dankmemes | Test Drive Meme #22

Welcome to Hadriel's test drive, and thank you again for your interest in the game! As always, our reserves page is here, and our applications page is here! Reserves open July 25th, and apps are open August 1st. Please remember that there is an app cap of 20 apps.

Two quick points here as well:
1. Any thread made in Hadriel's test drive will be accepted as the sole Action Log sample in the application.
2. All threads made in the test drive can be considered game canon, either through handwaving or through a shared mental experience while coming through the Door!

Test drives will be broken up into specific god mini-events, during which your characters can see how well they fare under the watchful eye of one of the gods. Choose wisely or just simply pick 'em all, and have fun!

F E A R

SCENARIO ONE: THE WRONG KIND OF SCARY
[The Door brings in all that is chaotic and evil in the world. This may include you, may include the person next to you... and may include the monster behind you.

There's an odd shuffling to your right and to your left. Do you know what that is? Maybe not, but at least nobody else does either. You might peek at an eye stalk or a stinger, you might catch a glimpse of something that can maybe pass for fingers... or maybe it just has a mouth on its butt because its creator was feeling particularly sadistic that day. That's right, you're looking at the creatures from Spore, EA's infamous alien creation game with the most awkward alien creator imaginable.

These particular Spore creatures are the carnivorous kind, the kind who seek out and eat other creatures so that they can instantly procreate to pass on their victim's genetic code and make their species even more wild. You might not want to stick around and watch the mating process. I promise it's just as weird as you think.]

T R A N Q U I L I T Y / C O N F U S I O N

SCENARIO TWO: STEPFORD SUNDAY
[You wake up one lovely weekend morning to the sounds of birds chirping outside and sun streaming through your window. What a wonderful day to be perfectly normal and happy in the suburbs! Your family is all around you, like a Norman Rockwell painting, happy to go about their average day in their average life in their average city.

So what if your sister is an archdemon? Or your father is somehow a dragon? It's just the way that things have always been... isn't it?

The perceptive of you may begin to see cracks in the veneer, may begin to wonder why everything seems to be so perfect... and as the truth begins to unfold, it paints a much darker picture than the one you're seeing. Are you sure you don't want to stay, just a little while longer?

This is a mini version of our Stepford Summer event this month!]

R A G E / D E L I G H T

SCENARIO THREE: CAKE WARS
[There are plenty of ways in this world to rouse your competitive spirit. Many of them involve athletics- few involve such beautiful edible artistry as this.

That's right, you're in a cake baking competition, and no matter how competitive you normally are, thanks to Rage's influence, you want to win. Competitors can be in teams of two or alone, and they have until morning to bake their cakes to the fullest and bring it to Delight's temple for judging.

So what kind of cake baker are you? Do you revel in your artistry? Do you measure everything and carefully prepare each icing tip? Or do you know that you suck at cooking and decide to use the opportunity to sabotage your opponent's cake instead? Nothing is off limits, and all's fair in cake and war, after all!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Wash listens, really listens, committing each name to memory. It's the least he could do for the lost, the victims of Freelancer and its seemingly imaginary war. Because really they hadn't done anything besides be there. Canon fodder, same as the Project. Part of a giant experiment.

"They didn't deserve to die," he finally says, but doesn't apologize. He knows how that goes. It won't fix anything. All he can do is respect the dead. Respect the soldier standing in front of him.

Who will probably try to kill him again anyway.

"Let's get you patched up."

"No, they didn't."

Not for that. They didn't deserve to die for someone's game and they didn't deserve to go out like that while Ephemera lived. They died and he lived, and they were all better than him.

Ephemera jerks back with a hiss.

"What? No! Back off."

"Fine. Get yourself checked out on your own, then." He looks around again -- most of the people that were here before fled while they were fighting. Good. But it also meant less people around to interrogate. Wash needs information and he needs it now.

Begrudgingly, he turns to Sharkface.

"Are there doctors here? Wherever we are?"

