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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!
so the meme told them both to watch where they were going!
She's... heard better jokes, but could be worse. ]
Couldn't have been too wrong, you're here anyway!
no subject
They're slave-drivers. Couple'a weeks ago? Rewiring a fence after some giant lizard plowed into it. Got me workin' my fingers to the bone here.
[ Someone suggests they keep moving, so Sans starts shuffling to keep pace -- if barely.
She takes his bad joke in stride. That's nice. Anyone who doesn't kick up a fuss over a bad joke wins points in his book.
There's also the fact that there's magic here, he can feel it, a kind of vastness that defies description, and her appearance, those things make her less human to him and more, well... more monster. More like him and his kind.
He asides to Jade: ]
The name's Sans, by the way.
no subject
I'm Jade! Jade Harley.
[ She glances back momentarily, worry creeping back. Liam looks ok right now. She hopes there aren't too many bite-y things on the parts of him she can't immediately see. ]
Hey, um. Do you know if there's any plans to clear these creatures off poor Liam? Being bitten all over can't be fun.
no subject
Creatures?
[ Being a monster himself, he hasn't been the biggest fan of, nor particularly surprised by the overwhelming consensus that monsters are dangerous creatures instead of people -- and a few times he's even had people tell him 'oh but not you'.
Really makes the whole specist thing so much better, y'know. Being 'one of the good ones'. Eh. He can't judge. He doesn't even know if these guys are people or animals, and that's part of why he's here.
He rolls his shoulders in a shrug, grinning. ]
Haven't seen 'em. But if I know these guys, it probably involves a lotta bloodshed. [ His eyelights roll up and away. ] Not my thing.
no subject
She frowns when Sans brings up the bloodshed angle. She hadn't thought the process through to the most "sensible" conclusion, but... hm. ]
There has to be a way to protect Liam without just killing the other creatures! It's not their fault they're hungry.
[ That whole food chain thing is tricky to deal with though. Carnivores eat meat, and meat is other animals, and this is exactly why she used to be a vegetarian. It's a real shame meat is so delicious. ]
I suppose they do have to eat something. But I'm not ok with it being Liam. [ Even if that's being a bit arbitrary. ] I wonder if there's some sort of repellent we could figure out. Something that says "I'm definitely not delicious, don't taste me to find out for yourself".
no subject
He COULD just... y'know, take a shortcut back to safety.
But since he's here, he might as well see what's going to happen. Turns out, he happened to strike up a conversation with just the right person, watching her with the same fixed grin and indolent stare even as he feels a glimmer of... admiration? Yeah, let's call it that. ]
Heh. The merciful option, huh? I like your angle, pal.
If they're chomping on our giant here, what did they used to eat? And where'd they go? Couldn't tell ya, but maybe when we get Liam here far enough from the city, it won't be our problem anymore.
sorry for the wait |D;;
That's true. If there's more food for them out here, they might solve the problem themselves! Maybe I'll stick around for a bit to see if he still needs help once they've all settled in.