aftr_ooc | TEST DRIVE MEME ( 002 )

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*test drive meme

TEST DRIVE MEME ( 002 )

Test Drive Meme #2

Hello, and welcome to LifeAftr! We’re pleased that you’re expressing an interest in the game. Here, you can test the waters, gauge how your character may fare in the world of LifeAftr, and even gain some in-game incentives, if you so choose.

Remember that Reserves will open on August 17th and that Applications will open on August 24th!

Two important notes:

1. LifeAftr's test drives take place on the island of Mu, which exists apart from the real world and possesses a dream-like quality that characters are innately aware of from the moment they appear on its shores. No need to panic or fret. Dreams are odd things, after all - and anything can happen in them. Why would anyone question where their mind chooses to wander in its sleep?

2. Due to the nature of Mu, threads in our test drive can not only be accepted as thread samples in your application, but can be accepted as game canon as well. In fact, certain choices your character makes in Mu have the potential to bear in-game consequences, largely in the form of test drive reward items.

I'm on a Boat
The rhythmic rocking may be soothing to start with - perhaps reminiscent of how an infant might feel, rocked in the cradle. Well, up until you wake up long enough to take stock of your surroundings. You're on a flimsy wooden raft, comprised of logs lashed together with straw-like twine. You're surrounded by water on four sides, with the only landmass for miles rearing like an inkblot on the horizon.

Right - and you're not alone, either. You have a raftmate, and they're probably just as shocked and displeased to be here as you are. Good thing the boat appears to have come with a pair of oars - as well as a pair of very large butcher knives.

Those, ah...are probably just for survival's sake.

Probably. Though that's rather up to you, isn't it?

The Beast of the Bay
A roaring bonfire, the sound of waves lapping up against the sand, the uniform dark blanketing all but the orange glow of the embers at your feet - what more could you ask for? Those who huddle around the flames for warmth will find themselves oddly compelled to make something of the setting. It's simply too perfect to resist.

It's time, once again, to tell a story.

In fact, your lives may very well depend on it. As long as there is silence, the fires begin to dim, and the flames sink low. And in the distance, you swear you can hear...a snarling, a liquid yip-growl of a great stalking thing with slavering jaws. Maybe you glimpse it in the corner of your eye, dark-furred and clawed with golden slits for eyes that glow like molten amber.

For as long as your fire burns, you're safe. But you'll need a story to fuel it...and if the story is insufficient, if it's more lie than it is truth, then there's a beast that's hungry for your failure.

Get Spelunked On
The caves built into the cliffs lining the beach may be imposing, but you're going to need protection from the elements, and you might not have much choice if you want to last the night. In you inevitably go - or maybe you simply wake up there, having bypassed the need for a raft and a bad-tempered boatmate.

Never fear if you lack a natural means of producing light - it seems that there's all manner of round, glowing orbs buried in the ceiling of each sea cave. Isn't that thoughtful?

Maybe it would have been, if those orbs dispensing that faint cerulean glow weren't sentient - and annoyed at the sight of so many people invading their dark, secluded, peaceful habitat.

Glowgrubs are pale, wormlike creatures that like to dangle from the ceiling like very peculiar stalactites. Most don't grow any larger than two or three feet, but they can be remarkably fast on the ground when they like to be - and they do like to be, when there are intruders afoot. Armed with fanged mouths on both ends of their slightly striated bodies, glowgrubs can deliver a nasty bite that, while not fatal, is dangerous in its own right.

Those who succumb to the bite of a glowgrub will find themselves drawn, trancelike, to deep water. But while a glowgrub can survive submerging itself in those murky depths for hours at a time, most oxygen-breathing creatures cannot.

So don't go wandering about all alone, all right?

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

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| Beasts of the Bay |

[The woman on the beach is dressed in a white sundress and has an exotic-looking yellow flower in her white-blond hair. She sits with her legs off to the side, hands folded neatly in her lap.

Angela has been quiet tonight. She so rarely dreams, especially of nice sandy beaches and warm campfires. Usually her dreams are filled with smoke and screams - nightmares, really. But this isn't one of those nightmares. Not yet, anyway. The night air is cool on her skin and the sea brings a pleasant breeze over the group she's seated with. She's been watching the fire grow and wane as the others tell stories of adventure and ruins and exotic worlds she wishes she could see.

