Test Drive

[uploadedmods]

TEST DRIVE 001


-TDM threads can be considered game canon if players involved agree & if it suits any roles you may decide to choose for the current plot.
-Any reserving player that does not submit an app by Saturday morning will be subject to challenging applicants.
-Participation in the Test Drive is worth a flat 10 points per month rather than per thread, and you must have a minimum of 5 comments in that month to qualify for it.
-This TDM is good for the duration of the Mist setting. A new TDM will go up before the next setting.

The NETWORK for this setting is a voice-only walkie talkie system that can be used to communicate between all locations. The default channel will be open to all walkie talkies, but characters can change to an unused channel for private conversation.
of note: There seems to be something strange about these walkie talkies, in that there is no static. The quality is disturbingly crystal clear, like the person you're speaking to is right next to you instead of miles away.

CONTENT WARNING: Some prompts contain gore, character death, and substance abuse.

Reserves will open on Saturday, September 8 until Saturday, September 15
Applications will open Saturday, September 15 until Saturday, September 22

General Prompts


The lights above you are a blindingly, pristine white. The walls around you curve up into the ceiling like the inside of an MRI machine. Your hands, feet, and midsection are strapped to a clinical table, and minutes seem to tick by, with no clear course for escape presenting itself to you.

The curved white space above you flickers with color, and a perfect square like a television screen expands before your eyes. It pans over what appears to be a town, something small and simply populated.

“Hello, and welcome to your first setting,” a neutrally cadenced feminine sounding voice begins, riding the line between human and machine. As she speaks, captions of the text type themselves in neat and perfect Arial font. “The location is loosely based off Bridgton, Maine, United States of America, Earth. The year is 2007. You have been selected to participate. Obedience ensures an enjoyable and immersive experience for our audience. If you have been granted a role, instructions will follow. Do not talk about the role. Do not attempt disobedience. If you have not been granted a role, your objective for this round is simple: survive.”

After that, the shackles may release promptly and allow your character to roam free. Or perhaps not — perhaps they've been given a role to play, and if so, further instructions will play out upon the screen. Once suitably briefed, characters will be released to their own devices. Beware the mist.

CHECK OUT THE CURRENT SETTING PAGE FOR DETAILS ABOUT THE LOCATION.

learn from the mistakes of others

A pair of unperturbed mall inhabitants decide to chance the mist. They're the first of a handful to trickle out the front doors, and they seem to get by just fine. About a minute ticks by, and they disappear completely into the dense fog that presses in from every direction. It's so anticlimactic that for a moment it almost seems stupid to feel uncomfortable by the sight of it.

Until precisely one half of a body is hurled abruptly and with great force from an indeterminate point in the obscurity. It's not a top half or a bottom half; no, it's a cleanly sliced left half, head to toe as though a neat line were cut down the middle. It slams into the transparent glass doors and crumples before them, still and obviously unmoving, slowly leaking.

After a few seconds, a dark tendril of something reaches out, curls around the jutting left ankle, and drags it with painstaking slowness back into the fog.

At least the rest of them probably made it, right?

Right?

Hopefully you weren't one of the others to follow their lead. If you were, that dark shape seems to be closing in awfully quick.

eff this, let's bounce

A pair of car keys can be found discarded or perhaps dropped in their owners' haste. Braving the mist when it's at its lightest and pressing the key fob will cause a car to beep politely, flashing lights to indicate its location in the fog. Take anyone willing to go with you and pile in. Try to get the hell out of dodge!

An excellent idea....

Within five miles of the car's journey the battery will die and the engine will stall. Consider yourselves effectively stranded and with no one but yourselves to blame. Perhaps help will come if you wait long enough? Hours, surely no more than a few days... Maybe you should consider braving the fog to get back? Five miles can feel like a hundred in conditions like these.

Either way, it seems like you're trapped in the car for about as long as R. Kelly got trapped in the closet during that one unfortunate CD.

radio chatter

Characters in the library and the church will be able to communicate via walkie talkie radio chatter immediately! Characters in the mall will not have this ability until later in the month, so any network style threads with a mall character will take place during Week Two of the October plot or later, after most people have already been fully introduced to the setting and given time to adapt.

