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

[royallyunappreciated]

My dear boy! Why didn't you say so from the start? Well, that changes everything.

[It changes nothing apart from the fact Ardyn doesn't expect this man to be a great deal of use for direct information about the island. He's reminded of Ignis. But at least he knew how to be civil without being chided to it.]

Do you have any means of guiding yourself? Even just a stick you've found to feel your way?

[lestercraft]

[The radio catches the deep, quiet breath he takes to calm himself.

Christ he misses John.]

Just my own persistence, as of yet. I haven't yet found a walking stick, or-or cane or anything to help.

[royallyunappreciated]

That really is going to be a problem. I woke up next to a cliff overlooking the ocean. And I've been hearing all manner of sounds from the jungle nearby. Coeurls, cockatrices, and zus, oh, my! Honestly, from the sounds of it, I wouldn't be surprised.

[lestercraft]

[.........sir.]

I'm-- I-I'm sorry, but- cockatrice, aren't those. Fictional? I, I don't even know what those other ones were.

[royallyunappreciated]

[There's a long pause on the other end of the line.]

Did you happen to hit your head stumbling around? [Or what rock did he crawl out from under?] I can assure you, they're all very real and very dangerous to a man who can't see them coming and doesn't wield the appropriate weapons or components for elemancy.

[lestercraft]

Elemancy...? Look, sir, I really don't know what you mean.

[And Arthur sounds quite sure of that. There's nothing to suggest in his voice that he's nothing less than perfectly lucid.]

Whatever kinds of monsters there are in- i-in whatever country you're from, I assure you - I have no idea what you're talking about.

[royallyunappreciated]

[How very strange. Have the beasts of his time and even more modern ones died out and been replaced? It's his best theory at the moment. If they gods have held him in some sort of stasis again before dumping him here, then... what else could it be?]

Whatever kinds of monsters are actually out there, they likely exist in some capacity. My point is, you sound like you need a hand. What do your other senses tell you about where you are? You're welcome to skip the obvious observations. Are there any notable sounds or scents? The feel of the ground? Do you feel a particular vibration beneath your feet?