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

Augustus "Gus" Porter | The Owl House

[paperclipsong]

Arrival

Gus's response to waking up in the water is less of a gradual groggy coming-to and more the actions of someone yanked violently into consciousness by a surge of instinctual bone-deep terror. Human water isn't constantly boiling, but it's easy to forget that when you've lived your whole life knowing any body of water can at best scald you and at worst melt your skin off and you just woke up. He frantically splashes his way to the shore, which isn't that much dryer, before his thinking brain catches up to his nervous system.

His ears droop in dismay as he stares at the ocean, then the plants, then the sky, trying to make any sense of this. The last thing he remembers was saying goodnight to Hunter in the basement of Luz's house, drifting to sleep, and then waking up here. Wherever "here" is.

At least when he was first stuck in the human realm, he had his friends with him.

And his...heart didn't feel so...weird?

Uh-oh.

He draws a circle in the air with his finger. Nothing. He tries a few more times. Still nothing.

"Ah!" he gasps, "my bile sack!"

He drops to his knees and frantically draws a small symbol in the sand. Nothing happens and he clutches his chest. He looks lost and the only reason he's not panicking is his very deliberate slow breathing.

Network

[Gus's knowledge of human technology is sometimes only approximate, and the frequent bursts of static suggests he doesn't quite get the walkie-talkie. He basically knows what it is, because his friend Luz had one, but this one has more buttons and isn't shaped like a rabbit.

Callsign M1RR04 pops up a couple more times before a voice finally comes through.]

So OK has anyone figured out if this is a human island or the kind that's part of a cadaver?

Network: callsign AP251F

[desperate_times_right]

... What size is the island you're on?

[paperclipsong]

Uh...big? I can't find my Palisman, or I'd fly up and give you a better idea. For now, let's go with big.

[desperate_times_right]

Okay. And you think it might be a cadaver because...

[Come on, kid. Work with her here]

[paperclipsong]

Oh! Sorry, yeah, all the islands in my home are made out of a giant corpse. And I read that most human islands have tourists that bake themselves in the sun for some reason, so not seeing them kinda threw me.

network | callsign: HO125E

[trialbyliar]

[Well, that'd sure a weird thing to say. The answering voice sounds young and unsettled.]

Ehh? What kind of freaky murder islands do you frequent?

[paperclipsong]

[He absolutely picks up on that distress, and he wants to reassure the kid.]

Don't worry, it's nothing like that! My home is just built on top of the corpse of an ancient Titan!

[See, totally normal sentence!]

[trialbyliar]

[There's a moment of silence to just process that statement, and then the worried tone is suddenly replaced by a bright, cheery one.]

Ohh, I get it. You should have just said from the start that you're crazy!

[paperclipsong]

Look, I know it's weird to humans, but it's just how things work where I'm from. I'm a witch, witches...live on Titans!

[Gus has never actually had to explain this to a human that had never seen the Boiling Isles or wasn't predisposed to believe him. It's kinda hard, it turns out.]

Arrival

[hyakuoku]

Some meters away, Senku watches a guy splash out of the ocean like he's afraid of it. But that's not really what catches his attention. The thing that does it is he's pretty sure those are pointy ears.

That mystery only deepens. This guy draws a circle in the air. Then he says something about a bile sack, of all things, followed by what looks like a rising panic attack. What the hell...

Senku hops off the rock he's perched on while he strips leaves off a vine and makes his way over.

"Pretty disorienting way to wake up, huh?"

[paperclipsong]

Gus was going to take a minute to get his breathing under control, but his attention was grabbed by a voice belonging to a human with giant green hair. By Boiling Isles standards it's only mildly unusual, the equivalent of a person who takes particularly good care of their hair.

But it's weird to see on a human, and that does distract Gus into breathing a bit more normally. He sighs in relief and stands up to wring out his shirt.

"Yeah...yeah, for a moment I thought I was gonna be boiled alive! But I guess this is just human realm water."

