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Test Drive
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.
Applications will open Saturday, September 15 until Saturday, September 22
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.
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.
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.
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)
mistakes!
And there is a protective streak in her for mortals that she has never managed to quash no matter how much grief it has brought her. Seeing him unresponsive, Circe reaches out and down to grab him by his shirt and drag him backwards if possible. She says sharply, loudly, in case it helps, "Move if you don't wish to meet the same fate! Fear only makes it sweeter for them."
She can't know that for sure, but given her own experience with gods and monsters, it seems impossible not to be true.
no subject
But the voice -- the voice sounded human and normal, as in, it has expression and tone, sharpness. Glasses found, he pushes them onto his face (upside down at first, then scrambling for right side up), blinking up at the stranger from where he's still sprawled on the floor, features pale. A woman is there, and the fresh experience immediately flows from his mouth, even though she seems quite aware of what happened, herself.
"I--- Something killed someone and---right there," he rambles; he can't bear to look at the door again, where the mutilated excuse for a cadaver rests. The teenager moves backwards more, away from that door, until his back hits a wall and he wraps his arms around his knees, trembling.
no subject
Do not linger among death-power if one wishes to remain alive. That seems sensible enough to her. But not to all these earnest, desperate mortals, it seems. Circe cannot fault them when they have so little time with which to be patient.
She has seen worse, caused worse herself unquestionably, than that one mutilated corpse; Circe flicks it a stone-faced disinterested glance before facing Shinichi again. It relents to something softer as he draws away and crouches, shaking, away from the mist. Circe comes with him, kneels on the hard floor with both knees -- someone used to skirts -- and goes on, "I did see. It is the way of monsters, to inspire terror. You need not feel ashamed for it. But you must steel yourself. It will not be the last gruesome thing we see."
The warning passes as kindness, in her world. She silently curses herself a fool for it. Does she never learn? Must she keep this same sorry song? This boy could be as horrid as all the rest that have come to Aeaea over the years. There is no reason to think he is one of the few exceptions she encounters. But as always, her soul curdles to imagine cruelty to someone already wracked with fear, who has done nothing she's seen to deserve it. That has always been a great failing of hers.
no subject
But it's all so new to him still. He'd always been an average human, living an average life, until he suddenly wasn't anymore, only a few fresh months ago. Now he believes in the presence of other, in-explainable, alien things -- but that doesn't make it any easier to see a human life torn to shreds. That concept still shakes him to the core; it's wrong, so wrong. He can only tremble like that, until the woman stoops down close, his eyes drawing to her. He's not so stuck that he can't understand what she's saying; her quick interference has successfully torn him from his stunned state.
'But you must steel yourself. It will not be the last gruesome thing we see.'
He blinks widened eyes at her, a million questions fluttering through his mind -- and his restless hand's, which remains clenching the leg of his pants in a manner that doesn't seem out of the ordinary, given his reaction to the whole situation -- but it's not his own doing.
"Th-thank you," The gratitude isn't lost despite everything; his open heart always speaks for itself. "For helping me away from it--" His eyes sweep back to the glass. Whatever's... out there, is still out there, and he owes this woman for getting him the hell away from it. And the body. Even now his own is trying to remove itself from where the mutilated thing rests outside even more, leaning to the side somewhat as if by natural aversion.
"Do you know w-what's out there? What...did that?"
no subject
That is beside the point. She needs to stay focused. Circe shakes her head. "Not in detail, but I have seen, and faced, and survived monsters before. I am sure it is that like. The mist itself will unroot you from this plane, I think.
"We must stay inside. Especially those of us not suited to arms and fighting." She invites a lighter tone with a wry smile, self-deprecating.
no subject
"That..that sounds like a great idea to me." Shinichi offers a little smile of his own, just as self-deprecating in its own way -- there is no sense of pride or ego to be found in the particular young man. He realistically knows he's helpless in situations like these. Even moreso now. He hesitates for a moment, unsure what he should divulge or alternatively, explore. But there's some common ground between them, and he's wondering just how common it is. Anything to make sense of any of this... The question is tentative when asked.
"The monsters you've seen... what are they like?"
no subject
But none become monsters like family, as Scylla-- a nymph, and so related to her somehow down the family tree-- and her nephew, the Minotaur. Pasiphaë's grotesque son, who Circe had helped deliver into this world.
"Boundless with hunger," she says finally. There is a quiet sadness to her accounting, more than horror, although there is that, too. "Crude, uncaring of humans, who are flesh and blood set before them to feast on. Their minds are made flat with simplicity. If ever they had complexity to them, before they became what they are-- if there was a before-- it is lost with the hunger. I have tried, but there is nothing there to save."
I'm sorry for the slowness!
So he hesitates only for a brief moment before he nods with a slight swallow. "I've faced monsters too." Survived, though some days he's not sure if that's enough. "....I've killed them before. It's not that I wanted to. I.. I don't want to kill anything." Why he's admitting this is beyond him; it comes out of its own accord, almost. It's some thing he's had to hide from everyone around him for a few months' now -- so many secrets. How many secrets can one person carry before they demand release?
