![[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}
quaranmeme2017-06-19 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!
no subject
I get the mobile part, but - where's the wires? For the phoning.
no subject
[ Jean-Claude uses phones. That does not mean he is altogether ready for smartphones. ]
no subject
See, they could have said that from the beginning. Would have made my life easier.
no subject
[ Pot calling the kettle on that one, but nonetheless. Jean-Claude offers a quick, rather old-fashioned bow as he introduces himself. ] I am Jean-Claude. Am I correct that you are a new arrival like myself?
no subject
Got it in one. French, I'm guessing.
[ Not much of a guess given the name and the accent. He hasn't given hi own name yet, but he doesn't plan to withhold it for long. ]
no subject
Précisément, [ he answers, making pleasant small talk somehow graceful and lilting. Everything about him is poised. ] Although of late I am of St. Louis. It has been many years since I was in France.
[ And only hell itself could drag him back there, to tell the truth. Belle Morte, his maker, resides there still. ]
no subject
Let me guess: royal blood?
[ Not exiled royalty, if he's from France and not, say, Belgium. ]
no subject
Regardless, he is not about to tell him one way or the other. He's left smiling in what some people (read: Anita) consider an insufferable fashion. ]
Why, you pay me such a compliment. Truthfully, I came to America, rather than left France. [ Okay, sort of. It was both, but he does in fact like America.
Vampires are so delightfully legalized there, after all. ]
no subject
Especially with that smile to match it. ]
It's a good country. Sure do miss it right about now.
no subject
But have you not heard? They will send us home out of the goodness of their hearts, if only we give them time.
[ The low purr to his voice might, to an astute person, imply sarcasm. Jean-Claude does not really believe in the goodness of anyone's heart anymore. There are only the naive, who serve as prey, and those who take advantage of it. ]
no subject
Anyway. It's all a moot point for him regardless. His eyes track Jean-Claude's movements, subconsciously fascinated by his otherworldliness. ]
See, as much as I'd like to go home, I'm pretty sure I can't.
no subject
Why would that be, Monsieur? [ It does invite the question, and he will not pass up free information, no matter how trivial. He has a long way to go to rebuild himself. It is deeply frustrating, seeing as he'd done all this work over years and years, decades and centuries, but at least here he has less far to climb.
And he will not be at the bottom of the food chain, ever again. ]
spoilers from here on out
A moment's internal debate; hell, what has he got to lose? Who's really going to care, anyway? ]
I'm a little bit dead.
no subject
In what way? You look quite... alive.
[ By which he means: he can hear his heartbeat and knows blood runs through his veins. Zombies do not have that. (He is transparently not a vampire.) ]
no subject
Alive now, yeah. Spent my first day here in their hospital. But I definitely died back home.
no subject
From the way you speak, it seems it was more than your heart stopping. And you credit your survival to being here, not to anything else.
[ He's a quick study. ]
no subject
Massive hydrogen explosion. Thirty thousand feet in the air. Very, very dead.
no subject
Still, he knows the social dance, and offers a credible, ] My sympathies. How strange, that this could be an afterlife. [ He glances around at their surroundings with new eyes. ] You have been given a rare gift, mon ami-- a second life with you unchanged from the first.
[ All of the second lives he knows come with strings attached. ]
no subject
Got a few scars. Won't complain though, no. Once I get my feet under me.
[ He turns a shrewd eye on Jean-Claude, though. His turn to ask a few questions. ]
What were you expecting?
no subject
Still, he is not in the habit of giving things for free if he doesn't have to. ] Tell me your name, Monsieur, and I will answer you. A fair trade.
no subject
Steve Trevor. Nice to meet you.
no subject
[ He gives a second bow, this one much more flowery, with an arm gracefully flung out to the side, lace dripping over his fingertips. ]
I am Jean-Claude. A vampire. [ Dramatic, over-the-top, him? Always. ]
I wondered if perhaps you were some other variety of undead.
no subject
A what.
Steve's surprise is obvious and instantaneous. And - yet, not quite disbelieving. He's met literal Amazons; it stands to reason he might meet a literal vampire too. ]
With - fangs and everything?
[ Said rather faintly. ]
no subject
Of course. [ His smile widens, deliberately flashing his fangs. They are delicate, a natural part of his mouth, completely belying how deadly they are. An instant later, he is back to being ethereally beautiful, no trace of danger. ]
I would be a poor example otherwise, non?
no subject
And you drink blood. Don't like running water or stakes. All of that.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)