In the Night Moderators (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
inthenightmods) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
memesinthenight2019-06-14 11:39 pm
inthenightmods) wrote in memesinthenight2019-06-14 11:39 pm
Entry tags:
TEST DRIVE MEME #1
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...
| QUICKNAV | |||
| comms | | | network • logs • memes • ooc | |
| pages | | | rules • faq • taken • mod contact • player contact • calendar • setting • exploration • item requests • full nav | |
!! i love into the badlands hello
he's seen all manner of boys do all manner of things what stain the soul. he knows someone hurtin' when he sees it. call it a medic thing, call it the province of a soul that's seen ghosts since before he could walk. some folk ought not to be alone. )
Well sure, if you ain't gonna drink it.
( there's no trace of havin' found the boy rude or crass to his tone, just calm acceptance as he sits down beside the kid. near, but not so near as all that so as not to set him off further, and he holds out his hand to take the cup back. he won't insist on it, that sorta attitude is like as not to scare his type away. it's like handlin' a spooked horse. you gotta calm it some before you try to lead it anywhere safe. )
Name's Eugene. There somethin' I can call you?
omg??? small world, hellooo... i'm sorry i only have this shitbird for you
What do you want?
[He's never had time for the sweetness when you can get straight to the sour. In a few hours he might regret turning down something to fill his belly, but for now he's throwing all his energy behind the spirit of self-isolation, pointedly not looking at the man as he hands the cup off.
As if then realizing his hands have nothing left to occupy them and not knowing what to do with them now that he's under scrutiny, he flexes his fingers, settling for making a cup of one hand and resting the other in it, forming a fist out of both. Eugene might be giving this particular horse too much credit. He's barely in control, which isn't a thought he's had in a while. Of late he'd been thinking of himself as free--except he doesn't feel all that freed now. This feels like being crushed.]
ahhh no i'm super excited! i love m.k c:
Nothin' much of anything. Though it'd be nice to have someone appreciate my cookin'.
( that'sajoke.avi. he's always been a simple man. his needs and wants were much the same, aligned to a singular purpose. roof over his head, enough food not to call himself starving. the folks around him alive and well. he can't ask the lord for more than that. )
An' I've heard tell the sun don't rise here, when I mightily wish it would. But unless we can rope the sun on in and fetch us a dawn, I think that one might be impossible.
oh no, ty ty <3 i'm already having a blast with this train wreck
Ha ha. He's laughing on the inside. Except not really.
He denies his unwanted audience a reply, turning his face away and presenting Gene with the tangled tail of his hair, but it only takes a few seconds of this heavy, petulant silence before he's shifting irritably, close company without the exchange of words itching at him just as much as with.]
What's it going to take for you to go away?
[Peacefully goes unsaid. The raw truth of it, scalding as any bonfire, is that he doesn't want to touch his swords, doesn't even want to look at them. Masking the guilt seeding and growing poisoned vines in his stomach behind roughness is all that's stopping him from envisioning taking up the blade and drawing it across his own throat, He should. He should.]
every new tag just has me going ahhhhh nooooooo baby tbh
nobody's suspicious without reason. it just ain't the human condition. it's learned behaviour, laid down by a life of pain. trust can't be taken, it can only be earned.
he leans back on his hands. there are stars overhead, foreign constellations far and away from what he learned in europe. if he was one for loneliness he'd feel it here. but peace and silence have always settled him right down to the bones.
he ain't lookin' at the boy as he responds, )
All's you gotta do is ask. But if you need a condition an' all, I'd settle for you drinkin' the soup.
911, i'd like to report this baby giving a good boy a hard time
The strong rule and the weak die. Words he'd said, once. Maybe he'd been fooling himself no matter what choice he made.]
You'd have to take a hint for that to happen.
[Either way, Gene's here, making himself a bone for pointed teeth to gnaw on. That alone might be bearable, but it's the babying that chafes, and he sighs with audible frustration. Soup! Like he's a child who needs big brother's arm around his shoulders to chin up.
