riverview: test drive meme

[riverviewmod]

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

prompt i: batten down the hatches

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!

prompt ii: monster madness

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.

prompt iii: hold your lover close

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.

prompt iv: solution

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.

prompt v: wildcard/network

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!

navigation

Comments

[detia]

Adam, calmly, brings the gun up and aims as Caitlin shouts, the mountain lion not moving. Giving her some more space, he steps to the side, gun cocked, ready to strike. The beast growls and growls, but doesn't move - neither to retreat nor attack, which is not actually a bad thing. Looking back a just a second at the rest of their group, Adam motions at them to walk past him, giving the animal a wide berth, towards the city.

"Quietly!" He whispers harshly against the rain and turns back to focusing on the lion, growling more and more fiercely, sounding just about ready to either run off, or strike.

In the end, it runs. Adam's surprised by it - he honestly thought the beast was scared enough to just go at them, but it doesn't. And for a second, Adam thinks it's because of them, but then he hears the crack, the sudden thunderclap, and he doesn't think. He throws himself at Caitlin, pushing them both out of the way of half a tree falling where they were standing a moment before, the bark still smoking from the lightning that just hit it.

They hit the ground hard, with squelching wet noises and mud splashing around them. Adam shields Caitlin as best he can, his arms around her head, before pulling back a little once the tree is down, looking at Caitlin with wide eyes, panting.

"Are you okay?"

[naz]

Her eyes flicker toward the rest of the group as Adam directs them around and away from the situation, but she doesn't stop swinging or shouting at the mountain lion. The animal neither retreats nor attacks, but the fact that it hasn't pounced feels reassuring. Maybe this is working and the animal is taking its time trying to decide whether to run or back away slowly.

She's so engrossed with focusing on the cat that the sound of the lightning striking the tree is lost under the roar of thunder and before she can even feel triumphant because the mountain lion takes off in the other direction, a solid body is thrown into her and she hits the ground so hard that it knocks the wind out of her. Caitlin doesn't have time to feel disgusted with the face full of mud that splashes up from the ground because she's too busy flapping her jaw in a failing attempt to gasp for air. It's a frightening sensation she'd, up until now, had the fortune of avoiding over the span of her life, but now she knows exactly why they call it having the wind knocked out of you. Her head feels a little fuzzy for a second and it feels like it takes minutes — in actuality, only a couple of seconds — before the attempt to gasp for air is rewarded with a lungful of oxygen again and her wide, panicked eyes narrow into something less terrified as she's panting to catch her breath again.

Her fingers grasp tightly, twisting fabric of his shirt beneath them as if she needs to keep herself steady even though she's on the ground and there's nowhere to fall; it's reflex. To his question, at first she just nods as she looks around and finally registers why he's knocked her to the ground. Her eyes snap back to his face and she lets out a heavy huff as she finally manages to get control of her breathing again. "I'm okay," she says, nodding again. "I'm okay. Thank you..."

[detia]

Gently, his hand reaches for hers, fisted in his shirt, and just rests on top of her, like another layer of reassurance. He pushes off of her, kneeling instead, his free hand helping her sit up as well. He looks down at his free hand, covered in mud and grass, and sighs softly. At least it isn't blood.

"Don't mention it. Hope the fall didn't hurt. I'm sorry, got you filthy."

She's got mud all over her, her face, her hair, but at last one benefit from the rain is that it's slowly, but surely, clearing it away. He probably looks no better, but he doesn't really care - it might even be an advantage if they need to camouflage their scent.

"You're okay to stand? We should rejoin the others."

He's not leaving her behind, obviously - there's absolutely no way, but they still need to keep going. This storm has to be dealt with, and she might be one of their best ways to sort it. He really hopes he didn't injure her.

[naz]

Her breathing is slowing down, but her heart is still racing so fast that it almost makes her feel a little nauseated. That's only happened a few times in her life. It's an adrenaline rush, pure and true, that's for sure. Caitlin lets him help her back into a sitting position and she shakes her head a little, a small smile tugging up the corners of her mouth.

Adam just saved her from being crushed by a falling tree branch and he's apologizing for getting her dirty. That's really endearing. "No, it's okay. Better dirty than..." her voice trails off and she gestures weakly toward the fallen branch with the hand that had been clutching at his shirt. Taking a slow, deep breath and letting it out just as slowly, Caitlin wills herself to come down off the dregs of the rush.

