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]

Much of Randvi’s power has always rested on being the property of her father, then her husband. Right now, lost who knows where while Sigurd chases a madwoman’s magic stone, the only thing she’s got to fall back on is her own self-control.

It's tempting to keep her eyes on the weapon, especially since she doesn't know how it works (does it need to be reloaded like a crossbow?) but that betrays a fear that she can't admit. She sweeps his body quickly, noting a slight imbalance in his stance that might suggest an injury to the leg or foot, then brings her eyes back up to his face.

If it comes down to it, she has no qualms about dying in battle, but if she can she's going to make sure that he doesn't enjoy it.

“My name is Randvi.” She tries to keep her voice conversational, as if she's at her table negotiating a trade agreement. “What shall I call you?”

[salamanca]

"Nice to meet you, Randvi. You may call me whatever you like."

He appreciates the conversational tone. In truth, he's impressed with her calmness in this situation. Not many people would be so nonchalant right now. His own tone matches hers, and he even gives her a faint smile.

He catches the way her gaze drifts to his leg. It's subtle, but he drags it just a little when he walks, nurses it slightly in his movements. He doesn't wine, or betray any pain in his expression, but he can tell she's noticed that could be a liability for him.

"Careful," he warns her. He decides not to get too close just yet, instead maintaining a distance just slightly out of arm's reach while keeping the gun on her.

"That's a nice weapon you've got there." He means the hammer. He studies her face, trying to get a read on her. "Where are you from, Randvi?" He decides he needs to know more about this person. She's unusual and different.

[meadqueen]

Randvi’s fists clench at the warning, but she forces herself to relax them. While he remains at a distance, this man has the advantage. She's been training more seriously since the attack on their settlement by Rued’s clan and does not doubt that she could kill the man from here with a well-timed throw of her hammer, but the speed of the other weapon makes it too great a risk.

Randvi doesn't know what a projectile like that would do when it strikes a person, and this isn't the way that she wishes to find out.

“Thank you. It was a gift,” she says about her own weapon. She had received it at her wedding and remembers being impressed even then by Gunnar’s workmanship.

“I'm from England.” Her accent isn't what he might expect but it is the truth now: if she survives this she expects to die there.

[salamanca]

He notices how quickly she's able to force her tensing fists to relax and unball. Smart, he thinks. He doesn't mind giving her credit for that. It feels impossible to him, but it almost seems like she's from a different time. Either that, or she grew up in some kind of weird cult or something. She's having to take in a lot of new information really quickly right away regardless, and he's gotta say -- she's being smart about it! Good girl.

"A gift?" He reacts like she's showing him a new car, or maybe even a new favorite shit. He grins, then he whistles. "Nice gift! Who gave it to you? Whoever it was must want you to be safe, eh?" A laugh.

"England, huh? Nice place! Me, I'm from Mexico. You should go if you get the chance."

His tone is conversational at first, but then he drops it immediately in favor of becoming still-cheerful, but a little more stern and insistent: "Slide the hammer over to me. Don't worry. I'll keep it safe for you."

He's aware that, until that damn thing isn't within her grabbing range, she's going to be dangerous to him, maybe even potentially lethal.

[meadqueen]

Randvi studies the man’s face, mind racing. Her marriage has been a heavy weight to carry, but it's also a shield that's served her well while living among the Raven Clan. Sigurd has this unassailable quality - not leadership, she thinks, but another type of charisma - and even the most belligerent Ravens are reluctant to damage what belongs to him. Does any of that matter here, to a stranger on an unknown shore? It may be that for the first time in five winters, she's on her own.

“Yes. From my husband.” At least it indicates that someone could be looking for her.

He talks about England as if he knows it, but Mexico is a place that she's never heard of. How far is she from home?

Then the stranger asks for her hammer, and Randvi has to make a choice. She doesn't want to die here, like this, but she also remembers the story of Varin, once an ally of Sigurd’s family. Kjotve the Cruel had demanded he surrender his axe to spare the rest of his clan, and once it was done, had dishonoured him and killed the others anyway. If she's going to die here either way, she is not about to condemn herself to the eternal loneliness of Helheim out of fear.

