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TEST DRIVE MEME 002
⚰︎ ⍢ ⌲ ⍚ TEST DRIVE MEME:
Welcome to RUBILYKSKOYE — a dark, horror-smut game where player choices will drive a mod-run storyline about the world and its NPCs. This test drive meme provides a medley of prompts evoking the game's general tone.
THESE THREADS CAN BE GAME CANON if both players are accepted into the game and agree to it. However, if players who'd prefer to start fresh are welcome to reuse these prompts in their own personal logs upon acceptance into the communities. Note: the universal test drive arrival prompt will not be repeated on the coming event log, but players are welcome to reuse the prompt.
CONTENT WARNINGS for this game include: monsters, body horror, dub-con, non-con, religion, blood/violence, and marking/branding, loss of autonomy/self, and mental influences. This log additionally has warnings for: nudity, spiders, character death, and references to children in proximity to sexual situations.
If you have QUESTIONS about the test drive prompts, please ask HERE. Questions about the game itself or the general setting should be directed to the FAQ.
FAQ ✧ SETTING ✧ CALENDAR ✧ RESERVES ✧ APPLICATIONS
THESE THREADS CAN BE GAME CANON if both players are accepted into the game and agree to it. However, if players who'd prefer to start fresh are welcome to reuse these prompts in their own personal logs upon acceptance into the communities. Note: the universal test drive arrival prompt will not be repeated on the coming event log, but players are welcome to reuse the prompt.
CONTENT WARNINGS for this game include: monsters, body horror, dub-con, non-con, religion, blood/violence, and marking/branding, loss of autonomy/self, and mental influences. This log additionally has warnings for: nudity, spiders, character death, and references to children in proximity to sexual situations.
If you have QUESTIONS about the test drive prompts, please ask HERE. Questions about the game itself or the general setting should be directed to the FAQ.
IN THE WOODS SOMEWHERE
The chirping of partridges in the treetops rouses you. Light barely filters through the canopy, just enough to suggest daylight. By the time it reaches the forest floor, the light has taken on a sickly green. You lie amongst the frost-covered mosses and ferns, the frozen soil cold and just a little damp on your bare skin. Wherever you were before this moment, whatever you were doing or wearing, when you awaken in this forest, you find yourself naked and helpless as the day you were born. As you sit up and get your bearings, aside from a brief wave of disoriented nausea, you seem to be no worse for wear than you last remember.
You seem to be alone. The gnarled oaks and moss suggest no sign of civilization or sentient life. Just flickers of movement from curious squirrels or brave lizards emerging from a temporary retreat from the wintry weather. With your feet under you, and you'll find the wood is filled with berry bushes and nut trees, though much of the fruit has been picked clean. The freshwater stream that runs north-south, populated by both poisonous toads and delicious crawdads, is running actively again as the weather warms back up from the recent snowstorm.
As you explore, you may run into others with stories just like yours. Some may have already formed clumsy nudist groups, others may still be processing their confusion, with no memory of how they got here. Now is a good time to overcome any hang-ups you have about modesty; it's going to be a long hike, and the weather isn't quite amenable to your lack of.
Turn your back to the darker, shadowy parts of the forest and eventually the glow of manmade lights and the curve of a dirt road may come into view. At the edge of the wood, you'll find a town surrounded by a fifty-foot wall of beige stone. The only entrance is an iron gate positioned on the southern edge. When you arrive, the gate is already open, welcoming people inside.
This quaint, historic town of five-thousand has cobbled street and signs lit by gas lamp. Wooden shutters protect otherwise open-air windows on the buildings, which are all under three stories with gabled roofs. A number of businesses hug the main street — a clockmaker, a cobbler, a grocer — while residential homes sprawl outwards towards the wall. At the far end of the main street, visible about a mile to the north now that the trees and the enormous wall is out of the way, sits a castle with three towers.
When you enter, the streets are full of people, but despite any efforts on your part to hide or make excuses, they don't seem offended by your nakedness. Even families with children don't gawk or look twice. Those determined to find proper clothing regardless will find that modern clothing stores aren't available — the closest this town has is a tailor's shop and a stand in the central marketplace selling scarves and blankets.
breaking and entering
If you intend to have your character break into someone's house or yard to steal some of their clean laundry, please review the info about game laws on the FAQ and give the mods a heads up HERE.
