TEST DRIVE MEME #1

[inthenightmods]

TEST DRIVE MEME #1

Hello and welcome to the In the Night test drive meme for June! Thanks for your interest in our game! Reserves open on June 20, and applications open on June 22.

While you're here...

• Take a look at our rules and faq pages to familiarize yourself with the game.
  
• Note that we have a reserve/application cap of 20 apps per month (this has been waived for the first month!).
  
• TDM threads can become game canon if both players wish. If the situation isn't something that could happen in-game, you're free to chalk it up to some strange hallucination, a shared dream, or other mysterious circumstance.
  
• Note that this is not limited to new characters threading with characters already in-game. If current players wish to thread out the TDM prompts as canon events, they are welcome to do so.
  
• Though threads can become canon, they cannot count toward AC.
  
• If you plan to apply, please keep in mind that we do require at least one sample thread on the application to be from our TDM (though it doesn't need to be the current TDM).
  
• You're welcome to use the provided prompts or come up with something on your own, but we do ask that all threads take place in our game's setting.

Thank you again, and we hope you'll choose to join us!

log prompts

YOU'RE DEAD, JIM

You haven't been in Beacon long when you find yourself in Bonfire Square, staring into the flames and thinking about how you ended up here. Maybe it was an accident, a sudden freak thing that you never saw coming until you woke up on the ferry, or maybe it's a miracle you made it as long as you did. Maybe death was a relief. Maybe it was just your time. Whatever the case, you can't help but reflect on your final moments as you linger in the firelight.

But however you died, it's behind you now, and you're here, stuck in this little town with just a few buildings and a smattering of other people. You're going to be here a while, so you may as well get to know your neighbors, but... Would it be cathartic to commiserate about your deaths? Or is your time better spent stocking up at the general store? Then again, you've got plenty of time, so why not catch a drink or two (or three) at the Invincible? Pretend you're unaffected by your death, and, well. Fake it 'til you make it, perhaps.

Point is, you have options. You're dead, you died, and this is your "life" now. Better get used to it.

AND THEY WERE ROOMMATES

Currently, there's only one place to live (technically speaking) in Beacon: the Invincible, a tavern and inn located in Bonfire Square. Luckily, the place has working amenities (minus light), and the forest spirits don't charge anything for your stay. Unfortunately, it seems there may not be enough rooms for everyone. Guess you'll have to get cozy!

Maybe you'll try to pick a roommate from around town or in the bar downstairs, or maybe you'll just walk into the first room you see and choose that way. Want a room all to yourself? Get ready to fend off any potential intruders. And the fun doesn't end there.

The Invincible's rooms aren't all created equal. Some may have had their furniture stolen or become a dumping ground for unwanted pieces, resulting in a single bed, five dressers, and other equally distressing situations. Will someone sleep on the floor? Will you nail two beds together to form bunk beds? Maybe you just want to make this room into something more like home— potentially to your roommate's chagrin. Whatever you decide, this is where you're staying for now, so you might as well get comfortable.

network prompts

HACKER VOICE: I'M IN

In order to use the network, you have to register a username. Er, at least, that's how it's supposed to work. For some reason, new users have recently been able to bypass that requirement, allowing them to post anonymously. Time to troll strangers on the magical internet!

Eventually though, you'll need a username in order to use the tablet's other functions, like the direct messaging system. So hey, why not take advantage of the ability to source opinions, and workshop your potential usernames on the network? Share ideas, get feedback, steal ideas, critique others, and figure out what you want everyone to call you.

TURN ON YOUR LOCATION

When you wake up, you're in the woods. An iron shackle complete with a chain leashes you to a tree, and the only light you have is your lantern. You've never seen this area of the woods before. You certainly didn't go to sleep here.

Hm.

But, all is not lost. You find your phone in your pocket, as well as a scrap of paper covered back to front in cryptic scribbles. Are these clues to your location? They must be. You also spot a key dangling from a branch, though it's hanging from a tree you'll never be able to reach from here. Perhaps someone on the network will be able to lend you a hand...

