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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!
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He hated that the probable reason for it was him. That they'd toyed with her just to get to him; or because of her connection to him. He doubted Warren and his cult were aware of his feelings for Alex; he'd barely realized them himself until recently. And if they had, they would have kidnapped her along with his father and Coralee. If they had there would have been no choice to make, no time to think about it. He would have been on a plane that day.
He drew his brows in confusion though, too lost in contemplation to think to kiss back. Still, his arms remained around her waist, not letting go.
"I saw you a few minutes ago." It wasn't exactly much, but it was something. Some form of confirmation.
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Despite knowing that, he hadn't let her go, and Alex just frowned for a moment, the expression deepening to shock after a split second. She didn't try and pull away, instead she just asked in the typical Alex way, "what?" That shouldn't make sense, of course it did because she knew that people were returned to the moment from which they were taken, but Strand was... Well, Strand, and she had kind of expected that he'd notice that something wasn't normal and that she was gone. It was odd to be so wrong about something when it came to him at this stage of their working together, and now she was wrong twice in a row.
"I've been here for months, Richard." Her voice was soft, but it was matter of fact, and she doesn't look away from his expression. "I know you probably think that this is some mass delusion or whatever, but I've been here for almost six months. I've lived here for six months. The last time I saw you, we were at your father's house talking about how the picture of the kids who looked like Sebastian Torres." She doesn't tell him how she actually marks the conversation in her memory as both 'wife' and his being irate at her comparing his manner's to Thomas Warren's.
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"That was weeks ago." It was hard to imagine a way for someone to alter her memory like this, but it was Alex, and they were facing a man with more connections and money then either of them could ever have. If anyone could do it, it was Warren.
His mind started racing through all the plausible and implausible ideas. The idea of a mass delusion didn't make sense, but what about a mainframe of some sort - no, the knowledgeable world wasn't that advanced. There had to be something.
It was then that something hit him. Something very, very important. Not in the grand scheme of things, not even in the overarching insanity that they'd both found themselves in, but to him. Something so incredibly personal that his hands unclasped around her and he stepped back for a moment.
How right was this? How allowed? If the last thing she remembered was that picture, was it even proper to be touching her like this?
The look on his face as he scanned her face, her hands. It was a look she would remember all too well. The same look he had when Coralee had driven away what felt like so long ago.
"You don't ... remember Geneva, do you?" He knew she didn't, but he needed to hear her say it. To have it confirmed with her own words. If this was Thomas Warren's doing then Richard would strangle the man to death. To hell with everything else.
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She had been looking down, because while there was the best of intentions of her journalism ethics, it was easier for her not to look at him for a moment. Alex's face told the stories of her thoughts even better than her voice could, and she was making a herculean effort not to let the hurt be read on it. Of course, with someone like Strand who could see her more clearly than most people, it was an impossibility, but she'd thought he'd been willful about not seeing things like her insomnia and maybe, if she was lucky, he'd be blind to this too.
But Alex could feel the weight of the stare on her, and when she looked up and met his eyes, her confusion was waging a war with that hurt. Alex knew that look. She had seen that look and had felt it from the sideline that day. Though she tried quite often not to think about Coralee Strand, Alex couldn't help but wonder if she had felt the weight of this look that day, and if it had carved into her the way it was carving into Alex.
Geneva. Alex just knew it as a city in Switzerland and had no idea that it would be one half a choice that she would give him in a few weeks back home. But the way that he asked her hurt more than the look. Something had happened in Geneva, something huge and Alex knew that it could be any number of things but all of them that might have changed something between them. Without thinking about it, Alex moved closer to him, and she reached up and touched his cheek, the concern overtaking the hurt by miles now. She was worried for him, and worried about what that meant. "What happened in Geneva, Richard?"
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He couldn't take advantage of her like that. So instead of being honest, instead of seeking comfort in her; something he dearly wanted to do, he steeled his emotions and pushed them back inside. This, his emotions, his soul, he wouldn't force that on her. Not on an Alex who had weeks taken from her somehow.
Letting out a heavy breath his mouth closed into a straight line. He forced his mannerisms to become more the ones that Alex would remember, the Richard Strand that was familiar and almost emotionless (except on occasion). The one everyone else saw him as. Then he spoke. That same deep and detached tone that he often took coming out now. No longer the hushed anxiety and ripped open pain of a moment ago.
"Nothing. I have a lecture there. Soon." It wasn't a lie, he did technically have one. There was just far more important things that were there. There were even more important things that had spidered out from that. There was Coralee and Howard and the supposed end of the world. There was the belief of Simon Reese that he was the one that could cause it ... and there was Alex, asking him to run away with her. But none of that mattered if she didn't remember it. Not here at least.
