Special Edition TDM

[sixthiteration]

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Special Edition Test Drive!

In April, Sixth Iteration will be making the transition from simulation to real life on a new, uninhabited planet. While the Observers have gone to great lengths to choose a suitable planet and terraform the area our intrepid characters live in, there will be a great deal of unpredictability and increased risk.

This TDM focuses on the NEW, POST-SIMULATOR environment, and is open to EVERYONE, whether your character is in the game or not — It's a chance for everybody to try out some of the new scenarios coming our way in April. (Yes, that means characters in the game can make top-levels!) Use one of the prompts below, or make one of your own.

There's ONLY ONE RULE, but it's important:

Your threads here should NOT be about your character's arrival on the planet. We want to save that for the actual event!

Environment Prompts

The Observers have terraformed the area approximately represented within the boundaries on this map, but outside of the sim, there are no canyon walls keeping characters inside... or native plants and animals outside. Perhaps you have adventured past the edges of the map, excited to have somewhere new to explore. Or maybe you've just gotten unlucky within the safer boundaries of the created habitat. Either way, you've come into contact with a native plant or animal, and your body's reaction isn't exactly normal:

1. Brown, skunk-like mammal, brown with cream-colored stripes and extremely bushy tail - Spray smells sweet but makes the target drowsy; Adult humans doze off for apx. 2 minutes, and wake up with libido increased 200% for apx. 5 hours.


2. Small, glassy green ant-like insect - A bite leaves a red welt about the size of a quarter and the sudden ability to lift 10x your body weight. The welt and strength gradually fade over 12 hours, leaving you loose limbed. People typically feel weak after, but that may simply be psychological.


3. Purplish seeds about the size of a walnut - They are protected by hard seed pods that are either bright green or brown depending on age. Opening the pods can be very difficult, but one of the native birds has a specialized hook beak to pop them open, so the seeds can sometimes be found already shucked. Eating one seed provides a sudden burst of energy for about 20 minutes that allows (among other things) running at speeds up to 60 MPH. The after effects can be brutal, though, particularly if your body isn't used to it, and can include vomiting, dizziness and exhaustion.

Texting Prompt

All characters will bit fitted with a smart watch-like device on their left wrist. They cannot remove the device no matter what they do to it. It looks similar in design to this. (The functions shown in that picture are not necessarily included.) Functions include automatic distress signal when danger is perceived as well manual SOS that send your location to all watch wearers, digital clock, and text messaging to all or select watch wearers.

- Texts may only be 140 characters long
- No video or voice, text only
- No usernames, everyone is listed by their name

Please list your CHARACTER NAME, CANON & PROMPT in your SUBJECT LINE, even if your character is already in the game.

Comments

Bob | Heartstrikers | OTA

[greatseerbob]

Prompt 2

Bob was pretty unimpressed with the super strength. It wasn't all that out of line with his normal state of being. He's never been much of a bruiser by his family's standards, but he's over a thousand, a Fang of the Heartstrikers, and prone to making very big dragons very angry every so often. Even his littlest siblings could probably manage five or six times their body weight. He threw a few big rocks just to remind himself what being stuck in a body that isn't flimsy and human was like and then lost interest.

The aftermath, though? That's weird. His normal metabolism resists pretty much any chemical alteration with extreme prejudice. His favorite sister has to lace vodka with basilisk venom to get a buzz going. A little wobbly isn't much of an effect, but it's pretty novel to him, and feeling weak is par for the course when he's been stuck being transformed into a human for so long.

Which is why passers by might find a six and a half foot man leaning bonelessly against a tree and giggling quietly to himself. This is fun!

Owen Prichard | The Last of Us (OC) | Original prompt; hunting

[underpinnings]

Noah's ark is a story that survives well in the post-CBI world. His mother told it often enough that year on the ship; researchers echoed it in Utah; some far-flung settlements made it their mission statement. Preserve life through the cataclysm. Wait through the storms for the doves to come home.

The observers seem to at least make a token effort against inbreeding, one or two family units notwithstanding. Maybe they're here to show them how it's done.

If social engineering were the real purview of most Fireflies, they'd have won and held more zones. Owen's surmised this: there's a point where the rabbits stop foraging outward from the village, where the pines are just a little more blue than green, and he isn't sure they're the first population to be ushered two by two onto the soil. Given enough time, grass cracks asphalt; whatever can put down roots in this place, has.

And people don't exactly cover it like weeds.

It isn't his first time out of the recognizable trees; walk through an area enough times with a bow, animals start to move out of it. He tries to start where the ferns give way to plants with thicker leaves, heavier scents, stalking the perimeter until it seems all the more dangerous to cross. If they can keep the wildlife penned in naturally, exploration might stay a choice, rather than a necessity. Keeping low, his remaining fingers keep an arrow notched and ready, his good hand steadying the simple bow at a slight angle to the ground.

A deepening quiet of the space gives him pause, and a break in that quiet turns him; Owen points the arrow at a heavy rustle of leaves, sighting down its length to his target.

Finding another person in the brush doesn't quite have him lowering it.

[underpinnings]

It's odd enough to find another person out this far, at this hour; Owen's clock hasn't settled since his arrival, and wasn't very exacting to begin with. Infected had about the same visibility day or night, so his schedule had always adjusted around human sentries and patrols--an avoided confrontation was the only good kind.

