Annexed Mod Team (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
modaccount) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
annexedmeme2022-11-06 09:45 pm
modaccount) wrote in annexedmeme2022-11-06 09:45 pm
Entry tags:
Test Drive Meme #3
Test Drive Info
⇝ Test Drive Memes take place in a virtual reality simulation occurring in characters' minds that tests them for 'fitness' before they enter the setting officially. Because it is set in a simulation created by the Sylphid, the missions, while being comparable to regular missions in the game, will be from a Sylphid perspective.
⇝ Characters will not be chipped during the simulation, and will have access to their abilities from canon, but will be chipped upon waking for the rescue.
⇝ Current characters can easily be pulled into the simulation if they are sleeping and dreaming when it's happening. The Sylphid cast a wide net with the simulation to fill it out with characters to interact with for prospective new arrivals.
⇝ Test Drive Meme threads may be considered game canon so long as all parties agree to it.
⇝ Test Drive Meme threads do count for Activity Check.
i. Awakening
It happens in a dream. You fall asleep and the next moment you feel like you're awakening again, but without any exhaustion, as if you've had a full night's sleep. You find yourself in a comfortable bed in a room full of comfortable beds, all of which contain other people waking up just the way you are. The room is large but cozy, with wide windows that are framed by light curtains, and the sun is shining in from an angle that suggests morning.
Once you're up and moving around a little, ready to explore this new place, you'll discover an open door on one of the walls in the room, through which soft strains of music can be heard, and above which there's a sign saying "Free Breakfast." Once you make your way into the room, possibly with some of the other people just waking up in this strange place, you find a buffet table loaded with breakfast foods - some familiar, and some strange, mainly featuring mushrooms and root vegetables. Quiet, soothing music is playing and there are a variety of tables with chairs available to settle down and enjoy some food.
This is just a dream, right? What could be the harm in eating a bit of food, maybe trying out some cool alien cuisine, and getting to know the other people here?
ii. The Mission: The Fungus Among Us
Once everyone has eaten their fill and gotten to know their new compatriots a little better, there is an interruption in the music playing in the room. Three musical chimes sound, and a pleasant female voice speaks.
Attention, new recruits! We have a mission for you.
The intercom goes on to explain that there is a forest of mushrooms called The Troop that borders on the northwest walls of the city, which releases spores near constantly (though more prolific in fall) that have a hallucinogenic effect on sentient beings. These spores can cause people traveling in The Troop to become disoriented and confused, experience vivid auditory and visual hallucinations, and become permanently lost. Generally, the spores aren't a problem inside the city or in the surrounding area because no one has built close enough to the Troop to suffer serious effects. However, this particular fall, the spore count has been significantly higher than previous years, and spores are making their way into the neighborhoods bordering The Troop. Even worse, the spores are having a slightly different effect on top of the usual ones.
The spores, once inhaled, are growing into microscopic fungi that populate in the brains of citizens and take over the brains of the infected. Once taken over, the citizens who are infected are servants of The Troop, and will do whatever they can to infect others by whatever means possible, whether it's by capturing spores and releasing them in people's faces or by gagging up fungi that will infect others. Beyond that, there is a kind of mania about the people who have been infected - they are wide-eyed and high-energy, they will accost random people with spores or fungi, they will chase people down on the street to infect them.
Beyond that, there's another effect. Those inflicted with fungal infection become distinctly lacking in any kind of verbal filter. They will say exactly what they're thinking, they will blurt out secrets, expose themselves emotionally, and share their innermost thoughts and dreams. After all, it's not like the individual mushrooms in The Troop keep secrets, they're all part of a larger whole, and that's how infected individuals will behave. It's as if they're sharing a consciousness, taken over by the hive mind of The Troop, and see others as simply extensions of themselves.
Will your character get infected, try to help the infected somehow, or just plain stay out of the way of all this madness?
iii. The Mission: Full Fungal Smackdown
As the infection gradually progresses, those who are infected start to become more violent, which is a big problem. The infection is slowly spreading throughout the low-income neighborhood that it initiated in and moving toward the city proper, with increasingly aggressive infected doing their best to infect others. Their methods are starting to become more aggressive as well, where before they would simply spray others with spores or present them with mushrooms, they are now altering common devices like leaf blowers to spread the spores over a broader area and violently attacking people to shove mushrooms into people's mouths, curling fingers inside their mouths to force the fungi into their victims' sinuses and infect them.
It isn't just infection techniques that are getting more aggressive. Their behavior in general is aggressive - the infected are starting fights, are attacking people, often shouting in a strange, unintelligible language. The tone of the attack is that of people defending their own territory, fighting off intruders or predators, even if the person they're attacking made no moves to strike first. Attackers may fight hand-to-hand or even employ weapons that they are familiar with to attack others, whether it's guns, knives, laser swords, or anything else they might use in their regular uninfected life. Even those who were non-combatants will use kitchen knives or other makeshift weapons to attack the uninfected.