Fortunately, the people of the town are very generous! Anyone who ask the locals will be directed to the boarding house for both clothes and a place to stay. Accessible through an embellished iron garden gate and obscured by hanging plants, trees, and vines, beyond an overgrown yard in the residential sprawl of the town is a bright-red door, which opens to a spacious cottage of several stories. Parts of the house still bear the dust of disuse, gathered on various furnishings — bedding, sofas, curtains, wooden tables. However, it's already full of people! Anyone who's already appeared in the village just as you did today lives here. Once inside, you may notice patchwork repairs have been made, and some scorch marks still linger from a recent fire, and some furniture is still lying around in splinters.
Tonight, a few of the townspeople will help out with the new arrivals. They stock the kitchen and prepare a communal dinner of parsnips, pheasant, and squash. During dinner, they (and those outsiders who've already begun to settle) sit down at the enormous wooden dining room table and help orient the newcomers and answer their questions.
finding roommates
Don't spend too much time in the dining room going for seconds, though. You'll want to claim a bedroom quickly because each one only has two full-size beds, and there aren't enough spaces for everyone. The last people upstairs will need to double up to squeeze in. Roommates will not be mod-assigned; players should coordinate directly with one another to determine their living arrangements.
Get a good night's rest. By the light of day, locals will help get the new arrivals set up on the coal stove with breakfast. You may notice they're dressed in a way you would almost call normal — at least, in a manner befitting 19th century Eastern Europe. As you find your way around town to get your bearings, folks are eager to help you find a place to apply your skills so you can contribute to your new home.
writer's block?
If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try: naked hiking, acquiring clothing or other inventory items, asking questions at dinner/orientation, or staking your claim on a bedroom!
OFFERINGS FOR ULANTI
The festival starts in the middle of the night, when the sun and the children are safely tucked into bed. The streets come alive with dancing locals, their faces painted red and purple and black and yellow. They all wear revealing clothing that, to your sensibilities, may seem sexually suggestive. Some individuals openly expose their breasts and nipples, while some others may incidentally reveal when they turn around to tend to their errands that their dress is backless — entirely! market stands and kind neighbors will gladly provide clothing befitting the occasion to anyone who asks.Notably, the locals' choice of clothes reveal a mark on their bodies. An astute person will notice that there are four varieties — and a very astute (
In addition to dancing and the lighting of any number of candles, you may stumble upon fighting rings inspired by Terry Silver's basement club, where the locals brawl until they're bloody and unable to move. Elsewhere, amongst the performance of a number of erotic dancers, you might come upon a face you recognize — naked and collared and caged, tongue pressed to the bars to taste anyone who'll stop and give them a little attention.
Temporary night market food stands offer various forms of alcoholic beverages and sweet and savory street food in suggestive shapes — sausages, popsicles, flowering cupcakes. many of them represent hedonistic indulgences and displays of wealth that the town usually does not seem to possess. This bounty, they attribute to the Duchess' patronage — and much of it is dosed with herbs and additives that enhance the sexual appetites and aggression in any who consume them.
Another kind of temporary stand has been erected — while new arrivals may at first mistake these for some kind of bathroom, it becomes apparent upon entry that they are partitioned stalls with gloryholes drilled between them. Some stalls are closed with an anonymous stranger waiting inside for someone to push a part of themselves through the hole to be lavished with mystery touches; others are fully unoccupied, should your character wish to lock themselves in and wait on the small wooden stool for a partner to offer themselves.
Anyone native to Rubilykskoye will take the time to answer questions about the festival of Ulanti, which functions as a way to purge their bad energy ("zadza") and sate their inner beasts ("duchozweirz"). They encourage characters to join the festivities — which range from staged sexual performances to sadism and masochism designed to feed the desire for violence. all appetites are welcome here, and there are only two rules: (1) stay away from the unmarked, which refers to the locals' prepubescent children; (2) hold nothing back.
writer's block?
If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try entering the fighting rings, watching or joining a live sex performance, or eating some aphro food (deliberately or otherwise)!
the fathomless dark of pajak wood
At the outer edges of the forest, shadows grow long and the air grows thick. Though the sun never grows warm red-gold with sunset, the wood darkens. Birdsong is replaced by the click of mandibles and the skitter of many legs. Anyone who ventures out this way will soon find it difficult to see before them, even in the middle of the day — eventually, even the brightest magical light source or darkvision cannot stretch further than a few inches. In the void, the air feels heavy, as if it were not air at all but some more solid mass. Almost like liquid-smoke, it presses down upon you. Slowing your movements. Characters who push too far into the void may stop being able to move at all, and find themselves given over to insanity if they collapse, unable to draw themselves out. This is just one of many dangers.
