memepatheias | Test Drive: January

Entry tags:

*test drive

Test Drive: January

— TEST DRIVE: JANUARY —

Welcome to

empatheias' test drive meme. This test drive is to help interested players test their characters in the game's environment. We've included a few prompts that incorporate specific elements of the game, though you'll find all of them have a lot of leeway for players to get as creative as necessary. Before diving in, here are a few things we'd like to remind everyone about the game in general:

Pre-Intro Log. For the Test Drive, we are using parts of it as a "pre- intro log," which means not only can players go ahead and use the prompts as if the character is arriving into the game for the first time, but this setting will be adapted and continue in the official Intro Log. For TDM purposes the prompts are a little more generic and vague than what will be on the actual Intro Log, but they're relatable enough that can be easily transferred to the official log with a few minor tweaks. For those who do end up applying and entering into Emp, these threads are considered "forward dated" to the Intro Log.
Date reminders. Reserves open December 25th and Applications (Canon | OC) open a week later on January 1st. Apps will only be open for four days! Because we're on a bi-monthly schedule, the next app cycle after this is MARCH.
Emotions are key! Empatheias's premise focuses on how anyone's emotions can affect their environment, be it big or small. While not every emotion will cause a reaction, significant ones definitely will. How much effect a character will have will ultimately be up to you, the player. While we're giving a lot of leeway for the test drive, keep in mind that there will be some limits in the actual game.
Everyone has an amulet. All characters have a unique amulet that is specialized for them to collect their emotions and serves as the network device. Remember, communication is telepathic, but it works basically the same as most other network devices.
First or third person allowed. Your threads can be in either first or third, but we'd advise being flexible about it. If you have a preference, be sure to specify. Remember, these threads can also be used in your application for samples! Reminder: We only require one sample and it can be done in either format.
For your threads, put the Character Name and the Canon in the subject line to help readily identify them. You're welcome to use more than one prompt for respondents to choose from. If you have any questions or want to brush up on the game information, refer to the Game Information entry. Otherwise, tag around and have fun!

PROMPTS

• Prompt A: How about giving the emotions a try? Is your character feeling particularly wound up upon finding themselves in a new place? Or perhaps they're finally getting to live out the fantasy dream and are overjoyed! Or they just stubbed their toe and are in a lot of pain. Whatever it may be, this prompt is your catchall "let's try these emotion effects out" for any miscellaneous situation you may think up.

• Prompt B: Refer to the Task Board and choose a task your character may be interested in taking up. For this prompt, you could have your character ask for help, already be in the middle of the job, or react to it in some way. Perhaps they were an unfortunate victim or want to create a job countering an existing one. You could even have a prompt making a job request. Creating jobs for the purpose of the test drive is absolutely doable.

• Prompt C: How about giving the amulets a go? Start a telepathic conversation and see how it works. Remember, the amulets are sending out the owner's thoughts so might want to be careful about how the stream of consciousness goes...

• Prompt D: It's winter in Verens, and the festivities are alive with some new gimmicks. As always, emotions come into play, so be careful where they take you! Try not to destroy the city.

Beware the Snowmen: Do you wanna build a snowman? All snowmen are affected by the emotions around them, and it doesn't take too much to make them come alive. They have imbibed different emotions around them, so you'll find lovey-dovey snowmen who have no respect for personal space, snowmen jumping up and down with joy, sad melting snowmen, and irate snowmen trying to lob their coal and carrots at you. A few snowmen have managed to get hold of murderous tendencies and will now try to kill you when you pass by. Good luck? It's kill or be killed.
Bittersweet Chocolate: For those looking for a way to warm up, many cafes have begun to offer hot chocolate which is said to be the best in all of Verens. It tastes delicious, with the right amount of sweetness...except to those who hide their true attitude or personality behind a facade. To people who aren't true to themselves, the hot chocolate will taste terrible depending on how much they conceal, not feel. It'll also burn their tongues pretty quickly no matter how long the chocolate has been sitting around.

• Prompt E: Candles of Remembrance for Selenium, a holiday for mourning and grief, are always going through different changes for each year and the prototypes are distributed to see if it works. Normally, when lit, the candles create an image of a person sorely missed, whether they are dead or still alive. But something went wrong with the candle-making process this time. Various scents and aromas were infused into the candles to help improve moods, but the complete opposite is happening.

