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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
A lot. Her whole everything is A Lot right now. But maybe it could A slightly easier Lot with someone who knows everything here.
(Lol too bad about that whole Chase also existing thing.)She steels herself, drawing back from Caleb just enough that she can look past him at his father. Deep breath. Faltering smile.
"Hello, Mr. Danvers." Maybe he can do more than make crackly breathing sounds now that he's. Y'know. Dead.
no subject
None of this was her fault. She was only involved because she was close to Caleb and because Chase was a dick. She didn't make any poor decisions - unless being close to him is a poor decision.
Jury's still debating that one. "We'll sort it out."
Being here, Chase, all of it. Hope springs eternal, or somesuch. More on that theme: when Sarah leans away to speak to his father, Caleb turns his head to see what the response will be, and frowns at the ghost draws a breath.
"I suppose she's pretty enough," his father's voice crackles and whines. "You couldn't have chosen a girl with some money?"
"Father..." Caleb's voice is tight with unexpressed anger. "Don't."
"Hmph. If you're having a girl, it'll be useless."
Caleb's grip on Sarah's jacket tightens, somewhat. "Okay we don't need to listen to this."
no subject
The mantra lasts for several awkward seconds, but it works. Somehow it's easier to smile at Dadvers when what she really wants to do is slap him. Her hand would probably go right through the guy, and that would really be too much for her right now.
"It's fine, Caleb." Silently, she adds, If you had so much money, Mr. Danvers, why'd you live in a b-horror shack? Did it feel more homey that way?
It's not as satisfying as saying it out loud, but she can imagine that she did. "I'm fine, I mean."
She stands on her tiptoes to kiss Caleb's cheek, half to comfort Caleb and half to irritate the Texas Chainsaw Massacre grandpa stand-in. Another twinge of guilt at that--Caleb is too sweet for her to use him that way--but it's too late to take it back.
no subject
"None of that matters to me. For the record." Not that he's thinking about them having kids or anything! There's a bit of a leap involved but Chase gets it, kinda. His father was only twenty-six when he was born, and already accelerating downward at a breakneck pace. Legacy is important to him. "I mean...obviously. I hope."
Still, the tips of his ears are warm and he has the grace to blush a little. "C'mon though. Have you seen any places to eat, here?"
Food seems like a better idea than engaging with his undead father.
no subject
"Definitely obvious."
She loops her arm through his, which puts her back to the elder Danvers. "There's a few. Some of them look pretty weird, but I mean. We're on a moon. In a forest, in a city, on a moon."
no subject
This is the future, right? And maybe, here...maybe things won't be so strange, or difficult, or on the edge of a disaster. Maybe things can work out?
"I know, it's kind of crazy." He tilts his head back to look at the unfamiliar sky. "I mean. In a cool but terrifying way." The whole thing with the war and the plague and all that? Pretty terrifying.
Being in a different reality? Definitely cool, especially being there with familiar faces.
no subject
Even if here she can't call her parents, she can't text her friends. In a way she's even more alone than she was at Spenser. Sarah tightens her grip on Caleb's arm just a little. It's good, to have someone familiar. It's good, to have someone she can trust.
It's good that she's not alone. It's good.
So why does she feel uneasy again?
no subject
'Sorry' is something Caleb finds himself saying, thinking, a lot, but he isn't sure anything compares to knowing that she felt isolated and alone and ended up here, who knows how far away from home and anything familiar. That's his fault, he suspects, or at least nothing involving him and Chase helped.
"Someone told me people leave. To go home, I guess. So it could happen." Just so she knows.
no subject
Not having so many questions would be super great.
Sarah leans against him, closing her eyes and trusting him to lead the way. "That's good. That's great."
How long, what will she tell her parents when they get home, will they miss the start of the semester, what a stupid thing to worry about when you're on a freaking moon.
Sarah shakes her head, trying to focus on the present. In the present, they're getting something to eat.
"You wanna try one of the weird places?"