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newcombers2024-05-23 02:01 am
newcomod) wrote in newcombers2024-05-23 02:01 am
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May 2024 Test Drive Meme: The First of Many to Come
We will officially be opening our game June 1st at 12:01 AM EST.
Reserves will open on May 28th at 12:01 AM EST.
Applications will open on the 1st at 12:01 AM EST.
Applications will close on the 5th at 11:59 PM EST.
Please follow our Plurk
Our memes are open to current and prospective players alike.
All Test Drive memes are game canon and serve as a lead-up to the following month's event. The first prompt in each TDM will always coincide with the disastrous circumstances of Penumbra's collision.
This disaster will leave unique supplies or conditions for the following month until the reset in time occurs and a new collision invokes new circumstances.
Most characters upon initial arrival may suffer mild amnesia, fatigue, and diminished powers. Memories, energy, and powers will eventually return. Per player choice, this can be quickly or slowly.
You can use your TDM threads for writing samples on your application.
If you are applying for a new character, you can choose to keep your TDM threads canon to your character or not.
Even if our current players do not engage with the TDM, we strongly recommend they read each TDM to be aware of how Penumbra strikes Newcomb every month. We encourage characters to react to this via network or log posts in the community spaces.
Image Descriptions from left to right: First image is a red train pictured along raised tracks set against pine trees in sunlight, second image is a gif of a train explosion as people flee from the destruction, third image is of a dark sky with orange lightning.
Prompt
Once upon a time, Newcomb had its very own train station that was used by students and staff alike. Most students would arrive at campus via the train and supplies were often shipped in through the train. This very train station used to be located by Fitch End and was one of the first out-of-campus locations to be destroyed by Penumbra. This month, it seems as if the reset has brought the train back. For a moment, anyway. One may awaken from a deep slumber in one of the passenger cars, groggy and nearly jetlagged. You will be surrounded by other characters waking up, just as disoriented and confused as you are.
The train ride itself isn't so bad though. The scenery beyond the windows is filled with gorgeous sprawling woods, already tinged with the golds and reds of autumn. The smell of pine and old leather fills the train and you will find your backpack in a cubby just above your head or on the seat beside you.
There is no way to exit the train at this point, no matter how one might try. What is the point anyway? Just sit back and enjoy the ride. Something is soothing about a train ride, after all. You may even feel tempted to fall back asleep. Maybe things will make more sense when you wake up again.
You won't have peace for long. The train jolts violently as if being struck by something, and after, everything descends into chaos. Cars begin to slam together, some smashing upward, shattering glass and doors, crushing seats. Explosions burst from the front of the train, and as it pivots onto campus, it scorches the ground.
Cars break apart, sliding into their destruction here and there against buildings or trees. It feels as though it happens both slowly and rapidly, defying time itself, the sound of a ticking clock somehow overwhelming the symphony of metal scraping against metal.
Oil from the train catches fire across campus grounds. While the buildings are fireproof and resilient, the rest of the campus is not and neither are some characters who may be wandering about perchance. As the disaster comes to a screeching halt, characters will have to help each other from the wreckage and help put out the fires.
The train will remain on campus for June. It can be broken apart for metal parts and explored for small, sentimental items or important weapons that belong to a character. The train will vanish in the blink of an eye as midnight hits on the 31st. The Penumbric siren alerts the campus of the reset and the incoming meteor and its potential new disaster.
You will have to brace yourself for what happens next.
Note on Penumbric Collision Prompts: Characters do not need to arrive in this prompt. You may opt-out entirely by having your character fall through the sky or wake up incredibly disoriented randomly on campus. Arrival to Newcomb should be somewhat physically and/or mentally draining or damaging. Even characters resistant to pain or injury will be temporarily vulnerable to the arrival.
Image Descriptions from left to right: First image is a shadowy humanoid with a black and gray smudge effect concealing the face, second image is a pair of hands covered in a black goopy substance, third image has several clear vials containing a smoky, goopy black substance.
