test drive — spring

[villagemod]

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: ♫ )

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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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Comments

[trigeminalheadache]

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.

[abrightboy]

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?”

[trigeminalheadache]

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?"

[abrightboy]

He laughs with a cant of his head.

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

[trigeminalheadache]

"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?"

[abrightboy]

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

[trigeminalheadache]

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."

[abrightboy]

He cocks his head, eyes narrowing slightly.

“Destroyed by what?” he asks.

[trigeminalheadache]

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."

[abrightboy]

“A similar sort of apocalypse?” he asks.

[trigeminalheadache]

"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."

[abrightboy]

"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."

[trigeminalheadache]

"This is probably a ridiculous question, but..." She looks down at her coffee. Asking this while looking at him somehow feels dumb. "What keeps everyone here? What's to stop anyone from just walking out of town?"

[abrightboy]

"The ocean on one side," he replies. She probably noticed that. "The fog everywhere else." He leans forward faintly but earnestly. "Never enter the fog."

[trigeminalheadache]

Caitlin raises her eyebrows at him. "The fog. You mean, the fog I just walked through to end up here?" she asks, pointing back in the direction of the front door. "That fog? Or is that a different fog? What does the fog do?"

[abrightboy]

"The fog with the dead people in it? That's different," he says, taking a sip of his coffee and looking away.

[trigeminalheadache]

"Okay, okay. So two different fogs." That's not at all settling or comforting. The longer she sits here, the more sure she is that the fog she walked through was causing her dizziness. She feels clear now, feels like herself again. Still damp and possibly with sand in places it shouldn't be, but herself.

"Tell me about the fog that keeps people from leaving. Why shouldn't someone walk into it?"

[abrightboy]

"It's like an extra strong version of this fog. You didn't feel well after walking through it, right? The other fog acts faster. And then kills," he explains.

[trigeminalheadache]

"Well, I don't normally nearly fall down just turning around," she reluctantly agrees. She may not be the most graceful person, but she's a far cry from stumbling clumsily. She got a D+ in Physical Education, thank you very much. A hard-won D+. Imagine if that had been what kept her from graduating when she did.

Caitlin toys with her mug, swirling the last of her coffee around. "You mentioned deaths. Are those all because of the fog?"

[abrightboy]

He looks grim.

"No. Not all of them. There was a night when... creatures came. Invisible creatures. They gutted everyone who was outside."

[trigeminalheadache]

Caitlin's eyes get wide. Then wider. And wider still, showing more whites than her warm brown irises. It's not quite a full blue-screen-of-death mentally, but it may have shorted something out in her mind.

"Invisible... creatures," she says like she's testing the words out for the first time. "That doesn't happen often, right? Or even occasionally? Please say that's a very rare occurrence."

[abrightboy]

“It was only one time,” he said. “But we recommend being inside when it’s... night.”

[trigeminalheadache]

"When it's night or when it's dark?" she asks. It may not be much of a difference, but there still is one. There are few occasions where it's dark without being night, but it still could happen. Maybe even more so in a place where fog can kill.

"How do people find a place to stay here?"

[abrightboy]

“There’s room at the boarding house,” he tells her. “Or you can occupy any empty house you want. Or, once you make some friends, you can live together. It’s safer.”

[trigeminalheadache]

"Okay. Safer living with other people," she repeats, giving a nod. She hasn't lived with other people in what feels like forever. But forever is really just six years. Six years since Ronnie 'died' the first time.

"I'm sorry," she blurts out. "I've interrupted your morning and intruded on you and your roommates." It's an assumption, considering he said living with others is safer. "You've been more than kind. Thank you."