dankmemes | test drive meme #11

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.

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: WORKING TITLE
[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 lurking in the shadows, waiting for the perfect chance to swarm around you and chow down. This time, the Door has brought in a few Working Joes, from the Alien: Isolation video game series.

Once simply androids meant for mundane jobs, working Joes have had their programming altered to isolate and eliminate threats onboard their ship- which they now believe to be Hadriel. Super strong, yet slow and plodding, an android may ask you for identification before throttling you when you don't have the right answer. They are quite sturdy and difficult to destroy without the right tools. Have fun!]

H O P E

SCENARIO TWO: BEAUTIFICATION DUTY
[The city has always looked a little drab, but now with some tools from Hope, it's up to you guys to spruce it up a bit! Your character will find themselves in a shop filled with various paints, home improvement tools, window stickers, streamers, and various other items and tools used to improve the appearance of the neighborhood.

You're encouraged to add your own little flair to the project in order to improve living standards and make Hope the happiest god in the pantheon. So, what will you do? Paint a mural? Sweep up some rubble? Install a skylight! The cave is your oyster.

This is a mini version of our Extinction v2 event this month!]

S O R R O W

SCENARIO THREE: CRY ME A RIVER
[When you wake up in the morning, something feels... off. It feels like you just watched 20 ASPCA commercials in a row and then topped it all off with the first ten minutes of Up. You're beaten down, depressed, upset by all the horrific acts and trauma in the world, and it's enough to make you want to cry.

Turn on the waterworks, because Hadriel is about to have a shortage of tissues and everyone's getting dehydrated. You might run into your neighbor crying while you're scavenging for food, or you might just find that one whole asshole in the entire movie who isn't affected.

Either way, it's time to get some hugs, some kleenex, and maybe a little bit of chocolate. Happy... crying?]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"If there's too much of it," she agrees. "With oranges, or greens, or reds, or golds, as the shadows, the murky unseen darkness, then it could work, but they're all stars outside. She'll pick another canvas for darker things, drier things. Deserts and shadows. The monsters under the beds, beneath the eyelids."

Suddenly the girl vaults backwards, does a handstand. There's shorts on underneath her dress, and thin but muscular paint-covered legs to go with. She walks on her hands, turning in a circle until she's looking at Mello upside down.

"What would you be doing besides?"

There's something Mello finds deeply unsettling about the way the girl talks - an abstract quality to her speech pattern while still containing a thread of coherence to follow, like a riddle Mello wasn't aware he was being asked and for which he isn't prepared to come up with an answer. It makes him feel far less intelligent than he actually is, and he doesn't like that feeling, but he is intrigued by it, because so few people have ever been able to make him feel intellectually outclassed.

Also, people don't typically do handstands in casual conversation - or any conversation, for that matter. Mello raises an eyebrow as he watches the girl maneuver her way around.

"Besides talking to you? Painting a wall." Or, if it were up to his discretion, literally anything else. Sifting through the data he's been able to collect over the weeks he's been here, looking for patterns and clues as to something to be done for getting back to where he's supposed to be.

"Doesn't that give you a headache?"

"Besides painting the wall." He doesn't want to, that much is clear (to her anyway) though the details of why are muddled and she's not terribly interested in them anyway. His mind makes her curious, the same way her speech makes him unsettled.

River lifts one hand off the ground in a shrug, extending her hand out and then lifting it up briefly before putting it back down to stabilize herself.

"Everything gives her a headache. This is better."

"There are a lot of things I could be doing besides painting a wall." Which doesn't exactly answer the question of what he would be doing. Mello barely had time to adjust to being in Hadriel before Near arrived and set what little footing he'd been able to find completely askew, and not long after that, Sharon da Silva cast a nightmare reality over the entire city and Mello found himself on the run and in hiding for his method of trying to stop her.

Mello tips his head to the side as he studies her increasingly strange movements. "Do you always talk about yourself in third person?" She could also genuinely have a dissociated view of herself, of course. Asking is the natural way to discern which is correct.

River rolls her eyes before springing back to her feet and shaking out her hands.

"You want to ask her why she talks in circles that are mathematically correct but jagged to the naked eye while you speak in spirals that wind upwards or downwards depending on the source of your sought out truth. What is always? Since the beginning? Or since the fissure?"

There's an answer, Mello. Somewhat.

And there's a kind of sense in what she says - it's faint, but he can sense it enough to follow it somewhat. He does tend to speak in spirals, as she put it - answering questions with more questions, evading verbally the way boxers dodge their opponents. One of many methods in which he was trained by the orphanage that raised him from childhood to be a potential copy of a very important man. Most people don't notice it, though, or if they do, they don't comment on it. Mello just stares at her for a long moment, finally deciding on one very simple question:

"Who are you?"

"Her name is River." She grins, wondering how long it will take him to figure out that she can hear the thoughts of others. River has no intentions of saying it outright, anyway; people with secrets to hide will go to great lengths to keep them hidden, even if she had no real plan to find them and expose them to the light.

Her mind is a cobblestone of other people's secrets. That's just how it is.

"Just arrived in the place with no sky."

"It's called Hadriel." But she's right; there's no sky overhead. And River, he thinks, sounds like one of the code names they'd give a child at Wammy's House - mysterious but somehow meaningful. It suits her, he thinks, given from what he's already observed, because her words wind around the way a river does instead of shooting straight to the point.

"Do you know why you're here?"

"The Gods require sacrifices. We feel the burning of the pyre and so, in our minds, our skin blisters and cracks." She shrugs; she gets it, to be known a god must be worshipped. Why not just keep the ones who were here alive, though? That's what she wants to know.

"How matters less."

test drive meme #11

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