♥ October 2019 TEST DRIVE MEME

[hugtopiamods]

October (Lasohm) Test Drive Meme
Premise ♥ Setting ♥ Rules ♥ FAQ ♥ Mod Contact

Havenwell is normally a beautiful city - all tall spires and pure white stone glistening with gold against a blue sky. Now, it's still quite lovely, but it's marred. The wall that surrounds the city has a large glimmering hole broken through the stone and the buildings are missing bits and pieces here and there. The city is still reeling from the aftermath of its siege when a new set of souls are drawn to its shore. Good luck, new arrivals; and please excuse all the dust.

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❥ PROMPT I: Buddy System

With all the changes and the fear of a secondary attack lingering, the natives are a lot more protective of their newest arrivals. When new characters begin to appear at the temples, they receive the welcome speech, get their communicators and the simple map of the city, and a warning to stay away from the walls. Then they get taken to the front of the temple by a helpful robotic priest. Rather than turn the newcomers loose right away, they pull someone seemingly at random off the street and push the two people together with a cheerful, "It's dangerous to go alone, so please show our newest resident around. Please be buddies!" They wait until they're certain the pair is going to be moving off together before going back inside.

They try to place a new arrival with one of those who previously arrived, but who can keep track of all that, right? Characters may find themselves thrown together with an actual veteran or with another new arrival who only came here a day or even just an hour before them! Good luck helping each other out, offworlders, and don't lose your buddy!

❥ PROMPT II: The Havenwell Archives

Lasohm is another month that belongs to Ohma and after such a vicious attack, a small group of citizens decide that it might be great for the offworlders to help with something important to the feline god. These citizens are marked with a sash with the sign of a quill on it, a decidedly antique symbol considering how technologically advanced the people are. They hand out fliers to any who will take them, offering a small amount of Dora in compensation to any who will help the Havenwell Archives repair, catalogue, and restore any books damaged by the attack.

The Archives is a large building in the south and its doors, which have been sealed shut until now, are slightly ajar, allowing people entry. Head to the Archives and you'll be greeted by one of a handful of robotic citizens, all wearing that quill-emblazoned sash, and directed to a small room where you and other offworlders are put to the task of reassembling history texts that have fallen into disrepair or reviewing work that earlier offworlders completed, fixing any glitches that might occur in the text. Most of the writing is illegible, but it seems that these books are important to the Archives for more than just the information contained within. As you work, you might notice that talking and sharing information about yourself or engaging in physical contact near these books with the other people in your room makes the text on your pages a little more legible, a little easier to read and understand, and easier to fix.

❥ PROMPT III: Virtual Research

After the attack, every part of the city is on repair duty and the means the Entertainment District as well. As new arrivals wander the city, they might be called into one of the numerous Virtual Reality cafes. These cafes vary in layout, but most have areas for the natives to plug directly into the machines and other areas which have older looking virtual reality helmets that allow flesh bodied people experience the games. For those who need assistance with their sensory inputs, basic options like audio descriptions of visual scenes, enhanced audio and descriptive speech, closed captions, and crude mobility chairs are available. A handful of cafes have other options like direct visual or audio cortex stimulation to simulate vision or hearing, or suspension tanks to allow simulated movement, but these are currently unavailable due to damage.

All of these facilities are, unfortunately, under repair. The direct plug-in systems are easier for the robot natives to fix because they can do the most important part of it - testing - by themselves. But for the helmets and other interface systems, they need your help. Naturally, they'll pay you for the work, but they need the offworlders to play the available games and record any areas where they find glitches. Playing with a partner increases your chances of finding and fixing any issues, so feel free to log in for free for once and test any of the following games:

• Big Bass Fishing
The beautiful lake has blue-green waters surrounded by forest and rocky, reedy shores. You and your companion are on a small single-motor fishing boat and you have fishing gear - two poles in the water. As the game starts up a read-out announces the objective: Catch the largest fish before the time limit ends. What's the time limit? ...Well, that's your first glitch because it reads as static. Might as well start fishing though, right? It doesn't take long to catch a few regular sized fish, nothing too exciting, and then? You get the big one - it bows your fishing rod nearly in half as you reel it up. The fish leaps into the air and you realize this is your next glitch because the fish hangs there - the size of a minivan - and yells, "BIG. BASS. FISHING. ATTACK." The fish slaps its fins and tails at the boat and now you and your fishing companion better fight this fish or you'll end up in the lake or worse.


