![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
riverviewmod) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
quaranmeme2017-12-18 08:58 pm
riverview: december 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 13 Character Slots available.
● Reserves are Open. Applications will be open from January 1st until January 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.
● 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
Going into the last week of December, the city experiences an abrupt and unexpected dump of snow - several feet of it, in fact. Usually, it wouldn't be a big deal, since most people and most exploration teams could just hole up and ride out the storm and snowdrifts. And that's what most of the city is doing.
Unfortunately, this is the week that some of the Perimeter Guard Cadets have decided to go on their Winter Expedition - a sort of camping trip slash exploration expedition into the Abandoned City just outside the walls of the Inner City. While the goal wasn't to get too far away from the walls, with the snow starting up in force, the groups of Cadets have gotten turned around in the inclement weather and are stuck outside the walls, unable to return to the safety of the Inner City.
A general call has gone out to anyone willing to brave the snow and storm to rescue groups of Cadets between the ages of 12 and 17 who are trapped outside the walls in their camps.
During the last half of December, residents might start noticing the appearance of cute, trilling little birds with soulful eyes (very mild spoilers for the most recent Star Wars movie in the link) throughout the Quarantine. Perched on tree branches or the corners of awnings and eaves, they will keep multiplying in number until December 20th, when a positive swarm of them will come through the portal.
Welcome to the Quarantine, Porgs!
These little lovable birds (spoiler-free image) will be settling in to roost just about anywhere you can think of. Outside your window, inside your kitchen on top of your fridge, under your bed, or anywhere else. Whether residents consider them a nuisance or a potential new pet, they're bound to cause a stir. The Porgs will be out and about in the city until the end of December, when most of them will find their way back through the portal to whichever world they came from, though a little colony of them will remain in the City from now on. Porgs will be added along with domestic foxes and Pokémon as creatures that can be found or caught in the city as pets without the use of AP!
Some residents may remember that back in September, a love-drunk and confusion-spell-addled newlywed mage from Gramarye Magic Research let loose some pretty little fairy lights that trapped people in the city in little invisible bubbles until they kissed (and any kind of kiss would do). Well, the same slightly-less-newlywed but no less romantically-inclined mage happens to really, really enjoy the winter season, and thinks it's totally romantic. That particular sentiment is pretty common in the Quarantine - while Hygge is the celebration of familial love, the residents of the Quarantine all agree that that family often includes partners and lovers. Besides that, the folklore of mistletoe as being representative of love and friendship is something that the Quarantine has in common with the universes many residents inhabit.
So, as the last week and a half of December rolls around, residents around the Quarantine will see the result of the resident romantic trying to share a bit of Hygge love - small, glowing sprigs of mistletoe will be floating around the Quarantine, ready to trap people up and make them share a bit of affection. But how does it work?
Two or more characters walking under one of these glowing, floating sprigs will get stuck for one hour, trapped inside an invisible enclosure with an approximate three foot radius. The only options are to either wait out the hour, or to kiss! Characters will know they're meant to kiss, because part of the magic spell is the sudden and intense knowledge that they should kiss in order to break free. There is no compulsion to kiss, just the knowledge that that's how to get free. This time, instead of any kind of kiss working, there will be different types of kisses that will work to release the trapped residents depending on the color of mistleglow:
GREEN: FOREHEAD ● BLUE: HAND ● VIOLET: BUTTERFLY
Trapped residents will not know what kind of kiss will work for each color and may have to experiment before finding the right one.
Remember those Hygge Cabins that the City set up all along the banks of the river? Little cabins with enough space for a small kitchen, a table to eat at, and a lounge area in front of a fireplace, meant to be shared in celebration of familial love and found family during Hygge? Well, the sudden onslaught of snow that trapped the Cadets outside the city are also serving to isolate people who are in and around the cabins.
With the river nearby, the heightened humidity in the area of the beaches where the cabins are set up, the snowfall is even heavier than it is throughout the rest of the city. Anyone who's down by the water will find themselves quickly driven out of the open and into one of these cabins, whether it's inhabited or not! Whether these weather refugees are sharing a cabin by choice, after having a lovely dinner together, or unwillingly, in the form of an intruder on someone else's holiday or by being driven into the same cabin with a stranger, they're going to be snowed in for a while!
Whether your character is 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
Then again, normal is... She's going to give herself a headache if she starts thinking about what normal is any more. Her grip on the apple tightens in brief panic at that train of thought, the places it could lead, and she forces herself instead to focus on what he's saying now.
She puts the apple in her basket, just to have it out of her hand. ] I'm fine.
[ The drill sergeant in her mind snaps Clarify, Cadet! and she straightens up without realizing it. ] I'm handling it. I've moved colonies by myself before. It's not so different.