For the first time he turns to fully face Gene--and it's the first time he has an opportunity to take the other's measure beyond a moment's glance. The uniform's foreign. Flat. Almost lifeless in its lack of color and design next to the Badlands' tradition of differentiating factions by dress.]
What I don't need is coddling. There are plenty of other people who could use it more than me. You know how I got this? [He turns his torso to the firelight so Gene can see the hole in his scale armor, just under the heart where a knife could slip in past the ribs, chin jutted out challengingly. The trickle of dried blood shines blackish in the light.] A woman. I was about to kill her in front of her daughter. She was pregnant, too. The only reason she's not sitting here instead of me is she beat me to it.
[So you see? his tone says. Do you think I still need soup?]
emergency dispatch to follow tbh
the armour is impressive enough in and of itself. and it's nicked and battlescarred in all the ways that make a man a fighter. and if he is a fighter, and was about to kill a woman who beat him to it, odds are she was a fighter too.
maybe it's on account'a his ma, or maybe it's all the time he spent with aveline. maybe it's reggie, who casually let it drop how many women were in the war, doin' just the same job as men, maybe it's all the collaborators shot in france. but any woman who can manage a thrust like that, through armour, is someone who was in for a fair fight. the bit about pregnancy might bother him, but the boy wouldn't wield this information like a grenade unless there was some guilt he felt over it. war is war, an' to his reckoning that's what this sounds like.
and the spot itself. that's where they were taught to aim for with their bayonets and trench knives. he reaches out, touches just below the impact on the armour where the blood dripped down. ain't fresh, at least, so he doesn't hold to worry that there's a wound he should be treating beneath it.
then he glances up at the boy. there's a furrow to his brow, and he tips his head faint to one side. )
Well, I reckon there's time enough for me to get to them after I've seen to you. I won't speak to the rest.
( he's treated germans just the same as his own men. maybe it's on account of seeing ghosts, but he has a better understanding than most that the divisions that follow demarcation lines are just man-made constructs. they ain't a matter of the soul. the rest is for the lord almighty to judge. )
headline: well-meaning medic didn't ask for this
The admission isn't about garnering sympathy for the Widow, that much he knows--he has none to spare. And if he deserved no mercy, she deserves no more than him. It's not really about her at all.
Maybe it'd make it easier, getting someone to look at him like he's afraid Tilda will were they to cross paths in this place. Practice for knowing what to say, which he's been trying to figure out all day, looking for her in every group of people. Whether her absence is a good or a bad thing is beyond him to guess.
A beat passes as he decides how to proceed. Finally, he settles on another dismissive snort.]
I'd say you're wasting your time. [With the do-gooder act, with all of them. But some of the ever-present fight seems to ebb, leaving a gruff acceptance.] Fine.
[There's more to it than that, but it takes a handful of moments for him to work up to it, battling past an inner conflict.]
Have you seen a girl around? My age. Brown hair cut to her chin. Blue eyes.
[Stabbed like me. But like Gene's sun, those words aren't about to see the light of day anytime soon.]
luckily his tolerance for recalcitrant babies is high!!
( it's said with a little self-deprecating smile. other folks are a lotta things, but he wouldn't ever consider them a waste. souls have weight and worth. gene's killed when he has to, but there ain't any joy in it. when he's done with the war, he likes to think he won't ever take up arms again.
but if it's true, that bein' here means bein' dead, then it's a moot point, now ain't it? they won't even be able to bury him in the cold. truthfully, he'd rather his squad not waste the time on it. st. vith has been a goddamn bloodbath.
he gets up from where he's sitting and moves nearer to the fire. he takes out a pack of chesterfields, taps one up and crouches to light it off the flame. his damn matches don't work none, and he's jonesin' hard for the nicotine. once he's got it lit he reclaims his little spot near the fire, one knee drawn up. the cigarette is loose between his two fingers, he takes a drag off of it and holds it out for the boy in case he wants one too.
way he sees it, any fella old enough to die is old enough to smoke. )
Can't say as I have. But I'll keep an eye out.
