Test Drive Meme #1 (cw vehicular crash, moderate injury)

[spoofer]

Test Drive Meme #1

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

You don't need an invite to test
but please remember we're currently invite-only

CRASH LANDING

Exit one dimension, enter the next. It was chaos: pressure against your ears, light bending in an impossible, unimaginable way. The very molecules of your body vibrating against one another. If you have windows, the view outside makes no sense. Even if not, your hands, your face, your feet seem like an uncertain thing. It's the feel of reality itself tearing apart, reshaping, reconnecting, thread by thread.

And suddenly, there's a beach— or ocean, whichever you land in. Smoke. Fire. Salt water churning up, fizzing around.

Maybe you crash, in a ship wrecking into sand. Maybe you merely stumble out of a portal, a ragged wormhole in space. Or maybe you fall off the back of an incredible steed, some creature that carried you into this place. Either way, there's pandemonium around you. Incredibly, severe injuries are far and few between— nobody's screaming about the dead. But you might have to help pull someone free of wreckage, or move quickly to salvage burning belongings from the landing craft. Maybe it's the crafts themselves, that you're trying to salvage.

Likely, you don't know them, these other strangers who arrived here^[1]. Maybe you don't trust them— you just came out of a dying world, after all. But you all have one thing in common: you're here now.

When you get a second to breathe, maybe you'll see it. The brilliant green forest across the sand. Beyond that, the glint of a faraway city.

INTO THE WOODS

Your first night at Xistentia does not feature five-star accommodations, but as the sun begins to set, the forest offers everything you need to survive. By now, you may even have met your daemon, who'll help guide you through this. There is fallen wood to make fires for warmth and cooking, any number of rabbits, deer, and fish if that's what you're into eating. Those very same animals also provide guidance as to what vegetation is edible, including a variety of vine mushrooms, fruits, and flowers. If you're the kind of creature that mostly eats other sentient creatures, well. Technically, there are a lot of those hanging out too^[2]! Now and then, you'll see tiny, winged humanoid creatures the height of a finger dart in and out of view.

A resourceful group, the multiversal refugees have determined ways to create shelters, using wreckage, supplies, and basic survival knowhow. There aren't enough blankets to go around, but the weather is mild and the fires seem to keep out any aggressive creatures.


Things get quiet. This could be a good time to meet the others under less fraught circumstances. Maybe you'll see some familiar faces and reunite with others who fled from your dying world; maybe you'll meet someone new.

Try not to seek out and fight any Rock Trolls. It's still early.

ENTER THE CITY

The city is beautiful, even with the vines covering everything, the streams running down half the streets, the massive white deer leaping off under the highway overpasses. The architecture of the skyscrapers is incredible to look at, modern and sweeping. It's clear that terraced gardens were part of the building design, and some of the greenery that lines the street had been part of the original city plan. This is a city of great potential.

And it knows you're here. As you walk by, beacons like streetlamps begin to emit a gentle glow, registering your presence. No doors are locked, though you might find yourself chasing out nests of silver-winged birds and bug-eyed rabbits.

Here, you can claim empty shops or the clothing and other sales items inside of them. Apartment complexes aren't difficult to find in a range of sizes; nor are standalone homes, brownstones, loft studios. Penthouses may not feel like penthouses when there's a thin layer of dust growing on everything and a flower growing out of the sink, but you know what? Maybe that little bud is gonna be your first roommate.

It's the strangest thing. After a few days, the lights begin to work and the water begins to run, fully operational within the unseen sewer system. At some point, the keys to your house or residence are going to turn up. Your daemon will help you find what you need. F.A.TE.S. welcomes you.

NETWORK

By now you've settled in. You have some time to explore the city, the woods, and your new kit.

Chances are pretty good that your daemon is not a phone or a computer or a wax-sealed piece of parchment or a Howler, nothing with a convenient camera or a keyboard; it probably isn't even a pocket sized. Likelier, it stares at you with eyes that contain the lenses-- or powers-- of a camera, and some part of its body projects a holographic keyboard into the air. For those of us who are not accustomed to manipulating intangible light prisms, it's about as intuitive to type on as shaping a cloud with your fingers.

But here's your network access. Accessible to all your fellow travelers in XISTENTIA.

Misfires, typos, and blurry video footage are likely. Time to feel like a Luddite!

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE

hells yeah

Footnotes

1. Some of these can be nameless, plot-device NPCs to facilitate interactions! But even in this case, please avoid gore in describing their current state of being. Anyone dead or catastrophically injured will have disappeared by the time your characters make it to Xistentia. There are no corpses or dying here.
   
   
2. But like OOCly ask permission ofc.

Comments

DICK GRAYSON. ▎batman: arkham ( eudiocrau )

[pleasant]

woods.