Well, This Stinks: No images are produced from the smoke and flames, but instead, they exude horrible and disgusting smells from memory. They can range from recent events like burned cookies from last week, or the stench of a bloody battlefield from years past. The scent of the candle depends on the character lighting it, so everyone will be able to smell whatever they smell from it. It's very strong, so it's possible someone could actually feel nauseous either immediately or from prolonged exposure. But that's not all. The aroma will elicit varying feelings of regret, disgust, hatred, rage, and overdramatic despair.
Counter Whiff: On the other end, a different kind of aromatic candle is producing far more pleasing scents, but it's way too strong. It's like getting a bottle of strong, "mature" perfume shoved up one's nose. The scents from these candles have even stranger effects, such as actually knocking someone unconscious; soothing them to sleep right on the spot; or even have strange hallucinations believing that the person in front of them is the one from their memories. The candles also make those affected strangely happy with extreme exuberance, and the emotion effects from their displays of joy are just as extravagant.
Take a Walk on the Wild Side: Both candles have a troublesome side effect: their scents attract a variety of wildlife from the woods. Deer, skunks, chipmunks, foxes, all sorts of birds, you name it, they've begun to invade the city and zero in on those lighted candles, lingering around them or worse, actually taking the lit candles, which can (and will) potentially start fires. The fires can be put out normally, but strangely enough, after they go out, it is as if the affected structures and items were never burned in the first place. Now they just reek of candle scent. Attempts can be made to remove the scent, but it'll take either a lot of scrubbing or somehow creating emotions that produce a more pleasant scent.

• Prompt F: Boreas, or winter, is in the air and this month the city suffered from a number of wintery effects, partially due to the Arehtei Peromei. Some like the blizzard and mistletoe could be considered typical holiday fare. The werewolf flu sweeping the city, not so much, but that still hasn't stopped the citizens of Verens from celebrating the holiday season. [Note: Scenarios pulled from our current event, and the full details can be read here. Due to the timing, these threads cannot be carried over into the game.]

Hibernation: A despair filled blizzard has taken the town by storm, bringing a strong urge to hibernate with it. Characters with strong negative emotions will be hit the hardest, but most everyone will feel the urge to take a nap right then and there at some point. There are ways to ward off the emotionally induced drowsiness though as roving bands of carolers seek to keep people's eyes open and spirits light. In addition a number of hope infused lanterns have been strung throughout the city to guide travelers to safety and keep them from dozing off in a nearby snowbank.
Mistletoe:t's not just the snow either, the town is also plagued by a particularly invasive species of mistletoe brought to the island by Peromei. To citizens' dismay, it isn't ordinary mistletoe or even ordinary magic mistletoe. No, instead this awful plant that lurks in corners and on ceilings is influenced by a combination of Peromei's and Elios's influences to make it aggressive and mobile. It now prefers to slither around and attach itself to moving targets. Once attached to someone, it induces a terrible longing for the sort of love and affection one secretly hopes for the most -- anything from a simple hug to a mom to fuss over you to a new friend you can always have lunch with -- and it won't let go until its victim has found someone who can fulfill that longing.
Wereflu: In addition to the mistletoe and blizzard, there's also the aforementioned werewolf flu sweeping the city. Thanks to a foolish researcher, the infected are suffering partial or in some cases full transformations into wolflike creatures. The main cure for it is positive attention as like the mistletoe, the afflicted will be driven to seek it out and the more they get, the sooner they'll be back to normal. If left unchecked, it can lead to more feral aggressive behavior, so Otherworlders and natives alike have been warned to be cautious when attempting to help those affected.

• Prompt G: Make your own! It could include paper snowflakes and/or cinnamon.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Prompt F-2
[ Obi-Wan has always been a bit (sometimes a lot), introverted. Time alone has been luxury to him more often than hardship. He could, would, and has chosen to sit alone in a cave and mediate - and not only chosen to do so, but enjoyed it.

What he has never been, is a recluse. Even had he not been raised (and spent the majority of his life) as part of a communal living environment, two years on Tatooine would have been ...trying. Add in the horror of order 66, and the death of nearly all Jedi, whom he was very used to feeling, and two years was just about enough to drive him half out of his mind with loneliness.

Being here is better (even if he doesn't completely understand it). There are people here, and more life in general, but he is desperate for even mildly friendly interaction and faces. Meals, conversations, and force he'd kill for tea with someone, or to feel the presence of another Jedi (who wasn't seething in hatred and rage).

He's just... lonely.

No surprise, then, that the mistletoe attaches to him and absolutely refuses to let go. Which, lonely or not, leaves him a bit grumpy and more than a bit bemused.]

