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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!
Grandmas' gonna have to keep them on a short leash
I mean, a hundred is a nice even number?
rein em in
Geez Lup, I dunno if we can keep doing this for that long. Though, I suppose you existing like this in this moment means that we can? (It's tricky.)
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[She sighs.]
Barry and I are doing something kind of stupidly dangerous to try to win us some ground - Taako says it works but he's not telling me everything.
[...and that is weird because her brother always told her.]
I think he needs some time.
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Apparently dire enough to do dangerous things. Her eyebrows raise.)
... What exactly are you doing?
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...we're gonna be liches.
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(Lucretia stares at her, shocked.)
You can't be serious.
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[It probably didn't, and fuck. If she got back to Barry she would probably tell him to cancel it all.]
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(She can't tell if she's angry or upset. Mostly she feels a bit sick to her stomach.)
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[She crosses her arms a bit defensively.]
We were running out of options.
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(Lucretia's gonna do a hit, Lup, swear to god.)
Does Taako know about this??
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[She's sorry for breaking this to Lucretia like this, but fuck she doesn't want to lie about everything.]
Taako knows... and he said we made it. We're liches.
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(And of course Taako knows; yet again, she's the one left in the dark. Lucretia exhales sharply and shakes her head, pinching the bridge of her nose sharply.)
Lup, please. You don't need to do this. Neither of you need to do this. There's no coming back from this– don't you understand that??
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[Her shoulders sag a bit and she closes her eyes for a moment.]
Barry and I are going to use our love to keep ourselves together. It's going to work.
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(Her voice is pinched, furious. She doesn't think she's ever snapped at Lup before. But then, they've never had anything as big as this to argue over before, either.
It's a lot easier to be angry than it is to examine the small, scrunched up and hurt part of herself that wants to know why Lup wouldn't have confided this plan in her.)
But nothing I could say is going to change your mind, I presume.
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I'm not going to let everyone suffer these bullshit cycles forever! If we have a chance, then it's worth it!
[It had to be worth it, right? It had to have made a difference, or something, because Taako...]
We've left whole worlds to be destroyed by the Hunger. What are two people compared to that?
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(She's very aware that they're having this fight in the middle of the market all of a sudden; she drops her voice to a mutter, draws herself up a little straighter.)
Do whatever you want, Lup, but don't pretend like this is necessary.
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I... I know. It's... not easy for Taako, either. Just... do you really think I'd do something like this if it wasn't the best hope we had?
[They're tired. She's tired. They've died too many times, seen to many worlds destroyed.
She just wants her friends to be safe.]
What is necessary changes a lot in half a century.
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(She doesn't know enough to be arguing this, really. Lup is from a far more desperate time and perhaps this is why it stings Lucretia so much. It's hard to reconcile with the fact that this mission is going to steadily become worse and worse, to the point where two of her dearest friends would considering throwing their souls away to gain an inch.
She sighs, and drops her gaze.) Never mind.
I... I might not agree with you, but I trust you, Lup.
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[She wants to hug her, but Lup isn't sure that's a great idea right now. Not after... this.]
I mean... we might disagree, but we're here now. Not there. We got some time to just... be.
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They do have time. Perhaps she can bring Lup around? A hopeless thought.)
I suppose.
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[Damn, it was weird to feel awkward with her friends.]
Do you know any place with good clothes? All I have is this robe.
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Oh, yeah. I can show you around, if you like. For the first couple days here I borrowed Taako's clothes.
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That's what I always do, but a girl needs her own underwear.
...you probably looked good in them. His clothes, I mean.
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I mean, if by good you mean uncharactistically ostentatious, then sure. I looked very good.
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[She laughs too, but man the tension was palpable and not even this seemed to ease it.]
...maybe I should go, for now.
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