TDM #2

[glencolans]

TEST DRIVE MEME #2

Welcome to Glencola Reef's second Test Drive Meme! This is a place where anyone interested in applying a character - or just curious to see how their characters might interact with the setting and others in the game - can mingle with one another. General prompts are provided below for inspiration.

TDM GUIDELINES

• Please read the rules before posting to the TDM. These still apply here and will be enforced, up to and including deleting tags/toplevels and prebanning.
• Posts from a TDM are required to apply. At least three tags across any number of threads within a TDM, posted within the last 6 months, must be provided in every application.
• TDM threads can be used for AC. Note that new characters only need to check in for their first AC cycle, but established characters can use TDM tags for their AC.
• TDMs are not considered game canon by default. This is mostly for logistics reasons - due to how characters travel on the map, it's unlikely that non-network threads that take place here will actually happen in-game. However, I won't stop anyone from working out how to make parts of threads game canon if they really want to.
• New TDMs will be posted every three months. Keep checking back into the current TDM for new toplevels!

I. ARRIVAL

You awaken on a tropical island beach, soaking wet, powerless, and without any idea how you got here. Were you carrying something important, or wearing powerful armor? How unfortunate - it looks like only the most basic clothes, items in your pockets, and simple weapons managed to make the trip with you. Are you even physically the same as you remember? If you had superhuman abilities tied to your physiology, you might be stuck in a completely different body that lacks your usual senses. You might've been whisked away from a tense battle or a near-death experience and wake up delirious, or even injured.

Thankfully, against overwhelming odds, you're not the only one to wake up on this particular stretch of beach. You and your companion have a lot of puzzling out to do.

II. NETWORK

Even if you weren't lucky enough to wake up near someone else, at least you've arrived with a military-grade radio transceiver gripped tightly in your hand (or mouth, or other vaguely opposable appendage of choice). The clunky walkie-talkie will start buzzing and crackling for every public message that starts coming your way. Answering them back is as easy as pressing the "talk" button on the side of the device and either speaking into the receiver, or using the keypad to type into the message box that appears on the screen, then pressing the button again to send. A list of ongoing conversations with responses that are less than 24 hours old can be found by scrolling through the menu, identified by the callsigns that are participating in them. It seems that you've been assigned a callsign, too - it shows up in the top right side of the screen, format AB123C. The letters and numbers picked are...probably random.

This is your easiest avenue to communicating, or coordinating with, or complaining at the other people stuck on this island; how you decide to use this tool is up to you.

III. A SAFE PLACE

Whether because someone else directed you via the transceivers, or someone found you and is leading you there, or just out of sheer luck, you have stumbled your way up the western coastline and run into an abandoned airfield. At least it used to be abandoned; there are obvious signs that the area has seen recent use, from the myriad of footprints in the sand leading up to the ocean, to the racks of drying fish lined along the shattered asphalt of a runway, to the strangely complex water stills and...who even knows what chemicals are brewing in those pots next to the largest airplane hangar? Even if you find the signs of people first, you're likely to run into the inhabitants themselves sooner rather than later, as the airfield has become a surprisingly busy hub of activity in comparison to the bleak isolation of the rest of the island. Maybe some of the more experienced inhabitants will help you figure out what's going on here, or try to rope you into exploring or cleaning out the more run-down buildings lining the runway, like the smaller hangars or the desolate traffic control tower at the far end. You likely aren't the only new person trying to find your way around, either. Hopefully the person you arrived with is more interested in helping rather than just looting the place and running off.

IV. STRANGE BOUNTIES

The weather on this island can be rather unpredictable sometimes. Just yesterday it was sunny and hot, then today, without warning, the sky opened up - literally, like the pale blue horizon was a vase smashed by a hammer and a billowing cyclone poured through the hole - and dumped at least a foot of rain on you in the span of an hour. You just barely managed to avoid getting swept out to sea, hunkering down in the relative safety of the deeper jungle, when the storm stopped as suddenly as it started. Dazed and possibly hurt, you stumble back to the beach to get a look at the sky--

--And find the beach absolutely covered in heaps of beach peas. There are so many that you can't even see the sand underfoot, and more of the pods are still washing up with the swollen tide. A flurry of very confused seagulls are already picking at the pile of legumes, but you should be quick about getting your own share - other captives are likely to show up soon, too, and they probably have much deeper pockets and appetites than the birds.

V. HOSTILE STRANGERS

As others have had the misfortune of discovering first-hand, there are entities on the island that have been here for much longer than the active group on the transceivers has been, and they aren't necessarily friendly. One in particular guards their territory fiercely from intruders - or maybe they just enjoy toying with those that wander within their reach. For those exploring the dense jungles in the northeast, this individual's motivations are probably the last things on your mind when you encounter them personally. Minding your own business, by yourself or traveling with others like you, noting the odd lack of animal calls in an otherwise vibrant jungle, suddenly there's the faint whistling noise of a crossbow bolt hissing through the air on a collision course for your vitals. You might consider yourself lucky if you stumble into one of their expertly-hidden rope traps instead and end up dangling by your ankle ten feet in the air. Hopefully, if you are currently traveling alone, someone will find you quickly enough to keep you from being killed outright by this hidden assailant.