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Comments

[preseance]

( christ o'lordy, the familiar uniform draws the eye. gene could kiss the man if it weren't so riotously steeped in impropriety. it's the first genuine smile this place's gotten outta him. better than christmas, given all the other folk he's met here. ain't a one been from his war, much less the year familiar to him.

that question, though. it don't leave him cold, he's seen too much death to really be troubled by the thought. but he does gesture for the bottle the other man has. no dancin', well, they can find a quiet corner just as well. man's a ranger, by the insignia. up in the thick of it since normandy. )

January 4th, 1945. Just outside'a St. Vith. Shellburst, I think. ( he hands the bottle back politely, an' in exchange he offers the man a smoke. chesterfields. ) What about you?

[sulfa]

Outskirts of Ramelle. Captain wanted to take a machine gun nest so the next guys wouldn't get ambushed-- You know, to be honest, I wasn't so sure about it. [ a quiet, humorless laugh. wade shakes his head mildly. ] I went along with them while they were being shot at in case someone got hit. Turned out it was me. [ he smiles, like something about that is amusing. it's not. ] Five bullet wounds, one in the liver and one in the spine.

[ he almost mentions the mercy kill, the request for another dose of morphine he knew would hasten his departure, the wave of warmth that came over him and gave way to darkness - but decides against it. for reasons irwin can't place, those details feel very personal.

he answers the offering of a cigarette with a rueful smile. he's about to be the bearer of some bad news for just about anyone from the war that did him in. ] Lighters don't work here--well, at least mine doesn't. [ please, God, have this be an issue of his alone - things are going to get real unpleasant in a few hours if this is about to become a new fact of life. ] Thanks, though.

[preseance]

Sorry to hear it.

( and he is, his brow is faintly furrowed at the admission. it would'a been an awful way to go, and not one of the shots would've been outright fatal. it ain't the death he rails against most especially, it's the suffering. death is peaceable by comparison.

nests ain't no joke. there's a reason they're as effective as they are.

he gestures for the both of them to take chairs at the farthest edge of the dance floor, and sits down heavily. he's been dancin' half the night and he's ready for a break. )

Here, lemme try then.

( he doesn't have a zippo, but he does have a box of matches rattling around in a pocket. he pulls the book out. it's got a picture of artemis on it, the symbol for one of the wac divisions. he'd gotten it from some nurse or other, and it's got a few matches left. he pulls one outta the book and strikes it, and the flame gutters briefly but fades out and refuses to burn. ah, hell. maybe he got them wet at some point. )

Mm. Well, you go on and keep it anyhow. We're sure to find somethin' somewhere.

[sulfa]

Hope so. [ wade figures one could probably, maybe light the end of one with the fire of the lanterns - were it not for the fact that it'd probably just consume the whole thing, burn a guy's fingers, or both. he'll find a workaround, though - he has a few hours before things get unpleasant, and if nothing else he's come out of the war a more resourceful man. speaking of. ]

You hear from anyone if we won?

[preseance]

( the question is a burning one. he felt it, same as this fella must. gene nudges against his shoulder with a soft, reassuring smile. )

Met a few Americans from the next century, if you can believe it. Not a one of them speaks German so far as I can tell.

( they've been maddeningly cagey about the whole thing, but. he's made his inferences. by january, the allies kinda figured they had hitler on the ropes anyhow. havin' a ghost with the soe on your side was a boon more often than not, and reg' liked to keep him up to date on what churchhill was up to. )

So... I rather reckon we did.

[sulfa]

Well that's some good news. [ now if only there were a way to find out about his own squad - if they'd all lived to the end of the war, if they'd found ryan, if he was alive or dead when they did - but hopefully it'll be a while before one of them shows up to answer those questions. until then irwin supposes he'll have to settle for not knowing. ]

Would've liked to visit San Diego one last time. This place isn't much like home. [ and my mother. god, hope she's taking this okay. or as okay as a mother can losing her only child. ] What about you? Where you from?

