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quaranmeme2018-09-20 10:12 pm
riverview: september 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!
● There are currently 58 Character Slots available.
● Reserves are currently OPEN and will close on September 1st. Applications are currently CLOSED and will open on September 1st at 10:00 pm EST.
● 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 ● exploration progress report ● ask a question ● calendar ● navigation
Residents of the city may or may not remember a particular patch of fertile ground that was scouted over a year ago, and the highly-intelligent and territorial alien hogs that were protecting it because the soil's fertility stems from it being a alien hog graveyard. After that revelation, the city had abandoned the project for the foreseeable future, as digging up an intelligent species' graveyard is more than a little beyond the pale.
That would've been all well and good, had the alien hogs stayed in their territory. However, after being disrupted by two teams over the course of a few months, the hogs (who have an excellent memory for this kind of thing) have started to get a little restless. It's not enough to be left alone - they want revenge. And with the summer winding down into harvest season, they've figured out how to get that revenge. As September winds down and October starts to dawn, the powerful and intimidating hogs have started on stage one of enacting that revenge - they've been making concentrated runs at the fences closest to their territory, hitting it in the same spot over and over again, herd mentality at its strongest, trying to make a dent. And they're succeeding.
The big problem here is that, on the inside of that fence, is the bulk of the Quarantine's agriculture sector. Fields full of livestock and crops that are meant to make up the majority of the winter's food supply are in danger of being wiped out if that fence falls, and if that happens, it's going to be a cold, hungry winter, no matter how many supplies the Capital World manages to send up to the moon.
Residents are being called into service for various containment missions - construction teams to reinforce the fences from the inside, tech teams to develop defensive force shields or repellent soundwaves to drive off the hogs, and teams including flora and fauna experts to try to find out what's causing the hogs to be driven into such a singular frenzy and fix it - there are a wide variety of team types being suited up, and anyone who wants to take a solo or duo trip out into the Quarantine's agriculture district who might have some insight into how to fix or at least better the situation is welcome to come. On top of that, all these teams are going to need some protection, so bruisers and fighters are needed in droves.
Sometimes, people are just no match for nature. Around September 25th, the hogs finally break through the wall. At first it's just the laser fences and force shields crackling out of service, and then the stone of the wall itself starts to crumble. By the evening of September 25th, the hogs have made it into the fields and are wreaking havoc, stomping and rampaging through the crops, crushing and destroying as much produce as possible, and terrifying and killing livestock wherever they're able to. The numbers of them are immense, much more than was anticipated by people who previously studied the hogs, and it doesn't take long before there's a massive breach in the wall and hogs are pouring in, along with other creatures from outside the wall, to destroy and eat as much as possible.
This is a melee, and there are desperate pleas from the Government and the farmers whose livelihood is being decimated by the breach to come and help protect the crops. Whether you're tech-savvy or a mage, or just a really good fighter, your help is desperately needed to stem the tide of monsters through the fence, to try to patch it up, and to either drive off or destroy the creatures who are threatening the crops. If this goes on, there's going to be some serious trouble this winter...
Around the 10th month of every year on the moon, due to a complex series of chemical, electromagnetic, and magical forces that no one has ever exactly distinguished or completely understands, the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead are weakened almost to the point of nonexistence. This year, unanticipated and probably due to the upheaval in the city over the past year, this breakdown is happening earlier than usual. During this time, residents of the moon are able to see and interact with the dead - ghosts, manifesting in ways that run the gamut from being a strange sense of being watched or being visible or audible all the way to more corporeal spirits that can affect the world around them. The barriers are weaker in some parts of the city than they are in others, with some areas experiencing little to no ghost activity, while others are so populated with these ghosts that residents can barely go a few feet without running into one. The ghosts are generally the unsettled dead, people who died violently, or who were lost, seeking a place to call home, and their behavior is as varied as it was while they were alive. Some ghosts are angry and vengeful, some are simply lonely and lost.
While some people tend to interact with the ghosts only a little and as necessary, others avoid them as completely as possible, and yet others actively seek out souls who are suffering and try to ease that so they can stop coming back year after year. There are other people who have found that ghosts from their home worlds have come through with them, following them through the portal when they arrived, even if they did not die on the moon...
