♥ August Test Drive Meme

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August Test Drive Meme
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As Achtom and Ohnir flow into each other, the skies are still gorgeously blue and dotted with high fluffy clouds that never seem to threaten rain - so long as the weather stays controlled. Businesses are picking back up, the natives starting to cater once again to flesh-bodied people with varied amounts of success. The VR cafes are featuring more helmets so even more people can play along with the ever expanding selection of games. Overall, it seems like Havenwell is quite the peaceful city.

But there are still some issues to be had...

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❥ PROMPT I: Where's the Pied Piper?

All Achtom, the residents have been dealing with things in characters' houses seemingly moving of their own volition to other parts of the house and going temporarily missing, returning chewed upon by the mice that have overtaken Havenwell. By the time the new wave of arrivals come, the worst of it is over, but there are still some pesky little temple familiars running about the city!

The noises at night aren't as terrible as they once had been, but the squeaking and chattering in the walls and ceiling is still noticeable. It's still difficult to sleep at night for all the noise throughout the long night hours. Trying to find the source is a surefire way to drive yourself mad, but it seems that sleeping in the same bed with another person makes it a little easier to bear, especially if you hold hands or touch throughout the night.

Pink and purple rodents of various sizes from panda mouse tiny to chihuahua-sized rats are still popping up all over the city. It seems the only place they aren't is where they're supposed to be - Ainea's temple - and that's a big problem. While many have been returned thanks to the offworlders' efforts, Ainea's temple priests are still out in the city, begging residents both robotic and flesh to peacefully and carefully capture the creatures and return them home to the temple. They pass out soft woven reed baskets to any who agree and thank all participants heartily for their help.

❥ PROMPT II: We Didn't Start This Fire

Throughout the month, pockets of the city experience magnificent dry lightning storms. Before each onset of the storm, an immense clap of thunder booms across the entire city like a siren and the natives hold their figurative breaths until the first strike rains down. A peal of lightning, searing hot, strikes the ground or hits the spires of nearby buildings, cracking stone and leaving nasty burn marks behind. Each storm is only 4 to 5 minutes in length before they suddenly disappear again, but in those few minutes chaos reigns. For anyone unlucky enough to get caught amid one of these storms, take cover! Residents throw open doors and push people inside, even shielding the offworlders with their own bodies if necessary to keep them from getting harmed.

When the lightning and its sonorous booms pass, residents scurry out to repair the damage. They'll be asking nearby offworlders to help as well with patching the stonework or removing broken debris. Most importantly, they put out a call for help in putting out fires that spring up after each storm. Their metal bodies can't withstand the heat for long without melting and the water is dangerous to their circuitry. After the fires are put out and the damage repaired, on occasion, residents will ask for the somber help of pulling a native robot unlucky enough to take a direct hit from the lightning to a local repair shop. Strangely, the natives don't seem sad when their friends and family can't be repaired, and instead start gathering up objects from home to take with them to the temples along with the bodies. When asked, they say it's to pray for a rebirth and go on their way.

❥ PROMPT III: Let's Play the Friend Connection

With all the craziness going on, some people might just want a distraction. A lot of Havenwell's natives certainly seem to think so. Despite everything, the Entertainment District is as bustling as ever and this month the offering is to participate with a friend or group of friends to play a game called: Friend Connection. Rather than the usual plug in and sit configuration, this time the VR cafes have been reorganized into 3 meter by 3 meter square pads with no chairs or furniture available. Players plug in or put their helmets on and they're instantly transported to a garish neon-lighted stage with multicolored spotlights that show a floating, legless robot with a rainbow bowtie and a magnificent mustache. The robot's LED face lights up into the approximation of the :D emote and then a disembodied voice comes from speakers overhead:

"Hail, well met, and welcome to the hottest game show around: Friend Connection! As the studio audience already knows, this game is simple! You and your new friends compete to complete more challenges than the other hidden team. The more fabulously you and your team completes each task, the more points you'll be awarded. At the end of the game, the team with the most tasks cleared and the highest point value will be declared the winners and take home some fabulous prizes. On today's team is..."

And the robotic host waves an arm to a scoreboard behind it, showing your names. The heading "Other Team" has ???? underneath it and a list of challenges is revealed along with a burst of applause. The list reads:

1. Play Twister until someone falls! The longer you go, the more points you win!
   
2. Help each other do a handstand! The Wheelbarrow is acceptable too.
   
3. Recreate your favorite scene from a romantic movie. Take, for example, That Scene from the hit movie, Skytanic! Or hum along to this song as you and your friend make some pottery together.
   
4. Create a complicated Best Friend Handshake consisting of more than 5 moves and do it together 3 times without messing up!
   
