Test Drive Meme #6 (tw violence)

[spoofer]

Test Drive Meme #6

I want neither revenge nor relief.

INTRODUCTION ⇄ FAQ ⇄ APPLICATIONS

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.


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 brilliant green forest across the sand. Beyond that, the glint of a faraway city.

BATTLE WITH D.E.S.T.I.N.Y.

November has barely begun, when chaos strikes again^[2]. Perhaps you've had weeks to settle in, finding yourself a new home and getting accustomed to the neighborhoods... or maybe you've had no time at all. Your daemon warns you of a massive invasion coming from the West, the ocean where you first arrived.

The enemy has come for you again. D.E.S.T.I.N.Y., the cosmic threat to not only your homeworld but the entire Multiverse.

When the violence makes land, it's shockingly similar to the exit from your original world, yet mashed in with the experiences and genres and world details of other refugees— soldiers in red armor wielding weapons of all kinds, both advanced and rudimentary; airships, bizarre monsters; firestorms and quakes that seem sentient in the way that they move, pursuing people through the beach and the forest. You see the injured and the dead, and people running in panic. Heat and gunfire break up the ordinary peace of wilderness, driving animals into stampedes and filling the sky with panicking birds.

There are children and doctors and engineers among the many refugees of Xistentia, and not everyone can fight back— but maybe you're one of those who can.

Think fast— that's a crimson spear launching at your head now.


The city's defenses are buckling too. While ordinarily, the civlization possesses unnatural physics that subvert violence, the onslaught starts to wear agains them. The only safe place is the Temple. Here, civilians and injured combatants are banding together to try and boost morale... which coincidentally also can boost the defenses of the land by with the energy collected from emotional connectivity. For better or worse, there is plenty of negative feeling to go around, the air thick with fear.

Whether you're recovering from injury or afraid to fight, you can still contribute here. Tell a story, sing a song, make a meal out of one of the cookfires started in the hallway, or even help with medicine. One thing is for certain: we're in this together.

NETWORK

Today, it's peace time. By now, the city of Xistentia has a population of over 500 people. Shops line the streets of downtown, and increasingly well-trodden paths will take you into the agricultural zones nearer to the forest or even down to the beach. There are still distinctive animal presences around— careful with that— but the most common critters you'll see are birds crapping on your stuff outside and tiny winged hairless people creeping your food.

One afternoon, you are taken from whatever you’re doing - taking a walk through the city, sunning yourself on the beach, running around in the forest shoring up defenses - by a message, appearing on your Daemon’s network screen. It’s a simple notification, that reads:

TEXT MESSAGE SENT

It would appear that your daemon accidentally sent a text message misfire.

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE

hells yeah

Footnotes

1. 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.
   
   
2. This is connected to the war plot, coming up in November. Please read the announcement for more information! Features include good, old-fashioned violence, hurt/comfort, and "drift compatibility."

Comments

haneul moon | oc | ota

[grimless]

crash landing:
[he's glad he skipped breakfast this morning, there's enough of a mess on the beach already. but that doesn't stop his body from trying, dry heaves bringing him to his hands and knees in the sand.

haneul pulls the collar of his shirt up over his nose and mouth once the retching stops. normally he likes the smell of the ocean, but the burning wreckage sort of ruins it. he's amazed that the air isn't polluted with the smell of burning bodies on top of it. he lets his shirt fall and stares at the chaos for a few seconds longer.]

How is no one dead?

temple:
Would you like to see a magic trick?

[because haneul is not a fighter and wasted no time in getting himself injured. fortunately it isn't serious - guiding his own soul could've been awkward. but as promised, prepare to be amazed as he holds up his hands and proceeds to remove his own thumb. he totally doesn't just have one thumb bent. definitely not the oldest trick in the book. but maybe it was enough to get someone's mind off of the violence for...three seconds.]

See? Magic.

misfire:
daemon: moond

I'd never seen one that size before.

[saints]

DAEMON: LUCID

You can't just go around saying that and not tell us what it is!!! A bird? A plane? A flying dick? I want some answers. The people want answers. You know?

[grimless]

actually

i would be impressed by a flying dick of any size, wouldn't you?

[saints]

Kind of useless if it's flying though, isn't it?

[grimless]

maybe. could be useful in a long-distance relationship though. and think of the postage you'd save if it could deliver itself.

this should be the next step in human evolution.

[saints]

You might as well buy a dildo and attach some kind of mini jetpack to it then, I'm not flying my dick long distance anywhere. What if you lose it? what if it gets LOST or eaten by a... bald eagle or something?

Then you'll never get it back.

[grimless]

i didn't think of that. even if it had gps, that wouldn't protect it from birds of prey. some of them will eat anything. it's amazing but it's not invincible.

by the way, i wish i could tell you more, but i don't know why that original message was sent in the first place.

[saints]

Meat's meat or whatever and birds get mad hungry.

Oh well, guess that's a mystery for the ages or something.

[grimless]

sorry to disappoint.

i did see the world's biggest avocado once but that's probably...not as exciting.