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

[squadgoals]

[It hadn't been immediately noticeable—she'd been eating her own popcorn too, after all, albeit decidedly quieter—it's during the first break in the music, with a kernel halfway to her lips, that she starts to hear it.

And can't stop hearing it.

Every irritating little gobble and chew and lipsmack, the open-mouthed mastication, the satisfied sigh after every mouthful—it's a never-ending orchestra of teeth, jaws, and lips, slathered with saliva.

She holds out for a genuinely admirable length of time—long after the patrons to his immediate right get up and move, making disgusted noises. No, it's not until nearly the climax of the movie that she finally snaps during one particularly offense snarf, and spits out:]

I'm sorry, but could you possibly keep it down? [beat;] Please.

[If a polite request could come wrapped around a knife, this was it.]

[freightcars]

It's hard to say who looks more surprised, Shuri or the man in the Dippin' Dots visor holding an ice cream scooper in a metal fist. His lips part the second she starts talking, and they're followed quickly by a furrowing of his brow when she starts grinning at him instead of talking.

"Um-" he starts, searching for which path to take to even begin words-making at this whole thing. Before he can really manage starting off on a good foot, though, a familiar twisting in his gut compels him to act, and a scowl takes over his features as he leans over toward a nearby freezer. Scoop gets plunged into a random bucket of ice cream balls, they're slopped into a cup, and he thumps it unhappily onto the counter before her. Punctuating the whole thing is his frustrated answer of, "I have no damn clue."

But hey, enjoy your ice cream.

[theseuschip]

Simon drums his fingers on the armrests, clenching and unclenching fists, trying to offload the anxious wrongness in which the Power Suit is, frankly, not at all an improvement over the first one. He gives her the sidiest incandescent side-eye. “That’s easy for you to say,” he retorts, because here it fucking comes, “you got the human body.”

This is a totally emotionally transparent excuse for a segue, and the least productive thing they could possibly be talking about, not that he cares any more than usual. The look Catherine gives him is still grounding, and he slumps back in his seat, like a marionette with its strings cut, in something like acceptance. After all that, Simon still trusts her implicitly - when she says they’re safe; when she says she knows where to go; when she says there are no quests on the robot-afterlife bounty board right now.

[riskierbusiness]

Nancy giggles. The touch tickles, or she's so hyped up, it's causing her to be ticklish. She's not sure which. Softly, she brushes it away, then scratches.

"We do? I mean," at least Airy clarifies. "I'm not," she's not what? Nancy has no idea what is up with her right now, but she knows one thing.

"I'm Nancy."

[demonicbeauty]

Ariadne did her best to track the voice. She found that most humanoids preferred to make casual eye contact, during conversation. Of course, that was a little complicated when the humanoid in question had no visible eyes. But Ariadne was nothing, if not polite.

"Nancy's your name?" she asked. It seemed like a reasonable assumption. But there was possible there was a nationality or species called 'Nancy' that she'd never heard of.

She'd been learning a lot of new words lately. Like ketchup and nickles and American Express. Although she still wasn't sure about that last one.

What was and American? And what made it move so fast?

Re: A-OK!!

[majormalfunction]

[Really is that even a question that has to be asked]

Are you?

Re: Same here!!

[mobilityassistance]

Currently, I do not have access to any of them. [Shouldn't that have been obvious?] I seem to have been forcibly removed from them.

[Rude, honestly. How do organics even stand it?]

[officerzeppelin]

Dean considered that for a moment, nodding. Yeah, there had been lots of times he'd considered cutting his brother loose. It'd never stick, of course, because... well, because. But he identified with the doctor in any case. Family was all he had, but sometimes it drove him crazy.

Not crazy-enough-to-need-a-shrink crazy, but crazy.

"But it's good, y'know?" He shrugged, settling back into the seat and looking up at the screen. "You can be yourself around your brother."

[156]

"Unless, of course, you're undercover." You know, he wasn't saying how Dean should do his job or anything like that, but just as a matter of principal, he thought he ought to point that out.

It's okay, I dropped off the face of the planet too.

[symbioticbeat]

"Eh." Gwen shrugs even though Pearl won't be able to hear it. "They can eat it, there's just no nutritional value and their stomach isn't going to be happy. Guess it could be worse, depending on the glue." She's never tried it herself, though given her food of choice is corn dogs one might say her eating habits aren't that much better.