[preseance]

( good news in a grim war. gene's heartened at being able to give him that much, though lord knows it ain't much. he doesn't think there'll be a time in his life (or afterlife, as the case may be) when he won't hurt for soldiers. they're all just boys, ain't they? tryin' to survive.

funny thing is, he never would'a shirked the war. even if he'd known — really known — how bad it was. it wasn't in him. it's the other folk he'd rather see spared.

he takes the opportunity to flag down one of the forest spirits, who seems all too happy to get them another couple beer at his polite behest. gene ain't a prodigious drinker by any means, but. bein' dead ought to warrant somethin' in the way of indulgence. )

L'il place called Agathine. Southern Alabama. Cotton and coal, not much else to its name.

( but he loves it dearly, by the fondness to his tone. that little patch of ground holds the whole of his heart. )

San Diego, that where you're from? Or where you shipped on outta?

( most boys in europe shipped outta the new york port, but. stranger things have happened in war. )

[sulfa]

Where I'm from. [ He smiles at the memory - the warmth of the sunlight before summer hit in full force, the grainy beaches, the blinding glint that shimmered on the pacific's impossibly blue waves. ] Agathine. Never heard of that before. We had a guy in my unit who was from Tennessee, but that's as far south as it went.

[ wade accepts Beer #3 from the forest spirits with a quiet 'thank you' that he's not entirely sure they understand. hopefully the feeling of the sentiment will carry over. he takes a small sip off the top before lowering the bottle again - he holds his liquor pretty well considering his size, but there's no need to push it, at least as far as he's concerned.

[preseance]

( he tips his beer in a polite little salute, thanks the creature just the same. like wade, he ain't sure if they cotton on to what's bein' said, but there's no point bein' rude. )

That don't surprise me much. Only about twelve hundred souls in the city. Doubt anyone who ain't from there could find it on a map.

( he cracks the top off, rubbing at the condensation that's peeling the label. beers're all warm in europe, and they look funny at the americans that ask for 'em cold. just ain't a thing there. he hasn't drank enough one way or another to really have an opinion. conecuh's a dry county, and gene ain't hardly drank since he put his boots on european soil. )

Bein' with the 82nd really spoiled me, guess they call us the All-Americans for a reason. Fellas from Alaska, on through Hawaii. Got a fella who can surf, a couple who used to run trap lines — Hell, we even had us a genuine cowboy an' a broadway singer.

( most beautiful voice he ever heard. fella could lead the whole of the 505th in a rousing rendition of just about anything from holy hymns to bawdy barroom ballads. )

to quote bobby: "someone: its hot. wade: im from california"

[sulfa]

A genuine cowboy. I knew a few of them in California - they're mostly called vaqueros when you're that close to the Mexican border, though. That's where the word 'buckaroo' comes from. [ then, remembering that being from alabama eugene probably hasn't ever been out west, it occurs to wade to add: ] Granted, my parents and I, we lived in San Diego, so it wasn't exactly a Wild West Scenario. More just hot and dry on the walk to school. [ he punctuates it with another sip of his drink. it's not stellar, but it's got enough alcohol by volume to ease some of the ever-present tension in his shoulders provided he keeps drinking at the rate he has been for the past hour and a half or so. good thing his liver seems to have regenerated. ]

[ pointedly, wade glances down at the bottle. ] You know, it's not pisswater. It's not great, either, but according to most of the chaplains I met, the beverage choices in the afterlife were supposed to be a bit more clearly delineated based on past behavior.

