May 2024 Test Drive Meme: The First of Many to Come

[newcomod]

"When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.”

Welcome to our first meme!

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 newcomb for updates regarding the opening of our game.

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.

Prompt 1 Prompt 2 Prompt 3 Questions

Premise Taken Applications Navigation

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.

First Train In

Content Warnings.

Violent train crash, fire, explosions, burning, and injuries from such conditions.

Summary

Characters appear in a train that is crashing through the reality rip left behind by the meteor, Penumbra. The train falls onto the campus fields and mostly implodes.

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.

Assimilation

Content Warnings.

Mysterious goo-like substance with parasitic qualities, manipulation of behavior, forced uncharacteristic behavior, very mild body horror.

Summary

A mysterious black goo escapes from a frozen boxcar on the train. This goo attaches to living organisms and begins to influence their behavior. The goo will either naturally slide off after some time or can be rubbed off the skin with freezing water.

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.

Two Truths & A Lie

Content Warnings.

Forced honesty and deciet via parasitic mind control. Implanted knowledge. Potential forced vulnerability.

Summary

Characters are forced to break in their Fermii accounts by publicly posting two truths and a lie for other characters to figure out. This is a network prompt.

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.

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Comments

[everyspark]

[this man would definitely have been tapped for Nirai Academy, and probably wouldn't have whiffed the opportunity by insisting on the military as she had. it had been harder to judge the impact of such things as a teenager.]

Most technicians I've known [with one important and very distantly-outlying exception] can't lie to save their lives, but can talk for hours about personality matrices and why different talents take people in different directions.

Did you destroy part of the solar system to get revenge for the arrow?

[bathtubarchimedes]

I'm a scientist, not a technician.

[He has no idea what kind of technician she's referring to, and he actually is the guy that fixes everything and also an engineer, but he likes to show off.]

...now that I think about it, I wish I had.

But unfortunately, they were two separate events.

[everyspark]

...What's the difference? All the scientists I've known applied their fields to technology. [not all of them were military technicians, even.]

Do you want to talk about the solar system? [the first few can be hard. she knows that from experience.]

[bathtubarchimedes]

A technician does the bidding of the scientist. The scientist is the subject matter expert, requiring a PhD and years of experience in the study.

...which solar system? There's a lot of them.

[He would, actually. He loves space!]

[everyspark]

Where I come from, technicians have to be subject matter experts in their qualifications. They need to be able to operate in the field if they're cut off from outside help. [she thinks a moment.] Oh, do you mean engineers? That's who does manual work when there aren't enough technicians or servitors available. Maybe it's just a difference in terminology.

The one you destroyed part of, if that one's true. I'm starting to think no one here is from any realm I know, but it's interesting to learn.

[not that she knows all of the hexarchate's thousands of inhabited systems, much less those in foreign polities, but no one here seems to have lived under a state-mandated high calendar.]

[bathtubarchimedes]

Definitely a difference in terminology. I've got a degree in mechanical engineering, but I wouldn't ever consider myself a technician. Manual work is done by the technicians, basically. Though honestly, I do quite a bit of it myself...

Oh! Well, yes, that is sort of a lie, I actually destroyed 5/6 of it but it's not an exact science. It was a planet that blew up, called Doranda, that was home to this ancient civilization that had mysteriously died. We assumed this species called the Wraith destroyed them, since we found a bunch of their ships in orbit, and I found, in a lab, an Ancient experiment on extracting Zero point energy from own universe, creating basically unlimited energy. Long story short, it didn't work, it overloaded, we barely escaped with our lives, and the planet blew up.

[What he doesn't add that it was totally and 100% his fault for being too stubborn and continuing what was an ancient, doomed experiment. As one does.]