Subject: Building on that idea...
Author:
Posted on: 2013-08-16 02:10:00 UTC
...how about a theme park in which the attractions are based off of various 'verses? There could be things like the Lost Woods maze from The Legend of Zelda, a Star Trek flight simulator (complete with Kobayashi Maru mode), a shooting gallery with weaponry from various continua, and so on. The possibilities are only limited by the (semi-insane) imaginations of the Agents!
I just realized that we only know bits and pieces about the PPC City in New Caledonia. For example, we know there is the Musée des Univers Perdus, an eating district, a door to HQ, a DIA division, a TARDIS dock, and a cemetery somewhere in town. Aside from that, we don’t know much else. The place seems somewhat underdeveloped and unimportant in the PPC universe.
With that said, can I interest anyone in a little world-building RP?
The scenario is simple: following a freak scheduling accident caused by a length of rope, a plastic inflatable shark, and an impressionable group of trained circus monkeys, dozens of agent teams suddenly found themselves with nothing to do for an entire day. Some of them decide to visit the PPC city to see the sights, eat the food, meet some friends, relax, or just goof around.
Now go forth, chronicle your agents’ day off, and flesh out New Caledonia!
…um, if anyone’s interested, that is. If so, maybe we could start it up on the Other Board to avoid clogging up this one.
A while back I started, and nearly finished, a short interlude based on the 'what would your agents do in a Disney-related theme park' thread...which could easily take place in New Caledonia, if people agree to placing a Disney-themed amusement park somewhere in there or nearby. Not sure how much it would be related to this RP, but...it could help with the world-building? And I could perhaps finish it by having the main agents I'm using in it heading over to a restaurant of some sort or wandering around the city...
In fact, what if there was a permanent portal set up somewhere in the city that leads to a sort of generic Disneyworld/Disneyland? Anyone mind if I put that in? It would certainly explain what all the agents were doing there...
~DF
You may or may not need to adjust the descriptions of Disneyland attractions to something a bit more like what a PPC affiliate would build, but since it would be a "sort of generic" Disneyland, it might be like that already.
As for the second thing, all of the agents just went to New Caledonia of their own accord for a day off. No portal mishaps or anything of the sort. If you were asking to have a free-standing plothole in the middle of the city that takes the agents to the theme park, well, you could, but it would be easier, more plausible, and less unstable to just have people walk over there, or at least use local transport.
It's a theme park, and the agents have a day off. They might want to go there anyway, if only to see what it's like, and they don't need to be pulled in dimensionally from across town. Then, when the agents finish going on the rides or eating theme park food, they could go somewhere else and immediately regret consuming said theme park food.
As an aside, since it's a PPC-themed generic theme park, I imagine that instead of the people dressed in Mickey Mouse or Foghorn Leghorn suits walking around traumatizing children, there would be a collection of dull-colored Generic Beast-costumed workers strolling around the park, staring at people with unblinking plastic eyes. Lumbering, unblinking facsimiles of potentially licensable characters are part of the theme park experience, no matter how many creepy dreams you have afterward!
...how about a theme park in which the attractions are based off of various 'verses? There could be things like the Lost Woods maze from The Legend of Zelda, a Star Trek flight simulator (complete with Kobayashi Maru mode), a shooting gallery with weaponry from various continua, and so on. The possibilities are only limited by the (semi-insane) imaginations of the Agents!
...my agents just happened to be exploring the Trekverse part first, being somewhat that way inclined. The theme park as a whole is multiversally themed.
Now, which popular continua could easily be turned into a roller coaster? Stargate could make a fun one, since the theme would allow the cars to teleport after passing by certain sections.
Admittedly, that would be difficult to service if there was a problem in the middle of a ride, but I expect the dedicated New Caledonia Division of the DO has protocol for problems with sudden physics reassertion in the rides. Actually, it might be just as hard keeping the Skull Kids in the Lost Woods attraction from causing trouble. They'd be on the payroll, of course, but there's only so long a guy like that can go without trapping some tourists in alternate universes or turning them into plant people.
Now, what else would make a good roller coaster? Every theme park needs at least two or three.
Oooh! Sounds fun!
A day off is something not often seen, so Des and Anebrin would definitely be excited. Plus, I could use that as Interlude material.
So begins my agents' quest for more coffee.
Linking here would make it easier for people to join in, because they wouldn't have to hunt down the Other Board.
If you want to make the link even more visible, you can make things in titles bold by surrounding the text with <b>this will be bold</b> If you ever need literal angle brackets, you want < and >
This links to the first post in the RP, which states its basic premise.
I'm not sure how the bolding helps, but anything to get the information available!
(facepalms) Sorry about that.
...unless it's just a copy and paste job?
There are two ways (that I know of anyway) to add links in a post.
The first is just to copy and paste the web address, in which case it will appear as a clickable link with the full title - like this: http://ppc.wikia.com/wiki/PPCWiki
The second is to use this handy bit of HTML code:
Type the text you want the link to appear as here (remove the £ symbols to get it to actually work).
This allows you to <a href="http://ppc.wikia.com/wiki/PPCWiki">make the link appear as part of the normal text, just like I've done here. I find it particularly useful for long addresses, or things like Google Doc links which just look really messy as they're a string of random characters.
Maybe I should have waited a bit to propose the RP: I've got to go to work soon.
*Shakes fist at time zones*
I'll try joining up later in the day!
But, to help out anyone who does, I thought I'd throw you a list of the key references to New Cal. By 'key' I mean the ones that tell you the most - if a ref only mentions something in passing which is more fully described elsewhere, I'll give the second.
This is also a good opportunity to pull all the information together for the purposes of adding references to the Wiki article...
*The Wiki itself. This gives a good overview of most things.