Network: callsign L0N31Y

[lonelynotforsaken]

Why would it be part cadaver?

[That sounds that giant monster roaming around in the Vast domain with Simon.]

[paperclipsong]

I live on one back home! Buuuuuut it can be kind of hard to tell if you're in a place where you can't see the head.

[lonelynotforsaken]

That's... I mean, that's horrible. Isn't it- that must be really unsanitary. Corpses aren't sanitary.

[paperclipsong]

Nah, it's cool! Most of the rotten flesh is covered in grass, you can build solid stuff on the bones, and the stench only gets really bad when it rains!

arrival

[krmvgivv]

"Dude!" Dipper covers his face, cheeks turning bright red. "You can't just yell about... that."

It occurs to him that someone shouting about their testicles is probably not the strangest thing happening right now, but honestly, strange things happening were pretty much normal for Dipper. People using words that were over PG-13? Much more shocking.

"Um. Have you tried ice?"

[paperclipsong]

"Ice? How is that going to help my heart?"

Gus thumps his chest for good measure, taking a good look at Dipper. He's clearly human and probably never met a witch, but he seems like he's trying to help? Just...not being able to feel half your heart is a good way to keep Gus in the low-level panic state that means he's not thinking straight enough to figure out they're talking about two different things.

Arrival

[droppinnoeaves]

Elf. The young elf is the most familiar thing Samwise has seen since he woke up down the beach, and he’s already jogging towards him when he recognizes the signs of panic. Nearing, he slows, holding his hands up the way he would to gentle a goat.

“Lad… are you hurt?”

[paperclipsong]

Gus takes a few more breaths before swallowing and nodding at this new human. A short human, with feet way more hairy than he thought human feet could ever get, but obviously very much a human.

"No...No, I'm OK. I just...thought I was in the Boiling Sea for a second."

[droppinnoeaves]

Or not quite. When he straightens up to look out at the water, Sam's hair reveals pointed ears.

"The- where d'seas boil?"

[paperclipsong]

Oh, normally he's better at that. Blame the fact that he just washed up on a strange island.

...Or, uh, not. Something's up.

"On...the Boiling Isles? Where we're from? You...are a witch, aren't you?"

Arrival

[badbutsad]

Well, Hunter doesn't feel any different. But then, he doesn't have magic anyway, so.

He dusts the sand off his face as he pushes himself onto his knees in the surf, trying to get his bearings and look around, when he hears a voice.

A familiar voice. And his head swivels towards it so fast his neck clicks.

"G-- Gus!" And then he's on his feet, charging through the wet sand to kneel beside his friend, putting a hand on his shoulder immediately. "Gus, are you alright?"

[paperclipsong]

"Hunter!?"

Gus puts his hand on Hunter's upper arm and grips it as he puts his other hand on his chest, over his heart. Hunter's hand is grounding, steadfast, and it lets Gus calm down enough to evaluate how he's actually feeling. He feels it for a bit, eyes darting in thought before swallowing hard.

"I...think so, yeah but...I can't...feel my magic?"

It's kind of like how he imagined having a coven sigil would feel.

[badbutsad]

His eyes widen in alarm, and despite himself he puts his other hand on Gus's chest too, like he'll be able to feel his bile sac through his ribs.

"...you're not hurt, right?" he asks, concern bright in his magenta eyes, before he glances back at the world around them. "So, maybe it's... this place? The human realm doesn't have magic, remember? Maybe it means us, too."

[paperclipsong]

"I'm OK." Gus lets him feel his heart, then loosens his grip on Hunter so that he can get to his feet without pulling him down. "I freaked out a little waking up in the ocean is all."

It was kind of an embarrassing display now that he's more lucid, but not as embarrassing as it might have been if literally anything made sense here.

"Maybe, but...what happened to us? Why are we here? Did we make someone mad enough to whisk us away to a deserted island?" Gus's imagination starts to fire up and run away with him.

"...Are we dead!? Is this where you go when you die!?"