Test Drive Meme #8

[seasonsmods]

Test Drive Meme #8
LOGS | NETWORK | OOC | MEMES | NAVIGATION

Arrival

Part 1

You arrive in an unknown space, dressed in white clothes (player choice what kind of clothes, as long as they cover everything). Whatever was happening to you before no longer happens. It's like everything was put on a pause and you were transferred away from the situation without you realizing it happened.

The space that you find yourself in is one of these four options:

An empty landscape filled with snow and ice, almost like a blank canvas.
A field with cherry blossom trees and spring flowers.
A sunny beach near an ocean that seems never ending.
A quiet forest with falling autumn leaves.

All of the spaces seem to continue endlessly. No matter where or how far you walk it almost seems like you're not moving at all. There are no animals here - just those who happened to wake up there at the same time, in the same place. Everyone is wearing the same kind of plain, white clothes.

Despite the possible rollercoaster of emotions you might be feeling, the place somehow feels familiar. Like somehow you belong there.

And it looks like you're not alone.


Part 2

After half an hour has passed the surroundings change as everyone is teleported into a room with all the other new arrivals, no matter what space they woke up in. It's a large place with plenty of seats to sit in and beverages to enjoy. Medical attention is offered to those who need it and the doctors here are very prepared for any challenging situations.

Here, in this room, everyone gets an answer to where they are and why. A hologram of a man appears at the center of the room, waiting to be heard. He brings a message on behalf of the leaders of Ellipsa.

The Message [ Click to Expand ]

Hello, my name is Olwen. I'm one of the leaders of Ellipsa as it currently is. I'm also one of the four who summoned you here.

Our world is in trouble and we need your help. I apologize for tearing you away from your world and forcing you to come here but I hope you understand. The magic we used doesn't let us ask in advance, nor does it let us choose who we bring here.

This world is composed of four Seasonal Segments. All of them represent one of the seasons. They were the places we used to get our resources from, but now they're dangerous places no one should go into unless they have the power to fight back. All of them have their own sets of powerful monsters and natural catastrophes.

We used to have plenty of people here who could control the powers of the four Seasons. We called them Seasonal Power Holders. Unfortunately, due to a tragedy you can read about later, we lost almost all of them. Now only four of us remain and the world is in chaos. We have done our best to protect the world, but we need more power holders to do that.

That's where you come in.

All of you have been assigned to one of the seasons. Whatever space you were in just now is what season you represent. You will learn different skills based on the season and those skills are going to help you save this world.

These powers don't interfere with your own natural powers. They use a new energy that has formed inside of you. It's harmless to your health, but it's vital to your seasonal powers. Your own powers should still work, even if the dark energy outside the city might interfere with them.

Unfortunately bringing you here wasn't as simple as it sounds. We couldn't do anything about how to keep you anchored to this world other than making a simple spell that helps with it. That is, you need to touch someone else who is not from this world ideally at least once a day. It will help you stay in control of your powers and boost your magical energy. If you don't, the consequences aren't very good. But as long as you hold someone's hand or give someone a handshake, you should be fine.

That's all I have to say about the situation. The staff of the Research Center will give you more information about housing and other necessary things. I will, however, promise that you will be sent home once the situation becomes better. That's the least we can do.

The hologram can be viewed in private in a separate room later, should someone wish to look at it again. For now, the staff of the Research Center hands everyone their new smartphones with their small flower lucky charms (the flower is anything the player decides). They're also told that the building next door is where everyone can find a room assigned to them with some of their belongings there and possibly even any animal companions. Those concerned about their mount-sizes companions are welcomed to the stables downstairs to see if their friends are there. The mounts are allowed to stay there until you find a place more suitable for them.

In the Arrival's hall there are also several stands with information pamphlets.

First type of stand is for the local Guilds and about the benefits or joining one.

Second type of stands is for the Welcome Center that aim to show otherworlders what the world is like and help guide people in the beginning of the journey and helps in getting settled into the new world. They even have people to help if you're unfamiliar with the new phones.

Once you get your smartphone and necessary information, you're urged to go out and find your apartment. After that whatever you want to do is up to you.

Part 3

The building next door is where everyone can find their new apartments. As you enter, you're told by a friendly native that for the first two months you can live anywhere rent-free and five meals a day are paid for you. After that they get a monthly payment that helps with some of their living expenses, but otherwise they have to have a job to support themselves.

All of the apartments are comfortable, two bedroom apartments with all necessary utilities. They are also completely soundproof. Sometimes the magic system, however, does glitch and you might find yourself rooming with a stranger. This is not the intention and the staff will immediately prepare you your own room if you ask them. But maybe having a roommate isn't all that bad?

