xistentiaooc | TEST DRIVE MEME #11

Test Drive Meme #11

To men that mix and meet her from many times and lands

CRASH LANDING

Exit one dimension, enter the next. It was chaos: pressure against your ears, light bending in an impossible, unimaginable way. The very molecules of your body vibrating against one another. If you have windows, the view outside makes no sense. Even if not, your hands, your face, your feet seem like an uncertain thing. It's the feel of reality itself tearing apart, reshaping, reconnecting, thread by thread.

And suddenly, there's a beach— or ocean, whichever you land in. Smoke. Fire. Salt water churning up, fizzing around, reaching toward a brilliant blue sky.

Maybe you crash, in a ship wrecking into sand. Maybe you merely stumble out of a portal, a ragged wormhole in space. Or maybe you fall off the back of an incredible steed, some creature that carried you into this place. Either way, there's pandemonium around you. Incredibly, severe injuries are far and few between— nobody's screaming about the dead. But you might have to help pull someone free of wreckage, or move quickly to salvage burning belongings from the landing craft. Maybe it's the crafts themselves, that you're trying to salvage.

Likely, you don't know them, these other strangers who arrived here^[1]. Maybe you don't trust them— you just came out of a dying world, after all. But you all have one thing in common: you're here now.

When you get a second to breathe, maybe you'll see it. The rich, green forest across the sand. Beyond that, the glint of a faraway city.

"Chance" Encounters

Your first week in Xistentia^[2], it's obvious you arrived just after a crisis. The shield above the glinting green city is flickering erratically, shifting strange shadows across the ground. You see a few hazardous waste disposal bins here or there, and clear, glassy orbs that seem to match the bin slots.

But spirits seem high. People greet you in the streets, and you bear witness to a profoundly weird, sudden uptick of public wedding proposals that can't possibly end well? Still.

That's when your daemon starts acting funny. Whether by "GPS" routing you with wrong directions to wherever you had originally intended to go, or by physically pulling you off-course, your personal assistant seems bound to drive you right into the path of another passer-by.

You don't know them yet. But whether it's coffee spilled downy our front, an armload of groceries that goes rolling, or the fact that there's a bird visibly about to take a dump on their head&mdahs; you're about to.

NETWORK

Xistentia now has its own 'friending app.' You can use it to make connections with new people! But beware, your daemon may well post without your permission, and things could get pretty embarrassing.

F.A.T.E.S. thought it was a pretty good pun: Synchr. Get it? Like sinker? Hook, line, and?

TEMPLATE Select and copy the code below, paste into your comment. Please also keep in mind that this comment code is different to the entry code should you join the game! (The font is tiny for ease of copying!)

<raw-code><center><div style="background: url('https://i.imgur.com/LMmsp9R.jpg'); margin: auto; width: 300px; height: 500px; padding: 30px; border-radius: 20px;"><div style="font-family: Arial Narrow, sans serif; text-transform: uppercase; font-size: 28px; text-align: center; letter-spacing: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px; border-bottom-style: groove; border-bottom-color: #999; border-bottom-width: 1px; line-height: 16px" align="center"><i><b>synchr</b></i></div>

<div style="width: 275px; height: 275px; border: 5px solid #b7d1ae; border-radius: 170px; padding: 0px; margin: 15px auto"><div style="background: url('http://i.imgur.com/i0hSO7K.gif'); background-size: cover; width: 225px; height: 225px; border-radius: 180px; padding: 25px; background-position: center;"><div style="background: url('** YOUR PROFILE PICTURE URL HERE **'); background-size: auto 220px; border-radius: 130px; width: 223px; height: 223px; padding-top: 223px; border: 1px dotted #000"></div></div></div>
<div style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Arial Narrow, sans serif; text-transform: uppercase; margin-top: -10px; text-align: center; color: #000;"><b>NAME</b> ▐ AGE</div>

<div style="height: 120px; background: url('https://i.imgur.com/m5GzmXX.png'); overflow-y: auto; margin: 5px auto; border-radius: 6px; padding: 10px">
</raw-code>** INSERT YOUR PROFILE CODE HERE **

<raw-code></div></div>

<div style="clear: both"></div></div>
<br />
<center><table><tr><td style="text-align: center"><span style="font-family: times; font-size:40px; color:#2EB82E;">✓</span> </td><td style="text-align: center"><span style="font-family: times; font-size:40px; color:#CC0000;">✕</span></div></td></tr><tr><td style="text-align: center"><big><big><big><b>YES</big></big></big></b><br />
<textarea><span style="font-family: times; font-size:40px; color:#2EB82E;">✓</span></textarea></td><td style="text-align: center"><big><big><big><b>NO</big></big></big></b><br />
<textarea><span style="font-family: times; font-size:40px; color:#CC0000;">✕</span></textarea></td></tr></table></center></center></raw-code>

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE

hells yeah

Footnotes

Some of these can be nameless, plot-device NPCs to facilitate interactions! But even in this case, please avoid gore in describing their current state of being. Anyone dead or catastrophically injured will have disappeared by the time your characters make it to Xistentia. There are no corpses or dying here.
If you decide to join the game, this prompt may be patched over into the upcoming event, which involves a welcome party that comes under attack.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[he shrugs.] They might, but bartering seems to be the more preferred method of obtaining goods.

[ weird. but easily doable. ]

And this is just for your day to day life?

[ what a drag. erik can't even picture it. ]

Aside from fighting battles, yes.

[from his bag, kurt removes an alien plant, cupping it between both of his hands as he gingerly offers it to erik.]

Isn't it bizarre? [even though he's smiling like it just so happens to be one of the most amazing things he has found.]

[ there's a brief flicker in his expression. curiosity. not a feeling erik often indulges in. ]

I guess it's kinda weird. So what?

Watch this. [seeing that he's unquestionably noted erik's curiosity.

with the plant under one arm, he raises the opposite limb and drags his thumbnail across the inside of his wrist, immediately drawing blood. his attention redirects to the foliage where he gingerly removes a length of the stringy looking pieces and breaks them open, dragging his finger through the sticky substance that pours forth and smearing it across his cut.

the viscous liquid staunches the blood, acting like a natural adhesive over the injury he'd given himself, which makes kurt grin with satisfaction.]

[ erik stares before chuckling. ]

Okay. Gross, but okay.

[kurt laughs, too, settling the plant back into the crook of his elbow.]

Definitely gross, but helpful.

Yeah?

[ his tone is casual. ]

Guess fightin's part of the norm here.

Considering we're at war? Yes, it is.

[he rolls his shoulders, not quite uncomfortable with the idea, though not dismissing it.] But defense and protection are essential parts of fighting, too.

[ if there is anything erik excels at, it's war. being in a warzone doesn't bother him. ]

I just don' see a lot of it happening though. Everyone's sitting cozy.

For now, [the teleporter notes.]

Just wait until something weird happens and we'll end up fighting again.

Who do we normally fight? Monsters?

Whatever is thrown our way. Last time, it was this odd, undulating bomb type thing that created quite a mess.

What kind of bomb? What did it do?

Edited 2018-05-25 10:04 (UTC)

Nothing normal bombs do. There was a weird disruption, followed by disorientation, then some time later, people began revealing deep dark secrets to strangers.

Huh.

[ useful. especially in erik's line of work. ]

I'm guessin' that didn't go down too well.

Depends on who you ask. [during the confessions was when he'd finally gotten some semblance of an answer from kavinsky, so others might have different experiences.]

For most people, though? I'd imagine it was troubling.