[preseance]

( once in a while it strikes him, how so few of these boys ain't ever had much to their name or their lives but schoolin' and then this. he's got a keen perception of age and a lack of adjacent experience — speakin' with ghosts who never saw the physical side of twenty is maybe what put that in him.

they're young. wade's young. he is too, he supposes, though he ain't felt that way in near a decade now. but followin' the line of logic, a man twice his age'd be well within his rights to say the same of him.

an' maybe it hurts a little worse that it's a fellow medic. not only on account of the accords, but. just like with him and his company, somewhere out there is a battalion missin' one of their boys. medics're hell and gone harder to replace than front line infantry. last he heard it, the training that'd took him near four weeks had been cut down to just twelve days. ain't barely enough time in that to learn what to do with a sucking chest wound, much less anythin' else. sorrow and grief bear up under the consideration, and gene fusses a bit with his newest bottle. he ought not to have another. )

Well, maybe they're on the same budget as the Army, huh?

( ain't nothin' he'd ever say to anyone who hadn't put their boots on the ground, but gallows humour is the province of medics and the folk what man the gravedigging corps. )

[sulfa]

[ that actually gets a laugh out of him - a brief one, but still. that's a lot from someone whose humor usually extends to smiling while everyone else laughs. ] Yeah, maybe so. The lodgings seem pretty army, too. Next someone's gonna tell me how it burns when they piss. [ but the statement is punctuated with a lighthearted smile to show that the comment is about half in jest: another rarity. ]

Some afterlife. Granted, could be worse. For starters-- [ a sip of his drink. ] --I recognize this song. [ in reference to something of charles trénet's floating through the bar, although the name escapes him. interestingly, it's in english this time, although that doesn't stop him from thinking of their translator - hope he did okay. wade chases the thought with another swallow of beer and fumbles in his back pocket for a cigarette. he's not sure if it'll work, trying to use the lanterns to light one, but he's willing to try. ]

[preseance]

( it gets a laugh in turn. like his tone, it's a mild, soft thing. gene ain't given over to extravagant shows of emotion no matter what that emotion may be. but it's a genuine thing. just to be able to sit with another soul what knows his woes is a balm.

christ o'lordy, but he's grown tired of that. men ought to know by now that prophylactics are the mother of prevention. )

Fella, we're of one mind.

( how many times did the boys of love come to him? he started throwin' condoms at boys what had furlough, it got so bad. )

I heard somethin' by Anne Shelton earlier. Maybe they're just tryin' to make us feel at home.

[sulfa]

Yeah, maybe. Seems unlikely that they'd move heaven and earth for two guys, though. Unless everyone else failed to get their weekend passes on the boat over.

[ what's a little dark humor? at the same time, though, wade's acutely aware that the only person here to have solid frame of reference for his experiences thus far is sitting in the chair next to him. does anyone else even recognize these songs? a lot of the people moving around in the center of the room don't seem to know how to dance to them, although irwin can still recognize the unfamiliar patterns of movement as dancing. ]

[ and then, backing up a little bit-- ] Anne Shelton. [ he repeats the name quietly, mostly to himself, accompanied by a faint smile. ] Heard one of her songs on the radio on the drive to ship out for basic.

[preseance]

( could be that. could be a lotta things. )

Or maybe we're the only ones what hear it.

( macabre thought, but given the nature of ghosts he ain't so sure he's wrong. he ain't a man of imagination, gene, but he's spent his life dealin' with seein' things other folks can't see an' hearin' what they can't hear. touchin' on that ain't so hard a thing. )

[sulfa]

[ irwin shrugs. ]

Could be. They're keeping rhythm over there better than I could, but it doesn't exactly seem like the kind of dancing the original artists intended. [ some of it does indeed seem to follow some sort of predetermined collection of moves, so these are probably dances that the denizens of the future, and whichever dimensions the various participants hail from, have given names to. he'll be damned if he knows what those names are, though. ] Could be that we're the ones who are behind.

[preseance]

( 2spoopy.

gene takes another drink of his beer. the room ain't yet begun to tip, but he's feeling it in the way his shoulders ease off their tension, in the way his fingers feel warm and electric. he didn't get frostbite in st vith, but he battled its lesser cousin the whole way on through december. )

Seems that way so far as calendar years go, anyhow. Ain't met another soul from any earlier than about 1990. Hell, one fella said he was from 2556.