He's unsure what this exactly is: unwanted company? A straggler?

Whatever he is, Owen doesn't love the way the man slouches to eye level. It's an advantage he's used to securing himself in, at least mentally. At least he isn't using local flora to hold himself up. "Are you--drunk," he asks, snapping an assessment down and back up the man's posture.

[greatseerbob]

Bob opens one eye, luridly and obnoxiously green, not quite a human color even stuck in this strangely human body. "Tried that once in 1536. Slightly more fun than this? But only slightly. Sort of a lot of trouble? No, just a local... something. Might be sort of toxic. Think it was whatever left this. Probably." He holds up a hand with the peculiar welt on it. Giddy Bob is a hard person to talk to, but he's really amusing himself, anyway. Not knowing things is still fascinating.

[underpinnings]

Everyone's a hard person to talk to, when you spend most of your time in the backwoods of--a world that is mostly backwoods, now. This one though, he's especially nonsensical. A moment's anxiety shifts his gaze around them, cataloging shadows and dust motes. Nothing immediately with them, and the air smells clean enough.

He parses just enough on the second try to see where nonsense bleeds into an answer. "So, yes," he decides, aiming his squint at the welt. Owen rests a hand on the head of an ax, sitting just above his hip. Guns don't grow on the trees here; it's a bit like turning over certain items to enter a zone.

"What do you mean, toxic?"

[greatseerbob]

"So no," Bob says, as always affronted when his honest attempts to communicate don't work right. It's almost as if centuries spent being as cryptic and annoying as possible have harmed his communication skills in some way. "Drunk specifically implies alcohol is at least involved. I am definitely... a little messed up? Something bit me. Not a significant issue." He says that with more confidence than it deserves. He has no idea what this body's really up to.

[underpinnings]

The other hand lifts from his hip as he turns his head out, pointlessness vented one direction. He only has the two fingers to tap against his thumb, a one-two wave dismissing the idle chatter before the point. His first hand stays on its hold, and he eventually looks back for the honest answer.

"Specify messed up," if he had to specify anything. Owen's gaze narrows for bit me, the significance ranking pretty high for him. He means the welt, that much is obvious; nothing a human mouth could have done.

Previously human, anyway.

[greatseerbob]

He'd be devastated. Idle chatter? Brohomir of the Heartstikers does not chatter idly, and if he appears to be doing so, only a small mind would neglect the pearls of wisdom hidden within. As he's just as deeply self centered as he is egotistical, though, he doesn't actually catch on. "Mildly poisoned? Most chemical alteration you people get all excited about is just mild poisoning, though."

[underpinnings]

Egos blossom just fine after the end of the world, and Owen's never heard you people from anyone with the best of intentions. You is just a way of saying not me, most of the time. Owen slots that in the usual shorthand for disagreeable, undesirable. Save it for later and keep one eye over his shoulder--new town, same story.

"Does it hurt," he asks, not quite hoping. More ill twinge than ill intent: he's still standing there, weighing how much help he thinks the man might need against what he'd be willing to give.

[greatseerbob]

If he cared to try, Bob could probably explain away the comment, being both another species and having spent most of his life possessed of very nearly unique abilities setting him apart from even others of his rarified kind. He does not care, and it'd be bullshit anyway.

His current amusing predicament is more interesting, anyway. "It's not pleasant or anything." He's still not used to the weird weakness of an actually human body. Gauging pain is still tricky.

[underpinnings]

"Clearly." He flicks a gaze up from the man's boots. "Hence all the giggling."

Still: most people don't lounge all over trees unless they need to, this far from an audience. It would lose him some time to drag the man back to the village, but it would lose him more to carry some kind of guilt around and double back later. Moving the hand off the ax, he held it palm-up, then placed it outward, between them.

"Let's get you back, you can deal with it from a bed."

[greatseerbob]

"Don't be deliberately dense. It's not a good look on anybody." Bob thrives on pointless obfuscation. He just doesn't take it well from anybody else, even in its milder forms like dry detachment. "I doubt the bed is necessary or anything. Unless that's a proposition? I honestly can't really tell most of the time."

[underpinnings]

FEDRA boarding schools were still boarding schools, and he'd spent seven years in segregated dorms, every shithead teenager the military could drag in boiling over together. The man's point B is so far from Owen's point A he can't take it as anything but idiotic ribbing, and over the years he's evolved his adolescent eye-rolling into a blink so slow it's almost reptilian.

He drops the hand back to his side; at this point, his new friend can let him know if his legs aren't working. Well, needs to and can are different things. "Would pretending it was get you to come along any better than admitting it's not?"

[greatseerbob]

He can respect reptilian, even if his own nature is much less saurian than usual and he's really more of a giant bird most of the time anyway. The pragmatic response amuses him, though. He can relate. He's just very used to mortals throwing themselves at him. Not usually the brighter ones, but the mountain's groupies aren't always very discerning. "No, just an ongoing project about reorienting my social awareness. It's a personal thing."

[underpinnings]

"Getting people into bed," he asks, deliberately obtuse for the sake of an arching brow, a touch of tongue to incisor. The punchline is, "It doesn't have to be."

Orient that, weirdo against a tree.

"Is walking part of your ongoing project, or should I be building some kind of pallet to drag." He's not keen on replacing that tree for support, and outright carrying anyone that tall is out of the question.