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riverviewooc2017-02-19 07:56 pm
riverview: test drive meme
Welcome to Riverview's first 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 March 1st.
● All threads on the test drive meme can count as game canon once the game is up and running.
● TDM threads do not count for Activity Check, but they do count for Activity Bonus Points.
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 ● navigation
If the sky has seemed a little more yellow-green than usual for the past couple of days, there's a reason for that. Meteorologists have been warning of a particularly nasty storm blowing in from the direction of the Delta in the Southwestern part of the Abandoned City.
The Quarantine is about to be hit by a nasty typhoon, and there's a lot to be done. Whether you're helping sandbag the banks of the river, which is bound to be swollen by the storm and flooding, weatherproofing your building, or just huddling indoors for warmth and helping reassure your friends, family, or partner that everything will be okay, it's time to take action!
There's been a lot of talk around the Quarantine about the various predators and monsters outside the fence, and how they've been getting steadily more active, crowding the fences, trying to leap over them, seemingly driven by some kind of mania. There have even been increasing instances of predators that normally mind their own business attacking the fences wholesale, slamming into it over and over as if they're trying to find a weakness.
The good news? The fences have been holding. So far.
The bad news? They won't be holding for much longer.
The Perimeter Guard is in a bad way, and it's all hands on deck. They've also sent out a few of the Perimeter Guard Cadets to post up flyers around the city asking for temporary help in fighting off the beasts. So pick up whatever weapon you're best with, hop onto a truck transport, and head on over to the fences to help drive off the monsters and keep the Quarantine safe.
With a storm rolling in that's going to keep everyone indoors, that might cause power outages, and is just frankly pretty scary, a lot of the clubs, restaurants, and hotels are doing special events to keep everyone's brains occupied and flooded with endorphins.
There are flyers around the city advertising various couples activities: speed dating, dance classes, overnight pool parties, and all-expenses-paid lovers' nights in.
The catch? The great deals only count if you're a twosome. So if you don't have someone to love, hit up speed dating in the indoor courtyard of Riverview's largest mall, or grab the first person you see and take the opportunity.
After a day or two of storm activity, things are definitely not getting better: the rain is torrential, the monsters are attacking with increased energy and decreased rest times, and the distractions are starting to wear thin. Power outages happen off and on, a very rare situation in Riverview Quarantine.
The government has put out an all-points-bulletin imploring anyone with an exploratory spirit to help.
From what government science techs can tell, the storm isn't natural - after all, even the meteorologists were saying that the pressure systems seemed extremely strange. They've managed to narrow the cause to an area in the delta where the storm seems to be originating from, and are broadcasting the general location so anyone with the guts can head out into the storm and try to find the source of it.
Any characters who decide to penetrate the jungle in search of the source will find a device in the shape of a pyramid, with glowing blue edges about a day's walk into the Abandoned City. The pyramid is a malfunctioning weather control device that is causing wild pressure fluctuations and causing the storm as well as making the animals in the jungle aggressive and erratic. Characters can destroy or deactivate the device to end the storm.
This mission can be threaded out however you would like, in groups however large you would like, and more than one team can accomplish the goal.
Whether you're looking for help with a mission or just want to get to know your fellow new arrivals, your character can make a post to the network.
Or you can choose your own adventure and do something else in the setting!
no subject
Someone's never been bitten by a horse.
[But the insight she offered was graciously given. He won't thank her for it, but it's appreciated all the same.]
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No, I haven't, and I'm fine with that. You prefer ships as a mode of transportation, I assume?
[He hasn't said that he's a pirate but again, she's assuming that it's more likely than not that he is if he counts Nassau as a home.]
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Personally, I find nothing clears the head like a good walk.
[He has always been a private man. He's given her enough of himself for now.]
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It's true, there is something to be said for a good long walk. [For lack of transportation.] I enjoy them at night, when the city is quieter, stiller. My brother and I used to walk everywhere in Sokovia.
[Though that was for lack of their own car, and before Pietro died and Novi Grad was destroyed. She never thought she'd ever consider those years simpler, sweeter times.]
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Perhaps what surprises him the most is that there is a place that exists where a woman can walk at night unnaccosted. A brother's company is no deterrent for those that would do her harm. He barely trusted London's wealthiest avenues - with good reason, as it turned out. As cities go, she had as much mind of her own as Nassau. The nature of men and women is immutable. There will always be theft, betrayal. No culture is devoid of it, no family free of it. Love and loyalty grant no immunity to dark impulse.
He doubts the future is some quiescent, gentle thing. After all, used to.]
I confess, I've not heard of Sokovia.