Whether facing death or making peace with those who have died, this is a time to reflect.
A Few OOC Guidelines:
● Characters may see or interact with ghosts from the Quarantine's past. These people will be as varied as the NPCs, from a multitude of different worlds, and characters are welcome to either engage or avoid, as players wish.
● Most Quarantine-based ghosts will have died in either the Great War with the neighboring reality or in the Pandemic that wiped out the population of the Abandoned City years ago.
● Characters may also see or interact with ghosts from their own or other characters' canons, providing the character in question is dead in canon and is not currently being played in the game.
● Canon-based ghosts should not be simply transplanted into the game as they were in canon - they are ghosts, and therefore 'not quite right,' and should not be used as an excuse to NPC a canonmate for a month. These ghosts are there to be used as plot devices to open up new avenues of CR, to create angst, to help a character make peace with their past, or other similar reasons.
● Ghosts should not be complete corporeal physical presences indistinguishable from living people, but barring this, how strongly the ghosts manifest and how much they can interact with the world around them is up to player discretion. Ghosts shouldn't be present the whole month straight, but can disappear and reappear at random times.
Not everyone in the city is focused on the troubles in the agriculture sector. In fact, some people in the city are trying desperately to distract people from it, to keep morale up as much as possible. Some of those people are the ones who run the Amusement Park, where the end of the Dragosta celebration of romantic love and the start of the Feast of the Dying season with all its horror themes, have smashed together into an enjoyable date night event. Characters who don't want to think about the trouble befalling the city, or who just want a break from it for the evening, are encouraged to attend Doom Dates, a horror-themed night at the amusement park. Featuring free entry to all of the rides with the price of admission, discounts on fairground treats meant to be shared, and plenty of fun and spooky prizes to win for that special person (or persons), it's definitely an enjoyable night out to forget your troubles.
It's not just the free rides that are a big draw, either. The park has gone all out and set up 5 different haunted houses throughout the grounds, running the gamut from a kids haunted house where the scares are mild and vaguely fluffy to a high-tech holographic haunted house that adjusts to suit the fears of the people entering it. There are also actors dressed as horror-themed characters ranging from zombies to creepy clowns to characters from well-known horror franchises wandering the park, scaring passers-by. Whether your character is taking someone out for a creepy date, going with a group of friends, attending alone to make some friends (or more-than-friends), or even working a night gig as a zombie, everyone is welcome.
Whether your character is posting up a silly word game, 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.
Use the wildcard prompt to choose your own adventure and do whatever else you like in the setting!
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"...Harry Goodsir. And you're hurt. Your ribs?"
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A quick, calculating examination of the buildings around them, and Simon jerks his chin at one across the street. "That one will do. Third floor is unoccupied. I can get us inside."
A boast he can hopefully fulfill, given this place's technology.
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When they make it inside the tidily furnished space, clearly some kind of model suite, Simon eases himself down onto the nearest comfy chair.
"Here we are. Much better than an examination in the middle of the street."
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"Can you remove your shirt?" he asks.
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Harry Goodsir. Where has he heard that name?
Simon eases out of his jacket, wincing a little, then sits up enough to unbutton and shed his shirt.
His stomach and chest are practically one solid, yellowing bruise, with a fresh splash of purple across the side hit by the monster.
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"I can bind them if you prefer, but otherwise I fear there is little I can do here. I have some medication for the pain, but if you require anything stronger, you will be best served at the hospital."
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Every word a true one. Never let it be said that Simon Templar passes up on a chance to brag in the most outlandish way possible.
He eases back into his shirt once Harry's done, studying the man with increasing curiosity, now that the obvious has been attended to and they're out of harm's way.
"Harry Goodsir. I don't suppose you're a famous cricketer or something like that?"
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He's rummaging in his bag for the packets of pain medication when the possibility of name recognition draws him up short.
"Nothing of the kind, I'm afraid. Before I came here, I was assistant surgeon and naturalist on a Royal Navy Discovery Service expedition to the Arctic."
He's already bracing himself.
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He works at his buttons, fading adrenaline making his fingers tremor very slightly. "Discovery Ser--?"