Now, she watches the dimming flame through half-lidded eyes, thinking back on times both good and bad and wondering if she could feed any stories to the fire.]

Stories? I don't really have many good ones to tell. Most of my stories would be about war and sad things.

[She leans back a little and cocks her head to the side.]

I have seen beautiful corners of the world, however. They won't be thrilling tales of adventure but I could tell you about some of the places I've been?

| Wildcard |

[If you can dream it, you can be it.]

Edited (added a little detail) 2017-08-25 14:22 (UTC)

Those are pretty much ones I have too, so if you tell them I don't think anyone will judge.

[Roy shrugs, which he can do very expressively despite his armor. One might think he'd take it off to relax by the fire, but regardless of whether or not the Beast out there might actually be vulnerable to a good old magic sword -- though his was a very good old magic sword -- Roy certainly isn't the type who can keep himself from being prepared should it venture closer.]

But I'm curious about other worlds, so hearing about places there would be interesting.

[Angela eyes the stranger's armor, somewhat amused. He reminds her a bit of Reinhardt in the sense that it's such a casual setting and he's still wearing heavy metal on his body. She misses that old fool.]

Hmm. I think the most beautiful place I've ever been to was a monastery in the Himalayas. Nepal. A safe haven for the omnic monks - I believe they were called the Shambali - that followed Mondatta. Beautiful, snowy mountain tops for miles and miles. I swear, the air there has got to be the crispest and cleanest in the world. The temple itself was gorgeous, too. There's a huge domed ceiling in the main chamber with a skylight in it. I hear from an old patient of mine that when the moon is full and at its peak, it lights up the whole temple. I've never seen that, though.

[The woman tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and smiles fondly. Then she seems to remember something and her brow furrows, smile fading quickly.]

I went there to help treat victims of a riot against the monks. Omnics have it so rough these days...it makes you worry after another crisis.

Rioting against monks? That honestly seems like just asking to be punched. A lot.

[Roy, of course, is envisioning warrior-monks, as is to be expected from his cultural background. But the first part of that statement catches his attention in retrospect, and he sits up slightly more straight to appraise her.]

You're medically trained?

[He's partially right, in that at least two of the monks believed more in action than pure peaceful meditation on the mountaintop. Angela sighs and nods reluctantly. No matter how much she abhorred violence, those guys probably did deserve to be punched. Still, she had treated many of them after the attack. That was just her way.]

They were awful people. They spray painted "Blood Not Circuits" all over the village. Most of the monks don't fight, so they made it very close to the temple before- [To tell Roy about the cyborg ninja and his martial artist master or not? Did patient confidentiality apply here?] -before they were stopped. They got much worse than they gave, I'm afraid.

[Angela straightens up and puts on a warmer smile.]

Field medic currently, a frontline combat medic when I was younger. [She doesn't look much older than her early 20's as is, which makes this statement somewhat dark.] You're a soldier of some sort, I take it?

Blood not... what? [But Roy only mutters that, before he pays more attention to the far more important part of her statement.]

I'm a fighter. [As if that explains everything, which it would if they were in a world that properly understood how reality works (in the form of a core rulebook or three).] Roy Greenhilt, and I think you may be my new favorite person here.

[Angela catches it, and for the first time realizes that several minutes ago, Roy said the words "other worlds" which didn't really make sense. But this was a dream, it didn't really have to make sense - right?]

Circuits. Most of the monks are omnic. You know... [She makes a movement with her head suggesting she's not really supposed to say the word.] Robots? Some of the monks are human, one is a cyborg. Can you believe those rioters hiked all the way up a mountain just to harass those poor people?

[She extends her hand in greeting, considering his answer carefully. She knew good men that could be considered "fighters", but she still didn't approve of the whole "fighting" thing.]

Doctor Angela Ziegler. Or Mercy, if you'd like. Pleased to meet you. What do you fight?

[Roy hefts himself to his feet, the better to properly take her hand and shake it. A nice solid shake, firm and with absolute control of his frankly ridiculous strength.]

The short version? Evil. [With a very distinct capital 'E'.]

