TEST DRIVE MEME

[eluviomods]

// TEST DRIVE_ Welcome to Eluvio's first Test Drive Meme! Whether you'd like to try out a character in the setting, get some samples for your application, or just mess around and have fun, this is the place to do it. If you're getting samples together, remember that you need at least four comments made by you in the thread for it to count. Test drive threads can be used as game canon if both parties agree and the thread fits with what's going on currently in the game. Pick any of the scenarios below or make up any of your own. This is space! There are infinite worlds and possibilities. If you'd like to thread out hijacking a ship, it might not be eligible for becoming game canon but it would still count as a sample. The most important thing is to have fun! ➣ SCENARIO 001. It's a normal day aboard the Eluvio. Maybe you're on your way to work. Maybe you're hanging out with friends. You can even be up to nefarious misdeeds. Whatever the case, you're having a relatively uneventful day. And then you see it. From a distance, it looks like a ball of fur. Up close, it looks like a ball of fur. If you touch it, it will chitter at you. It will vibrate and purr. Where this is coming from is anyone's guess because even if you turn it over, there's nothing to see but more fur. It's pretty harmless, though. Leave it there. Take it with you. The choice is yours. As you continue about your day, you'll begin to notice more of these little furballs. On the ground. Sitting on tables. Here and there at random intervals. By the end of the day, they're fucking everywhere. Good luck! If you get overwhelmed, maybe go talk to that bald starship captain who showed up last week. He might know something about the furry invaders. ➣ SCENARIO 002. Congratulations! You've been selected to be part of the team being sent down to the planet around which the fleet is currently orbiting. Initial scans of the surface show that oxygen is in abundance, temperatures support carbon-based life-forms, and there aren't any large quantities of poisonous gases that might pose problems. Your mission is to secure a landing site, set up a camp, and locate edible flora and fauna. Stores aboard ship are running a bit low on food and it's projected to be another three weeks before the fleet reaches a station large enough to replenish supplies. Once identified, larger parties will be sent to the surface to help hunt and gather. The good news is, scans show fruits, vegetables, and animals are plentiful. The bad news is that once your ship lands on the planet, everything goes sideways. An unexpected ion storm sweeps through the solar system, shorting out communications between the fleet and the team. It wreaks havoc with the electronics planet-side too, temporarily shorting out the smaller craft's navigational array. Until it passes, about six standard days, you're stuck down there. And the bountiful harvest isn't without its dangers. Even the most docile looking animal will attack. Sampling the fruits and vegetables will cause temporary paralysis, hallucinations, and psychosis. Inhaling pollen will bring out a person's baser instincts. The planet itself is predatory, you see. Everything on it has evolved to entice visitors from nearby systems and kill them. And the fleet's unwittingly taken the bait. ➣ SCENARIO 003. It's been a rough day. Everything's going wrong. Machines are breaking down everywhere. The owner of your favorite business wasn't there today and the store was closed when you stopped by to pick something up. A coworker didn't show up for work, leaving you with an interested workload. And now it feels like you're being watched. It started about ten minutes ago, but whenever you turn to look, there's no one there. The feeling doesn't go away, though. No matter where you are, it feels like eyes are watching. Did you hear something? A quiet, scuffling scratching sound just for a second? Maybe you did. Maybe you didn't. But it came from the misshapen monstrosity that just punched a hole through the bulkhead right beside you. The creature makes a low, wet gargling noises and darts toward you: six to seven feet tall, vaguely humanoid, and covered in strange growths over which is stretched bubbling grayish-brown skin. Maybe you notice tatters of familiar clothing hanging off of it. Or there's enough left of its eyes to recognize the shape and color. Or maybe something about the noises it's making sound familiar. It's your missing coworker and it looks like the unfortunate soul ran afoul of that weird slimy creature the science team brought back from that jungle planet a month ago. The good news: you can kill it. The bad news: it can kill you. It's fast, it's hungry, and it reproduces at an alarming rate. A single bite can transfer the parasites in its bloodstream to you. Then you'll be just like your buddy. And that shop owner you like so much. And all of the people on Level 12. And... ➣ SCENARIO 004. You're welcomed and encouraged to make up your own scenarios. As you can see, there will be a wide variety of the types of things your character will encounter in this game. So feel free to make your starters as horrific, sexy, lighthearted, action-packed, or slice of life as you'd like. Make up a planet, make up a location on the Eluvio, make up a ship in the fleet, fight off a zombie alien invasion, NPC Captain Picard, there's no limit to what you can do on the TDM.

PLEASE USE OUR NEW TDM HERE!

Comments

[gaveherwings]

Daedalus sighs. Hallucinogenic properties, huh? In that case, it had probably already had an effect on the brain.

The plant samples they'd brought back hadn't exactly looked safe for consumption either, and it seemed they'd been dusted with young spores as well. If they'd entered the bloodstream through digestion, that could be an even more serious problem.

