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

III.

[desperate_times_right]

Speaking of bedraggled wet cats, the first person he encounters is a woman in a red t-shirt that has seen better days, torn haphazardly across the waist and jeans with the right knee torn out, stained from the knee down with something dark and crusty that could be mud or old blood. She’s leaning on a crutch made from a tree branch and her right foot is wrapped in what look like men’s shirtsleeves.

Despite that, she's moving around surprisingly quickly, and grins when he approaches.

“Oh, hey! Look what the elephant dropped in. People here’ve got a bunch of fish jerky in the far hangar if you want some.”

[sang_bleu]

The elephant?? Vanitas mentally shoves that aside, a question for another time.

"Fish jerky," he repeats. "Well, mademoiselle, I'm sure it will seem a feast after the day I've had. I couldn't tell you when I last had a meal. Does this, er, village have a name?"

His too-blue eyes linger on her injured foot. Unfortunately, his doctor's bag is probably still in Paris, but if that is the best that someone here can do... Well. It might be leverage, if the people here are as friendly as they seem.

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe shrugs cheerfully. “Dunno, really. Only got here recently, myself. Everyone just calls it the airfield.”

[sang_bleu]

Vanitas looks again at the large buildings in the distance. He'd taken them for enormous warehouses or something, but upon reappraisal, they could be hangars for some sort of airship, albeit smaller than most of those he had encountered before. What was this place?

"Did everyone here just... wash up on the beach?"

[desperate_times_right]

“Far’s I know, yeah. Well, maybe not Sam, I didn't ask him.” Sam is a cat.

“You’re new-new, I take it?” These are the kinds of questions that come up all the time on the radio whenever anyone wakes up.

[sang_bleu]

"It seems so. I woke up here this morning. At least, I think it was morning." A pause. "I'm assuming no one happens to know how we all got here? Or why we're missing specific possessions?"

His left hand (with the coat over it) fidgets with the edge of his other dark elbow-length glove. They're itchy with salt and sand, but he doesn't take them off. Won't leave them off. Not in public.

[desperate_times_right]

"Nope! A bunch of stuff fell out of the sky a couple of days ago but we don't know if it's related. It's just kind of like this the whole time."

Chloe notes the glove and the drape of the coat, eyeing him curiously.

“You lose something important?”

[sang_bleu]

"Hmm? Oh, well. I had a book with me. Not really valuable to anyone else, but it's an important reference. I'm a doctor."

Half-truths. He's almost died for the Book multiple times, once for someone trying to use it, once for someone seeking to destroy it. And while it does provide him knowledge about the esoteric ailments that befall vampires, it's also an "analytical engine" capable of rewriting the laws of reality. When dealing with those who know of it, it has also been his protection. Whether seen as a cure or a threat, he's still (almost) the only one who can use it.

He is a doctor, though, even though he looks young by modern standards. Where (and more importantly when) he's from, there's no graduate degree required.

[desperate_times_right]

“Oh, was that you with all that angry typing earlier?” This also happens a lot. “Thought you’d be taller.”

Sorry, kid, you're like a baby.

[sang_bleu]

Vanitas brushes off the comment with a wave of a clawed glove. "Did you? Well, I'm plenty big enough for everything that matters."

It's not clear if he's actually trying to flirt or just being obnoxious.

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe laughs so hard that her crutch nearly slips out from under her and she has to kind of hop sideways to compensate.

“Oh my. I'm sure you are, love.”

[sang_bleu]

This reply also seems to roll right off of him, his cocky smirk never really fading. But when Chloe stumbles, he immediately shifts his weight, ready to lunge forward and catch her if need be. But when she rights herself, he leaves her be, falling back into nearly the same posture as before.

Despite the innuendo, he's used to women who could break him over their knee, and Chloe doesn't look like a delicate flower either. But he's not going to let an injured lady fall in the dirt.

"I'm Vanitas," he offers, sketching a little bow that (like practically everything he does) borders on mocking.

[desperate_times_right]

“Chloe Frazer,” Chloe says, doing her best (maybe a little over the top) imitation of the bow as best she can on crutches.

“I'm okay. Watch out for traps out there, huh?”

[sang_bleu]

"A pleasure, Ms. Frazer." He's practically m'ladying, and his clothes aren't quite archaic enough for it to be unironic.

But then his eyes go back to her foot and his tone finally gets serious. Traps.

"What sort of traps? And set by who?"

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe laughs again, what a greeting! Considering that another guy here introduced himself to her by sending her an ASCII dick pic, she’ll take the insincere politeness.

She gets more serious again when he asks about the trap.

“A spring trap with teeth, like for bears. I was lucky some of the teeth were broken - saved the leg, I think. We were hit in a camp in the northeast of the island. Whoever it was came back for the trap after, so I'm assuming it was on purpose.”