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annexedmeme2022-11-06 09:45 pm
modaccount) wrote in annexedmeme2022-11-06 09:45 pm
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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."
cal kestis ☄️ star wars: jedi fallen order
[ Cal wakes up feeling far more rested and comfortable than he has anytime previously, not sore from a quick nap on a cold jungle floor or a cramped bunk space on board the Mantis. Everything feels pleasant and fuzzy, with almost a dreamlike quality to it. It's rare that he has dreams that are anywhere this good so he doesn't question it too much.
As he makes his way towards the smells of food, he keeps an eye out for Cere or Greez, and BD-1. And of course, the Second Sister. It's difficult to truly relax or accept this as a harmless dream when she's been there around every corner since Bracca.
Hungry, he sits himself down in front a plate filled with brightly colored vegetables, breads and whatever had looked mildly appetizing, taking a seat near the exit in case there's need to make a quick getaway. ]
Uh, hi.
[ Might as well get to know the others in this dream, right? ]
the mission.
[ Not too long ago he was more or less interested in self preservation, keeping his head down. But now he's in the fight, he can't not join in. Even if Cal's not entirely sure what's going on here. There's people running around, nobody familiar.
He kneels down in front of someone, injured. Not for the first time he misses BD and his cache of stimpacks. ]
Hey, you alright? C'mon, let's get you out of here... just stay close.
[ Except that the infected is less interested in help and more interested in violence. Of course. He could really use a hand, here! ]
welcome to the broken world.
[ The next time Cal wakes, it's not half as wonderful. He shoots up, panting and looking around and it doesn't take long to figure out what feels wrong. The Force, his newly healed connection to it, seems to be gone. His clothing is different, his saber is nowhere to be found and it seems like he's trapped.
Bounty hunters, again? It doesn't seem Imperial but perhaps they're involved in this somehow.
He paces, meditates and paces some more, looking for any kinds of weaknesses in his room that he could use for a getaway. The commotion has him reaching for a weapon that's not quite there anymore; but he'd gone six years without using the Force or ever pulling his saber. If he has to defend himself... the door opens and the rescuer only brings more questions than answers.
He may not trust it, but he wants to stay in the cell even less. Cal takes the blaster and follows them out. ]
Not really my weapon of choice.
mission
Sleep.
[ The infected woman stops struggling immediately and Rey jams a syringe full of the antidote into her arm before looking up at the person she'd just assisted. ]
Can you drag her inside? She'll be immune now, she'll find her way home when she wakes up.
welcome rescue
Not mine, either, usually.
[If the currently unlit saber hilt in his hand is any indication. But they don't have those stockpiled to hand out to new rescues, so a blaster is all he has to offer.]
Do you know how to use it?
cackles like a loon
Vader is, as last time, decked in his full helmet, but dressed in a mix of dark grey-green and matte dark blue that better blend into the shadows. His gloves and boots are still black but matted as well and absent ate the electronics of his life support suit. The heavy belt was replaced with simmering else too, which was a broad circular shape on his left hip with a wider belt running to his right and a thinner one running at lower making the belt look like a triangle. His saber was clipped high on his waist, a blaster hung from a drop holster connected to the thinner belt.
He'd had time to settle in, in other words.
He sensed more than heard the struggle and while he wasn't fast anymore he could power through the underbrush like a land clearer and didn't immediately clock the red headed teenager being attacked until he'd flipped the attacker off the bot and sent her tumbling down the embankment.
He turned to Call to tell him to follow and bit off a 'well kirff'. Nope just using the Force then to firmly seize his shoulder. He'd come or be dragged. "Away from someone trying to tear out your throat is the place for questions."