"But I can't do anything like that now." Shinichi glances downwards to his lap where his hands are draped; he's helpless without his own parasite's abilities. "All I can do is run from them." At least he's not alone about that, now. He looks back up to the mysterious woman. All this talk of monsters.. his own humanity pushes insistently forwards, seeking connection. "What is your name?"
doesn't bother me at all, I was a bit absentee this week myself :)
Heroes tend not to apologize for those they kill, that is for certain. But it makes Shinichi more sympathetic to her, that he does feel regret. Circe knows that feeling too well.
"I am called Circe," she replies steadily, getting back up to her feet from where she had been kneeling before him. "And you? Come away now; we won't be doing any killing today, so there is no need to speculate, or to give them an easy target."
Circe drawn up to her full height is not an impressive figure. Her voice and form are so like a mortal's, she'd once been mocked endlessly by her mother and siblings for it: the harshness of her voice, the plainness of her features. But she has found it's served her extremely well with mortals, and in any case, she loathes to inspire fear in those that don't deserve it. She is just an unremarkable woman with messy auburn hair and strangely gold-light eyes, the one thing she'd taken true from her father, the sun.
no subject
"I'm Shinichi Izumi," he replies, blinking around now that he's stood upright again. He's hardly an impressive figure of his own, either -- not that compared to a goddess he would be, anyway. He's just an average boy, a little taller for his age, demeanour shy and awkward, not knowing where to put his hands, hovering them over his jacket pockets and then just letting them fall by his sides.
Though of course, he has more than one reason for his restless hands. Migi has quietly been listening and assessing, and he too has studied myths and lore, but being what he is, he's retained so much more of it than a human ever could. And his kind aren't restricted to human denial of what isn't in front of their faces in black and white. If they've been transported back in time to some foreign location, to a place with creatures lurking in shadow and fog, why couldn't this woman be the goddess herself? He fidgets, having just enough strength in him to flex his fingers outwards as Shinichi draws beside her, brushing the woman's arm with them.
And it tells him nothing. He's unable to determine any of the usual information from his sensory capabilities. Whether she's a normal human or not, she doesn't read like anything to him. That's.. both interesting and unsettling... And of course there's Shinichi instantly shoving his hand into his pocket, mouth opening in surprise.
"I'm sorry--" It's helped bring him out of his funk at least, back to his awkward self, as he dips his head apologetically and starts moving forwards away from that glass and what lies on the other side of it.
no subject
The brush of her arm stills her for a moment, but it seems innocuous, perhaps the instinctive reaching out of a creature feeling their possible imminent death. Circe has encountered many young men, the few people who do visit her isle being sailors and brigands, and she has learned to distinguish between the immoral and the lost.
"Never mind it," she instructs, sweeping ahead toward the wide, open hall of the main mall walkway. "There is something you might help me with, Shinichi, if you wish to take your mind off such things as monsters and mists. I am tragically unfamiliar with this sort of marketplace, and could use a guide."
Goddess or not, she certainly can't hide she's not from this time. Sometimes to keep one secret you must give up another. Circe knows that game.
no subject
Shinichi turns his head to look at her as he follows, tongue pushing the roof of his mouth, questions lingering... but subdued, for the moment. There's still danger around them, still unknowns, and securing safety for the both of them takes precedence. Weak as he may be to threats of monsters, when someone else is in need, there's no questioning stepping in to assist; it runs deeply in him.
"I can help you," he agrees at once, still timidly drawn into himself and looking nervously around for any sight of danger -- but he means it genuinely. "Have you run into any of the other people around here? There's something... something wrong with them. I think we should avoid them." Both of his hands are stuffed into his coat pockets now, but he manages to relax his shoulders a bit as he walks beside the other. At least there are two of them now, and simply not being on his own in this nightmare is a strength gained. "I haven't been upstairs.. We could head up there and see if there's anything we can find out?"
no subject
It is certainly easier to occupy herself with another person to converse with. Very different from the empty, endless stretch of years before her that she had left behind on Aeaea.
"They have been mind-altered, I think," she returns in a steady voice. "I have seen it before, although this may not be quite the like. With sufficient power and resources, it is possible to form minds to a... more useful shape. It is unlikely they will be of any benefit to us. I had thought to search for natural ingredients, plants or rocks and so on, of local significance, to see if I could reverse it.
"I am a witch. Although you are right, I have not yet been to the next floor."
Being a witch is no tell that she is divine. Many mortals may be witches, if they have the temperament for it and the patience for the grinding, grueling work required. It is not, however, something everyone is positively disposed to, and although Circe has the same unflappable composed face as ever, inwardly she is a bit uncertain this will be well-received.
no subject
If he were to spend more time thinking on it, Shinichi would realise that on a subconscious level he has already attached himself to the woman -- that if she were to have suggested they part ways instead, he would have no doubt pleaded not to do so, perhaps like a child might. He's grown used to dealing with things on his own for awhile now, hiding those secrets of his from his friends and family, but just because he has grown used to it doesn't mean it's become natural for him. His heart is a soft and timid one; it seeks warmth and comfort and guidance from others.