She hasn't heard about the church yet, so that's a good thing to know, but how is food anyone's least concern? This woman has to be eating something or she wouldn't sound this good after so many days. That's something she'll have to focus on later. "Seems like everyone's stuck - at least those who haven't been lost to the fog. I don't know if anyone's managed to get through it.

"As for the climate... I don't even know where this region is, so I can't say if it's normal or not." She's behind on her lies. Being forced to be untruthful in serious conversations is the pits.

[officerzeppelin]

Dean chuckled, nodding. "Right." And even then, they were themselves. When they were kids, they'd tried to make one another laugh when "undercover" (as long as Dad wasn't around). It was stupid and dangerous, but they were young enough not to care. For some of it, at least.

"You're an all right guy, Dr. Crane." Nothing particular made Dean say it, but it was probably true that the good doctor had made Dean feel a feeling, so he got kind of shmoopy about it and displaced his positive sentimental feelings onto Niles. Or something.

[keephimtalking]

[ The parade of gruesome munching noises rolls to an abrupt halt. The young man is frozen with a handful of popcorn shoved halfway into his mouth and he blinks owlishly at his neighbor for a second before meekly offering: ]

Shorreh.

[ Spoken, of course, around the mass of half-chewed popcorn still in his mouth, resulting in several spit covered kernels flying off into the darkness between the seats. ]

[avengeme]

Coulson has his own trust issues that could compare but, it is true he's more trusting than most spies though. He finishes the twinkie, crumples up the wrapper, and tosses it behind him.

He slides his hand down the page. He's on the forewords, and more specifically the printing date.

"Whoever's running this. The simulation's accurate. Less terrible than the time we unthawed Cap."

[sanephiroth]

Sigh. Humans and their self preservation instincts. Sephiroth turned to observe alongside him though before he could respond to that first reaction, the second left him staring incredulously at Wade.

Then distastefully added, "you're an idiot."

[sanephiroth]

"Let them be entertained before I find them and kill them by my hands," he answered. The smugness toned down just a tad as he found himself getting hit a few times - the pain sharp and intense and almost unheard of till recently. His body wasn't reacting as quickly as he was used to and his eyes, while sharp, were missing some of the quick movements of the rod.

In the end he had to dodge as much as he attacked. He noted the scattered items on the ground, stepping around them and ignoring the pain when he stepped on them. He had made a new decision to disarm Ignis first so he worked towards grabbing that rod, at risk of being hit, to try and twist it out of his hands.

[156]

It wouldn't be the diagnosis that Niles would make, but if asked, he would be forced to admit that some of his own positive sentimental feelings were potentially being displaced on Winchester, too, if his own schmoopiness was taken into account.

He smiles genuinely, honestly intrigued by the sharp mind he'd encountered by chance (or as close to change as he can imagine considering how fabricated this experience was said to be).

"You know, I appreciate you saying that very much, thank you. The feeling's mutual, Dean." He leans in a little, an excited little smile on his face. "Honestly, I should be thanking you. You've proven to be quite the guide. Should I ever use my new knowledge of Peter Parker and Spider-Man, I'll be sure to credit you."

[dyeordie]

She lets her eyes drift and settle on the wrapper, watches as it tries to unravel itself from that unnatural crumbled state.

"It does seem impressively detailed," she offers, not unwilling to corroborate the observation. "But accurate to what? A specific place?" Natasha asks. Generic details could be impressive, but being beholden to nothing, it carried little value beyond the obvious prop value.

[outwear]

Hard to say, right? It's a big place and what's happening outside doesn't exactly give us a lot of clues.

[ But good call. Not that Sam's going to admit it, but he feels a little bit called out. ]

[middlechilde]

[She nips her lower lip a moment, debating the next question very carefully. It's a complete Masquerade breach. But she's not sure the Masquerade matters much, in light of the circumstances.]

What if...bullets won't hurt it?

[avengeme]

"Time. No books after 2007 so far. Can't say I've been to this part of Maine though so I can't speak for this mall's accuracy." He pauses, looking at her. "Isn't Maine the setting for that one guy's books?"

[generalstudies]

Tentacles? [So definitely something-]

[Well, okay, it could be a human with a quirk. All things considered, though, if his quirk were so dampened then no way would someone be able to manage anything so big and impressive. It was something inhuman in the world.]

Can they get in here? [If something like that came for him, he'd be done. No questions asked. The idea that right now he was just trusting they couldn't come in and murder him was sickening.]

[officerzeppelin]

Dean couldn't help but grin. The guy's misplaced enthusiasm was catching.