5. Answer trivia questions about each other and your worlds while holding hands and staring into each other's eyes. The more questions you can answer, the higher your points!
   
6. Do a trust fall into your friend's arms. The higher or further you fall, the more points you'll earn.
   
7. Play two truths and a lie with your friend. If you can guess correctly, you'll earn points for your team!

Are you ready, contestants? You have 20 minutes. Good luck!

At the end of the game, the characters are declared the winners by a slim and, naturally, exciting margin of just one point! And their fabulous prize......? The friendship they earned along the way! Congratulations, players! And don't worry, when the game ends, you'll be in the exact weird position you were last in as the helmets turn off. Hopefully you aren't still in those weird Twister positions because everyone can and has been able to see you. Yup, the entire time.

❥ PROMPT IV: Comic Logic

Although Achtom is waning and Ohnir beginning, Diacht's influence is still going strong. Throughout their day as they go about their daily routines, helping people out or trying to find their missing items, the natives stop looking at them and start looking above their heads. In fact, as characters meet one another, their attention may also be drawn vertically above their companion because floating above every offworlder's head is a faint white cloud. Whenever they move, the cloud moves too. Attempts to dispel it by magic or physical means does nothing and it seems like you can't touch it at all.

It's annoying isn't it? Or maybe you're feeling quite curious about this phenomenon? Or maybe it scares you? Whatever you're feeling or thinking, it shows up in that cloud clear as day. It's not every thought or feeling that shows and attempts to control what appears fails, but you're now broadcasting your innermost self to the world.

For a time at least. Smart characters might notice that after prolonged physical contact with another character, the cloud fades away and stays away for an undetermined amount of time. Sometimes it's an hour, sometimes it's a day, sometimes it's only 5 minutes, and then it begins to reform again. Whatever it is, it's here to stay, so good luck keeping your secret inner workings, well, secret.

❥ PROMPT V: Buddy System

With all the changes going on, it might be hard to be a new arrival to Havenwell. The natives understand! Sort of. When new arrivals begin to appear at the temples, receive the welcome speech, get their communicators and the simple map of the city, 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, "Here's your guide to Havenwell! It's dangerous to go alone, so be buddies!" 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!

---

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 September 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 August 30, 2019 at 10:00PM EST and our applications will run from September 2, 2019 to September 9, 2019 from 10:00PM EST to 10:00PM EST.

♥ Taken Characters ♥ Reservations ♥ Applications ♥

Comments

[carbungle]

You wanna learn about other worlds?

[Makes sense. Even he's a little curious, though maybe not so curious that he wants to go bury his nose in a library all day.]

[pinkmin]

[She nodded almost eagerly.]

I probably won't get to visit, so I can pretend. But if they don't have other ones, it would be good to learn about this one, since we are here.

[carbungle]

That's... a good idea, yeah.

[It's hard to imagine a place so digital and electronic having real books, but who knows. Maybe even robots like to have solid paper in hand sometimes. Not personally his thing, but who knows?

It makes him (and as a result, his cloud) think of Gladio again, sitting in the back of the Regalia with his nose always buried in a book. He didn't know how the guy did it.]

[pinkmin]

[It wasn't a thought that had been voiced just yet, but the whole digital everything had definitely been on her mind. As much as she'd prefer the heft of a real book in her hands, she wouldn't be terribly surprised if she found out they'd digitized everything and there were just tablets like the ones they had handed out to access them. It was easier, even if it felt... lonelier.

Maybe that feeling was what made her notice his cloud again. She watched it for a moment, and then lifted a hand to give a little point above her own head. Her own cloud hadn't popped back yet, but the motion was more for indication.]

Your cloud has a person. Does your friend read a lot?

[carbungle]

Huh?

[Oh, that again. It's easy to forget about - how often do you look above your own head? - but when he sees the contents he doesn't try to wave it away, just sighs in its direction.]

Yeah, he does. That's Gladio- we spent a lot of time in the car the last few months, and he was always reading something in the back. I think he packed more books than potions.

[pinkmin]

That's a bit silly.

[Books were good and excellent, but potions were very important, Gladio.]

Were you on a roadtrip?

[carbungle]

Yeah, kinda. I mean, it started out that way.

[It was meant to be a quick trip, originally- just a few days by car and then by boat, but life apparently had other, much more complicated plans.]

I'm not really sure what to call it now, but it's still a lot of driving.

[pinkmin]

[It started as a roadtrip and... became a different sort of roadtrip? Perhaps it was the shift between something that was meant to be carefree, but ended up becoming something more than intended. A few months did seem like an awfully long time.]