Monsters thrive this far out. Huge, blood-red spiders the size of hunting dogs drop from the treetops. In addition to their venomous bite, which contains a fast-acting paralytic, these creatures are clever: they attempt to use their webbing to entangle any trespassers, binding limbs together or to trees. If you're unfortunate to become fully cocooned, you don't have long before this forest will be the last thing you see.
In addition to the spiders, you may come across the sharp-toothed furred yetis that emerged during the snowstorm, still looking for a meal. Each one hunts alone, a fifteen-foot-tall shambling creature that drips black ooze and super-chills the air around it until your skin feels tight and icy. If it gets the drop on you, you're likely to be its dinner. It has emerged from a long summer hibernation to enjoy the colder weather, and it's starving.
Those who seem lucky enough not to run afoul of the monsters here are in for a worse fate. The void can play tricks on your senses. As madness sets in and you lose all sense of direction, you may also lose control of your body — what is that steers your hands to turn against your friends? Why does it sound like your own voice whispering?
In the fog, you may also hear the voices of those familiar to you — people you know from the town, or people whom you know with almost perfect certainty aren't here. these figments may recreate unhappy memories or force trespassers to hallucinate their worst nightmares. Nothing is as it seems in the void, and when you swing at these figments, desperate to silence them, it might not be a figment at all, but a friend in the flesh trying to help you. By the time you see their true face, it could be too late to stop yourself.
writer's block?
If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try fighting a monster, hallucinating your worst nightmares, and/or attacking a friend or stranger!
HIDING INSIDE EACH OF US
Uh oh spaghetti-os.
The marks worn by all residents of Rubilykskoye aren't just cool body art, as it turns out. The town is full of rumors, whispered in shadows and over candles of a starving creature hiding in the dark corners of your chest. Feed your inner beast, they say, before it finds a way to feed itself.
Alas, its emergence is inevitable — sooner or later, the horrible things that happen here pile up and make someone repulsed by the idea of human contact. Someone holds themselves back, bites their tongue, or simply does not believe the stories. Today, for one reason or another, that creature is coming out. Someone hasn't been keeping it sated.
Symptoms escalate over weeks, from monstrous irritability to full-blown body horror transformation, where people physically shed their human forms and evolve into the monsters this place made them. Once a person becomes something more (or less) than human there's only one way to go back — sate the beast.
The baker, Nile Yoren, is a likable, middle-aged woman who can fill any request — wheat, rye, even nut breads. She boasts that her sourdough starter belonged to her grandmother. Today, when you enter her shop — to help out or to get a muffin or a bag of rolls — something is off. Her smiling face isn't behind the counter.
Around the back wall, you hear the crackling of the oven. But when you call, she doesn't come out. You have to go back and look for her. What you find is not just the oven crackling, but nile herself — twisted into an incandescent monster of human flame, the flickers of dark orange light like a face howling in agony amidst the yellows and reds and whites. Before you can scramble away, the creature lunges at you. Defend yourself or flee, or her inner beast will be feeding itself on you.
(There are other monsters lurking in every townsperson — feel free to invent your own npc monsters and scenarios!)
The marks worn by all residents of Rubilykskoye aren't just cool body art, as it turns out. The town is full of rumors, whispered in shadows and over candles of a starving creature hiding in the dark corners of your chest. Feed your inner beast, they say, before it finds a way to feed itself.
Alas, its emergence is inevitable — sooner or later, the horrible things that happen here pile up and make someone repulsed by the idea of human contact. Someone holds themselves back, bites their tongue, or simply does not believe the stories. Today, for one reason or another, that creature is coming out. Someone hasn't been keeping it sated.
