Test Drive Meme #7

[inthenightmods]

TEST DRIVE MEME #7

Hello and welcome to the In the Night test drive meme for November! Thanks for your interest in our game! Reserves open on December 20, and applications open on December 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 cap of 20, and a (current) application cap of 2 apps this month for new players, as the game has a player cap of 60. An accurate count of current players will always be available on the taken page.
  
• 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. They are welcome to make posts in the main comms for TDM events as well. Please note, however, that actual plot clues or happenings will not occur in TDM prompts.
  
• 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

MAGIC CASTLE IN THE LAND OF SWEETS

You wake up one morning to find that The Night Market has come to Beacon, rising from the depths of the lake to set up booths and stalls all around the square. As a market, they offer a variety of goods and services typically unavailable to the good people of Beacon. Lantern charms that grant special and boosted abilities? Check. Magical potions to imbue the imbiber with fun but temporary effects? Got 'em. Specialty goods from home? Can do. Cigarettes? You bet your buns. The only catch? It all comes at a price.

Accepted currencies at the Night Market include: Building and scrap materials, old tablets, old lanterns, captured forest spirits, torches, information, and most importantly... Plutonium. Of course, attempting to barter is always an option... but these currencies are your best bet for dealing with the various vendors offered by the Night Market.

And finally, if bartering isn't your speed, The Night Market has also brought with it a host of activities akin to a street festival. Warm up with a hot toddy or gourmet latte from the pop-up coffee booth, sample a treat from the candy shop, or win your bae a stuffed forest spirit or mechanical goldfish from the carnival games. Above all? Have fun!

This prompt is a mini version of the game's Pleader event.

BATTLE WITH THE (RAT) KING

Throughout the month, the residents of Beacon will discover that a familiar and not particularly wanted visitor has returned. Strangely, the creature appears to be incised by the holiday decorations that have been put up by those so inclined. It goes after any decoration it can, intent to rip them down, tear them, sometimes even run off in a tangle of garland. In particular, the Rat King goes into a frenzy any time it spies a nutcracker, and won't stop until it sinks its teeth into the wooden soldiers. It could be worse, you suppose. The thing doesn't seem to be paying mind to people unless they get in its way. Still, there are some residents that went to a lot of trouble to put this all together. Maybe you should help?

Or maybe you're scrooge and just want to watch the Rat King do its business. That's also fair. Just expect to get some coal in the secret santa exchange.

network prompts

MARCH OF THE TOY SOLDIERS

At some point while you were out and about, minding your own business, you find yourself in quite the troubling situation. All of a sudden, you're surrounded by what appears to be a small army of tin soldiers. The reality, of course, is that they're all somewhat small forest spirits that have decked themselves out in pieces of scrap that act as army-like uniforms, and not real toys at all...but still, the effect is unsettling. They're not all that threatening, really, aside from being creepy, but there are so many of them, and they hold sharpened, bite-sized spears that they keep trying to jab into you any time you try to move out of the circle they've made to sequester you.

Ultimately, you're able to more or less make out what they want: a ransom, of which they do not have the ability to properly communicate. They won't rest or let you go until you post of your plight on the network and give them what they want. You know, just, who knows what they actually want. That's still up for debate.

CHILDREN'S GALLOP

RINGLE DANGLE JINGLE JANGLE!

This is the nosie that greets you on an endless loop from the Bonfire Square. A small group of spirits have gathered there and set up what appears to be a donation pan, which they keep smacking and rattling as they provide all of Beacon with a rousing and unending set of holiday caroling. Unfortunately for everyone who isn't a spirit, this basically just sounds like coordinated screaming. And the screaming does not stop. Maybe for some of you, this would be easy enough to ignore in one capacity or the other, but it seems the spirits have accounted for this, and are very insistent on being given the attention their cheery efforts deserve.

Which is to say: throughout the day, everyone receives what is effectively spam emails to their tablet in the form of...very loudly written words. The emails pour in, over and over:

WE WON'T GO UNTIL WE GET SOME WE WON'T GO UNTIL WE GET SOME WE WON'T GO UNTIL WE GET SOME WE WON'T GO UNTIL WE GET SOME

QUICKNAV
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Comments

[especiallyparanoid]

W-world Eaters.