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No, it wasn't fair. He wasn't going to drop the not!something of whatever Geneva was and embracing her and then putting on the 'Three PhDs from Yale and two of them are in being a dick' and walking away. "No." It was sharp and it was angry, and with more emotion in it than Alex would have allowed herself to put on a word.
"Richard, you just got here, and you embraced me, and I kissed you, and fuck your lecture. Tell me what the hell is going on. You can't just walk away from this conversation! The moon isn't that big, you know." And this time, she was the one who had the places to run to rather than him. At least she hoped so. But she didn't want to run. She'd spent too long running from her emotions where he was involved. At the end, she took a deep breath, and her voice mirrored when she asked him to run away with her without her knowing it. "Please don't shut me out. You have no idea how much I missed you."
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"Alex," Her name is all he seems to be able to get out. What could he say? Telling her about Howard and Coralee would be pointless, the memory of that conversation had been taken from her somehow. Hypnosis maybe - no, hypnosis didn't work like that. Telling her about the choice she'd given him would be the same. There, wasn't a viable option.
"It's, complicated." It wasn't enough. Richard knew Alex and knew she would keep digging. Fume and storm out only to come back again a few moments later. Alex couldn't brood as he could. Not really, but she would get to the bottom of what he was hiding; at least she would try. He had to give her something. So he gave her something small, something that would distract her from trying to figure out the rest. "I offered to cook."
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(And, the back of her brain reminded her, he definitely hugged you back) but the thing that was more important was that he'd offered to cook. "Wait," her voice was a soft and puzzled question, "for me? Like for me for me and not..." And not like for a colleague who he just happened to be friendly with. Not just Alex who sometimes had fallen asleep on his sofa when they'd rewatched his tapes but also the actual person that he'd asked to trust him. That he could trust.
In the end, Alex just gave him a smile, a little one that was unsure, because it was only a few weeks for her there, but months without him here so she'd had much longer to think about it. "I said yes, of course." There wasn't any doubt of it, hopefully. Alex could be stupid, but she wasn't that stupid to say no. Hopefully.
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"Yes." It was an affirmative that he hoped didn't come back to bite him. This was Alex, he knew it would, but there wasn't much else he could do. Once, he would have lied to her or just walked away, but this wasn't then. He'd asked her to trust him, and he had to give her the same. He wanted to, in fact.
Alex seemed so invested in whatever this was. Someone had taken time from her and left it with him. Left him to try and sort out what she should and shouldn't know. A year ago the answer would be nothing. Alex didn't need to know anything that she didn't already know. She didn't need to try and worm her way into his life like that. Now everything was different. She's already bored a hole into his life, into him. Her optimism and annoying ease of belief in the occult had somehow become something he looked forward to. It was, endearing, though not something he planned on telling her.
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Later, she'd wonder if it was her admitting her feelings that had done it, and she'd kick herself for not doing it sooner, but for now he was here and that was nearly all that mattered. Nearly, because he was weeks ahead of her in their timeline, and Alex knew better than anyone how much this particular story could just change on the drop of a dime.
The smile was still on her face when she... Well, when she was inevitably was Alex Reagan, prying extraordinaire. Oh, and her hand was still on his cheek. "So, we were in Geneva? Why were we in Geneva?" And then a beat. "You offered to cook for me in a hotel room?" Yes, Airbnb was a thing, but Strand was definitely more of a hotel sort of man than one of those.
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"I think," Without thinking he reached his hand to curl it around hers. "I already said I'm not telling you that." There was a slight amusement in his voice. This was Alex being Alex and him being him. It was them in a nutshell. Her prying into his life without abandon and him refusing to tell her. This was going to be his life from now on
or until the supposed apocalypse happened. At least, he hoped it would be.no subject
Yes, she was better about doing it since he'd asked for her trust, but this was different, and Alex felt the need to qualify her statement, so that he didn't think she was just doing it for the sake of a show that didn't even exist here, and hadn't done so for nearly five months. "Besides, do you really need to keep it a secret from me when I'm going to be catching up to it in a few weeks from now? When they fix the portal to send you home, it's the second that you left. So it's not going to mess up anything if I know."
A beat, because this was Alex. "Well, probably not."
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"You believe this place is real." It was an easy comment, but an unsettling one. How quick had she been to buy into this falsification? To set up a life here as if it were real? It was worrying to think that it might have only been a few weeks before she was walking around as if this weren't some augmentation of her reality. Bereft of memories that she'd forgotten she had. He didn't like it and pointed the comment with a squeeze of her hand.