Roles

Employee of the Month (Multiple)

Some characters will be printed wearing a designated kiosk uniform, their name sloppily stickered in slightly crooked letters onto a Dippin' Dots badge, or whatever store they may happen to be assigned to. The cool voice that introduces them to the mist will carry on to tell them that they'll be playing employee # _____ in this month's immersive experience. Their motivations and objectives are simple: go to work.

Except the role seems to be bugged, because they can never not go to work. If they leave the five or six foot radius of their designated post they'll begin to experience consequences, which worsen in severity based on distance and duration. The role doesn't end at mall closing, it doesn't end on Saturdays, it simply doesn't end. Hopefully next month's code push will have a bug fix; we apologize for the inconvenience.

(If choosing to keep these threads as game canon, the role will wear off within the first in-game week)

Aggravated Assault

Congratulations, participant! You will be playing the role of a CONVICTED FELON having recently been released on parole. Your motivation for this month's immersive experience is frustration. Having undergone hard time, you'll find that we have increased your aggression and temper characteristics, and lowered your inhibitions. Your objective is to find and begin an altercation with Snuff the Rooster, who will be playing the role of the person who turned you in, NARK. Your altercation must take place in a public space with witnesses, and may not stop until Snuff the Rooster is unconscious, evicted from the mall, or someone intervenes.

Thank you for your participation!

Consequences for not completing the objective in this role can be moderate to severe.

Snuff the Rooster

Congratulations, participant! You will be playing the role of NARK. Formerly a close friend and ally of CONVICTED FELON from Aggravated Assault, you were quick to roll on them during police questioning in exchange for your freedom. Your motivation is to turn over a new leaf, and get your shit together. Your objective is to survive the altercation.

Thank you for your participation!

The Lovers (Duo Role)

Congratulations, participant! You will be playing one half of a partnership role! Please seek out (character 2). Your motivation this round is love, and the need to protect your partner from threats both inside and outside of the mall. Your objectives is to greet your lover with a kiss and place them above all others. Do not act like strangers.
Consequences for not completing the objective in this role or failing to present a convincing couple can be mild to moderate.

Pathological

Congratulations, participant! You will be playing a background character in our current setting. Your motivation is to tell lies; at least one third of what you say must be unarguably untrue. Your objective is to keep these lies from being discovered as false.
Consequences for not complying with this role can vary from mild to severe, with the compulsion to tell larger and larger lies growing as time goes on.

Scared Speechless

Congratulations, participant! You will be playing a background character in our current setting. You may choose one person, stranger or otherwise. This is the only person you may communicate with, either verbally or through writing.
Consequences for not complying with this role are severe.

Glitches

potency error

Someone seems to have miscalculated the relative strength of intoxicants; all inhibition-altering substances seem to have been cranked up to eleven. One shot has the strength of three, though the taste seems to stay exactly the same. One or two drinks will quickly creep up on you. One of the joints found discarded in the bathroom trashcans will easily green you out. God forbid you've got anything stronger.

greatest movie of all time

Settling in to the relatively nice theater found at the far end of the mall is a decent way to make the time go by. The projectors are automated, and there are six different theaters that show flicks at scheduled times.

Except that every single one of them is showing Spider-Man 3. Every single one, every single showing, no matter what is advertised, becomes Spider-Man 3. That's how you know this is a horror game. Hope you didn't wander in by mistake because the doors will shut behind you and leave you to watch the entire showing. Please keep your feet off of the seats.

please replace toner cartridge

It seems there was an error in printing someone this first time around; everything came through but the visuals somehow. Your character is flesh and blood, fully formed, wearing tangible clothes even, but are completely invisible. Donning additional clothing causes it to clip out and then promptly disappear. Taking clothes off will cause them to reappear. Hopefully this gets fixed in the next lite patch.

(If choosing to keep these threads as game canon, the glitch will wear off within the first in-game week)

code bases by tricklet

Comments

[officerzeppelin]

Dean bore his brother’s embrace stoically. Maybe he didn’t know what he’d done to that hipster of yore, but he had a list a mile long of times he’d embarrassed his little brother. When the idiot finally stepped back, Dean grumbled, “What the hell is going on here?”

