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

[desperate_times_right]

“Seems a little weird to imagine me and not someone you know.” Chloe stretches a little and groans. “Also you made the salt water too realistic, I'm lodging a complaint.”

[cactusy]

"Thanks for the constructive criticism," she says, nodding at the treeline up ahead, picking up her pace after another glance back to make sure Chloe is still following. "Let's see if the shade is realistic, too."

[desperate_times_right]

“Yeah, good idea.” Chloe picks up the pace, even though it makes her head hurt a little. “I feel like I'm about to start steaming.”

[cactusy]

"How are you at hiking? We should stay near the shore, keep an eye out for a harbor or something, but, uh--"

But there's no harbor in sight from here, and no boats on the horizon. This place, if maybe not entirely deserted, is at least remote. Blowing out a frustrated puff of air, she leans against the trunk of a shady palm, kneading at her temples.

"I'm gonna give my gun a little more time to dry. Then I'm thinking we high-tail it, yeah?"

[desperate_times_right]

“Not bad, but I'm pretty sure I got swept down here by a river, so this is probably all going to start to hurt eventually.” Sometimes the adrenaline takes longer to wear off than you’d think.

“My partner might be looking for me, but I can't tell from here where I was before, so it's hard to guess how to meet up with her. Any direction’s as good as another for me.”

[cactusy]

"A river," Shaw repeats, making a big show of looking around. "You see any rivers that could have swept you down onto the beach? 'Cause I don't. More likely you were thrown out of a helicopter or something."

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe rolls her eyes. “I see a big ocean, which rivers traditionally flow into. I bet if we walk along the coast we’d find it eventually.”

She tries to stick her hands in her pockets, but they're pretty much glued shut with salt so she just sighs instead.

“Seems like a lot of work to knock me into a river, find my body, and then throw me from a helicopter. Just do that first.”

[cactusy]

"Wait, so--" Shaw pushes off the tree, focusing back in on Chloe. "You actually remember the river part? I don't even remember being attacked."

But if this woman does, then she almost certainly has a better sense of the chain of events here, which brings up a whole new set of questions - because it also seems like a lot of work to haul Shaw from New York City to Malaysia.

"The whole 'this isn't real' explanation is starting to look more and more likely," she mutters, and turns to stalk back down towards her jacket and her drying gun. "I changed my mind about waiting; I can just-- carry these while we walk."

She's sick of standing still.

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe stops to wait but doesn't offer to help. She recognizes that energy - not really panic but close enough - and she's been punched enough today already.

“I remember hitting the water. Not much after.”

The impact had probably knocked her out. It had been a pretty big fall.

[cactusy]

"That sucks," Shaw grunts, carefully picking up the jacket and holding it spread out, letting it act as a makeshift hammock for the drying gun. "Ready?"

[desperate_times_right]

“Yeah, let's go.” Chloe turns and starts walking again.

“Do you have any more ammunition for that?” It doesn't seem like the other woman had been planning on a day out.

[cactusy]

"Yeah, but it got wet, so performance is probably gonna suck. This thing might end up being better for clubbing bad guys over the head than shooting them. What about you? You got anything useful on you?"

A knife or a machete, she reflects, would be really damn useful right now.

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe makes a face. “Goons took my gun before the whole... Thing. With the river. Think I've still got my knife, though.”

She pats the sheath at her lower back, then makes another face. “God, I bet the leather’s fucked. This is going to be so expensive.”

[cactusy]

Shaw stops dead, turning around to face Chloe.

"What about the important part? Let's see the blade."

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe pops the snap with her thumb and draws her tactical knife. This thing has been dunked in a lot of disgusting types of water over the years. She’ll need to oil it later.

“Here.” She holds the blade out sideways for inspection. It's no machete but it cuts rope well enough.

[cactusy]

"Not bad," Shaw murmurs, running a thumb over the edge of it appreciatively. "You know how to use it?"

[desperate_times_right]

“Yeah. Not so great at hunting, but I can do it.” She usually doesn't have to because they eat Nadine’s terrible MREs.

“I've worked in this kind of environment for a while.”

[cactusy]

"I haven't for a while," she admits, turning to start walking again. "I'm better off than a civilian, sure, but consider me a little rusty."

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe sheathes the knife again and follows.

“I have a rope too if we need it. How are you at climbing?”

[cactusy]

"Good upper body strength, good cardio, middling training and climbing experience. And your rope is better than--"

Shaw pulls a dog leash out of her inner jacket pocket, wrapping it loosely around her hand.

"You got any reason to think we might need to scale any cliffs? Not that I'm opposed to planning ahead."

[desperate_times_right]

“If your helicopter theory is correct, then maybe not. Otherwise... well, I fell off one so there are cliffs in the area somewhere.”

Also it seems to be half of what she does in these kind of jungle scenarios. The other half is death traps but for now she won't bring that up.

[cactusy]

"One rope, no harness."

Shaw shrugs her shoulders as well as she can while holding the tented jacket, turning the shrug into a roll to stretch out her muscles.

"If I die, I die. You just tell me if you see anything that looks familiar."

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe chuckles. “I've done it before, and you're way smaller than Sam. Piece of cake.”

None of this really looks familiar at all, but she doesn't want to say that.

[cactusy]

"What does my size have to do with anything? Tell me you're not planning to carry me on your back."

Risking falling sounds better than that.

[desperate_times_right]

“I had to keep climbing over him to throw the rope.” For some reason he hadn't thought it was very funny - maybe he takes the whole brother’s ex thing more seriously than she does.

“Also sometimes stuff happens and you're both on there at once.”