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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.
no subject
Where I come from, exotics are any technology that depends on calendrical mechanics. Ordinary invariant technology just depends on regular physical laws. You can do a lot with exotics, but only under the right calendar. How does magic work for you?
If someone tries to kill you first, I'd say you had an excuse.
no subject
[ That... actually is interesting. Holland's never heard anything like it. ]
My type of magic doesn't depend on calendrical mechanics. It is an inborn ability to effect elements such as water, fire, or bone, as well as various effects triggered by the contact of my blood. Some are born with a very small amount of magic or none at all, and others have immense power.
no subject
[citizens absorb these lessons early in childhood, but now that she writes it out, something prods at her still-jumbled recent memories. something about mothdrive -- what could be strange about the interstellar warmoths and trademoths on which the entire economy depends? why does the thought give her an intense feeling that something is wrong, something she can't fix because they're all trapped here? she frowns and hits send anyway, filing it for later. the existence of non-calendrical ways to break physics is much more interesting right now.]
Like an individual talent in art, or mathematics, but you can influence physical properties, and the ability isn't affected by the environment? Can parents gene-select for magical power? [prebirth genetic tinkering, for anything from looks to personality profiles, has been affordable and commonplace in the hexarchate for as long as she can remember.]
no subject
[ But he is interested. What a fascinating world, so completely different from his own. ]
Magic in my world-group is affected by the environment -- if the magic drains from a world, people are no longer born with the ability to use it, generally. And you cannot select for genetic strength. It was tried extensively, but the results were entirely random.
no subject
this is fascinating -- it's like calendrical terrain, but not tied to the consensus mechanics of mass observances across the population. what do you do without an overwhelmingly homogenous state-sponsored culture that makes technology work?] If people move to a world that still has magic, do they have powers they couldn't channel before?
no subject
[ As far as he knows, anyway. His world has little in the way of academics about such things. ]
I would be interested. What do you mean by official calendar? I get it in the sense of having a rigid structure of days, weeks, and months, as well as official holidays, but I get the sense you mean something different.
no subject
All cultural practices have to mathematically align with the high calendar. That can include traditions, belief systems, rituals celebrating small achievements, dress codes, superstitions, even something as private as what you can name your child. Nowadays, calendrical heretics are separated and confined individually so heretical gatherings can't affect local consensus mechanics, but reeducation doesn't involve ritual torture anymore, so that's a step forward.
Every calendrical realm has to convert the peoples they conquer to their calendar, or everything breaks down. Clocks, stardrives, physical laws, lights, energy, medicine... weapons, shields, life-support on stations and toxic planets. There are some ways to make it easier, and the Rahal are always tinkering with the formulas, but all the calendrical realms are locked into their own systems, and that's why we're always at war.
It's hard to understand how that isn't true here. I didn't think there were any untouched worlds anymore. [it happens in dramas, but they're always found through their widening calendrical footprint on the surrounding space. nothing escapes unscathed.]
no subject
[ Holland generally regards himself as reasonably smart, but even he struggles with that explanation a bit. ]
That sounds... tyrannical. What happens if someone doesn't adhere to the high calendar? Re-education?
no subject
It is, yes. Reeducation's not as bad as what was happening before, but it should still be made better. I hope someday it will.
[[The worldbuilding system blew me away when I first read Cheris's canon, if it's not obvious! XD The hexarchate's a very awful place and there's nowhere else to go, so all that's left is somehow managing to stay alive (and sane) long enough to make it better.]]
no subject
[ And that's officially the most that Holland has shared for some time. Miracles can happen. ]
I imagine the people doing the imposition in your universe must be unimaginbly powerful, if they can control so many worlds.
no subject
They are. They've been in power, gathering power, for a long time. As big as the factions are, though, most people don't go into faction service, and their power lies in ordinary citizens' fear of standing together against them. When a government spends more of itself discouraging that solidarity than protecting those in its charge, its biggest enemy is the possibility that they could organize effectively enough to change it.
no subject
Ah, the eternal authoritarian fear of unionizing. Fear is a powerful weapon.
Perhaps our worlds aren't so different after all.