aftr_ooc | TEST DRIVE MEME ( 015 )

Entry tags:

*test drive meme

TEST DRIVE MEME ( 015 )

Test Drive Meme #15

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 September 17th, and Applications on September 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.

Drawn to You
The forest is dark, silent but for the snap-buzz of cricket song. Nearby, the soft babble of running water threads its way between the rough-barked trunks, though the origin of said water is difficult, at first, to pinpoint.

Granted, you probably aren't paying much attention to the forest, or the water, or the darkness. You're probably more concerned about the creatures flitting to and fro in sparse groups, most of them quite small. They tend to vary in appearance - some look to be totally benign, while others considerably less so - but all belong to the same species.

Scribblets are wily beasts, dream-haunters by nature, and they seem to revel in the idle torment they inflict upon those who cross their paths. You, dear travelers, are no exception. And while they are quite easily crushed into dust once caught, they are exceedingly slippery, agile creatures that are most difficult to pin down.

If you're not careful enough, the scribblets will fasten a peculiar tether to you. It looks very much like it is made of the same materials they, resembling a sketchy line of crayon, drawn into the third dimension. Their intent, tonight, is to tie you to something that will make your life difficult - binding you to a tree trunk or to a branch far above the ground, tying your hands together...or even tying you to someone else. These bonds will only grow progressively denser and heavier the more you struggle against them.

Fortunately, the solution here is very simple. Like any drawing, it can be washed away if you find water. You'd simply better hope that you're able to collaborate with whoever you must in order to access said water, whether it's working alongside whoever you might be tied to, or convincing someone to lend you a hand.

You'd better hope the scribblets don't go after them either, by the way.

Quarantine Breached
Whatever this place once was, nature has long since claimed it for its own. A darkened, secluded laboratory now nearly swallowed by thick snarls of overgrowth is probably not your ideal vacation spot, particularly since there's a dearth of any decent lighting sources here. Drenched in shadow as this place was, it might have been helpful if you had thought to bring a light.

Fortunately, that problem is soon to be solved! Twin smoldering points of light abruptly ignite several yards away from you, paired with the pitched mechanical hum of engaging circuits. Another pair of lights immediately spritzes to life just beside it, and another pair, and another...and another...and...

Well, there seems to be a lot of them, doesn't there?

"Attention," chimes a pitched, automated voice, doubtless issuing from one of the many automatons that have begun to stir awake, one by one. "Potential host sighted. Quarantine breached."

You must understand, traveler: the island of Umui was nothing like this. The guardian units there were conscious nurse-bots, charged with caring for the sick and dying populace of a hospice island. Most did so with as much care as they were capable. But in the initial days of Umui's exploration, a great deal of explorers' anxieties revolved around these fallen automatons, and what possible purpose they may have served.

We invite you to imagine a scenario in which this went horribly wrong.

Consider these automatons to be shadowy, overzealous mirrors of their long-dead, real-world equivalents. They have learned to become hyper-devoted to their task of keeping their patients safe; so devoted, it seems, that nothing will stop them from fulfilling those obligations. They intend to catch and sedate you so that you can be...returned...to a place of safety.

Unfortunately, this place of safety probably entails an inescapable four-walled room or a hospital bed, and it's doubtful, to say in the least, that enough of their programming remains for them to remember to care for and feed you once you've been returned to whatever passes for a quarantine zone. In a decrepit, dilapidated building like this, it's probably not pleasant.

Our advice is to simply not get caught. If this means doing some inevitable destruction to all this complex hardware in the process, well...at least there's no chance you'll be billed for damages.

The New Farm Simulator Looks Great!
It is possible that you vaguely recall being asked to take watch this evening. By whom? Oh, please, that doesn't matter! With the pleasant hum of crickets in the air, and a backdrop of paddocks and grain fields around you, there are plenty of worse ways to spend your evening than this. All you have to do is keep an eye on passive livestock. The farmer's life is a simple one, where your biggest problem is trying not to fall asleep before your shift is over.

In theory, anyway.

While the scenery of the quiet countryside may be ideal, the state of the farm's buildings and and fences is far from it. For the curious creatures such as popo, there really isn't much to keep them in one place for long, wide stretches of fenceline ruined by fallen sections. Meaning that these massive, shaggy creatures can simply step over the crushed regions and start plowing their way contentedly in the direction of the fields of grain - fields that were certainly not intended to end up in some silly beast's stomach.

