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quaranmeme2018-04-20 06:40 pm
riverview: april 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 25 Character Slots available.
● Applications are currently open and will close on May 7th at 10:00 pm EST.
● 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
For the past month, the flooding in Riverview has been out of control, and the attacks of strange mutated creatures from the swollen river haven't been helping much. While the water level has stabilized over the past couple of weeks, the river is still way, way out of bounds and keeping a large number of people in relief shelters or put up with volunteer families, causing significant damage to riverside properties, homes, and businesses. While residents have done everything they can to try to correct the situation, from machines and tech to magic and appealing to the River Spirits during the yearly Flower Festival River Spirit Procession, nothing has made any real meaningful difference.
On the 20th, almost a month to the day after the river started swelling out of control, anyone looking at the rushing surface of the water will start to see a strange glow just underneath it, and as the day progresses, glowing white tentacles start to rise from the surface of the water. As the tentacles rise from the surface, members of the Perimeter Guard will be setting up a protective barrier around the area to keep civilians back until they figure out what's up with whatever's in the river.
In the meantime, the presence of the glowing thing is driving the last of the nasty giant mutated crocodiles, carnivorous toads, and other monsters out of the river in droves. While the Perimeter Guard is still holding the line, volunteers are being called for to take out the monsters as they exit the river, menacing the rest of the city. Whether your character is a member of the Guard in training, helping keep the civilians safe from the possible new threat in the river, or a volunteer helping take out the fleeing monsters, their help will be more than welcome.
After a few days of study, Gramarye Magic Research's strongest mages have banded together and found a way to communicate with the glowing presence in the deep, using a wide variety of nature-based magicks from different realms. And what have they learned?
The presence is not just one creature, it is many, and they are awakening from a long, long sleep. Possibly almost as long as there have been people on the moon - it's hard to tell, when the creatures 'speak' so slowly. What the mages have managed to get from them is that it is their awakening and movement that's causing the flooding in the river, a combination of blocking up the river's exit through the fences with their bulk and an overflow of elemental water magic that is causing the river to swell with more water than it can hold. The creatures, who call themselves the 'Guardians of the Deep,' are eventually ruled to be completely benign, and their only request is to be helped on their migration to the sea - a trip that they usually take once a year when they are not in hibernation. The problem is that, since their last migration, the river has become a much more dangerous place, plagued by monsters and clogged with rubble from the Abandoned City.
Any resident with nature magic of any kind and who can communicate with the creatures, who is a fighter or member of the Perimeter Guard, or who has abilities that can help to clear the river of any debris or blockages, is invited to aid in the attempt to escort the Guardians of the deep down the river. Once they reach the delta and waterfalls, their path will be clear and they will be free to explore the ocean until they return to the city in late fall.
ETA: In response to a player question, the Guardians look like very large glowy amoebas.
The Guardians of the Deep are slow-speaking and they are also slow-moving. For a period of at least two weeks, they will be making their way from the center of the city down the river with the current, and as they travel, they'll be having a rather...interesting effect on anyone who is sensitive to their influence. This sensitivity is something a character may be aware of through a strong connection with or love of nature or animals, it may be a spiritual or magical sensitivity, it may be an emotional one, or it might simply be something a character is not aware of until they are affected. However, no matter what a character is or where they come from, they may be susceptible to the aura of the Guardians.
And what does that aura do?
Starting on April 20th and intermittently continuing throughout the next month, any characters with a sensitivity (feel free to make one up that affects your character, or have them be immune as per your choice) will lose an important sense. While sight is the most commonly lost sense, others may lose hearing, taste, touch, smell, or other senses unique to their physiology (whether biological, mechanical, or otherwise). The only relief from this loss is for the character to make direct contact with another character - any other character, in any way, as long as there is no clothing, material, or other matter blocking contact. As soon as contact is broken, the loss will return.
The effect can last for as long or short a time as each player wishes, and affect whatever sense is desired. Reprieve from the effect comes with skin-to-skin (or equivalent) contact with another character, and is not limited to just one other character - it doesn't matter who else is being touched, as long as it's someone.
During this year, there's been an influx of people from a dying reality consisting mostly of living plant people, and they've really taken the Flower Festival as a great opportunity to introduce one of their most honored traditions to the people of their new adopted world. The tradition involves sharing various types of flowers with strangers, with each type of flower having a different meaning and effect on both the giver and receiver - the bond of the exchange can spark emotion as well as physical responses that function in a unique way that affects almost everyone that participates, whether animal, plant, or even android.
