TEST DRIVE MEME ( 027 )

[lifeaftr_mods]

Test Drive Meme #27

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.

In conjunction with our monthly Test Drive Meme, Reserves are now open! Applications will open 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.

Eye of the Storm
Unlike the calmer waters of other dreams, this particular one is in a frenzy of activity. The sea thrashes and roars and crawls hungrily up the shores of the unassuming island upon which you've found yourself; it assumes the shapes of tridents, swords and, most notably, the snapping heads of serpents.

The sea isn't acting rough for no reason, it turns out. Right now, it's seething in conflict with torrents of fire that seem to have, however improbably, assumed the shape of a three-headed dragon. Whether the serpent is simply coated in fire or it is fire isn't clear. You don't really need to know the specifics. All you need to know is that, at present, there are two dragons furiously crashing against one another in a dichotomy of fire and water. They issue rushing plumes of steam whenever they connect, scourging deep furrows into the earth. Adventurers will find themselves thrust into a veritable maelstrom of conflict upon waking. Unlike the case in the waking world, everything is simply too indistinct to grasp or engage with in all but the most oblique manner. All you can do is hold on and try not to get lost - or separated - in these new, wild conditions, and seek shelter as these two behemoths ruthlessly duke it out.

The clash of the elements isn't the only thing you have to worry about, either. Little tails of fire and water will occasionally unspool from the giant wyrms and decide they want a taste of something with a little more body. Though their shapes are indistinct due to their elemental makeup, it will still be evident that these are smaller dragons with a taste for destruction. You can dispel them easily enough, and largely through application of common sense - flame-dragons can be reduced to steam by water or blasts of cold air, and water-dragons can be vaporized by heat and fire - but there happens to be a lot of them, and not very many of you.

There is shelter, however, as a respite from all this. Ruined buildings dot the landscape, impervious to both the water and fire and surrounded by a sense of eerie calm. Though they're long abandoned, as long as you hide in such ruins, nothing can touch you there. Not even the smaller, scuttling dragons can breach those walls, held back by whatever unique arcane constraint lives in the smooth, cool stone.

All you have to do is reach one.

Echoes of the Past
Don't be alarmed if you find yourself waking on the floor of a ruined house in a ruined city on a deserted island. Don't be alarmed, either, if it looks like the edges and corners of most of these buildings, built of simple stone and clay and mortar, look as though they have sustained an awful lot of fire damage in the past. That doesn't have to mean anything, you see.

The houses and buildings here are of an unknown purpose, but the signs of civilization are writ large in stone and on the landscape. And yet, no matter how much you might search, there doesn't seem to be anyone else around.. Abandoned and broken, exposed to the elements without proper care, it's clear that the inhabitants of these places are long, long gone.

Wandering between the buildings will certainly help avoid the heat of the day, and as the day winds on, some thought might be put into gathering the necessities to make it through the night - water from barely recognizable wells, or vegetables scavenged from overgrown gardens that have long since abandoned any semblance of order or restriction. Still, even devoid of their original owners, the contents of those broken structures might well be interesting in their displays of lives left behind. The blocky, square buildings show a sense of efficiency over articulation, with ornate mosaics carved into the walls as a sense of decor. You might even find piles of strange, smooth stones with speckled patterns decorating their exterior, hard as rock and curiously similar in size. Their function can only be guessed at, but they're quite heavy.

...at least, until they shudder and start to crack beneath the pressure of something moving around...inside of them?

Give it five minutes to an hour, and those stones will prove to not really be stones at all, but eggs. To be specific...? They contain these little guys. Tiny, baby dragons, newly hatched and eager to imprint upon the first venturing hand to give them the time of day. They can vary in size from barely nine inches in length to just over two feet, and their coloration can be just as diverse. However, it will become clear within mere minutes of meeting your new, scaly charge that they're just the same as any other baby animal: they're needy, demanding, curious, and hungry.

It's advised you go looking around for something to feed them. These dragons are omnivorous creatures, and will eat anything from berries to meat, but either way, they're going to be looking to you to care for them.

A warm congratulations to an unsuspecting parent may very well be in order.

The Sound of Sirens
The idyllic setting of a tropical island might seem perfect for a vacation getaway...or it would be, if this place weren't populated. You aren't here for very long before you hear it - a loud, shrieking siren, shrilling out over the trees. And then another. And another. And another...

Followed by the sound of gunshots.

It turns out you're not in a happy little island getaway at all, but in the middle of a turf war. Stay in one place too long, and you'll realize that you can start to make out blurred, shadowy silhouettes crouched in the underbrush and huddled behind boulders, issuing indistinct shouts as they charge one another with spears and harpoons, or shoot explosive bursts of scattered buckshot with rudimentary firearms.

At first, these shapes merely pass through you. You are but a spectral spectator, lingering on proceedings far removed from you. But as the conflict escalates, you'll find that you're not as immune to this as you might have first thought. The shapes start to sharpen, and before you know it, you'll start to feel those weapons piercing you for real - and they will hurt just the same, too. But getting caught in the crossfire isn't the worst thing that could happen to you - oh, no. See, if you're not careful, you might find yourself wanting to join them. It might start as a small ember in the pit of your gut - this feeling of displaced upset, that one side of this shadowy war has truly and personally wronged you. Or it might be out of self-preservation, because someone shot you or stabbed you and it hurt, and before you know it, one of the dark, featureless shapes is handing you a weapon for you to pay them back in kind.

