villagememes | test drive

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test drive — spring

SPRING 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.

Prospective players are welcome to play with any of the established locations within Mathias.

( Recommended listening: ♫ )

GHOSTS OF THE LIVING
The fog moves in quickly and without warning, not from the waterfront but the forest, cascading through every street in a thick wave of white. It is not a soft blanket enveloping the town, but a heavy weight pressing down, threatening to suffocate as the sky is blotted out and no one can see more than ten feet in any direction.

Those who are outside when it rolls in are left wandering blind, hoping that a randomly chosen direction will lead them to shelter or another living soul. There are perhaps even those who were lucky enough to already be inside when the fog descended, quickly closing doors and windows to keep it from creeping in. Wherever they are, the residents of Mathias will soon notice that they are not the only ones in the fog.

Anyone out in the fog is left disoriented, possibly losing their sense of time and place, and it is only after prolonged exposure that they will begin to feel off. A sense of being ill will cling to them if they are in the fog for too long, including dizziness, lightheadedness, or nausea — the time it takes to manifest varies from person to person, as does the duration it will last after leaving the fog.

With all of these elements at play, the first strange apparitions encountered may be assumed to be figments of addled minds, tricks played by psyches struggling to cope with the strange reality they've found themselves in. But before long, there will be no denying that the Others in the fog are real. Appearing almost wraithlike and startlingly recognizable, these figures even feel a bit like ghosts to those who can sense such things, though everyone will feel that there is something wrong about them. Truly, there are many things wrong that residents will begin to notice as they encounter more and more of the spectres that do not acknowledge their presence in any way. They simply exist, silent and subtly terrifying like so many things in this town.

Like misty ghosts of those who have been in the town at one point or another, the Others appear as those who have died or disappeared and even those currently within the town. The likeness is truly uncanny, to the point of being completely terrifying, made even more so when they realize there is no way to communicate with the Others. They do not acknowledge anyone's presence nor anything said to them. At times, they may be only one in an area, or there may be a dozen existing in the same space. There is no limit to how many people can see them — if they are there, they are seen by all.

The Others do not enter buildings and cannot be contained in any way. They can appear at one moment and be gone in the next, or they can exist in one place for hours on end. Whether standing stationary or slowly wandering throughout the town, there is no discernible purpose to them. There is something absent and distant in the way they hold themselves, the way they walk, and their expressions, as if even they cannot grasp what is happening.

A BIT OF EXPLORATION
There are plenty of places in which to get one's bearings and hide from the fog.

There are businesses on the square, nestled around and extending out from the Town Hall. There is a schoolhouse nestled by the southern treeline, not from the rather expansive makeshift cemetery at the end of Jackson Boulevard that is courtesy of a few kind residents in town. To the far north of the square is a sprawling garden, now covered in snow, and a greenhouse that once supplied the botanical shop. And to the east and west, beyond the business square, is are residential districts.

The eastern district sprawls all the way to the beach, with some houses in perfect condition and others beginning to show significant signs of age. The western district, however, is nothing but decay. From the beginnings of rot to completely collapsed and little more than a pile of proverbial bones, none of these homes are anything resembling livable. Well, as far as one can tell, at least. For between the streets of Hill Lane and Stine Road there is a crack in the earth. A dozen feet across and fifty feet down, there is no way across.

TO SEE AND BE SEEN
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. Covering the board are tacked-on 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 painted directly across the center of the board, visible in the gaps between the pieces of paper, is a symbol in dark red. While peering at that obscured symbol, a strange breeze ruffles the papers, revealing a little more, just enough to—

An eye. A strange, ornate eye with three lobes, painted in still-wet red. And upon close examination, a keen eye will realize that the paint is actually blood, perhaps even human.

The longer someone stands there, the more it will feel like they are being watched, even studied, with great interest. It's a sensation that lingers and stays with them even when they exit the building.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He gets her a glass of water and sets it next to the aspirin.

"Yeah, they really like leaving people on the beach. Almost everyone has arrived there."

He gets the french press down and puts the kettle on. He's going to make coffee. Just in case. Someone in the house will drink it anyway.

"Where are you from?" he asks curiously.

She reaches for the bottle of aspirin, first lining up the edges of the childproof cap before popping it off. Caitlin shakes out two of the pills and tosses them back, gulping down the water to wash them down. Hopefully, it'll help because she hates feeling like this.

She exhales out of her nose, an amused little huff. "I wish they would have told me beforehand. I could have put on a wetsuit, packed a bag." But when people are kidnapped, they don't get much advanced notice. It seems that would defeat the purpose of a kidnapping.

The sight of the french press helps her perk up a little. Coffee. Yes, god, coffee would be great. She lifts her eyes to look at him. To really look at him.