Yes... but you got to see a lot of your world that way, right? What's it like?

[carbungle]

More my country than the world, but it's the same idea. It's... big, I guess. That's the most impressive part about it. Every day we'd see something new, and there's still so much out there.

[To think that the world beyond his own land is many times bigger and would have just as much to see... it's daunting, but exciting, too.]

[pinkmin]

[Vianca nodded along. She'd turned a bit to give him more of her attention, more eager than she looked to hear more about his home.]

What kind of country is it? Do you have many sorts of biomes?

[carbungle]

Biomes? Kinda. It's mostly warm, temperature-wise, but there's tons of variety when it comes to the scenery. Lots of forests and rocky areas, mountains, some giant swamps where it rains all the time... then there's these big stretches of dusty deserts right next door. It was awesome to see all that nature, but it made traveling through it a huge pain.

[pinkmin]

Oh... Yes, it would be hard to prepare for all of them in one trip, wouldn't it. Did you see the big birds out there?

[There was a pause as Vianca's eyes got a bit big. It was one thing to see his thoughts when he was awake, but it felt a little rude to admit she'd been watching his dreams. Even if! She'd already told him he'd been dreaming!]

Um. There was a big bird. In your dream. [Here is the helpful cloud to show you the picture of a cloud with birb.]

[carbungle]

[His brow lifts as she works her way through it until his eyes at last widen in recognition. That one, he knows, and he doesn't seem to mind that she saw that particular dream.]

Yeah, those are chocobos! They're amazing. Huge, and fluffy, and the fastest way to get around if you don't have a car.

[pinkmin]

Ah!

[Her voice went up a notch in surprise, even if she hid it behind a tiny hand. That expression of hers was still mostly the same, but golly there were a lot of soft colored exclamation points overlaying that Chocograph. That was a name she remembered!]

Chocobo...! It looked very familiar. I have read about them before, I'm pretty certain.

[carbungle]

You read about them? Wait, did they exist on your world?

[It would be a strange coincidence if she ended up being from Eos, too.]

[pinkmin]

Did they...

[Vianca was vaguely sure they had been used at mascots somewhere in Final Destination. One of the other schools?]

It is possible, but I never met one. There were lots of things from lots of places on my world. Do they come in different colors where you are from?

[carbungle]

Oh, yeah. I mostly saw yellow ones, but they come in all kinds of colours, and we saw black ones out in the wild. Mine was blue.

[He can't help smiling, thinking of his usual rental partner. He'd had to say his goodbyes the night they'd planned to leave Caem, and it'd been surprisingly hard to do. She was a good girl.]

[pinkmin]

[Black and blue! Those seemed like uncommon colors. At any rate, Vianca decided his smile was a nice one, so they should obviously keep talking about bird.]

What was their name?

[carbungle]

Well... she wasn't really mine, we just rented them, so I didn't have the right to officially name her or anything. I liked to call her Captain, though. She was big on leading the pack.

[And she seemed to like it better than the name she'd been given, anyway, so he feels justified in this.]

[pinkmin]

I see, like a nickname.

[Though, wait, hang on. She blinked.]

Oh... I know your Chocobo's name, but you don't even know mine. [And here she'd gone and woken him up and was taking up so much of his time, too. Rude! Vianca looked just a little bit pinker for it.] My name is Vianca.

[carbungle]

Oh, right- same here. [What are interpersonal skills.] I'm Noctis.

[He isn't bothered about not getting her name before, at least.]

[pinkmin]

[Socializing was a mystery. These were so many more conversations than she was used to having.]

Noctis... [It was a soft refrain as she put it to memory.] From 'night'...?

[carbungle]

Oh, you know the language?

[He can't help his surprise. It's true that the naming conventions of his family are pretty well known, being public figures and all, but he wouldn't expect someone from another world to get it.]

You're not wrong, though.

[pinkmin]

[His surprise in turn stirred her own surprise, although it mostly materialized in a lift of her eyebrows.]

I was not sure if it would be the same.

[She held her hands up, pantomiming them as if she were opening them like a book. Were you ready for a nerd, Noctis. Were you. (No.)] There is an old language that birthed many others in a world attached to mine. When 'nocti' or 'noct' are part of a word, they usually denote its association with night. [She closed her hands together, and with it, the metaphorical book.] Like nocturnal.

Does yours work similarly?

[carbungle]

[Oh noooooo, a nerd... what a terrible fate he's fallen into.]

Sounds about right. I mean, I'm not an expert on it or anything, but I know that most of what we speak and write now stem from the old language. It's probably based on the language of the Astrals...?

[Just don't ask him to speak it. He could barely understand a word when a god the size of a mountain was bellowing it at him.]