For others, sweet grains aren't as appealing as that sweet, sweet taste of freedom. A word of advice: once the popo are over those hills, you won't be seeing them again. And they might not be terribly fast on their own, but in a herd, they can get to be as dangerous as a stampede.

Hope you weren't expecting an easy night, because in LifeAftr, there's no CJB cheats menu to save you.

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[A drifter's gun makes a distinctive noise; old, appropriated technology, finding new use in the combat-rich environments that plague a wanderer's footsteps. They anticipate that it must be a drifter of some sort don't anticipate the silhouette as it presents itself to them, the cream-colored fur and the pink helm that shadow every part of their face but for the eyes.]

[Their motions are swift, sharp, and to the point. Their blade hums out in a blaze of cyan, cleaving a scribblet in two in one fierce stroke.]

[And then, because the shape of them is so distinct and so familiar and so immediate, the Drifter's pace slows and skids to a stop and they make that critical, often fatal error - the very same that aches behind the rationalization that one should never get attached.]

[They hesitate, because no part of them wants to believe this is real.]

[They are much the same, recognizing the hum of a drifter's blade and the blaze of cyan striking true. Downing those who came for their lives over and over again. The preservation of a dying life for just one more day alive.

And the Guardian too cannot help but stare in surprise when the Drifter bursts into the clearing. They had stood before them as they were dying, silently listening to the Guardian's story of their family as they faded away. Yet here they are. Perhaps this is just another hallucination, a final battle cooked up by a dying brain as the Guardian slips into oblivion. The Scribblets are very...strange, but it was far kinder then anything Judgement has inflected the Guardian with.

But the minute one of the Scribblets attempt to sneak up on the Drifter, they level their weapon at the creature and fire. They could not wrestle with whether or not this was real while the Drifter was outnumbered. The Scribblets had stopped at binding the Guardian to the tree and likely would do the same to their fellow drifter. After that, who knows what the creatures would do.

The Guardian did not particularly want to find out.]

I'll cover you!

[Until they could work themself free from these strange bindings, it is all the Guardian can do.]

[They call out, and that sound - memorize it. Preserve it. Hold it in your mind and soul because it will disperse again and you never have to wonder if you were breaking your rules long before you'd understood their breaking as a potential threat to you.]

[They're stuck. They need help. The solution here is very simple.]

[One, two quick slashes, a dash forward, and they'll cleave through those bindings, and - ]

[And, impossibly, their sword fails to cut through them. They try again. Again?]

[Why isn't this working?]

[The blades of drifters were made to cut though those who opposed them, the hard light slicing through flesh and metal alike. And now it seems to have met its match against something that looks like a bored child's idle doodle.

The Guardian fires their gun one more time to keep the scribble beings back before turning to the Drifter's efforts to free them. Their main attempts to free themself had been focused on his sword-arm but the more they struggled, the more tired they became. Certainly the Guardian's blade was heavy but they have used it for so long that the true weight of the weapon only made itself known if they were pushed to their absolute limit.

Still they will still struggle until the end, even if this is just a dream.]

I don't think it can be cut. [An obvious statement but they can't keep trying what does not work.] There has to be another way.

[They kick out a foot a little way from the Drifter so they don't accidentally smack them. The bindings hold fast and they wish they had an eraser, a really big one.

At least for now the gun is enough to dissuade the creatures from approaching. They still had time to figure this out.]

[Another way indeed.]

[The Drifter is often direct, and even more often to a fault. Their eyes narrow, sharp slits of obsidian imprinted against the dark cobalt of their face, and their sprite picks out both themself and the Guardian in friendly-green.]

[The rest? Hostiles.]

[They twist on their heel and lob a roly-poly into the swarm of black-scrawled scribblets, without even so much as a warning. No demand to duck, no question that they should perhaps hold on to something. But the bomb only affects those that have not been pinged in green.]

[To the Drifter and the Guardian both, it is merely as though they are standing in the heavy wind, and not in the midst of an explosion that sends the scribblets flurrying into the air like flakes of ash.]

[That was not quite what the Guardian meant.