[ It's completely different. She went from her aunt and uncle on Mamore to Circinius IV and Corbulo, falling into the arms of rigid protocol and training like she was learning how to breathe. Still, she adds a soft-voiced: ] Thank you. It's kind of you to offer.
no subject
[ There are plenty of things in life that no one can actually control or help with. Things like this, where he can, or can at least try, there are plenty of those too. Finn doesn't mind at all. He hesitates a little, thinks about the snap of her posture, the tone of her voice. ]
Everything was different for me. When I first got here. Too much going on.
[ He shrugs one shoulder. ]
It gets easier. There are lot of people in the same boat as you. Handling the same thing. Nobody has to handle it alone.
no subject
She wants to say I am alone. She hasn't found anyone else from Hastati Squad. She's not the only one who died. (The faces of her squadmates, the faces of the hundreds she knows by sight and year and name.) But somehow, she's the only one who made it here. Was taken here. As far as she knows, this whole colony is made up of the dead. This place could have saved so many more and it hasn't. There's a tangle of hate in her heart for that reason, another fresh knot in lines that have been laid out straight and clean for so much of her life.
The same boat.
The same thing.
She starts to shake her head, but then there's nothing but gunfire in her ears and the near-magical glimmer of green and purple projectiles painting streaks through the air.
Somewhere, several rows over, someone yells to a child and she flinches, and she's back, in the grocery store with a kind stranger on a moon without bomb shelters.
She's fine. She's fine. ] It's... it's not enough, actually.
[ The admission makes her glance down, but training and practice forces her at once to orient on his face without looking him in the eye. ] There's too much time in the day. I don't know what to do with myself.
no subject
Filling a day has never been his problem. Just... realizing how much he never got to have, before. He picks what he wants for breakfast in the morning and it still hasn't gotten old. He picks his own routine-- his own normal, like Cassian called it. Like little reminders that he got out, and it's good even when it's complicated to think on, and he's free.
It's fair that someone could come in with the opposite problem. He doesn't know Chyler's personal situation, exactly. Routines are hard to break. In a place so alien, wanting the familiarity of knowing what you're supposed to be doing and when and how, or hell, knowing you know anything at all-- Finn understands that.
She's well-trained, he thinks. Holds her posture well. Schools her expressions fast, knows how to look at people (that flinch could have gotten her singled out for closer observation, but in a helmet it wouldn't have been so obvious). ]
They've got options. There are a lot of schools around here-- I don't know much about how they operate. Plenty of places to look for work.
[ Whatever the standard is for a school here, whatever honest work someone would be willing to offer, it's likely not exactly what she's looking for. ]
And the Perimeter Guard takes recruits. That's where I went. It won't take up all day, every day, but it's a good start on filling time.
[ He offers a smile, small and brief. ]
If you don't mind two weeks of boot camp covering stuff you already know.
no subject
[ Hey there, profound incredulity. Corbulo's basic training lasted twelve, not including the induction week. ]
Two weeks is nothing.
[ Wait. He's with the Perimeter Guard. He's with the Perimeter Guard, and what he's saying implies that he was with something like them before. Chyler drags in a horrified breath and comes to attention. She is well-trained, and even if he's not an officer, she is still a cadet. Lower than the lowest enlisted personnel. ] No offense meant, sir.
no subject
You can just call me Finn. If you want. I really don't have a leg up on you. [ If she needs time to work towards that, maybe, he won't hold it against her. One day at a time.
Finn can't hold back the start of a grin. ]
And I actually thought the same thing. Two weeks is definitely nothing. Just try not to give the other recruits a hard time if they aren't used to it yet.
[ His tone seems to lack the part of that advice where he thinks she actually might give them a hard time. If she's done all her due diligence before, to his mind, she's probably got a general idea of how to work in a team. Hopefully a better version of team functionality than he got raised on. ]
no subject
[ She says it almost experimentally, and she bites her lip to keep herself from smiling outright. He has a nice smile, one that's hard not to reciprocate.
( God, but he reminds her of Tom, and she's not equipped to handle that thought right now, so she tamps it down. Boxes it up, stores it for later, when she has the privacy to cry over the question of whether her friends are alive or dead. ) ]
That isn't me--that's Vickers, he's... [ Also dead. Uselessly, courageously dead, a corpse whose attempt at heroism may not be remembered by anyone but her, in a universe where it doesn't matter. ] He was like that. He couldn't wait to be an upperclassman, but I don't think they would have put him in charge of a squad.
no subject
Hasn't stopped a lot of people from losing too early, that he's met. ]
I knew a couple like that. Probably would have been squad leaders if they did better on evaluations. [ Ruthlessness and control-- not just controlling a team, but controlling themselves, too. Being kept well under control. The First Order knows what it wants.
