♥ 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

[indelebilis]

[ Aera shakes her head at him. ]

That is not true! You are allowed to grieve, just like anyone else. I know you have feelings despite what you may want others to think.

[ She knows him better than the people here would. In a way, at least. ]

It isn't right. Especially if he is being kept in the dark... it isn't right at all. I will pray that he never leaves this place.

[meridio]

[ He prays that they all leave this place—his brother and Noctis, most of all. Only then will they be released from their suffering. Naturally, he and the young king must return as well. It will not please Aera to hear this, though, so he says nothing.

Similarly, he forfeited his right to voice his grief millennia ago.

Somnus' gaze drifts from Aera to the paper in front of him. The words have become a little clearer. ]

[indelebilis]

[ There's exactly nothing about this that pleases her at the moment, honestly. There's so much she wants to ask Somnus, there's so much she wants to say. She wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, she wants to do something but she can't bring herself to do anything of the such.

Talking about fate and Noctis is depressing. She already loves the boy as if he was her own, even though they've only met once. Just knowing that he is family of sorts... that's enough for her. ]

...Have you seen Ardyn yet?

[meridio]

[ At the mention of his brother, Somnus narrows his eyes. He hasn't, no. Yet others have uttered his name enough for him to know a few things. ]

It would be better if we were not to cross paths.

[indelebilis]

[ She winces again, unable to help herself. ]

I understand that way of thinking. He is, understandably, extremely upset.

[ To be fair, she's not happy with how Somnus locked his own brother up for two thousand years either. But it's not her place to scream at him or flail at him for what happened. She was dead when it all went down, and... well. That's Ardyn's place, not hers.

On that note: ]

...Do you not think that, perhaps, the time is now to try and repair your relationship with him?

[meridio]

[And, what, make it that much harder for his brother when it's inevitably time to return? Their relationship is over. Anger and sorrow are all that remain between them; understanding and reconciliation are beyond.

Somnus frowns.]

The time for that has long passed. Now we must restore this world.

[For Somnus, who hails from the far future, his mind is fixed on that point.]

[indelebilis]

So you will not even try?

[ The frown she wears deepens, and her brow furrows. ]

We are not talking about restoring this world right now. We are talking about repairing the relationship between brothers. This may be your only chance, Somnus.

[meridio]

[ His last chance was over thirty years ago. And he squandered it.

"You lost the right to hold a conversation on your own terms the moment you buried a blade in my back." ]

This is no chance.

[ This is a cruel purgatory, to keep his brother from his long-deserved rest. ]

[indelebilis]

How do you know? This is not home. There is always a chance.

[ She looks down again, fidgeting with her hands just a little. ]

I cannot make you do anything, the only thing I can do is offer a little bit of advice. And that is to not waste any time... time is very precious, you must know that as well as I do. If there's something you need to say to your brother... an apology, anything, now is the time to do so.

[meridio]

[ How does she know? She's been dead all these years.

The fault for that, too, lies with him.

Having said what he wanted those few decades ago, he knows now what he needs to say . . . provided that the conditions are right. Yet they seldom ever align themselves that way, and it's for this reason that he answers gruffly. ]

Your advice has been heeded.

[ With Aera, though—he finds that he doesn't know what it is that he wants to say. He's never had to think about it until now. Thus, he volunteers nothing more. ]

[indelebilis]

[ She heaves a soft sigh at his answer; years though it may have been, some things never change. Which is really unfortunate, because she'd been hopeful to have a somewhat civil relationship with Somnus moving forward. Had hoped that she'd be able to get the boys to see eye to eye and to at least patch things up enough. ]

I hope you realize that I am serious. This place is a second chance for all of us.

[meridio]

[ A second chance to enjoy what could be by their free will, away from the knowing gazes of the gods. Is this not a self-indulgent illusion? She suggests a fragrant balm that doesn't address the infection at its root. Her words are pretty, just like those of his brother's once were.

He wishes to say more, if not on this matter. He had not seen Aera in so long, and too much had gone unsaid. And yet, no words come as he bows his head in silence. ]