memesinthenight | TEST DRIVE MEME #01

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!tdm

TEST DRIVE MEME #01

Hello and welcome to the The Next Night's test drive meme for May-June! Thanks for your interest in this GPSL! In an effort to streamline our application process and avoid future confusion between incoming and existing players, we do not have a reservation period. Applications will be judged on a first-come, first-served basis.

At this point in time, characters have not yet ICly unlocked the ability to bring in new people. However, we hope that will change in June! As soon as we set a date for applications to open, we will post an update to the OOC community as well as to plurk.

While you're here...

Take a look at our rules and faq pages to familiarize yourself with The Next Night.

Note that we will have an application cap of 20 apps for new players for this upcoming round only, and that the game has a player cap of 60. In future months we expect to limit this to 10 apps per round. 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.

Threads with new arrivals must ICly take place after the mechanism for bringing in new characters has been re-enabled in order to be kept canon. We understand this makes keeping track of dates a bit tricky and may require some timey-wimey handwaving but please try to keep this in mind when deciding if a thread can be canon or not.

Note that top-leveling is not limited to new characters! If current players wish to post a starter, 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. In addition, any threads from the TDM will be forward dated to when these mechanics are restored.

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.

As we no longer plan to have a bimonthly game-wide HMD meme, we will require all new applications going forward to have a HMD post somewhere on the journal and we will ask for this as part of the application process.

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

log prompts

EMERGENCY LANDING.

You've arrived.

Where, exactly? Well, that's quite hard to say. All around you is darkness. Even the stars above seem dimmed, as if it were possible to turn down the brightness on the sky. The only light immediately apparent is a lantern placed directly beside you. The handy-dandy tablet also provides light, but not enough to help much. Seems like you're going to have to find your way in the darkness.

Whether you find yourself in a dusted, rusted old amusement park, a spectacularly creepy abandoned orphanage, or what seems to be a museum with a very abrupt water feature in the middle of it, it's very clear you're not where you were when you closed your eyes. If you look back, what do you remember? Your death could be vivid, complete with the injuries that brought it, or a distant memory that almost seems like a dream. Either way it sticks to the back of your mind, whether you want it to or not.

And it might not be the best of ideas to worry about how you died or how you got here alone in the dark. Because turns out, maybe you aren't so alone after all. It might be a feeling, a crawl up your spine. Or sounds, bumps and wheezes and scratches hidden in the dark. Or it might be eyes, shining out in the shadows. It might be a good idea to start running, and hope you aren't the only one that found yourself stranded in this strange place.

Whatever you do, make sure you bring that lantern with you. Diverting too far from it makes you feel faint, and pushing past that feeling is not advised.

Turns out, it's not just new Beaconites that are turning up all over the place. The automated system is doing its best, but, there's some kinks to work out. The good news is, there's supplies coming into Beacon after almost two months of nothing! The bad news is, the supplies are showing up all over the place, with no rhyme or reason.

There are blankets and clothing items scattered on the dilapidated track of the Euthanasia coaster. There's a pile of food in the midst of the mostly destroyed sculpture garden, almost looking like an artistic statement on consumerism. Need some new tools? Hope you like climbing, because they seem to be precariously balanced in the branches of trees. There's a fax machine settled by the Bonfire, and nobody really knows what that's about.

Whatever it is you find, it's all helpful things that the residents of town could probably use. Though, admittedly, it'd be more helpful if it were in a place it could be used. Just like cargo off the ferry, it'd be a good idea to haul all this stuff from its landing place to the store, or wherever else it might be helpful. Or for those feeling less charitable, just grab what looks good and squirrel it away. Surely nobody is around to mind that you're helping yourself to more than your fair share!

As a final warning — tread with caution. Because with everything appearing at relative random, the next place it appears could be directly above you. And nobody wants to be under a pile of building materials when it ultimately lands.

KATAKLYSMOS.