She closes her eyes - All-Father, guide me - and then opens them again and looks hard at her assailant, trying to seem unafraid.

“No.”

[salamanca]

"Your husband?" Lalo nods exaggeratedly, and makes a half-mocking, half-approving facial expression. "Well, he's a lucky man, eh?" He says it more to get a reaction from her than anything else, but hey! He really does call 'em like he sees 'em. He wouldn't usually say something like this about a lady in front of her, though.

Unless he was trying to intimidate her.

This bitch doesn't seem to be easily intimidated, though, which he approves of even if it makes his life a little bit harder.

She's not gonna give him the hammer, though, eh? That's annoying. Whatever. He can deal. He steps towards her, eyebrows jumping up once, meaningfully, over his eyes. He gives a little nod, too. "Then step back." If she's not going to give it to him, he'll force her to keep backing up until there's enough distance between her and the hammer for him to grab it.

[meadqueen]

Randvi bears the comment about her husband with the same stoic resignation with which she's borne this entire encounter so far, but when he demands her hammer again she's seized by a sudden fury.

What is the point of all of this, dancing about like a fish on a line, if he plans to dishonour her anyway?

Like flash Randvi grabs the hammer, holding it by the handle with the head facing the sand. It's not a direct threat like the stranger’s weapon, but she holds it with an ease that shows the world that it's more than a bauble for Sigurd’s pretty little caged bird. This weapon has tasted blood, and gods willing it will do so again.

“No! Enough of these games! If you wish to kill me, then challenge me and face me with honour. You will not deny me my seat at Odin’s table.”

[salamanca]

Blah, blah, blah, honor. Lalo has met people with "codes of honor", and none of them were any better than him.

They were just dumber. Honor, integrity, it's all bullshit made up by people who can't face the music and see themselves for what they are. That might not be the case for this woman -- the hair, the clothes, the way she speaks suggest a time from long ago, when maybe "honor" was less of an excuse for criminals and more of a way of life -- but it doesn't matter.

He'd been fascinated by her obvious differences from him and anyone else he'd ever met, and he hadn't intended to kill her. Not necessarily, anyway. But she's fast and she's not giving up her weapon. So leaving her alive ain't gonna work.

He shrugs again when she says he won't deny her a seat at Odin's table. The bizarreness of her reference to Odin is noticed, but it's ignored. "Yeah, the thing about that is, I'm pretty sure I can," he tells her. He gives less than zero shits about her place at anyone's table, or what primitive religion she might cling to.

Lalo aims directly at her chest and fires the gun.

(ooc: i am so sorry about him lmfao. PLEASE lmk if you need to me re-write this tag, and i will! feel free to say his gun was too waterlogged to work, if you don't want her to die lol.)

[meadqueen]

[ooc: No worries! I was kind of expecting he might kill her when I tagged the log, lol. Also unfortunately I find the idea of Lalo smugly taking the hammer just to prove he can only to have it disappear an hour later because it's part of her starting kit extremely funny so here we are]

The hot punch to the chest when the projectile strikes her is indescribable. Randvi doesn't even realize she's fallen until she's already staring into the sun, drawing in terrible gasps that don't give her any relief. Her hands somehow don't feel like part of her own body anymore, but she uses the last of her strength to cling to the hammer. Someday she will see her loved ones again, and maybe in Valhalla they can live the lives they'd all deserved, rather than the ones they'd had in Midgard, dictated by duty and blood.

[salamanca]

[ AHAHAHA. Excellent! 👌 He will be so mad when it vanishes, lol. ]

Just to be an asshole, Lalo kicks dirt in the girl's face right before he walks over to take the hammer. A weapon that he doesn't have to reload will come in handy, he thinks.

He watches Randvi cling to the hammer but there can't be much strength left in her grip now. "I'll take that," he says cheerfully, wrenching it out of her dying grip with one quick, fluid, surprisingly strong motion.

Then, out of an abundance of caution rather than mercy, he fires a second shot directly into her head. He hates using up his limited ammo, but he needs to be completely sure she's definitely dead and won't come back after him.

Besides, he's got a hammer now. (For now, at least.)