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thequaranmeme2019-08-17 07:49 pm
quarantinemod) wrote in thequaranmeme2019-08-17 07:49 pm
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test drive meme: august 2019
about the tdm
○ The monthly test drive memes are considered game canon, so anything in the TDM is actually happening in the game setting. All Test Drive Meme threads are eligible to be used for activity check.
○ While writing prompts are provided, the Quarantine's setting is very flexible, so feel free to head in different directions. If you're planning on doing something big, please contact me so I can help out!
○ There are currently 100 character spots available.
○ RESERVES are currently OPEN.
○ APPLICATIONS will open on September 1, 2019, at 9:00 PM PST.
○ While writing prompts are provided, the Quarantine's setting is very flexible, so feel free to head in different directions. If you're planning on doing something big, please contact me so I can help out!
○ There are currently 100 character spots available.
○ RESERVES are currently OPEN.
○ APPLICATIONS will open on September 1, 2019, at 9:00 PM PST.
prompts
i. hungry & tired
You could have been anywhere when it happened - asleep and lost in dreams, packing up to head home from a trip, fighting the biggest battle of your life, drunk and dancing at the club - but wherever you were, you felt...out of place. Like you didn't belong. Whether it was a flash of a feeling after a friend doesn't pick up your phone call, or a lifelong ache borne of being the last of your species, the Portal heard you, felt you. And in the space of a blink, you find yourself stumbling out of a glowing circle of light that moves like living liquid, at the top of a set of slate steps.
First, the heat and humidity hits you in the face like a brick, so heavy it's almost tangible in the air, and the smell of petrichor lingers in your nostrils. A moment later, it hits you that you're hungry, absolutely ravenous, and your limbs are heavy with exhaustion, as if you've been walking for days. There's the sounds of life all around you, birdsong, the chirping of insects, and...voices?
You're not the only one to have just arrived in this alien jungle, and if you manage to make it down the natural slate steps without falling, you'll find yourself walking toward a heavy-duty metal trunk with a busted lock and a well-worn path at the edge of the clearing that winds off into the jungle. Looking behind yourself, you see the portal, glowing blue, surrounded by what looks like bone, with tendrils of ectoplasmic nerve endings winding into the stone and plantlife around it. Then the portal flashes almost blindingly bright for a moment, and someone else is stumbling out of it. Will you help them? Leave them to their own devices? And what's in that box...?
ii. the monsoon & the shrine
About halfway through your walk from the portal down that path that leads to the settlement area, the humidity breaks and the petrichor delivers on its promise - as if the sky opened up above you, rain starts to fall in thick sheets that drench you in minutes.
Continuing down the path will lead to the edge of the river, where a relatively sturdy wooden bridge crosses the river to a large island, where the top of a stone structure is barely visible through the sheets of greenish-grey rain. Considering the only other shelter is the large leaves of some nearby plants, it looks like the best option to get out of the rain, dried off, and to regroup. And maybe, hopefully, find some food?
This is the Shrine: a stone group dwelling where characters will find the remains of a communal garden with some edible vegetables and berries available to partially sate their hunger, a pond, and circular staircase leading up into the home units, where the rock furniture and floor are heated and perfect to dry clothing on while characters regroup. Feel free to look around and see what you can find...it's obvious the original residents aren't here to care about you invading their homes.
iii. shadow knows
Curious about why there were no people here, and then suddenly an influx? Characters might not know it yet, but this is what happens when the Portal has a nightmare - a burst of new arrivals, torrential rainfall, and crazy winds. Anyone seeking shelter in the Shrine will hear the howling wind, though the structure stands firm, protected by the ledges of stone around it and the thick stone walls.
Anyone hunkering down in the Shrine, or even anyone still out braving the rain, will start to notice that the shadows seem oddly deep and thick. Out of the corners of their eyes, characters might see movement in a dark corner, and when they turn to really look at it, there's nothing there. Nothing but the shadows. As the day goes on, though, and the rainstorm keeps up, the shadows start to get thicker and deeper, and characters will start to notice flickers of movement much more often. Soon, they notice that the shadows are creeping in, twisting tendrils of darkness that creep across floors and along walls until they've closed in only a few feet from the nearest source of light. Anyone brave enough to put part of their body into the shadows will see that part of themselves disappear almost completely into the darkness, impossible to see - and impossible to feel. Who knows if your body would even still exist if you fell into the shadows, and could you find your way home?