Reflexively they shield their face with their free arm. Although the Guardian wore a helmet that protected their head, they did not wish to find out exactly what it would take to damage their still-visible eyes. But to their surprise the explosion is no stronger then a particularly windy day despite displaying enough force to send the Scribblets flying. They knew that those bombs were being sold in Central Town but had not bought a few themself.

A shame it is not something they could try any longer.

The Scribblets are out of commission but when the smoke clears the doodles binding the Guardian still remain untouched.

Third time's the charm?]

Blades can't cut it nor do bombs. [They don't know if their gun would work but the angle makes it impossible for them to try.] It's to sticky for me to slip out of either.

[Perhaps there way a way to wash it off...?]

[At least the little creatures are off of them, now. The Drifter will consider that a success, which means - ]

[Which means they can look at the drifter they last saw collapsed in the grass, peppered with falling rain, strength fading and failing. And they can not think, not think what this meant, what it means now, that they can see them. They don't have to think.]

[They cannot cut or blast or slip away the bindings that keep them, that keep the Guardian in one place, and so they...]

[They issue the first text they have had time to input since their waking.]

water?

[The Guardian too has to look at the person who saw their final moments and held the last words they would ever utter. It was fitting in a way, the life saved witnessed their death, and they did not wish it was someone else. Perhaps that is why the Drifter was here in this dying dream.

But that is something the Guardian will keep to themself. A final dream or not, the tenacity of a drifter still bound them to handle the problem on hand first and foremost. Their companion sprite floats closer, having stayed back to avoid being webbed up as well. The map it displays is shockingly bare but luckily they were able to record the location of a very small pond nearby.

They couldn't go to the water so the water will have to come to them.]

I found water not far from here. It should work.

[If not then something else will have to be found. But they both can cross that bridge when they get there, like many other things currently left unsaid.]

[Water. They have water, and they have a container for that water, and so they'll have to locate it. But at least - a map of the area, a memory of modules ticking up across linked interfaces, and it is just the way that it was.]

[And then it isn't.]

[The Drifter is quick to nod, quicker to sprint away, and fill a canteen with water. It seems a pointless endeavor, but as long as they keep moving, they do not have to think. They do not have to consider. They do not have to remember what it was like, to watch something die and realize that they had not considered that it would leave them feeling hollow as a result, because everything dies and the quality of life is ephemeral but they'd not considered that it would ever be someone to whom they had allowed themself to get - ]

[They return promptly.]

[There is silence left behind when the Drifter leaves but not the kind of silence they could not help.

It is the silence that came with waiting. Like many fellow drifters, the Guardian could not and did not sit still. If they were not patrolling the wilderness they were exploring the ruins of the land and updating their map. If not that then they were home, tinkering with old machines and objects they found to keep their hands busy.

If they did not, the Guardian would think of the past. Of those who passed and those who had to move on. And now, stuck tied to a tree, they could do nothing until the Drifter returned but think. This dream, this dying hallucination was too...long. To clear. To real.

The Guardian was no masochist but the hallucinations of Judgement that consumed their mind on their worst days were always over quickly and ended the same way each time. But this continued on. The Guardian was breathing, could feel their heart beating in their chest like nothing had changed.

Like they were still-

But the Drifter's reappearance halts that thought where it stands. They do not shake their head to rid themself of the...idea, but focuses on the task instead.

It would be best to start with their sword-arm. The Guardian stretches out their right arm as far out as they can to pull the doodle taught and leave a gap between them and the tree.]

Let's give it a try.

[Some part of them acknowledges that this fervent need to do something will inevitably come up against the wall of there being nothing left to do, but the short-term relief in occupying themself with this desperate, frenetic energy outweighs that long-term concern.]

[The dichotomy of what they are about to attempt, compared to what they have tried previously, must be absurd. This squiggle had repelled bombs and swords and all other attempts to sever it. And yet, when they pour carefully over the dark scrawl that looks as though it might have been sketched out by a child's wobbling hand, it almost seems to rinse the dark lines away, as easily as chalk over pavement.]

[Their shock is telegraphed solely by the blink of their eyes.]

better?

[Yes, they will run out of things to do but it is something the Guardian will cross when they get there. As best as they are able to.

It is indeed very absurd. The Guardian had fought against many and triumphed against all except for the inevitability of death but now was stopped by a child's doodle. And now something seemingly so strong is being washed away like ink, not even carrying the stubbornness of blood seeped into clothing that refused to come out. It is...strange. Weird, to be more blunt.

