memepatheias | Test Drive: January

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*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.

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[Ugh, the Clone Wars. The Sith. All of that tired history brings annoyance to the surface, especially when he's being compared to the underling of a failure.]

The Sith are dead and I have no intention of taking up their mantle.

[He's got his own thing, thank you very much. Supposedly. He straightens up and points accusingly at the bird, but otherwise stays where he is, his own saber still lit.]

Don't tell me you feel any sympathy for this thing when they've been such a nuisance.

Not yet they are, but they will be.

[After he finds whoever Dooku's Master is. But that's a story for another day.

While he doesn't move he mentally dares this person to attack.]

And I'm a Jedi. We hold sympathy for all lifeforms. No matter how annoying ...

[He may give the bird a brief glance as he says that last part.]

[The look Kylo shoots Anakin is clearly incredulous, almost exasperated in a knowing way. Yeah, right. Sympathy for all lifeforms.]

You're not that much of a Jedi.

[But he's not... terribly eager to get into an argument with Anakin when they both have lightsabers at the ready, so he'll try on at least one chance to avoid it. Either way, he's going to retrieve his hard work. Even if he has to dunk his grandfather into a snowbank. ... maybe that would be a bonus, actually.]

Then hold sympathy for me and get my part back, if you're not going to let me do it.

[If that stupid thing honks again, he swears. It's not going to have a pretty result.]

[If Kylo wanted to piss Anakin off, that was certainly one way to do it. Anakin does, however manage to keep his calm. Though slicing off this Sith-whatever-he-is' face is slowly going to the top of the list of things Anakin wishes to do right now.

But this person is also not attacking him and while odd, it wouldn't be the Jedi way for him to act as the aggressor.]

Why do you need it? If you tell me what it's for, maybe I'll agree.

[Probably not though no matter what it is simply on principle that this guy is clearly a dark side user.

He does, however, keep the bird from flying away using the Force. If only the stupid thing would just drop the item and save him some hassle though.]

[For any other aggressive annoyance, Kylo likely would have bypassed any admission and simply resumed his efforts in reclaiming it himself. But because he knows Anakin in some way—because he's family, even if Anakin might not know it—Ren opts to answer the question. His voice is markedly less aggravated as he replies, turning almost solemn.]

It's part of a project I'm working on to protect someone dear to me.

[What's the best way to appeal to Anakin Skywalker? As far as Kylo Ren knows, it's invoking loved ones. It is the truth, though. It's just convenient that those two things line up.]

[... That was a very good answer and one that Anakin could sympathize with on multiple levels.

But he also didn't know if he could trust the word of someone who used the Dark Side.

It did feel like the truth oddly enough.]

Fine.

[He switched from holding the bird in place to trying to force pull the item from it's grasp ... but the blasted thing just refused to let go. Whatever the thing was, it wasn't it really really badly.]

You are not making this easy.

[But at least he was no longer directly pointing his lightsaber at Kylo Ren. That's a plus, right?]

[That is definitely a plus! That and Anakin's attempts to help are enough for him to turn his own saber off and clip it back against his belt. He shakes his head at himself for preparing to do this, but the creatures of this planet have required worse than a bit of humiliation. He guesses.

Given that the Jedi finds his sympathy for all lifeforms so important, and that a typical Force pull isn't working, Kylo opts for a more roundabout method, not wanting to damage the hardware. He gathers up some snow, packs it into a reasonably hard projectile, and chucks it with a significant amount of force at the goose.

Thanks to his grandfather's efforts, the thing is still enough for Kylo's aim to hit, and it lets out a distressed honk as it loses its grip on the part, which obediently flies into Anakin's hand at last. Ren grumbles about it.]

Finally.

[However, there are a few more angry birds approaching. They don't seem happy that their friend(?) is being Forcehandled. ... Does one of them have a knife?]

[That ... worked entirely too well but Anakin couldn't help but give Kylo a look of disapproval.]

Did you have to do that? I had this. I didn't need your help.

[Especially not the help from someone who was probably evil.

Of course it doesn't take long to notice to angry bird group and he really resists the urge to say "now look at what you did" but he does think it. He takes a slight step back, defensively because those birds look mighty angry and this might get ugly very quickly.

Maybe they should run. Yes, that would probably be a good idea though he vocalize it. He'd rather not have a minor blood bath with a group of animals but at the same time maybe he should leave the not-sith to his fate.]

[His response to that disapproval is a deadpan:]

I appreciate the assistance.

[Because unlike some people, he can be grateful. To a Jedi, even! ... this place really has changed him, hasn't it.

Ren is about to ask/demand for his part back when he notices the flock, and it only takes a moment to register the ridiculous mess that will ensue should they stay here. Or should he try to dispose of them. Why have these things not been killed already when they're apparently capable of wielding weapons with the intent to use them?

... Frankly, it looks like a lot more trouble than it's worth. Maybe that's what everyone else thought, too.]

Time to go, Skywalker.

[A wave of his hand sends the nearby snow in a shower against the geese to cover their escape for a few brief moments, and he grabs the back of Anakin's robes to ~~drag~~ spur him into moving. Personal space doesn't exist when you're around Kylo Ren.]

[If it were anyone else, Anakin might have shown some gratitude. But he won't and that's mostly on principle.]

Wait what.

[He can fully admit that he had not expected this random evil stranger to grab and pull him to escape. He especially did not expect his name to be known.

Sure there's stories and gossip around the HoloNet about him, but a random Dark Force user knowing? Never a good sign.