*Fallen Feathers: Nita. About halfway down we get this:
She found herself the Rue Jay Thorntree, the main street of the New Caledonia, scowling at the sunlight as if it had offended her. Around her was a variety of hustle, bustle [...] she leant against the wall of the entrance to HQ (a building known, through the magic of PPC multilingual humour, as The Appetiser)...
There's also a mention of Club Aujourd'hui ("What do you do there?" "Mostly alcohol.") at the very end.
*PPC: Flight of Swans. The second and fourth sub-stories are set in New Cal. The first only tells us that Agent Monty's pond is there. The second gives us a decent description of the Musée des Univers Perdus:
Agent Penny was wandering through the streets of the PPC’s city in New Caledonia, just passing the time, really, when she heard an unusually loud voice. Screaming voices weren’t actually that uncommon around the PPC - the insanity levels were even higher than in Penny’s home city of Ankh-Morpork - but the content here wasn’t the usual obscenities.
“... the Doctor’s favourite book growing up! And oh, what’s this? It turns out it was the Racnoss! Oh, did I ruin that for you? Let’s get another one... the Lost Road Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien! Forgotten when the Professor died, leaving it unwritten. And on the last page... well, fancy that. It seems Earendil was-”
Penny emerged into the plaza before the Musée des Univers Perdus, took in the crowd of agents and associates gathered in front of it, and then her gaze joined with theirs and tracked up to the blue-skinned woman standing on the roof of the Musée.
“... now this is rumoured to have been Cicero’s favourite book. Let’s see... oh, a murder mystery! And, would you credit it, it was her slave who did it? What is the world coming to?”
[...]
“Looks like they’re making another go of it,” she said. A handful of black-clad figures were sneaking across the [roof] tiles towards Starwind [...]
"[...]is there a back way into the Musée?”
“This is the PPC city,” she pointed out. “There’s back ways into everything...”
As for the original description of the Musée, that comes from here:
Dustin and Five were leaving the Musée des Univers Perdus, a museum of continua lost when the civilizations they were written in had fallen. (Works from the Roman Empire stood side by side with folktales from Sernpidal and Time Lord novels in its library and its bookstore.)
That same link notes that the pond is 'on the other side of town' from the Musee.
*This, this and this all mention the Tour Prend Pion pawnshop. The second establishes that it's possible to park a TARDIS opposite it, but to be honest I think Tawaki's agents just parked them wherever they chose. That link does also note that the TARDIS dock (singular) was newly-opened at that point.
The third link provides an address for Tour Prend Pion: 104 Rue Fait-des-Choses du Nord (ie, it's on the northern half of 'Makes-Things Road'). It also provides us with 'the corner of the Rue Dafydd Illian and the Rue Imbolc Telyan, by the hospital', which I guess is a local section of Medical (and maybe FicPsych?). It also gives us this:
Tawaki walked down the Rue des Fleurs, trying hard to resist the urge to ignore his destination. That works in PPC HQ, but not on Earth. Besides, the city is so regularly laid-out that getting lost is well nigh impossible, unless you happen to be looking for a strange TARDIS. Tawaki was looking for a familiar one. He reached the corner of the Rue des Fleurs and the Rue Imbolc Telyan and turned left. It was another two blocks to the Rue Jay Thorntree.
Which both points out that navigation is different there, and gives a hint of a map. And then there's this:
Eclectica read the message. “'Tadkeeta, and Tawaki if you are with her, report to the field just south of the cemetery hill at once. Signed, the Yertis, Deputy Head of the Department of Internal Affairs.'” So saying, she moved the TARDIS to the hill. Tawaki and Tadkeeta left the TARDIS, which had become a large headstone with the inscription:
“SACRÉE À LA MÉMOIRE DE
“FAIT-DES-CHOSES
“NÉ 30 JUIN 1954
“MORT 13 MARS 2008
“LOIN EN AVANT
“LA ROUTE EST PARVENUE”
In fact, it was a perfect replica of Makes-Things' memorial stone. However, it was at the base of the cliff, while Makes-Things' stone was on top of the hill.
[...]
They entered the farmhouse and met Agents Honesah and Ontic from the mirror multiverse, with the Yertis, the Corkscrew Cattail, and Captain Dandy.
That gives the general layout of the cemetary area, and also provides the farmhouse, which is either a safehouse for Honesah and mirror!Ontic, or the New Cal DIA headquarters.
*This provides us the following:
And it is not in the TARDIS dock, but at the corner of the Rue Jay Thorntree and the Rue Ella Darcy.”
“Down by the park where Misplaced Flora and Fauna found those feral squees?”.
“Yes.”
Ten minutes later, they arrived at said park, and Dustin flew low enough to drop her safely. He then alighted by a brook.
*This might imply that there's a Nursery in New Cal. It's sort of unclear.
*This provides us a look inside Big Murphy's store:
“Right you are,” Big Murphy replied, leaning over the store counter. “Agent Marcus Langston brought the set to me - Department of Floaters, like you two. [...] I took one out back and tried running it over with a truck. Didn’t even scratch the finish.” He smiled broadly. “Of course, that means they don’t come cheap…”
It also notes that 'Several minutes later, both agents were walking down a surprisingly crowded hallway in HQ', which suggests Big Murphy's store is fairly close to the door back inside.
*By 2024, the City will have agents living in it with their children.
I'm sure your links will come in handy for the RP. I'd just like to add that the bottommost link appears to be broken.
Another thing: may I contact you to discuss a PPC writing project? I posted something on your talk page about a week ago but I'm afraid it's gone unnoticed...
There's an extra '%22' on the end of the URL which is breaking it. The correct link is this.
And yes, of course you may. If you don't have an email for me already, send something over at the one linked above. I'm afraid I'm quite bad at checking my talk page, so...
hS