Let Me Kiss You in the Pouring Rain

Part 1

The months of April and May are the time for a strange weather effect that affects all of the districts, except the one in the middle and Frostreign. It's not weird that it rains, but it's what the rain does that has been dubbed as the Rain of Affection. It's raining very often until the end of May at different times in the affected districts.

Anyone who stands in the rain will feel the need to get close to someone. It starts with a need to gently touch someone, but can escalate into needing a hug. The ultimate craving is kissing in the rain, but that's the most it can make happen. It's a very Safe For Work Rain Effect.

After a successful kiss in the rain, the cravings slowly become less urgent, but the effect can start all over again at any given time. Once someone is completely dry, they will be safe from effects restarting again.

Of course, there are individuals who don't get too affected by the rain (at all or not as badly) and it only works if it directly hits someone. So staying in a shelter or being in the unaffected districts is definitely a way to avoid this whole phenomenon. Even purchasing and using an umbrella helps. The shops around every district are very aware of the need for umbrellas, so there's definitely a variety of them being sold. Some of the umbrellas have a variety of harmless magical effects, like changing the color depending on the users' mood.

Part 2

An unexpected secondary effect has been discovered with this year's rain. Anyone who tries to ignore the urges to be close to someone for too long (two hours) may find that some of their other feelings get amplified. Especially feelings someone might have been suppressing will suddenly feel impossible to ignore.

Hugging someone will make the feelings return to 'normal' easiest, as it's almost instant. Getting out of the rain and changing into dry clothes also helps, but the effects will go away slower.

Most of the shops around the districts have prepared private rooms for anyone who needs a place to calm down, in case they're far away from home. The various invisible shop fairies will also help someone contact their friends if they're unable to do it themselves - as long as they manage to say someone's name.

Just like with the regular effects, some people might be less affected by the amplified feelings. It really depends on the individual (= player's choice) how the rain affects them.

Shine Bright Like a Diamond

Part 1

Tents have been built into various places around the city, to give shelter from the rain. These tents are also workshops for crystal and gemstone crafts. A group of crystal miners have decided to share the rest of their gemstones and crystals so that people can make themselves magical weapons, protective armors and accessories or just normal decorations.

Crystal Mine is one of the places that was lost to "The Darkness" and it existed in the Autumn Segment. All crystals and gemstones from the mines have a natural magical aptitude, meaning they can be easily enchanted into various purposes. They were used for armors, weapons, accessories and such to help fight the monsters of the world.

All of the crystals and gemstones are in alphabetical order and the miners happily answer any questions about them, such meanings and symbolisms they might hold. They can also make suggestions for which ones to use in the same craft.

One of the miners is especially keen on telling about Birthstones and suggests using them as an accessory that you carry around everywhere. He's a firm believer that keeping a birthstone on your person will bring someone luck and protection from evil forces.

Part 2

Crystal and gemstone enchanting is managed by the teachers from the Magical Manor. They will hold lessons where they demonstrate how to get the results you want the most. The key is to be positive. The more positive feelings and words you feed the crystals and gemstones, the stronger the enchantment will be.

The enchantment can be anything from more strength into a weapon to just a nice, warmly glowing flower that helps someone sleep. Imagination is the limit, though even the enchantment can't make someone's armor permanently invincible or make their weapons kill things in one shot.

Enchanting your friend's, family member's or loved one's crystal or gemstone will make the magic twice stronger.

Those who have difficulties in being polite can either get fairy dust sprinkled on them to make them happy or they can ask someone else to help them. Needing to fake happy feelings will lessen the strength of the spells, but it works nonetheless.

Part 3

If someone does manage to pour negative feelings and words into their enchantments, they may cause the crystals and gemstones to form negative monsters. These monsters are ethereal and usually look like small goblins that eat positive energy from anyone within one-mile radius.

Attacking them with magic and weapons doesn't work, as they have no actual bodies, but trapping one between two people holding hands will make them feel overwhelmed by the sheer energy the handholding provides and disappear. They will do their best to suck as much positive energy into them before they do, though!

Someone who has their positivity stolen will slowly recover it over time (it takes at max. a day), but holding foreheads together with someone will speed to process.

Oh? A little extra

Starting from April 19th onwards, characters may find a peculiar basket on their table. This basket comes with any kind of pokeball (except Master Ball), some Pokémon Food and Treats, and a Pokémon Egg of any species that can have an egg (except the rare mythical/legendary/special ones that are able to). This Pokémon also has a chance to be shiny.