Symptoms escalate over weeks, from monstrous irritability to full-blown body horror transformation, where people physically shed their human forms and evolve into the monsters this place made them. Once a person becomes something more (or less) than human there's only one way to go back — sate the beast.
someone else transforms
The baker, Nile Yoren, is a likable, middle-aged woman who can fill any request — wheat, rye, even nut breads. She boasts that her sourdough starter belonged to her grandmother. Today, when you enter her shop — to help out or to get a muffin or a bag of rolls — something is off. Her smiling face isn't behind the counter. Around the back wall, you hear the crackling of the oven. But when you call, she doesn't come out. You have to go back and look for her. What you find is not just the oven crackling, but nile herself — twisted into an incandescent monster of human flame, the flickers of dark orange light like a face howling in agony amidst the yellows and reds and whites. Before you can scramble away, the creature lunges at you. Defend yourself or flee, or her inner beast will be feeding itself on you.
(There are other monsters lurking in every townsperson — feel free to invent your own npc monsters and scenarios!)
you waited too long
At first, as you hide yourself from your darker impulses, a subtle itch develops under your skin. An irritability that makes you snap at the person who bumps into you on the stairs because all those fleeting emotions that you've been repressing bubble to the surface. Every dark thought you've had about being here, all the fears of never getting home, of being surrounded by ticking time bombs, the anxiety of wondering who you might hurt or what relationships you might betray by doing what you have to do. The anger. Oh, the anger.
Maybe you shut yourself in your room or run into the woods to hide away, but there's only so much you can do to deny the itch that grows into hunger like a spark catching and growing to wildfire. Someone comes to check on you. That knock on the door or crunch of leaves in the wood that fills you with dread at what you might do and hope that you will be sated.
As claws and fangs and scales and spines and fur grow and your body transforms with a sickening crunch of bones and peeling of skin, so do your appetites. If you won't sate them, you'll lose yourself to your beastly impulses sooner or later, mauling friends and taking your fill. Is it better or worse if only your claws get inside of them?
Maybe you shut yourself in your room or run into the woods to hide away, but there's only so much you can do to deny the itch that grows into hunger like a spark catching and growing to wildfire. Someone comes to check on you. That knock on the door or crunch of leaves in the wood that fills you with dread at what you might do and hope that you will be sated.
As claws and fangs and scales and spines and fur grow and your body transforms with a sickening crunch of bones and peeling of skin, so do your appetites. If you won't sate them, you'll lose yourself to your beastly impulses sooner or later, mauling friends and taking your fill. Is it better or worse if only your claws get inside of them?
no subject
Alone in the woods until she'd come across strangers she supposes are now acquaintances. It's disappointed her not to stumble across the likes of Tamar and Tolya, even Adrik and his gloominess and Leoni with her impossibly insufferable positivity. She longs for Nina and her ability to adapt so seamlessly. But if she was to be kidnapped, stripped, and tossed into a strange town that reminds her too much of Pachina with its rambunctious need to show how connected its people are, she's grateful that Nikolai is here with her.
Even if she'd preferred he was at home, perhaps on the Volkvolny, being utterly insufferable. Away from this confusing mess she's found herself in.
There's a particular reason why she hasn't uncharacteristically launched herself at Nikolai in elation that he's here.
"We're not. Genya, Alina, and the Darkling are also here," she says, not looking pleased at all. How can she say it with lightness when she wishes Genya to be tucked away in the safety of the Grand Palace, Alina back home in Keramzin, and the Darkling in a grave with no possibility of return? "I found the festivities very spoiled after discovering that."
Especially the Darkling. Pompous, perfectly-haired and manicured ass. Hopefully, this time, Nikolai won't dissuade her from punching him.
no subject
And the Darkling, who should be dead. Who he has not seen, but it will be only a matter of time until their paths cross.
And no one else. If more of their people are here, they've yet to make themselves known. It makes for a small group. Nikolai worries over it, these diminished numbers set against the Darkling if it came to such a circumstance.
"Considering the amount of work that went into putting him into the ground, I admit I was disappointed to find it hadn't stuck."
A very understated summation.
Nikolai crosses into the room as he speaks, moving to close the shutters. There's a banya, Alina had said, and food if he seeks it out. But instead of these pieces of information, Nikolai asks, "Have you spoken with him?"
no subject
Zoya can push. Does he mean in the belly of a tree? Inside darkness that was destined for Nikolai instead? Doesn't he mean, I was disappointed to find it hadn't stuck again?
Alina with her brown hair. Genya calling him Kirigan. Morozova with his too-fine features and no Yuri lingering underneath. Maybe Nikolai's doing the same tap dance as she is, but Zoya doesn't believe so. Where she's a thunderclap, he's sunshine, illuminating everything first before withdrawing until only streaks keep visible what he wants to be seen. He'd have been bold with his words before neatly untangling them if she didn't know what it was he spoke of.
