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riverview: april test drive meme

Welcome 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
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Choose your own adventure and do something else in the setting!
noctshaming is already becoming popular i see
I left my change of clothes at home. [...] Not like I'm wearing long sleeves and a jacket, anyway.
really it's unavoidable
[He's joking, probably, but there's still a wink and a really long stare, like he's waiting to see if this stranger would do it.
Anyway—] Black absorbs heat so quickly, and your hair is dark, too. You must be so warm. Let me feel~. [He's gonna reach his unfairly cool hands to touch Noctis' arm now because he wants to Know.]
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Let you— [uhh UHHH what, Noctis leans his head away first because he thinks Eichi will go for his hair after making that comment, but no, it was his arm all along!! Just touching him out of nowhere is weird enough to get him to jerk his arm away and look at Eichi like there is definitely a problem with him. Good start.]
Uh, let's not do that now... or ever.
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I was only joking. Clothes like that don't suit me at all, and you'd look equally out of place in mine. Fufu, but I have the solution right here. [Out of a tiny little cylinder, he presses a button and an umbrella opens up to the side. Eichi holds it over the both of them. Shade!!]
See?
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What the heck is that though. What an advanced umbrella, he's looking up at it now...]
Yeah, I'll pass on trading clothes. Where'd you get this thing?
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[He doesn't know why, but it's cute so he accepts this.] I thought that it would be bad to get stuck in either rain or sun, so to have this would be convenient. It seems it's paid off, after all.
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Yeah, you're a real life saver. [...] Uh, real quick, can I see the frog?
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[He doesn't want to have to get up all over again, so he pulls the umbrella away and angles it so that Noct can see the pattern. That is more than one frog.]
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Huh. [PLAY IT COOL] That's cute. More frogs than I expected.
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[He said it was cute, he tells the truth! He chuckles, spinning the umbrella slightly in place before shifting so it shades the both of them again.] There was one type of umbrella that was quite large and had attachments sticking off of the top, but that made it look a little terrifying. I much prefer cute ones like this.
By the way, why are you sitting here? Are you waiting for a friend?
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Like... ears? I guess on frogs it would be the eyes. [Hmm, it could also be cute. But anyway.] ...I fell asleep.
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[Yay, he got it, good job. He even sits up a little straighter, like he's congratulating Noct for guessing. But there's a significant pause at his explanation.]
Rather than explaining anything with that, you've opened up a number of other questions... Wouldn't you rather sleep in a bed?
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I was tired. [He says, like this explains everything.] It's a long walk.
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[Eichi chuckles.] I'm a bit envious. If I fell asleep in a place like this, I'd overheat and dry up like a raisin.
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More like I was just tired... Uh, sorry that you dry up like a raisin, I guess.
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[He's just going to ignore all stares and sideways glances. There's a cute little frog at the very base of the umbrella he's holding, too, and he spins it once or twice.]
I'm a little tired myself, so I think I'll rest here for a bit. You're welcome to share the shade for as long as you'd like. [But like, probably don't fall asleep again.]
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But alright, he's not going to turn down frog shade. He shrugs, sitting back and looking up at the underside of the umbrella. He can see fuzzy frog outlines showing through, nice...]
Thanks. [don't look now but he's definitely going to start to doze off in record time!!]
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[So, he's poking him in the arm a couple of times. Wake up!!] We've only just met, and you're able to sleep beside me? I could be dangerous, you know? [No he couldn't...]
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Yeah? Maybe I'm dangerous, so it's safer for everyone if I'm asleep.
[He yawns and stretches in the middle of this, like his three minutes of dozing were equal to a whole nap. Intimidating.]
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[He seems like the type who would be grumpy to wake up, at least. Just from this gentle pushing. It's polite, but... Sleeping here of all places?] You'll catch a cold, and without even a name to call you by, how will I reach your emergency contact?
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Also he's tired and it's hot, which contributes. He sighs just because he's awake now, sitting up a little more and leaning his elbow on his knee so he can look at Eichi directly.]
That's definitely me, the... city-leveler. My name's Noctis, anyway. Or Noct, whatever.
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[His humor is great, okay. He winks with it, and then gestures to himself with a free hand.] My name is Eichi Tenshouin. It's nice to meet you, Noct-kun. I hope you won't spend all of your time here being so exhausted. Perhaps a cup of tea might help wake you up?
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Uh, maybe, sometime. [Sometime....!!!!] I guess that could work.
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[Score, future tea date. But hold on—] You don't want to try some now? Whatever it is you're drinking must not have enough caffeine.
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No, it's- it's working. [He fell asleep literally four minutes ago, fuck-] Maybe I could try some. Wanna trade?
[That was cooler before he said it out loud.]
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