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test drive — winter

WINTER TEST DRIVE
Welcome to the test drive and thank you for your interest in The Village. This test drive is not game canon but will allow players the opportunity to experiment with game mechanics, the setting, and the flexibility of choice allowed by this game. The following prompts are examples of typical situations characters might face in the game. At least one thread from the TDM is required as part of the game's application process.

The setting details and locations are still being unveiled in the game, so prospective players are welcome to play with established locations or create their own within the general setting of Mathias.

( Recommended listening: ♫ )

INTO THE ENDLESS
Winter has arrived in Mathias. Snow falls steadily, big puffy flakes that pile up quickly in drifts as the wind blows them around town. The trees in the forest are covered in it, the branches bending under the weight and shaking when the piles fall from them to the forest floor. The roofs of buildings become solid white and drifts form in doorways as the wind tries to rush inside anywhere it can.

New arrivals wake in the forest, with its winding paths twisting back on themselves as they branch in either direction. It isn't safe to stray from the path, there is a menacing fog that waits just a few yards inward in any direction, but for now, there is nothing impeding movement along those snow-covered paths that cut through the trees. Continue stumbling in one direction and you'll reach the small town, coming out near the mishmash of quaint houses that nestle beside crumbling ruins that used to be homes. But choose the other and you'll seem to stumble on forever, huddling against the wind until there seems to be a clearing up ahead—

And then nothing. The earth opens up before you in a ravine so deep that the bottom cannot be seen. The other side can be seen, tantalizingly out of reach, and there is the sense that safety is just beyond, if only you could get there. But with that sensation is also the knowledge that if you stay here, you will die. The edge seems unsteady, like getting too close would set it crumbling and send you tumbling into that dark endless nothing that waits below...

BODIES WITHOUT SOULS
Benedict Books is nestled quaintly on the square surrounding Mathias's Town Hall, a thick layer of dirt covering the front windows. Looking through those windows provides a much different view than looking directly into the shop through the doorway — vague shapes and forms of figures seem to be inside, though no details can be determined through the streaks of grime. Flickers that resemble flashlights can be seen passing along the windows from time to time, and on occasion there is even a muffled tapping sound that comes from behind the glass, as if someone is trying to get your attention. The same distorted figures can be seen looking through the windows from the inside outward, but moving from one side or the other reveals... nothing. There is nothing there, and perhaps it is all in your imagination.

A portrait hangs at the front of the store to illustrate the namesake of the little shop... that may, in fact, not be so little. Dust covers everything in sight and detritus litters the wooden floor, as if someone left the door open and allowed half the forest inside.

The books are mostly familiar titles from the 1990s and earlier, but close examination will reveal that key details seem to have been changed. They fill shelves in neat lines along the walls and rows in between, the building almost seeming to stretch on forever until, finally, a small office can be seen tucked away in the back. A glance back toward the front door gives the impression that the room isn't that big, after all. Strange that you previously thought so.

Prying the door open is the only way to get inside the small office; the hinges have rusted and are caked with dirt and grime. Search as you might, there are no interesting bits of information to be found here beyond a few inventory lists on the little desk. There is, however, a green and gold safe in the corner that, no matter how many times one turns the dial, simply clicks and clicks. Scratches around the safe indicate that someone tried to get in at one point, though there's no indication as to whether they succeeded.

THE END APPROACHES
Standing at the center of Mathias, the town hall is a modest two-story building that would be welcoming if not for the faded sign, chipped paint, and deafening silence within its empty halls. It's a typical government building, with a reception desk at the front and rows of identical offices within, the names half faded from each door. But what catches the attention is a large bulletin board on the main wall beside the reception desk, once meant to hold flyers or announcements for the community.

What it holds now is decidedly different. Tacked onto the board are scraps of paper covered in an assortment of handwriting styles — requests for supplies should anyone find them, pieces of information shared in the hopes of someone understanding the strange symbols and mathematical equations, notes about those missing or recently deceased. And over the center of the board, tacked on top of other papers, is a map discolored with age. Mathias Township can be read in the corner, a stretch of forest displayed beneath it, but everything else has been smeared to illegibility with red... ink? Upon close examination, a keen eye will realize that the ink is actually blood, though whether it is human is unknown. And scrawled across that forest, nearly covering the illustration of a clearing and a large house within, are the words

he is coming
A number of tarnished metal pushpins are scattered around the edges of the board, waiting for future messages to be shared, and a stack of pristine white paper and pile of cheap ballpoint pens rest on one of three chairs beside the board. The chairs are clearly meant for those waiting for meetings and are covered in the same layer of grime as everything else in the building — everything except the pens, paper, and bulletin board.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"If you're doin' the same thing half the other people did, then I can't. You're holdin' the only thing that says I am who I am-" If she were an adult, he might show how bothered he was by arguing him being real so often to so many faces, but she's not and he wasn't going to go around yelling at kids.