"Central City," she answers plainly. No qualifiers. No state or country. Everyone knows Central City. "What about you?"

He looks at her oddly because he does not know Central City.

"New York," he answers, watching her face for recognition. "Manhattan, to be precise." He scoops grounds into the press while keeping an eye on her. "Grew up on the Upper East Side, but I live in SoHo now."

There's a brief flash of confusion to his look. Maybe it's merely in relation to the location. They're obviously in some coastal town, and both coasts are pretty far from landlocked, midwestern Missouri. It's still hard to think about it too much.

Recognition does light up in Caitlin's eyes at the mention of New York. Of Manhattan, the Upper East Side, SoHo. There's a click in her mind, making a reasonable assumption: he comes from money. What is it people said? Upper West Side is new money, Upper East Side is old money? So, a couple of generations of wealth, at least.

She isn't going to ask him about it. She comes from money, herself, and was raised right. One doesn't talk about that sort of thing. "Expensive place," she says. Carefully, she lets her gaze rove over the kitchen they're in. No turning around. That doesn't feel safe yet. "But this clearly isn't SoHo, so where are we?"

"We don't really know," he admits. "We all woke up here, no idea how we got here: same as you. The first arrivals that I know of got here....oh, a month and a half ago now. I got here about a week later. New people arrive all the time. Sometimes people disappear. Or die. This town is called Mathias, according to what records we've been able to find. We don't know who's pulling the strings, but not from lack of trying."

The kettle boils and he pours water into the press.

"Where's Central City?"

The look of confusion and dismay on her face just grows with each sentence he utters. No one knows how they got here. No one knows where they are. He mentions the arrivals like they're the only people here. How can that be possible? Surely there'd be other people who lived here. There's coffee, there's aspirin. You don't just find those sort of things in abandoned towns.

Don't you?

Water hits the coffee grounds and the smell alone feels like it's starting to part the haze in her mind. Which makes his question hit her extra hard. Her brow knits together, her expression puzzled. "You... don't know where Central City is?" she asks in disbelief. "Central City, right across the Gardner River from Keystone City? Central City, home to 14 million people in its greater metropolitan area?"

That's like asking where New York City is. Or Gotham.

"I... don't know how to tell you this, but... not everyone here is from the same reality?" he explains. "Some worlds seem to have some things in common, but then you get into it and details are wrong. Like. Some worlds have magic or superpowers. But even worlds that seem the same... like, my friend Neal is from New York too. And he's also from a New York with no magic and no superpowers. But... in my world, my father is very famous. Very. And Neal's never heard of him. He doesn't exist there. Or, if he does, he never got..." His voice trails off, like he's said too much. "Famous," he finishes, and it's clearly not the word he was originally going to use. "So what else is different, right? We can't know. But the point is, your world can have New York and Central City and mine can just have New York."

Of course. Of course, she should have thought of that. It makes sense, in a way. She takes a breath, another lungful of that coffee-scented air. Her head clears a little more, and it feels like there's room for actual thought now. "The multiverse," she half-mutters to herself. They know of quite a few Earths within it, but it's impossible to know them all. There was a different number. No, wait, here's a hidden Earth. How many more could be hidden or unvisited?

"It makes sense," she says, louder now. "The multiverse. Feels like so many things come down to that. More than should be possible." What he says, it tracks. "One of the first few Earths my friend visited? He didn't exist there. I didn't, nor any of our friends. Where we work. And our Earth? Didn't have her or the city where she lives."

Where Kara had ended up had been an off-and-on debate between her and Cisco. Did she never leave Krypton? Did she die in the Shadow Zone? Did Krypton just not exist in her universe.

"Maybe that's what this is," Caitlin says. "Another Earth in the multiverse. Some breacher traveling to our different Earths to grab us and bring us here." But why? hangs in the air unsaid.

"A 'breacher'?" he questions, getting two mugs down and pressing down the plunger. He fills one and pushes it towards her. "We have milk and sugar, if you want."

"Yes," she says almost automatically before she adds, "Please." She may not be feeling all that well, but she can make an effort to be polite. He's been kind already, mostly with just not throwing her out of his house. He's gotten her aspirin, he's made her coffee. He's been incredibly kind.

She reaches out to wrap her hands around the mug. The heat is practically scorching against her cold palms. If only she could draw the heat out of it to warm herself up, but her powers don't work that way. If they're working. She'll have to think about that later.

"A breacher is someone who has the ability to, well, basically tear a hole that goes from one reality to another." She pauses, considers her words. "Maybe less a hole and more a portal. 'Hole' sounds unstable and while some of the portals can be, typically they're controlled. They open and close seamlessly."

