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

Network | Callsign VL121R

[meadqueen]

Are you having trouble? It's all right.

[This isn't the first person that she's heard growling at one of these devices. She had struggled as well in the beginning, and the others here can get so angry when you don't know how to use it correctly]

It isn't as complicated as it seems at first.

[excal_umbra]

[ Easy for her to say. She has a mouth. And, presumably, at least memories of using a similar writing system. Umbra knows how to read and spell, but the memories of actually using any such technology or even paper and pencil have long since been lost to him.

He tries again. ]

WIDR

WH

ERR

E

[ Well. That's almost a word if you squint. Hopefully, she'll be able to make sense of it. ]

[meadqueen]

[It is easy for her to say! It took her 20 minutes to even figure out that you need to hold down the talk button.

Also this may be the one circumstance where the radio having to translate everything into runes actually helps]

Where are we? No one seems to know yet. Far from home, surely.

Are you hurt?

[excal_umbra]

[ There is silence on Umbra's end for several minutes—not because he's upset or confused, but rather because it is something of a revelation for him to have communicated successfully with someone, and he needs a few moments to absorb it. To have asked a question and received an answer—that is not something he had the means nor mental clarity to do for centuries now.

When he takes to the transceiver again, it's with significantly more determination. ]

DN

DO

N

NT

KKN

OW

[ He hasn't sustained any injuries, but something is very definitely wrong with him. He feels weak and slow, senses dulled. It had been easy to dismiss as post-unconsciousness grogginess at first, but now it is evident that this isn't something that fades with time. ]

S

SI

C

JK

[ Sick. No disease but the Helminth strain has been able to touch him for lifetimes now, but it's the only way he knows to explain what he feels. ]

[meadqueen]

Sick? You're ill?

If it's a new sickness, it may be from the heat of the sun here. If you go into the trees, the shade will protect you, and you can find fresh water.

Can you tell me your name?

[excal_umbra]

[ He's dubious as to her explanation. He hasn't needed food nor water for a very long time now, nor should mere sunlight be enough to weaken him. Still, he has no alternative explanation to offer and so, after a moment, he reluctantly moves towards the treeline. Only once he's in the shade does he respond to her query.

He is even more careful this time. The precious abilities to reason and communicate have only just been restored to him and this answer would perhaps be the easiest to fumble. He inputs one letter at a time, just to be sure. ]

U
M
B
R
A

[ A pause and then: ]

Y
O
U

[ He doesn't know how to express it as a question, but—he wants to know her name as well. ]

[meadqueen]

Umbra. I hope I'm saying it correctly.

[She thinks it's Latin, but doesn't know as much as she probably should of the Saxons’ god language]

It feels strange to say 'well met' under these circumstances, but I'm glad to be hearing from you. My name is Randvi.

[excal_umbra]

[ She is saying it correctly. There are another few moments of silence as Umbra simply basks in the satisfaction of being understood. He quite literally cannot remember the last time he was. Growling, snarling, whimpering—it's all he's been able to do for so long. And yet now he kneels in the green shade of tropical trees, very nearly having a conversation. He revels in it. ]

THA
NNK YO
U

[ It probably seems like he's thanking her for telling him her name; in reality, it's for so much more than that. ]

NNO VO
ICE

[ He thinks she should probably know why the person on the other end of the transceiver is painstakingly tapping out messages to begin with rather than just responding to her speech in kind. ]

[meadqueen]

[Randvi has been watching how other people interact on these devices for some time. Some people exclusively use one mode over the other, and others match what their conversational partner is using.

She avoids text herself - she can read and write but finds the buttons cumbersome and difficult, and doesn't understand the symbols for functions like erasing errors.

It's a difficulty that Umbra seems to share, so it makes sense to her that he doesn't have any other option]

You can't speak? Is that normal for you, or is that what you meant when you said you were ill?

[If it's a new problem then the culprit isn't the sun]

[excal_umbra]

[ Is it normal for him? Sitting alone in the shade with the transceiver, Umbra feels himself draw in tighter, shoulders tense. Is it normal if he's been like this—worse than this—for centuries? Is it normal if he'd had a voice once, but can no longer remember it?

For several minutes, he doesn't know how to answer. Finally: ]

NO

[ It is not normal. It is not what he'd meant by 'sick.' ]

TAK
KEN

LONG

AAGO

[meadqueen]

[Randvi sits with that for a moment in quiet horror. Of course, she has no idea what sorts of terrible things exist out there in the universe that people can do to each other, but she’d heard that growling earlier. It's not hard to imagine a man lost here, abandoned on the shore with an old scar where his tongue should be]

I'm sorry.

[excal_umbra]

MANY YEA
RS
NO WORRDS

HAVE WORDS N
NOW

[ Perhaps this is not where he wants to be. He wants to be with the Tenno, with the child who had taken away the pain even if just for a few moments, just long enough to return his mind to him. But this place had given him a means to communicate and someone patient enough to listen. For that alone, he is grateful. ]