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That surprises me. [Perhaps it's the way he speaks in a way that in her time might seem more formal, but he seems like an intelligent man. At least in his eyes, and she suspects he might be well-educated.] It's between Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
[Wanda hates to reduce her country to a simple location, especially in light of how many regard it, but to wax poetic about it to a stranger as they dance seems like too much, uninvited. It's difficult not to think of Novi Grad as it once was, however, a city of history rotting and wearing away in time. A city of people working to survive day to day, to build their lives in a city whose richest aspects were its communities of people. Those brought together through shared experiences and surviving war after war.]
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He gestures her towards a long, low table in the back of the hall where refreshments are being served. Dancing results in thirsty people in every century, it seems.]
You know Nassau, so we're clearly from similar - if divergent - worlds. If I were to hazard a guess, these places are in eastern Europe?
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She grabs a glass and the pitcher of water, before holding it up, offering it to him if he'd like the first glass.]
Yes, eastern Europe. South-west of Poland, if that helps at all. [They could look at a map later, if he'd like.] I'm used to some people from outside of Europe not being as familiar with it, but to think that it might not even exist in some realities is unsettling.
[Whether it's more or less unsettling than seeing it destroyed before her eyes is up for debate.]
Perhaps as much as hearing your Nassau called a former pirate haven. I'm sorry.
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He rubs the rim of his glass, and takes a measured drink.]
Why would that merit an apology? Pirates are a rather unsavory, lawless lot. Most would be glad to be rid of them.
[He raises the glass in a slight gesture of cheers.]
And I do happen to know where Poland is, so I'm spared the further indignity of my ignorance.
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Ignorance seems an unfair thing to fault a person for when they can't educate themselves about the political borders of countries they've never heard of three hundred years in the future. [Especially a country which apparently doesn't exist in his reality at all.] You must be more knowledge about pirates than I am, however. Are they all actually as bad as you've implied?
[As a former terrorist herself, as someone capable of dipping into the minds of others, she finds it hard to paint everyone with the same brush.]
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I have my opinions, though I'd be wary of relaying them as irrefutable fact. Man is too subjective for that.
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And I think man and life are too complex to box them up into categories of good and bad, and it's a saying in my time that history is written by the victors. [Which ultimately, the pirates are not. Not with regards to Nassau.] But I'm still interested in the impressions of a man who may know better.
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Most folk will do honest work if you let them. If they're paid decently and respected. If they feel that they can eke out a living not just for survival's sake but for the betterment of their life and loved ones. I've not seen a man turn to piracy that wasn't driven to it by some mistreatment. But it doesn't make them good men. It makes them dangerous.
[When he thinks of a consummate pirate, his first thoughts are not for Teach, not for Hornigold, not for any of the old guard. He thinks of Vane. A hard man, merciless, yet with a strange sense of honour twisted up and disfigured like the wrecks in Nassau's bay. Vane lived without compromise. It's something Flint can respect well enough, though he'd have tore out the man's throat given half a chance. Still, his reputation among the Bahamas was well earned.]
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But for all that he tries to speak of people at large, he manages to say a great deal that resonates with Wanda. After all, she can at least admit to herself that she's spent most of her life wondering what would have happened if her family's apartment hadn't been shelled. Would she and Pietro have had better lives? Would their parents have been able to support them even as they were older, despite the hardships that sometimes came with living in Novi Grad? One thing is for certain. She never would have let Pietro convince her to submit to the experiments of Hydra if it weren't for their desperate circumstances and the state of the war that raged in the streets.
Instead, the twins had both been pushed to take desperate risks, and for a time made villains of themselves in hopes of bettering the lives of their people.]
Desperation can change a person more than they ever would have thought possible. Especially if they think the risks are worth it... [For the greater good. For their loved ones. For whatever drove them to do terrible things in the first place.]
no subject
The fact of the matter is, few have that skill. Most people cannot imagine a thing they have not lived. So when she speaks of desperation the clearest, simplest answer is that she herself has had some cause to know its rigors.
What sympathy he had once upon a time died years ago, now. What husk has he to replace a heart? But he does understand.]
Were yours? [A faint nod. This is not a question succored by kindness.] Worth it.
no subject
For what we hoped to accomplish, what we wanted to change, no. [She'd lost Pietro and the only place she'd ever called home in a single day. It's impossible for her to forget how Novi Grad looked after. Gutted. It looked the way she felt, and even now Wanda still walks around feeling as if she's living with a hole punched through her chest.] Some good came of it, serving the greater good, but the cost is always so high. Too high, personally.
[She's lost her family, her city, and even the last scraps of innocence she didn't know she still possessed. Not until being the pawn of Hydra and Ultron stripped them away. Trying to do the good thing has taken everything from her, and not just once, and before she was pulled through the portal she'd found herself at rock bottom once more on the hard ground of the airport. A rogue Avenger, an "enemy" of the lawful governments of the world.