Slip never made the cut, for obvious reasons. Nines had his temper, needed to learn to contain himself, to focus. Zeroes was closer. Just not quite better than they thought FN-2187 was.
Nothing standing in his way now. If he's still alive. ]
But they always had pretty poor standards for leadership where I came from.
[ it's weird to say that. on the other hand, get rekt, entire command structure. ]
no subject
[ She doesn't hesitate to say it, both because she believes it wholeheartedly and she feels the need to defend her squad. ] We were all training to be officers. I think--
[ It's hard, talking about him in the past tense. But it's impossible to talk about him in the present. She was there in that locker room, kneeling over his body, not three days ago. For a second she feels dizzy.
She's learned to battle the impulses of her own body, to push through when she thought she couldn't hang on any longer. She does that now, taking a deep, quiet breath and finding the stillness she associates with calm. (It isn't calm, not really, it's a sheet of ice over rushing water and one of these days it's going to break.) ]
He could have been great. Corbulo teaches... taught us to win, to want to win. Victory was always the objective. He jumped too quickly when he thought it was close.
[ It was what got him killed. ] You... [ She's desperately curious, now. ] You were in training, before this place?
no subject
But he listens. Watches her stop and push something back and start again, assess someone's mistake, switch the subject a little to the left. It's like seeing his own coping methods in a mirror that displays a different face. Something that he knows as intimately as breathing.
(She'll feel it eventually, he realizes, more than she knows what to do with. Finn doesn't even know what he's supposed to do when his own mental dams inevitably run out of borrowed time, and he lives with two people he's sure would do anything they could if he asked-- but he still finds himself wishing he could help her, somehow.)
If she was a cadet, she isn't one anymore, not really. Whether it was a choice or the forcing of circumstance, she took the next step up before she came here. Chyler Silva is a soldier. She might not realize it. ]
Not right before I got here, but... yeah. [ After a brief hesitation, soft but frank: ] I was in training since before I can remember.
[ It occurs to him that he's never mentioned that to the people he's met here, even in vague terms. Rey and Poe both knew already. Cassian and Jyn know what he turned away from, might have made their own guesses about how long he was there, which he hasn't cared to ask about. Some people know he's a soldier, or that he's had some training, but that's it.
A lot of finer details, what got taught to them, when and how, he doesn't talk about at all. He avoids the subject. Doesn't want to point arrows towards what's wrong with him. Doesn't want to lose that control over how he's perceived before he's ready, if he can help it.
But she's young enough that she might actually have to start out as a cadet in the Perimeter Guard, at his best guess. She's young and she snaps to attention like a second instinct, well-trained, officer track. He won't disrespect what she's coming from by keeping a lid on some of the things that make them the same.
Besides, he just told her she's not alone. If he can do anything to try to get across that it's the truth, then he'll do it. ]
no subject
What's before she can remember? She remembers hiding under her parents' bed when she was six and they couldn't make the bomb shelter before the fighting hit their neighborhood. She remembers taking apart and putting together her father's handgun while they hid, over and over like a prayer.
What's before she can remember? Is there a time that wasn't blood and fire and Insurrectionists murdering her family and her friends? Maybe Cygnus, but that really is too far back for her to recall. She was one when they moved to Mamore. She was ten when the Innies took her cousin, thirteen when they took her parents, fourteen when they took her brother.
Training, that stability, that order, it sounds like a delirium dream. ]
I was only at Corbulo a year. [ There again, watering eyes, constricted throat. She clears it. ] I was on Mamore before that.
[ She realizes, suddenly, he won't know what that means. He won't hear Mamore and think battleground. ] There's. A lot of violence there, Innie--Insurrectionist violence. My parents were Marines, KIA. The Innies....
[ She glances down and away, trying to pin down feelings that have become more complicated than she would have thought possible. (She doesn't see it, doesn't notice, but she's already more relaxed around him; it's almost like he's a fellow cadet, with his honesty and his invitation to call him by name.) ] I thought they didn't care who they killed as long as they made their point doing it. I do--they're monsters, they've always been monsters.
[ Except now she's seen real monsters. Seven-foot-tall beasts wielding glowing weapons and projectiles that don't just rip through armor, they explode inside their targets. ] We were training to fight them. Who were you...?
no subject
But some of the sentiments they have in common ring true all the way through to his bones. A lifetime steeped in war, in violence. Training until training became adopted instinct. That ongoing internal push and pull. Honesty for honesty, frankness for frankness.
Finn folds his hands behind his back. ]
I was trained to fight the New Republic. They told us a lot about that. We were protecting the galaxy from the Republic's deprivations. We were gonna be part of a greater cause. Bring order to chaos.
