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]

"No idea. I just woke up over there." He gestures further down the beach. "Without my gun."

[sang_bleu]

Vanitas frowns at the last bit of that. Someone must have stripped them both of some of their belongings. But who? And why would they take this guy's gun but not Vanitas's knives?

And if they weren't targeting the Book in particular... it raised more questions than it answered.

"Do you remember what happened before that? Or know who might have brought us here?"

[solitarysoul]

"No...at least, I don't think so. I remember some things but nothing that'd lead up to, uh, wherever this is. Or how I got here."

[sang_bleu]

"Where were you? Could you have been drugged?"

Vanitas asks himself the same things silently. He'd been at the hotel in Paris, still recovering from his fight with Noé. He must have eaten at some point, but nothing that Noé or Amelia hadn't brought him themselves. So if it was something in the food, it must have come from someone they would trust. But who? And who the fuck is this guy that they'd take him too?

Vanitas taps a fingertip against his chin. It doesn't make sense.

[solitarysoul]

"I definitely could have been drugged." Maybe all of Karin's talk about them being gassed had turned out to be true after all. At least sort of. "But I don't know why anything would dump me here...or anywhere."

Anything he can think of would probably have just killed him.

[sang_bleu]

"Well. Standing here on the beach probably isn't going to get us any answers," Vanitas says decisively.

"What's your name? Can you fight?"

[solitarysoul]

"...yeah. It won't.
"I'm Levi. Don't worry about me, I know how to fight."

He knew all too well.

[sang_bleu]

"I'm Vanitas. And good. I've no idea what is waiting for us here, but I'm not confident it will be friendly."

He looks around again, eyes lingering on the tree line beyond the beach. "How much have you explored?"

[solitarysoul]

He grunts, "I could count the times it was on one hand.

"Not much, I was just going along the beach."

He pulls out his transceiver. "Do you have one of these things?"

[sang_bleu]

Oh right, that thing. Vanitas remembered holding something, but hadn't noted much about it. He looks around, and spots it on the sand a few feet away.

"Apparently so."

He stoops to pick it up and examines it curiously, scrolling through some of the recent messages. A radio or telegraph of some kind, perhaps? Likely powered by astermite, but he's never seen anything quite like it.

[solitarysoul]

"I didn't have this before. I'm not sure why they'd take our stuff and give us these radio things. But they're military. I think that means something like that brought us in. But...I don't get it. I don't get any of this."