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quaranmeme2017-06-19 09:05 pm
riverview: june 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!
● Reserves are currently OPEN.
● Applications open on July 1st.
● 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
Whether you've just arrived in the city or you've been here a while, and you have a sensitivity to the spiritual, magical, multidimensional, or anything else outside the realm of everyday normal, you've probably noticed a distinct uptick in weird feelings, strange nightmares, or daymares - hallucinations of scary things that are lurking just behind you.
You're not the only one who's noticed it.
There are rumors going around that the psychological and spiritual disturbances are due to the emergence or re-emergence of a deity. Some people say that it's something new that's come through the portal with the sharp increase in new arrivals recently, and others say it's simply an ancient spiritual presence or some ancient incorporeal monster that's been somehow awakened. Gramarye, the top-tier magic research center in Riverview Quarantine, has been studying anyone who's felt this presence, and have recently confirmed that whatever it is, it's being fed by all the extra energies and prayers and thoughts as the city's population increases. The one thing everyone agrees on is that, if the expanding community is feeding the entity, then the entity has got to go! Teams are being assembled across the city to travel into the Abandoned City or the forests outside the walls and look for anything like an abandoned temple that can be destroyed or that contains a relic that can be broken or pacified by a ritual. You're looking for something that will solve the problem, or for other evidence of a way to solve it. The mission might be dangerous, though - there are the usual dangers of venturing out into the wilds, but this time, characters may also face booby traps, spectral or physical guardians, and if the entity itself gets awoken? Someone will have to kill it.
The mission is open to multiple teams, multiple deities can be named (both made up or from characters' various canons), and there can be multiple outcomes. If you complete the mission in a TDM thread, and all characters involved are apped and accepted, you can submit the completed mission thread to the exploration page once you are in the game!
The problems the city is having this month are not just ethereal - there's something a little more scientific stirring up trouble. Recently, a large research company in the Quarantine has been trying to develop a monster repellent to provide to explorers who are traveling outside the walls, in hopes of protecting them from attacks. Unfortunately, the containment unit used to store the repellent - which is still in its experimental stages, not even yet tested on animals, let alone people - completely failed, leaking the experimental repellent into the environment around the facility. This facility is close enough to the wall that the repellent has permeated the groundwater and soil in the area and leeched underneath the fences.
Even more unfortunately, the repellent seems to currently have an almost opposite effect on monsters than its intended purpose. It's attracted the attention of a large colony of carnivorous plants that has thrived just outside the wall for decades, living by attacking fellow monsters that are dumb enough to try the fence in that area. Now, instead of going for other monsters, the plants are drawn to the failed repellent and are climbing the walls in search of the source, craving more of it. Residents have been asked to both help clean up the tainted soil by the wall and to fight the carnivorous plants in that area.
The carnivorous plants are in the form of vines ranging from the thickness of a pinkie finger to nearly half a foot thick, that grow incredibly fast, writhing together to form thicker tendrils. The leaves are about a foot wide at their largest and have stingers around the edge that cause a painful rash, and the flowers are large and red or orange, capable of spitting thick globs of acid that can cause burns ranging from very serious (red) to moderate or mild (orange or yellow-orange). They can be defeated especially well with fire, extremely strong pesticides, and edged weapons - vines do not grow back once they've been cut.
The carnivorous plants aren't the only ones feeling the effects of the spilled experimental repellent. Recently, an intrepid team went on a mission after hearing rumors of a type of monster outside the walls that might be able to be tamed and used as valiant steeds. The team was successful and the possible steeds, which turned out to be Chocobos!
So far, the Chocobos have been comfortably in training, learning how to wear saddles and carry people, but once they get a whiff of the repellent in the air, or gotten a taste of it in their water, they kind of go a little off the wall. Or, over the fence, as the case may be. Highly energized and unwilling to listen, Chocobos who have been exposed to the repellent will get free of their pens and start stampeding around the city. Citizens, it's time to team up to tame the wild Chocobos! Let the wark games begin!
