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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!
no subject
...right?
"It'll...be okay." Never mind the fact that they were kidnapped and locked up in a nut house of a city. "Try...uh...try taking deep breaths? That helps. Think about happy things? Like...I don't know. Rainbows? Kittens?"
no subject
He still felt sad, and a weird lump of it, almost, inside, like after someone died, but... it felt more distant for the moment. "Thank you." His voice was rough and he offered her a smile as he wiped his cheeks.
"Something weird... " he swallowed a long breath, then nodded as he looked up at her. "is definitely going on. But you helped. And I appreciate it."
no subject
Fun times.
"Not to play 'scare the newbie' or anything here," she said, offering him a wry smile, "but 'something weird is definitely going on' is pretty much the motto we're living by in this nut house."
If you couldn't laugh about your situation, you'd cry. The was pretty much the last truth Fatima had to hold onto. Other than the fact that bugs hated fire.
"What's your name?"
no subject
"Sounds about like my life, really. Go to Camelot, they said. It'll be fun, they said. I didn't even get there before I was snatched here." His tone was self-mocking as he spoke.
He looked at her and smiled a little at her words. And her question made him offer his hand to her, rising. "I'm Merlin, at your service. And you?"
no subject
She gave him a grimace of sympathy. They could start a club. The 'weird name' club. Or something.
"Fatima," she said. "Fatima Merali." She always said her name as if it ought to mean something. And it did mean something. Just not here. Not with these people. Which was a weird sort of truth she was having a hard time wrestling with.
Add that to the list.
"You have a weird life?" Better to focus the conversation on him. It kept her from getting too introspective.
no subject
"Nice to meet you, Fatima." He had never met anyone with a name like that, and he was curious, but he was almost sure asking about someone's name on a first meeting was bad form.
"Oh, not terrible. Magic waking up when I was barely old enough to walk, starting without control and learning you have lots of magic powers but no idea why. But oh, hey, the whole kingdom hates people with magic. Having some small adventures involving trolls and the like, and then heading for Camelot, only to be yanked into a whole other... whatever this is."
He squinted around them, then shrugged and turned back to her.
"Compared to this place, maybe not odd at all, but it feels that way to me."
no subject
Or he was just a crazy person. Fatima couldn't really dismiss it, between the way that he'd started sobbing and the fact that he hadn't exactly demonstrated any of his 'magic' yet.
The part about 'trolls' wasn't exactly helping his case either.
But she was working on the notion of taking things at face value. It was utterly foreign to her, but not to a lot of the other inmates. Maybe that said something about human nature. Or maybe it said something about her world. Either way, she decided not to dismiss him offhand.
Not yet, anyway.
"I, uh, I can't said I've ever heard of actual trolls befeore," she said, figuring she might as well probe. "How's that work, exactly?"
no subject
...which had started right afer he had gotten bitten.
He turned to stare after the fireflies. "That... that's it." He fought the urge to cry more and shook his head. "I started feeling like this after being bitten. Some creatures have a magical or magic-like effect when they bite people."
He had read about a few different ones in not so legal books he had managed to sneak looks at over the years. That had to be it.
He blinked then, refocusing on her words. "Hmm? Trolls? Ugly beings, not nice, strong and powerful. I ran into a young one in the forest when I was looking for herbs. She almost snagged me in a magical trap. Nearly broke my arm." he rubbed his recently resprained arm, which felt fine, now. Well, mostly fine.
no subject
Or trolls, but those had lost precedence.
She scowled a little bit, looking up at the bugs. That would explain a lot. But correlation didn't necessarily equal causation. Or however that saying went.
So she bit down on the inside of her cheek. Hard. Hard enough to feel blood pool on her tongue. With well-practiced ease, she channeled that blood, feeling power fizzle on her fingertips. She directed it at the nearest convenient bug. And suddenly, said bug froze. Suspended in midair. Like it had suddenly been stuck in amber. And once it was holding still, she could finally see its stinger.