And here in this place, where he can't help feeling something like a lost child, where he misses his father and his mother, whom he is especially close with, Circe's mere presence feels like a safe candle to him. A glow, flickering reliably, even as they discuss such frightening business.
"Mind-altered.." A beat, hesitation, before he dips his head and speaks quietly, divulging more details of his own. "Where I'm from, there are people sort of like that. Um.. their minds have been stolen? Taken over by something.. alien. They act like that, like people but.. not." Is there anything more unsettling than a face that is human hiding something inhuman beneath? The eyes are what really betrays it, he thinks.
A witch.
Shinichi can't hide the surprise that draws a soft sound from him, not a gasp per-say but more a sharp intake of breath. His familiarity with the term is mostly limited to cackles and spellbooks, the stereotypical ideas learned from stories and media. There's much more history behind it that Migi is probably familiar with, interested by, but Shinichi has always stayed away from seeking out to study "darker" (at least, by his perception) things.
There's no disbelief in him, however. He has no thought to question whether she's telling the truth; he accepts that she is. His brain naturally accepts things like that now, for the alien thing that slipped into him has widened his mind, continues to widen it even. And somewhere in him, there's an odd curiosity blossoming that counteracts his initial reaction to feel trepidation. So his answer is an odd blend of the two, of curious and afraid (alien and human) -- voice quivering around the edges, but still polite even as he keeps his eyes forwards for a moment, unsure how to look over at the woman after this knowledge.
"What kind of witch are you...?"
no subject
Although not a mother yet, nor planning on being one at this point in her life, Circe had raised her younger brother from infancy out of sheer sweet sentiment for him. There is a deep nurturing streak to her worn thin by centuries of cruelty and dismissal, but beneath the veneer she's built over the surface, her compassion is a steady thrum she's never managed to quash. And it's always been more obvious than she would've liked-- an obvious, exploitable weakness.
On occasion, it has worked to her advantage. She can be as a spider waiting for her prey to fall into her nest, her innocent, warm demeanor fooling many; or she can wield it as the truth, more honestly protective.
She listens while walking at a slow, steady pace, eyes glancing sidelong to track him as she takes in his words. Circe wishes she could find surprise at his admission that there are people taken over by something alien, but it seems wholly within the realm of possibility, even if she is without immediate explanation as to potential causes.
This reaction to her confession is better than she might've expected. Fear is only appropriate. Sometimes she relies on that fear, and sometimes she feels sickly with the evidence of how evil gods and men can be, that they expect no better from her. Still, she can't help a flicker of amusement, out of place as it is, at the question. It's just so naive. So sheltered. Once she had been the same, ignorant of her own power, or even that it could exist in the first place.
"What kind? There are not kinds. It is like a sword, or a brush. You may ask a warrior or an artist what kind he is, but it is what he makes with his implement that you are truly concerned with. For my part, my talents lie elsewhere than what is done here." Circe nods her head toward the shops around them, and their brainwashed staff. "To change minds like this, it requires a belief that they are yours to change. Frankly, I lack the presumption. And the mist... does not seem like a witch's work, to me."
Deliberately, she keeps what her actual skills are unstated. Kind, compassionate, too earthly to be a good goddess, that may be. Stupid-- she has learned not to be. Through hard experience.
no subject
The teenager's mind is working swiftly, it almost hurts -- perhaps that's Migi working his own mind too; sometimes it feels that there isn't room for both of them in here. He wants to openly confer with the alien, to hear what he has to say about this, but of course he can't. His hand does take its own initiative, peeking from his jacket pocket and he doesn't stop it this time, fingers curving over the edge of the pocket in a way that's unnatural, but doesn't necessarily draw attention to itself.
They both listen as Circe speaks, both enchanted (an appropriate word, considering their company) -- even if the enchantment rides on tension now. Shinichi's absorbing each word almost painfully, as if waiting for a physical sting to accompany each. Like a timid animal who hasn't been able to rest for awhile, anxious.
But he isn't excusing himself away, and there's no physical aversion. It's all just a mental wariness.
Shinichi's heart is a ridiculously loyal thing, skewing the definition of loyalty into something that he can't really explain anymore. There's loyalty to strangers who offer simple kindness. There's loyalty to a witch who saved him. He's loyal to anything that seems or acts human, because he's desperately clinging to the concept of humanity.
"Are you dangerous?"
It's childish-sounding coming from his own mouth. Not only for the question itself, but the fact he asks her such a thing outright to begin with. But it's not with a pressing tone; there's no demand behind it, no force. He's asking almost as though asking for her opinion on the matter, still nervous, but still giving her a certain degree of his trust.