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

October 'Toby' Daye | October Daye series

[bloodychangeling]

Arrival
[Toby had thought Chelsea ripping holes through the fabric of Faerie had been bad enough. And, well, it had been. But this...this was...she couldn't even think about it. Because she couldn't fix it. There was no rogue changeling to douse with magic dampening goo, no curse to break, no psychotic duke's daughter to stop. There was just the world being ripped apart--no, worlds, mortal and Faerie falling apart at the seams with quakes and tsunamis and so much worse, threatening to take the people she loved with it.

So of course, when the door opened--like Chelsea's doors, but not, because she couldn't see through to the world beyond, there was just the feeling of electricity in the air, almost like when April manifested but still not--she ran through. She didn't know if she would have taken the rest of them with her if they'd been there in that moment. She was the hero, she was the one who saved people. And not knowing just what might be waiting on the other side, she wasn't sure she would have risked them.

That didn't change that, right before the world dropped away, her heart ached for May and Quentin...and Tybalt. Sweet Titania, she never expected to feel that for Tybalt, and now she might not get the chance to see how it would end.

But then she couldn't think, because there was that strange sensation of her body changing--not anywhere near as painful as when her mother shifted the balance of her blood, but strange--and she didn't even have time to scream for Tybalt before the world fell away and then reality was slipping out from under her feet….

Dropping her in the ocean. Oh, Oberon's balls, this was just getting better and better.

Her first act is to drag herself from the water, almost flailing like it might kill her just by touching her skin. That's a phobia she's not sure she's ever going to get over, even with another fourteen hundred years. And then she's standing, looking around, trying to figure out where she is. The scenery is strange enough to be part of Faerie, but it doesn't seem like any of the lost kingdoms, or even any of the ones they still have.

Whatever's going on, she needs a cup of coffee or ten before she can even start thinking about it too hard, so she starts trudging up the shore, the only thing keeping her from looking absolutely bedraggled being the stylish leather jacket that she wraps around her body like a security blanket. Which it is, not that she'll admit to it to anyone.

As she walks, it occurs to her that she isn't wearing her human disguise and she might be somewhere with humans. So before she gets too far, she finds a spot of shadows and grabs a handful of them, weaving herself a human disguise in a moment, blunting the tips of her ears and taking the sharpness from her face and the strange color from her eyes, leaving the scent of copper and cut grass in the air. And then she keeps walking towards the trees, hoping against hope that someone or something will be able to provide her with answers and caffeine. Not necessarily in that order. ]


Into the Woods
[Not long after she walked through the trees, Toby had found the thing that looked almost like a rose goblin, until she looked at it a bit more closely and saw it's very un-catlike eyes. Still, like Spike--oh, root and branch, she hadn't even thought of Spike and that makes her want to cry again--it had comfortably perched on her shoulder. Unlike Spike, it actually spoke.

If she hadn't grown up in the Summerlands that probably would have made her scream. As it was, it just made her feel even more off balance. Still, she listened, taking in what it told her. She didn't want to believe most of it, but she had to for now. She was a hero, she'd find a way to save the people she loved. If that meant trusting the word of a not-rose goblin and walking into a strange forest...she'd done more foolish things to save people.

That didn't make it smart, but she didn't have much of a choice.

Still, when she sees the little flitting creatures, she smirks a bit and actually crouches to speak to them. They don't look quite like the pixies she knows, but close enough that maybe they can give her some more useful information than the thing on her shoulder.]

"Hi there. Any of you know where I can find a cup of coffee?"

[What? Even a hero has to have her vices.]

OOC: anyone with magic/powers able to see through relatively weak illusions is free to see through Toby's human disguise. Her ears are pointed, her eyes are oddly colorless, and her facial features are very angular--think your archetypical Faerie in most ways.