Simon freezes, looking up at Harry. "What ship did you sail with?"
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Damn.
"HMS Erebus," he says, then adds (because you might as well grasp the iron straightaway): "Under Sir John Franklin."
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Except he doesn't, really. Giant monsters, other universes, planets in the sky. Creatures from the imaginations of every science fiction writer who ever lived. Magic. All of that is outlandish enough that he can block it out, somehow. Function through it. Laugh about it, because it makes so little sense.
There's something different about staring a dead man in the face, having read his name in history texts. There's no writing it off as some hallucinatory experience. This is something Simon is fairly positive he couldn't make up on his own. It's bleak and shocking in a way the rest of this nightmare is not.
"This must be.... You must be...." What? No more out of place than anyone else who ends up here. Does he know? Does he know how the expedition ended? How could he, unless someone here told him? How many people here even know about it?
Dear god, are he and Goodsir from the same world?
"Have you been here long?"
The question is so inane he could almost laugh.
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Having been able to talk honestly about it now with Cameron and Alex, he can afford to be straightforward, he thinks.
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"I'm passingly familiar. Familiar enough to recognize the names involved."
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He finds the painkillers—two pills in a little paper envelope—and hands them over.
"I have been told," he says, "that the fate of our expedition is a mystery to those who came after us." Charging right at the elephant in the room. "You will forgive me, I'm sure, if I am reluctant to shed much light on the mystery. Save to say that it is entirely fair to call the Franklin Expedition 'lost', for surely we were."
There's a chance, if Simon becomes a friend, that he might learn more someday, but now is definitely not the time.
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He wants to ask, desperately wants to ask what Harry means by all of that. Simon's curiosity is insatiable, and he hates being unsatisfied, even if he cultivates his own mysteries with just enough information to leave people wanting. It's most definitely a sideways (or backwards) case of Do as I say, not as I do.
But he's face to face with a dead man, one who seems to be implying very heavily that he knows about his own demise. Simon is curious, desperately so, but he's never intentionally cruel.
He's not sure how to answer Harry without platitudes, and he hates those, both receiving and giving them.
"Well. I'm fortunate that you were here. Death by pig isn't the most elegant way to go."
He remembers a moment too late: dead man.
Well done, Templar.
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Harry, in the process of re-packing his bag, freezes, a roll of gauze in his hand.
He wants very badly to answer: Nor is consumption, being cut to pieces, starving, succumbing to scurvy, being stabbed or shot, or poisoning oneself. But Simon hasn't earned that kind of verbal decimation, at least not yet.
And so: "No, it is not," he says, mildly but with a certain coolness that suggests that Simon should be glad that he's not getting a different answer. He continues packing his bag. "I am glad, in any case, that I was able to help, and that you were not worse injured." Which is true; regardless of personal feeling, Harry generally would prefer that no one got hurt needlessly.
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Just as Harry doesn't know him nearly well enough to share his own experiences, Simon isn't comfortable--is never comfortable--mentioning his. The number of bodies he's encountered across the span of his life is a gruesome toll he does his best not to think about, like so many other things. While most of those weren't his own doing, there were exceptions. He hates killing, but if it comes down to a choice between himself, one of his own, or the enemy, well. It's not even a real choice.
For a second, he's at a loss--if this were his own world, he could provide Goodsir with just about anything, legal or illegal, fairly or unfairly acquired. Gifts are an easier form of apology than words.
"I should apologize," he says, as much to himself as to Harry. There's another pause. He eases to his feet, picking up his jacket. "I do. Let me make it up to you."
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"Apology accepted," he says. "There is nothing—I require nothing else."
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There's a thought.
Simon slips a hand into one of the inner pockets of his jacket, withdrawing a small business card. It simply says The Saint, with a small drawing a haloed stick figure, a jaunty and almost mocking little doodle.
"Should you ever have a need my particular skills can fulfill, I'm at your service, Dr. Goodsir."
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"An interesting nom de guerre, Mr. Templar."
He can't, at this point, imagine when he might need the skills of a thief, but then there's a lot of things he hadn't predicted he'd need here.
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"I should like to hear it," Harry says sincerely. "Perhaps when the alarums of the city are less."