Characters will quickly discover that the safest way to cut through the darkness, to push it back, to keep themselves from being swallowed whole is to make physical skin-to-skin contact with another person. Whoever's nearby, better grab them by the hand, because they've now become your safety blanket.
iv. the book of life
Once the shadows dispel at the break of dawn, characters can feel safe enough to explore the Shrine a little more freely now that their clothing is dry and they've got a bit of food in their bellies. Rifling through the rooms will be mostly unfruitful. They'll find clothing that falls to dust as soon as it's touched and little personal knick-nacks from the previous residents of the Shrine.
But exploring and rifling around isn't entirely useless, because someone is sure to find a strangely heavy, leatherbound book in the drawer of one of dwellings in the upper inner ring of the Shrine that miraculously doesn't crumble to dust when touched. The cover has strange symbols on it, but characters will find they're able to read it through translation magic - The Book of Life. While it might seem from the outside like some kind of religious text or something, when it's opened, characters will find the messy scribbled notes of a previous resident who was obviously a naturalist. The book details some of the resident plant and animal life, and (very fortunately for these new arrivals) includes which plants are poisonous, edible, or good to use for medicine. Likewise, it explains which of the common creatures around are good to hunt and eat, or will attack at random, or can be carefully tamed into a pet.
Of course, the book is old and probably out-of-date, since the Portal has opened and shut to a lot of worlds since then, but it's a great place to start.
[Mod Note: The Book of Life will contain whatever information is put up in the Bestiary and Flora pages, which should be up and running later tonight with some initial info. The book will need to be updated as characters discover new plants and animals and learn about them.]
v. is anyone there?
The box that residents ran into near the Portal contained a variety of walkie-talkie radios that characters could power up and create a username on, which broadcast audio only with no privacy settings.
Looking for someone to explore with? Calling for help? Need someone to talk to or to find someone to touch in the shadows? That's what the radios are for! Give them a try.
Tony Stark | MCU
[ 'I don't belong here' is a common enough thought in a person's life, but it's not quite so emphatically visceral a sensation as when they're wrapped in vibranium nanites facing down a literal moon being hurled at them. That's-
It's not how his day is supposed to be going, honestly. He's meant to be finishing his jog with Pepper, talking about the wedding, promising to pack up and move upstate to a log cabin by a lake and not get caught up in world ending bullshit at the hands of his personal nightmare of the past six, eight years. Normally the thought comes, goes, and Tony pushes through because that's what he does. He's Iron Man. He can't sit down and quit because the situation is ridiculous. But he does, apparently, get thrown a cosmic bone.
Just after the thought but before tons of foreign moon rock make themselves intimately known in the worst crush test known to man, he's not there anymore. A half step and a spin and the suit's whirling through foreign, lush space as he lands awkwardly, eyes scanning for- anything. Thanos, the kid, the wizard, any of them.
Nothing. Air's good, Fri's still dead in his ear, and he's suddenly starving. Fighting a mad titan will do that apparently, and in the interest of conserving power once the first paranoid, wide eye'd pass of the surroundings prove there are no imminent threats? tony lets the armor slip back into the nanite housing on his chest, trying to shake off the bone-deep weariness he has no time for. Okay. Food, shelter, water- a way back. Thing one- investigate the box. Thing two- ] Oh, hey-
[ Portal thing spitting out another person that- he'll need to bring up the glasses to squint at that later. For now he takes the half step needed to support the newbie (not that he's an oldbie, they're all fucking new here)'s elbow or shoulder or- whatever, keep them from tipping over and cracking their head on slate. ] You good?
iii - I Put the Finger on You
[ Establishing a perimeter is a thing- just. Figuring out what's close to the structure they all stumbled through, taking a lap- the suit's not the best thing for walking but without any concrete way of knowing how long what power he's got is going to last? Discretion's the better part of valor. Tony's braved the rain (the suit's sealed, he's safe inside the metal skin) to get an idea of what's beyond the shrine's solid walls. At least until the storm gets bad enough that navigation becomes a bitch- and getting caught on the other side of an impressively thick patch of shadow between him and heated safety is-
Vexing? He should be able to push through but the lights on the armor are only doing so much, the nanite housing's glow anemic in the face of whatever this bullshit, sense sucking shit is.
At least he can retract a gauntlet to offer his hand to anyone caught on this side with him. ]
Don't make it weird, just-
[ Grab his hand so they can go. ]
v - Radio Ga Ga
Well, this is tragically archaic but- whatever, it works.
