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

Randvi | Assassin's Creed

[meadqueen]

Arrival

The first thing that Randvi notices, even before she opens her eyes, is the smell of the sea. It's a scent that's as familiar to her as her own name, yet one that she's not experienced in nearly a year. Not to mention one that indicates that she's nowhere near Ravensthorpe.

She tenses and sits up quickly - there are few reasons that she would be so far from her home and not know why and none of them are good - and that's when she notices both the weight of her sodden clothing and the high temperature.

It's strange, because there is no captor nearby and nothing has been taken from her, but this is a land that she's never seen before, or even imagined. It's beautiful. And somehow she, Randvi, is the one who gets to see it, perhaps the one to describe it to those only able to wistfully look at a map.

She's still afraid, but the fear is slowly being animated by excitement, like a cloud of fireflies swirling in her stomach. There's no telling what dangers might lurk in this place, but for the first time since she'd left for Fornburg, even if it's only for a short while, maybe she can be free.

A delighted laugh slips out before she can stop it. As it continues, it grows a wild edge, and soon she is sitting in the surf, head thrown back and laughing at the sky.

Network

[someone keeps pushing the TALK button over and over, causing static but not saying anything.

Eventually a faint voice appears in the static, but the button is still being pressed at random]

...at is... -ow are y... -eaking? Oh!

[The sound abruptly clears up. She's figured it out]

Hello? Where are you, that I can hear you from here?

network; callsign TO994M

[cactusy]

Have you never heard of a walkie-talkie before? Or a radio, or a cell phone?

[meadqueen]

I have never heard of any of those things.

A warrior once described to me a Saga Stone that spoke and displayed strange writing, but it resembled a keystone of a door and would only work for some.

[cactusy]

[Girl, what in the world.]

Where the hell are you from?

[meadqueen]

England.

Have you seen one of these before, then?

[cactusy]

Yeah.

[There's an air of impatience in her voice, though one that she's clearly trying to keep in check.]

Yeah, these are, uh, pretty commonplace. Old tech, even.

[meadqueen]

Old -

[What she says next comes out more quickly and at a bit of a higher pitch - she's nervous but also increasingly irritated by the conversation]

If you're hiding behind a rock somewhere projecting your voice at me, you should know that I'm armed and in no mood for being mocked by a stranger.

[cactusy]

Oh, for-- does my voice sound like it's coming from behind a rock? Or does it sound like it's coming from inside that thing you're holding? Kinda crackly, yeah?

[meadqueen]

I don't know, this is impossible! Where are you from that such things are commonplace?

[cactusy]

The twenty-first century.

You see any people around you?

[meadqueen]

In the Christian system? That's -

[There’s a long enough pause that it might seem like she's done responding, and then:]

I'm alone here. By the sea somewhere.

[cactusy]

Yeah, okay. Well, you're not alone with these - kind of. If you need someone to physically help you with something, you're screwed, but you can ask for advice or... whatever.

[meadqueen]

I see. And the other voices - you're all so far in the future?

[cactusy]

In the future? No, we-- wait, what year do you think you're from?

[meadqueen]

I'm Norse. We don't calculate the year this way, but I correspond regularly with Saxons and by their reckoning, the year is 874.

[cactusy]

That's-- insane.

[But then again, so is everything else about this situation, is it?]

[meadqueen]

Hm. Are there others where you are?

[cactusy]

No.

But, you know, I got this nice walkie.

[meadqueen]

I'd wondered whether we are all in the same location, speaking across time, or if...

[If everyone she loves is dead]

Or perhaps we've all been moved.

[cactusy]

This look like anywhere near England to you? Even if speaking across time weren't literally impossible, moved is a safer bet.

[She pauses a moment before adding something the implicitly acknowledges the other impossibility at hand.]

874, huh. You haven't even heard of where I'm from.

[meadqueen]

The twenty-first century is impossible.

[Even if she manages to avoid all the ways to die that lie in wait for a jarl’s wife living in contested territory, she won't live to see the eleventh. The idea of another thousand years on top of that makes her head spin]

Our world is not as small as you might imagine. My clan has been as far as Constantinople, and I have scouts in Vinland.

[Of course, to someone with the technology to speak across large distances maybe that's nothing. Perhaps this woman could close her eyes on this island and open them in England.

If she sounds excessively defensive it's mostly because her own physical world is so stiflingly small: Grantebridge is less than a day’s ride away and she's never been there]

Re: network; callsign GMD243

[maximusspainard]

The Ex-General is looking over the box and not sure what to expect when he sees nothing happening except a strange square like feature on there. Pressing it several times, static comes from it and various sounds come from it.

"Who's..Th-re..

The sound coming from the speaker has an accent of Latin mostly but not much, but only a bit.

[cactusy]

So there's two of you. Cool.

[She heaves a big sigh.]

Look, tech support isn't really my thing, but, uh-- you get that I'm not there there, right?

Arrival

[zerocharliexray]

[ Somewhere next to her, somebody's laughing up a storm.

Zinda can't help it; her own grin flashes, delighted, and soon enough she's chuckling right along, even as she's sloshing her way up and out of the water. ]

Say –

[ She's still grinning to beat the band as she comes up to the other woman, as she's taking off her uniform cap to wring it out. She's not sure what the joke is, exactly, but that's never stopped her from going along with one. ]

– what's so funny?

Re: Arrival

[meadqueen]

[Randvi scrambles to her feet, mortified to have been caught expressing such a genuine emotion.]

Oh! Oh, I apologize, I thought I was alone.