TEST DRIVE MEME #1

Welcome to Glencola Reef's first 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. EXPLORING

For a place that appears, by all signs, to be an equatorial island in the middle of a tropical ocean, the local environments are surprisingly diverse. Beaches range from idyllic white sand to storm-swept pebble crags to cliffs with waterfalls cascading off the edges; the interior forests can be thinned from sandy soil or dense jungles full of prickly underbrush and with towering canopies; and the central mountain peaks, perilous enough to climb on their own, terminate in ravines and sinkholes that are hidden by thick foliage until you already have one foot over the edge.

The animals that make their homes here are equally as varied, and sometimes just as dangerous. The standard Earth fare of tropical fish swim right up to most shores, especially where reefs have grown, and a multitude of seafaring and jungle birds make their homes in ocean-facing cliffs and trees. Any one of these creatures would make for an easy snack. But you're not the only opportunistic hunters here; sharks prowl the waters, big cats stalk the jungles, and feral boars raid any camps that smell enticing. And that's just the stuff that looks like it came from modern Earth. Your improvised fishing rod might have captured a trilobite, or maybe that deer you were stalking has rounded on you with a set of alien mandibles full of sharp teeth. Or maybe, among the plants and animals completely foreign to you, you've stumbled across one that's strangely familiar to your home and no one else's.

There's a lot to figure out about this place. At least, in this instance, you aren't doing it alone.

NAVIGATION

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Randvi doesn't intend to lurk, but she’s been standing at the tree line for a while, trying to get the measure of the man on the beach. He's dressed like one of Octavian’s statues and has the same strange device that she’d arrived with.

When he seems to tire of turning the device over, she makes her decision and steps forward.

“There’s a raised portion on one side. You hold it down if you wish to be heard.”

Maximus looks up, immediately turning to hear footsteps in the distance. His hand moved near his weapon but stopped when he noticed her attire.

He looked down at the strange box and pressed the small device on the side. Like this? "Ciao? Hello?" (Italian) (English).

It took the ex-general quite a few times before he could talk in the thing correctly.

She does have a weapon, but it's hanging at her belt and at the moment her hands aren't near it.

“Yes, I think that's it.”

Randvi holds up her own device and replays the message for him.

“I'm not sure how it works either. We can speak to others, but you're the first I've seen face to face.”

The device is speaking to him, and he must get used to the sound in his ears as he moves it closer to his ears.

The General looked up at the woman and nods "This is the first time I've ever seen such a device myself. Also, you are the first person I've seen here myself."

Looking back and stopping the radio to speak again, trying again "You must be from a place where this box thing didn't exist, right? Me too."

“I've heard tell of stones that speak, but I can't imagine that this is the same thing.”

Sigurd had seemed to think that those messages came from the gods, and these ones are surely from other humans.

Randvi puts the hand holding the device to her heart in greeting.

“My name is Randvi. I'm Chief Strategist for the Raven Clan in England.”

"I can't say I've imagined stones that speak either. It's hard to imagine this box that shares so many voices in question.

"My name is Maximus Decimus Meridus, I was the Commander of the armies of the North and General of the Fenix Legions."

“Things are very strange in England. It seems our gods speak more directly there than they ever did in Norway.”

It's difficult to know what to make of the wild claims that Sigurd and Basim are sending home to her. If only it were easier to trust her husband.

“Maximus, well met. I wish I could explain this situation to you, but no one that I've been able to reach seems to know anything other than that we've been marooned here.”

"You as well, Randvi. Guess we both must adapt to survive around this new place then. I was a farmer at one point back home. If we must survive, it's better to think as a team rather than alone. I suggest we start up some sort of fire once we find something to eat or hunt."

Randvi hesitates. She's a woman alone here, and whether this stranger would care about Sigurd’s claim to her is an open question. (Not that she particularly enjoys Sigurd’s claim to her, but it's a convenient shield to reach for whenever things get tense at home)

On the other hand, she is armed, and confident enough in both her martial skills against humans and her hunting abilities to agree for now.

“Would your blade be suitable for butchering an animal? My war hammer can bring down prey, but I doubt you would want to eat the rabbit I’d gut with it.”

Maximus looks back, quiet not sure how Randvi would handle his offer after only one encounter so far.

He thought of his wife and son that died a long time ago due to some rather bad events.

But he sighed. "I suppose food isn't free around here and we need to work with what we got so far. I can eat whatever. If it's raw, I can prepare a fire if needed and we can cook it.

“I used to roam the mountains behind my village for weeks at a time as a girl.” Randvi can't help but be nostalgic for those days in the forest: the cold and the solitude, unburdened by duty.

“I doubt I could bring down a deer without my bow, but I can make snares and catch us some smaller game. Did you farm livestock?”

If not it's fine, but if so he's likely better at preparing meat than she is.

Maximus looked back, just a bit sad, more longing but he frowned "Yes. I had a large farm back home with my family, before things happened, I rather not talk about."

"As long as we have a brief advantage, we can avoid trouble if necessary. A gun is dangerous, so I heard, and I don't want to run into someone who has one yet. Survival is key right now."

"Perhaps if we find some fruits and herbs or some sort of seeds on the island, I can grow a light garden."

“I would hope that we will not be stranded here for so long as that! Once my husband finds me missing, someone will be looking for us.”

She's not sure now whether Sigurd would care, bewitched as he is by this speaking stone, but there has to be enough between herself and Eivor - even if Eivor loves her as a sister would rather than in the way Randvi cannot even bring herself to admit that she wishes for - that she would search across the world for her.

"I wish I could say the same for myself. Not sure if anyone will be looking for me back home." Maximus looked mostly frustrated but that only lasted a short time before he nodded "It's not much, but if I can get at least one person off this island, it will be worth it."

“If my people come, we will save everyone.” It's not the way that they had lived in Norway, but it's the way they want to live in England.

"It's important to consider that not everyone may have been as fortunate as I have. While I was able to escape the dangers of the arenas and start anew, others may not have been so lucky. We should be cautious and aware of the potential risks that come with certain situations and do our best to protect ourselves and those around us."

Randvi is curious about this arena but doesn't pry. This man seems conflicted about his past.

“I can defend myself, if that is your concern.”

Yes, the hammer is mostly ornamental, but she has killed with it before when their home had been attacked by Rued’s clan. That she had considered whether she could fight off Maximus himself before agreeing to ally with him is something that she doesn't need to mention.

TDM #1

TEST DRIVE MEME #1

TDM GUIDELINES

I. ARRIVAL

II. NETWORK

III. EXPLORING

Arrival

Re: Arrival

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TW: Family death

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