And whatever her motives, Flint was right. To others, it didn't make her a good person. Just dangerous.]
no subject
I'll drink to that.
[After all, Thomas wanted to change the world for the better. It is petty, cruel, gutless men that can't handle the thought. When you have power, the last thing you want to do is give it up.
Flint pursues the path he does because he knows he could. He has no taste for power. It holds no especial sway over him, it does not inform his decisions and it neither stays his hand nor causes it to strike. The only thing to motivate him, that which drives him to action and calls him to arms, is memory. So he sips at his water and settles back against the pillar as if it were the mast on a shipdeck and he but seeking a moment's respite from the sea.]
no subject
Something stronger seems better for a toast like this, and Wanda has no driving need to step back onto the dance floor right away. For a man who's proven to be so careful with regards to talking about himself, she almost hates reaching for the bottle of what seems to be something like rakia. It shows how deeply she's affected. Still, she does it, pouring a finger's worth into a short glass. Once more, she offers him the bottle with a questioning look.]
no subject
But a pirate's tolerance for alcohol far exceeds what he's seen in the modern day. His veins at this point may as well be equal parts rum and seawater, comparatively speaking. He nods, drains the last of his water and holds his glass for her to pour. Once she's finished, he lifts it to his mouth for a surreptitious sniff.]
Rakinja?
[He even manages the proper accent, it seems a seamless thing. He's not about to start speaking in the tongues of the Bulgarian Empire, but no man can call himself a pirate captain without having taken prizes and prisoners from ships of every nation, nor culled crew from the same.]
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She's glad that James recognizes it. One less thing to try and explain.] Yes. They call it rakia in Sokovia.
[She presses her glass forward, clinks the edge against his.]
Here's to hoping that we don't come to regret the costs of risks we take here.
no subject
[The alcohol is strong, and of a higher grade than what he's used to. A princely thing. Thomas' father kept an extensive wine collection on the Hamilton estate and as Thomas and Miranda wore down his reservations he found himself sampling them at length. They were of a similar quality to this. Whoever runs this distillery takes pride in their work.
-- But it's incredibly fucking fruity.]
no subject
Of course we do, but no one can predict when we'll be able to return to them.
[She gestures to the rest of the room, the people dancing, stumbling, laughing, having a much lighter experience than she and James. Who may or may not be a pirate.]
So instead we can dance, and we can fight to protect the city's borders, and build a city that isn't our own. Claim it for ourselves if we like and rebuild our lives here.
[They certainly seem to be encouraging it, the way they arrange so many events that throw people together.]
no subject
Are you certain you aren't a pirate, with an attitude like that?
[It certainly is... a familiar sentiment.]
no subject
If one can be a pirate without a ship? It's possible. You haven't heard me claim a side, after all.
[And in the end, it's all a matter of perspective when it comes to Wanda. She's a bad person, a law breaker and a threat to international security to some. A strong, powerful Avenger on the side of good to others.
To a rare few, she's Wanda, but that matters to very few people in the world, it seems.]
no subject
[He makes a soft, speculative noise designed to imply he has no set answer, even though he's watching her as he speaks. Nothing in his countenance gives away his opinion on the matter one way or another.
McGraw kept his head down, but Flint has a particular knack for getting the measure of someone. Man or woman, slave or freedman. Humans, for the most part, are driven by the same things. They have the same wants, and they all die the same. So as long as you can slot someone into a category with which you've some familiarity, the odds of them surprising you are low.
Silver. Silver surprises him. Or perhaps it's accurate to say he surprised him once, on a day becalmed. He calculated the amount of strength he would need to expend to spear the man in the fucking throat even as he talked. Flint heard every word of it, yet overlaid on those words was an echo: I betrayed you, I continue to do so, I'll do it again. He was impressed by the flagrancy of it all, and there was one single, infinite moment where he thought for the very first time since London, Perhaps I've met an equal after all. It is not often he lets someone a direct threat to his vision live. He can still remember the stench of rotting whale beneath a merciless sun, gaseous bubbles of its decomposition roiling the surface of the ocean. It felt an appropriate accompaniment to their discussion. So yes, Silver surprised him in a singular, meritorious moment.
This woman is doing similarly, albeit on a less grandiose scale. He's used to strong women, of course. His mother was one. Miranda. Eleanor Guthrie another. Max, Anne Bonny and Madi. He does not have the contempt for the fairer sex that most men do. Why would he, when a person is generally dangerous proportionate to how dearly you've underestimated them? But thus far, Wanda has given him no indication that she's even accustomed to being underestimated. Has the world changed so much as to value women, or is this something unique to her? He finds himself curious, and that is surprising.]
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