All around you are signs of a devastating flood. Debris is still washed up against trees and buildings, walls have been knocked over, roofs caved in, and there's even a massive sinkhole in the Town Hall. Sandbags and trenches decorate the salvaged buildings.

And to the forest spirits, this seems to be cause for celebration! Are they excited that everything flooded? Are they just trying to cheer people up? Is this some festive holiday they've adopted from previous Beacon residents? Hard to say. But little pop-up booths reminiscent of a street market start to take shape around town, made out of collapsed homes and downed trees. The spirits offer snacks and drinks (probably pilfered from whatever was left of the sorry supplies, so think sliced spam and Tang), and "souvenirs" of people's ruined personal belongings that had washed out of their homes.

The best part, though? Water-based activities, fun for the whole family! Yes, the spirits are running around with buckets full of water to dump on everyone! Congrats, you survived the flood, here's more water! Watch out - if they can't find buckets they might just steal your shoes or hat and fill those with water instead!

As with most forest spirit prompts, feel free to NPC them yourselves - they're of slightly above animal intelligence and will come up with inventive ways to get you soaking wet when you least expect it.

network prompts

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES.

So you've found yourself in Beacon's eternal darkness. Well done! One of the first things most do here is check out the folding tablet they arrived with. On opening it, a prompt requests that you enter a network username.

But the instant you hit "OK", the screen redirects you to a welcome app. Which seems like it should be a good thing! But whether you select that you'd like it to be read aloud or if you would rather read it yourself, it seems to be a completely glitchy, bizarre mess. Parts are barely readable, but some parts look perhaps intentionally altered. Surely this isn't how the people of Beacon intended to welcome you, right?

Once it finishes, or once you manage to close out of it (a challenge, perhaps, since finding the right button on the screen to touch is difficult - the X shifts, the screen gets covered in static, and what is that sound) the network opens, prompting you to read the latest posts or make a post of your own.

WHISPERS IN THE DARK.

It's late. Or it feels late, it's always hard to tell in Beacon. Something pulled you from sleep, or whatever you were working on. A whisper, just nearby. A familiar voice, quiet and distant, and getting increasingly louder.

After some investigation, it becomes apparent the voice is coming from the tablet. There's a cryptic post, asking simply Do you hear me? And any time that particular post is pulled up, the voices won't stop.

The voices are distinctly ones that seem familiar. Maybe someone you've met in Beacon. Maybe someone you knew before then. Maybe it's someone you shouldn't be able to hear at all, and yet, you do.

There's no chance at actual conversation, though — the voice is simply asking if it can be heard. Softly, at first. A tinge confused, in some cases. The confusion escalates and is tainted by panic, as the voice keeps calling for an answer, an acknowledgment, that seems impossible to give. Even as the voice begs to be heard, please, please just say you can hear me, even as it fades into screams of frustration or terrified tears, no amount of response seems to break through.

The comments are open — maybe you can get your answers that way?

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I am. We all are. This whole world is dead.

[Which isn't something he has had much difficulty accepting from the start. His death was brutally final, and yet what he did with those last moments of life was a sacrifice worth making. Some protest, here - a rare few have even tried to escape. It's not his style, though.]

That bag of rice isn't probably from your actual world. What I meant is it got here by the same mechanism. Some sort of portal that draws supplies from those worlds out in the stars, and also somehow the spirits that once gave us life. It's not something I really understand, I'll admit. I've tried, but it's beyond the kind of technology I'm used to. Have you looked at that tablet, yet?

[He nods to the one beside her. Hey, at least not arriving with clothes means he can easily point out an example of this strange, fantastical technology he's had to become familiar with in his time here.]

I have died, then, and my soul is not to be allowed to move on. I have made a mistake.

[She exhales through her nose, and glances down at the tablet before picking it up. She turns it over in her hands, frowning at it. She handles it gingerly, by the edges, as though unwilling to touch it.]

This device of dead material is important, then?

