TDM #1

[glencolans]

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

Comments

[meadqueen]

Hm. We could mark the path with stones. My scouts taught me their trail signs.

[wingbound]

...do we have stones?

[ Maybe there are some on the beach. He's not so sure this would be efficient, though, since they'd have to lug them over all the way here. ]

[meadqueen]

In the river, I’d imagine. They need not be large.

[Yes, in order for them to work efficiently she’ll have to teach people the meanings but they seem less likely to be inadvertently disturbed than something tied to a tree]

[wingbound]

[ That isn't going to help anyone find the place from a distance, but it's not like he has the rope needed to build a sign pole properly. Besides, they still don't have a good idea of where they are. If this is enemy coastline, it might be a good idea to not alert anybody about their position. ]

[ He nods. ]

Will you show me?

[ How to arrange them, he means. It's going to take him maybe a minute to fill up his flask, it's not like he's got other plans after that so he might as well help her. ]

[meadqueen]

[Until they have a way to store water they can't stray too far anyway, but this might help them if they get turned around]

Of course. They’re simple by design, and here we may only need a few symbols.

[If they start needing to mark troop movements or bandit camps, then they have bigger problems on their hands]

I imagine ‘hazard’, ‘resource’, and ‘supply cache’ would be sufficient.

[wingbound]

Sounds good.

[ He cants his head slightly to gesture at the waterfall. ]

"Hazard" or "resource"?

[ In case she wants to try the unicorn horn thing again. He probably won't trust it until it's correct at least three times in a row, but so far it seems it was right about the weird fruit, since he's feeling just fine, aside from that slight tiredness that has been ever-present since he got here. ]

[meadqueen]

[It absolutely does not work, and the man who recommended it to her father was actively being poisoned by his subordinate while using it, but she believes that it does and right now that's all they've got]

Resource. I drank from it already.

[wingbound]

[ Guess they might discover it the hard way, then. ]

[ So far, so good, though. Drinking from it and still being alive and well an hour or however long later is a more solid proof anyway. ]

...

[ He goes to fill up his tiny water flask and fish out a few round stones out of the stream, then he'll simply wait for Randvi to show him how to make the signs. ]

[meadqueen]

All of the signs are simple - less room for error, and not all of my scouts are literate.

[She picks up a branch to draw the signs in the earth in front of him.

Three vertical lines side by side:]

Hazard.

[Two horizontal lines, one on top of the other:]

Resource.

[A large stone encircled by smaller stones:]

Supply cache. We can use this for camps as well.

[wingbound]

[ Simple enough, so far, though it's quite different from what he's used to, so he glances at her again with a small frown. ]

What about placement?

[ He assumes there should be several at least at different distances. ]

[meadqueen]

For the most part, each scout has their own preference, but I recommend only leaving hazard markers where you expect the viewer to turn around immediately. If they see a hazard warning and turn away too early, they may miss something that you've marked for them later along the path.

Best practice for resource markers is a marker at every trail branch and one half an hour prior, but my scouts are often covering large distances and don't always have the time to double back.

[wingbound]

Makes sense.

[ He starts gathering some round stones from the riverbed. ]

You commanded your own scouts?

[ Tell him more. ]

[meadqueen]

[Randvi blushes. Alone in the settlement, she likes to imagine herself a hardy independent woman like Soma, creating her own village and bound only to the duties she chooses for herself, but that's not the case in real life]

I command them, but they're not truly mine. My father’s, in the war with the Raven Clan, then Styrbjorn Jarl, and now my husband. We don't have these devices to speak across long distances, but we need to stay up to date on who controls the lands around our settlement, other unrest in England, and developments in Norway and Vinland.

[She smiles, trying to imagine Eivor or Sigurd doing the same work]

Most of the warriors have no patience for waiting so the work falls to me.

[wingbound]

[ He seems to be thinking it over. ]

...You're still the one doing it. Don't sell yourself short.

[ She may not be leading them, but she's the one making their work worthwhile, isn't she? Taking in all the information and crafting an accurate image of the surrounding world, it's not as easy as it sounds and it doesn't even sound particularly easy. ]

[meadqueen]

I've been working with the Raven Clan’s scouts for five winters now, so we’ve come to know each other. They know what sort of additional information to collect for me.

I like to imagine myself out there, among the ruins that they find sometimes, or with the armies in their tokens on the map.

[In the two years since Ravensthorpe was founded, this is the first time she's left the settlement. It's overwhelming]

[wingbound]

[ That just sounds like, indeed, more proof that she is in fact extremely competent at her job. Like she knows the things to look for which may not be obvious to others. Like a tactician, almost; it matters not if she's not on the field herself. ]

...Would you like to go, one day?

[meadqueen]

[Randvi looks at Levi in surprise. It's been so long since anyone has asked her what she wanted that she’d almost forgotten that other people can notice that she wants things]

I would like nothing more. But our fates are already woven, and it seems that's not what the Nornir have chosen for me.

The scouts tell me of beautiful places, and I dream, and that is enough.

[wingbound]

...

[ Levi's relationship with fate is complicated. On one hand, he hates people who are complacent in the face of injustice because it was "meant" to be this way. On another hand, as he gets older, he definitely catches himself thinking if he was fated to carry out a specific role and nothing beyond that. ]

[ He certainly hasn't felt much in the way of purpose for years. He was still going through the motions, of course, for the ones he still had left, but... ]

Did they also choose to drop you off here?

[ He gestures at the island around them. Their circumstances of ending up here were far from ideal, but he can't deny that the place is kind of beautiful to look at. ]

[meadqueen]

Yes.

[Randvi doesn't know anything about the truly wild things that are happening around and/or to her at home involving Norse gods, so she just believes in them in the regular way. The fates of everyone, including the gods, are pre-ordained]

I must admit, though, as frightening as all of this is, it's a bit of a treat for me. To be here, to see all of this, to smell and feel and taste it... And I will go home and describe it to my scouts and warriors, who will have to look at the map and imagine.

[wingbound]

[ He fights the urge to rub his temples. His main experience with religion are the idiot priests worshiping the Walls, and he doesn't exactly have a high opinion of them. At the same time, whatever Randvi is talking about doesn't seem to be actively making things worse for people... ]

Clearly you're fated for some exploration, then.

[ At least... whatever this is. Speaking of which, though, it's the going home part that might be a problem. They need to work that out. He has unfinished business to attend to. ]

Any idea which way "home" is?

[meadqueen]

[Randvi nods, conceding the point]

I can only imagine the volume of work that will be waiting for me upon my return.

[She won't be making any other trips any time soon, that's for sure]

It's difficult to say more than 'vaguely to the northwest'. I don't remember how long I've been away.

[wingbound]

[ He scowls. ]

Don't remind me.

[ He could, probably, shove off the mission reports on their new recruits, but that feels like a disgustingly MP thing to do, so he's not going to. ]

We'd better start figuring out how to get there, then.

[ It's... probably going to take them a while. ]

[meadqueen]

I don't remember anything, but a place like this must be weeks away from England, at the least. You said that your homeland has a cooler climate as well?

[wingbound]

That's right.

[ And he has no idea which way to go at all. In fact, he's suddenly very aware that he doesn't even have a plan. He just knows that he has to go back, finish his last mission, whatever the cost. ]

[ Finally, he decides to risk it and drink from the small waterfall. Randvi did so earlier and she still seemed fine, so it was probably okay. If he didn't, he'd end up dead from dehydration anyway, so it's not really much of a choice. ]

[meadqueen]

I think we must have been brought here by ship, but there seem to be so many of us... Perhaps we should set watches on the shore in case they return.