that's a kind description for this tit babe
Until now he hadn't paid the other much mind, but now that he's accepted the man with the unfortunate accent intends to cling like a persistent burr, Gene goes about his business under the watch of an attentive observer, M.K.'s gaze following his movements, lingering on the pack of smokes--again, not a make he recognizes from the Badlands. The only time he's not noncommittal is when Gene leans into the fire. It's no further than a steady hand needs to catch a tendril of fire, but tension straightens his spine nonetheless, watching the flames lick so close to skin. Any minute now he expects to feel the flood of aching pain down his face and chest, pain he's been living with without respite from for weeks. Burns hurt worse than blades, he's now decided.
But the charitable, drawling figure in his bland uniform doesn't come away with melted flesh. Just a lit cigarette, which he offers out. This, unlike the soup, inspires some interest. It's not opium, but...
He takes it, not noticing his hands fail to fidget restlessly this time around. He doesn't give thanks, but then that doesn't seem to be a commonly found word in his vocabulary.
Neither does he do the amateur thing and cough after the initial inhale, but it's clear from the way he speculatively turns the cigarette around in his fingers that it's not a brand he's familiar with.]
Most people who spend time helping people they don't know do it because they're trying to make up for something bad they did.
[Would you believe that's a casual observation? No. It's not. Coming from M.K., it sounds more like a mild accusation.]
you're doing so well with him tho ;; soft angry baby
I reckon that's the likely case for some folk.
( gene's always been a deliberate man. not a soul alive or dead could stir him to do something he weren't keen on, and he ain't never done a damn thing he knew he'd later regret. there ain't ever an excuse for cruelty by his yardstick, and he's a man of convictions plain.
he watches as the kid fusses over the cigarette like he ain't quite sure what to make of it. he'd intended to share it originally, but now he just pulls out a second for himself, leans over into the boy's space to light the second off the dim cherry of the first. )
An' it's fine by me if'n you care to assume it of me. Y'ain't got no reason to trust my word. We're a passel of strangers tossed together in the dark. That ain't a thing what engenders belief in one another.
( a faint pause, and m.k. gets a bit of a sideways smile. playfully, )
But who knows. Maybe one day I'll surprise you.
screams, i'm glad, bless u
[An invitation to prove him wrong--with the confidence Gene can't. It makes for some cognitive dissonance, being at an age most young men would just be beginning their lives while his words drip with a worldly man's cynicism. Better to die young for something than grow older and more miserable for nothing like most people he knows, at any rate.
Because he's watching the watcher now, he thinks he gets a whiff of the humor tucked away behind the equanimous expression. Words on a page elude him--body language, though, he's literate enough in that, and the way Eugene seems entirely unafraid to come near him allows him the chance to scan his face. He doesn't press it. The free cigarette buys Eugene that much.]
I doubt that. Not a lot surprises me anymore. [The second inhale is better the second time around, knowing what to expect. He savors the burn a beat before releasing the smoke through his nose, again turning the cigarette around to look it over, tangible evidence he hasn't lived long enough to encounter quite everything yet.] One thing's for certain, the darkness makes everyone more honest. I don't have to take your word for it. We'll see.
i hope you app tbh i'm already living for this cute cr
It does at that.
( darkness terrifies. brave men lose themselves in it. things endured in daylight hours become hell beneath the cover of twilight, and the mind imagines all manner o'horror lurking just past the edge of comprehension. he's heard more confessions, more admissions, more sweet nothings passed over in darkness than any other time. an' more death. most injured men, if they're gonna pass over, do it in the small hours of the morning just before dawn.
it ain't ever been a thing of fear for him. maybe it's the ghosts that are like as not to lurk in it, or maybe it's just that he's too dog-stubborn to fear what normal men fear. it's been more friend than foe to him. he kissed alex in the dark.
gene takes another drag of his cigarette, flicks the ash off one end. it's such a damn thing, to be warm after st. vith. felt like he wouldn't ever be so again, an' dead or not it's a little miracle to find himself conscious of the tips of his fingers on down to his toes.
as m.k. studies the cigarette — )
They're called Chesterfields. They get handed out like candy in the war. Calms the hands.
