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

u got it! :3

[noctyourking]

[ The sight of his friend instantly brought him to fidget behind the counter, he would have hopped over it if it weren't for that ball and chain keeping him in place. Figuratively speaking, but with real physical consequences as he has tried to deviate but was pushed back in line by the ramifications of "not playing his role".

However, the smile that spread on his face after seeing Prompto was not forced, fake, or "a role". ]

Prompt! This isn't my first time walking the pleb path.. but.. [ He pulls in a breath and holds it before he shakes his head and exhales. ] This is my first time being in... this situation. [ Speaking of, Prompto was in this shit-situation as well and he wasn't all too comfortable knowing that whatever they had to "survive" meant Prompto was going to have endure that as well. His smile faded with that thought and his eyes softened. ]

So... we're.. here.. together. [ He was definitely happy to see his friend, but again, it was an awkward joy, a selfish joy. ]

[mercurio]

[it does feel awkward, because the last prompto saw of noctis--it wasn't great. whatever he was fed in the deluxe torture chamber in zegnautus did nothing but drill in the idea that noctis hates him, doesn't care about him, wouldn't mind him dead. a part of prompto knows better, but another part of him...]

[...never stopped thinking that the prince and his retinue would be better off without him.]

[except noctis is smiling at him--and the thoughts of hatred and disdain towards himself melt away almost too quickly.]

...yeah. [prompto wants to say so much. he looks down at the choice of ice cream on the other side of the glass, but he can't really focus much on it. the bruises on his face and arms are noticeable, where he was bound and hurt. he still feels this -- uncanny hunger for comfort food, but it's like a thought in the back of his head.] Well, I ran into Iggy, actually.

[raising his eyes, he glances up again at noctis.]

We've been looking for you.

[...carefully,] ...were you -- looking for me?

[ignis isn't blind. ignis doesn't know altissia. does noctis know? does noctis-- know about gralea? the train? all the things he said to him, angry and threatening, a sword materializing to cut at him, forearm against his throat, blaming him for everything.]

[noctyourking]

[ Noct’s brows raise and he, well, he had to be honest. ]

I wasn’t looking for anyone.. I just.. kind of came here, I knew exactly where this shop was, even though I hadn’t ever been here before.. [ He figured it had all to do with his “role” and being “programed” to perform it adequately. Somewhere in the back of his mind running the counter of this ice cream shop came to him, at best, as an -auto pilot- experience. Without the need or explanation of exactly how he knew to do it. It’s not like it was all that hard in the first place, but there was some training involved, wasn’t there? The more he thought about it the more he got annoyed and separated from the moment that was Prompto’s and his. ]

If I knew you were here I would, you found me first. [ He looks over Prompto’s face and then down to the other’s chest before he looks up again and notices, now, some discoloration. ] What.. [ He moved to get a better eye of his friend and noticed the bruises elsewhere as well. ] Did something happen, what’s happened?

[mercurio]

[prompto keeps his eyes on noctis's own blue pair, searching. between himself and noctis--sometimes (most of the time) they don't express the full extent of their feelings, but both of them somehow knows exactly what the other one is thinking or feeling without having to put it into words.]

[he finds no malice or attempt to deceive him in noctis's eyes, and prompto manages to breathe a little easier because of it. there's not a vice grip in his heart, anymore.]

[but the question still remains:] You don't remember anything?

[is it the same as with ignis?]

Noct, [somewhat urgently] do you remember being in Altissia at all? --ah, uh... [behind him, another person in line to be served coughs, catching prompto by surprise. this isn't helpful at all. nor the best place, either.] I'll, uh, have chocolate? Dude, do you need to be doing this?

[noctyourking]

[ His eyes widen and he his lips part at the mention of Altissia. His heart skips a beat and he stammers a bit with his voice, his mouth moving but what he says is more to do with the damn role than what’s really on his mind. ] How many scoops—

[ No, that’s not what he wanted to say. What he wanted to say was a confirmation of his memory of the place. Yet.. ]

Prompto… I.. I looked for you.. I came for you. [ It was like the previous question flourished in his mind with a sudden color when before it was grey; it was like Prompto was asking about then and there, not here and now. ] I found you.

[mercurio]

[prompto manages to keep himself steady, but the breath he lets out is shaky at best. he breathes again, ragged, like what he's hearing is too much.]

Ye...--yeah, okay.

[he didn't even get that far, and noctis knew what he was talking about. prompto scavenges his brain for more information, for something to say. but, instead, he huffs out sad and pathetic:]

I didn't see you anywhere. He said you weren't coming. [distractedly] One scoop, I guess?

[noctyourking]

[ This was too much. Noctis feels himself tense and he moves to the ice cream fridge to get out a scoop of those small little dots of chocolate ice cream. Prompto’s memory reveals the place he’d come from and Noctis slams the fridge closed. No, this isn’t how he wants his friend to remember him. ]

I found you, we went together… all of us, and we found him and kicked his ass.