• A (un)Familiar Experience
Jump into the life of the temple familiars and see life from their perspective! Choose the temple, any temple is fine, and be transformed into a fledgling rainbow dragon, a purple mouse, a white raven, or a blue feline. You're free to move about the virtual confines of the temples and, in fact, you can even interact with other familiars in their temples - who may be other players in this game. Play, climb, try to get your fledgling wings to fly, tumble about with the other mice, enjoy your simple life as an animal! --or you would if you weren't an insane size. Rather than being a small mouse, you're the size of a horse. That fledgling rainbow dragon? About the size of a fly. The building sizes are off, too - one might have door that's 30 feet tall, but a ceiling that's only 12. Everything else seems fine, but those sizes? Well, you better figure out how to get around that.


• Robot Crossing
Logging in with another character will net you a little farm and a variety of games to choose from:
1. Pick and harvest as many Aellyn vegetables and fruits as you can before the timer runs out! The more you pick, the better your score. Work together with your partner to clear the field in any way you can. Strangely, once you finish clearing a tree or a field row of their bounty, they seem to magically refill when you turn your back. Strangely, when the timer runs out? It flashes 00:00 and the game...doesn't? Stop? In fact, the fruits and vegetables just keep multiplying and multiplying and if you don't hurry up you might just get buried in them all!
   
2. With a partner, use the giant slingshot to launch comically large fruits into a garden patch of other colored fruits. Match a line of 3 or more similarly shaped fruits to clear it from the field. The more fruits you can clear, the higher your score - aka welcome to Fruit Crush. Stack lines of 6 or more to get shining clear diamond fruits that clear the entire row and snag yourself some bonus points. Or they should, but whenever you clear away a matching set, the fruits explode, sending fruit bits and juice everywhere - most notably on you and your partner. Still, the game is going on and it looks like it won't stop until you finish, so good thing it's all a computer game, right? Sure feels real though - reeeeeeally sticky.
   
3. You and your partner(s) are given a magical golden pumpkin and it's your job to grow it into the largest pumpkin possible. Why? There's a county fair of course and the largest pumpkin wins! But how do you grow this pumpkin? Well, for whatever reason? This pumpkin is already the size of a grizzly bear and it just won't stop growing! You and your partner better find a way to stop it from growing out of control or you might get (virtually) crushed! You could do a song and dance routine together to touch the pumpkin's soul to teach it moderation or calm its insane vegetable puberty. You could hold hands and share stories and entertain the pumpkin until it feels satisfied that it's grown enough. You could just hack and slash at it in an attempt to reduce its unwieldy bulk. The possibilities are endless and so is the pumpkin's growth, so you better hurry!

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Have fun however you like with the setting! Make a network post, make up other prompts based on the general setting, go wild. Havenwell is your oyster.

This TDM is for the November application round. If you have any questions, feel free to direct them to the FAQ or to the Mod Question thread below. The reservation round begins on October 30, 2019 at 10:00PM EST and our applications will run from November 2, 2019 to November 9, 2019 from 10:00PM EST to 10:00PM EST.

♥ Taken Characters ♥ Reservations ♥ Applications ♥

Comments

everyone wants to befriend somnus so much

[meridio]

[Turning back, Somnus' eyes flit down and linger on the ground before sliding back up to study the man's face. With the respectable distance between them, it's easy to notice a few things from a once-over. Was that narrowing of sharp eyes habitual, he wonders, or deliberate?]

Of what nature?

[unsunderworld]

[More observant than his delusionary incarnation, it seems. Not many people look at the ground - such are the things an Ascian is grateful for. He remains neutral, almost bored, in tone and expression.]

Spiderlike, not too large - at least actually came through the breach. Some manner of giant actually did the deed, and why it did not follow through is a question I would quite like the answer to myself.

[meridio]

[The man's faint boredom belies a certain persistence. Somnus looks in the direction of the large glimmering hole in the city wall.]

Have you seen what lies beyond the wall?

[unsunderworld]

Not personally, but a dear friend decided to poke her nose outside the breach. She's still recovering, as it seems the air beyond is quite caustic.

[meridio]

And it falls on us to fix it. Yet there is no guarantee that this world will sustain itself once we've served as a source for the gods.

