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

Sameen Shaw | Person of Interest

[cactusy]

I. ARRIVAL

"You've gotta be kidding me--" Shaw mutters darkly under her breath, pulling her wet gun out of her jacket pocket and looking at it in dismay. Scooting off the sand and onto a patch of beach grass, she shrugs out of her leather jacket (also wet) and spreads it out as best she can on the ground, using it as a makeshift mat to disassemble the gun on.

It's only now that she finally looks up and acknowledges her companion. A girl has her priorities, and they go gun first, then talking to strangers.

"Hey, uh, stupid question; do-- do you know where we are?"

II. NETWORK

[As is probably inevitable when a large group of people are given free rein with walkie-talkies, not everyone is going to use them strictly for business purposes. Maybe you're one of the people having a long, public personal conversation and/or argument and/or phone sex session, or maybe you're just another bystander. Either way, you're bearing witness to callsign TO994M breaking in with--]

Oh my god, can you shut up already? My fingers are cramping from having to scroll through this crap.

Arrival

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe has been lying flat on her back with her eyes closed, carefully testing her limbs to make sure everything's still attached, but cracks one eye open at another person's voice.

"Not gonna lie, I was hoping you could tell me. Don't feel nearly beat up enough to have floated all the way out to sea." She does feel at least a bit beaten up, though: it's obvious to look at her that she's taken a couple of nasty hits to the face pretty recently.

Chloe sits up then, feeling gross in her salt-heavy wet clothes, and smiles at the other woman. "I'm guessing we're probably still in Malaysia. How'd you wind up down here?"

[cactusy]

"Beats me," Shaw says, making absolutely no effort to smile back. In fact, she looks rather annoyed at this whole situation, whatever that situation may be - though annoyance is, at least, better than panic. "Malaysia's a new one. Need a hand?"

She offers hers out, ready to help haul Chloe to her feet if she takes her up on the offer.

[desperate_times_right]

Oh that's fine. Chloe's used to beautiful women who need to unclench being annoyed with her for no reason.

She's also used to being stubbornly independent even to her own detriment, but unfortunately her rapidly drying salt-infused skinny jeans aren't giving her great range of motion right now. Chloe grabs the woman's hand and pulls herself up, stiff legged like a baby giraffe or something.

"I was up by the Mulu Caves when I fell," she says by way of explanation. "You on vacation or something?"

If this is another rival for their shipwreck she's going to feel pretty stupid.

[cactusy]

Two peas in a pod, these two, because Shaw's own skinny jeans are giving her the same problem. The leather jacket isn't exactly made for this climate, either.

"Got lost on my way from the infinity pool to the tiki bar," she deadpans - but then, after a moment, adds, "The last I remember, I was in New York City."

She's a long way from home.

[desperate_times_right]

Chloe glances at the disassembled gun lying on the spread-out jacket. Maybe this is a rival after all, but she hasn't punched her yet so for now she's calling it a win. “Yeah, stupid question.”

Her own gun hadn't made it out of the camp with her, so at least like this it's sort of even. “I've never been to New York,” Chloe says, for something to say. It's even true. “Long way from here.”

[cactusy]

"Looks like it," she says, blowing out another annoyed breath. "I'm guessing someone came up behind me on the street and knocked me out. Quick needle of something in the neck, whisked me away into a car - lots of drugs will cause short-term memory loss."

As she talks, she turns away from Chloe, bending back over the drying gun and using a finger to scrub away any salt she sees left behind. "You know anyone who'd want to do something like that to you?"

[desperate_times_right]

“I'm sure there's tons of people who would love to whisk me away,” Chloe says, because the casual nature of that description makes her a bit nervous and she says dumb shit when she's nervous.

“If your guys wanted to drown you, couldn't they have done that in New York?”

Arrival

[ichoosefight]

Steph is wringing out her shirt, making a face at the feeling of sand that will definitely not come off until it dries or get washed. At the question she glances around at their surroundings looking for some kind of clue. It's not very helpful.

"Uh... I'd say there's a fifty-fifty chance we're somewhere on the planet Earth." There's breathable air and recognizable plants, so that's at least a possibility. Considering she was in class a second ago she's not ruling out aliens.

[cactusy]

Shaw, who is use to insane things but not things that are that insane, takes this as a joke.

"Yeah," she snorts, blowing out a huffy breath and looking out over the long expanse of ocean as she rubs salty water residue out of her gun (as best as she can with damp fingers, anyway). "At least there's that. Hey, how old are you?"

Because she looks young.

