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

I (and I'm sorry)

[sharktrash]

It's hardly surprising to find someone out of sorts on the beach, considering that was exactly how they all had woken up a couple weeks ago. Still, Squalo does a double-take where he's strolling across the beach (or it looks like he's doing that, though he's really looking what, if anything, the sea has washed out overnight), because nobody had told him this would be a repeated occurrence.

Well. It's either that, or it's whoever has trapped them here trying to get feet on the ground and perhaps spy on them. He'll find out soon enough.

For now, though, he strides forward with confident steps until he stops a couple meters away, grins lazily, and unhoists the very real hatchet from his shoulder to point it at the soaked woman.

Of all things, guess she's ran into an axe murderer, huh?

"Do you, now?" he asks, sounding just a little too cheerful and too loud, but at least it seems he's not interested in immediately resorting to violence. "What's in it for me?"

[doomcame]

Taissa instinctively draws herself up once she finds herself pointed at with a hatchet, absolutely nothing about the young man's casual cheerfulness setting a single nerve of hers at ease. In the flash of a second, she thinks she sees the bright color of fresh blood dripping from the blade, but some quick blinking and slightest twitch reveals that to not be the case. Her hands raise regardless. A sign of peace that prepares her for trying to grab the axe if things suddenly go very, very south.

"Money," she spits out as an answer to his question. Even before being able to fully assess this situation, bribery feels like the most universal motivator that comes to mind. "I'd pay you for your help in getting back home."

Not that she wants to go back to the house she shared with Simone right now. She still feels compelled to go somewhere, find something. But the help she needs for that was last seen as a file in the apartment of a hired private detective. She just needs to get back to familiar ground. Make some calls. Reset.

She needs to be away from the man carrying an axe on a beach for no good goddamn reason that she can think of.

[sharktrash]

Squalo stays still for a moment, considering. That... sounds a lot like something a normal person would say, but clearly Island Kidnappers would know that if they were trying to infiltrate their ranks!

"Yeah, there's a lil' problem with that," he drawls, axe arm steady and eyes on the prize. The faintest trace of Palermo accent can be made out. "There's a whole bunch of us here still figuring it out, so whatever you offer me ain't going to get you home any faster."

He tilts his head slightly, playful, spins the axe in his hand and rests it against his shoulder again, but he nonetheless looks ready to strike out at any moment if necessary.

"I'd say think smaller. Like, any good reason I shouldn't cave your skull in, 'cause we've had people sent to kill us before."

[doomcame]

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

Surprisingly, this is not aimed at Squalo, but projected out like a curse as she even momentarily takes her eyes off of him to glance about in frustration. She had gotten stranded here, but she was only one of many. A much more dire situation than she had dared to hope. Did she do this? Or rather, whoever she seemed to be in her sleep? Is this where she had wanted herself to go -- another desperate, disconnected place in the wilderness?

No. She is not doing this again.

"Do I look like an assassin to you? Or do a lot of middle-aged women try to kill you?" This is where the frustrated attitude starts to bleed towards the man who also has her on height and weight. "I'd at least be the one with axe, don't you think?"

At least it's resting at his shoulder again.

"And the more people you have working together, the better our chances are while we wait for the real help to get here."

[sharktrash]

Yeah, that's about the reaction he expected. Hell, it's about the reaction he had, so he just scratches his ear absently while Taissa gets it out of her system.

"Looks can be deceiving," he points out. "Maybe you're going for subterfuge this time. Infiltration. Nobody suspects the harmless old lady, yeah?"

Wow, he really just went and called her old. To be fair, he probably thinks anyone over 30 is ancient at this point.

"Unfortunately, you've got a point there. Plus, it's always easier to kill someone later than to un-kill them, so!" He says it so casually you'd almost expect him to clap his hands after that delivery. Which he probably would, if one of them wasn't occupied with the axe. Instead, he extends the free one to help the woman up, if she'll take it. "Got any useful skills? We could really use a doctor."

[doomcame]

He definitely gets a look for the "harmless old lady" remark but she'll have to circle around back to that eventually. She's kind of hoping the Not Old realization comes in tandem with the Not Harmless realization, at this point.

She takes the hand offered and instead focuses on more pressing matters.

"I'm not a doctor, unfortunately. I know some basic first aid depending on how hard up you are," she answers. Mostly things she had gleaned from Misty in her youth.

"I've also spent some significant time surviving in the Canadian wilderness. Obviously a very different climate, but I'm sure I can earn my keep. Do you have a camp? How many are there?"

She doesn't mean to ask infiltrator-esque questions, but it's all very pertinent.

[sharktrash]

He either doesn't notice the look, or chooses to cheerfully ignore it. (It's probably the latter).

He pulls her up easily enough, it seems he's athletic despite the longass hair maybe giving a different impression. He does let go immediately afterwards, though.

"Ah, that's another fun feature. It seems we're all on different parts of the island. I've ran into a couple folks by now, but mostly we just talk over these." He lifts the walkie-talkie, dangling it for a moment. "So there's no big campfire to sing around, sorry to say. There's shelter from the rain not far from here, though."