"So this... isn't so weird for you," he acknowledges. "You'll probably have an easier time adjusting than most of us."

"Well..." She trails off as she waggles her head a little. And immediately regrets it. Thankfully she wasn't lifting her mug, otherwise, it might have hit the countertop suddenly. That would be a terrible waste of coffee. And breaking things isn't part of good manners.

She flinches at her tilting vision, but her eyes don't stay closed. It passes quickly. "It's weird for me to wake up in a strange place. But you'd probably think I'm crazy for what isn't weird to me."

"I'm actually crazy," he tells her. "And I've heard some things here. Give me a try."

He's broken many mugs in this house. The one he's currently using is a melamine camping mug scavenged for him by Doc Holliday. For safety.

She has the good sense to look sheepish. Her hands wrap around the mug again, tighter this time. Better to think about the warmth instead of her foot halfway down her throat. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. I know better that," she confesses, ducking her head a moment. As a doctor, she really does.

But try him, hmm. What would sound the most outlandish, the most over the top? "I've been mind-controlled by a telepathic gorilla who has, or had, a soft spot for me because I took care of him before he got powers. Or... my former boss turned out to be a superpowered sociopath from the future who traveled back in time to kill a boy who would end up becoming one of my best friends. He failed in that mission, ended up stuck, took the literal identity of a scientist who was destined to become famous, and, a little over a decade later, sabotaged the particle accelerator we built so it would explode the night we first turned it on so he could manipulate that same boy-now-man to develop super speed and work to steal it so he could go home."

Thawne is a trippy rabbit hole that she'd like to avoid ever thinking about again. But his story sounds like something out of a pulpy sci-fi novel.

He frowns faintly at her apology.

“You... don’t need to apologize; you couldn’t have known,” he tells her gently.

He raises his eyebrows as she gives examples.

“That’s a wild dimension you come from. So. Superpowers, right?”

He says she doesn't need to apologize, but she still feels guilty. Words and phrases have stigmas to them, and she's working to correct her own language. But she takes him at his word. No harm.

She shrugs gently, sipping her coffee. "Superpowers, costumed vigilantes. Aliens, both good and bad. Time travel. Doppelgangers," she lists off, almost rambling. "More. But yeah, things can get wild on Earth-1."

She doesn't think twice about the term sounding odd. It makes sense where she's from, "So I take it things aren't that flavor of wild where you're from?"

He laughs with a cant of his head.

“Nothing that wild, no. Just run of the mill ritual murder and serial killers,” he says.

"Well, that's fun, too. Who doesn't love the occasional ritual murder?" Hopefully, her tone conveys just how much she's kidding right now. He gets it, right? He gets it. Talk of serial killers still hits a little close to home for her. It might always, though she wishes it wouldn't. She's put him pretty firmly in her past.

"So, the other people here. The other arrivals," she clarifies, "how many are there?"

“Over twenty now. Arrived at different times, all seemingly from different.... “ a beat. “You said ‘Earth-1’. How many do you know of?”

Over twenty. That's... that's not much at all. Not even a crowd. It's about twice as many people who show up at Joe's for Christmas. And here, they had a whole town to spread out in.

She blinks and sets down her coffee cup. "After the Singularity, we knew of 52. Then, after the attack at Barry's wedding, we became aware of a 53rd: Earth-X. An Earth that was isolated, blocked off, by the other Earths aware of it," she says, toying with the handle on her mug. "But now, as in literally the past 2-3 days, we became aware of an Earth-90. And that Earth was being destroyed."

He cocks his head, eyes narrowing slightly.

“Destroyed by what?” he asks.

She takes a breath as if to steel herself. The Flash of Earth-90 had relayed some of this to her and the others, but she was still sorting it all out when she went to bed last night.

She bites her lower lip before speaking. "A being known as the Monitor with an object called 'The Book of Destiny.' The one survivor came to our Earth to warn us that the Monitor was testing Earths, and that his Earth, that he failed." Her head feels like it's totally cleared, and that's both good and bad. Being able to think is a plus, but it means that she can see these things vividly.

"Our Earth passed, but we were warned that a crisis is coming," she continues, finishing with a half-shrug. "People like that really enjoy the cryptic, ominous feeling."

“A similar sort of apocalypse?” he asks.

"Worse, from what my friend tells me," she answers. "I didn't meet the Monitor myself. Or, if I did? I wouldn't remember it. That Book of Destiny gives whoever has it the ability to rewrite reality." It's as bad as it sounds.

"When I woke up on the beach, just now, I thought this was just another rewrite. But then I realized if it was, I wouldn't remember everything from before."

"It is easy to assume this place isn't real, in one way or another. More natural than accepting it, really," Malcolm observes. "We haven't been able to figure out how it works or... how to get out."

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