The local wildlife aren't the only ones affected by the experimental repellent spill. While at first they didn't think it had any effect on sentients, they're having to start reevaluating that particular theory, because residents are definitely feeling it. Whether they're inhaling it in a gust of wind that smells disturbingly of ozone, or sipping a glass filled from a tap in the area of the spill and tasting something like chlorine, it's getting into residents' systems.
Once ingested or inhaled, the repellent can have two effects on an affected character: an overaffectionate mood, or an anti-social mood. The effects can vary in type, swinging from affectionate to cranky and back again at the drop of a hat, and they can also vary in intensity and manifestation - it all depends on body chemistry, both within an affected character, and in the interactions between two characters. So whether or not your characters liked or disliked each other beforehand, maybe their chemistries are very compatible or not compatible at all, and feelings might be a little...out of the ordinary.
Affectionate moods can range anywhere from a casual 'I love you man' to romantic or even carnal ideation; anti-social ones can range from being nervous around crowds or other people to being outright aggressive with other people. The repellent does not remove inhibitions and characters are able to control themselves. Emotions might be heightened, but these effects should not be used to facilitate things that would normally be completely out of character. Please put content warnings in subject lines.
Whether your character is posting up a silly word game to distract people from the dangerous mission going on, 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.
Choose your own adventure and do something else in the setting!
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But sometimes there's not much he can do to stop it, although Lup's words remind him that they're in public, and even if he's hidden against her, the last thing he's going to do is have this reunion where other people can see it.]
Hold on.
[Taako casts teleport, taking himself, Lup, and the dropped umbra staff back to his place, to the bedroom that's so obviously his, the chaos and contents of it couldn't belong to anyone but him.
He wants to keep hugging her, but he also wants to look at her, so she compromises by pulling back just enough to hold her face in his hands, looking at her like he hasn't seen her in years (he hasn't). The disguise self spell he uses to keep himself pretty is dropped, suddenly, because he doesn't know if he can put into words what's happened, since she's left, but the time that's passed is so much more obvious now.
And he looks so much less like her, something that hurts in ways he can't describe.]
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[...and then they teleport, and at least she's used to that. One look around the room they're in now easily tells her it's her brother's, so that makes Lup relax slightly. It made more sense.
Things do not make much sense immediately after that. Not the way he holds her face, looking at her like she's been gone forever and fuck, is that what happened? Has she left him alone?
Then more weird shit happens and he suddenly looks so... different. Lup can't quite say exactly what it is, but he just seems like a lesser version of himself. Not as vibrant, not as ethereal... and fuck, he even looks a little older, no matter how hard that may be to spot on an elf.
Her eyes are wide, and she sucks in air between her teeth in a mix of a gasp and angry denial.]
...Taako, what the hell. What happened? Who... fuck, what can I do?
[Who can she beat the shit out of for this.]
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Instead, he takes a shaky breath, the knowledge that he can't keep this from her is a crushing weight, but one he can't ignore.]
We're out of the cycles, Lulu, I'm from your future.
[A decade isn't that much time, to an elf, but it feels like far too long when they've never spent more than a year apart.]
What just happened, for you? What planet are you on?
[He needs to know how far behind she is.]
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Now it's her turn to be shocked. From the future, out of the cycles, out of this mess of dying and reawakening and running, always fucking running. But did that mean they had won?
It had to, didn't it?
...but in that case, it must have been a hard victory for Taako to look so different.]
...it was the one with the magic plane stuck in the material plane. I told you... something important.
[You are my heart. You know that, right?]
This is messed up.
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Lup told him that nothing could change how much they meant to each other, that no one could take it from them, but someone did. He spent so long, not even remembering her, and regardless of the fact it wasn't his fault, he still feels guilty. Guilty and angry.
It takes him a few long moments to speak again.]
It works, what you two are doing, you're liches. [And that's what happened to him, two liches who fed on love, until it wasn't enough. A part of him is so terrified that the same thing happened to Lup, that it's why Barry couldn't find her.] But it's... [He finally lets go of her face, but only to take her hands in his.] We fucked it up, Lup. I don't think we're gonna win.