"Damn..." she muttered. "That makes so much sense..."
no subject
A few other of the wildly colored bugs buzzed a little closer, and instinctively, Merlin threw out his hand, and they were surrounded by a faint golden light. His concentration wasn't so good, though, so he shoved them as far away as he could, instead of trying to hold them.
he shuddered, feeling that sadness start to rise and shook his head, fighting it. "And it really tries to keep affecting you, too. I'm still fighting the feeling like... like I just watched someone I loved die." He blew out a breath, refocusing on the bugs.
"How does one make insect repellent that will affect magical insects?"
no subject
There were plenty of magics she knew nothing about.
She turned her attention to the swarm. And to the question. And finally, she could only shrug and suggest, "Fire?"
It had repelled them the same as regular bugs, so far. Not exactly a permanent solution, but sometimes you had to improvise in the short term to fix anything in the long term.
no subject
Thinking on it, he hoped he could do this. He had not tried to make that much fire before, but he had made small sparks, so... he might be able to do this. "Fire." The word tasted of ash and light and life in his mouth as he drew in his will. His eyes glimmered golden as he considered how to do this best.
Realizing she had power, realizing she might even be better at this than him, he glanced at her. "Together?" He would need her help if he was to do this. Hell, he might be the one assisting her! Probably that would be the way of things.
no subject
Maybe it had created a subconscious aversion to teamwork in Fatima's mind. Who knew?
But she nodded slightly. They didn't have much to lose by trying. And she was fresh out of mothers and all.
"Okay," she said. Already her, tongue started to probe the inside of her cheek, coaxing out more blood. "You count us down," she added, her speech a little muddied.
no subject
"Okay. Five," He squared his shoulders more, and concentrated, the gold in his eyes burning brighter, more intensely, as he reached within him, pushing and pulling for the power to make his will take form.
"four," Energy filled him. This was harder than his usual stuff, which came so easy.
"three," He saw sparks flickering around his hands and frowned, concentrating harder.
"two," He forced the word out, a sudden rushing energy filling him out of nowhere, and running out of him, pushed by his will, he thought, and seeming to lance forward.
He shouted the last words. "one! Now!" And he lifted a hand forward, and a hand toward Fatima, trying to make a connection even as he flung his will forward as hard as he could.
Sweat beaded his brow, and for a moment he thought nothing would happen, then fire bloomed in the air, alongside one side of the fireflies, a silent explosion in space as it blossomed toward the insects, a seemingly hungry sphere of fire, his teeth gritting as he fought to make it overtake those he could. he trusted her to do what she could as well
no subject
She built up the fire inside of her and forced it out. The display wasn't quite as impressive as his. But it was fire nevertheless.
And the bugs really hated it.
They scattered, buzzing angrily, but not coming near. "I think we pissed them off," she said, not sounding terribly apologetic about it.
no subject
"Did you have someone teach you magic, or do you study on your own?" He had always avoided talking about magic, but since coming here, he had realized that he needed to know more and get better. And frankly, every magic user he met seemed more competent than he. Maybe not more powerful, but more knowledgeable. And that meant asking questions and trying to learn from answers.
"I'm trying to get better at mine. I never had any real... schooling." Of any kind, really, but, yes. As he considered her, he realized a second thing. She was kind of hot, also. And that was his cheeks going red as he realized he was staring. His eyes dropped and he nodded.
no subject
Marcel already knew. That was bad enough.
"It's complicated," she said, eager to sidestep the issue for the time being. "But you seemed to hold your own pretty well," she added. Always talk about the other person, never yourself. Who'd taught her that? She couldn't remember. "Thanks for the help."
no subject
He smiled at her words, thought his smile faded as he thought about what she said. "Thanks. I'm working on it. I'm sometimes worried I won't be good enough in a pinch but... that felt good. It was nice working with someone else, getting to do magic openly." Which was always dangerous, he reminded himself. Today had gone well, but still.
He straightened his shoulders, one arm sending a spike of pain through his body, reminding him it had been hurt just a day before. he managed to fight that down. Considering her, he grinned at her, a small smile, but a smile anyway.
"Ah, do you want to get a bite to eat?" His cheeks were slightly red as he asked, but, there you go. Danger, magic, and a beautiful woman, and his brain went one way, even as he tried to not listen to it.