They'd both been in alternative realities before, and as usual, whatever was happening seemed outside their control. But just because they’d both been here and done this, it didn’t make the experience any more welcome. If anything, the fact he had to part-time it in a vegetable store while Sam didn’t, well this was just punishment on a scale that far surpassed Sam’s stupid grin.

[mightyboy]

Kacchan...

[Izuku is worrying his bottom lip, gaze on his friend. He didn't want to coddle him--the last thing Kacchan ever wanted was to be coddled--but Izuku was worried. All of the bravado was gone, which only made him think whatever Kacchan had seen out there was not good. Worse than he already thought it to be, with what it had done with those bodies.]

[He treads carefully.] I'm not going to pester you for information if you don't want to talk about it, but it would be helpful for my notes. Information is the only thing I'm able to work with right now, since I can't leave. Otherwise, you can just give me something else to work on while I'm here, if anything has caught your interest.

[middlechilde]

The social butterfly in Diana wanted to throw away everything else and ask about Italy. Was Peggy a Cainite? Diana tried to catch a glimpse of her aura, but her mind was too scattered to focus the way she usually did. A few fleeting colors spun around the air, but that didn't tell Diana enough.

But, she figured, there was no better way to build trust than over a mutual...experience, as it were.

"I...was USO in 1943," she said carefully. She cleared her throat. "Didn't exactly prepare me for..." she made a vague gesture, "...this."

Whatever this was.

Well, if nothing else, Diana had--as always, cast her lot almost immediately and without thinking. Selene would probably roll her eyes and remind her that she was too trusting. As if she needed reminding.

[majormalfunction]

This is going to cause a headache and there's nothing that she can do about it. Was being completely organic always such a huge inconvenience? She should just leave, this isn't accomplishing anything. She almost does leave, too, except the an stands up and promptly begins wobbling like he's about to fall over. Really? That bottle isn't that empty.

"Lightweight... Try not to fall over and hurt yourself."

[mightyboy]

[It takes a minute for Izuku to register the tone to Shinsou's voice--and why that tone was so important.]

I always call him that...

[Oh, he sure was going to hear about this later. No one in class 1-A ever questioned how Izuku addressed Ka--Bakugo--so it had escaped his mind that Shinsou wasn't in class 1-A and wasn't used to it.

It's just what he always called him, okay? He'd been Kacchan for ten years!]

[A sigh punctuates his thoughts.] At least if there's an exit that is letting in the mist, then there might be a way to seal it...but if there's not, we'll have to consider other options.

[shipyards]

What? [To all of that. There isn't much he really caught out of any of that, not knowing who Cher is or the Christian faith.]

Han. [He introduced himself with a nod.]

[middlechilde]

Han Solo.

[A name like that is far too memorable.]

I dig it.

[Sorry, Han. You landed the loopy hippie chick.]

I've never heard the name "Han" before. Just "Hans" or "Hansel." Where's it from?

[nonstopnarcissist]

"Howard? Yeah, I get that a lot." Genetics are wide and varied and while he does have traces of his mother for the most part? People look at Tony, they see the ghost of his father. No matter how hard he tries to not be him.

It's a thing, he's working on it, since he knows it's a thing.

"My Father made a pretty big impression on most people he met." Might as well get that tidbt out of the way as he pops the cover off the sensor, squinting at the insides. Work is easier than baggage about his parents. Infinitely so. "Extra eyes and hands are always appreciated. Especially when I know they're capable. Faster we get this done, the better for everyone else."

[mightyboy]

[Following along with their demands? Corruption? This man really despised working with anything--even if it was the parameters of this simulation they were given.

It's not like Izuku hadn't thought about how to get around things--after all, if this objective had an underlying complete criteria that was less than ideal, he would have to think a way around it--it wasn't following along as much as it was survival. They didn't have enough information to rage against these powers recklessly!

But would this man care?

Instead, Izuku plants his feet, arms still outstretched in front of the door. It was shaky, but there was grim determination on his face.] Are you planning on going back outside?

[He couldn't stop this man from believing what he was going to believe, but he wasn't going to let someone die meaninglessly.]

Movie!

