Test Drive Meme # 2

[hadrielmods]

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 October 25th, and apps are open November 1st.

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!

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 LAUGHTER OF A CHILD
[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.

Watch out as you explore the streets of Hadriel, because you're not alone, and there's always something on the rooftops watching and waiting for the perfect opportunity to separate you from your group and tear you into pieces. This time, the Door has brought in some little friends for you to play with.

Grey Children are enemies in the video game Silent Hill. They usually move in pairs or groups of three, clinging to your legs and pulling you down so that they can laugh as they stab you to death. They're not particularly sturdy, but since they hunt in packs, they can kill you just the same. Let's hope your group is bigger - or that you can get away before they get ahold of you. But don't be too mean. They're just children, after all.]


SCENARIO TWO: FEAR ITSELF
[You turn a corner, and there it is. The one thing that terrifies you more than anything, that turns you into a frightened child, that makes you want to run or scream or fight wildly. It could be anything. That person you trusted, who betrayed you. A monster that haunts your dreams. Spiders, maybe? Whatever it is, it's exactly what you fear the most.

And then there are footsteps next to you, and someone else is there. Maybe they can help you. Maybe they can save you. But everyone's afraid of something, and the moment your savior gets close, their fear will manifest as well - and if you're really unlucky, combine with yours to make something even worse.

It's not real. It can't hurt you. Not unless you let it. But if you let it, it will destroy you.

This is a simpler version of October's Fear Event.]


H O P E

SCENARIO THREE: THIS IS NOT MY BEAUTIFUL HOUSE
[A moment ago, you were making dinner. Not alone, but with someone you care about nearby - your beautiful spouse, or your amazing child, or your beloved sibling. Then, in an instant, you look at them and you know: this isn't real.

This perfect house, this perfect family, it's not yours. You can remember your real life now, and that person you care for? You might not even know them. A moment ago they were your world, and now you know this isn't actually your life. Your life is something else, somewhere else.

Above the fireplace sits a painting of you and your happy family. You know that if you destroy it, you'll return to your life. But do you really want to, when you've never felt this contentment, this happiness before? You could have it all, if you wanted. And what about your companion? This is a decision you should make together - if you want to.]

Comments

Sarah Kerrigan (primal zerg) | Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm

[swarm_embrace]

1

[The city is twisted and unfamiliar and terribly different. But in some ways, at least, it's familiar. Kerrigan has to be on her guard here, not against any familiar foes, but a foe waiting for an opportunity is enough. She won't run. In a way she's almost glad for it, an opportunity to lash out, to fight against something tangible. An obstacle that can be beaten with claws and blades and psionic blasts.

She can hear them, but she can't see them yet, so she's on guard. Both against the obvious threat, and the less obvious one that might be presented by the other people trapped here.

There's movement out of the corner of her eye so she turns and lifts a hand, but doesn't attack immediately.]

3

[This was far crueler than anything this place has thrown at her. Kerrigan wants to scream, and the walls and everything in the house rattle around her as her anger spikes and psionic energy rolls off her. What did it do to her. She's furious about memories being put into her head, and angry at having a chance for happiness snatched from her. With the illusion broken, she knows she'll never be able to enjoy this life. But the pain at that thought is short-lived, she's not going to mourn something that wasn't real to begin with.

Kerrigan only has to extend her hand and reach out with her telekinesis and the picture flies across the room to her. No illusion of happiness is worth giving up the real world. It's awful, and painful, but it's hers, and real. And she's not done with it yet. She runs the tip of a claw across the photo, but doesn't damage it.]

For what it's worth... living with you like this? It wasn't that bad.

3!

[hornrims]

[This is not his illusion. The setting is completely foreign, and he doesn't recognize the stranger's connection to it. What he does recognize is the anger and feelings of betrayal. When a person couldn't trust their own mind, everything else they thought to be true was thrown into question. To not be angry was to be stupid, or worse, a pushover.

He approaches Kerrigan calmly as the house shakes around them, with a blank expression tinged with curiosity. There are questions to be answered about her mind and how it links to the feeling that this environment wants to knock Richie to the floor. But that was for another time.

Eyes behind glasses glance down at the photo before looking up to her face.]

Tear it.

[swarm_embrace]

[The energy fades. There's nothing here deserving of her wrath, not really, so the house settles down and no longer threatens to be torn apart around them. She has more respect for him now, to approach her so calmly while she's so angry. It's either brave and controlled or foolish, and she doesn't care enough to peek inside his mind to know.

They've shared this fake life, and maybe the person she has been could have existed had her life turned out differently, but it isn't her.]

Something so small and easily destroyed is the way out...

[As if whatever's behind them doesn't want to force this on them more than it already has. It's a small mercy, and one she appreciates as much as it troubles her. The photo offers hardly any resistance for claws that were made to rend metal and armored carapace, and the illusion of the house evaporates like smoke.

The building they're in is similar, but lacks the warmth and lived-in feeling. The view from the window doesn't offer life in the Koprulu sector, on a quiet less developed planet, but this twisted battleground they've been dragged into that calls itself a city.

