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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
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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!
no subject
You did complain about that for a while. But you helped keep Dawn safe, and my mom, and that made me trust you. Sort of. That much, at least.
no subject
[That sounded too... nice. Blowing out a stream of smoke, he leaned back and took a sip of beer.]
I'd still eat both of them in a heartbeat.
[There. He was still the big bad, after all.]
no subject
My mom died two years ago.
no subject
[He didn't say sorry, but the fact that he didn't press it, didn't make another quip about it was an apology in its own way. He took another drag, eyes dropping away from hers as he fiddled with the peeling edge of the label on his beer bottle.]
I hope it was quick.
[That was the best sort of death he could wish on someone. Something quick, painless, something that let them drift off to sleep quietly. And he had liked Joyce. Vampire or not, she'd always been weirdly nice to him.]
no subject
It was a brain aneurysm. They said she probably didn't feel any pain.
[ Two years and it still hurt just as much as it had then. She still missed her mother more than she'd missed anything or anyone. She watched Spike's fingers as they worked at the bottle's label, and took another sip of her drink. ]
I was the one who found her. I had to pick up Dawn at school; she didn't believe me when I told her. [ A deep breath, because it was time to move on with the story. ] A few months later, I died too.
no subject
He found a little smile tugging at the corner of his mouth before he noticed it, clearing his throat and taking another drag. Then she went and said that and he felt a nudge. A trigger of a memory from the last week or so of missing time he'd had here. 'She's dead. Buffy's dead', and the accompanying pain from that.
Why the hell would her being dead hurt? He hated her.
Didn't he?]
Guess it didn't stick the second time either. Maybe you're part cat. You. Angel. Death doesn't seem to be as permanent as it used to be.
no subject
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat at his words, that old pain rising up to the surface. The betrayal she'd felt then was overshadowed by the much more recent indiscretion by her friends, but she still remembered it.
Heaven. ]
It was supposed to be. I was gone for months. At peace. For one hundred and forty-seven days. [ There was a tiny smile then, directed at him with a fondness she knew he wouldn't understand. ] You kept count. And you looked after Dawn while I was gone. I've always been grateful for that.
no subject
That's what he did, after all. Right?
...
Right?]
How the bloody hell did you wind up in Heaven and then b-- no, wait, better questions; why was I watching the little bit and why did I give a damn how many days you'd been gone? You didn't go try to get your mum back, did you?
no subject
No, I didn't. [ Simply said, because she didn't have the energy to be offended at the question. The next part was in the same tone, a statement of facts that he could take or leave. ] You were watching Dawn and counting the days because you were in love with me.
no subject
I was what? Don't tell me the witch did another spell...
no subject
No, there wasn't a spell.
no subject
Never mind the flicker of something from that lost time. He finally met her eyes, a scowl on his face as he blurted out the first thing that came to mind.]
Why the bloody hell would I go and do a thing like that for?
no subject
Tossing back the rest of her drink, she closed her eyes for a moment, trying and failing to collect herself before setting down the glass and sliding out of her seat. ]
I don't know, Spike. Why do any of us bother falling in love? All it does is hurt in the end.
[ She dug out some money from her pocket, trying to do the mental math of what would be needed to pay for the drinks, and finally just threw it all on the table. ]
Have another beer. I'm leaving.
no subject
[A small pause as he realized what he'd said.]
Well, another one. You pop into the one place I'm starting to feel half decent in and tell me what? That I fell in love with you? No whys. No hows. Just that I made another apparently horrendous afterlife choice and-- Bollocks. I call bollocks. There's no bloody way it happened. This is some sick joke of yours to try to... what? Rub in that I'm half the vamp I used to be?
no subject
I don't know why, or how. I didn't accept it at first, I hated you because I hated myself. We weren't good together, it was destructive, but things changed. You got your soul and I--
[ She covered her face with her hands for a moment before letting her arms fall to her sides again, a lost and broken expression on her face. ] I miss you. I loved you and I miss you, but if you want me to leave you alone here, I will. I'll stay out of your way and I won't bother you.
[ It might be better that way. It hurt so much to see him and know he wasn't her Spike. ]
no subject
And as if that wasn't enough of a bombshell, she was standing there all shades of vulnerability lighting her up, offering to leave him be. Spouting out more nonsense that still had him having a hard time working up a reply. Because none of this sounded... right.
Or maybe it did.
No, no. Definitely wrong.]
I--
[What about Angel? What about Riley? What about his soul? The questions and confusion was visible on his face, and it was he who rose, he who got up and staggered back from her. It had to be a lie, didn't it? All of it. That was the only thing that made any sense.
He looked at her and for a moment, there was just confusion and way, way down in that part of him he crushed to a pulp every day as it tried to regrow, there was a little hope. Not about her, necessarily, but that someone wanted him. Someone loved him. It was just a cruel joke that it was her. That naked flash of feelings was visible for a moment before he pushed back from the table and turned to leave, not really seeing where he was going. He needed to think. He needed... he didn't bloody well know what he needed, but if he sat there and talked to her any longer, something was going to happen and he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to deal with those repercussions. Yet. So he fled. And if she got her feelings hurt in the process, well... good. She'd run roughshod over him for years and he'd wanted nothing but her blood in his mouth for the same amount of time.
He didn't care.
Right?]