But still the fact remains that birds were probably going to attack the two of them soon and both of them making an escape was better than dealing with the resulting mess. So he'll go along with him. For now.]

So you know my name, do I get yours?

[It's pretty handy being from the future and having no names that mean anything to your family from the past, as it turns out. As they dash through the cobblestone streets and into the crooked alleyways Ren has come to know well, Anakin will get one of them.]

Kylo Ren.

[And because he can't help himself:]

Try to keep up.

[What's the Force worth if you can't do some parkour, right?]

[Oh good. Now he had a name. That still didn't explain everything, but it was a start.

Which is no doubt better than nothing.

Kylo Ren's comment earns a smirk. Any other Jedi would probably not give into the bait and attempt to also show off. But Anakin?

Oh Anakin could be very, very petty.

In fact so much so that he uses the Force in attempt to yank Kylo Ren back and slightly stall him while he gets ahead.]

Not a problem.

[Thankfully Ren has enough practice in being tossed around to stay on his feet, but he is nonetheless stalled as Anakin planned. He has a retort at the ready in response, however, as scornful as it is amused, and there's almost a smirk on his face as well.]

Do all Jedi resort to petty uses of the Force to make themselves feel superior?

[With no order or master to answer to, he's come to embrace grudges in his years here. And Anakin is making it so, so easy.]

Most Jedi? Of course not. But I only do it to Sith. Oh wait, I'm sorry. Not sith.

[Kylo did seem slightly offended by being called one. If anyone could pick up on and run with something for the sole purpose of being annoying it would be Anakin.

At least it seemed like they might have lost the angry flock. For now anyway.]

[Anakin may be playing a more dangerous game than he realizes, emotionally speaking. Just because they've escaped the geese doesn't mean he's entirely escaped from everything that has anger towards him. Kylo has... a lot of baggage, and a lot of information. It isn't a good combination.

He stops behind the other man, the amusement in his eyes turning to something darker.]

It's no wonder you've never become a Jedi Master.

[Oh. That is a sore spot for multiple reasons. Partly because he felt the Jedi Council were afraid of him or did not trust him. And partly because he needed to become a Master for certain ... reasons.

Anakin turns sharply to face Kylo Ren.]

You don't know anything about me. And I don't need to be a Jedi Master to take down someone like you.

[Here's Kylo Ren poking the very volatile bear who's carrying an item he needs. For being good at pushing people's buttons, he can be very stupid about when to apply this skill. At least he's not pulling out his saber...]

I have no doubts about your power. [He's... experienced it first-hand, thanks to this place. Even if he hadn't, Vader's legacy would be enough evidence of it.] But power alone doesn't make a Jedi. Are you that eager to strike me down, knowing nothing about me?

Depends. Are you a threat?

[He does not care to learn the life history of someone who is a danger to innocent lives. But ... A Jedi does not strike someone down for no reason at all.

Even if this guy was pushing his buttons. ]

Depends on who you're asking.

[A lot of people would probably say he is. Not that he would blame them.]

I'm not a proponent of massacring innocents, if that's what you're thinking.

[He used to be more harsh about that kind of thing, eliminating everyone who might be connected to his enemies, but his years here and the people he's surrounded himself with have changed that. Or... maybe it's the absence of certain things that's done the major work.]

Then I suppose we have no quarrel.

[Though that was somewhat disappointing. He did not know (as much as he feels like he should) this person or trust them, but he couldn't exactly do anything about it.

Frustrating yes, but he'll make do.]

So I'll ask a question instead, and you'll answer if you want this back.

[He holds up the device that they saved from the terror bird.]

How do you know me?

[Ren's eyes go to that part, and for a long moment his gaze stays there before moving to Anakin's. He's searching, trying to determine the best way of approaching this issue. It hasn't always gone well, this discussion.

Granted, back then he was more... difficult to deal with, himself.]

I'm from your future. By at least fifty years.

[He's not going to jump into the rest just yet. He wants to see how the first part of it will be accepted.]

[The future is never an easy subject for Anakin. Whether it be because of dreams or just thinking about the possibilities.]

I see. And why should I believe you?

[He's actually not saying that he doesn't believe him. In fact as far as his feelings go it seems like the truth.]

[Anakin being a stubborn piece of work is nothing new, but it's still irritating.]

Because it's true. If you accept it now, you won't have to waste your energy denying it.

[He'll give Anakin another reason, though:]

Have you married Amidala yet?

[Kylo Ren kept adding to the list of reasons why Anakin did not like him. Mentioning Padme was a trigger that almost made him ignite his lightsaber, but he slowly closed his hand into a fist instead.]

I don't know what you're talking about.

[Open denial surrounding the Senator was almost automatic at this point. It had to be in order to keep it a secret. Though it would make sense if this person was from the future, that the knowledge of their marriage would have gotten out by then.

Doesn't mean he likes this person knowing about it anymore though.]

[Ren lowers his eyelids at the other man, his entire demeanor unimpressed. Really, Anakin??]

As stubborn as ever.

[Said the pot to the kettle.]

No one cares in this place. There's no council to strip you of your knighthood or anything to threaten her over it even if she were here.

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starsignited - 2020-01-05 07:24 (UTC) - Expand

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lostapprentice - 2020-01-06 08:07 (UTC) - Expand

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Test Drive: January

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kylo you can't just throw snowballs at geese gosh

you can't tell him what to do >:0 he's a grown man

>( well maybe stop attacking birds with a lightsaber and he won't

fine!! for now.

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