Prompt
A curious boxcar can be discovered among the wreckage of the train. This boxcar was carefully sealed off and kept at freezing temperatures. Inside were metal crates filled with test tubes and Petri dishes containing a mysterious black goo. During the fall, the boxcar's front end was ripped away. Between the raging fires from the crash and the exposure to higher temperatures, the vials and petri dishes thawed. Vials and Petri dishes began to break apart as the mysterious goo essentially "woke up" from its cryogenic state and escaped from the glass containers.
This mysterious goo seeks out living organisms and will subtly attach itself to character bodies. This can be as subtle as a dime-sized speck of mysterious goo behind a character's ear or consume half a character's body. The goo's attachment is painless. It has a tarlike odor and causes a strange prickling sensation the longer it remains attached to a character.
After some time, the goo will naturally slide off a character. Alternatively, a character can apply freezing water or ice to the goo and this will essentially "kill" the goo and slough it off in broken chunks.
While the goo is attached to characters, it will cause uncontrollable, unusual behavior. On a less severe end, symptoms may include disorientation, difficulty walking, slurred speech, confusion, and clinginess even to strangers. On a more extreme end, the goo may cause characters to act in ways contradictory to who they typically are: they may be prone to fits of violence, hysteria, flirtation, cruelty, or even for some, abundant kindness and outgoing friendliness.
The goo will automatically make characters want to interact with other characters whether positively or negatively. It uses these interactions as a way to migrate from one host to the next.
Image Descriptions from left to right: First image has a playing card and two white dice, second image has a text bubble that reads, "I'm not a Soft Gay I'm an Anger Gay. I love dogs and burning things." Third image shows a field of grass and wildflowers with a free-standing picture frame with torn canvas, the torn spot revealing a city scape image.
Prompt.
Who isn't familiar with the bizarre urge to overshare to total strangers online? It would appear that the mysterious goo has an intimate understanding of this instinct and intends to capitalize on it.In other words, the mysterious goo's influence is not limited to in-person interactions. Even characters unfamiliar with technology will have the burning desire to get out their new phone and create a public post to all Fermii users containing two truths and a lie about themselves.
These can range from embarrassing and silly to serious and incriminating. Characters will continue to feel an itch to respond transparently to those who correctly guess which is which. Even the most sophisticated and chronic liars cannot resist the force of the mysterious goo's presence.
The urge to overshare will ebb away the more truth is exposed.
Ironically, this may be a minor blessing to those unfamiliar with smartphone technology. It would seem that the mysterious goo has managed to assimilate the knowledge of how smartphones work and helpfully pass it into the mind of its host. However, the price of exposure might not be worth the shortcut to knowledge.
doctor stephen strange ╳ mcu
It's not uncommon for Stephen's reality to change on a dime, but he can safely say that this is the first time he started off the afternoon meditating and ended in a train crash.
Everything goes black for a long moment, long enough that Stephen's first worry when he wakes up is about brain damage. How long was he unconscious? He doesn't know. What he does know is that there's the smell of smoke in the air, other passengers groaning, metal screaming as it tries to warp and bend -- and jammed through his shoulder is the remains of what must have been a slim metal window pane, sheared off to form an inconvenient stake. Because he's not an idiot, he doesn't pull it out, and picks himself up instead.
The Cloak of Levitation is disturbingly lifeless, falling limp around him. And when he tries to conjure a self-assessment spell, the runes flicker and die. Stephen scowls.
No matter. The more important thing is seeing to the other passengers. He casts his gaze over the others he can see -- mental triage: sprained wrist, bump on the head, bruise, he doesn't need to attend any of them yet -- and finds someone on the floor, bleeding from a head wound. Stephen kneels down next to them. "Lay still," he says, not so much gentle bed-side manner as it is firm instruction that brooks no bullshit, and finds a nearby scarf to press against the wood. He cringes internally at the bacteria that might be on it, but an infected head wound is better than one that doesn't stop bleeding.
