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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Jet? I didn't realize I was expected." It's a relief to hear one of his family over the radio, especially so the prodigal son. Though, it could be that everything since watching those stars fall to earth - again - has been some kind of fever dream. Even almost a month after His Voice, Albert still isn't sure any of what happened is even plausible, let alone possible, and that Jet, Pyunma, Joe, and GB returning weren't just something his psyche made up to deal with grief. Granted, it's also hard to believe his subconscious would add being secretly transported to an uncharted island with malfunctioning cybernetics to any other delusions he might be experiencing.

Is he delusional if he's aware he might be delusional? That's for Joseph Heller to figure out.

"Where are you and have you seen the others?"

Didn't realize he was expected.
Oh...

"Right...let me guess: you washed up on the beach with a radio on or near you. Which I guess you're using now. Shit..." He sighs and takes a moment to close his eyes and adjust that expectation. Not rescue, but he'd still be a liar if he claimed to be anything but relieved.

"I'm somewhere inland, not sure where compared to you, but I've been here over a week. I was hoping you were the rescue committee, not another captive." He pauses and then switches to a private line. "Have you noticed? Brainwave communicator's quiet. Even now. Kept hoping it was just me that got messed with, but either they messed with you too or it's this place."

He waits patiently for Jet to rub those two thoughts together and actually tell him what's going on. He's not disappointed. Resigned, maybe, but not disappointed.

Now on a private channel, Albert sighs heavily before holding in the talk button to answer. There are a lot of things he wants to say, a lot that they haven't hashed out yet, but other things take precedence. "I'd been preoccupied with my targeting system and shock absorption not working. Jamming could take out communicators and targeting, but the shocks are mechanical. Could be a combination?"

That would be their luck.

"I can't find any indication they opened me up. You?" If this is a twenty-first century Black Ghost-like shadow organization, he's going to throw himself in the ocean.

The shock absorbers...fuck he's been stiff and overly tired this whole time from his own not working, But Alberts would be twice as bad. And he still hadn't found any tools to even check.

"None. I haven't had much of a chance to take a deeper look...and no one to help look me over either. Didn't arrive with anything but the clothes on my back. My jets aren't working and none of the panels are responding. Once the people I'm keeping an eye on are somewhere safe, I'll come find you." There's a small beat as he weighs his own words a moment.

"Hey...you might not be the rescue party, but uh...still good to hear your voice."

There's dead air for a long moment.

"Yours too." He'd missed Jet during their estrangement more than he would admit even to himself, but Jet had still left, and for reasons Albert thought misguided, short-sighted, and petty. He'd been right, too, but that doesn't mean he doesn't regret what happened, and seeing Jet again in the aftermath of His Voice had given rise to an intensely complicated set of feelings that Albert hadn't processed. Still isn't.

But it doesn't mean he can't be comforted by one of his family, however complicated the relationship, being here.

"Whether I'm a rescue party or not is still open for debate. What's your location? I can work my way towards you. And who are you with? Civilians?"

"If I had coordinates, I'd give them to you. If you've got eyes on the mountains in the middle of the island, we're somewhere in there and making for what seems to be a source of one of the major rivers."

There's a moment of longer pause than usual and when Jet responds again, it's a little quieter, like he's stepped away from anyone else a moment. "Kokichi...didn't catch another name. And Martin Blackwood. Both civilians and Kokichi's a minor. Martin's recovering from a near-dehydration death and Kokichi's limp only just got better not long ago. We've already run into a bear and a dinosaur. Don't worry about us, We're practically back home."

"That narrows it down a little, at least." Not by a lot, but inland and at a higher elevation near water is better than he had. "I'll start working my way in. I've been walking the treeline of the beach I arrived on looking for a river."

He frowns deeply. The civilians are probably safer with Jet than they would be on their own, but that coupled with Jet having stepped away to talk to him about it means he's keeping his nature a secret. Smart, but that makes it more difficult to fight when necessary. "The more you speak the more I'm put in mind of Black Ghost. Was the dinosaur mechanical, or could you tell? And have your companions displayed any unique abilities?"

This absolutely all reeks of weird science.

If Albert's as up a creek as he is about his abilities, it makes Jet a little worried for him to travel through the jungle alone. He could likely handle himself or keep himself quiet enough, it wasn't that, it was the physical strain and natural pitfalls. He knows better than to say anything, at least. Albert would do what he deemed best.

"That's about where I keep thinking too, but there hasn't been anyone claiming to be the cause or any obvious evil scientists. Not yet. But, no, I couldn't tell. From what I've gotten out of them, they're as normal as any guy."

He thinks to the moment he'd seen a flash of something odd in Martin's eyes, but...dismisses it. "There's all kinds of weird wildlife out there, from what I've heard. Weird as it sounds, don't trust any of it to be normal."

"I stopped trusting anything to be 'normal' a long time ago," Albert replies dryly. What is normal, anyway? Not robot dinosaurs and psychoreactive belief-born pseudo-gods.

"Tell me when you move again so I can adjust my heading. Stay out of trouble, at least until I find you anyway." He pauses for a moment. "And don't hide yourself if its a difference between life or death. Its better they know what you are while you can explain then they find out from your body."

He almost rolls his eyes, but restrains the urge. "Yeah, got it. On both counts. So far, it hasn't been anything I couldn't take care of."

There's another pause on his end where his hand tightens a little on the radio as he picks his words. "If you find trouble you can use help with, call me. We're not so far from other people out here that I couldn't just turn and head for you."

Probably. He's pretty sure another group is reasonably close by, at least. Martin and Kokichi weren't helpless, they could probably watch themselves long enough for that. "See you soon."

TDM #1

TEST DRIVE MEME #1

TDM GUIDELINES

I. ARRIVAL

II. NETWORK

III. EXPLORING

no subject

->private

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject