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

[ordinaryannie]

Give it time for them to get a few drinks in. If no chairs get thrown before the night's out, I'll call it a miracle.

[She rolls one shoulder in a shrug, then winces slightly, more out of the expectation of pain than pain itself.]

And a psychopomp is...kind of a spirit guide for the recently dead. They turn up in most mythology that frames death as a place instead of just a process.

[featherknives]

If no chairs get thrown out, I'll be disappointed.

[She's used to it. The battle and brawls, day in, night out. It was fun. She wasn't doing it by herself though... She chases away the moody thought and focuses.]

Never heard of it. Vastayans pray for moons to the ancestors to help our spirit find the way, peace and joy. [She takes a large gulp of her drink and briefly wonders if anyone will actually pray for her.]

[ordinaryannie]

It's just a name that got stuck on a common pattern of belief because academics like labels. Especially Greek or Latin labels.

[She takes a sip from her own bottle.]

I don't think I've heard of your people before. Where are you from?

[featherknives]

[Typical of humans to do so. Give names to things that cannot be named. She twirls the bottle slowly, thinking of home. She's dead. Does it really matter if she tells anyone about her tribe?]

I am from Ionia, from a landmass called Valoran. My Vastayan tribe has nourished the nature and its magic from the day the first raindrop fell.

[She chuckles, but there's no real humor in it.]

I suspect you are not from the world I know?

[ordinaryannie]

[While she has enough self-control not jerk upright in sudden and clear alertness, her interest is most definitely piqued. It isn't every day she meets someone from somewhere far enough removed to have its own geography, and as newly dead as she is, her first thought is what she might be able to add to the family records, how much she might be able to ask before tripping across the boundary between interest and prying.]

I'm from Earth. Maine, on the North American landmass.

[It's not, strictly speaking, a lie - Maine isn't where she comes from, but it's the last physical location she was in before her death - and it rolls off her tongue like gospel truth. The benefits of long habit.]

Do you have much contact with other worlds?

[featherknives]

[Earth. Her homeworld is called... Earth? Just that? It's so simple, like the ground they walk on. Of course, the tribe she comes from is human and has a name for itself but, seeing she's not one of the people from her own homeland that use shadow magic.]

No, we do not. [Her tall ears twitch-] We have enough problems on our own. Or rather, had.

Having other different worlds meddle with our business would throw everything into chaos.

[ordinaryannie]

A century and a half of speculative fiction would agree with you there.

[Also a significant percentage of history. Some contact between dimensions is amicable. The rest...not so much.]

You said you had problems. Did something happen? Besides the obvious.

[She tips the neck of her bottle slightly to indicate the rest of the tavern. Death. Here.]

[featherknives]

Who doesn't have problems?

[She pokes the bottle with her finger, nail grazing off the paper.]

I had a task to finish back home. [A task she decided on and pursued relentlessly, but still a task.]

And then death had to get in my way, [she says jokingly, taking a good swig of her drink again, but voice void of any humor.]

[ordinaryannie]

Death is an inconvenient bastard.

[She grimaces, watching the flickering light of the lanterns play off the glass for a moment.]

If I had to lay a bet, I'd say most of us probably have some unfinished business. Maybe that's why we're here.

[Or rather, maybe there's a similarity in that unfinished business that drew them all here, instead of a more standard sort of afterlife.]

[featherknives]

That it is.

[She has to agree. That was the most inconvenient time for her to die. Headstrong, she thought she made the right decision. And was proven wrong.]

Unfinished business... is there anyone that has all of their things in order before they die?

[That seems almost impossible to her. But that would be quite a convenient explanation for this place.]

[ordinaryannie]

Some people have to. Or at least enough of it that they're not desperate to stick around to finish it, y'know?

[Or else the world would be choked with ghosts grasping for anything that would give them a little more time.]