But Zoya pushing is akin to a lightning bolt. She's precise and sharp, but she's not subtle. She's always left the subtlety to him, even if he uses too many words to reach his point.
"Yes."
She can't help the upward tug of her shoulders. Despite her anger towards him and his countless betrayals of their kind, Morozova's still the person she once looked up to. It's difficult untangling years' worth of trying to stand as tall as him, to emulate the best parts of him.
"He was pleasant as always. He tried insulting me while pretending I wasn't getting under his skin." Zoya shrugs a shoulder. "He wouldn't have spoken to me for as long as he did if he was bothered by my presence."
no subject
But they will be here together for some time. They will work more closely together here than they had in Ravka. Nikolai will come to know her better.
"He's lacking the leverage he's used to wielding, but he can't be underestimated."
If nothing else, the Darkling is clever. Kirigan had been formidable then, and he is formidable now.
"Have you seen Alina? Genya?"
All things considered, Nikolai assumes those are the two she would prefer to be speaking with. Maybe they should be strategizing altogether, once Zoya's settled, but in the immediate aftermath of arrival Nikolai can't imagine she wouldn't prefer those closer to her.
no subject
And if she felt entirely confident that Nikolai recalled everything as she did, she'd blurt to him what she was thinking: That it upset her greatly to see Genya in so much pain, fresh and alone in her grief when they had been riding it together. It destroyed a little piece of her to have Alina hate her so openly when they buried the hatchet without any anger between them. She worried for him and his demon with the Darkling's sharp gaze around.
But when Zoya isn't confident, she doesn't push herself. Somewhere, Juris is shaking his head and tutting. You are weak.
"Alina's not my biggest fan." And if her small smile is brittle, well, it's not as though Zoya Nazyalensky has a reputation for being soft.
She lifts her brow slightly. "Have you seen them? The Darkling?"
no subject
There is little sense in playing down that fact. Alina hadn't recognized him, and the tentative understanding they'd come to is only a shade of what they'd shared in Ravka.
"I spoke to Genya after," he tells Zoya. "But I haven't seen Kirigan, and I mean to take my time before meeting him."
Surely there will come a time when he will be able to consider coming into contact with the Darkling and not wanting to drive a blade into him at first opportunity. All their work. All that Alina had endured. Mal's sacrifice. All the work that had gone into his destruction and it was erased by his presence here.
It felt like a cruel joke.
"We've come to the decision that I'll conceal what I know from him, when her and I come across each other. At least for the moment."
no subject
She can't help the slight tilt of her head.
"And what is it that you know?" She doesn't ask it gently, nor does she ask it ungently. Zoya's always been a thunderclap, but at least she knows when to be a softened one.
no subject
"That he killed my father, and my brother," is such a complicated thing. Nikolai is still trying to parse out his own feelings; there is very little grief for those two men, but there is something else that might stem from what Nikolai wished they had been. He presses on to steadier ground, "That Alina killed him, and destroyed the Fold. That I've had my coronation and intend to repair Ravka's wounds."
Another thing easier said than done. Impossible to do from here.
"As far as he need know, I came here from university in Ketterdam."
However long that lie held. Nikolai didn't expect to hold it forever, only until he had some kind of leverage, wasn't so newly arrived.
"How much of that sounds familiar?" is a question flipped off the cuff, Nikolai considering that this might well be news to Zoya if Alina had been so baffled by what he'd been speaking of to her.
no subject
Perhaps Zoya should try for a fake flicker of surprise to flash across her features, but she's never been much of an actress. She prefers to be a thunderclap, clear and evident and very much herself. He won't see any surprise or bafflement cross her features. She knows all of this already and more. It's better he knows it now; Zoya's never been very good at keeping up a lie when she's always preferred the truth.
Although, she does furrow her brows as she tries to recall one thing.
"What was it that you studied? Piracy or sailing?"
It's a very minor joke. The one thing she knows best about Nikolai is his love for the high seas, something she's never quite appreciated for herself (and never will—it ruins her hair).
no subject
It occurs to him, in this moment, that perhaps Zoya has knowledge beyond him and Genya both. Nikolai’s split second of deep scrutiny gives way quickly to a laugh.
“Piracy,” is all mock affront. “You meant privateering, surely.”
