TEST DRIVE MEME ( 012 )

[lifeaftr_mods]

Test Drive Meme #12

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 June 17th, and Applications on June 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.

There Goes the Neighborhood
Today, you're not merely waking up on an island. Oh, no. You're waking up in the world's most perfect suburb, complete with perfectly-trimmed lawns, white picket fences, and a uniformity that borders on the absurd. Not a fleck of paint is out of place, and not a blade of grass is out of line.

Mu has attempted to imitate the sort of fabricated happiness that adventurers dealt with in the month of May, but without the full power to shape fantasies to the whims of each individuals, has opted instead to attempt for a blanket, painfully generic alternative. It's a cheap attempt to mimic something that was already a falsehood to begin with, rote and uncommitted. Thus, much of this world is patchworked with palpable holes, both visible and otherwise: neighbors are featureless specters performing daily routines with robotic precision, entire swathes of the neighborhood are perfect replicas of the same painfully generic family, and, of course, there's you.

You obviously don't belong here. The framework of the narrative is so structured that it's not hard to realize things are amiss. The more you think about it, the more it seems like this entire fantasy is deeply, deeply amiss.

But then again, maybe not. Maybe you buy into it, completely and utterly. Maybe you're so eager to escape whatever life you lived prior to this one that you're all too eager to live in this Stepford-esque facsimile. The degree to which your character adheres to this structured world, and how much they remember from their true life, is up to you.

Do it for the Vine
This next scenario is far from pleasant, though it is much more real. The thick, tropical woodland might be difficult to traverse at first, but don't worry - it's about to get much harder. Do you like earthquakes? How about massive, twisting vines that swarm out from the undergrowth to attempt to snake up around your ankles and shins and root you in place, perhaps smother you in the dirt? Isn't it fortunate that you're being left to contend with both at once? Mu is compensating for the events of May, it seems; commemorating a god whose demise tore an island apart by mimicking with precision efficiency how that must have felt for everyone to bear dramatic witness.

The good news is that while the vines might be both eerily cunning and vast in number, they still are just plants, and plants can be easily pruned or burned. The subterranean rumbles of the ground as it cracks and ruptures underfoot might be less easy to contend with.

To that, our only suggest is simply to run. Good luck!

Taken for Granite
This particular brand of landscape is striped with cliffs and crags, a lifeless mountain range crooked along the horizon with rock the color of fired clay. And not far off from where you've stirred awake is...a rather eccentric rock formation.

By "eccentric", of course, we mean "moving". And by "moving" we mean "it is extricating itself from the ground like some unholy tectonic zombie and it's coming right at you RUN".

Formed entirely from an amalgamation of earth, rocks, ore, and valuable gems, the earth golem is surprisingly territorial for a glorified lump of mud. Approximately fifteen feet tall and half as wide, this lumbering creature has only one concern: the eradication of anything that steps into its territory. It is sensitive to vibrations in the ground, and is thus very difficult to hide from for those moving on foot. However, it is nearly blind and very stupid, preferring to wallop anything within reach using its massive, boulder-sized fists rather than employ any sort of strategy. Still, unless you're looking to travel to the other side of the area via the Golem Express, avoiding this creature's warpath may be a wise choice. Especially given its talent at re-assembling itself upon destruction.

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LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

Comments

[braceforimpact]

Kaworu looks up obediently into the clouds, and continues looking at them for a second or two as though sincerely considering the matter of the weather. This is an entirely superficial behaviour, mind--Kaworu has never in his (extremely short) life had a single thought about the weather, and is in fact entirely incapable of forming an opinion on it. But the neighbour didn't tell him to think about the weather. He was told to look at it.

So he is.

Except then the spider-human asks for help, and he returns his attention to more earthly matters. (Though not to imply that the weather itself is not an essential function of the earth.)

He frowns slightly, brow furrowing in bemusement.

"What do you want me to do about it?"

Does he think this is still about the weather, or has he figured out Jowan's problem is the neighbour?

Yes.

[worstmage]

"You comin' to the barbecue?" asks the Neighbour, not put off by Kaworu's lack of weather response. At least, he's sure still smiling.

"I don't know what he wants," Jowan whispers, almost silent. He is a terrified and panicking giant spider man with like three kinds of natural weapon. "He won't stop looking..." He's gripping his front legs that he has drawn up by his human waist so hard that he's gone white-knuckled.

[braceforimpact]

"It sounds like he wants to know if you're coming to the barbecue," Kaworu reports matter-of-factly. The benign tone lasts another half second before he asks the inevitable.

"What's a barbecue?" He looks up at the unnatural neighbour, then at Jowan, not actually sure where he can expect an answer.

[worstmage]

"Cooked.....meat?" Jowan whispers, still refusing to look around. "Over a fire. Maker, he thinks I'm already coming, why is he following me?"

"Haha, you fellas are such jokers," says the Neighbour, repetitively. "How's the wife?" Which wife? Whose wife? Who knows.

[braceforimpact]

Good news: Kaworu knows what a wife is.

But he doesn't have one, and he doesn't understand what Jowan is so upset about. Can this misshapen human tell the 'neighbour' has no AT Field--no soul? There's no such thing, of course. A human without a soul doesn't exist. This is getting weirder and less easily ignored. He isn't supposed to do anything because anything he does might give him away. But he's also not supposed to be out of doors naked.

He glances at Jowan speculatively.

"Do you have a wife?" he asks.

[worstmage]

Jowan can tell that....all of his senses are totally creeped out by the Neighbour. He's also honestly starting to get unsettled by the naked teenager. At this point, he feels like...he'd honestly be so lucky for this to be a dream? He's probably finally accidentally found his way into Ryslig's version of the Fade and these are both demons who are going to...eat him. Or something. Probably not possess, as this seems an odd way to go about it.

"Do I look like the sort of person who'd...have a wife?" he asks, eventually, and the Neighbour, simultaneously, says, "Polly's looking forward to seeing her!"

[braceforimpact]

Kaworu stares at Jowan blankly.

Does he... what? What does that mean? Look like someone who...?

....?????