She was scared. She was right to be.

"If I had a knife, I'd cut my palm or somethin' but if you're that deep into it, wouldn't you just question that too?" A beat passed. "C'mon," he said, jerking his head a little as he took back to walking. "No holy water to test, no hallowed ground to walk on. Can't say I'm not glad to not have a church here to haunt us too."

"That shit doesn't actually work, anyway," she says under her breath. She hesitates for a moment longer. Considers turning and booking it back into the woods.

But again, if he really is in her head, what the fuck kind of good is that going to do? And if he's not, then she's going to get herself killed.

Athena chews on a bit of loose skin on her lip, wincing slightly as she bites it hard enough to bleed. "Motherfucker," she mutters. Swallows. Takes another deep breath.

Then she starts walking again. "I hate cops. For the record."

Really, she says it just to have something to say.

He didn't stop, knowing that Athena was making a choice. A hard choice. Trust wasn't easy to give, even trust enough to follow someone down a road. He was glad to hear the crunch of snow behind him and he stops to let her catch up. The faint smirk that curls on his lips is schooled away as she finally does.

"Not a cop. Marshals means I only really care about federal. Course, what's a Marshal without his gun or a jail or a courthouse?" He shook his head. Law and Authority to it wasn't carried around like that, in a singular person's pocket. He couldn't make himself that here. That was the place of the others. If they chose to vote that way.

"I'm just a guy trying to keep my ass in one piece while I'm stuck here." Maybe help a few of the people he'd gotten close to on the way.

She stays quiet for a little bit as they walk.

"Federal's all right I guess," Athena finally says. "My aunt's a fed. She's with the DGA."

Another few steps of silence.

"And even if you don't have a gun or a jail or a courthouse, I think like." She shrugs one shoulder. "That doesn't change what you are, right? Like..."

She scratches the back of her head. "Even if I don't have a piano, even if I didn't have my voice, I'd still love music. I'd still be a bard. Even if my aunt didn't have her badge she'd still do what she does."

"Least she's not FBI." No one liked the FBI.

"You're right," he granted easily with a little bob of his head. "It doesn't. But I'm only as effective as the power that stands behind me. Place and situation like this?" He shook his head a little. No, he wasn't into philosophical arguments about how much was left of him when he finally got his badge taken away - he was sure it was coming.

"Too many people libel to challenge the authority and that's not a good energy for a small town. Does me no favors either. There's no institution to enforce it. Gotta be done a little less.. heavy handed. I grew up in a small town. Coal mining town called Harlan. They didn't believe in Government, insofar as they could get away with it.. Had a Marshal come into there, he would have found quite a cold and inhospitable greetin'."

The even softness of the tale was almost entrancing with the way Raylan spoke about it - no trauma, no mention of the death or the hell that hid in the dark there.

"Whaddya mean 'bard'? That D&D shit? Generally Tim's area.." God he wished Tim was here, his fellow Marshal would be all over this.

"You think I would admit it if she was FBI?" Athena sniffs scornfully, a touch of the bravado returning.

He has a relaxing voice. It's weird. It's not Jeff's voice, exactly, not with that accent or without the breathy quickness that he sometimes has when he talks. Still. It's soothing, in its own way.

"My family's from Staten Island. A whole genealogy of Cop, Son of Cop, y'know?"

She contorted one arm around behind her head to scratch at the base of her neck, instead of just reaching back to do it. Why? Eh. She felt like it.

Athena scuffs at the snow, not kicking it as kick or as eagerly as she was before. She shoots him a quizzical look. "What d'you mean, what do I mean? Bard. Like. Bard."

He smirked crookedly at that, though it fell away again as Athena continued about her family, nodding faintly. Yeah, they had those type too and it was never a good thing. Raylan didn't have anything against local cops on their face, unless they were plainly stupid or incompetent but that had less to do with their job and more to do with his judgement of them... And the hiring office there, whatever.