They never attack the infected, somehow they seem to know immediately who is and who isn't part of the hivemind.
As the attacks start to really escalate and there is panic in the streets, characters will be informed that a cure for the infection has been found, and everyone who isn't infected should stop by one of the Sylphid trucks carrying syringes of the cure and load up. Anyone who's able to fight, or even who is just capable of carrying and using a syringe, is asked to take a bandeau of them and to inoculate anyone infected. Unfortunately, though, the only real way to tell if someone is infected is by that wide-eyed look, and the attack that comes out of nowhere.
iv. Welcome to the Broken World.
The simulation is over, and you don't even know how you got here from there.
All you know is that one moment you were participating in a mission to save the Sylphid children, to uphold peace talks, and then you were asleep again, after the mission was over.
You wake up in what seems like the blink of an eye, nauseous and dizzy but otherwise unscathed, possessions taken away, barefoot and dressed only in a set of plain grey clothing, like the most bland uniform ever imagined, in an empty room with empty walls and one single door with a small barred window and a single number printed just above it. The door is locked and cannot be broken by any means, you can feel your connection with any superhuman powers you had severed, leaving them just out of reach - you can feel them there, tingling at your fingertips or in the back of your brain, but you just can't get to them. There is no one to greet you or explain what's happening. You start to lose track of time, the only sound the distant ticking of what sounds like a massive clock.
Just when things seem hopeless, when you feel like you're about to go mad, there's the sound of a commotion outside your door. The sounds of a battle, or perhaps an infiltration gone just slightly wrong. Either way, when the door opens, there is a figure there with a hand outstretched.
"Welcome to the Broken World. Come on, we'll explain everything just as soon as we get you and the others out of here."
1. I was summoned by the discord gods (Sorry for Luke, he's in his post-ANH golden retriever era)
There are worse coping mechanisms for loss than drowning yourself in training after all. Though he's gotten more than one lecture about how you can't use the Force to forget. But it's not that he's trying to forget, he's just keeping himself busy enough that he doesn't have time to remember. That's all.
Still, when he spots Ben there's a light that hits his face, leaving Luke practically beaming. Dream, reality. Doesn't matter. Because it's Ben and he's going to take any chance he can to spend more time with the man. Which is why he sidles up to the table and deposits his plate next to the older man's before taking a seat.]
If you mix these two, [He points at the dishes with his spoon helpfully.] It tastes kind of like something you can get from one of the food stalls in Anchorhead. Only better.
[That stated, he proceeds to mix the two on his own plate before taking a big bite. He's not being particularly helpful yet, but Luke will get to that point. Eventually.]
a;lskdjfa hiiii! I wouldn't consider apping him but my Han wants to pester you real bad right now
I see. Thank you.
[Cautiously, Obi-Wan does the same. One is more dry, and the other is more glutinous, but when mixed they... continue to look unappetizing. He tries a bite anyway. The mixture of spices does make it more appealing.]
I'd be happy to meme them! I've never gotten to tag a Han before.
For a while, Luke manages to eat in silence, but he's pretty fidgety throughout it. But it's Ben and he's having a hard time containing himself. Which is why the silence only gets to last for so long.]
Time works weird in this place.
[It kinda bursts out of him, while he'd been busy internally trying to figure out just how to explain and introduce himself. Still, he manages to look sheepish enough after h speaks before fully thinking things through, but now that he's started, might as well continue.]
What I mean is, I'm Luke? Only a lot older than you're used to.
[Oh, he's so good at this. Not.]
Sorry, I just wasn't expecting to see you here, Ben.
[If this is really just a dream, he's hoping it's a nice, long one.]
Yay! Luke is freaking adorable
Luke-? I - how did this happen?
One of the best examples of golden retriever energy I've ever seen, Luke.
Yup! Luke Skywalker in the flesh! Just... not the ten year old you're probably used to back on Tatooine.
[Returning to the table, he hands some of the napkins to Obi-Wan he takes a few and wipes up any water he finds on the table. Look, he's a good and dutiful pupil. Honest.]
There's some sort of strange magic here, apparently it knows how to bypass the rules of time as we knew them. It's weird to say, but honestly you get used to it.
[Moving any spillable liquids out of the way mindfully, he turns to watch his reaction to his next announcement. One part mischievous and the rest absolutely sappy. And not just because of the news about Padme, no. It's because honestly he's still so, so overjoyed that he gets more time with Ben. It'd been too short, painfully too short, but that doesn't even matter anymore.]
Not only have I met people here who know me when I'm your age, but my mother too.
[But Luke knows that his mother means a lot to Ben, so the fact that he can see her again? That's a big revelation.]