[She's dead, Magnus is stuck in a mannequin with no way out, Barry is stuck as a lich (Taako has some questions re: the body Barry had when they first met him, but he doesn't have answers), Merle has no fucking magic, and as far as he knows, the Hunger is still a mystery to most of them.
And on top of all that, he has no idea where the ship is. That's the worst part.]
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This was just sounding worse by the minute, and there's still nothing to punch for this or to goof about in order to ease the tension somehow. Instead she leans in, forehead to forehead with her brother.]
Breathe.
[For a long, long time, 'we're not gonna win' was just a part of the cycles. It had always been painful, and there had been so much shit happening to each of them that Lup is pretty certain she's going to have nightmares for the rest of her life... but they could always try again.
If they were out of the cycles, that meant there were no second chances.]
We'll figure it out. Magnus will have some weird plan, or Barry and I will do some cool lich shit.
[She would never give up.]
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But how can he pretend that everything's going to be okay, when it so clearly isn't.]
Lulu...
[He doesn't know how to say it, how to tell her that she can't do some cool lich shit because she's gone.]
I don't-- I don't know where you are.
[You're dead isn't enough to cover it, because it's so much worse than that.]
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Shit, Taako...
[Lup feels kind of cold inside, and that must be some form of panic but fuck if she can deal with that right now. Not when Taako is such a mess. They had to take turns for breakdowns in their little family.]
How long have you been alone?
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[It's overdramatic in his typical style but it's also the truth; for ten years he built a life around being alone, it shaped who he was, how he dealt with the world, and even though he has his memories of her back, it can't... it doesn't just magically go away, the person he became.]
We forgot. Me and Mags and Merle, everything about the ship and the Hunger and you was fed to Fisher.
[She doesn't know about the immunity to the voidfish, yet, so he won't explain the complicated mess with Fisher's baby and Lucretia's lies, but he has to tell Lup the truth, she has to understand.]
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[She looks at him and then hugs Taako close again like she's trying to prove she's not about to just stop existing any time soon.
They forgot. All this shit they've gone through and that was all... erased? For what reason?
...and why make him forget her?]
It doesn't make any sense. How... why?
[She pulls back for a moment to rub her face with a groan. This was all so messed up and just the thought of Taako not remembering her? Fuck, if she came here and he still didn't remember her it would destroy her, so at least they avoided that mess.
Still, she feels cold inside, and Lup moves towards the bed and makes sure there's nothing breakable on it before she flops down and waves her hands for him to join her.]
So how did you remember?
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He feels like a little kid, lost and scared and grateful that at least he has Lup, but he's not sure if that's enough.]
It's a long fucking story, Lulu. [It's a shitty one that he's not sure how to explain, because despite everything, despite telling Lup most of the truth, he's not ready to tell her about Lucretia's betrayal.
Which is why he quickly adds:] Lucretia is here, from earlier than you, just after we got Fisher. I haven't told her this shit.
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Now that they're lying down and she doesn't have to rely on her legs to keep them both upright while her brother clung to her, it's easier to hold his hand tightly, warm and alive just like hers, and listen.]
I have time. You just tell me when you're good to go.
[Lup knows it migth take time for him to find the right words, so she's not going to push. Instead she latches on to the Lucretia thing with a smile.]
Really? Fuck, it's gonna be weird to keep timelines in my head. Any sign of the others?
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[It's a promise and an excuse at the same time, but he needs at least a couple hours and maybe several glasses of wine to work out how to explain the past few decades between Lup's time and his own.]
She hasn't even had her year yet. [It was a big moment for Lucretia, the year she spent alone fighting for survival, and it's just another thing that Taako hasn't been able to talk to her about, although that's easier to avoid than everything else.] But it's just us, Lucretia only got her ass here last month, I've been stuck for a little while. [He's not okay, by any sense of the word, but he can talk about innocuous shit while he tries to calm down.] I'm dating a guy.
[Speaking of innocuous shit. But it gives them both something to focus on, a distraction while they both come to terms with everything that Taako has just dropped.]
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...and then he drops another thing on her and she sits up straight at once, looking at her twin.]