Ephemera shifts into stance, just in case. Feeling is coming back into one of his hands, slowly. He can work with that. Fight if he needs to. It's definitely going to come to a fight, isn't it? "Yeah, they've got a few. No biofoam."

Instead they have magic. What the fuck.

Yeah, Wash isn't surprised at that -- he doesn't drop back into one himself, but he's ready. He's always ready.

"No biofoam? What planet are we on?"

"No fucking idea," Ephemera snaps. "It's called Hadriel, that's all anybody knows."

"Hadriel..." Wash rolls the name around in his head. He's never heard of it, and he's pretty up on the colonies.

"I don't remember being taken," he admits, warily. "How did you get here? Last I saw you were... not in a good way."

Dead. He means dead.

"Nobody remembers. They just wake up here."

Ephemera shifts, frowning.

"What, you've never been dropped out a window before?"

Is he sure they're not both just dead? Because that honestly makes more sense, that the afterlife is just another shitty life.

"That's not..." He trails off, hrming. "You didn't come at me like you'd just been dropped out a window."

"I've been here a while. Almost a month. I recovered."

Carolina's good, but she's not that good. Washington's tone is going places Ephemera doesn't like. He shifts again, testing his hands.

"What?"

"Nothing. A month... have any captors come forward? Made demands?"

He's used to things being. Clearer than this. Prisoners have certain things expected of them, after all.

Ephemera snorts. "Yeah. They're calling themselves gods. Apparently they eat emotion."

It sounds insane. He's learned to roll with it.

"They fuck with people."

...

Did Sharkface land on his head when he fell?

Wash is quiet for a long moment.

"You're sure we're not dead? This really really sounds like we're dead."

"Maybe. Can't tell."

How does a person know if they're dead, anyway?

Ephemera shrugs, flexing his good hand. The one that isn't currently dealing with shiny new burns.

"Maybe we're crazy. That's cool."

Well at least he didn't cripple the other man. Or maybe that isn't a thing he should be grateful for -- mostly he just doesn't want Sharkface to blame him for something like that, too, because god knows he'd find a way to overcome it and take Wash's head off. He's actually concerned about that burn, though, and the way that blood is starting to stain the front of Sharkface's armor.

"I've been crazy, it feels different."

Yeah, well, Washington would fucking know, wouldn't he? Ephemera flexes his hand again. Feels the hurt and pushes past it. Sprained wrist, definitely. Maybe a cracked bone or two. Nothing he can't work through. "Gun. I want it back."

There aren't enough weapons to go around in Hadriel. He wants the fucking pistol back.

Wash hesitates. There's no reason to think Sharkface won't take it and shoot him in the face the second it's back in his hand.

"Why should I?"

"Because if you don't, I'll set you on fire when you're sleeping," Ephemera informs him, quite calmly. "Gun. Now."

That's not exactly more of a threat than being shot in the face right now, in this moment. Wash considers Sharkface, weighing the fact that he's still an enemy with the amount of enemy he could be... and drops the clip from the gun, quickly and efficiently unloading the bullets. Only then does he pass it back, holding the pistol in one hand and ammo in the other.

....

Asshole.

Ephemera mutters a curse under his breath and takes the pistol back, holstering it one-handed. His left arm hangs useless. Now that the adrenaline's gone down, he's feeling the burns on his bad arm. The slip of skin and the understanding that he's going to have to get this fixed soon, possibly bribe someone to cut the survival suit off him and hope it hasn't gone all the way down to the bone.

When that's done, he takes the ammo too. No use wasting that.

Carefully, Ephemera takes his bad arm and tucks it against his chest. Yeah, that's going to sting like a bitch when he gets it looked at. Awesome.

"You can fuck off now," he suggests.

"Fucking off." He spares a glance to Sharkface's arm and adds, "Get that looked at."

And then he's off, jogging swiftly towards what he thinks is the exit. There must be someone else here who can give him better answers.

Test Drive Meme #22

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