sixthiteration | Test Drive 21 (October & November)

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Test Drive

→ Holds and applications are always open. Holds are required for all applications.

→ Choose one of the scenarios below or make up your own. Feel free to try multiple scenarios.

→ Write LOGS or TEXT prompts, or both.

→ THERE ARE ONLY THREE RULES FOR THE TDM:

1. It has to take place in the 6I universe.
2. It cannot be the character's arrival into the game.
3. Please only test new characters who do not have a version in the game. Our cast list is here.

→ TDM threads cannot be used to meet AC, but if the character is accepted into the game and both players agree, you may keep the CR.

→ Character want ads are here.

Prompts

STAYING POWER - Go down to the bunker, they said. You can get yourself amazing powers from the vending machine, they said. Well, you've done that, and you've made your choice, but one thing nobody told you was that unless it's a power you're familiar with, you might be on a teensy bit of a learning curve when it comes to keeping it under control. You have a week to figure it out without killing anyone; have fun!

FORGIVE AND... - You poor thing, you've gotten into some dust moths. Not that you can remember that, because depending on how big that swarm was and how quickly you got out of it, you might not remember much at all. Better hope somebody's got some Forget Me Nots on hand.

HIT & RUN - Life in the village can be pretty sleepy... until suddenly, it's not. Were you being a troublemaker? Were you disturbing the local wildlife? Because it's now disturbing you, chasing you down the street in front of everyone. Maybe it's a herd of chupapaca or a swarm of fireflies. Or maybe you went old school and it's just a really pissed off badger. Godspeed and good luck.

WILDCARD - Choose your own adventure. Maybe play powers roulette.

Texts

All characters are fitted with a smart watch-like device on their left wrist, which they can use to send text messages to other villagers.

- Texts may only be 140 characters long
- No video or voice, text only
- Display names may be changed by characters on the fly, but anyone can tap to see someone's real full name

Please list your CHARACTER NAME, CANON & PROMPT in your SUBJECT LINE.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"It's not playing," says the man- about Faraday's age, probably. An educated Yankee judging by his accent. He's not quite talking down to him, but there's definitely something of a schoolmarm's patience in his tone. "Like I said, it's to make medicine. The bites from these creatures" he motions to the batsnakes he has in tanks behind him, "cause temporary blindness with their bite, but nothing worse than that. It makes them perfect for training people for handling venomous snakes, while I start work on an antivenom for the fever snake."

He points to the much, much larger tank with one single, much larger snake inside it. "That one could kill a man twice your size and still take out a goat if it wanted to."

The fever snake lies in a contented coil under its heat source, fast asleep.

Edited 2018-10-05 00:50 (UTC)

"Nothing worse than that," he repeats, giving Alex a look like he's just sprouted a second head, and a third is growing now. "I mean, come on. Who cares if they go blind for a bit, right?"

Now he's just openly mocking the other man, keeping his distance from both man and snakes.

"I know things here are peculiar and you people when you're fancy and all like you are think you're above death and all, but maybe you just avoid gettin' snake bit? Maybe try that instead of playin' with snakes?"

He's still real uncertain about this, and nothing Alex is saying is making that better.

"Even if I avoid it, people will inevitably get bitten by them anyway. I can use the venom to make medicine that will treat them when that happens. We have kids as young as fifteen here who've never spent a day in the woods in their life," he explains- he's assuming based on the man's seeming understanding of medicine and speech patterns, that he's human, and potentially from an earlier time period.

He doesn't talk down to him the way most scholars of his time would. Alex has been raised to consider the life experiences of others when talking to them, and not to judge them based on his own ideas of human morals- it doesn't take too far a leap of emotional logic to apply this to another human, within reason. So he speaks to him with the level of respect he would a member of crytpid society trying to understand humans.

Honestly, it makes interacting with this guy a touch easier than some modern humans. You don't become the God of Scales and Silences without going through several very awkward phases and making very few friends among your own peers.