"You keep sayin' that like that'll explain it," he replied with a little back and forth gesture of his index finger, lazily held at the level of his hips. He didn't even realize he gestured as much as he did half the time. "You mean Bard like those assholes in medieval times that played the lute? Because I believe we call those people musicians now, is that what you are? This some... millennial thing I don't understand or somethin'?"

"I play the piano, first of all, but I'm sure there's some nerd bard out there who goes the whole hog medieval route."

She looks positively baffled at this point. "Dude, your generation coined it. I think. How old are you anyway? Were you too old for the whole 80s DnD thing?" She squints at him for a moment. "I can't tell from here. I mean I probably couldn't tell anyway, but that's not the point."

Athena waves that question off. She, too, has no real awareness of how much she talks with her hands. "I really don't get what you want me to explain. I'm a bard. I have the Gift with music."

The fact that there were 'nerd Bards' and the fact that she seemingly refused to use the word musician told Raylan a little. So it was a D&D thing. Shit he coulda used Tim right now. His head tilted a little at the question of his age - No, he wasn't going to tell her but his age had little to do with it.

Harlan however..

"A gift.. So you're.. Talented. Great, glad we cleared that up," he said as he started walking again. "What's the DGA then?"

Maybe he'd get a more sensical answer with that.

"I mean, yeah, I'm talented, but that's not..." She's even more confused now. "What do you mean what's the DGA? Everyone knows what the DGA is. It's the motherfucking... It's the Department of Gifted Affairs. Everyone-- You said you were a fed."

The wariness creeps in again. "Are you high or something?"

Raylan sighed the sigh of a deeply confused and frustrated man and kept moving.

"I am and we don't let talent agencies onto the list. Speakin' of, I want my badge back once you're closer. No consolation prizes for bein' in hell."

Edited 2021-03-14 00:17 (UTC)

Athena, however, stops. Because it's hitting her, really hitting her, that he doesn't know what she's talking about.

"You really don't know what the Gift is."

It takes a moment of actual effort to start walking again, the shock is so thick. "How can you not know?"

The question is more to herself than to him. "So you... you really don't know what I mean when I say bard. Or kirby. Or like, angle-chaser. None of that."

"Nope," he answered, largely unaware of how much of a revelation this was.

Raylan looked over sidelong. "Ain't Kirby that fat video game characters that sucks everything up? The south would call an angle-chaser a carpetbagger, but I'm gonna take a guess and assume that they aren't the same thing." A beat passed. "You gonna fill me in or let me keep guessin'."

It honestly was a question, even if his inflection didn't lift at the end like it was.

"No! I mean, yes, but it's a Jack Kirby thing, the artist, because..."

She pauses again, then shakes her head and starts jogging for a moment to make up the distance between them. "Jack Kirby was the first prominent Gifted pop-culture artist of the 20th century. Angle chasing, it's a math term, it's used to describe a geometrical proof that involves finding relationships between the various angles in a diagram. It's for people who use their Gift through mathematics, like my aunt. I'm a bard, which, yeah, it started as a jokey DnD thing but then it just kind of stuck."

Athena's voice stays wildly confused through the whole explanation. "The Gift is... I don't know, it's the motherfucking Gift. We... do magic shit with it."

Edited (whoops timelines) 2021-03-14 00:41 (UTC)

Raylan hummed a note of acknowledgment to go with the lift of his chin, eyes locked on Athena as she continues, only narrowing a fraction more as she does. He really should have paid more attention to the few times he'd come into contact with it but it wasn't something that ever really caught his interest. He'd rather be reading at that age, never mind the religion of small town keeping something like DnD out of range of the kids.

"So you're magicians. Via music. And you do.. magic shit with it." Raylan nodded a little, face turning back to the path and the narrowing crack between them with a deep breath. He'd bent before, he could do it again. Wasn't his world - the one thing that helped keep him from going insane.

"And that's somehow what, common enough that it gets its own federally backed division? Modern day Guild or somethin'?

"No, it's..." She stares at him for a moment more as she walks, trying to find her words. "This is really fucking weird. Um. The Gift, it's common, yeah, but it's not like... super common. I think the statistic is 12% of people or something like that. The DGA is the division of federal law enforcement that investigates crimes by and against the Gifted. Like, terrorist shit and hate crimes and stuff."