[ Because you really want to target democracy when you're starting out. That's really where you want to go.
You are the galaxy's chosen few, they used to broadcast. He'd stand in line with his cadre, straight-backed, and feel proud. ]
They lied. Once I got deployed, I found out pretty fast that my monsters were all on the side that raised me.
[ He thinks that makes sense. He hopes it does. ]
no subject
She wonders now what made Tom question the motives and methods of the UNSC, when his own brother and mother were both in service. What made him different? What did he see that she couldn't?
My monsters were all on the side that raised me.
She doesn't believe that to be true of the UNSC, not in the least. But there's still the image of Innies and Marines fighting together, facing down what she knows now were the invaders at Corbulo. Innies fighting to save their own skins, the cynical part of her says. Innies fighting to save human lives, says the part of her that didn't exist a week ago. ]
How did you know? That they were wrong?
no subject
How it felt wrong, there and on Jakku, in every sense he was using-- seeing it, hearing it, thinking about it. How Slip died and they left him there like old garbage. Left all of them.
Those are the reasons Finn knows now. The things he's realized. He thinks for a few seconds, pushes his own thoughts back, jaw tight. Simple might be best. ]
The only two times I got sent out, they stood me in front of unarmed civilians and told me to open fire.
[ He swallows. His first deployment isn't something he talks about, not even to Rey or Poe, not yet. He isn't even telling the story in full now. But it's worth admitting to. That it happened twice. ]
First time I couldn't follow orders. Hard to get more wrong than that.
no subject
In the space of days she's losing her grip on everything that she thought she knew. About the world, about herself.
It scares her. ]
Why would they do that?
[ She shouldn't be asking for a reason. What reason do Innies have to murder innocents? But then, if she's willing to consider it, what does that make her?
( Buried under it all, so deep she can't see it herself, is a faith in the system that was supposed to protect her planet. A faith fractured, not yet beyond repair, a faith she's trying to hold together with both hands. It's what she has left of home. It's what she has left of her family. It's all she has left. She's putting too much of her own situation on Finn, thinking too much of his commanders as her own. ) ]
You don't... you don't have to answer that.
no subject
[ He'd asked himself that question. Then he'd asked himself why he was questioning it.
You come up in a place where the first thing you learn is to follow orders, to understand that whoever's giving them has a good reason, that there's a purpose for it all, and that whatever the reasons are, they're none of your business: just follow the orders you're given. There end up being things you want to understand. Want to follow the reasoning on. ]
... the short answer is that people who are afraid are people they can control. And control is exactly what they want. [ He remembers her words. ] They use their soldiers to make a point.
[ There are still hooks in him, sometimes. Almost in spite of how hard he tries to pull away from what he used to know. ]
It's different here. With the Guard. I wouldn't still be enlisted if I didn't believe that. And there are a lot of good teams. You can choose the one that fits you.
[ Or choose none. Choose to leave. Choose anything. ]
no subject
One of the squad leaders offered me a spot. John Sheppard of RR-1.
[ She still has to find out exactly what RR-1 is, but it's a goal. It's something to hold on to, and that's what she needs right now. To tie herself down to the present goal by goal, moment by moment. ( Not choosing one, choosing to leave--that possibility isn't even on her radar. She doesn't just want this. She needs it. )]
Which squad are you with?
no subject
He's never gotten around to meeting John, and RR-1 doesn't ring much of a bell. He hasn't exactly been shopping around for a squad, though. There are few things he genuinely trusts as far as the Quarantine goes. But so far, the standards for leadership in the Perimeter Guard have been pretty solid.
If this John guy is in charge of something, chances are he's proved he's worth it.
aka note to self: snoop. ]
I'm just with the regular patrol. Keeps me freed up if anyone needs extra hands. [ It's worked out okay so far. ] I'll try to keep an eye out for you. See how it goes. Something tells me you're gonna have a lot of offers.
[ And some people thrive on specializations. ]
no subject
Of course, that just gives her a chance to prove him right. ]
Yes, sir--Finn.
no subject
It's enough for Finn to crack a wide grin of his own, anyway. ]
Let me know if you need anything, alright? I promise I don't mind. I'm just Finn on the network, too, so. Easy to look up. [ What's objectively easier to look up at one in the morning: 'finn' or something with underscores or puns or what have you. Call him crazy, but sometimes simple is good. ]
no subject
I'm c dot silva. [ She too is in the "make it serviceable and sensible" camp. She offers her hand again, a farewell handshake. This time with the confidence she didn't feel before. ] ...Thank you, Finn.
no subject
Finn accepts her offered handshake, firm but as warm as one can generally make a handshake. ]
You're welcome.
[ it's sad 2 put a bow on this thread but luckily i have another one already that i can tag, so everything Works Out. ]