"I'm not a doctor for people, but if I can use my skills with animals to help them, I will. This can help people, potentially children- I'm sure you've seen how much worse it is when a snake bites someone that much smaller." It's a deliberate deference of expertise. "Because of medicine like this, only about five people a year in the US die of snake bites despite several thousand of them getting themselves bitten."

Alex is leaving out the deaths by snakes not currently acknowledged as real by mainstream science, since the cryptid employees of the CDC make a habit of making sure those go unreported. The gorgons have a particularly vested interest in this.

"Then maybe some adult should, I don't know, educate them so they don't get killed. Never had a pa myself, but trust me. I knew by the time I was old enough to wander off what happened if I wasn't careful."

And look at him! He grew up. Just fine. An alcoholic with a gambling addiction and apparently a death wish, but just fine.

"Oh, an animal doctor then. So this like with cows then? Got to milk them or they get ill?" Now that makes sense to him. Not that snakes are useful like cows, but if you cared about animals, maybe that made sense because even with the statistics, Faraday is still eyeing him kind of crooked.

"You learn all that in one of them fancy schools back East? You speak fancy like Goodnight, but you make a tiny bit more sense than he does." He mutters something about a sarcophagus under his breath. "I'm guessing because you're an animal doctor is why you don't just kill them and take the venom?"

"Believe me, we're working on that. Not everywhere has snakes to make it a thing worth teaching," Alex explains. There's some flatness to the first part of his answer, born less out of immediate frustration than memories of keeping actual children away from zoo enclosures.

"Yes, I worked at a zoo back home. In the reptile house," he explains. "As well as keeping the animals on display, we'd harvest venom regularly. And it's easier to keep one snake alive for multiple milkings than to repeatedly capture and kill them. No need to kill anything we don't need to. And being able to treat the bites in humans also means treating them in livestock and pets." Because the animal doctor animal seemed to be a good angle with this one. "I don't want to make too many assumptions, but I'm sure you can imagine the upside of being able to save a good horse."

Faraday shifts, hands on his hips as he considers what this man is going on about. "You and I aren't ever gonna see eye to eye on it bein' easier to keep a snake alive than dead. Like some men, just no point in them," he says, not one to look at things from a conversational viewpoint. Especially with anything that causes trouble in his life like snakes can.

"Well see, there you got me. I can see that. Hence why I don't get keeping them alive. Less snakes means less holes a horse can turn their ankle in. Less horses boltin' and leaving a man in the dust. Less heading out in the middle of the night for the outhouse and ending up bucknaked on the ground with a bite in your leg."

Okay at the last there's a bit of a smirk. He's seen that happen and since it wasn't him, it might have been amusing.

Alex actually laughs at that as he makes his rounds through the lab, checking locks on cages, and feeding the things he isn't handling today.

"Well, the medicine also means we can treat crazy men who handle snakes, too," he says with a good dose of self-depricating amusement. "Believe me, I've done things that look a lot dumber than this."

Faraday holds his ground, only slightly angling his body as the man moves about checking on things. Which is at least reassuring that he puts that much time and effort into ensuring the poison snakes were at bay.

"So you're pretty much just doing this so you can keep playing with snakes?" Okay, he's sounding a bit crazy again. "You sound proud of that."

As if he isn't a huge fool.

Alex laughs again, this time more of an amused, humble chuckle.

"A little bit of that, probably. But more to understand them. And believe it or not, there are medicines that can be made using small amounts of snake or spider venom. These snakes don't exist back home, could be there's a cure for something in them."

He decides it's probably not a good idea to mention animals that secrete psychedelic compounds. He can very clearly imagine Antimony scolding him for not sending the cowboy out to lick toads.

"I'm sure there are. Making medicine out of everything now'days," he says, though the now'days he means is a century plus before when Alex is used to.

"So you from this place, whatever it is?" Not where, but what. He's still not sure it's all real though he refuses to learn the truth of why it might be some kind of afterlife.

Test Drive 21 (October & November)

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