There are ways to break out of this, of course. A good shock is all it takes to jolt you back to your senses, though it won't render you immune to the effects of this battle. You'll still have to figure out how to get out of this mess without getting shot or blasted or bled out onto the floor.

Or maybe you can embrace the chaos instead, and decide to wreak a little havoc on the other side. Who are they? Doesn't matter! They're not one of you, so you can make them suffer to the fullest extent, right? Besides, who knows how they might take it if you try to disengage entirely?

One thing is for certain - you won't be getting away from this conflict and out of the battlefield without a fight.

---

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Comments

[neighborofthebeast]

Roman has had these dreams before--wandering in a broken place, ashes drifting through the air, the smell of the sea mixed with the smell of the sun on old stone. Weird how smells in dreams are so much more vivid here.

He was sitting on a large overturned column idly tracing shapes in the sand. His tail flopped back and forth behind him and his little wings were stretched wide to catch the sun.

He hadn't made a single deal in dreams or out of dreams...it was hard to talk to people here. They'd seen him in his true shape and if he wanted to pull one over on someone he was going to have to come up with a brand new human disguise. Roman started to trace the outline of his possible new face, oblivious to the menace just over the nearest clump of sea oats.

[press_y_to_honk]

Geese are waterbirds, but it hasn't seen quite this much water before. It's waddled up and down the shore for a while, sampling the plants for tastiness and otherwise going about its goosey business. But with the appearance of someone new, the goose's priorities shift.

It watches the young man for a minute or so, eyeing the barbs on his tail and the way his wings flick from time to time. Then it begins to sneak up, head kept low and moving slowly so as to not alert him with the plap of its feet. And then...!

A bite and yank on his tail!

[neighborofthebeast]

Surprisingly, it wasn't something that had actually happened before--having his tail tugged on. He'd given it a few experimental tugs when he first grew the thing but hadn't wondered about it since. He used it to hang, to balance, to prop...

"Awp!" Roman let out a surprised yelp and stood bolt upright on his shaggy legs. He wheeled around, stick lifted, ready to beat somebody's ass but found...a bird. A very out-of-place looking bird.

All he could do at first is laugh at the absurdity.

"Hahaha wow, where did you come from?" Roman curled his tail high and out of the goose's range. Was there a farm nearby or something? It didn't seem to be scared of people.

[press_y_to_honk]

The goose honks and flaps it's wings, circling back away from Roman's burst of movement before settling again. It looks at Roman with its beady eyes, and does not answer. After all, it cannot understand what words mean.

It does know that he's on guard now, however, since his tail is held up. Much like the groundskeeper, it will have to be careful and wait for a chance...or find some other way to make him react. It turns to walk in a lazy sort of circle around him, keeping one eye on Roman as it does.

[neighborofthebeast]

Roman turns, in turn. His ears flip forward curiously. Look at that! Look at that goose! Look at its waddle and its little tail. He liked animals. They didn't tend to like him since he was an abomination so having this very familiar farm animal so close was nice.

An idea came to Roman. He was gonna see if he could touch the goose. But to do that it had to get close. He squatted down and started pulling up fistfuls of grass. Geese ate grass right?

[press_y_to_honk]

!! The young man is kneeling!

The goose pauses for a moment in its waddling and slowly moves closer, stretching out its neck...to nab the glasses right off of Roman's face and start waddling away at top speed!

𝓢𝓽𝓮𝓪𝓵 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝔂𝓸𝓾𝓷𝓰 𝓶𝓪𝓷❜𝓼 𝓰𝓵𝓪𝓼𝓼𝓮𝓼

[neighborofthebeast]

For an instant, Roman is still charmed. He thinks the goose is just curious about what he's doing in the grass. Haha, funny bird!

But then.

"Wh-AAH!" The flash of beak near his eyes gets a scream out of him and he topples backwards from his hooves onto his ass. He claps a hand to his eye and for a second, thinks the goose has injured him. A few furious blinks later he realizes what's happened.

"HEY! Hey get back here!" He starts to run after the white blur that was goose but then has a horrible thought. If he was too loud. If he yelled and waved his arms and scared it...it might fly away. Roman swallows a scream.

"H-heeeeere goosey goosey goosey," coos Roman as he crouches down and waddles after it.

[press_y_to_honk]

Success! Elation! The shouts from behind are exactly the sort of loud person-honking the goose enjoys so much, and it turns around after making it a fair distance away to watch Roman attempt to find his way forward. Roman doesn't have to worry about the goose flying away--even if it was able to, it would take a lot more than an angry chase to truly frighten it.

Roman's awkward gait, so strangely like the goose's own, is signal to be beginning of the next part of the game. The goose honks and waddles further away, glasses still held safely in its horrible toothy beak.

[neighborofthebeast]

"Nnnoooo no no no no shit!" Roman hisses and picks up the pace, waving his tail awkwardly behind him for balance. He has to catch this goose! He couldn't be blinded on these stupid islands! He wasn't a skilled enough shapeshifter to change the make-up of his eyeballs so that he could see good.

"C'mere!" Roman makes a few clucking sounds with his tongue. "Pss ps ps ps goosey! C'mere!"

He reaches out one hand for anything, a tailfeather if that!