"Might be useful on Jeopardy." The Doc certainly seemed like a trivia game show winner. He assumed Niles' name would be written very neatly, and probably underlined.

[arkproject]

"It's not a human body," she retorts without delay, in a tight voice, as composed and professional as she can make it. Thankfully, she adds to herself. Being human again... Simon wants it more than Catherine can fully understand, but it seems like a whole new can of worms to her, like going backwards instead of forwards.

"I'm in what is most likely a simulated representation of my internal conception of a fully modeled android. Or the admin's conception of a fully modeled android. I honestly don't know." Catherine sounds a bit aggrieved herself, in fact, now that she has a chance to gripe to someone who doesn't need twenty minutes of background exposition about her gripes first. "If this is a simulated environment, it's an extremely good one, better even than I was hoping the ARK would be." Not that she'd know personally. "But if it is, you'd think we'd be presenting as our human selves, or-- at least that you would be. Unless you've more fully internalized yourself as the Power Suit than you think."

Also a possibility, although not one she thinks Simon will be eager to hear. It's at least constructive, if ultimately useless, speculation.

Sasuke Sarutobi | Sengoku Basara

[gatescostmoney]

A: Arrival: Scared Speechless

[ The instructions make little sense to Sasuke. He understands the words but the context, location names, the technology, most everything are completely foreign to him. And that is only part of the reason why he keeps towards the edges of the crowds, watching with steely eyes. Just... watching...

It's his role that Sasuke quickly learned to understand. He tried warning someone about going into the mist and started choking instead. He hadn't chosen them. A cold, thick substance filled his throat, his lungs. He felt like he was drowning, and he doubled over coughing and gasping for breath. His only relief was a mad dash away from the person and coughing up that dense shadowy substance out of his lungs. It's like his own darkness is trying to consume him from the inside out.

A ninja should be used to silence. However, this level of silence puts him at a strict disadvantage. He needs to gather information, but he can only communicate with one person. And... in a setting so wildly different from home, Sasuke feels vulnerable. So much is out of his reach. He would fully deny that he's scared... but there may be a little truth to it.

Sasuke plans to make that one person he can talk to count. He needs an ally. ]

B: Glitch: Greatest movie of all time

[ For something that's supposed to be torture, Sasuke is pretty unaffected. There's no immediate danger. This kind of darkness is a comforting setting. It's annoying being locked inside this space, but overall, it's not bad. Sasuke has never seen a movie. This technology is well beyond what he knows. He picks up some of the basics quickly, where the sound comes from, that the picture is made using light, that this is supposed to be like a play. (He gets that people are supposed to watch in silence; that plays well into hiding his handicap.)

There are questions Sasuke wants to ask about the technical aspects, but his role prevents him from doing so. Maybe he'll take a nap. What else can he do if he's not that interested in the story? ]

C: Choose your own adventure

[ OOC: Come up with your own prompt. ]

HERE FOR IT

[kiseijuu]

"Yes..! That's exactly what happened to me. None of it makes any sense... How could this possibly be 2007?" Shinichi frowns, glancing downwards again, brow knitting in confusion. The date is a fact he hadn't really been able to spend all too much energy thinking over, considering there were more pressing facts to pay attention to. Namely, the odd people wandering around like robots. Now that he's located a "normal" person and confirmed he's not the only one in this situation, there's some room to go over those other details.

So he nods to that plan of action -- continue exploring, finding more resources to make sense of it all -- before Ignis's words have a shudder rippling down his spine again. Just thinking about those people is.. eerie, to say the absolute least, but part of it is that their behaviour (how they're like people but not, robotically polite and lifeless just enough beneath the surface) is familiar to him. He's seen people like that, been attacked by them, unwillingly assisted Migi in... killing them. And while these mindless people seem quite different from the intelligent and cunning alien parasites back home, it's all Shinichi has to compare it to.

So there's the fear that flashes back across his face as Ignis describes them so aptly: how they feel false. That, that's exactly it, and has him feeling the need to hide again now that he's put himself out in the open. A false human.. that disturbing concept. Shinichi tenses and hunches his shoulders as if he wants to hide inside of himself. "They don't seem to be dangerous... and that makes them even more frightening. If they're not normal humans, and they aren't outwardly behaving dangerously, what do they want?" What unknown thing is going to happen? There's another shudder, and he draws even closer towards Ignis, his body willing him to start walking forwards.

"Should we.. maybe look for some sort of weapon?" That's not the sort of thing he'd generally think of, but without Migi able to protect him... he can't help but start thinking that way.