NAVIGATION

Comments

[solitarysoul]

He looks at her radio and then to his own. Only one thing comes to mind. "...are we an army? Did they bring us here to fight something?"

Has he been drafted again?

[meadqueen]

“If we are it isn't very well organized.” Randvi had been a tactician in a war in her homeland several years ago and she would never have allowed things to be this haphazard. “Many are unarmed and we have received no instructions.”

[solitarysoul]

"They took my gun away," he mutters. He'd have felt a lot better with it on him. "So...we don't have any idea what's going on?"

[meadqueen]

“The people in the village to the east believe that their god brought us here, but I don't know whether that is true or not.”

The Saxons in England love to use their god to explain everything too.

[solitarysoul]

"A god...A god could do this." He sounds bitter. Hadn't the gods fucked with him enough? "I hope its not...I don't really remember anything. Maybe I was just drugged."

Damn now he sounds like Karin. He can understand her not wanting to believe magic was involved, though.

[meadqueen]

“It's equally possible that someone used a piece of technology that none of us understand to bring us here for some unknown purpose.”

She gestures to the row of hangars to their left. “Do you know of the machines that are stored in places like this?”

[solitarysoul]

"...yeah, it is. Maybe this is what those things did." But then were was the rest of his party?

He looks to the hangars. "Um, yeah. Airplanes. I didn't really interact with the Air Force though..."

[meadqueen]

“Things? Something where you come from?” It’s doubtful but Dirk had said something similar so she can't discount it.

“Where I come from, nothing like that exists. When people described them to me, I couldn't believe it. I'm sure that as you meet more of us, some of them will know about things that would be like that for you, too.”

Unless everyone at this boy’s home was also turned to stone by a strange device.

[solitarysoul]

"There were these weird...machine things. With lots of tubes." And possible fleshy reflections if wood hell was real. "I've never seen machines like that before. No one knew what they did." They sure did turn them on anyway, though.

"I don't know how common planes are...I think they're kinda new?" So its not too surprising that she doesn't know about them. And he's yet to grasp the multiverse thing despite what she's said. The only other realm he knew was full of monsters and she didn't seem like one.

[meadqueen]

“I see.” She has no idea what that could be. Maybe K or Senku would know.

“Senku told me that such airplanes regularly carry hundreds of people across the sea.”

She's still a little dubious about that, but doesn't really think Senku would lie about that.

[solitarysoul]

Hundreds of people? And across the sea? The planes he'd seen could only carry a few, and why anyone would want to go across the sea is beyond him.

"...I wouldn't know. There's no reason to go across the sea where I come from. I think they just used planes in war."

Then again, all he really knew was war.

[meadqueen]

Randvi makes a face before she can stop herself: to her people fighting wars at such a remove is a coward’s method.

“All of this to say, while many of us have things in common, very few - if any - of us come from the same place. I doubt it was anything from anyone’s home that did this to us.”

[solitarysoul]

Levi would have preferred a little less up close and personal, really.

"What else do we know about this place?"

[meadqueen]

This is something that Randvi doesn't really like to talk about, but the others aren't exactly discreet about it.

“We don't know if or how it is possible to die here. Some people have disappeared and not returned, but two among our number have been killed by the hostiles to the northeast and still live.”

[solitarysoul]

Killed but...what? "Are you sure they were dead?"

He winches a bit after the question comes out of his mouth. "Sorry. That just sounds crazy."

Maybe they were doppelgängers? Or...was it possible they were already dead? Rher could have gotten tired of their refusal to kill and took it into his own hands.

[meadqueen]

“The first one was alone and announced it later, but when Ben was shot there was a witness.” Yes, it had been over the radio but with the way that everything has happened since she believes him.

“It is crazy. We don't yet know why it happens, or if it happens for everyone.”

[solitarysoul]

"That's crazy...but, uh, are you sure its the same person? Who came back."

[meadqueen]

“They both have memories of the moment of their death and neither of them took it well, so I think so.”

It's impossible to truly say, and this is something that she's worried about too.

“I caught a small animal in a snare here that was… abnormal internally. It's possible that the hugr is the same but the body is a construct. For obvious reasons this has not been verified.”

[solitarysoul]

"Abnormal how? And whats a hugr?"

Cw: animal guts lol

[meadqueen]

“It was a tusked creature that resembled a large rodent, but it had a bony plate in place of ribs. The intestines were laid out in a way that could not have been functional, and I was unable to locate its heart.”

It's something that has frightened her about the possibility of dying since she’d seen it. What if she comes back like that, a poorly sewn-together imitation of herself?

“The hugr is what animates the body. You might call it a spirit, or a soul.”

[solitarysoul]

He'd dealt with more strange humans than strange animals, but there were definitely mutated animals around Prehevil too. "So...you think someone, or something, made it?"

He shivers a bit, trying to push away memories of formless blobs that were once human.

[meadqueen]

“It seems impossible, but I doubt an animal naturally born in such a way would have survived to maturity.”

[solitarysoul]

"...I don't know if its better to think its a god doing this or a man." He knew both were capable of great evil.

[meadqueen]

“A man might be easier to stop.” Though if they can't die, maybe not.

[solitarysoul]

"Yeah. I don't really know how to fight a god." Even if he might have been on his way to do that.

Levi sighs, he should try to change the subject or something, but he can't think of anything. All he can think of right now are monsters.