[His eyes widen just a tad because oh. That... that would do it? If the name is any indication of what to expect. Which it usually is.

World Eaters. That sounds big. Apocalyptic. Not that he doesn't know apocalyptic but he just died and look, he was expecting something along the lines of Wrath Demon or Sharyggh the Terrible or, or Jay'kkarr the Bloodthirsty at best? Why does the weirdly cross-dimensional afterlife even have a potential apocalypse, what is the general need for that?]

Uh, y-yes, it can be a bit overwhelming at first... [He tries to go for a tone that indicates that he absolutely knows what he's talking about here. He has no idea what he's talking about except those two words (World Eaters) make him want to run to his office right now and bury himself in tomes for the next three weeks.

Only that.

Only that there is no office, is there. And there are no tomes which is slowly starting to sink in.]

So what... what is the state of the... resistance, what are our resources?

[They have those, right? Magical weapons? Champions? Maigc? They have those, right?]

... Do you?

[Almost like an afterthought, out of the blue, strangely disjointed. Do you own an alarm clock?]

[webshoots]

Do I? [ he repeats. does he wha— oh, right, own an alarm clock. ] —Oh, uh, not here, but I did — but luckily, nine-to-five's aren't a requirement for life on a planet in the middle of an unknown galaxy that's lost its sun.

—But you know what public transit's like, right? And I'm pretty sure the MTA's running on an entirely different understanding of time to the rest of Earth. Something like, one minute at a station is worth two point five regular minutes, because there's no way that I can get to a station fifteen minutes before my train's due to depart for a twenty-minute journey, wait nine minutes for the train to turn up and then still manage to be ten minutes late without questions being raised about the temporal integrity of the entire transport system.

[ can he? nah, the correct answer here is that: he is just constantly late. timekeeping, who's she? ]

But I am expecting to have lost my apartment and my job by the time I get home, so it's probably good practice. [ not if, when. it's not optimism he really feels at this point, but giving in to pessimism is uncomfortably close to giving up, and peter's got to believe that they'll get home because if he doesn't, what else is there?

(even if there's another part of him that says it's okay if he doesn't, as long as they deal with the world eaters and figure out a way to get everyone else home. but mostly the world eaters, because that is just another day in the life of.)

he pauses and he looks away from wesley: resistance. resources. a quick, slighly uncomfortable glance back at him. ] Do you do this a lot? [ wesley, you do not look as if you do this a lot — the resistancing thing, that is. ] And there's—. [ "there's not a lot". "we're still figuring things out." ] Would you believe me if I said 'it's complicated'?

[especiallyparanoid]

[Wesley blinks his way through the monologue – wonders if he should interject but he doesn't quite know what to contribute what with his driving a car to work; a quip about L.A. traffic maybe? But then something else catches his attention and he perks up as the information registers.]

Is that what happened here? The sun was lost?

[There's a rather awkward pause because he's not quite sure how to phrase that next question.]

Was it eaten?

[Those dastardly World Eaters!! Are they to blame? That must be it!]

I... have had my encounters with the supernatural world before, yes.

[He stands a little taller at that, sticking out his chin because yes, he is in his element here, he is a professional and-- ]

An eaten sun, however, that is new.

[webshoots]

[ was it eaten? wesley asks and peter realises, quite suddenly, that he's not actually sure. the assumption is yes, but when it comes down to it, he doesn't know. he's also not really sure if the creatures eat worlds in a literal sense or if it's metaphorical — honestly, it could be either and he's not really sure which of the two concepts is more or less unsettling. ]

Well, it wasn't always dark and the World Eaters are attracted by light, so— yeah, probably. [ he pauses, then: ] No-one really knows what the World Eaters are, it could be a metaphorical thing, but... [ he trails off, lifting a shoulder in a light shrug. ] No-one here's seen them — the town gets reset before they have a chance to, uh, eat the world, or whatever it is they do...

—Apparently thinking of it like a checkpoint's a good way of wrapping your head around it.