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.

code

Comments

Michael | The Good Place

[eudaimonikos]

i-a: train ride

[Michael blinks awake on the train, feeling groggy and vaguely ill. Granted, this describes a lot of his earliest experiences with falling asleep as a real human being. Sleep's weird. Sometimes, doing it feels great! Sometimes, it's terrible. And, as always, such a waste of time.

Dangerous, too - he's always feared it might be a little dangerous, even if this is the first time he's ever actually woken up somewhere unfamiliar afterwards.]

What the hell is this?

[It's not as if he's anybody important as far as people on Earth are concerned! Also, it's not a great kidnapping even if that were what it is. He's got full range of motion. Pretty sure these are his clothes - he checks his pockets, but he wasn't carrying a weapon anyway. Something about the motion feels strange, though. He rests his fingertips lightly on his chest for a moment, then touches them to his jawline instead. His brow is furrowed, but he seems more...puzzled than genuinely concerned]

...huh...

i-b: trainwreck

[In some ways, the crash is a relief. Michael's extremely used to his life becoming a sudden trainwreck.

Now that he's more himself - far less human, but nevermind that right now - getting hurt isn't much of a concern. Neither is the fire. He wrenches open the twisted door to his compartment, wincing at the screech of scraping metal, and then sets off to check on everybody else down the line.

In theory, it's better to never let anybody know he isn't a real human. In practice...well, this is already weird. He'd rather save someone's life and deal with the consequences later than just...not. So he doesn't bother playing the ginger, fragile old man. He just punches through some glass with his bare hands and entirely ignores the fire.]

Hey, you okay?

ii. affliction

[The blotch of black goo is very visible, stuck to the side of Michael's right hand. But it's not that visually distinguishable from his normal ink, and he has recently gotten very cut up. He doesn't think much of it, and then it's rather too late.

He's been a lot of people over the course of his long life. Fortunately for everyone, the goo's just amplifying some of his current tendencies right now. Evil demon or not, he's always had a capacity for Goofs.]

Heeeeeey, buddy!

[He lurches over to fling an arm around your shoulders, which also ends with him leaning most of his weight onto you. You have never seen him ever in your entire life probably. Michael giggles, and then:]

Boop!

[He has booped your nose.]

iii. two truths and a lie

So this is what we're doing? Children's sleepover games? Cool

1. I'm an amateur magician!
2. I once broke into Heaven through the mail chute. It was a fairly large mail chute.
3. Immanuel Kant is my favorite philosopher.

[text] ⸻ un: londoncalling

[summersaint]

The one about Heaven surely has to be false.

[ Why would Heaven have mail chutes? Does Heaven exist at all? Is Holland starting to have some existential dread thinking about how he'd died right before coming here and is wondering where he would have ended up if he had gone to an afterlife instead? (If Heaven and Hell do exist, he knows which direction he'd be going. It's not upward.) ]

un: eudaemonikos

[eudaimonikos]

lol, no 😜

[summersaint]

Heaven has... mail chutes?

[ ?????? ]

[eudaimonikos]

Yeah. They connect to the main office in Accounting - they used to send records up that way. Probably still do.

There weren't a lot of security measures, back in the day. Angels don't really think about that stuff. Very trusting.

[summersaint]

I'm not very familiar with the Bible -- it's not a concept native to my home world -- but I thought angels were supposed to warriors and guardians incomprehensible to the human eye. Not... office workers?

[eudaimonikos]

They're probably sort of incomprehensible to the human eye, but they can still work in offices. Or pretend to. Bunch of dinks.

I wouldn't really reference the Bible here anyway. Humans wrote that, it doesn't really have anything to do with anything if you're not on Earth.

Two Truths and a Lie UN: BGP

[abit_ofboth]

I do hope it is 1. So-called amatuer magicians are nauseating at best.

[eudaimonikos]

Aw, come on, it's fun! You get to wear a hat and learn a bunch of little tricks!

[abit_ofboth]

Actual magic is fun. And I prefer my helmet, thank you very much.

Am I to understand then that you are, in fact, an amateur magician?

[eudaimonikos]

Actual magic's easy. You barely even have to do anything. But the stuff humans come up with to imitate it is so inventive!
So yeah, I totally play with that stuff!

[abit_ofboth]

Sounds like the words of an amateur who doesn’t really know what they’re doing. The stuff humans come up with to fake magic use is infantile and obnoxious at best.

[eudaimonikos]

You take your magic pretty seriously, huh?

two truths and a lie

[lamiaceae]

Kant is a favorite of people who enjoy the rigidity of truth and his concepts of morality are suspect, but he's definitely better for a lack of existential angst than Neitzche or Sartre.

Which is to say that if you're joking about breaking into Heaven via a mail chute, or, weirder, serious about that, I'm calling Kant the lie.

[eudaimonikos]

You got it!
The guy's a sad repressed nerd and his ideas suck!
It's genuinely very difficult not to bully him at least a little.

un: badgirlcoven

[hootlem]

what kind of loser has a fav philosopher? definitely 3

[eudaimonikos]

You got it ;)
He was my friend's favorite philosopher for a long time, actually.
Love the guy, but he was a total loser.

[hootlem]

heh. good thing your friend finally saw the light. not that i can throw bones. i know a couple loveable losers myself

so. mail chute huh? sounds like you know how to have a good time. a little larceny's the spice of life i say

[eudaimonikos]

I do miss that. I'm legally allowed to go all those places now, it's just not the same.

[hootlem]

right? what's the point of bein the baddest criminal of the boiling isles if everyone acts like part of the scenery?

so is heaven like some kinda country club? sounds like a country club. or a restaurant

i-b

[telecosmetic]

Um...I think so?

[Honestly, an old guy being strong enough to punch through glass isn't unusual for her at all. Eliza is sprawled on the floor of the train, fumbling around before grabbing a water-droplet necklace which has a broken string and shoving it in one of her pockets. She tries to get up, then lets out a hiss.]

Ah-my leg! [Her left leg is pinned under some metal debris, in just the right way to not hurt until she strains against it.]

[eudaimonikos]

Don't pull on that.

[Michael clambers in, ignoring the glass shards biting at his hands and limbs. They still hurt, but the pain isn't so real as it was when he was an actual human. He gets in quickly, and comes over to inspect the leg situation.]

I don't really know anything about medicine, but I don't think it's bleeding...what do you think?

[He knows how taking stuff out of a wound just makes the blood gush out. You don't need medical training to understand that's probably not good.]

[telecosmetic]

[Eliza takes a moment to assess her own bodily status, just to make sure.] I don't think it's bleeding? It's just heavy, not poky. But for some reason I can't just shift to get out. [Normally she'd just be able to take mouse form and shrink down! But somehow her transformations aren't working.]

[eudaimonikos]

It is pretty heavy.

[Why would she think she could shift that big thing all by herself? Michael assesses for a moment, but...if it's not gonna make her bleed out, the right thing to do is probably move her out of there, right? He stoops down to get a good grip, then hoists the chunk of metal up.]

Okay, scoot.

[telecosmetic]

[Eliza quickly wriggles her legs out from underneath the metal, still not seeing anything weird about Michael's level of strength. There's definitely some bruising there, but at least it's probably not going to leave any new scars. She rubs her leg a bit, wincing when she passes over the spot the metal was crushing most.]

Thanks. I'm Eliza, by the way.