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quaranmeme2017-10-20 08:26 pm
riverview: october test drive meme
riverview test drive memeWelcome to Riverview's test drive meme! Feel free to dip your toes in on the test drive meme to try out your character in the setting, play out a mission, and get samples for your application at the same time!
● There are currently 31 Character Slots available.
● Applications are open but the application and reserve cycle will resume with apps closing on November 7th.
● Providing all parties are amenable, threads on the test drive meme can count as game canon, as the plot in the prompts presented is game canon, and may continue while applicants are waiting on the queue (including spanning multiple TDMs).
● TDM threads do not count for Activity Check, but they do count for Activity Bonus Points, so long as all characters involved are accepted into the game.
● Threading on the TDM is intended for prospective new characters, so top-levels should only be posted by players of these characters. Since the events in the TDM are considered game canon, characters currently in the game are free to use the TDM prompts for logs and posts on the regular communities.
Feel free to use the prompts below or create your own scenario. The setting is built to be flexible, so feel free to make things up as you go.
information resources
premise ● arrival ● setting ● ask a question ● calendar ● navigation
Over the course of the past couple months, something has been changing in the Abandoned City, the part of the Quarantine that was abandoned over a decade ago after the great Epidemic that decimated the population of the sprawling city. It hasn't been independent or spontaneous either - Quarantine resident Ava Orlova has been practicing with her energy production powers outside the city in a way that has had some interesting side effects.
With burst after burst of glowing blue energy surging through a spur of one of the abandoned and neglected transit train lines, something has started stirring. The line was connected to a long-dormant hydro-electric power relay station located near on the river just before it connects to the waterfalls (see the crudely-drawn map here), and with all that power being pumped through the train line and ending up in the station, the backup generators have wheezed to life.
What does this mean for Quarantine residents?
Providing the station can be secured and brought back to full power, it means that the overall electrical grid in the city will be much more reliable, the fences will be more secure, and new methods to try to direct the portal to send mistaken arrivals home can be explored. Most importantly, the part of the Abandoned City surrounding the newly-activated power station will be much easier to tame and inhabit. The possibility of expansion is very important for the Quarantine - with new arrivals coming through the portal almost constantly, overpopulation has been a bit of a concern of late.
With all of this at stake, the Perimeter Guard and the Government of Riverview are teaming up to make sure that this new area gets explored, secured, and made useful in as short a time as possible. Anyone with even an inkling of desire to explore will see ads, fliers, or Perimeter Guard Cadets talking up the exploration mission out to the new power relay station. Head over to the Perimeter Guard Headquarters to receive a free package of exploration equipment courtesy of the Government of Riverview (complete with comfortable camouflage jumpsuit, tactical belts, and a lightweight pack with a survival kit including food, water, first aid, flares, and other similar supplies) and be issued a weapon to follow the train line out to the power station and ensure the route is safe.
It isn't just the route to the power station that needs to be cleared - with all the activity and the thrum of energy and light at the station, a swarm of interested monsters and creatures has come toward the area. The exploration team and any techs interested in helping to get the station fully operational will need protection, and the station itself will need to be cleared of all threats and secured so the engineers, electricians, and technical geniuses can safely work on establishing a power grid in the area.
Join in the fray, and back up your fellow explorers to get the area safe, secure, and able to be used!
Almost any type of monster is possible, including monsters featured in previous Test Drives, monsters that players make up on the fly, and even monsters from individual character canons that could have conceivably come through the portal. The fight, however, is totally worth it. Once this area is cleared out, there's going to be a lot more space to move around and a few interesting new locations...
During the 10th month of every year on the moon, due to a complex series of chemical, electromagnetic, and magical forces that no one has ever exactly distinguished or completely understands, the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead are weakened almost to the point of nonexistence. During this time, residents of the moon are able to see and interact with the dead - ghosts, manifesting in ways that run the gamut from being a strange sense of being watched or being visible or audible all the way to more corporeal spirits that can affect the world around them. The barriers are weaker in some parts of the city than they are in others, with some areas experiencing little to no ghost activity, while others are so populated with these ghosts that residents can barely go a few feet without running into one. The ghosts are generally the unsettled dead, people who died violently, or who were lost, seeking a place to call home, and their behavior is as varied as it was while they were alive. Some ghosts are angry and vengeful, some are simply lonely and lost.
While some people tend to interact with the ghosts only a little and as necessary, others avoid them as completely as possible, and yet others actively seek out souls who are suffering and try to ease that so they can stop coming back year after year. There are other people who have found that ghosts from their home worlds have come through with them, following them through the portal when they arrived, even if they did not die on the moon...
Whether facing death or making peace with those who have died, this is a time to reflect.
A Few OOC Guidelines:
● Characters may see or interact with ghosts from the Quarantine's past. These people will be as varied as the NPCs, from a multitude of different worlds, and characters are welcome to either engage or avoid, as players wish.
● Most Quarantine-based ghosts will have died in either the Great War with the neighboring reality or in the Pandemic that wiped out the population of the Abandoned City years ago.
● Characters may also see or interact with ghosts from their own or other characters' canons, providing the character in question is dead in canon and is not currently being played in the game.
● Canon-based ghosts should not be simply transplanted into the game as they were in canon - they are ghosts, and therefore 'not quite right,' and should not be used as an excuse to NPC a canonmate for a month. These ghosts are there to be used as plot devices to open up new avenues of CR, to create angst, to help a character make peace with their past, or other similar reasons.
● Ghosts should not be complete corporeal physical presences indistinguishable from living people, but barring this, how strongly the ghosts manifest and how much they can interact with the world around them is up to player discretion. Ghosts shouldn't be present the whole month straight, but can disappear and reappear at random times.