"About that-" He glances up from the datapad, returning to the scout's previous train of thought first. "Can you tell me if the fruit you ate were the ones that looked like horned melon, or berries... or both? Did you eat them whole, or just the innards, discarding rind and such? And were you able to keep them down?"

"We haven't really seen how it interacts with other sentient life forms, until now...but let's try to figure out all we can about this first, before we panic about it, all right?" That's not exactly comforting and Daedalus knows it, but the more he can coax this fellow into babbling all the details of their mission, the better.

"The good news is that if we can< prove your squad leader was in advanced stages of a parasitic infection that compromised his judgement, at the time you docked, he may not be held accountable for attacking the landing crew?" Look on the bright side, kid, right?

[mildwildchild]

"Uh - I ate both of those, but more of the melon. I think. I remember eating the first one and then, um..." He trails off and lifts one shoulder in a sheepish shrug.

"And like. I was gonna throw the rind away, because that's what you're supposed to do with melons, right? But after I ate the soft part the rind looked really, really good so I, um. I ate it too." God, there is no part of this that isn't utterly mortifying.

"I felt mostly okay for a while, y'know, aside from tasting colors and stuff, but - " He pauses again, eyes narrowing as though trying to recall something, and then says with some chagrin: "I licked a rock. Could that have made things worse?"

Licking rocks never makes things better, surely.

[gaveherwings]

Daedalus makes a quiet, thoughtful noise, concerned, watching the young explorer seem to recede deeper into his shame.

"Possibly." His brows raise, hearing about the rock. He fishes out a penlight and beckons Jamiee a little closer- "Here, let me have a look at your tongue..."

The good news was that he hadn't dissolved into a gibbering pile of ooze yet. Maybe Jamie's body stood a better chance of resistance than his unfortunate team leader.

"So..." The doctor sighed conversationally, while inspecting the inside of Jamie's mouth, "was the puncture in your glove too small to catch, then, or did you make contact with any of these things bare-handed?"

[mildwildchild]

"Ahhgaass," Jamie comments, then repeats once he doesn't have a flashlight being shone into his mouth: "I guess. About the hole, I mean. I had my gloves on the whole time, y'know, like we were supposed to, so I don't think I took them off..." Again, however: he was messed up enough to taste a rock, so who knows what parts of his uniform he did or did not remove while under the influence.

Gingerly he touches the side of his jaw. The glowing fungus there flares softly in response, just for a moment. "I could've picked it up if it touched my face, too, though, right? Does it make a difference if I swallowed it or got it on my skin?" And if he'd ingested it wouldn't it be growing on his insides? That's a disturbing thought.

[gaveherwings]

"Alright." Daedalus catches that phosphoresent flare-up with keen interest, eyes widening slightly. "Did you touch your face, while you were on the surface?"

He fussed with Jamie's charts a bit more, then reached for a tongue depressor on a side tray to try gently tapping against Jamie's forearm to see if that might coax another responsive flaring glow.

"It's absolutely critical that we understand how its growth spreads, as well as the rate of infection, depending on whether it's transmitted topically, or if spores have been digested, yes." He nods. "By the way, did you notice if your team leader eat the fruit too, or if they had any other kind of direct exposure?"

[mildwildchild]

"I probably did sometime, yeah?" Jamie gives another dispirited shrug. He's starting to feel thoroughly incompetent. "I didn't really keep track of stuff like that, I guess."

The fungus glows a little when Daedalus taps at it, though in a more subdued fashion than when Jamie had brushed the growth on his face. He watches with mixed fascination and concern; this would be sort of cool if it wasn't happening to him.

He chews his lip a little, considering this question about the team leader. "Once it sort of looked like he was standing under the tree the fruit came from and it was raining clouds of glitter on him," he says. "But that was after I'd had five or six melons, so...I don't even know if that actually happened or I was just imagining it." Pretty much everything had looked sparkly and swirly and vividly-colored after he'd gorged himself on the LSD melons. Freaked-out teenagers don't make very reliable witnesses, unfortunately.

[gaveherwings]

It's a bit frustrating, how carelessly this mission seems to have been handled, to be frank. Perhaps he could make a recommendation, via his superiors, that teams out on surface deployment ought to review basic safety procedures to avoid contamination.

He thinks about how carefully he'd supplied Re-l when she first left the dome, and what little difference that precaution made, in the long run... but not everyone carries the amazing resistance of a Proxy's genes.

"Did you keep track of- even if you can only give me a rough estimate, at what point did the team decide atmospheric conditions were appropriate to remove your helmets?" He asks, carefully swabbing Jamie's glowing skin and tucking the swab away into a quickly stoppered vial. The med bay doctors will need to be asked about additional blood samples, he supposes.

"Clouds of glitter, you say?" That certainly sounded like a release of spores? "Did that cause any breathing difficulties?"