[unsunderworld]

Oh, there's no guarantees about any of it. Though that is a new and unfortunate angle to take.

[Less unfortunate for him, with nowhere to go, but the hero and the Exarch would certainly not like it.

...Ironically enough, those words might bring Ardyn some measure of relief, were they from any other source.]

We've been rather more straightforwardly focused on whether the claims of how it helps the world are in the first place true.

[meridio]

[Far be it from him to refuse the gods of Havenwell. He, however, has gods of his own to serve in his world. That long term is finally coming to a close, and yet here he is.

But for as long as he's here, he'll do what he must. It's all that he can do. If only the proposed plan to gather people from other stars and use their tactility wasn't so flawed.]

Has prolonged contact effected any changes within the city?

[unsunderworld]

Not that I've noticed myself, though you might hear differently from the first group of arrivals. In either case, I'd imagine it to take more than a few months to undo the damage that already exists.

[A shrug.]

Most of the changes that have occurred have been what I've taken to calling incentives - temporary changes that are deeply unpleasant until you fulfill the will of the gods. Namely through some extended embrace or something of the like.

[meridio]

[The will of the gods. Of course.]

What kind of changes?

[unsunderworld]

At one point, there was a strange affliction that drained the city and hose within of color. More recently was a collective experience of a peculiar nightmare that gave all who experienced it quite horrific vertigo until they managed to land themselves in the embrace of another. I've also heard some disquieting rumors about Ainea's mice.

[All information of no great import, ultimately, that he's happy to share.]

[meridio]

[They're all rather familiar scenarios. But whence do they originate?]

Does a curse assail this city?

[unsunderworld]

Not to my knowledge, unless one should count the general state of the world. That it is near death is a thing I can concern through my own observations; it is whether our method of restoration is at all useful that I have my doubts about. It generates no kind of energy I can sense nor have even heard of.

[meridio]

[His eyes narrow. A dying world is one thing. What's been described to him, though, sounds rather like something else entirely.]

The energy that sustains a world differs. Even divine beings of another world would be hard-pressed to sense it.

[unsunderworld]

Perhaps so. But my senses have not failed me yet as regards those who originate from other worlds, and thus my suspicions remain.

[meridio]

You voice your doubts with ease. In the city over which the gods you suspect preside, no less.

[unsunderworld]

Well, what might they do, kill me?

[Not a concerning possibility, apparently.]

[meridio]

There are worse fates than death.

[And gods tend to have a way of realizing them.]

[unsunderworld]

Such as leaving someone in solitary confinement for two thousand years, Your Majesty?

[meridio]

[With those words, the meaning of the look from before suddenly becomes clear.

Somnus pauses to regard this man with an indecipherable expression, for even he can't begin to express the myriad emotions he feels where his brother (who is here) is concerned. Ultimately, he frowns before glancing away. Just so.

All the same, this isn't the first time that he's been approached thus.]

What is it that you mean to accomplish?

[Intimidation, perhaps? Get to the point.]

[unsunderworld]

I am not so naive as to think that the version of you in Ardyn's nightmares is anything but that - his worst fears wearing your face. I desired to see the reality of the man, and make my own judgement.

[The look he gives Somnus is openly measuring, now.]

And I must say, you are indeed brothers.

[meridio]

[Seldom has he heard that said since the day they started arguing in earnest. It's enough for Somnus to meet the man's calculating gaze. Moreover, reality is often disappointing.

Nightmares, he said. Of course Somnus would be the one to haunt them.]

On what do you base your judgment?

[unsunderworld]

The first time I met Ardyn, he too sought to advise me away from a path he saw as ending in nothing but pain.

[There's some slight fondness in his expression.]

In spite of all the pain that lay between him and the world... And that too is in common, the way you have both pulled away from the world. In pain you withdraw, instead of lashing out.

[meridio]

[His frown persists. He's beginning to form an image of his brother here, and it is a troubling one.]

There is more to that distance.

[unsunderworld]

Not exactly a denial, I notice.

[The smile grows into that of a politician in his element.]

You care enough to flinch. That is indication that you are least not a complete monster.

[meridio]

[Yet a monster still. Somnus doesn't deny that, either.]

I have no quarrel with you.

[The question hangs in the air: do you, me?]