( and the nerves. makes dyin' easier. makes livin' easier too. )
i'm!! super tempted!! chinhands @ calm bro and snarly bro
He goes silent at the first remark, watching ash curl on the end of the cigarette. Easy agreement encourages settling into easy conversation, and he's not interested in making more friends. All of his friends are fighting where M.K. isn't, and many have probably already fought and fallen to Sunny. More black lines for Sunny's collection.
But the second...
Even if tobacco hadn't become hard to come by when the territory that harvested it went down, no baron he knows would have handed out anything like candy during the war, unless it were backhands to the face for daring to insinuate clippers were so weak as to need calming. Neither would Pilgrim; he hadn't needed bribes to comfort his people. The dots are there--the way people look, the way they dress, the things he's overheard--but he hasn't spoken to enough of the arrivals yet, still coming to the realization of just how vastly different they are.]
Not the part of the war I've seen. [Following the hunch:] You're not from the Badlands, are you.
im soft it's so cute
I'm guessin' you ain't talkin' about South Dakota.
( since. anyone who's ever set foot in the states would mark his accent as southern, and wouldn't bother with the askin'. )
Most folk here are from some other place or time, seems like. I'm from a state called Alabama, in 1944. ( a slight pause. then, in correction: ) Ah, sorry. '45. New Year just went on a few days ago for me. Only met one other from my war, an' he ain't a soul I knew.
protect Eugene 2k19
You guess right. I don't know where any of those places are.
[While the Gregorian calendar may have died an ugly death, the irony of ironies is that the geography they're thinking of is more or less an apocalyptic rose by another name. The Armadillo Territory had been lodged in the deep South, close enough that its eastern most border could've spit on Gene's home state. That same oppressive heat had made him sweat out his weight in water more than once.
In better news, in about six hundred years white privilege will be all but wiped out by the heterogeneous melting pot the baronies become, though granted, the slave trade sees a major resurgence.
Hey, you win some, you lose some.]
No wonder you can't take a hint. Most people from the Badlands and the outer territories would know to keep their distance.
[It may be as close to a thanks for the cigarette as M.K.'s going to get.]
he would object!!
From you especially, or in a more general way?
( the boy seems to expect to be known, an' feared some. he's used that as a weapon twice now in the course of this conversation, draggin' the dark things he's done out into the firelight as if he expects an exhumation of dead deeds. )
too bad, he doesn't get a vote
For as long as he can remember, he's seen wariness ground into people so deeply it's in their marrow. They live it. They breathe it. They greet their neighbors with it. They watch their backs with it. That knock on your door--is that a newcomer asking for directions? A clipper come to borrow your wife? When you knock on a door--is the person who answers it going to have a knife in hand?
People from the places M.K. names wouldn't need to ask. You approach a stranger preparing for the worst, not expecting the best. It's the way of things.]
From anyone, anywhere. Especially when they have a weapon beside them.
no subject
it's just. he never could cop to the attitude. weren't built like that. he goes out into the world knowin' people will lie, an' cheat, an' steal an' swindle him. he ain't stupid. he just believes it says more about them when they do than it ever would about him. it's on him to decide if he wants to let the world turn him cruel or not, an' he mostly comes down on the side of not.
gene flicks ash off the end of his cigarette thoughtfully, hums some under his breath. he's armed too, the boy might not've noticed it if he's lookin' for swords and the like, but he's got his service pistol at his side, seven rounds to its name. he's fired it only a handful of times in the war, but it's come to be a welcome weight at his hip. he doesn't like killin', but when it comes down to it he'll do it plain. )
Guess I'd find it stranger if a fella weren't armed these days.
( which is a curious thing all its own. war, an' those in it, is more familiar by far than folk who ain't never known violence at all. maybe that's why gene's all-but-gravitated to those souls what've seen it, breathed it in. he ain't all that sure about livin' life beyond war, now. an' if he's well and truly dead, then he guesses he won't have to. )