test drive — autumn

[villagemod]

test drive — autumn
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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.

Since not all setting details have been made available yet, you are welcome to invent your own general locations for this test drive. There are no living souls in Mathias Township beyond the player characters. In fact, there are no signs of life at all... We hope you enjoy your visit.

( Recommended listening: ♫ )



— the fog —

It moves in quickly and without warning, not from the waterfront but the forest, cascading through every street in a thick wave of white. The fog is not a soft blanket enveloping the town, but a heavy weight pressing down, threatening to suffocate the sky is blotted out and you can see no further than your outstretched hand.

Those outside when it rolls in are left wandering blind, stumbling toward shelter as you're unable to even see your feet beneath you, let alone any obstacles in your path. Perhaps you call out for help, hoping for another voice to guide you toward shelter or simply another living soul. Or perhaps you were lucky enough to already be inside when the fog descended, quickly closing doors and windows to keep it from creeping in. Can you hear those voices crying out? You recognize some, but the others... Are they really there at all, or are you alone here and simply beginning to finally lose your mind?

And perhaps the most important question: Do you answer?



— portents —

You wake up with an ache in your head and a cloudiness to your thoughts, your body sprawled on the ground in a location you don't remember going to. As you sit up, the world spins and start to clutch your head — to realize there's something on your hand. A symbol, a word, a streak of wet paint or ink. You don't recognize it or have any memory of how it got there...

Or how the much larger depiction came to be on the wall or the floor around them. You can see it shining wet in the glow of whatever light source is nearest, but something instinctual urges you not to touch it. If you defy that urge, it burns, a searing pain that radiates from the matching mark on your hand.

Did you do this? Or was it done to you? The person approaching may have answers — or accusations.



— past deeds —

The Town Hall stands at the center of Mathias Township, a modest two-story building that would be welcoming if not for the faded sign, chipped paint, and deafening silence. 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 your attention is a large bulletin board on the main wall, once meant to hold flyers or announcements for the community.

What it holds now is decidedly different. Tacked onto the board is a torn scrap of paper with words scrawled almost illegibly in dark red ink.

why did this happen

Upon close examination, a keen eye will realize that the ink is actually blood, though whether it is human is unknown. And beside that scrap, a symbol has been drawn in dark black marker — it resembles a feather or a branch, but you've never seen anything like it before. It scares you even as you know it is perhaps the most important thing you have ever seen in your life.

On the floor below the bulletin board are more scraps of paper scattered amongst grime and dust, most blank but some with other strange symbols scrawled in a variety of inks, perhaps matching the pens and markers scattered near the baseboard. Some are small enough that they might have once been part of the same page, creating something larger. And to the far side, a pristine stack of crisp white copy paper and an unopened box of ballpoint pens.

What do you do?



code bases by tricklet

Comments

[thering]

Nope. [He glances up at her and averts his gaze.] It either melted and then exploded, or exploded and then melted, and the appliance never quite worked right after. Had to- procure another microwave from the Amazon. [With a credit card he didn't have, but that's another story entirely. They've come a long way since poker chips and coin.]

Didn't burn down the homestead though. Suppose I got lucky. Is... that a bear? [He jerks his chin towards the bottle of honey.] It's rather cute. [He can't tell that it's honey - it could be cooking oil or that strange type of fruity/floral handwash or something. He wouldn't associate honey with bears to begin with.]

[chuju]

[ Daisy tries really, really hard not to laugh, purely out of consideration for how (embarrassed? chagrined?) he looks, but a few quiet chuckles still escape and are oh so smoothly covered by a clearing of her throat. What he should feel lucky about is that she doesn't know him better, otherwise she'd be giving him all kinds of grief for the Amazon. For someone who lives and breathes the internet and computers, it's just an endless source of amusement to tease those who don't. ]

It is a bear. Yogi, here, is going to play an integral part in the adventure we're about to embark on. [ Grabbing it and the rest of the items she'd already checked, she piles them up precariously in her arms before moving to carry them all out into the kitchen proper. ]

[thering]

[Yeah, they've had their fair share of laughs back home about him trying to cope with life in the 21st century. But he's adapting, probably better than anyone had expected.]

Yogi. I see you two are acquainted. [Doc raises an eyebrow and cracks a smile as she heads away from the pantry. He takes one last cursory look over the contents before closing the door. It's a small space so it's impossible for him not to get in the way sometimes, but he leaves her be in the kitchen area while he ventures towards the back. There's a back door, next to some large, tied up trash bags, cleaning supplies and a dishwasher. He was rather hoping to find better knives or some sealed cartons of bottled water but there's not much back there.

It's maybe a little nosy to be going through the few bits of paper he can find, but they're just lists of items that were delivered to the cafe. There is a supplier logo at the top, but no addresses or phone numbers to help figure out where they are.]

You ever been on the internet? [He calls out from where he's standing, folding up the list and tucking it into his pocket as he heads back towards her.] We need to ask Google where we are.

[chuju]

[ After locating a pot that looks like it can take a beating, Daisy begins the science experiment that might just turn out edible. The odds have to be good, right? Oatmeal is hard to screw up, even for someone whose cooking experience has thus far been mostly limited to microwave quesadillas and ramen. She's seen people making oatmeal... It'll be fine.

The burner works, thank goodness, and the water's beginning to bubble when he asks the question that has her looking at him like he's grown a second head. At least he didn't call it the Google. Points to the cowboy for that one. ]

Oh, trust me. If we can find a computer with a working internet connection, I'll beat Google into submission for more than just our location. [ She won't actually use Google to do it, but that's beside the point. Grabbing a set of measuring spoons hanging from a hook on the wall, she makes a best guess at how much oatmeal to use and unceremoniously dumps it into the pot. ] I'm a hacker, computers are kind of my thing.

[thering]

[The girls talk to Siri, Jeremy talks to Google; some things he recognises as almost like imaginary people and other things like the Wikipedia and the Amazon are separate entities. At least, in his mind. Don't ask him how the microwave works, or why it hates canned anything. He hasn't yet figured out wifi either.]

Well I think we best put that near the top of the list of items to look out for, then. [He doesn't think it's an absolute necessity, but knowing where they are might answer some of the other pressing questions they have, even if they don't know when they are or how they got here, or who's responsible for this. After they find a steady source of food, water and decent shelter, of course.]

I suppose we are not very useful here. [He flashes a tight-lipped smile at her.] A... hacker? with no computer, and a gunslinger with no guns.