( unsurprising to everyone, the vigilante nightwing thrives in survival-type situations. it wasn't so long ago, then, that he'd lived in a world and a city overwhelmed with fear toxins, a single night built to destroy the entirety of the country -- thank you, scarecrow. of course, the sun rose and the dark knight came with it, the victor but also the loser in this way and that, his mask removed and his cape hung up to dry, the stillness of morning, and then

dick is, perhaps, just feeling nostalgic. reflecting on easier times, or maybe just the sorrows of yesterday. missing his father's grave, missing his fiance, missing the home and the life he'd made in gotham, built to be permanent. it should come with the job title that all things are fleeting, universes and worlds included. probably, he looks like a sad old man, the weariness of older age hanging on his shoulders, all at once feeling less like the child he has always been, and more like the adult he's been afraid to become. ( he has dreams about white picket fences and the bobbing of children's heads, a world without need or want for nightwing, and then he remembers, i can't live without it, anyway. ) he doesn't head to the city immediately. instead, there's a camp he builds himself just beside the outer ring of the woods, enough concealment found to stay under the radar from a wandering eye, but not invisible enough to not be spotted by people arriving to the city, lest they walk the same path he had.

there's also a baby elephant at his side, zitkad, frequently pffffbting. loudly. )

choose your own adventure

( ota. open to writing starters, hmu up fingerstripes )

[mordacita]

[ Rafa has already made a home in the city. That hadn't taken long. That had been easy by comparison to living there, where blood was far harder to come by than in Eudio. Feeding on animals had never been his favourite thing to do, but he could survive that way, at least until he could establish himself enough to ask for volunteers. So it is that he's moving through the forest, near silent. After much argument, his daemon has not come with him and has instead hooked itself up to the phone in his pocket. It means he's alone, picking his way through trees, crouching to pounce and attack, and using his nose to find --

To find something familiar. Rafa stops in his track, his head flicking up to catch that strain again. Warm, very definitely human, but known. So well known.

His hunt is abandoned in an instant. His feet carry him after the scent, urgency bleeding into his skin. He'd thought this one was lost, left behind perhaps forever, and right after Rafa had wanted to commit to him. It had been one of the hardest parts about leaving Eudio. He lets his nose lead him, the scent getting stronger as he gets near, and then. Then there's the camp, and there's a little elephant that makes Rafa smile, and then there's the man that makes him smile all the more. ]

Dick. Dick Grayson. [ He moves closer, eager and disbelieving all at once. Can it really be Dick? Can he really be that lucky all over again? ]

[pleasant]

( it does feel like the quiet before the storm, dick notes, if the storm happens to be a handsome vampire with long hair and wood-bound silhouette, stalking the forest like a predator. dick does not mind being the prey. he feels him before he sees him, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up straight in a way that elicits pleasure instead of fear -- vampires are not, after all, so scary when they kiss the way rafa kisses, or when dick knows what its like to be held in their tanned hands like early morning delights.

he looks back, disbelieving in equal measures. zitkad pffffbts again, quieter, happy because dick is happy, because dick can be nothing else in rafa's presence.

it's been awhile, but not quite as long as three hundred years, dick remembers. he stares at rafa for a few moments too long, sitting on a log while the burn of a fire lights up the structure of his face, shadows casting him half in the dark. he stands, suddenly. )

Raffles.

( bad joke. he'd like to see rafa smile. he pads over without a word, first to hook his finger in the necklace around his vampire's neck, sliding his hand down to find the gold ring embedded with the phrase questo posto e il prossimo. this place and the next. dick nods, once, and before there are kisses there's a hug rafa get enveloped in, because before anything he's dick's dear, dear friend, and dick has been running a surprising shortage of those, lately. )

I missed you, ( he says, into the side of his hair. dick squeezes him tighter. ) You feel like a dream. Possibly, I have dreamed about this, is why. Don't make fun of me? I'm begging.

[mordacita]

[ Rafa does smile. There's one person in all the worlds that has ever called him that, and it's a smile of relief and delight. He doesn't know which he feels more. He steps into Dick's hands and against his body, and then he reaches to wrap his arms around him. Everywhere there is Dick's scent; he's awash with it, not least because he's nudging his nose in against his neck, and then kissing him there, and then kissing his jaw, and then his soft lips, and then - ]

Make fun of you? No, I am envious. I wish that I could dream so that I could have seen you. I thought you were not coming.

[ He says it in between kisses; soft ones trailing all over Dick's neck, light ones peppering his throat. His lips brush across an old, familiar scar and he kisses it all over again. ]

Oh, what are you doing here? There is a whole city down there! What if I had not found you at all?