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riverviewooc2017-04-20 11:42 am
riverview: april test drive meme
riverview test drive memeWelcome to Riverview's test drive meme! Feel free to dip your toes in on the test drive meme to try out your character in the setting, play out a mission, and get samples for your application at the same time!
● Reserves are currently OPEN.
● Applications open on May 1st.
● Providing all parties are amenable, threads on the test drive meme can count as game canon, as the plot in the prompts presented is game canon.
● TDM threads do not count for Activity Check, but they do count for Activity Bonus Points, so long as all characters involved are accepted into the game.
● Threading on the TDM is intended for prospective new characters, so top-levels should only be posted by players of these characters. Since the events in the TDM are considered game canon, characters currently in the game are free to use the TDM prompts logs and posts on the regular communities.
Feel free to use the prompts below or create your own scenario. The setting is built to be flexible, so feel free to make things up as you go.
information resources
premise ● arrival ● setting ● ask a question ● calendar ● navigation
Recently, a team of skilled explorers went out into the jungle to the Northwest of the city to follow up on several sightings of a giant lizardlike behemoth that's been skulking around outside the walls, a creature whose level of aggression (and therefore how dangerous it might be) was unknown. The team, while not exactly as stealthy as they were supposed to be, did manage to find the creature, which they found to have about the intelligence and temperament of a very, very, very large dog. And whom they named Liam.
Having established that the behemoth (which is around the size of a blue whale, snakelike in shape, but with four legs, brown striated scales, large claws and teeth, bad breath, and an affinity for face-licking) is not an intentional danger to the city, the authorities could not rule out the idea that it might cause accidental damage to the city, walls, or crops around the city. As a result, research has been done and a new mission has been drafted and recruited for - baiting the behemoth. The objective of this large-scale mission is for many small, quick-moving teams to take behemoth bait deep into the jungle for the purpose of luring the massive but mostly-harmless creature away from the city and hopefully to a new, less-inhabited feeding area. There is room for many different teams, and all of them should be heading deep into the jungle heading directly away from the city, going Northwest. The authorities in question have come up with a wide variety of food and pheromone scented lures that range from mild to truly stinky, so which type your team gets is up to you.
Each lure is small enough to fit in a cage-shaped canister that can be carried like a backpack by one person with average strength, and each lure-carrier will need to be accompanied by at least one or two fighters. Why, when the behemoth is peaceful? Well....
The behemoth might not be aggressive, but unfortunately it's picked up some unwelcome companions. After last month's near-disaster where a colony of lizardlike monsters had taken up residence in tunnels under the city, wreaking havoc in the power grid, and were subsequently either killed or flushed out of the underground, some of the local fauna has been bumped down the food chain.
The fauna in question is a very large pack of mammalian six-limbed creatures that usually live in the trees and hunt oversized insects in the underbrush. When the lizards escaped the underground into the surrounding jungle, and drastically reduced the population of the insects the mammals usually feed on, the predators became parasites, attacking the only thing left that is more docile than the insects they usually feed on - the behemoth. These creatures are quick-moving, well-camouflaged in the jungle with mottled brown-and-green fur, and sport massive teeth and long tongues that allow them to stick to whatever surface they land on.
Hungry as they are, they will make no distinction between the behemoth's juicy hide and the lure-carrying teams that are trying to help it. Hopefully, their ranks can be thinned enough that the behemoth survives the trip to its new home.
Not everyone is cut out for missions into the jungle or cleaning up angry predatory parasite monsters, but that doesn't mean that staying home means being safe from the weird things that come out of the portal. In the early morning of April 20th, drawn by the warmth of the rising sun, a massive swarm of rainbow-colored fireflies emerges from the portal into the quarantine. Unlike regular fireflies, though, they are bright enough to glow even during the day, and these bugs have bite! While generally harmless aside from stinging a little, the bite of the rainbow fireflies causes certain kinds of emotional response to become heightened, depending on the color of the firefly in question. While scientists have never run into these bugs before and have no idea how it works, they can cause this effect in any kind of sentient creature that is capable of emotion, including androids and characters that are usually unaffected by substances. The effects on emotions are as follows:
| ● RED: Lust/Anger ● ORANGE: Honesty/Openness ● YELLOW: Fear/Anxiety |
● GREEN: Jealousy/Envy ● BLUE: Sadness/Grief ● VIOLET: Love/Affection |
When a character is bitten, the effects on their emotions can last anywhere from an hour to a week, depending on the character's psychology and resistance to certain emotions - for example, if a character has a hard time dealing with their grief, the effect of a blue firefly may last longer than other colors. How the characters manifest the heightened emotional response or sensitivity is up to the individual player, as different body chemistry or other circumstances might change how characters are affected. Red firefly bites have a 50/50 chance of affecting a character with lust or anger, though characters who have not reached sexual maturity (underage characters) won't get get the lust effect.