[He gives her a sympathetic frown. No, she didn't make a mistake, but he understands at the same time that it's very hard to reconcile the religious or metaphysical beliefs from home with the reality of being here. She'll learn in time.]

It's useful. It's the sort of thing I'd never seen before coming here, but I've found it a helpful way to take down my thoughts, and it can do a lot more. You probably saw the stored message in it, too - don't know what's going on with that right now. That used to be a lot more helpful. Answered some basic questions.

Valans have such things. Sharers prefer other methods. I suppose I can make do.

[Still, she grimaces a little about it. She doesn't have to like it.]

I suppose that, being dead, I can no longer complain about having to deal with stone and other dead materials.

Not much that's living here, no. Probably nothing at all, actually.

[Dr. Solis might have been, as the last survivor of Beacon. But surely she too had been touched by so much death; otherwise, how had she lived for so long? Something unnatural had happened.]

Normally where you're from, you use things that are still alive? How does that work?

Easily. Our homes are the raft-trees that float upon the ocean. We share messages with other rafts through the songs of the starworms or through the webs that clickflies spin. When we need healing, the lifeshaper grows the tools needed to create and administer the medicine. It is simplest, for us.

[She lifts the tablet dubiously.]

I imagine that your world is like Valedon, where you live upon the dead stone. The only stone on Shora is beneath the ocean. We cannot make things like this, out of dead stone, of metal, not even if we wanted to.

[That is... a lot of something he has no understanding of. Translation issues combined with cultural differences, he has to assume. The words come through as words he recognizes, but not in this arrangement.

But hell, one of the things he's enjoyed about this place is the diversity of experiences people have on other worlds, so he'll try and make sense of it, even if she's still sitting naked in the open in front of the museum. He looks at the tablet as she lifts it and fidgets in his pocket for his cigarettes before remembering, yet again, he's out.]

We, uh. Yeah, some of us live on stone, or soil. A lot of people live on ships made of wood, though, at least some of the time. But I guess it's dead wood. I've never heard of most of what you just said, but it's not often I find other people here who are used to living at sea. So you have floating trees?

[He sounds impressed. Because honestly, that's pretty cool and he might be kind of jealous. The idea he's crafted in his imagination of a floating tree-ship is pretty spectacular.]

[She nods, slightly; she's attempting to poke through the tablet's menus, and while it's all very alien to her, it's at least fairly self-explanatory.]

They grow on the surface, sending roots down into the water, and are shared by many types of life. What walls we need we weave from sea silk. It is a good life, if we can conserve it.

[She looks up at him, her expression curious.]

Do you live on the sea of your world, then?

I've moved around a lot. Lived on a few islands. But, yeah, I've spent a lot of time on the sea. Sometimes it takes weeks to get from one island to another so it's as much a part of my life as being on land is.

[Which is normal enough for his world. Oh, sure, there are plenty of people born in one village who never leave it much, except maybe to go out fishing, or a short trip to visit friends elsewhere or have a holiday. But then there are plenty more who are purely nomadic, or who sail as part of their occupation - Marines, in his case. Military. It means he's seen a lot, and he's grateful for that.]

We have a couple races of people who live in the sea entirely, though. Fishmen, and merfolk. To me, you look like the former, mostly. I think you'd fit right in. Most people here are from worlds where humans are the only intelligent ones around.

[That's comforting. It shouldn't be, maybe, but the Valans had been so alien, living on the rock of their world. Her tone is mildly amused, though, when it comes to discussion of 'fishmen.']

I am human. I cannot speak for your fishmen and merfolk, but that does not sound entirely different from some of the words the Valans use to describe us Sharers. 'Catfish,' sometimes. It was not meant kindly. If there is one thing I believe to be true, it is that 'human' is more about the soul than the shape of the body in which it resides.

[Human, is she? Well, he's willing to accept that, now, after nearly a year here. There are far stranger things he's heard since then.