[ichoosefight]

It's maybe 20% joke. Coming from Gotham, most of her problems are more Earth-bound than those other big cities experience. But there are magic-workers in Gotham, and she even got a visit from a Metropolis villain not too long ago.

She grimaces down at her shirt, halfway between soaking and stiff from the salt, then moves on to wringing water out of her hair. She swears there's sand in her ears. It feels gross.

The question makes her pause.

"...19. Why?" She's a little confused, since she hasn't thought of herself as 'young' in a long time.

[cactusy]

"Just don't know a lot of college-age kids who are mixed up in the kind of crap that would get them kidnapped away to a place on planet Earth that they didn't start out in," Shaw says - sounding too blasé to be properly worried, but also clearly a bit confused herself. "Are you a military recruit?"

[ichoosefight]

Steph snorts. Military isn't too far off the mark, but by god the military would hate her.

"No."

She turns to raise an eyebrow at Shaw, smiling with grim humor.

"A bit early to assume we were dumped here for any kind of sensible reason, isn't it? Optimistic, even." It's much easier to deal with someone who's misguided than a sadistic madman. She can think of a variety of reasons they might have been taken, and none of them are pleasant, but none of them involve snatching Normal College Student Stephanie Brown out of classes, either.

"Do you remember being in the water? Because I don't."

arrival

[nottheboss]

He knows where they were and it can't be too far from that. "About a hundred klicks south of D.C." He's confident about this. He's also checking his weapons: a 9mm pistol, a kama, and a Bowie knife. There's a black and white mask strapped to his belt.

"How did we get here?"

[cactusy]

Shaw looks up from messing with her gun in order to give him the most judgmental look.

"Does this look like central Virginia to you?"

[nottheboss]

He gives her a smirk. "You asked. I answered. You got a better one?"

[cactusy]

"How about anything that's not obvious bullshit," she says punctuating this with a roll of her eyes. "What kind of shape's your gun in?"

Arrival

[droppinnoeaves]

Glad he’s not alone, Sam’s been doing very similar — spreading his green wool jacket out to dry, taking inventory of his many pockets. The pipeweed is, sadly, a lost cause.

“Ah might, but I don’ think it’s too likely. The Undying Lands ain’t for th’likes of me.”

Arrival

[cactusy]

Well, that's a name for an afterlife if she's ever heard one. She half-turns, trying to gauge how serious he's being.

"You think we're dead?"

Re: Arrival

[droppinnoeaves]

"What?" He straightens, alarmed by the idea. "No, of course not. Why'd you say that?"

Re: Arrival

[cactusy]

"'The Undying Lands'," she says, with a shrug. "That's not a place where your immortal soul lives forever after your body's gone, or something?"

Re: Arrival

[droppinnoeaves]

"No, Miss." He stares at her, shaking his head in bemusement. "It's where th'elves go, in their white ships. Folk do live f'rever there, so they say. They're very much alive, an' hale and happy for always.

"This surely isn't th'halls of waiting, either, if that's what you're thinkin' of."

Arrival

[lestercraft]

It's not immediately obvious who she's addressing, when the figure is struggling out of a sopping wet robe, so dark that the yellow is turning a murky brown, but the sounds of struggle inside it suggest a deep voice, and when a head eventually pops out: it's a man, with deep stress lines across his gaunt face, water-dark hair plastered down flat, and his head turns towards Shaw with a deep scowl - but his pale brown eyes don't meet hers, as they flick across the area.

"Who-- a-are you--" His accent is English but tempered, and he swallows thickly. "I-I, I don't know- I've got no idea where we are."

He didn't even know it was a we until she spoke.

Re: Arrival

[cactusy]

"Cool," she says, scanning him for injuries. He looks like shit, and he looks pissed; neither of those things suggest a peaceful pre-arrival existence. "You should walk away from the water. Path's clear to your left. Big piece of driftwood to your right."

Re: Arrival

[lestercraft]

Oh. Great. He's been clocked already. Fuck. Even the police didn't catch on that fucking fast. What was John doing that was so fucking obvious?

"I-I--" And a wave crashes on his calves, making him stifle a yelp of alarm. Shit that was cold. "R-right, sure. Okay."

He stumbles to his feet, nearly tripping straight over the robes as he struggles out of the robe entirely, and a part of him looks very clearly tempted to throw it on the ground, but instead he throws the heavy cloth over his shoulder as he veers left, towards Shaw's voice.

"Right. S-so. Who the hell are you, and where the hell are we?" Might as well get down to business. She's clearly got a handle on something, and he can rise to the occasion despite the fear roiling in his stomach.