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Test Drive Meme #1 (cw vehicular crash, moderate injury)
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
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
- 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.
- But like OOCly ask permission ofc.
CHANGED MY MIND OOPSSSsssss
presumably murphy has seen him in it before. that's the point.
andrew is very aware of the contrasts that exist between himself and his brother -- the way aaron hunches his shoulders or the space he takes between steps, how his eyes flicker sharply when someone moves as if expecting a fist to come slamming back down on him. he has studied aaron for many years, very silently and when no one is watching, staring at the taunt draw of his shoulders and the way he attracts people, simply by being. andrew's antithesis, despite the similarities in their looks -- twins in appearance and not much else, except for the way their mouths both seemed to form infinite hard lines, permanent frowns. andrew is grateful for this, because he's fairly certain the muscles of his mouth have long since forgotten how to hold themselves in a smile, and that little tear in his facade could give it all away.
because those years of studying his brother, his twin, his whateverthefuck, have amounted to this: murphy tracking into the woods for some reason, and andrew with his eyes stuck wildly on him. he might be taking a piss. andrew can't be bothered to care, stalking in shortly after him, sharing a precursory look behind himself to make sure no one is watching. ( except axel. specifically, he should be there. ) )
Hey.
( he says. aaron tone of voice. fake life knitted into the single syllable, a softness he sometimes lets axel hear in the dead of morning when sand is still bedecking his eyes from sleep. hey. gentle, kind, light, aaron minyard. it's fine if it isn't believable. andrew only needs to trick him for a second, after all, before he gears up and punches him directly in the jaw.
he didn't mean to do that. he doesn't think he did, at least. he meant to talk, and warn, and say unfair things that he knows are unfair, but that need to be said in equal measures. things that start with i will kill you if and have a variety of different endings, all relating back to aaron himself. ultimately, it becomes this: andrew can't be fucked to do a thing for himself because he can't find the vanity inside himself to care, but when it comes to aaron, he will always put his life on the line. there isn't a single life more important that his, and -- andrew has to admit, a lot of it is their looks. that andrew could be looking into a mirror when he sees him, a less fucked up mirror for a future he might've had if his life and innocence weren't ripped from his seven year old hands, like a toddler stealing something from walmart. aaron's dignity, his purity, his goodness, his light, it's something andrew can and will die for, again and again and again. )
If you don't regret what you're doing, you will. One day. Be sure of it.
( he says, after a short second. )
no subject
which is why andrew can likely see blood on said pearly whites when he straightens up, ignoring whatever was just said to him, because honestly, he doesn't fucking care. he's not dignifying this freaking stupid line of thought that whatever andrew says to him about how to conduct his life if going to mean absolutely anything at all. nah, we're just here to brawl. ]
Was wondering when you were gonna turn up.
[ because they'd warned him he'd get a talk. this isn't a talk, but no, this is better. so much better than just walking away and maybe flipping the bird. a snarl breaks across murphy's features, the kind of animalistic crazy you get when a place like the Ground formed you like pick axes carving out stone, and he launches forward overlapping the last syllable of what andrew had been telling him, completely in one ear and out the other, before he slams out a punch, angling a shoulder after to drive into his gut, trying to send him to the ground.
it's really a good thing aaron didn't tag along. ]