Some of the flowers have been used up, but a few types still remain. Any characters exchanging the flowers with other characters, whether friends or strangers, will experience emotional/psychological effects, physical effects, or both once the exchange is complete. Effects can last for as short or long a time as the players involved want, and are as follows:
● Baby Blue Eyes - Trust/Healing the Inner Child
Emotional Effect: Either an inexplicable trust in the person the flower was exchanged with, or a generalized paranoia.
Physical Effect: De-aging. Characters can become a younger version of themselves, physically, mentally, or both. Whether or not their normal selves are of age, de-aged characters may not participate in adult prompts unless they're de-aged to something above 18.
● Rose - Friendship/Beauty
Emotional Effect: Openness and a desire to make new friends, or excessive competitiveness.
Physical Effect: A temporary glamor that makes both participants in the exchange appear as the most beautiful possible version of themselves, and improves their charisma.
● Valerian: - Relaxation/Heart-Opening
Emotional Effect: A near-complete erasure of anxiety and stress, or a dramatic inexplicable increase in it.
Physical Effect: Forced honesty. Both affected characters become incapable of lying. Whether they're compelled to blurt the truth or if they can keep their mouths shut or talk around the truth is up to player discretion.
[Flower meanings used in this prompt come from this site.]
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!
friendr
They follow up their swipe with a message.]
i usually say "older than you'd think", which i am very attached to, but "i've lost track" has so much charm to it.
no subject
[Even so, Breq's answer isn't entirely true. Given reason, Breq could recite the length of her existence down to the day. Being charming is just so much easier than puzzling over the age of Breq the fragment of Justice of Toren, and comparing it to the age of the human body of Breq. It's simpler to brush aside the question than risk explaining ancillaries to strangers.]
no subject
no subject
[It's technically true. It's also still an evasion.]
no subject
that's remarkable. you must come from an incredible world.
the nexus boasts some of the most advanced medicine in all the worlds, but we aren't quite there yet. though we have the advantage of being a hub for refugees from all kinds of worlds.
no subject
Do you come from a place like this one, then?
no subject
it's certainly similar in that many different types of people live there, but most don't find themselves transported so unexpectedly.
no subject
[Breq will brush past the creation myth there. It's nothing she hasn't heard from dozens of cultures, before they were assimilated into the Radch. Every planet has a different way of describing their beginnings, and she has no reason to assume this one is different.]
no subject
that's a joke. i don't mean earthquakes and tornadoes and glass storms.
generally disasters caused by those with powerful Natures, up to and including the Natures born again from the original three.
the most recent influx came from the latest god of Destruction (unintentionally) wiping out the capital city of one of a world's major states.
sometimes they come from worlds set to be Destroyed intentionally.
and then sometimes people just kind of slip into one of my Tethers and are lucky enough to end up on the nexus and not a desolate wasteland.
which is entirely my bad.
no subject
When you say god, what kind of being do you mean? And tethers. Those seem to be a kind of warp gate.
no subject
Tethers are something i can do with a full grasp on my nature, like tetherers before me. i can link two points, or otherwise Tether anything together. mostly i use them to travel between worlds and places.
no subject
Do you travel much?
no subject
that would change soon, now that we have all three. at least, until i came here.
i did like the traveling, though. seeing the ways different earths and other planets lived. the universe is a large place.
no subject
I find it to be as much of a change as you do, it seems.
no subject
no subject
no subject
[Do they stay vague or come clean about their reasoning for being so glad to be gone?
Maybe a middle ground.]
i suppose being responsible for the lives of so many worlds weighs on me in a way i fear i may not be able to stand.
no subject
[The Tetherer may not be teh only one with hangups around this issue.]
no subject
He was such a compassionate god.]
i've heard the same sentiment before.
the nexus encourages us to look at things as necessary or unnecessary, interfere or not interfere. it's all very clinical.
i don't much enjoy it, but i could not say so in my position.
no subject
no subject
They never much liked the idea of it being referred to as "ruling" in the first place.]
if it helps (and i know it doesn't) most people on the other worlds have never heard of me.
they're unaware throughout the whole process.
the nexus is the only place where our natures are held in reverence.
no subject
In the end, it will happen as it will. Things fall as they will, in the wake of your actions, and in the wake of theirs. Or you'll end up staying here.
no subject
They let it stay rhetorical. After all...]
i'll be staying here.
[That's already been decided.]
no subject
[And she means it honestly. She has little sympathy for the Anaander Mianaais of the world-- but someone moving beyond that, who is facing a choice and chooses to step away from that position... Maybe they can learn to do good in a different way. Maybe they'll learn to stand up for something here in the way they couldn't where they were from.]
no subject
they'll be unable to mobilize much without me.
all three are required for it to be "the three", after all.
thank you for your sincerity.