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

[materdei]

It's incredible what a change of context will do for a person, because she feels filthy, right about now. Her pantsuit and heels - never mind the winter coat she's got stuffed into a bag she found - are unsuited for their surroundings, but an over-developed awareness of parasites keeps her from going barefoot. She needs a shower badly, her hair sweaty where it hangs around her face. What a pity that she hadn't packed ponytail holders or bobby pins when she was forcibly removed from Georgetown in favor of a deserted isle.

For a moment or two, Scully doesn't move. It's not defiant so much as taking the measure of the man in front of her - but when she's decided he means business, she unloads the gun and holds the clip in her other hand, ready to pocket it. There's no way in hell she's handing over her only means of defense.

[pigsfeet]

Daryl doesn't flinch-- impatience hasn't been a problem for a long time. Focus, slow and steady and occasionally cruel, that's easier. He watches her watch him, thoughts pooling in slow circles. What's going on? What is the point of all this?

She might know, she might not. She has the dubious honor of being the first person he's seen in this new place, this tropical exile. She might be as lost as he is, but he doubts it. Still, he can't ask someone who hasn't (yet) wronged him to act like a total goddamn idiot.

So he lets her keep the clip. "Where you from?"

[materdei]

She slips the clip into her pocket, tucking the weapon back in its holster.

"Washington, D.C. I'm going to pull out my badge so you can look at it." Holding a hand up, don't shoot, Scully brings out what might look like a thin billfold to the untrained eye. She flips it open for him, offering it to him to examine. Everything she says comes out slow and even, no surprises or sudden changes in tone. "My name is Dana Scully. I'm an FBI agent, and I was working a case in the D.C. area."

[pigsfeet]

The complete and total oddity, the bizarreness of this behavior, has Daryl taking a step back. The crossbow lowers half an inch-- he doesn't wanna kill a crazy lady-- but he pulls it back up just as quickly. Maybe she's trying to throw him off kilter.

"Don't care about no badge," he says, but can't quite summon the same level of spite as before. "Who you with? Kingdom?" They've got running water, last he knew. Carol's hair seemed real clean, last she visited.

[materdei]

He doesn't trust her. If everything else is confusion, she can at least tell that nothing she says is likely to convince him she's not a threat. All she can do is try.

The badge goes back in her pocket, and she tries to answer to the best of her ability. "I work for the United States government."

And then, after a moment's pause: "Where are you from?"

[pigsfeet]

"Ain't no government," he says, annoyed that he has to remind her-- annoyed that she's starting to remind him of Rick, back in those first days. "You hit your head, lady?"

[materdei]

"Not that I'm aware of," she answers dryly. So they'll try another tactic. "What's your name?"

[pigsfeet]

This patience puts him on the backfoot, unexpected. What the fuck is she gonna do? What could she do to him? Is he being a damn fool?

Whenever he has to ask that question, the answer is unfailingly yes. He lowers the bow, and keeps his name to himself. "Get on up, now," he says. "Take it slow. I'll keep watch."

He hasn't seen any walkers here, but that just means he hasn't seen them yet.

[materdei]

"Do you have any recommendations?" she asks, her gaze never leaving his, even as she reaches down to feel her ankle and the sharp sticks around it. The trap appears to have been built for someone with slightly bigger feet than she has, but that doesn't mean she's going to have an easy time slipping out. "For escaping your trap, that is. It's well-designed."

[pigsfeet]

"Should be easy," he says, "if you take off your shoe."

The things this trap is made to catch rarely have that presence of mind.

[materdei]

So she lifts her foot with care, toes pushing off from the sole of her pump, and slowly, her foot comes out. Scully experiences it by feel, unwilling to glance down from the crossbow.

When she scratches the side of her foot hard enough to bleed, she grits her teeth and keeps going, and eventually, she's out. What's left is a high-heeled shoe inside the trap, and for this, she's willing to look away from the man standing over her. As she's guiding her hand into the trap, to pull out the muddy black heel, she asks, "Where did you learn to build this?"

[pigsfeet]

He watches her, and decides, no, she's no threat. As long as he doesn't provoke her anymore, she won't shoot him. She could have tried, could have had time to slip the clip back in her gun, but she didn't.

Still, the lady's clearly fucking confused. "The woods? Figured it out myself."

[materdei]

"It's good work." An attempt to brush the dirt off her shoe is pointless as soon as she attempts it, but she tries anyway. When it's clear it won't make a difference, she slips it back onto her foot. "May I stand?"

Technically speaking, she's still a hostage, if one who's probably not in immediate danger.

[pigsfeet]

"Thanks?" This lady doesn't need to be trapped, she needs a goddamn guide. Gonna get herself killed with this shit. He moves his bow back, slung between his shoulders. "I ain't your boss."

She needs someone to help her. He isn't that person. He's seen evidence of other people living here, but hasn't quite gotten up the gumption to track them down. He points west, toward where he's sure there's some kind of encampment. "People living over there. Should be safe."

And he turns and starts toward the woodland he came from.