Surely.
But the real question—
“Did you expect otherwise?”
For him to recollect more. To have lived longer, experienced more. Would it have been a boon if he had?
It’s hard to say. This place is so entirely divorced from Ravka. His crown would sway no one’s favor, bring them no resources or deference. They would have to forge alliances in a different way.
no subject
But she doesn't pick up on the intention of his question. It's easy not to; there's a rapport that she's three years into, and him laughing rather than scowling or appearing pensive is very easy to be distracted by. (Morozova never laughed.)
Tilting her chin upward, she declares, "I hoped a pirate"—Zoya Petty Nazyalensky, at your service—"like you would've studied something you found difficult."
no subject
Zoya Nazyalensky is an exceptional soldier, Nikolai knows. That is what was meant for him to know. The tenor of this teasing feels simultaneously misplaced and wholly natural; Zoya is not manufacturing any part of it, though Nikolai perceives it as new and strange.
He can still lay a hand over his heart, feign a wound.
"I'll have you know my apprenticeships were very challenging."
Up until they weren't. Hence: the plural.
"Privateering had the dual benefit of keeping me occupied and benefitting Ravka. I think I was very clever for hitting upon it as an option."
no subject
Zoya knows better. Sturmhond is Nikolai as Nikolai is Sturmhond, but she at least doesn't utter the name. It's too familiar, and while it's a little too easy to fall into something that feels like an old kefta—worn, a little frayed, comfortable—she's aware of it being slightly discoloured. At least to him.
Had Nikolai ever told her there was a time when he considered hanging up his eye patch and toy parrot? The idea is strange. It's not one she'd ever allow, as his friend or anything else.
"I'll choose to believe you were incredibly challenged, if only to stop your ugly pouting."
As much as she wishes to tease him, Zoya knows there's a wall between them. She thinks it existed in some capacity before as something thin, often in the capacity of his (really, her) search for a bride. Now, it feels different and thicker.
She'd much like to bury her head in the sand and pretend the easiness she feels isn't something she's lucky to have stumbled across, but Zoya's never liked sand and she's never been one to enjoy stumbling through the dark.
Any teasing is gone from her face as she regards him seriously. This time, her words lack any bite, and her tone is significantly lower. "What do you know of me?"
no subject
There is so little choice involved in the latter decision. A king cannot run away to the sea. He cannot say he is serving Ravka as best he knows how as a privateer now that the crown has come to him.
But they are not speaking of the crown.
He knows this look on Zoya's face, if only in passing. It has been directed at maps and intelligence and at scouts, but never at him directly. (Perhaps it had and he had not noticed, but how much does Nikolai miss?) There is a quality in her that he recognizes, knowing it in himself, in Alina. Born maybe of soldiering, but perhaps innate in them all.
"You served in the Second Army, once working closely with the Black General before his betrayal of Ravka. And you were among our number who gathered and fought against him after he'd shown his true intentions. And I know you attended the coronation. I saw you in a room with Genya and Alina just before the ceremony commenced, before I excused myself."
A succinct summary. These are the points where their paths had crossed. Enough to know her, to recognize her one sight, to have some understanding of her and know her to be trustworthy. But if Nikolai were to guess at who would know her best, he would have said Alina before he said his own name.
no subject
She supposes she's been here before, at least twice. Once at a wedding chapel and another in Novokribirsk, when a tea shop was the last thing she had of her aunt. Crushing loneliness stopped being a friend because of the stubborn likes of Genya, David, Adrik, Nina, and Nikolai, but she supposes it's always been one of the more reliable things in her life. At least she knows how to handle it, even if it's been a little while.
She sucks on her teeth before she turns to survey the room, running her fingers along the nearest surface and wiping the dust away between her thumb and middle finger. Zoya's better at action than standing still—and she's not quite sure if she can hold her face to be impassive for much longer. She needs a break.
Don't look back at me. Yet it's all Zoya can do.
"That's all there is to me." Deeply impersonal information. It's not like Zoya's known for letting anyone close, anyway. It'd be easy to play into that; it's what she'd been doing since joining the Triumvirate and unknowingly letting these annoying people chip away at her walls.
"It seems most of us are on the same page, which will make matters of dealing with that demon all the easier."
It's always best to steer any conversation back to the matter at hand. If it's not an untameable demon or a bride search, it's the Darkling.