"I'm okay," she assures him again, nodding. "You're right. We should catch up. I'm fine, I promise." To illustrate her point, Caitlin carefully gets to her feet, not because she's injured — there's a little twinge in her left ankle from the fall, but it doesn't feel like a sprain — but because the mud is especially slick and she doesn't want to fall a second time unprompted. With her luck, if she did, she would end up hurt. "Seriously, thank you. I promise, I'm okay. Let's keep going." Hey, it could've been a lot worse, she tells herself as she wipes her hands over her face absently, trying to clear some of the muck away.

[detia]

He keeps a careful hand on her back as she stands up, following her, ending up towering above her once more. He swallows hard, nodding. They're both still covered in mud, but once he's sure she's fine, he takes a step back, hand going back to his gun to make sure it's still in working order.

"If you're sure," he replies with a slightly crooked smile, only now realizing that, despite the mud and her hair soaked through the way it is, she's pretty, with a lovely smile, and his usual awkwardness rushes through him. He rolls his shoulders, pushes it off - now is absolutely not the time.

"All right. Let's go," he says, trying his leader voice again. He keeps an eye on her, starting to walk back towards the rest of their group.

[naz]

Once she's comfortable on her feet, Caitlin nods and smiles again. "I'm sure," she promises. It's nice, she thinks, that he's so concerned when he's the leader and she's only one person. He could've been off by now and just looking over his shoulder to make sure she's still with him. Some men probably would've done exactly that.

Caitlin wipes her face again, feeling still more mud slipping under her fingers and she sighs. This is a losing battle. She'll just have to be messy. That's fine; there are worse things, after all. So her hands move away from her face again. She'll worry about how she looks later.

With a little smile, Caitlin gives a quiet agreement and starts walking, one hand out toward him in case she slips in the mud; maybe he could help her balance. "So where are you from? What do you do back home with those reflexes? Are you military or…?"

[detia]

He's not one to leave a man behind. Maybe it's been drilled in him since he was too young to even know what it meant, maybe it's because he's always known he was supposed to shoulder everything himself and not let anyone else be in danger, but it's just the way he does things. He can't even consider moving ahead without making sure she's okay.

When she asks him about his background, he nods, keeping in step with her.

"Yes, I am. Always been military. That's all I've ever known. You're a scientist, right? Any idea what's causing this storm?

[naz]

Caitlin nods her acknowledgement; she doesn't know Adam at all, but she can still see that. It's in the way he carries and conducts himself, maybe. Different branches of military are, well, different, but one thing is always the same: there's a discipline there which manifests itself in a lot of ways: putting himself between Caitlin and the branch; making sure she's all right and ready to keep moving rather than leaving her to catch up. Those point to it, for her.

Science is like the military in that each branch has its own focus and traits, but at the end of the day, they do all point to research-minded people. "I'm not that kind of scientist," she admits, almost apologetically. "I'm a biomedical engineer, mostly; I'm better with human bodies than the weather, but," she says, pausing thoughtfully as she walks, "with the right information, I could maybe suss out a few possibilities. I don't know enough right now to try, not unless you're more interested in speculation than a hypothesis..."

She wishes she could give an educated guess rather than a speculative thought, but at the moment, she kind of can't. She wonders how much it would help, anyway. This place is very different than Central City; anything she might have guessed for this same meteorological behavior there might have no relation at all to the same behavior here. She has no way of knowing.

[detia]

Discipline; it's a good way to put it. Habits that have been drilled into him from birth. Control, focus, honor. Don't act without a plan - and be able formulate a plan in seconds if necessary. Trust your instincts, but follow orders first and foremost. Adam's never had to think about it, it's always been his whole life. Orders, training, discipline, extreme control over his own body.

Now that his structure is gone, he's clinging to the discipline, to what he considers to duty - to himself and others. He's still military, even if he's in a completely different world with completely different people. He's still who he is, and he is a soldier. A Champion. A Savior.

What he isn't, though, is a scientist. "What would you speculate?"

He has a few thoughts himself, just ideas in his head of what could cause this storm, but hers might be anchored in more science than his. And he's interested - anything he can learn, anything he can know to be wary of, he's willing to hear about.

At this point, they've rejoined the rest of their team, who have been stopped waiting for them fora minute. They get back to the head of the group, and start back towards the ruins, looming over them ominously. Let's hope they don't get attacked by even worse in there than out in the forest.

sorry for the delay!

[naz]

That's a tricky question, Caitlin thinks to herself. There are a lot of things she could speculate, but she's not really sure where to settle for a response because she doesn't know enough about this place yet to be sure. The thing is, there are an infinite number of possibilities and that sort of array of choices always tends to be the sort of thing that locks Caitlin up a little. She is forever a victim of the Paradox of Choice.