Edited 2019-12-27 01:07 (UTC)

[Anakin spent his time since he arrived trying to figure out where exactly this place is and how to leave.

So far he's failed on multiple accounts, though he has gained some information none of it is what he wants to hear. Namely: How does he get back?

People needed him back home, if not for the on going war then for other reasons. Ones he still needed to process and figure out how he'd handle in the future.

For now, he had to keep himself collected and focus on getting home. Even if in doing so his options increasingly felt limited. Not to mention the snow as his tolerance for the cold was very low. If only Obi-Wan were around for him to constantly complain to about it, if only --

As he passes by a few buildings, he felt it. The pulling light in the force that could belong to no one else other than ...]

Master! I'm so glad I've found you. I thought I would be suffering here alone. Do you have any idea what is going on? Just where are we?

[He spoke rapidly in that general Anakin fashion and didn't even wait to head over to Obi-Wan. Surely together they'd be able to figure it all out. They were the ultimate team after all.]

Edited 2019-12-27 02:33 (UTC)

[ He is distracted from his irritation and bemusement at the mobile plant clinging with absolute determination to his ankle not by the sound of Anakin, or the sight of him. It's feeling him in the force that does it, at first. Then it's sight.

He actually does not hear, in any meaningful way, all of Anakin's questions.

His emotions - normally well controlled- flicker from shock, to amazement, to wonder, to relief, and then back again to horror, disbelief, guilt and fear. They are all flickers, fast and bright and settling back down (except the guilt, which stays as a low, constant, ache in the center of his chest) to...

wariness and hope. He does not trust this, but he wants to.

God he wants to.

Can't. Doesn't.

Wants to believe. ]

Hello, Anakin. I've only just arrived. And seem to have picked up a pet. I don't suppose you're familiar?

[He catches it, that brief shutter of emotion and it dies cause him pause. Normally, at least outwardly, nothing bothered Obi-Wan so much. Especially not his presence. (Other than perhaps irritation or frustration).

Something seems wrong.

But the Jedi Master's voice sounds normal. Perhaps he is mistaken. The city is strange with odd things happening.

It was probably nothing.]

It ... looks like a plant?

[He eyes Obi-Wan's leg and his earlier worry kind of muted into amusement.]

It seems quite attached. I could, ah, use a lightsaber but I'd hate to miss cause the loss of a limb.

Yes, I'd really rather no one lost any limbs, thank you.

[ That amusement? Might be both terribly ironic and slightly hysterical. He hadn't known he was capable of it. The hysteria, not the amusement. He'd known he was capable of amusement. ]

Did you ask where we are, earlier? Because I think we might be in my nightmare. Except it's cold.

Edited 2019-12-27 07:17 (UTC)

If it's anyone's nightmare it's mine. I kept on getting rained on. I'm surprised my head hasn't turned into block of ice at this point. Not to mention everything else strange that I've seen around here.

[He stares at the plant on Obi-Wan's leg some more before actually answering the question.]

And yes, I've asked. Repeatedly. It's not a place I recognize by name or appearances. I admit I was getting frustrated before I ran into you. At least now I'm sure we can figure a way off this planet.

[He spoke as though now everything would go back to normal because in his mind it would. Obi-Wan is here and together the two of them could solve any problem.]

[ He stare at Anakin's legs for a moment, too, then looks back to his face. The air, which had been a bit breezy goes utterly still. Like the world around them stops breathing with Obi-Wan. ]

Have you lost a hand, yet?

[ They are not having the same conversation, no, not really. He cares far less about where they are than who Anakin is. ...he cares far less about everything than Anakin. ]

[The more their conversation went on, the more Anakin started to wonder if Obi-Wan was even listening to him. Not that it was unusual (in his own opinion), but for some reason a feeling of concern continued to bubble up.

Something is wrong and he does not know what.

And that in itself bothers Anakin a great deal.

The question was also most odd and he had no idea why Obi-Wan would even bring it up.]

Uh ... you mean this one?

[He lifted up his metal arm in a gesture towards the Jefi Master.]

I lost it back on Geonosis. But you should remember that. Are you feeling all right, Master? Please tell me this is just your old age getting to you.

[Maybe if he made enough quips at him, Obi-Wan would stop acting so strange]

[ Yes. Good. Thank you for joining him in the conversation he is having, Anakin.

He always appreciates it when that happens. ]

Old age and maybe the heat. [ It's winter. It's cold. He isn't talking about the heat here. ] I do remember Dooku taking your arm, though.

Next question: Is Dooku dead?

Obi-Wan/Star Wars

ready for some pain?

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