He frowns sympathetically as she describes the insult, but then his expression softens as she continues. Reflected in his eyes is something like surprise, but also recognition. Agreement. Warmth in abundance, as he gives her a soft smile.]

That's beautiful. Where I come from, there are... divisions, I suppose, between people. I wish I could make them see the value in respecting everyone like that. It's better here. We all have to work together to survive, and people seem a lot more accepting of each other.

Yes, I know all about those sorts of divisions.

[She sighs, and it's a sigh with a great deal of grief and exhaustion in it.]

It seems that I have spent a very, very long time trying to break them down. I am... tired. I wanted to rest, but... it seems I cannot have that, yet.

I'm sorry. Really, I ... I was content with my life, even if it hadn't been a long one. I thought I'd get to rest, as well. I had someone to protect at home, and I thought I had ensured his safety, finally.

[As much as he hates divulging information about himself, especially to someone he's only just met, it seems fair to give her this much. It helps make his point, but also, whatever struggles she may have faced at home, he can sympathize with them. He is human and always will be - but his extended family, his ancestors, would vehemently deny their own humanity for to them humans are a lower race and practically animals. Rosinante is proud to be human, and wishes only for unity between humanity and the rest of the world's races, fishmen and longarms and giants and all. There are far greater problems they all face together than the circumstances and places of their births.]

There's more information in the tablet, but this world is threatened by creatures that consume all light and life. We were brought here in the hope that we would learn how to fix it. What I've learned since arriving is that this world isn't alone. The sooner we can destroy or incapacitate the world eaters of this world, the sooner we can try and do something about the ones up there. [He glances up to the sky - where normally there would be stars, but recent storms have left the sky covered in clouds.]

The longer they go unchecked, the higher the chances are that they might eventually find our home worlds.

[Merwen reaches to touch him, reassuringly, with one long-fingered webbed hand. She recognises pain, if not all the details that surround it.]

I am tired of fighting wars, and I am not sure I share your understanding of 'world eaters,' at least not yet. Still, it does not sound like the sort of thing I would wish my sisters and daughters to experience, not when Shora is still recovering from a war of its own. I can do nothing else but try to share help.

[She spreads her hands in a shrug, the webbing between her fingers translucent against the light of the lantern.]

[Touch isn't something he receives often here - mostly because he keeps to himself and doesn't really want people to try and change that. But she means well, and he allows it for that reason - and also because he doesn't want to back away from someone who has only just arrived. They all need each other's cooperation. He doesn't really react in any way, but at least he stays put.]

I understand. As much as I can, anyway, without seeing what you've seen. But anything you can bring yourself to do to help out will be useful. We have a lot to accomplish and we've just lost a lot of people. It's more important than ever that we all work together.

[He'll even manage a trace of a smile again if it helps put her at some small amount of ease.]

Do you want me to explain, or would you rather try to read up on your own?

I intend to read up later, when I have... adjusted, let us say. I would still appreciate sharing your insight now, if you care to.

[She pauses, looking out into the darkness for a moment, listening to some distant sound.]

I admit that I do not know if this is a safe place for such discussion.

It's not where I'd pick to sit and chat for much longer. We're not that close to anywhere with other people. But we could go to the old downtown area, it's a little safer.

[Not in great shape itself after the flood, but surely better than out here. Rosinante has walked from the bonfire to the museum several times, but usually via the southern route. Something about the far north end still feels wild and dangerous. Perhaps it's just his imagination, and lingering memories of racing through these woods while being chased by the green-eyed monsters that killed Captain Winters and Five so long ago.

He turns to indicate the direction, and beckons for her to walk with him.]

I will trust your judgement in where best to go.

[What else could she do? She hastens to follow, glancing back behind them but then fixing her gaze ahead.]

Each world would have its own dangers, I suppose. What is there to share fear of here? Are they predators or are they human?

The forest spirits.