Holy shit Taako!?
[Her brother, seeing someone (more than once)???]
Who is he? What's his name? Does he live here?
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He does not live here, there's a child in this house. [Which is also... something he should mention at some point in the very near future, though Ellie is more of a teenager than a child. Still.] His name's Eddie, he's a fucking cop.
[He manages a wink, because he feels like Lup is the only person in the entire multiverse who will get why that's so funny. Lucretia kind of gets it, and he explained it to Clark, but like, Lup knows him, they've spent their whole lives together. She'll know why Taako dating a cop is so ridiculous.]
But he's nice, it's weird. We go on dates and shit.
[Rather than the one night stands he's had in the past.]
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Who are you?
[Laughing, Lup shakes her head in bewilderment. Her brother, dating a goddamn cop. Going on dates. With a cop. Dating. Gods, now her stomach hurts from laughing rather than fear.]
Fuck, Taako... and there's a kid here? This is so weird.
[Surreal, even.]
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Her name's Ellie and she's rad as hell. She's like, sixteen? [He flops back on the bed, looking over at Lup, his expression softening a little.] I didn't wanna move outta the communal housing and get some place alone, and Ellie seemed like a good choice, she's quiet and doesn't get into too much shit. So... here we are.
[He's very fond of her.]
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Listening to him talk about the girl he was roommates(?) with, Lup groans again and leans back.]
I can't believe it, my sweet innocent brother, pulled into the claws of domesticity!
[She's so damn happy for him.]
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[Unlike some people, even if turning into liches might not be the picture of domesticity, it's still a lot more dramatic than anything Taako has done so far. Turning into undead beings together is probably even more dramatic than getting married.]
Speaking the fuck of, though, guess who went on a date with the lit-er-al grim reaper?
[NOW WHO'S MORE GOTH, LUP????]
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[Why do you have to upstage her every time with your shit, Taako? So rude.]
Bullshit! You did not!
[Of all the weird things they've seen, Lup still things her twin is messing with her. The grim reaper?
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[His heart aches at how normal and natural this feels, as if Lup hasn't missed over a decade of his life. It might not be much, in the grand scheme of elves, but it seems like a lot that she hasn't been around for, that he needs to fill her in on. It's a fucking miracle that all the words don't just tumble out in a rush.]
Nah, jokes, I didn't fuck the skeleton. He's super handsome when he's got skin on, though. And when he's not trying to kill us cause we're a bunch of assholes who've died heaps without, you know, actually dying.
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[Jokes are good. Jokes makes things move more easily, and fuck if that wasn't needed right now.]
Anyway, he sounds... interesting. I mean, it might be the the most unusual man you've dated, but still. Not the first one that wanted you dead, though.
[If she ever gets back she's going to slap the bony bastard, that's for sure. Still, it feels so weird to not know two guys her brother has dated. Who usually got all the details after each hookup? Poor old Lup.]
So how about this guy here? Is this something serious?
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[No he doesn't, not even a little bit, but he's not going to admit that he didn't realize the pun potential there before Lup pointed it out.
Although he'd rather admit that than try to answer her question honestly; Taako sighs, grabbing the pillow back so he can pull it over his head. He'll answer, though, because it's her.]
I don't fucking know, Lulu. It's not as if I've got any plans to stick around in this place, so like, getting attached is real fucking stupid.
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[Still, she watches Taako as he struggles, pulling the pillow over his head like an embarrassed teenager. She lets him hide for now, if it makes it easier for him to tell her.
It's about what she expected, too, so she nods a little bit even if he can't see it.]
I get you. Still, it's not as if feeling shit has any respect for situations.
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[Yet another blatant lie, although this one comes closer to the truth, in a lot of ways, maybe even more since he spent a decade and an imagined lifetime without having Lup to temper the harsher sides of himself. Acting aloof and distant is a talent that he's honed almost to perfection, and most of the time he can shut any gross feelings down before they get too complicated.]
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i couldn't resist making this joke im sorry
omfg i love you
i havent been able to stop thinking about that since i saw it
it's so Taako
shrugssss
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