it is another column, a miniature of the ones at the edge of the pavilion, a collins glass of high-proof colorless corn whiskey on top.

[For your Traveler's initial introduction to Synodiporia with the Moon, please go here.]

XIX. The Sun

[powersthatare]

A dome-shaped room with floor and ceiling of beaten gold glows with a light that appears sourceless - until you look down and see the glow is coming from beneath your own skin, as radiant as a flashlight shone from the other side of your hand. In the middle of the room hovers a gold-rimmed glass disc, with a white teacup full of rich brown tea, sun-warmed and honey-sweetened, resting on it.

[For your Traveler's initial introduction to Synodiporia with the Sun, please go here.]

XX. Judgement

[pendingjudgement]

A shroud of mist obscures the vision, but when it slowly parts, a warm golden glow illuminates a floor and ceiling of white, fluffy clouds, softer than silk on the skin and delightfully buoyant, water droplets somehow not sticking to skin despite feeling wet to the touch. The circle of fluffy, dense clouds extends to about ten meters in diameter, all told, and then drops off to an empty, golden sky. It is advised one does not fall off the edge - for it seems to lead nowhere.

Marble pillars veined with gold occasionally protrude through the clouds, their facades elegantly carved into the likenesses of cherubs at the architrave and base. In the middle of this circle of clouds is a marble table, upon which rests one golden chalice, filled with a clear, but deliciously sweet liquid that seems to not only feed the mind, but soothe the soul as well.

[For your Traveler's initial introduction to Synodiporia with Judgement, please go here.]

Liminal space between purgatory and albion jaunts

[prince_of_pain]

Noct wasn't here to look at the scenery, or even think about any of the symbolism that was taking place. He was just sick of hearing all these stories about the Arcana and their power plays and wanted to see if he could pry any answers from the one who marked him themselves.

He didn't exactly have high hopes. "So, I hear you're the one who thinks they're gonna bring judgement down on everyone else. However, if you want to play the high and mighty path, you can answer a few questions from your humble servant, can't you?"

Sarcasm always worked with the gods in his world, why wouldn't it here? "Is this just all some sort of game to you? Seriously, do you drag us out of our worlds and make us go play house in other places for some higher purpose we mortals can't ever understand? You never really did a good job of explaining that bit. And what's the whole bit of this with the Tower-apparently you can be killed and set the whole whatever this is into whack??"