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riverview: june test drive meme

Welcome 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
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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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Talk shit get hit, Lulu.
[In which case "talk shit" means saying he's messy, and "get hit" is an insult, but whatever.]
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[She moves the lights up to the ceiling, where they can sit and glow for the duration. Dispelling cantrips are for chumps.]
At least you don't leave food out. It took us way too long to find the moldy sandwich Magnus had lost in his bunk.
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[His quarters were way too close to Magnus's, he's fairly sure he contracted some horrible mold disease from even breathing the same air.]
He's still just as fucking bad, at least with messes.
[In other ways he's almost a Responsible Adult and it's strange.]
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I'm not surprised. Gross.
[Clothes and books and makeup and fuck knows what was a lot better than old food, even if she's pretty sure she sat on Taako's underwear at least a hundred times.]
Let's eat, Koko. You can tell me more about your boy while we do.
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[This is clearly a Very Important Fact, as Taako gently shoves Lup towards the edge of the bed before hopping up himself and starting towards the kitchen, just assuming that she'll follow.]
But it's not like, Magnus levels, you know? That's way too much for me.
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[She gets off the bed and pushes her hair back behind her ears, scooting her robe sleeves up to her elbows so she's ready for cooking.
Lup follows her brother to the kitchen, shamelessly peeking around the house as she does.]
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[The kitchen is probably the most well organized space, because it's where Taako works and it's what he cares about the most, in terms of physical possessions, and that means it gets a good treatment.
The fridge and pantries are both well stocked, so he'll let her choose what she wants to make for... whatever meal it is, for Lup.]
I'm pretty sure I could watch him beat up a punching bag for a week and not get bored.
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Lup makes a pleased little whistle when she finds enough ingredients for a simple risotto, picking it out and snooping through the cabinets for bowls and other kitchen stuff.]
So he's hot and probably good in bed. Is he nice? How serious is the cop thing?
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The cop this is puh-retty serious, he's a detective and he's real into like, being good? So yeah, he's nice.
[Which is... a little bit of a departure, from Taako's usual type. Not that he's really been with that many people, it's always been too complicated to worry about.]
Too nice, probably.
[For him. He has no illusions about the fact he can be asshole sometimes. He and Lup have fought about it, after all, his casual disregard for life.]
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Meanwhile, she's listening to Taako. It really was a weird to see him interested in such a type, but maybe that was what he needed?
It was not like she planned to fall in love with some denim-clad nerd, after all... but it grounded her a bit as well.]
Better be careful when we run some hustles, then. I don't want to know what you guys do in manacles.
[She bumps her hips to his legs.]
At least someone has been keeping you in check.
[It's not meant as an insult, just a reminder that he can do good if someone's there to kick his ass in gear.]
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[It's accompanied by an eyebrow waggle, which he'll leave open to her interpretation just to what he means by done that in conjunction with manacles and hustles. Not that it's hard to guess.]
He had a fiance.
[Not that there's anything wrong with that, but what he means is that Eddie is the sort of person who wants to settle down, who wants to build a life. Taako can't offer any of that.
If he sounds insecure about all this, it's because he kind of is. The physical attraction is easy, it's all the emotional bullshit that he doesn't know how to handle.]
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Geez, I wish I didn't ask.
[Still, her brother tells her the man had a fiance, and she can hear the tone in his voice. It's easy as breathing to suss out what he's thinking.
Turning to fully look at him, she wipes her hands on a towel and then gives her brother a stern look.]
Taako, you know you're allowed to be happy, right?
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[He makes a face at her, somewhere between pained and exasperated, wishing he had something to throw at her.
Mostly because he's mad at being called out.]
I'm just saying, like, I don't want him to think there's some kinda future.
[Not when Taako has to go home, not when even if he didn't, Eddie is still human.]
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Just be honest with him. If he can't respect that I'll set him on fire.
[Lup wishes she could say 'you deserve better' and that he should allow himself to think about settling down... but it just wasn't her brother.
At least not in this place, where they could go home and then break things off in a more painful way.]
Besides, we'd both be terrible spouses. Y'know, cooking aside.
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He's just going to swiftly move on.]
Shut up, you'd be great at it with the right guy.
[The like Barry is implied.]
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Pretty sure going lich together is kind of the same thing as marriage. Only even more permanent.
[At least it would mean she wouldn't have to watch Barry get old and die.
...but the world seemed kind of fucked anyway, from what Taako had told her.]
Food time!
[Let's eat and shut up about this stupid stuff, feelings are hard.]
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[At least he didn't turn into an undead being with his boyfriend, that's all Lup.
The food is a welcome distraction, though; Taako hops off the counter and grabs two plates, setting them down for Lup to dish up the risotto.]
You want wine?
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[Weird how a swear can sound all loving.
She serves them both a generous amount and nods happily at the offer of wine.]
Sure, let me see what this place has to offer. The food seems decent enough but the sign of a real good place is the booze.
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It doesn't him take long to pour them two glasses.]
The booze is great, the drugs aren't half bad either, they're pretty chill about all that shit.
[Not that he partakes often, but every now and then it can be fun.]
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[Eyebrow waggle.
Lup doesn't even bother to sit, eating at the counter like a savage while she talks to her brother. At least a home-cooked meal lifted some of the dread from her stomach to replace it with warmth.]
Have you been outside the walls?
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Fuck, you caught me, that's why I'm dating the cop.
[To get out of all those crimes he's doing.
(He isn't doing that many crimes).]
Oh, for sure, it gets boring as hell in the city.
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I knew it!
[Still, Lup is curious about the Quarantine.]
What's really is out there?
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[He's The Worst, but he likes making her laugh.]
Oh, you know, weird monsters and shit. It's not as bad as they make it sound, we can handle our shit.
[They're both pretty powerful wizards.]
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[She's grinning, taking a swig on the wine and making an appreciative sound. Pretty decent, after all.]
So, are they like... attacking now and then or are you just out there fucking up monsters for the hell of it?
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[That's one way to keep anyone out if he's in the middle of something important.]
They attack sometimes, and I don't go looking for trouble, sometimes I just get bored.
[After a lifetime travelling, being stuck in a single city is weird and claustrophobic.]
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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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