[middlechilde]

Diana loved movies, truth be told. For one thing, they were her best bet at seeing the daylight world. For another, there was something entirely and unrealistically romantic about them. The swelling music. The glistening lips. The way that the characters might suddenly burst into song and dance, before ending up in a tangled embrace...

Admittedly, she'd never seen a superhero movie with a dance number before.

But it was kind of groovy. Or at least a halfway decent break. The mist and the monsters were a little bit...well. It was her life, really. The only difference was that she couldn't call her sisters for backup.

And she seemed to be the only Cainite in this trippy cage.

So the movie was more than welcome, and she was sitting in the lotus position on the floor of the theater when she glanced up at saw someone come in. She didn't want to bother him. Everyone hated that person who talked during the movies. But she'd missed the first half of the movie--and the two previous ones--so the plot began to make less and less sense. Finally, she turned over her shoulder and glanced at the stranger. "Hey, dude," she whispered, American accent, vaguely tinged with hints of Valley Girl, "who's the blond lady?"

[shipyards]

[He doesn't know either of those names either.]

Corellia.

[middlechilde]

Corellia? Where's that?

[Is it Canadian? She's never been to Canada.]

[uncrying]

Just the body that was out front. [There was a group of people trying to get out after all. Until that happened. Now no one was going near the doors.]

Employee of the century

[mightyboy]

[The fact that there were any other kiosks near him had escaped Izuku's notice--the fact that there were other workers even more so. He had been so used to tuning out any other human bodies as AI that his neighbor had gone completely unnoticed to him as he did a very calculated circling of his own kiosk. He's muttering to himself under his breath, walking about ten feet away from his station (a hair straightening boutique, ironically), before hurrying back to scribble something down on receipt paper.

The first call to his attention...doesn't catch his attention at all as he's writing notes. The second question though--his head shoots up, looking across the aisle to the ice cream kiosk.] Oh! Oh, uh! You're also here!

[Izuku's face is slightly red, wondering how long this guy was trying to get his attention, and how much longer he must have seen him muttering to himself. What a lame introduction.] Sorry, what did you say again?

Noctis Lucis Caelum | FFXV

[noctyourking]

arrival

[ There was no room for questions, there was no guidance other than that of survive and away he went. He didn’t know how long he had been standing there, staring down the long lane and off into the distance. All he knew was that he felt as if he’d just woken up and he was here; what looked like a sports store with the immediate items on display around him.

Noct picked a foot up and pushed it forward, after about ten steps he was beginning to feel a bit more aware of himself and his environment. It was cool in the store and there was a distant sound of music without words that played low to his ears. What he heard next was his own breathing and he took a few more steps further into (or was it out of) the center of the store. Thus far he hadn’t seen anyone here, rather, he moved forward toward the check out stand where he hoped to find someone to help him. ]

employee of the month

[ Employee of the month; which equated to King of The Dippin’ Dots, evidently. He told himself everything would be fine, so long as he played this role as expected. Which meant he scooped the ice cream and served it out to eager people with blank stares or those who shared the same expression he had worn when he had first woke up on that bed.

From there, he had come to this vendor in the mall as if he’d done it a hundred times before. Some innate push forward to this destination kept him on track. When he tried to deviate from it he suffered an unbearable pain that afflicted every inch of his skin and blurred his vision. Once he got back on the “path” he was free of that pain. So, in this, his role was to serve ice cream, evidently, to those in the mall. ]

learn from the mistakes of others

[ Noct was one of the foolish who went out of the mall, following a line of others. At first, when he was tightly sandwiched between two people, he thought they were the brave. Weathering the unknown to come back with answers. Five feet out into the mist and he was starting to feel confident, so had the person behind and in front of him as they both detached from walking close to him. His heart fluttered at the sudden chill that replaced their warm bodies as he faced the mist as an individual rather than a link to a tethered row of people. Another few feet and everyone started to go off in a different direction, and he too became mesmerized by the thickness of the mist. There was a smell to it, as well, something he was about to put a finger on before the smell changed vastly and a quick splash of warmth hit him across the left side of his body.

