riverviewmod: (Default)
Riverview Moderator ([personal profile] riverviewmod) wrote in [community profile] riverviewooc2017-04-20 11:42 am

riverview: april test drive meme

riverview 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

premisearrivalsettingask a questioncalendarnavigation


prompt i: baiting the behemoth

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....


prompt ii: pest control service

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.


prompt iii: rainbow bite

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.


prompt iv: friendr/network

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.

Code to post your character's bio is in the textbox below, or you can just do a text version of the information in the app. An example of how it looks can be found here.


Many thanks to [personal profile] mistojen for coding this especially for Riverview!


prompt v: wildcard

Choose your own adventure and do something else in the setting!


navigation

[jungle image is by Armand Serrano and Paul Lasaine]
signifies: (kal ( 076 ))

[personal profile] signifies 2017-04-29 01:06 am (UTC)(link)
A lot of people here are from there.

[ we'll take avoidance for 500, alex

He's not technically lying: these are different Earths. ]


They can be very different. What's yours like?
nanamari: (Default)

[personal profile] nanamari 2017-04-29 01:15 am (UTC)(link)
And more similar than one would expect.

It's... I don't really know how to answer that. A little blue dot orbiting a yellow sun?
signifies: (kal ( 075 ))

[personal profile] signifies 2017-04-29 01:16 am (UTC)(link)
[ Clark smiles warmly. He should have been more specific. ]

That's the same for all Earths.

What's the year? What about your current events?
nanamari: (thinking about the future)

[personal profile] nanamari 2017-04-29 03:37 am (UTC)(link)
[ The year is an easy thing to answer. She's only about sixty years ahead of him. Current events, however... ]

The Omnic Crisis was the most recent world war, about thirty years ago. [ She's hard pressed to find anything else that has impacted so many lives to this day. ] Has anyone mentioned it?
signifies: (kal ( 019 ))

[personal profile] signifies 2017-04-29 03:39 am (UTC)(link)
Not that I've heard. [ He knows to listen for this now. ] You can ask around.
nanamari: (concerned)

[personal profile] nanamari 2017-04-29 03:44 am (UTC)(link)
[ Good. ] I'll do that.

What about your world? Any recent events?
signifies: (clark ( 051 ))

[personal profile] signifies 2017-04-29 03:46 am (UTC)(link)
[ Please don't ask, Ana. ]

No, business as usual here. It's around 2013 according to Earth's calendar.
nanamari: (man i'm gonna miss this eye)

[personal profile] nanamari 2017-04-29 02:30 pm (UTC)(link)
[ That's very unhelpful, thanks Kal. ]

I suppose that's the best one can ask for. Have you met anyone from home out here?
signifies: (clark ( 014 ))

[personal profile] signifies 2017-04-29 02:35 pm (UTC)(link)
[ He's not liking Twenty Questions. ]

Not exactly. There's a lot of alternate realities I didn't know about before coming here. With the time differences, it's hard to know for sure.

[ For example, one where he marries Lois and has a ten-year-old son. ]
nanamari: (Default)

[personal profile] nanamari 2017-04-29 02:54 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Does he practice this non-answer stuff in the mirror or is it just an alien thing. ]

You mean there are also alternate versions of our own realities?
signifies: (kal ( 002 ))

[personal profile] signifies 2017-04-29 02:55 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Make a wild guess. ]

There are of mine and a few others... there could be of yours too.
nanamari: (concerned)

[personal profile] nanamari 2017-04-30 01:06 am (UTC)(link)
[ Ana falls silent for a long moment. That's something she's spent a lot of years trying not to think about. Is there a world in which Overwatch didn't fall? A world where Amélie and her husband have lived their lives? Where Gabriel never became a monster? ]

What was different? Between yours, I mean. [ She glances at him. ] If that's too personal of a question you don't have to answer.
Edited 2017-04-30 01:06 (UTC)
signifies: (Default)

[personal profile] signifies 2017-04-30 01:10 am (UTC)(link)
[ Some details are very personal. He won't talk about those. ]

For example, there's a city on the west coast of the United States called Star City. In another timeline, it had a different name.

It could be something like that, or an first contact happening in one timeline and not another.
nanamari: (mom needs a nap)

[personal profile] nanamari 2017-05-03 12:01 am (UTC)(link)
[ Oh, that's much stranger. ]

First contact, hmm? How did that go?
signifies: (clark ( 004 ))

[personal profile] signifies 2017-05-03 12:19 am (UTC)(link)
Not all visitors are friendly.

[ That's all he's saying. ]
nanamari: (Default)

[personal profile] nanamari 2017-05-03 10:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Ah. You seem like a well-mannered young man, at least.
signifies: (clark ( 009 ))

[personal profile] signifies 2017-05-04 12:02 am (UTC)(link)
[ Clark looks like a deer in headlights at that. He can't duck away from it.

Clark nods. ]


I appreciate you saying so, ma'am.

[ The Kents raised him well. ]

Are you familiar with many aliens?
nanamari: (Default)

[personal profile] nanamari 2017-05-04 12:32 am (UTC)(link)
[ He reminds her a little bit of Jack, right there. In the early days when he flustered more easily, to be sure, but still: he's genuine.

She chuckles at the question, low and scratchy, but still warm. ]


Not at all. You're the first alien I've met - that I know of. It's comforting to know we aren't the only speck of life in the universe. [ She smiles at him. ] And to see that we have some values in common. Being a good man is nothing to be bashful about.
signifies: (kal ( 076 ))

[personal profile] signifies 2017-05-04 01:03 am (UTC)(link)
[ Clark smiles back warmly.

It's time to change the subject. ]


Am I right in thinking cyborgs are a possibility on your Earth?
nanamari: (Default)

[personal profile] nanamari 2017-05-04 06:25 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Ana tenses, though outwardly her expression remains calm. ]

I've met a few of them. Why do you ask?
signifies: (clark ( 007 ))

[personal profile] signifies 2017-05-05 12:08 am (UTC)(link)
I'm just curious about the future.
nanamari: (explaining)

[personal profile] nanamari 2017-05-05 07:12 pm (UTC)(link)
Cybernetic enhancements are more common than what you may be thinking of. Very few would choose to become more machine than human. Omnics - they are intellegent robots - they have been at the center of controversy for some time now, so the issue is complicated. But I've heard of genetically engineered soldiers, time travellers, and even scientists who have lived on the moon... It's an exciting time. Maybe yours will be even more so, with the knowledge of two worlds to draw on.

Are you interested in science fiction?
Edited 2017-05-05 19:16 (UTC)
signifies: (clark ( 004 ))

[personal profile] signifies 2017-05-05 11:23 pm (UTC)(link)
Yes, I am.

[ Science fiction was all the truth he had for a long time. Clark sees the stark dichotomy of aliens in human media. ]

You live in interesting times.

[ He can ask her in detail when he knows her better. ]
nanamari: (Default)

[personal profile] nanamari 2017-05-06 12:11 am (UTC)(link)
We both do. The line between reality and fiction seems to be moving all the time.
signifies: (clark ( 030 ))

[personal profile] signifies 2017-05-06 03:00 am (UTC)(link)
[ They come to the edge of the forest. Clark has led them away from any monsters in the area. The path on the steep slope has unfortunately crumbled. He holds out his hand to Ana to help her down. ]

They are. Even this city seems like it couldn't be real until you're here.

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