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So, Alex pulled her hand away from his cheek, but she laced her fingers between his own for a second before she used their combined hands to pull him along towards the nearest coffee shop. It was one of her favorites, so she knew it well. "Look, I know you're not going to believe this without evidence and all of that, but it is real, and I have been here for six months, and I can prove it."
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"You do realize that personal experiences can be created within the mind but not physically be real." Yes, he was pointing out that this could all be in her head, and it probably was. In all their heads. The question was why.
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Funny, six months and ordering for him still is something that comes as easy to Alex as her own beverage.
But then she studies him, seated across from him, and she draws her hand away enough to make sure that the sleeve of her cardigan is low enough that it's covering half of her hand. When she speaks, her eyes are on his, because she knows him, and she knows what he notices, and she also knows what he doesn't, but this is something that she'd notice. "Tell me what my left lower arm looks like?"
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Then came the challenging question, which, of course, she knew he was aware of the answer to. "There have been known cases of mental trauma causing physical scarring." It was a counter of logic that she should have thought of. At least he felt she should have.
This wasn't exactly the most impressive argument she'd made.
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"I mean," she corrected, "in that I was the only person who he let get anywhere close to him. But he wasn't food secure basically ever in his life, and when he thought I was going to take it away from him, he bit me. It was just the once, but it still left a scar. Apo's a good boy though." Yes, that name sure sounded like the beginning of the word 'apophenia', because well, Strand was where Alex had picked up the name from.
"And I've done a lot of stupid things with my brain, Richard, but no matter how powerful my imagination is, it can't create a wound and then replicate six months of healing on it, especially in the few minutes since you've seen me. Now who's talking impossible things?"
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"You believe it's real. It will heal like it is." He didn't really even need to examine the bite. It was the logical conclusion to what they'd been talking about. That didn't mean he was going to let go of her hand now that he had it. In fact, he returned them back to their laced position.
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"So if this is all fake and I'm imagining all of this, or someone's brainwashed me or it's something other than Occam's Razor, where the most obvious thing being true despite it being fantastic, how are you here? What do you think is going on? I mean look..." Alex gestures towards the window and all of the life beyond it. "Thousands of people live here, hundred like us. Do you honestly believe that every single one of these lives is fake?"
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As he thought about the possibilities, those that he had already dismissed and the ones that were still possibilities, he ran his thumb over hers without realizing it. It was, comforting, even if he wasn't fully aware of that fact. Alex was, comforting. To have someone who could look at him and see him was something that most people took advantage of. Something Richard hadn't had in a very long time; possibly never had if what Coralee had told him was true. What, despite his wishing it otherwise, he had no reason not to believe. "Drug-induced mass delusion, possibly." It depended on how far Warren, or whomever they'd pissed off this time, would go.
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Still, there was something that was distracting about his thumb moving over her own in this way, and she looked from his face to watch it for a second before her eyes moved back to meet his own. Alex didn't pull away, and she didn't comment on it, but it was perhaps having an effect of soothing her a bit. At any rate, Alex certainly wasn't angrily flying off the hand. "It's not a drug induced mass delusion. We'd have some sort of collective emotion if that were so. We don't, not really. We're all just people being people, Richard."
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His thumb continued to rub over hers, unnoticed by him. It was strange that, once she'd opened the floodgates he couldn't seem to figure out how to push them closed again. Light touches, things he never realized he did, or would do, seemed to become more, even when he didn't know he was doing them. Holding hands, physical closeness, it had always been typical for them. Even when he was trying to stay distant, it was there. Now it was merely part of the nature of them, an understandable fact. "We both know we have powerful enemies."
It was an undeniable fact, something that made him regret getting her involved. At the same time, he was happy that she was here with him. That she was by his side in all of this. It was selfish, but no one would ever accuse Richard Strand of being a selfless man.
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Well, mostly. "There are people here with way more powerful enemies than Warren, though. And there are people here with way more power. I know you're just going to completely disqualify what I say about them but they believe they are what they say they are, and I believe them." A little smile, pointed in his direction. "Besides, I'm pretty good at knowing when people are lying to me." She might as well have added Richard Strand at the end, but didn't. "But they claim to be gods, angels, people with magic and most recently Satan himself."
She let a beat linger on, before she added, "Please don't antagonize them into punching you, Richard. Yes, I know you think this is all a massive delusion, but if you get punched your brain is going to think it's real and I'd hate to lose you when you've just shown up here at last." Alex gave his fingers a squeeze at that, and there was a softer smile on her face.
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Besides, she'd always been the one to believe the delusions of people like Simon Reese.
"Contrary to your opinion of me I don't look for fights, Alex.," which was true. Richard Strand didn't look for fights, they found him. And really, the psychic was justified; more so now that there was concrete proof that Coralee was alive and he hadn't killed her and hidden the body.
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