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

[backsassin]

[ Zam's worn plenty of masks in her life. She recognizes the look the man gives to the one on the sand, sorting out names, identities. It can be hard to keep them straight, she knows. She just nods at the one he gives her, far beyond caring whether or not it might be 'real.' Humans get too caught up in that kind of thing—most of the rest of the galaxy, too. ]

Alright. [ She stands up straighter, trying to steel herself back into the mindset that she's alive and still needs to do what she can to keep it that way. ] Water first. Let's head inland.

[ Saying this, she starts walking towards the treeline, still feeling light-headed and wrong on a bone-deep level, but at least with a direction now. Is it because she's dead? Because she'd lost an arm? Or because she remembers being murdered in an alleyway by a man she'd trusted for more than a decade? Honestly, it would probably be easier to list the things that aren't going terribly wrong in her life (death?) right now.

She takes a deep breath and then, with forced lightness. ]

You've got more experience than I do with all this, so let me ask you a question: is dying supposed to feel like the galaxy's worst hangover?

[ Come on, mysterious stranger, shoot the shit with her. She needs something to distract her from literally everything else about this situation. ]

[vestments]

( alas, zam has stumbled across entirely the wrong person for near enough anything that approaches levity, near enough anything that isn't taking almost everything far too seriously.

water. inland. two decisions he can't and doesn't disagree with. he's happy to talk in relative silence, equally as unsure as to whether any of this is real. for marc, it's nothing new, the lingering doubt, the question as to whether what he's seeing or experiencing is real, or if it's something else entirely. if it's something his mind's made up or if it's something someone else is forcing him to see and hear.

there are times when marc, too, reaches the conclusion that it doesn't wholly matter: that for as long as it feels real enough, that's enough.

his gaze shifts sideways, to her and then to what he can see of her face in profile. the arm (lack thereof) says it probably wasn't a pleasant death. he doesn't know if dying, generally speaking, feels the same way regardless, but all of marc's deaths have been painful, leaving him with a firm assessment of— ) Yes. ( beaten and then stabbed in the desert, left to die of whatever took him first; drowning; being blown up. marc has never lingered on any of them other than the first and even that only in terms of what it meant for him in life — khonshu. moon knight. )

But that might have been the stab wound. Or the dehydration. Or the heat stroke. ( a wry quirk of his lips and he gestures vaguely with a hand, acknowledging. ) I didn't really stop to take stock.

Where were you?

[backsassin]

[ Hey, at least he's responding. Zam winces at his own laundry list of fatal afflictions and feels a grudging... not gratitude, but relief that her own passing had been fairly quick.

(No, definitely not gratitude. Zam's not pathetic enough to feel beholden to Jango for choosing a relatively painless weapon to stab her in the back.) ]

Coruscant, [ she sighs. ] In an alleyway outside some seedy nightclub...

[ Here, her attempt at levity falters. The reality of what had happened suddenly presses close and she feels her heart pounding hard in her chest. Her expression falls and when she speaks again, her voice is barely above a whisper. ] Fierfek, did I really die like that?

[ The horror lingers on her face for just a moment. Then she squeezes her eyes shut and gives a fierce shake of her head. ]

Ugh. I'm going to hold it together, I swear. The only thing that could make this day worse is dying again.

[ The green shade of the treeline suddenly envelops them. Zam looks around, trying to ground herself by searching their surroundings. It's hard to see much in the distance; foliage and trees form a dense wall, blocking the line of sight. Still, it's not impossible to spot movement up among the branches. Zam slowly lets out a breath. ]

Look at that. [ She motions up at the canopy where a flock of green, yellow-faced birds sits perched among the boughs, each a little bigger than Zam's fist. Zam's not sure why, but she feels oddly relieved to see them. In some ways, they feel like a surer sign of life—real life—than the white-garbed man beside her. ]

At least we're not totally alone on this island then.

[vestments]

( coruscant means nothing to marc and it's there, in the brief flicker of his expression, the way his eyebrows arch and then resettle in acceptance. he doesn't imagine the answer would mean much to him even if he asked.

then, zam falters and marc gives her the moment to pause and recover — not strictly, out of any goodwill or emotional intelligence, more because he’s not sure what he can offer her — he's never been comforting, never been the kind of superhero anyone comes to when they need something other than a violent answer to a violent question. his response to his death had first been an immediate, burning desire for vengeance, and then it'd been to viciously deny his own existence. he’d buried marc spector deep down beneath the cowl of moon knight until he couldn’t any longer.

he'd never thought to ponder the intricacies of how he'd died, whether it'd been a fitting death. (yes.) )

I've never known death to be good, ( is what he eventually settles on. it's uttered carefully, like he's still in the process of trying to decide where he wants to go with it. he could say that he's never known anyone to look back on their death and say that it was a good way to go, that they were happy with it, but it wouldn't exactly be true. he's never had a conversation about death and dying, not like that. he's been asked if he regrets the choice he'd made, if he regrets khonshu, but that's not the same thing. ) But there is worse.

( he gets halfway to adding that regardless, he has no plans of dying or letting her die again before she slows, attention evidently caught by the shift of sand giving way to green, and even marc can say it's a welcome change despite the unpleasant knowledge that it means humidity and beads of sweat rolling endlessly down skin.

zam lets out a breath and marc sighs. he pulls at a shirt sleeve, torn between the want to roll it up to his elbows, and the thought that they don't have any form of first aid kit. his eyes follow her gesture towards the birds — parrots? (interesting) — and then back to her. "not totally alone"— )

—Did you try the radio?