The note attached to the basket says "Sounds can be heard coming from inside! This Egg will hatch soon!" The egg will hatch anywhere between a few minutes to few days.

Anyone asking about how this came to be, the research center staff explains that it was a "metaverse miracle" and they asked the fairies to help them contribute the eggs to otherworlders, seeing as they already had Pokémon experience.

(NOTE: Pokémon Guidelines apply to these new hatching Pokémon as well)

OOC TIPS

- Ask your questions related to the TDM here.

- The TDM is available only to friends of the mods and their friends. If you want to play in the TDM, please leave a note here to inform us who invited you over. We will get to you as soon as possible.

- Test Drive is open for current characters to make a top level as well. New characters can add TDM on their subject line to indicate they're new!

- Current characters cannot access the starting area again to meet new arrivals. They can, however, be at the Research Center when the newbies are teleported in.

- The TDM is game canon so anything in the TDM can happen for your character(s) in the game as well.

- Smut is not allowed on the TDM. You can play situations leading to it, but if the thread is turning into smut, please move it to a private space such a post in your character's journal, or a locked post in the game's log community if you decide to app!

- Check Locations: City to find more areas to explore inside the city. Every place in the districts are open.

- Similarly, Locations: Segments is useful for outdoors adventures.

- You can find monsters to encounter on Beastiary.

- FAQ has information on characters' smartphones as well as general things about the world that might be handy.

code bases by tricklet

Comments

[rustyhonesty]

[At the mention of his wife again, Jean does visibly perk up. As if just knowing she was near lifted his spirit. Of course he had already felt her come closer do to their soulmate bond, but she was now closer.]

Yeah, that's her.

[He looks at Frieda again, with a very very tired and still kind of a sad smile. But it was still kind, underneath all that.]

Thank you.

[urtitan]

[Frieda can tell from the way his whole body seems to regain its lost vigour that he'll be in best hands from here on out. She returns his smile with fondness.]

Of course. Rest up, Jean, and take care.

[He's a good person... like all of her people (well, maybe not literally every last one - some people seem to just choose to be mean and cruel -, but the vast majority!), and it makes her glad to know that he's happy and loved. At least for the moment, she can keep her ancestor's will at bay, and as she looks back from the teleport node and sees the spouses embrace under the tree, she feels at peace.]

[dreamsofwings]

Eren doesn't necessarily think that Levi's approach to everything at the end and Armin's and Mikasa's were the same. He only knows what he wanted, what he expected, what he tried to do. The whole front he'd put up for Levi was to get him to give up.

It's strange now to think that he hadn't succeeded. He knows Levi has always done what had to be done, even when it's shitty and painful. But Eren mistakenly assumed that he could dictate what he was to other people as much as he could dictate everything else (though really, that was never quite as set as he wants to believe, either).

So he absorbs the captain's words. For a moment he's just…still. It's a hard realisation because it feels like failure. He knows how fucked up that is. Ungrateful. Selfish. All the things he's been for so long, probably for his whole life, are as true as they've ever been.

His ability to read people apparently hasn't improved much either.

"…I guess not," he finally says. At the beginning when they'd first arrived here, he might have thought otherwise. He thought for months that Levi stayed only to babysit him. He knows better than that now.

Either way, only one of them is a liar, and it isn't Levi.

"I wanted you to," he says. "I…needed you to."

That isn't exactly it; it's that he convinced himself that's what he needed. Those aren't the same thing but Eren can't make the distinction easily himself.

"At home, maybe I'd still feel differently, but…I'm glad you didn't. If I still wanted you to, I wouldn't be here either."

bawling every time i reread this ngl

[wingbound]

It had been one of the reasons, perhaps, but not the only one. If he was still willing to give the boy a second chance when entire towns had already been trampled under the feet of his monsters, how could he deny it here, where he had not yet harmed anyone?

"I know," he says simply, because Eren had expressed as such before, the fact that he'd been trying to make them hate him, and much of whatever did not leave his lips as words Levi had picked up on that time they were plugged into the metal titan together.

If it was truly what he needed, well, that part can be argued. Levi maintains that what he needed was a boot in the ass, but if Eren was determined to make that fucked up plan of his work, well, then that probably would have indeed been helpful.

"...I'm glad, too." It comes after a moment of hesitation, Levi considering leaving that part unsaid. But what is this if not a second chance for him, too? Perhaps if all of them had just spoken to each other more, things would have ended up different.

"You've grown. Even if you can't see it." He doesn't say changed. Perhaps nobody truly changes at their core, though he certainly considers himself to be less edgy and cringe than he was in his teenage years, so it stands to reason it's the same for others. Even if Eren would still make the same choices, it seems his attitude toward it has shifted; perhaps he's got a better understanding of the weight of it all now, or simply found the confirmation of the stubbornness of his found family.