"You." He grabs the attention of someone nearby, pale gaze narrowed. "Are you injured?"
When he'd heard that one of the cars contained cargo with test tubes, Stephen had made his way there as quickly as possible after helping what passengers he could. Without the use of his magic, which is still sputtering out and dying as soon as he calls it, he's forced back to far more rudimentary measures; make-shift bandages and splints, assigning the less injured to watch over the more injured.
It's been a long time since he was involved in triage for a mass injury event, and back then he'd had the full resources of a hospital. Now, he has nothing. It's enough to drive any former surgeon mad.
While rustling through one of the cargo boxes in the hopes of finding medicine, he'd noticed a black substance. Though he'd done his best to stay far away from it, he nonetheless finds it clinging to his fingers when he draws back. He still hasn't found the time to see to his own injury, metal sticking out of his shoulder, but he wrapped it with a torn strip of a spare shirt he'd found in someone's luggage. The black goo seems... a more immediate issue, but no matter how much he tries to wipe it off, it doesn't move. It's not burning, or sizzling, there's no immediate pain, and yet, when he stands, his head swims, and he winds up automatically reaching out to grab someone's arm to steady himself.
When his vision clears, he realizes he's just spread the goo to someone else. It's still on his hand, and spreading over their shirt sleeve.
"Shit." Stephen wishes he had a scalpel. A torch. Fire. Anything. "Quick, before it touches your skin, get rid of your shirt." He really hopes they have something on underneath!
un: notawizard
[ ooc: also happy to do other plots if wanted! :D ]
First Train In
Though when the man who looked like a caricature of a wizard barked at him rather rudely, he was hardly going to admit to any injury, even if the bump on his head was rather pronounced.
“I am fine, nothing to be concerned about.” It doesn’t occur to him that the man might want help because most people know better than to ask Loki for anything.
no subject
Really? Is he that unlucky? Whatever this is -- alternate reality, different world, nightmare, whatever -- he has to run into the chaotic, uncontrollable gremlin he'd once dropped into a portal loop? The last he'd heard, Loki had been having dealings with the TVA (a group Stephen stays very far away from because he's doubtless pissed them off countless times now), but this Loki could be a different version entirely. There's quite of a few of him throughout the multiverse.
"Yes, the giant lump on your head definitely agrees with your assessment," he says dryly, because Loki might be Loki, but Stephen is still a doctor, and he's not even the kind that denies service because he finds the case boring anymore! (Mostly.) "Get over here so I can assess your injury, I need to be able to look at your pupils."
His hands are shaking more than usual, adrenaline and lack of magic and pain getting to him. Maybe if Loki plays nice and isn't a bedraggled hobgoblin, he might even rope him in to help with other injured passengers.
no subject
Oh, Stephen very much is that unlucky. If this were Loki of the TVA, he might actually have some help without question. In fact, that Loki would already be helping people out. Unfortunately, this is a much younger, much angrier Loki, still quite fresh off finding out he was adopted and Thor's failed coronation, so help might be a little difficult to receive.
Loki rolls his eyes and crosses his arms, but the truth is he's never felt this off after a little bump on the head and it's concerning. So he pouts, but still heads over. "What do my pupils have to do with anything?"
Look, he might be a yonger, angrier, more obnoxious version of his later redeemed self, but he's still curious and hungry to learn. Then he notices the shaking hands and frowns. "Are you sure you are not the one who needs some aid?"
assimilation
"I always do what hot older men tell me," he says as he tugs it over his head and tosses it aside.
He looks at the shirt. Then at Stephen.
"Holy shit, are you okay?! Your shoulder looks a little, uhm. Not awesome."
On the ground the black goo starts crawling off the sweatshirt.
✘ ⸻ assimilation
"What are you? Some kind of pervert?!"
Truths and lies DN: DeFine_Cat