I'm sorry, but I have no idea what 'omnic', 'cyborg', or 'robot' mean. [But he does pronounce the terms reasonably correctly, being both intelligent and prepared to absorb a lot of new terms.] Normally, I wouldn't press you for the story, but I'm going to admit that it's hard to think of a better time than right now when you're supposed to be telling a story to begin with.

[A good handshake. Rare, these days. And "Evil" with a capital "E" is a good answer. She'll take it and do what she did with Jack, Gabe, and the rest: Pretend that evil wasn't horribly subjective and often times little more than an excuse to kill. He seems sincere and kind enough, though.

She shouldn't stare and she knows it, but...who in the world doesn't know what a robot, omnic, or cyborg is? What a bizarre dream...It is a dream, right? It feels too real, but it makes no sense. She shakes her head to clear it.]

O-Oh. Well, an omnic is...sort of a human made of metal and electricity. A robot is a little different, it's just a machine that performs a function. Omnics are more human-like and have individual thoughts and feelings. Some people believe they have souls. [In the interest of being polite, she doesn't add that souls can't be scientifically proven as a thing and therefor the concept itself is silly to her.] A cyborg is a human with robotic parts - different from an omnic because they were born and not built. If that makes sense?

[It's a hasty explanation, but it's the only one she's got. She turns now to the fire, which has been flickering lower and lower as they've been speaking. Angela has never been a good storyteller, but she gives it her all.]

As for the story behind the riot, which is what I assume you're after in this case, it happened on the anniversary of an assassination. The date was very important to the Shambali. You see, the monks were once led by an omnic named Tekhartha Mondatta. He was a very inspirational figure to millions of people. He claimed to have had a spiritual awakening that showed him a future where humans and omnics lived together in peace and harmony. He established the monastery to teach his faith and all that he had learned about the "Iris", a deity or state of mind or something like that. [The fire, which had been waxing encouragingly, flickered at her clumsy phrasing. She wasn't good with matters of faith. They didn't make sense to her.]

Tekhartha was assassinated one day in the middle of a speech. They never caught the shooter, but they knew who it was that did it. Her name was Amelie Lacroix, before she was kidnapped and brainwashed into the monster that she is today. They call her "Widowmaker" now as if she's some sort of super villain. I knew her once, you know. [A small sigh passes her lips.] A ballet dancer married to a very good man. A man who was also fighting evil, actually. The same evil that stole Amelie away and killed him in the end. I didn't know either of them very well, mind you, but well enough to grieve over them.

[There's a long pause while she goes over the events of the past in her mind. She's nearly forgotten about actually telling the story of the riots. Rambling is a bad habit of hers.]

Oh! But the riots. Yes, these protestors climbed all the way up the mountain to harass the monks and villagers. It's a terribly treacherous climb, I can't imagine why they would even bother. They went through vandalizing houses and breaking windows until they got to the steps of the temple. That's when Genji and Zenyatta stopped them, I'm told. Lots of nasty sword and shuriken wounds came out of that fight. Perhaps tackling a man half made of metal with the training of an assassin wasn't the brightest idea, ha!

[[OOC: Sorry this got so long, my b, my b. She's not a good story teller because she goes off on tangents and winds up spouting exposition and backstory without actually saying what happened. Coincidentally, I'm not a good storyteller because I wind up spouting exposition and backstory without actually addressing what happened.]]

[Roy absorbs the story like a sponge, taking each individual piece and turning it to fit in a place he understands in his head.]

[Obviously she's from Eberron and this was all about the warforged, but Roy hadn't checked to see how canon this storyline is and if he's allowed to make that reference, so strike that line of thinking and come at it from a tangential area.]

Hmm. It sounds to me like you're describing golems... and I think even if you aren't, that's functional enough of a metaphor for me to understand the context. I can definitely imagine how, if golems became demonstrably sentient on a wide scale, ordinary people might be afraid or otherwise determined to deprive them of basic rights and liberties.

[Which earns a sigh from him. How easy it is to trample the rights and feelings of others just because they're slightly different.]

I'm assuming disaster followed.

[Golems? She'd never call an omnic a golem to their face but she understood the spirit of the comparison.]