So she waits for a moment, considering quietly as they walk, and the expression on her face does at least suggest that introspection with the way that she chews thoughtfully on her bottom lip and her brow creases. "I mean, honestly, I don't know enough about this place to know if my speculations would even be applicable here; I can only go by what would be potentially possible back home. So that means it could be anything from this place's equivalent of climate change to a metahuman manipulating the atmosphere to create a distraction meant to keep from being caught doing something he or she shouldn't be doing."

Caitlin pauses there, looking over at him rather than just in front of herself, and she reaches a hand up to push more wet hair off her face as they catch up with the rest of the group. "But I don't know, obviously, for sure. It does admittedly remind me of something that happened back home which could suggest the latter, but..." her voice trails off and she shrugs.

Somehow it feels like expanding on that in the presence of the rest of the group is a bad idea. For all she knows, she could cause a panic over nothing. This could be a natural weather occurrence that just happens to be enough of an anomaly that the locals are uncomfortable with it. There's no point in unnecessarily stirring up worry in the whole of the group if she doesn't know; she's just guessing.

np!!

[detia]

"What's your home world like? What are metahumans?" He asks, wondering if her world is anything like his. It seems like there is such a varying array of people here, with so many different powers and abilities - it makes Adam feel pretty useless at the best of times, and miss the fact that he doesn't have his suit of power even more.

He keeps his voice low, though. He knows better than to start a panic of any kind, even with a small group. No, better to discuss this, the possibilities, as discreetly as possible. He hopes it's something natural, or at least something they can sort out quickly, but who knows what they could potentially be dealing with here? There's so much about this world they don't know.

[naz]

Another very tricky question, it would seem. Caitlin wrinkles her nose a little in thought. "Uhhh, well..." she pauses then, brow creased. For her, it's just normal plus metahumans, but what's normal in her mind doesn't necessarily equate to what's normal in his. Or anyone else's, for that matter. "I don't know how to describe it. I'm from Central City so it's like...just a normal, boring city except that a few years ago, my boss was making a Particle Accelerator and it exploded, killing several people and forever changing others," she explains. Like me, she thinks, except that it kind of wasn't, was it? It was sort of Barry changing the timeline that gave Caitlin her powers, technically; she just doesn't remember it that way, obviously. It's complicated.

"A metahuman is just...a human with abilities that came from that explosion. There was one we called Weather Wizard; he could manipulate the weather. Make it do whatever he wanted," she explains, her voice also low to match his, because he's right. Discreet is much better in this instance. They don't know the other people in the group very well and they don't know how this kind of information might be taken if overheard. "I know someone who can run at a speed close to Mach 3," she adds. "People who can look through different timelines and see into the future. Make everything they touch decay into dust...instantly freeze something or turn rain into snow...those are metahumans." She slips in her own abilities at the end casually, testing the waters there. If he doesn't know that it's her that can do it, maybe she can get an honest reaction, if she gets a reaction at all.

[detia]

"Like superheroes?"

He can't help the slight excitement in his voice as he asks. Superheroes have always been icons to him, role models he could never match, being a normal, boring human himself.

"That's... awesome. We have nothing like this back home. Just you know, comic books. But if we have anyone like this with us here, in Quarantine, that would be so useful."

Obviously, it would make Adam himself completely useless, but he's willing to try and deal with that, help however he can. Like Captain America would. Surely there's still stuff he can do, even with superheroes around.

"Damn. We have aliens, back home, but nothing as cool as superpowers."

[naz]

Surprise registers on Caitlin's face at his response. It's interesting to her that his conclusion to jump to is superheroes when usually people she knows jump to vigilantes or just straight up bad guys. But Adam, for whatever reason, doesn't take that avenue; he opts for the positive side instead. That's...kind of a nice change, actually and, once she has a few seconds to get over the initial surprise, Caitlin smiles, nodding.

"Yeah, like superheroes, that's a good way to put it. I mean, of course, not all of them are good guys," she replies, gently reproaching because...well. Most of them she's encountered haven't been...and Killer Frost most definitely isn't, if she ever gets a chance to take hold and put Caitlin in the back seat.

Her fingers move to the pendant around her neck when he mentions superpowers being cool. He's almost definitely missed the double entendre, but Caitlin hasn't and it makes her smile falter. "We had those, too, once. Aliens, I mean. But a bunch of them teamed up and took care of it. Um, a bunch of the metahumans," she corrects herself, intentionally lumping Supergirl in with that rather than differentiating because in Caitlin's experience, now, aliens are bad. ...except Supergirl. Obviously. "I think it could be useful to have people like that here, but it could also be bad...you have to be careful what you wish for," she points out, fingering the pendant again before forcing her hand to drop away back to her side.