And, for who knows which time, even if maybe he should know better, Levi wants to -- makes the decision to -- have faith in this Eren.

[dreamsofwings]

Without thinking about it, Eren reaches for Jean. He's always been tactile, and it just seems like he should. No — like he wants to. While they're here confessing their fears of the others disappearing, what good would it do to pretend that Jean isn't on the list of people Eren doesn't want to see disappear?

"I don't either. I'd do anything to keep us all safe."

There's something grim in his tone, but that's not too different from how he's ever been. He's always been willing to go to extremes if that's what it took. Kill all titans. Kill all people. Whatever!

"If there's anything else we can do, and you find out, tell me."

this whole thread is a MONSTER of emotions

[dreamsofwings]

Eren nods. Of course Levi knows. He wonders how much Levi really saw in the metal titan, but there are still things Eren has hidden from himself. It's more than he'd like to have shared, but that damage is long done now.

There are things that Eren has convinced himself are true that are too subjective. Whether he really needed all of them to hate him is one of them. Was there really no other path? He'll swear up and down there wasn't, but they'll never know now.

He's a little surprised by Levi's agreement. Levi isn't the most forthcoming, though he isn't dishonest the way Eren too often is. Maybe they owe it to each other to try to say things more often than they did. Eren will never believe the outcome could change, but he's said over and over that he wants to be different here. He means that. It's a slow journey, but it's something he's worked on.

"I'm the same as I've always been," he says, a hollow old thing he clings to. He's convinced himself that he's been the same since birth, but that's nonsense. No one, not even Eren with all of his issues with and mastery(?) of time, is static. And Levi didn't say he'd changed. It's just hard for him to imagine he's better here, even if he wants to be.

"But we don't have to be the same in this world. I know that."

At least he doesn't take Levi's faith in him for granted. He doesn't take any of their support for granted now. He might finally be realising that nothing he does will ever sever ties all the way. He can do irreparable damage, but it's not like he stopped caring about Reiner the day he found out about him and Bertholdt. It's a lot more complicated than that. Why should Levi — or Jean, or Armin, or Mikasa — be different? Somewhere along the way, Eren forgot that most of them are almost as stubborn as he is. They'd never have survived if they weren't.

YEAH ;;

[wingbound]

There was. There had to be. They never even tried Armin's suggestion. They never had to sacrifice Historia for it; any loyal soldier would have done in order to buy themselves a decade more at a time. Of course, who knows what might have happened then. Things had the tendency to find ways to go to shit anyway. Maybe they'll never know indeed, but Levi isn't going to excuse Eren's destruction with something like there was no other way.

But it happened, and none of them can change it. Going forward with what they have really is the only thing left to do at that point, and they can only hope to manage to do so with greater care and understanding across the world.

He gives Eren a look -- not necessarily stern, though perhaps there's a hint of what the fuck did I just say in there.

"I never said otherwise."

One doesn't have to change to grow and still end up... not different, perhaps, but not exactly the same either. A higher vantage point, a better view, a deeper understanding; whether or not it all leads to the same place, the path there may vary just a little.

"I believe you." He believes that Eren knows, that he's actually internalized that knowledge, with all the consequences and implications of it. He doesn't quite believe in him, but it's a trust placed in him nonetheless.

[rustyhonesty]

Jean ends up reaching for Eren's hand to hold. It soothes his nerves and makes things more bearable - actually feeling that Eren's here. Perhaps it could be anyone else, too, but having it be him felt... significant. They didn't always see eye to eye, but through everything, they were still friends.

Even with all the things Eren was hiding from him due to his request. It couldn't have been easy. Jean never thanked him enough for that. Perhaps he should.

Right now though, his thoughts were only in the misery they were facing in this world. The nightmare scenario of their friends leaving.

"I won't stop looking. I'll find a way, somehow. You'll be one of the first ones to know when I do."

When, not if. He couldn't afford ifs. Not when there were people he couldn't lose. Not again.

[infernaltouch]

[Koro soon pulls away, sighing.]

Come on.

[His voice is calm as usual. But the way he tugs at Hijikata's sleeve shows impatience and anxiety. He wanted to get out of this rain fast, just in case it really does bring him back to a more dangerous state.]

[mayoninofukucho]

[Given what a fright Koro just had, Hijikata won't drag things out further. With a nod, he gets moving next to him, though not without deliberately letting the back of his hand brush against his.

I hope I'll get to kiss you like that again.]