Firefly effects can be easily avoided simply by avoiding the fireflies. It won't take long for some of the geniuses in the Quarantine to start making and distributing firefly repellent, and characters can expect sales of mosquito tents to skyrocket.
These alien fireflies have a lifespan of around a month, and they are unable to procreate outside their native environment, which means the last of them will be dying off around May 20th.
CLARIFICATION: In response to a player question, the effects of the fireflies CAN layer, so they can be affected by more than one at the same time. Red fireflies with the lust effect don't make characters incapable of controlling themselves, just heighten feelings of arousal/desire.
Whether your character is posting up a silly word game to distract people from the dangerous mission going on, trying to get hold of a friend, or putting out feelers for people to go out into the fray with, the network is going strong.
Alternately, an offer for a free app is popping up on new arrivals' devices - Friendr is a friend-finder and/or dating app. If characters choose to install it, they will fill out a short bio and parameters for what they're looking for, upload a snap of themselves, and then proceed to browse for matches. This is a typical swipe-left-or-right type app.
Many thanks to
mistojen for coding this especially for Riverview!Choose your own adventure and do something else in the setting!
III - @dodger/audio
[Great minds think alike - he'd considered the possibility of marketing them, but ever the pessimist he has to poke around at the idea.]
There's only gonna be a market for it once you get most of them outta the sky. Otherwise, anyone who wants it for free can just chase 'em down. And trust me, a lot of dumb fucks are gonna pull that. And they run in swarms, so you're running a gambit of tossing out 500 units in one go that you're not gonna make back.
And that's assuming you got the brains to keep 'em alive, breed 'em and figure out a safe delivery method.
[Theoretically they'd worry about long-term effects too, but... who are we kidding, Dodger doesn't give a damn about them.]
no subject
I ain't lookin' to start a pet shop, boyo. If fools wanna get their asses chewed by a swarm for a chance at a cheap high, more power to'em.
[He can think of a half-dozen or so liquors made out of bugs (or bug parts), and more than a few things that people like to snort, smoke or shoot into their bodies made out of similar creatures.]
Nae, I'm gonna take these bugs and turn'em into something else.
no subject
[He won't lie, he's all for crazy experimental drugs. Especially ones with straight-forward effects like this. But he's hardwired for long cons.]
If you wanna get some real security outta this, you're gonna need some biologists that can figure out how to sustain the things. Then you can breed what you got, sell poison for the normal folks and spend some real time and effort making injectables for the crazy fucks like us.
And then you'll owe me... say 20%, for setting you on the right track.
no subject
[Okay, now he's really laughing. He physically has to wipe a tear from his eye at Dodger's attempt to extort a fifth of his profits from him.
For some people, he'd reward such an act with violence or the threat of it, but Dodger was so dead-faced about it that it's honestly hard to even be mad about it.]
Kid, I've been doin' this since before your grandad was spunk in his mum's cunny, and you ain't said a single thing I didn't already know.
[Getting the bugs is just the first step.]
If you want a cut so bad, you gotta be willing to put in some legwork.
no subject
If you want my legwork, you're gonna need to shell out more than 20. It's my specialty to find the people you need and a way to twist their arm into helping you - but that's only happening if you can beat my current paycheck.
[Which is zero, as far as the criminal underworld's concerned, but he's not letting a pet project take away from his Cashing Intel For Reaper's Approval time. Not without a lot of compensation.]
no subject
[And he doesn't give out partnership money willy nilly.]
You want in? Show me a little romance - prove you got the skill to do what you say you can. Then we can talk about me lettin' you in on this.
no subject
You'll get plenty of romance when you're paying me for it. [And he means it both ways, because Dodger Has No Standards.] Listen, let's make this fun - let's say in a month, I'll get you a jar full of glowing larvae. If I do, you pay me 50% of the profits. And if I can't, I'll push whatever you can get out of 'em for free. I'll even make sure to pay you if I skim off the top. We got a deal?
no subject
[That's the sort of attitude he can get behind, honestly - and one that comes with a win-win scenario for Oscar. Either he comes out with a competent, connected partner in this business, or he comes out of this with a lackey.
Things could go wrong, of course, but if they do at least they'll be interesting.]
Ye've got yerself a deal, moppet.
[Congratulations, Dodger. You've made a deal with the devil.]