![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
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.
The Hunger/"John" | The Adventure Zone | OTA (cw: NPC death)
LANDING (cw: NPC death)
[ The beach is quiet, or about as quiet as it can be, what with people crashing onto it from world after world after dying world. The sky is blue, dotted with clouds, and the waves lap on the sand. Or, wait. The sky was blue. But now, off in the distance, there's black seeping in. Small at first, but growing larger every second. An amorphous black mass, with ribbons of bright colors inside its swirling form, is flowing across the sky, getting closer and closer to the beach. When it reaches just overhead, it blots out the sun and the beach becomes dark. A column of black shoots down to impact with the beach, spilling out over the sand for a second like a shock wave, before it retracts, pulling in on itself, condensing into the form of... a man. A human man, with a slim build, in his early fifties. He's wearing a sharp gray suit with a trendy skinny black tie, and the most expensive shoes you've ever seen. The blackness from the sky falls down upon him-- no, into him, as though he's absorbing all of it, or... or calling it back inside his body. Finally, the black cloud is gone, and there is only the man.
He looks around, as though surprised and, well, disappointed slightly. He looks down at his very nice shoes, which now have sand all over them. He frowns. He steps forward, away from the ocean, and approaches the nearest group of refugees. ] Where are we? [ he asks, forceful yet curious. When they cannot answer, having just arrived themselves, his frown deepens, and he extends his hand, palm outward, and a black flame surrounds it. The other refugee freezes, hand clutching their chest, and they erupt into the same black flame, as though it was burning them from within, starting with their heart. ]
CITY
[ The man in the sharp gray suit does not bother trying to find food or other clothing. The bare necessities are just so small in comparison to finding answers. Instead he finds his way to the top of the tallest building he can find, and surveys the landscape. That tells him little, though it does give him an idea of where he has found himself. After that, he sits down and consults his daemon, an elegant wooden chess set, trying to delve into whatever information it can give him. ]
beach
Hey!
[He's afraid, very much so, but he tries to hide it as he tears his eyes away from the smoldering corpse on the sand. His stance is neutral, his tone placating, but he's positioned himself between the older man and the rest of the group of horrified refugees. Jamie doesn't want this to escalate, but no one else seems willing or able to defend the group if the man turns on them next.]
None of us know where we are yet, all right? Killing people isn't going to fix anything. Just - just chill, okay?
no subject
(It would be cathartic, maybe. But John is not a cruel man.)
He puts his hand down slowly. It would seem the peacekeeper's words were effective. ]
I... I'm sorry, that was a bit rude of me.
[ At least the body is staying dead. ]
no subject
Jamie sighs as the man lowers his hand. Whatever relief he feels by the man's concession is outweighed by the stress and anxiety of everything else, but at least the guy doesn't seem poised to murder anyone else right now. Mostly he's tired. So tired. He doesn't want to deal with this.]
That...that was a person. We're going to have to bury - [Him? Her? Jamie can't tell from the brief glances he's willing to take of the scorched remains and he sure as hell isn't going to examine them any more closely.]
- look, we can't just leave the body lying around. We'll bury it and mark it and...deal with the rest later. [He's saying it for his own benefit as much as Scorchy McMurderson's, here. Laying out plans helps ground him, even if they're plans for something as onerous as disposing of a corpse.]
no subject
The forest would be better. For burial. The tide will only undo whatever work we've done to cover the body.
[ Why did he pause? Why is he including himself in the plans to dispose of the man he just killed? This is beneath him, beneath them, beneath the thing that Merle calls the Hunger. Petty concerns of life and death were meaningless to John now that he's seen eternity and found it wanting.
But he's in an unfamiliar plane. And there's someone out there-- something out there, destroying every plane of existence faster than John can absorb them into his being. Maybe... Just maybe working together is in his best interest, for the time being. ]
no subject
[He trails off, scanning the nearby sand, and moves to retrieve something pinned under a hunk of metal - a blanket, scorched and frayed around the edges, but suitable for his purposes. He brings it over to the still-smoking corpse, which he manages to avoid looking at directly by shaking out the blanket. Then, after a pause, he tosses it over the human remains, hiding them from view, and kneels to try to poke the edges underneath.]
We should, uh. Wrap it up. To carry it. You wanna give me a hand, here? [...preferably not the hand that ignites things. He's seen enough of that hand, thanks.]