Oh, en mass. Tensions were high enough with omnics being treated as criminals simply for existing. Now the leading figure for peace between the two parties is assassinated in the middle of a speech? In front of hundreds of people, tens of thousands if you count everyone who was watching it on t.v.? Attacks on omnics worsened, omnic prejudice towards humans deepened. Everyone is afraid of a second omnic crisis. We're on the brink of another war.

[This time the pause is heavier. She swallows hard and fixes her gaze on the fire. Which is looking a little healthier now, though it certainly wasn't roaring by any means.]

Humans and machines killed each other by the thousands for ten years before this happened. That was called the Omnic Crisis, when the machines rose up and attacked us without provocation or warning. It was a world war that could have wiped humans off the face of the planet had Overwatch not been formed. That's the group I was part of. They fought back against the omnics and protected people around the world.

[She does not mention that Overwatch was disbanded. She does not mention Blackwatch or the public outrage or the whole "being branded a criminal" thing. Instead, she sits up straight and tucks her legs under her, putting on a tense smile.]

So, in a way we both fight evil. I fight the effects of war, you fight...Evil. I'm sure you have interesting stories to tell, too.

[Given that she described them as on the brink of another war, and how tense that smile is, Roy has a few guesses on how it all turned out that aren't terribly far from the gist of it.]

Well, I've been in one-and-a-half army battles thus far. Lost the one, won the half, so apparently I'm running about a 25% win average? [It's not that great a joke, and Roy punctuates it with a shrug, but better than letting the tension linger.] The biggest of my stories haven't finished, though. I'm assuming at this point that they're on hold till I get back... or rather, that the temporal flow is so disjointed that when I do get back where I belong, far less time will have passed there than here.

[Which is one heck of an assumption, grounded in no facts at all.]

[Hold up.]

T-Temporal flow...Wait, what do you mean "get back"? This is just a dream, isn't it?

[She was starting to piece together a reality in which she was not asleep on an uncomfortable cot in Iraq, minutes from being woken up by an urgent call for aid, but was instead in a sundress on an island without her staff or any supplies, sitting and talking with a stranger while a fire fueled by stories wavered uncertainly in the breeze. She did not like this reality and balked against it, insisting internally that this was just a dream and the comments Roy made were just dream nonsense.

Probably.

Hopefully.]

My personal theory -- and this is purely a theory, mind -- is that we're in a demiplane with particular qualities that are not parallel to reality, giving it these dreamlike nature.

[It might be a dream, yes, but that didn't seem to fit the available evidence. Of course, Roy might be less suspicious had he not been recently entrapped within an incredibly convincing illusion for several hours.]

[Angela remains quiet for a moment, thinking carefully about this information. She begins to take in her surroundings fully for the first time tonight, from the lush trees to the sweeping strand of beach. The scents of ocean salt and smoke from the fire seem so much stronger now that she's paying closer attention. Could dreams be this vivid?]

If that is the case, and I'm not entirely convinced that it is, then how did we get here? I have no memory of coming here willingly or being forcibly taken here.

Teleportation, plane shifting, divine intervention... [Roy, not having an answer, shrugs. There are numerous possibilities, none of which they had the evidence to support.] The only thing I'm reasonably certain of is that there's some way to undo it. I'm more curious as to why.

An equally good question.

[Angela isn't sure she believes this theory, but she has to accept it as a possibility. It seems unlikely to her, given that the way this fire works is impossible, teleportation and plane shifting isn't entirely a thing (though she is reminded of Tracer's mishaps with the time stream and supposes something similar could be happening), and she doesn't believe in anything divine, let alone anything divinely intervening.]

Casting aside the why's and how's of getting here, one does have to wonder how we get out of here.

[[ooc: i might not be able to reply for a few days due to real world issues, so in case this is the last i get to post in the tdm: thank you for threading with me! you really helped me pick up mercy's voice after not playing her for so long. i hope to see roy in the main game in the future!]]

That is a reasonable question, which we can probably only answer by finding out what we're doing here in the first place. I'm assuming that no one here is capable of casting Plane Shift on their own, of course. [Because if they could have, they would have done so by now.]

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TEST DRIVE MEME ( 002 )

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