Behind him her heard the splat of something hitting what sounded like glass he surmised it was the door, the mall door. He slowly looked down to his hand which felt grainy and wet and through the light blue-grey of the mist he found himself clear on the color of the gore on his flesh. Red, speckled, blood with pieces of what looked like broken fragments of bone, clothing, and whatever else coated the left side of his body and he immediately began his ascend back toward the mall doors.

Through the mist he couldn’t see where it was he was going, but there was a red trail of horror to lead him back from where he’d come. Upon reaching the mall doors he found the item responsible of flight beside his body— the left half of a body, cut vertical like a gingerbread cookie. Save for, of course, everything sweet that came of the treat.

Yet, in the mist perhaps that’s how they were seen; a treat to be sliced, diced, and devoured?

Noct’s red-stained hand slammed flat against the door and if he had been pleading it was lost to his ears as nothing could be heard over the sound of his own heartbeat. Let me in.. let me in!! Whatever was happening out here he was ill-equipped to handle it. What he didn’t want to register, was that the left half of that body belonged to the person who was tight against his front on their journey out. Yet, his mind knew as a sinking threat echoed down his spine: you’re next in line … you’re next..

Gods, someone let him the hell in! ]

[shipyards]

Inner Rim of the Core Worlds of my galaxy.

[middlechilde]

Core...Worlds.

[That's right, Abel. His world has space travel, remember?

It's just such a...big prospect.]

Where's that in relation to Earth?

[shipyards]

People keep talking about Earth, but I've never heard of it. Not even on the Outer Rim.

[middlechilde]

Uh, I think it's in the Milky Way.

That's a galaxy, right?

[agereversal]

[A messy-haired human wandering in circles and muttering to himself is... well, honestly it's kind of nostalgic. But the boy isn't Kokonose, and it's foolish to make any judgements without data.

He waves the question off with a friendly smile. He's sitting on the counter now, right next to the cash register, letting his legs swing in front of him. How he's sitting, his scuffed black combat boots don't quite touch the floor.]

That's all right. I said, do you think there's a reason we aren't permitted to leave?

[majormalfunction]

Not helping. So they're just going to keep this up, are they? Fine.

"I really don't have time for this. Don't you have something important to be doing?" Like not hiding and doing whatever with the plants? Is everything about this damn place entirely ridiculous? Actually, never mind, she isn't entirely certain she wants the answer to that. Mostly because she's afraid the answer will be "yes."

"I don't have time for nonsense right now." Or ever. "Go find someone else to bother."

[shipyards]

Never heard of it. [He's in a galaxy far, far away.]

[middlechilde]

Oh.

[Someone once tried to explain the vastness of space to her but...well, Diana had been more interested in the stars in his eyes.

Now that had been one hell of a fling.

Still, okay, okay. It's possible that there is a galaxy that far, far away.]

Well, I mean, it doesn't matter that much. We're all here now.

[generalstudies]

[Shinso pulls back his hand and the black mess seems to be just as shocking to him. It didn't make him more nauseous so much as it instilled a real sense of wrongness in him. It wasn't gross, disgusting, or sickening. It was otherworldly. It was unnatural.]

[Something at the shop... He thinks back, not to confirm whether or not he ate something, but trying to remember exactly what. He was stuck there all day. He got hungry. He hadn't really wanted to go anywhere because, to be honest, he was still shaken by this whole new situation. So, now he's got to consider that he ate some sort of weird glitchy food that was fucking up his stomach.]

Y- yeah. [And, if he did it to himself, he can't really direct that anger anywhere but at himself.]

Yeah, I did, I was there all day! [And while it would be convenient if he didn't feel hunger in a simulation, it would also be unrealistic. And they can't have that.]

So, I had some coffee! Some... some scones or something. [he pushes his clean hand through his hair, staring down at the black ichor that was already starting to dry up and turn ashy in his hands, like slowly erasing the evidence.]

[majormalfunction]

That question earns an almost surprised look for a few long moments--it would be full on shock if she weren't trying hard not to give anything away. There's always some feeling in the back of her head that she's being watched and she's certainly not going to give that...whatever it is the pleasure of seeing her react to odd news.

"Yes. For a moment I thought I was in the maintenance bay." Until that voice had started talking about settings and roles and other thing she only half paid attention to. Right now she certainly wished it had been maintenance. For a lot of reasons.