[He answers, while clearly keeping a close eye on their surroundings as they walk. The occasional unexpected sounds of movement off in the woods have him on high alert - for with people turning up in strange places, and supplies crashing down unexpectedly, there's a lot more sudden bursts of noise than he's used to. He keeps his gaze moving, and keeps his coat clear of his lantern. No point blocking any of the light for less visibility when there's two of them talking, they're obvious enough.]

A lot of them are fine. Not harmless, exactly, but they tolerate us. Some even like us. But the green-eyed forest spirits are dangerous, and can command the others to fight us. They're strong, and aggressive. We still don't really know why they do it. But if you see green eyes, run. Try to get help. You probably don't stand a chance on your own.

[She considers this for a moment, frowning slightly as she attempts to slot this idea into the world she knows.]

Can these spirits share speech? You speak of them as something more than animals, beings that have ability to reason. If that is true, then the possibility of peace must exist.

[Does she still believe that? Maybe. Maybe.]

They have some ability to speak with us, yeah. Some of them. It's how we ended up getting the ones around town to like us. In that tablet, there are a few lists of phrases of their language that we know, and that's helpful. The green-eyed spirits are something a little different, though. They think differently than we do. Never seen anything like it, and we're still learning.

[It's been nearly a year and they still haven't managed to make peace with those ones, even if Soldat claims he heard that they don't wish to kill the people in town anymore. Rosinante just isn't sure he believes that. It isn't like all green-eyes are the same. If one or two are willing to resist acting through violence, that's great, but what about the rest?]

Good thing about new people coming in from new places is it means you might have new ideas. Things we haven't tried yet.

[Merwen's face twists a little.]

At home, we shared compassion with those who wished to hasten our deaths. I spoke to my sisters of my belief that they were as human as we are, and that sharing compassion was the right course of action. We shared compassion, and many of us did die. We achieved some sort of success, but I am not at all certain I have the heart to see such a thing again.

[She runs a hand over her face, and sighs, heavily.]

I understand. But hey, at least here you won't be alone, right?

[He understands enough, anyway. If not the context, then the sentiment. And his reassurance, for what it's worth, is mild rather than full-blown optimism. What they have to deal with here is hard but for him it's worth every moment. Everyone finds their own reasons here to keep pushing forward together rather than giving in, whether that's fostering what little life is left in this world and helping it grow, or striving to end the world eaters themselves. Small actions still matter. They all contribute to a greater whole.]

I know it's a lot to take in, coming here and hearing all this when you thought you'd have peace. My advice is just take it day by day. You'll find your place.

I am not ready. I am not ready for more of this.

[She takes a deep breath, trying to steady herself. She's dead, after all, so what is there to worry about, really?]

But the last wave washes over all of us. I suppose I cannot fight this, not really.

[It's similar to the acceptance of the situation that he had to find in his first month here, and so he nods. She's practical and perceptive, and he can appreciate that.

A few minutes more finds them at the edge of downtown. The old buildings emerge from the trees, which are still oppressively close in the darkness. Concrete streets and plazas haven't really stood the test of time and decay well at all. Despite this, most of the buildings still look in decent shape, if a little bit weather-battered. He passes the hotel and its fountain, and notes the door still needs repairing - he'll have to get on that if nobody else has.

Ahead sits Kickaxe Brewing Company, though, and it's a cozy enough spot. He stumbles a little on the broken pavement as they walk up, then heaves the large garage-like front door open, which protests with a whine and grind of rusting metal. The bottom floor here looks a little barren, but someone has grabbed a few of the chairs from upstairs and set them at the bar downstairs, and those are in pretty good shape. He motions to them, but sits himself on the floor. Tiny chairs don't mix well with him, and when sitting on the ground he's still about as tall as anyone standing, anyway. He's used to it.]

This is the north end of town, these buildings here. Safer than the middle of the woods.

[Maybe. Safer by a slim margin, but he'll take it.]

If you hear music, this is a good place to hide. The door slides down easier than it goes up, and the Parade won't find you in here if you're still and quiet.

Edited 2020-06-10 00:47 (UTC)

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