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

1

[genice]

Victor knows it's probably polite to find an answer when one is asked a question. Truly, he knows this. He also knows these purring round balls of fluff were cute at first, then quickly approached annoying. He doesn't like being crowded out by things like this, nor how they'd taken to burring on to Makkachin's sides. It's unacceptable! He'd even been prying an armload off his poor poodle when he'd heard someone else speaking up about the situation and turned...

... only to face down a lioness. Makkachin wags his tail once, less out of anything like friendliness and more out of nervous confusion. He whines, and Victor holds his armload of fuzzy cretins in front of him, and he makes himself stop staring at the incredibly dangerous animal (person... think aliens, think people, even if they are fuzzy people) acting like an overgrown cat with a toy in paw.

"I think," he says, after a false start for speaking that leads to swallowing his surprised noises, "It'll just give you another hairball."

There's a talking lioness on this ship. Where's Yurio, to properly appreciate this moment?! (Where's his sense of sanity that he's desperately trying to roll with this being normal?! Is he secretly drunk. Is he actually hallucinating.)

[vitawny]

Vitani's gaze flicks between Victor and the dog, and it's probably apparent that - out of sheer animal reflex - she's sizing the latter up as a possible food source. For a moment, anyway. She's cottoned on pretty quickly that as long as she's here, she's not allowed to eat either the gangly primates or whatever animals they might happen to be traveling with.

Her tail flicks in annoyance and she huffs a little, swatting the furball to roll away, uttering a wobbly trill as it goes. "You're probably right. Which means they're completely useless. At least they're not trying to eat us."

She squints at Victor. "...they haven't eaten anybody yet, right?"

[genice]

He still takes another half-step in front of Makkachin. Too many frightening near-misses make him more wary of his dog's mortality than his own. That, and who knows, maybe he could have used his armful of vibrating furballs as some last ditch defense if he needed.

She's turning out to be a communicative lion, and so he tries to forcibly align his mental expectations to alien who looks like a lion, as that's easier than now I understand what a lion says. (He'd be sad that he likewise cannot understand what Makkachin says.)

Ergo, he gathers himself to respond as if this is normal. Conversing with an animal that could eat him, and his dog, and apparently all these purring furballs. He glances down at the ones in his arms. "Not that I've seen." Walking toward a bench already sporting a collection of furry menaces, he dumps his armload on top and plucks yet another one off his dog's side. "There's just so many, I've seen them overwhelm spaces. I imagine it might be dangerous for anyone sleeping?"

Or passed out drunk. These are considerations he didn't have until right now, and he's not sure what that says about this situation in the first place. "Where are they all coming from? What are they eating?" As far as he can tell, nothing the furballs have touched has been consumed. He keeps asking these questions out loud to force validity into the fact he's talking to a lion.

Yes, he's still hung up on that fact. Animals don't usually talk back.

[vitawny]

She seems oblivious as to the source of Victor's paranoia - she knows she's not going to eat the dog, and whether the human understands that or not isn't her immediate concern, as long as he's not making any hostile movements - and merely watches as he deposits his collection of hairballs onto the growing pile. Somewhat begrudgingly, she gives this situation some thought.

"Well, if they're animals then they're eating either grass or bugs or other animals." This is all the understanding Vitani needs of the natural world: where things are relative to her on the food chain. "I guess they could be plants, which eat...dirt, I guess. Never seen a plant with fur, though."

Another one's materialized next to her, and she swats it in the general direction of the bench where Victor's collecting them. "If they're gonna bury people, then should we, I dunno, get rid of 'em? Or at least put 'em someplace they can't get out?"

[genice]

He uses his foot to nudge the one she swatted his way toward the bench proper, ending up sliding it under the bench (and into two more hiding beneath). He can't figure out how they're moving in the first place. Finding something they can't get out of might be a task in and of itself, but with Makkachin turning into a walking magnet for the purring creatures, the lioness's suggestion makes a great deal of sense.

"Like a tub? I'm starting to think we should be looking for pest control." Cute as these creatures are, they're also acting far more like a swarm of pests than anything nice and innocuous. Even if they aren't eating people, just... reproducing. Over everything. Not to mention moving in unknowable ways...

He half turns to look down at the lioness. "There aren't many bugs on this station, and not all the grass is even real. Anyway, the dirt's in low supply, too." He shoves a hand through his bangs, pushing them back off his forehead and rationalizing reasoning through this situation with his alien companion.

"We could ask the security team?"