She stretches the limbs on her back, and the tendrils on her head flex at the base. This is real. This feels real, but so did the illusion.]

If only I could wake up from this, too.

[hornrims]

[Richie's slightly disappointed when the room calms. He looks to the ground, to the walls, to the objects around them from the false life. For all of her anger, everything remained. Lamps which should be shattered to pieces around them remain upright in perfect ceramic.]

Throw what you can at the world, and it's just a paper that breaks it.

[It's said in not only confirmation, but as a means of soaking in the new surroundings. He watches her, face blank as head tilts less than an inch to follow her movements.]

See how much you wake up from. Rip up that photo and see what else rips with it. Maybe you'll tear me open. Take hold of my skull and split me in half with one scratch.

[The inflection in the slight monotone reveals that he doesn't necessarily view that as a bad thing. He gives a single shrug of the shoulder.]

Maybe you'll do the same to yourself. But real death is worth more than a life of illusion.

[swarm_embrace]

[The fatalistic speech draws her attention from their surroundings, and she looks at the man who has been in all these false memories. He's not as she remembers him at all, but that wasn't really him, was it? It makes her think of the first day she emerged from the spawning pool on Zerus, the feeling of being able to rip apart entire worlds. And also, the patchy, incomplete memories of her first time as the Queen of Blades, waiting for the universe to end at the hands of Amon.

She almost does want to rip him apart, but he hasn't done anything to earn her anger.]

If death is waiting for me, it won't be here. I have too much left to do. Real death leaves no chance of progress.

[hornrims]

I dig your ambition.

[And it's true, Richie's always been drawn to people with goals. This might not be the right time to set them, but if Kerrigan wanted to waste time, that was her doing.]

But are you really gonna get that here? You don't know me and I sure as hell am not your husband. Maybe ripping it won't kill us and will take you back to where you're from and me back to where I'm from. We don't know. But this is goddamn purgatory and I'm getting out.

3

[notglitching]

[The picture's motion goes entirely unnoticed by Kerrigan's counterpart. Rinzler is frozen, head bowed, circuits flickering dark/bright, dark/bright in agitation as the data processes. Everything he is. Everything he's failed to be. Directives and commands and code-chained imperatives: not locked, not yet, but pulling tight just beneath the surface.

He remembers his system. He remembers Clu. He remembers hundreds of cycles of hunting and deletion, even more time spent trapped and idling and waiting for a call. A sideways jerk of his head brings air rushing past his exposed face, and the enforcer's noise jars out in a static snarl as he remembers just how many rules he's really breaking. How could he ever, ever have forgotten?

The voice breaks the loop. Rinzler's stare comes up, fixing on (his companion) (the stranger) across the room. User. He wants to laugh, and he wants to derezz everything, wipe every glitch through violence alone. It should be Clu, but Clu wasn't here. And maybe it was fitting that a user would fix things.]

Wrong.

[Not bad. Just wrong. Just like the voice that catches in his throat. All of this was. The program's eyes linger on the painting, then raise to Kerrigan's face. Waiting.]

[swarm_embrace]

[She's not entirely sure what he is. There's no organic mental presence, and the noise reminds her of a machine. The outfit more of the hostile environment suit she'd worn after Jim saved her. How much of her memories of this fake life are anything at all like the being she's been living beside? Has she been living beside him? It's hard to tell how much time passed, and how much was just a memory of time passing.

Some kind of advanced adjutant alternative? Wrong is a good word for it, and it briefly strikes her as comically laughable that the happiest she's ever been has been entirely wrong.

She shreds the photograph with her claws, and the pieces of it don't even begin to fall before the illusion around them fades away, leaving a cold, un-lived-in house in its wake. A sad parallel to the place that held so many happy, fake memories for her. Kerrigan is tempted to destroy it.]

I'm going to find whoever did this to us.

[For now, at least, she's convinced that her companion, the husband of her fake life, wasn't involved. He seems just as angry as she is.]

[notglitching]

[As the painting rips, the curve in Rinzler's frame grows stronger. It settles into a hunch, head bowed, shoulders drawn in close. There's a spark of red-orange light behind the program's pupils as code shifts and processes, spreading from disks to dock to frame as he resets to standard configuration. What he's supposed to be. He remembers (forgets) everything, and there's a skip and rattle that builds from his throat, the constant sound of code in conflict resetting as it should.

Attention settles on the user. Threat; users are threats, and this one looks more warped (viral?) than anything in the enforcer's database. The tags of false/wrong memory are difficult to sort, itching against permissions with the reminder of too many violations. Better to operate on current input. Claws, frame, powers flag the danger easily enough.

Danger. Threat. But maybe not to his administrator's goals. Dark glass flits up from the program's collar, a black helmet sliding back in place by sections, and Rinzler inclines his head as the outer shell locks off his face again. The ticking rumble eases before shifting closer to a growl. He isn't meant to set his own tasklist. But whoever trapped them here already interfered with Rinzler's function, and he'll gladly fight his way through this threat on his way back to Clu's side.

She wants to delete them? He's on board.]