"Long enough to be widely accepted. Lemme guess? Evolution? Genetics?"

He gestured up ahead of them. "Another twenty or so feet, you can consider jumpin' to this side." He couldn't jump over there, or he would. He knew better by now, having come back after finding others to throw himself at the invisible wall that kept him at bay.

"Depends who you ask, but yeah, it's as genetic as hair color or anything else really." She shrugs. "It's always been around, but the Gifted... god this is embarrassing, I don't know our own fucking history. Jeff would--anyway."

She squints at the air, clearly trying to recall details. "The Gifted made this 'declaration of existence' in 1946, since it was getting really fucking hard to keep our shit hidden by then. We've got it pretty good in the US, some places are better, some places are worse, but it's a lot more 'whatever' than it used to be."

"Can't imagine there are any good stories in that history, but being legal on paper is a damned good start. I don't assume that doesn't exempt you from still getting crap from people." If the way the US government and its population treated other minorities were any indication, he was glad that particular milestone was well before Athena's time. Those kinds of battles for recognition were never pretty or easy and they never solved the on the ground cultural issues without a lot of time for the older generation to die out.

Yeah, he was a real party, Raylan was.

"What kinda 'magic shit' do you do with your music?"

Since she was a teenager, he assumed a few things - Suburbs of DC she'd already confirmed so he assumed she was in school. As a person her age oughta be and since she lived with her aunt, he could assume that she was possibly kicked out of the Jersey family household due to her being Gifted. Wouldn't be so far fetched, most of the human race being as terrible as they were. He couldn't help but piece it all out; with no cases to work for as long as he'd been here, it helped keep his brain sharp.

"Not much. I mean, not right now anyway." She looks away, debating silently. Sooner or later it would come out--she's shit at keeping secrets. "I've kind of got this whole... probation-y thing... going. For reasons."

A quick shrug. "But I can move stuff, call light, start fires, find things. All the basics. The Gift's adaptable. If you're strong enough and skilled enough you can do a lot of stuff with it. It just depends on how good you are and how complicated what you're trying to do is."

"Like a tiny human swiss army knife," he snarked playfully. "If this place doesn't throw you back into life, you'll have to show me. Assumin' that breakin' your probation doesn't make you... explode or somethin'. Anyone shows up, I'm sure I can tilt the federal umbrella to excuse it."

"Nah, nothing like that." She grins. "I just can't do anything big without registration and supervision. Which honestly is fine with me, I've got enough other shit to think about."

Athena stops, eyeing the gap. "I think I can make this."

He eyed the gap too. "Yeah? Great, lets go fifteen feet more that way, then you can. Better to overshoot - Can't say how strong the edges actually are this far down."

Wouldn't take more than another 45 seconds to give her short ass legs some extra room. "What'd you do to get on probation? I won't even guess on that one, considerin' my record with ya so far."

She rolls her eyes, listening to his advice regardless. Adults. Always being overcautious. She very carefully doesn't note the fact that falling to her death would suck and that caution is probably the better route here.

"Um..." She stops once they've closed the gap a little more, looking uncomfortable. "That's. Complicated."

It's not that complicated, not really.

Athena stuffs his badge into her back pocket, backs up a little from the edge just in case, and takes a running leap that may-or-may-not end with her yelping and grabbing on to fistfuls of his flannel as the edge does indeed crumble a little underfoot.

God help him, he almost missed the teenage airs, mind drifting briefly back to Loretta. Girl put in a terrible position working her way out from under it and forming her own being without her daddy or the Bennett's influence.

"Complicated," he echoed, the question getting put on hold as he lined up across from her, hands at the ready should they be needed. As soon as she starts moving, Raylan thinks they should have gone another twenty feet before trying this but it was too late now and she wasn't going to clear it by much. He stepped in as she landed, arm wrapping around her and grunting softly at the missile of weight. "Aright, you're okay," he muttered instinctively, guiding her quickly towards more solid ground by a few steps before he pulls back.

"Shoulda gone for track and field if you haven't already in school."

No way in hell was he getting accused of being inappropriate and a scared girl didn't need to get more scared by him holding on, however loosely for a fraction of a second longer than necessary.

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SO MANY THINGS HE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND HERE lol

poor, poor Raylan

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