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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.

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

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Dean immediately wondered if the money had been counterfeit. He frowned, puzzling it over. Was this little erudite weirdo a white-collar criminal of some sort? And could he be so bold and carefree to just disclose his crime to random strangers at a viewing of Spider-Man 3?

No, Dean figured he’d just misunderstood. And if by some slim chance he was right, he didn’t want to get pulled into anything. So he just nodded, and said, “Yeah, well, enjoy the movie, huh?”

Dean might have been surprised to find that Niles was quite the criminal, although in comparison, nothing like Winchester. But he'd managed a few B&Es, attempted to steal at least one street sign, purchased black market caviar with his brother — he wasn't beyond committing a crime, it seemed.

He turned to look at the screen and then back to Dean. "I thought I might wait until it begins again." And he'd assumed, based on Dean's earlier explanations, that he'd already seen the film. "But—" he said, nodding his head, "I should leave you to it, of course. It was good meeting you, Dean."

Dean nodded to Niles. “Nice meeting you too.” And it had been, if a little strange. But at least seventy-five percent of the people he met were a little odd. At least Niles had been nice enough.

Niles turned back to the movie. For about three minutes. Tap tap tap, his hands on his knees. He was thinking about just that very brief conversation, and try as he might, he couldn't bring himself let something go.

He turned back around a second time and looked at Dean in the shifting light of the movie. "When you said identity earlier— I'm curious where you were going with that."

This guy.

Dean didn’t know whether to shush him or laugh. So he took neither path and pointed up to the movie. Onscreen, Peter Parker was confronting Eddie Brock for the first time.

“See, Peter Parker is just a guy, a kid, you know? But he’s also a superhero. So he’s always dealing with, you know, two sides of himself. And that twerp -“ Dean gestured to Brock - “is basically just flip-side Peter Parker. And they fight.”

He nodded, satisfied with his succinct analysis.

Crane only turned briefly to get a quick read on the people on screen, but he seemed to have followed whatever it was Dean was trying to say.

"So the twerp, being the flip-side of Mr. Parker, isn't dealing with the two sides? Or only has one side to speak of?" he asked, wanting just a bit of clarification. Sure, he could just stick around and watch the movie, but he couldn't guarantee Dean would want to stick around that long, and he had no idea he was trapped in.= just yet.

"Not to anticipate your answer, but if what I think you're saying is true, I find it quite fascinating to think that's the direction they would go in the third installment." He thought it would have made more sense as a sequel, if anything, considering what he knows (admittedly little) of the franchise.

"All three have been about the same struggle. See, in the first one, Peter turns into Spider-Man, so he has to figure out how to use his powers and how to live his life. Plus, his uncle was killed, and he has to learn how to control his anger and be a good guy. 'With great power comes great responsibility' is the big thing in that one." So not really identity per se, but there was the whole thing with Willem Dafoe's character and actually talking to his alter-ego in the mirror, but Dean didn't want to go down that road.

"In the second one, though, he has to to keep the newspaper - he works for the newspaper as a photographer - showing the good side of him instead of painting him like a bad guy. Plus the actual bad guy in that one is kind of having the same problem - he was a good scientist that goes bad and tries to avenge his wife's death."

He shrugged, gesturing vaguely to the screen. "But pretty much anyone that wears a mask is struggling with identity. Except Batman." Batman knew who who he was.

Niles couldn't exactly vet any of this information for himself, but he thought it was interesting to hear Winchester's interpretation. So often — more than people realize even — they see themselves in the media they preferred to consume. Was it possible that Dean struggled with his own identity? He didn't look like he was wearing a mask, but then again, without something to compare against, Crane couldn't know for sure.

"In that case, I understand that Bruce Wayne is the mask," he added, thoughtfully. Pop culture characters and their various neuroses were a favorite topic of high school kids. In Niles' case, it was usually brought to him through the opinions and observations of budding armchair psychologists looking for a mentor's approval. For a grade, of course.

Crane looked thoughtful and then asked, "What is it that you do for a living, Dean? If you don't mind the imposition."

Out of habit, Dean withdrew the FBI badge du jour - that week, he was Special Agent Todd Stiles.

"Undercover special agent for the FBI," he remarked mildly as though that were a thing. Identity crisis indeed. "Don't tell anyone," he added.

"What about you?" A walking library in an over-sized suit? Dean was guessing Niles was a college professor.

Niles plucked up the identification to inspect it, and while he was a pretty trusting individual, he was very dubious about Winchester's credentials. If he was an undercover agent, special or otherwise, he wasn't doing a very good job. And furthermore, if he had that kind of authority, why hadn't he done something about this mall situation?

Passing back the ID, Crane tipped his head toward Dean as if to prove he was accepting this ruse. "I'm a psychiatrist, so you can imagine that I understand the importance of confidentiality, agent." He leaned in, lowered his voice. "Which name should I be using right now?"

Dean smiled, amused by Niles' unnecessary discretion.

"Just 'Dean' is fine. I'm not working a case at the moment." Well, other than the case of where-the-fuck-were-they and what-the-fuck-was-happening. But that was just life, and he didn't need to be undercover.