Since October 9th, the residents of the Quarantine have been having a stranger-than-usual experience that's been drawing them closer together (or pushing them apart). The machinery in control of the process that's used for canon updates has gone haywire and is releasing nanites that usually function to restructure characters' bodies to match the updated information. The nanites are doing something different, though - they're sharing memories between characters.
Memories can be shared in several forms:
● First Person: This is experiencing another person's memory as if it's your own, seeing through that person's eyes in all its detail. This option wouldn't clearly expose the identity of the person whose memory is being viewed unless the memory includes that information specifically.
● Dreamscape: Mostly happening during dreams or with shared flashes during the day, this is watching the memory as if it were a three-dimensional movie, during which you can meet and talk with the person whose memory is being viewed.
● Network: These are memories shared through the network by accident, either as audio/video uploads or text-based descriptions transcribed to the network. These would be posted with the ID of the person whose memory is being shared.
● It is up to individual player preference how much feelings can be used in the memory, but knowing the other character's thoughts is not permitted.
● All memories must be from your character's canonpoint or earlier.
Whether your character is accidentally sharing a memory, posting up a silly word game, trying to get hold of a friend, or putting out feelers for people to go out into the fray with, the network is going strong.
Alternately, an offer for a free app is popping up on new arrivals' devices - Friendr is a friend-finder and/or dating app. If characters choose to install it, they will fill out a short bio and parameters for what they're looking for, upload a snap of themselves, and then proceed to browse for matches. This is a typical swipe-left-or-right type app.
Friendr base code is by photosynthesis.
The code in the textbox is for the default color scheme, but the Friendr app has a wide variety of themes, so feel free to customize with colors and patterns as you see fit, but do not remove the credit line out of respect for the creator of the code.
Use the wildcard prompt to choose your own adventure and do whatever else you like in the setting!
no subject
His own birth father did the same thing for him, just a month or so ago, and Chase never once felt sad about it.
"What a hero," he finally says dryly, because that last part, about keeping others from that fate? It makes Chase bitter as hell.
He could've used a friend like that when he was thirteen. Now it's too late.
Anyway. He lets out a short sigh and casts a glance back at his weeping ghost mom. Maybe... maybe talking a little will make her calm down and go away. Ghosts only stick around for unfinished business, right?
"So, what, quid pro quo now, right?" Chase spreads his hands and shrugs. "I was a baby when my mom died. I don't remember her. I don't even know anything about her, except that she was our age when I was born. That's it! That's the whole tragic backstory, okay?"
no subject
Clearly it's not too late.
There's probably something to that thought of unfinished business being connected to the visibility of ghosts, considering the way that William Danvers III begins to flicker and fade out. Caleb is a lot more furious about the whole thing than he's letting on; his father is gone, Caleb has more power which he never wanted, and now he's here.
Plus the complicated feelings about Chase's 'demise' and survival.
"I'm sorry. That's fucked up." He sighs and looks at the ghost of Chase's mom with a tight-lipped smile. "It sucks that you didn't grow up with the rest of us."
no subject
Let's keep this going!
"What is, teen pregnancy or fatal car crashes?"
...
Not helpful, Chase. He clears his throat, casting another look back at his mother. Shockingly, something like regret actually passes through his face, and because he's already a little less guarded than usual, there's even some sadness. For just one moment. "Yeah."
He used to dream about it, when the Power first manifested. Not of, like, Caleb or Pogue or anyone in particular, but about what it would've been like to find others like him. Like... maybe he was going to get his freaking Hogwarts letter or something. But it never happened, and that hope eventually gave way to a festering resentment.
"Why do you care about your dad, anyway? He was practically dead to begin with."
Look, it may sound like Chase is just being his usual dickish self, but he's kind of trying to help here! Well. Help and avoid talking about his own feelings.
no subject
He's pretty sure that Chase is going to just think he's a sap for bothering to have any feelings on the subject to begin with but Caleb remembers what it was like to be thirteen, to be shown his father's everything and be told, look, this will be you if you're not careful. It was an added stressor on top of puberty and coming into a bit of Power already. If he was freaked out he can only imagine how Chase felt about it, essentially on his own.
At Chase's question, Caleb tilts his head in his father's direction. "He's the ultimate warning, being the way he was, but...he was also a person. He lived. I don't want anyone to die for me, or because of me."
no subject
"Well. It might not have been so bad if--" He stops himself, looking back at the crying ghost again. Fuck, why is it so hard to talk about this crap? He can talk about just about anything else! "If I had her. I don't know." It depends on so much. What kind of a mom was she? What kind would she have been? His adoptive parents were nice, sure, and they provided for his every material need. But they were busy and distant to begin with. Throwing magic into the mix only pulled Chase deeper into his alienation. He never felt like he could tell them everything.
But who knows. Maybe his birth mom would've been different. Maybe he could've told her? Then he wouldn't have been completely alone.
Hey, though, it seems to actually work a little. Now there's the beginnings of a faint smile on her lips-- which is kind of eerie, because it only makes their family resemblance all the more noticeable.
"Anyway." BACK TO CALEB'S DADDY ISSUES. "You need to get over it. People die. Especially parents."
no subject
"Yeah maybe I need to get over it but maybe you need to be less over it. It's suicide, doing what my father did, and he only did it because I'm his son, not because it was the right thing to do, and being a murderer is not something that sits lightly on my heart, okay? People die. I don't like when they die for or because of me, you need to actually listen to that part."
He pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. "I'm sorry your adopted parents were rich shits." That, at least, he's pretty damned familiar with.