[ Compared to the comms in his suit, could be better- but without the satellite network they're configured to work with being present? This is the best thing he's got for now. ] Consider this a network test- trying to nail down the degradation of signal, distance, clarity of broadcast- the usual. Putting the tech through the steps, etcetera. Playing telephone with a radio, since it seems like long-distance isn't going to be a thing.
[ Yet. ]
So call in with- I don't know. Observations about your surroundings? Notes about clusters of those creepy shadows. Terrible jokes. What you're wearing. Favorite showtunes, whatever. Floor is yours.
iii.
Worst. Nightmare.
So he's not exactly super calm when what looks like a robot (not in the good way, like Mom, but not necessarily in the bad way like the Null either) approaches. Breathing too fast and too shallow, heartbeat going a mile a minute, trying not to think about how he's in a humid-ass jungle again and it's getting dark and there's ghosts everywhere and he can't really do shit to shut them out.
It's starting to look like he's going to have to pull out one of his pathetic two joints and take his chances with the shadows and the robot when the gauntlet pops open and a human hand emerges.
Klaus stands still for a moment, eyes wide, brows raised. He opens his mouth to say something, then closes it, and reaches out to take the robot's hand in his. It's warm. There are arm hairs on the wrist. Human.
Okay.
Oh well, it's not like Klaus has never rolled with things he has no context to understand before, and holding the hand seems to keep the shadows at bay, so he salutes with his free hand.]
Uh sure thing, don't mind if I do, Mr. Creepy Android Man.
no subject
A little scuffed, weary, and ragged, but highly human. ]
Iron Man. It's armor, nanotech. [ Normally- wouldn't spare two seconds to explain but walking someone through the abyss of shadows that renders reality numb, null and void while there's a risk of a flight response kicking off due to panic is a shitty, shitty idea. So. Two-second quick explanation, raised brows as he waits for another beat, maybe two, until it seems like the worst of the moment has passed. ]
You good?
[ He'll try to figure out the why of the guy's unfamiliarity with him- later. Global icon he may or may not be, there is a portal involved, a weird moon and defunct semi-advanced tech lying around an alien planet. Some details can be skipped until they're not going to get swallowed up by whatever it is that's seeped into satan's own shadows. ]
no subject
Okay. Breathe. In, out, in, out.]
Iron Man. Okay, okay okay, yeah yeah, yeah, I'm fine, just not a huge fan of the dark, that's all.
[For a second, he holds his breath, and then lets it out in a rush.]
So uh, we headed back to shelter? Because this whole rainy jungle thing is getting really old.
no subject
Nifty.
Symbolic, probably. The warmth of the human connection in the face of apathy? It's philosophical as fuck and he'll roll it around the ole brain later when they're not in the wrong side of the jungle, surrounded by void creating shadows. ]
Holing up until morning seems like the safest bet. I'm not exactly a fan of...any of this. Come on, kid.
[ Not as young as the last person he called that, but there's something about how big and wide the guy's eyes are that scream too young, too old, too rattled to have Tony consider him anything but. Hand in hand, he takes the first step. Finds solid ground- and pushes forward into the dark. ]
v.
Well, fine, scratch that: she didn't expect to hear any familiar voices, and frankly she would have embraced Paul Harvey telling her the rest of the story if she'd had to. She clears her throat before she hits the button to respond. Static crackles and covers any uncertainty that might possibly be there before she's hitting him with dry humor and the mildest sass. ]
Are you singing those showtunes? Because I'd pay money I don't have to hear you do Cats.
no subject
[ There's some sort of echo somewhere in the space-time continuum, mirrors, shadows, a resonance of a phrase and a bloodline that means destiny or some other narratively relevant bullshit at play here, because Tony remembers far too many stories dear old Dad told where he'd said much the same thing to one Peggy Carter.
It's weird.
Not enough to keep him from rolling right on through. ]
For a cup of coffee, I'll be your Magical Mister Mistopholes.
no subject
She exhales. She doesn't laugh much, and that's about as close as she's gotten here. ]
Shit, Mr. Stark, for a cup of coffee I'd dance every part of A Chorus Line.I don't think either one of us are going to have to go there tonight.
no subject
[ Any edges of less than stellar emotions he might've had connected to her RE ye olde accords fuckup and the clusterfuck that was the Avengers Airport Brawl had washed away before it ever had a chance to settle. Everyone was trying to do what they thought was right and every last one of them got played.
It's not her fault Rogers lied. ]
The good news, I guess, is that this is an ideal climate for the growing of coffee. If we find comprable soil and seeds and everything.