"So, uh, what's that like? Being a head doctor?" Dean guessed it was an interesting line of work, breaking the brain-pan code, even though he didn't personally understand the need some people had for having their heads shrunken and told that all they really wanted was to sleep with their mothers and kill their fathers.

It's not how Niles prefers to hear his profession to be referenced, but he'd gotten used to those sorts of bias as the years had passed and his career had grown in both footprint and notoriety. He took it with the same grace as the rest, folding his hands and patiently nodding.

"It's interesting. Every day is different and everyone thinks they're the first to ever encounter their issue," he said, somewhat amused at the idea of it. "All while trying to admit to themselves they've come to me to ensure they're not the only ones with that particular problem." A true exercise in keeping perspective.

Dean nodded. He'd made a similar assessment of humanity during his career - everyone thought they were special, but really, they were all just headed to the same Hell in the same hand-basket.

"How'd you, uh, decide to be a head-shrinker?" Dean scrooched down in his seat a little, giving Niles his ear but watching the screen. Above them, Peter was hugging Aunt May. And yeah, it was stupid, but Dean had a soft spot for Aunt May, and he was happy to see her hugging her beloved nephew. And yeah, maybe he'd once heard that there was an Aunt May scene where her nightgown was a little sheer, but he wasn't interested in that. Nope. Not at all.

"Well, after I reached a certain point — I was very young — I knew that's what I'd like to do," Niles revealed. It was almost as if he'd been born for this job for how often it became relevant to his life, and for as much as it seemed to control from one moment to the next. Like his life had been on a very particularly trajectory from the start.

"I'm sure I could have decided to work with the FBI, but I've found having a private practices particularly fulfilling." At least he gets to see some progress happening unlike certain radio personalities. "My brother's in he same field." For some reason Niles felt a need to divulge that fact. Hmm.

"My brother does the same work I do. We usually work together." It was a partnership neither had ever been able to successfully dissolve, no matter how much the universe (or Sam) tried.

"You two ever, y'know, team up?" He didn't know if psychiatrists actually did get together to shrink heads, but it was a lot of talking as far as Dean knew, so it seemed like a more likely working relationship than his and Sam's.

Niles nodded. "We've worked together on several projects," he said, thinking back to many times throughout their lives he and Frasier had launched some team endeavor. "Although they rarely lasted," he added.

He didn't seem all that bothered by this fact; there had probably been a lesson in every one of those failings. Mostly to not work closely with his brother. Unfortunately, it's one lesson that never seemed to stick, and in the interest of their lifelong competition — healthy or otherwise — probably one that would be learned over and over again.

"It's so strange to imagine you work together. Is there a large need for undercover brothers?"

Dean lifted an eyebrow. “You mean, like, in the movie?” Before Niles would have a chance to consider the question, Dean realized the improbability he’d have seen it, and he waved his hand.

“Nevermind. No. We normally don’t announce that we’re brothers.” He’d like to say it was because they were just that good, but unless people already knew them, they wouldn’t think Dean and Sam were related.

“We work well together, though.” And that wasn’t a lie. Argue though they (often) did, they had a lifetime of experience and innate trust that made them a great team. He was guessing it wasn't the same for Niles and his brother, but he didn't want to pry.

It's true they had some things in common, but not as many as maybe they would have thought before. Niles and Frasier could look startlingly similar — face-swap similar — and even an untrained eye could pick that out if they were standing side-by-side. And, true to Winchesters' guess, they weren't the best lab partners, so to speak. Where Frasier struggled, Niles usually succeeded, and vice versa, up to a point. Where it didn't really seem to matter — from the cultural aspect — they certainly seemed to resemble one another.

"That must be a practice in patience and thrilling all at once. Don't you worry you might find your personal judgement compromised where your close kin is involved?" Niles considered his question and decided to rephrase: "Meaning, how do you maintain your objectivity in a situation where your brother is at risk and maintaining his safety is directly contrary to your mission?"

Dean had to smile. "Are you sure you never worked for law enforcement?" Because he'd undergone psychiatric analyses before, and it usually took even the best (read: highly paid) head-shrinkers at least a session to get to Niles' hard-hitting questions. And they hadn't even made it through the first act of Spider-Man 3.

The question was rhetorical, though, and Dean moved on to the answer. "But yeah," he said honestly. He always put Sam's safety ahead of anything else. "That just makes us all the more careful, though." Not that the care they took to avoid trouble actually kept them out of it. That probably had more to do with the fact they were always running toward the danger rather than from it, but at least when they were together, they came out of it alive. Mostly.

Another thing in common! Mostly. But strangely enough, every single instance where Niles had worked closely with his brother, they'd come out of it alive. In some universe, that alone would have been enough for a spin-off.

"I suppose you would have to be," he agreed, although it certainly didn't give him anything else to go on while attempting to glean more from his new companion. "At times, I might be worried what choice I would make," he mused, casually considering allowing his brother to be murdered in the name of a long-standing rivalry. Honestly, he loved Frasier, but if the tables were turned, the older man would be considering the same.

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."

"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.

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.

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."

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.

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