[ He set the cup down and looked to Prompto. He offered a sure nod before he flattened his hand on the counter before speaking again. ] He is a liar, there was nothing that held me back. There’s nothing that can split any of us up.

[mercurio]

...

[prompto looks down at the cup with the one, singular scoop of ice cream. noctis sucks at this job, to be honest... it brings a small smile to prompto's face. of course he believes noctis, but it's so -- hard to grasp at something he doesn't know, never experienced.]

This is ridiculous. Can I get sprinkles, too?

[he has a voucher for it--which he presents to noctis.]

[he's not trying to be dismissive, not really.]

...can we talk during your break? I'll wait for you.

[noctyourking]

[ Eh, Noctis wasn’t sure if it was obvious or not that some of his retelling had been a bit embellished. More the “we kicked ass and went home” indication he was leading to. But why would he ever stress his friends out over crap they didn’t need to know.. that would only upset them. Noct had to tell himself this “talk” wasn’t going to be a bad one.

The talk was going to be fine. Just like they were, here, they were going to be fine. They were going to “survive” whatever was happening here… or going to happen. ]

Yeah, of course..

[ What even was a break? Noctis got the sprinkles for his friend and took the voucher. It was about another two hours before he was finally free to have a break. It didn’t take long to find Prompto and when he did he led them someplace they could talk alone. Being in the mall made it more difficult to find a secluded place, but they managed. ]

Hey.. so.. about then…

[mercurio]

[he probably should have told ignis that he found noctis. but--no; this was something he and noctis had to sort out first. it was noctis who pushed him, it was noctis whom prompto couldn't stop thinking about, wondering if the things he had said were true. in the end, he finishes eating the ice cream and throwing the cup into a bin without much preamble, two hours spent glancing about and people watching.]

[only when he meets the other does prompto move, following after him, half hesitant.]

[they sit on a bench on a corridor that is thankfully not being traversed through a lot. prompto's shoulders are stiff, nervous as he considers talking to noctis; what to say? what to do?]

[he breathes out to get rid of all the nervous energy.]

You came looking for me, right?

[he just wants to clarify. his eyes meet noctis's face.]

...I knew you would. It just ... never happened for me. [he frowns] Iggy and I got a theory running-- well, it's a work in progress, more like. That time's all weird for us. I'm-- glad to see you.

Ice cream smeared apron and all.

[a small smile; he's joking a bit. a good sign.]

[noctyourking]

[ Noctis felt a frown tug at his lips and his brows drew together with a sigh slipping from his lips. The guilt swells in his chest and his skin turns pale. He feels an uncomfortable stickiness form on his skin. It’s a sickening feeling that originates from his gut. Shame was in that as well. ]

Prompto.. what happened.. on the train, what I did.. I.. [ He looks down to his hands, the very same hands that has betrayed his friend. The words, as well. ] I thought I was chasing Ardyn.. he.. did something to me. [ Or was it to Prompto? ]

We all are.. taken from .. different places, I know.. I know.. but .. I never.. [ He looked to Prompto and assured him. ] I would never leave you, abandon you.. I didn’t.. mean to hurt you Prompto..

[mercurio]

[prompto interrupts abruptly]

Nah. I get it. He really messed with both of us.

[he stretches his legs out in front of himself, feet swaying from side to side as they rest on the heels of his boots. he's removing the withdrawn attitude and being a little more playful, a lot more comfortable around noctis.]

I knew you'd come find me. We're ... best friends, right? Even if--

[he frowns, coming to a quiet pause.]

Do you know about me? About... what I am?

;;

[noctyourking]

[ Noctis reaches over to Prompto’s wrist, he firmly grips it and he leans over to the other. His eyes looking to Prompto’s even if his friend avoided the eye contact he would keep his own there. For a moment he just holds Prompto’s wrist. Yes, that wrist. ]

You’re my best friend. You’re the reason I laugh every day. That’s who you are.

i cannot forgive this

[mercurio]

[noctis has never been good at expressing his feelings. he tends to sway from one extreme to the other, either exploding with emotion or stewing inside while keeping quiet. prompto has gotten used to it, but it doesn't make him any less surprised at the sudden contact.]

[he keeps eye contact with noctis, even if he keeps faltering and looking away.]

...you're making it sound like a full-time job...

[and he stops himself from trying to hide and run away, instead keeping his gaze locked with noctis's. his eyes sting, and he feels his vision blur some; he's always been prone to showing his emotions easily in the physical realm. at the very least, prompto manages to secure a strong stand.]

[reaching out with his left hand, prompto covers noctis's hand, urging him to slowly let go. it's okay.]

Meeting you, Noct, I wouldn't change it for anything in the world. Even if it means going through it all in Niflheim by myself again and finding out what I am. I wouldn't hesitate, not even for a second.

[his voice sounds somewhat raw, but he manages to keep the shakiness away.]