[sulfa]

1990. [ wade repeats the date with quiet awe, to say nothing of the idea of someone from about 600 years after their time being present in the same town. the 1990s had always sounded impossibly far away - hell, even the 1960s, once he was in a combat zone, experiencing each day as it came without much psychological energy to do anything more. lightly, and only half-serious:] Any advances I should know about?

[ bet they think we're neanderthals. which, to be fair... but that's just the nature of battlefield medicine. a non-sterile kill zone isn't exactly an environment conducive to groundbreaking advances. ]

[preseance]

( he chuckles. it's a quiet little noise, though there's real and genuine amusement behind it. he leans into wade's space and touches the necks of their bottles together in a little gesture of cheers. )

Got some good news about polio, for starters.

[sulfa]

About polio? [ he asks the question like he hasn't already picked up on what gene means by what he's just said, what "good news about polio" that warrants a toast could mean. wade's smiling, too, before gene has a chance to put words to what he's already all-but-telepathically conveyed. ]

[preseance]

Got a workin' vaccine some time in the sixties, sounds like.

( it was a cruel thing. didn't see much of it in agathine, but his ma was a nurse, an' she kept on with that manner o'thing. read every medical journal she could get her hands on, before the end, an' she cursed polio somethin' fierce. he wishes he could've told her the same thing he's tellin' wade now. )

An' the fell I talked to, from some six hundred years on? Said he didn't even know what cancer was.

cheers ill drink to that bro.png

[sulfa]

Christ. [ it's tragic that it didn't come earlier, but it's spectacular news. his only regret is that he wasn't around to see it, but this is almost as good, so irwin lifts his bottle in a completion of the very earned cheers and takes another drink. it's certainly something worth celebrating, and he's not in a dangerous situation or experiencing lowering of inhibitions to a concerning degree, so he figures he might as well allow himself this small enjoyment now that he's dead. and, admittedly, it's nice - nice to allow himself to relax and drink like most of the people around him had done routinely, nice to not worry about remaining semi-professional and inhuman around others who did have that luxury. if it wasn't another medic on the other end of the toast and was instead a potential patient, things would be different - but for once wade's in the right company and the right context, and he sees no harm in enjoying it at this point in the night. ]

Did he mention when cancer was cured?

[preseance]

Nah, but... I reckon it must've been a couple hundred years for it to have completely fallen off from a layman's memory you know?

( folks still remember the black plague, spanish flu. these things don't fall outta public regard so quick or easy, an' cancer's been a blight for an age.

gene's silent a spell, taking another drink. he's pleasantly warm, an' he can feel his inhibitions mostly fallen off. he ain't like some other fellas that'd get up and dance on the bartop, or run naked in the streets singin' la marseillaise, but. he knows when he's four sheets in. )

[sulfa]

I sure hope so. It was terrible, from everything I saw of it. Parents were both doctors and I was in medical school before the war. Got three months into my internship.

[ wade punctuates the statement with a quiet, ironic laugh, then eases into the silence too, watching the clusters of people gathered around the bar and moving on the dancefloor - virtually all of the clothes they're wearing either look like they were taken from an ancient history exhibit or are too modern to be recognizable; some of the townsfolk don't even appear to be humans. and then, as if to drive in the relative alone-ness further, the tail end of a song he doesn't recognize shifts into the brassy opening bars of one that he does, although very few of the other patrons show any sort of recognition. apparently the forest spirits like glenn miller. who would've thought. ]

I know half of this one. Not good at it, granted.

[preseance]

You don't say? My best pal, his folks were doctors too.

( wade has no cause to know just how rare it is he mentions reggie. maybe it's death what's loosed his tongue, or maybe it's the liquor. he's been dead two years now, ain't he? either way, gene seems to realize that ain't a topic he'd like to dwell on. he shakes his head instead, sets his drink down on the bar's wallside table and stands up. )

We ought to take advantage of that then, huh? C'mon. Let's celebrate the good news.

( don't leave a fella hanging, wade. it ain't polite. )