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

Zam Wesell | Star Wars

[backsassin]

i. arrival

[ Zam Wesell had never put too much thought into an afterlife.

The way she looks at it, if one does exist, she’s probably karked. The Mabari had taught that Clawdites are sinners from birth and of the things she’d done with her life after the fact, very few seem likely to have placed her in the good graces of any kind and benevolent gods. Not to mention, she’s seen the light go out of enough eyes to doubt that there’s anything waiting on the other side at all.

Which is all to say, when she chokes out her last words in some grimey Coruscanti alleyway, cursing her partner of more than a decade, the last thing she expects is to open her eyes once more on a perfectly ordinary-looking stretch of white sandy beach.

She groans and sits up in the sand, neck still throbbing where the saberdart had pierced her skin. ]

Bastard, [ she hisses. ] Karking two-faced murishani bastard!

[ Turns out she had more cursing to do before Jango’s neurotoxin had cut her off. She sits there for several minutes, trying to compose herself and shivering despite the sunlight beating down on her back.

She’d really died, hadn’t she? She remembers Jango lining up the shot, her foolish hope that he was aiming at the Jedi not her—and then the sting in her neck like an insect’s bite, the rapid pounding of her heart, how quickly everything had gone dark. So how could she be here now, waking up on a tropical island on some unknown planet? Unless… this is just what comes after?

She tries to stand up and finds herself feeling peculiarly unbalanced. She glances down at herself—and screams.

Guess who just remembered that her entire forearm had been chopped off? ]

ii. network | callsign: KYD2I

[ The broadcast starts with a long, staticky sigh. Zam can’t quite shake the feeling that she’s talking to herself here, but she supposes that even that is better than being alone with her thoughts. ]

The way I figure it, there’s good odds that all of this is just a product of a dying brain pumped full of neurotoxin putting on one last show. So. If all of you are just different parts of my brain in the process of slowly dying: sorry, I guess. I may have made some mistakes.

[ Maybe a lot? Zam’s not really that great at reflection or regret, but she’s pretty sure she should not have put her life in the hands of a man who had told her on at least one occasion that he’d kill her if he had to. ]

But on the off-chance that I’m wrong: anyone care to share the last thing they remember before waking up here? I can’t be the only one who remembers dying, right?

Also, is anyone else’s body, uh… not quite the way they remember it?

[ Don’t get her wrong, if she has to be stuck in a certain form, the one she’s in right now would have probably been her first choice. But it’s still disconcerting not being able to change back. ]

callsign: JE573R

[royallyunappreciated]

[What a fascinating message.]

Oh, no, no! I can assure you, I'm almost certainly the product of a dying brain. Your sense of humor, perhaps? Did you have one of those?

[backsassin]

[ Zam groans. ]

Of course you'd be the first one to show up here!

[ Is she serious or just playing along with the bit? Honestly, she's not even sure at this point. Humor has always been her go-to coping mechanism of choice.

She sighs again. ]

Well, we had a good run. You see our senses of trust and affection show up, you tell them to go get karked, okay?

[royallyunappreciated]

I shan't put it so bluntly. You know how soppy affection gets when they think something tragic is about to happen. I won't be able to do a single other thing but console them.

[backsassin]

You sure you aren't my sense of compassion? Last time I checked, my sense of humor wasn't nearly so merciful.

…Pretty sure there isn’t any part of me that’d use the word ‘shan’t,’ either.

[ Not that that completely rules out that this is some kind of dying hallucination, but the notion that this is a stranger having some fun at her expense also can’t be ignored. ]

You going to tell me who you really are or are we gonna keep playing games?

[royallyunappreciated]

Are you entirely sure you know yourself that well, my dear girl? [His tone is teasing.] Perhaps I'm an even deeper part of yourself you hardly knew existed! Or perhaps my name is Ardyn. What would you name your sense of humor or compassion? Something with a bit more flare?

Network, Callsign: YL078T

[doomcame]

[The woman's message is a bit alarming, but Taissa puts it all on the stress of the situation. Trauma that is still being processed.]

You're here. You survived. You're just in shock.

[She speaks, firmly and calmly, but unfortunately her answers don't provide much of the substance that Zam is looking for. Waking up in strange places with no memory is not new to Taissa.]

I was in an apartment, I think. Before now. I was looking for something. But I sleepwalk. I don't know how I got here after that.

What do you think is wrong with your body?

[backsassin]

[ In shock? It's certainly possible. After having her arm cut off and dying, Zam would be surprised if she weren't in some amount of shock. Still, Zam can't exactly doubt the reality of what she remembers when she's still missing that arm, and what she remembers is her death in a Coruscanti alleyway. ]

Well, you didn't sleepwalk here. And I'm pretty sure no one scraped me off the pavement and flew me here, either.

[ So, back to the hallucination theory. Or the afterlife theory, though that's a bit much for Zam to wrap her head around.

At the question, Zam can't help but laugh, though the sound is more brittle than amused. ]

Stars, where to start... Well, uh... It wasn't human before I got here, for one thing. And there are certain modifications that aren't there anymore. Which, again, is not doing much to persuade me that this isn't some insane neurotoxin trip.

[doomcame]

Sorry, "not human"?

[Okay, so the other woman might be tripping on something. Or perhaps she suffered a head-injury? Maybe she should just keep her talking for now.]

Which modifications?

[backsassin]

Clawdite, to be specific. Changeling, to be less so. [ It's not information Zam would usually share about herself so readily under normal circumstances, but these are not normal circumstances. She's got a lot bigger things to worry about than anyone's opinion on her species. ]

I had a breathpack grafted to my lungs. That's gone and so are the, uh. The holes.

[ In her chest, she means. Convenient, but inexplicable. ]

There's not even any scars left...

network | callsign: HE412T

[timaeus]

[The broadcast receives a text response, a series of messages coming in quick succession.]

Seems real enough to me.
Not that that'll necessarily mean much to you.
A dying hallucination can make the same claims just as easily, after all, and that doesn't make shit any realer.
But for what it's worth:
I do remember dying.

[Not necessarily just before waking up here, but it's definitely a thing he's experienced a few times.]

[backsassin]

Okay, well, I'll shelve the hallucination theory for now since there's nothing I can do to prove or disprove it. [ A sigh. ] And if this is a dying hallucination, I guess I'll know when the lights finally go out.

[ Other reasons not to linger too long on this theory: it's perhaps the most depressing one. ]

I'm not really religious, but—do you figure this is the afterlife? It's not really as, uh... ghostly as I'd imagined it.