The Guardian bends their arm carefully. The limb still feels half asleep but they should be better once they get moving again. Still, they bow their head.]

Yes, thank you.

[Bound to the tree, the Guardian knew they would not be able to get to the water unless someone ran across the drifter. It would have left them stuck in place and at the mercy of whatever hostiles that found them.

The Drifter's aid saved them from that scenario.]

[The Guardian picked them off the ground and saved their life and led them to the possibility that they could be devoted to an end goal that was not their own, that they could do as they did and pay their kindness forward.]

[The Drifter washed away some scribbles with some water.]

[They doubt this covers the full extent of their debt.]

hurt?

[HERE IS...WHERE THEY SHOULD START, THEY GUESS.]

[It is indeed a good place to start and a far easier one to answer. The possibilities of injuries rather then whatever this is.

The permanence of death for those who were chosen to follow the Jackal was not the same as others. Cut down by others, ripped apart by Judgement...it blends together after a while. But as the Guardian knelt in the ground and hacking up blood in the Barren Hills, they knew their time was up.

And then they woke up.]

No, I'm fine. They just strung me up.

[The Guardian had not been particularly eager to see if the doodles' childish pranks ended there.]

Are you okay too?

[Did the Drifter wake up here too? How long have they been wandering around these forests?]

["Okay."]

[To denote physical fitness and wellness. They are "okay," in the general sense. In the sense that they are not immediately injured and that they are not at any risk of dying in the near future. They are, of course, at the risk of dying eventually, because that poison still corrupts their lungs and there is no peaceful way to contradict that. They are "okay," in the general sense, because they can still stand and walk and breathe and fight and think with reasonable clarity and not spend too much time doubled over coughing. They are "okay," in the general sense, because even if their muscles are atrophied and their skin blistered with blood sores and their constitution is so low that several short blows would be enough to completely immobilize them, they can still dash and swing their blade, even if every motion hurts because every motion has always hurt, for longer now than they can remember it not hurting.]

[They are "okay." They would venture.]

yes

[They are not okay.]

[This should not be happening, and yet - it is. It is, in fact, happening, and there is no avoiding it, no steering clear of it, no disregarding it.]

[Except to look at them, directly, and issue it bluntly:]

are you real

[It is the "okay" of someone who is not healthy. The Drifter has not been harmed by any creatures that lurk in this forest but that is where it ends. They both are still sick, still waiting for the moment that their heart squeezes and that familiar taste of bile and blood clogs their throat. The Guardian remembers the days far in the past where things were "okay", when they did not need technology to run longer then usual without doubling over and hacking their lungs up in a nearby bush.

(When things were still hard but "okay" because their family was alive.)

The Guardian appreciates the Drifter's blunt question. It became...difficult, eventually, to tell if it truly was their time before they woke up, be it by the Jackal's hand or the end of Judgement's brutal hallucinations. And there truly is no other way to confront this but directly.]

I'd like to think I am. [Fight, for just one more day.] Are you...?

[It's a less certain answer than they'd like. It's..incomplete, and indirect, and it does not suit the question that was so. So they stop thinking about it, which is a tactic that is serving them less and less.]

yes

[Even if the Guardian's response has shed a new line of doubt upon that sort of answer, they still respond to the affirmative. Yes. Act as though they are more certain than they actually are.]

forest
dream

[It is strange to have to work their mind around this. That after more then a thousand "deaths" at the hands of Judgement and others they would still question the nature of reality when the Guardian's last death had been so very final.

There is a simpler way to confirm if this was real or not but they do not. Some welcome touch, some do not. Now was not the time to ask about it.]

Who's dream is this?

[The Jackal's, the Drifter's or the Guardian's? Or someone else entirely?]

[Whose indeed? The Drifter is not in any position to tell. They are not terribly predisposed to meander down the walkways of solipsistic musings, just by default. Their shoulders shift, very slightly, their cloak rippling in the tiniest shrug.]

does it matter

[What else is there to do but...think? But thinking is not their prerogative, not their specialty, not their preferred means of passing the time.]

[So, instead, bluntly, as a counterpoint:]

you were dead

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

TEST DRIVE MEME ( 015 )

drawn to you!!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject