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test drive — autumn

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

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"Mmhm," he hummed with a nod and a glance at a passing shadow before looking back at her again. That seemed to be the general vibe around here - confused people with no real information. It wasn't her fault and he wasn't surprised.

"No clear way outta town either, despite an attempt that was otherwise stopped by an aggressive fog." He lifted his chin a little.

"What's your name?"

Edited 2020-09-12 23:31 (UTC)

"Yeah, it's like...there's nothing even out there. I didn't even hear birds or deer or anything in those woods." The whole thing is spooky as hell. Ellie doesn't scare easy at all, but she's definitely unnerved by this place. Who wouldn't be?

"Ellie," she answers. "What's yours?"

He hadn't even thought about wildlife or listening for it. That was clever. "Huh."

A beat passed between that and her question and he answered readily. "Raylan Givens. Deputy US Marshal, though I seem to have lost my gun somewhere along the way. I've only been here a couple of hours. You been here any longer than that?"

Or did they all get pulled in at the same time?

One corner of Ellie's mouth quirks up.

"US Marshal? Like in a cowboy movie or something?" That's really her only frame of reference for what a marshal is or does. The only authority she really knows is the military, and they're all assholes in her experience.

"No, just a few hours for me, too. I don't think anyone was here before us. Or, I mean, if they were, it's been a long while." She looks around for a second before looking back to Raylan. "So, Mr. Deputy Marshal, you got any ideas how we got here?"

Raylan smirked, scoffing a breath of a chuckle out of his nose. "I suppose so, depending on how far back you go, yes. I'm just a Federal Agent that gets to cross state lines without losing my jurisdiction. Which is why we're the ones that chase after bad guys that go that way."

Don't get him started on Assholes, he'll have to disparage the FBI for a while.

He nodded at her answer though, smirk pulling at her emphasis. "Current theories are Alien abduction or too much whiskey. Followin' that, I got nothin' and those two aren't exactly shinin' winners. Never seen these symbols before so I'm afraid I'm no help there." He nodded at her notebook. "They all the same one?"

Ellie mostly just looks confused at his explanation. So he's...some kind of cop or whatever. That's what she gets out of it. There aren't really cops anymore, of course, but she reads and she's watched as many old working movies as she's been able to find. If she hadn't already met Daisy, this would be a lot more confusing than it already is.

"Aliens, huh? You think aliens really exist?" She's not judging. She wishes aliens existed, because they probably suck less than most people, Infected or not.

She opens her notebook and holds it out.

"There are some other ones. I found them there on the ground. But nothing like that big black one. "

"No," he replied, face curling in amusement. The suggestion had been sarcastic, but Raylan's tone didn't waver enough into it for Ellie to get that clearly, so he doesn't blame the question.

He took the notebook, turning it around the right way so he could look them over. Might be helpful if he saw them again.

"I feel like this is the first clue but it's useless to me," he said, handing the book back. "I'm not sure what else to do but find somethin' to eat and post up in one of these houses for the night. Maybe pool all the information whoever is here has."

So unlike Daisy, Raylan doesn't believe in aliens. Ellie still can't explain anything that Daisy can do, or how they're all here, or why Daisy didn't know about the Infection, or where Raylan could have come from that US marshals even still exist. It's a lot to wrap her head around. But...she doesn't think it's a dream, not anymore. Something about it is too immediately real.

She watches Raylan study the notebook, one arm crossed over her torso, hand holding onto the other arm. It's just a nervous gesture, a subconscious way of closing off.

He hands it back and she looks down at it, a slight frown on her face.

"How many of us do you think there are?"

Neither did he really believe some of the stuff that Daisy said. He hadn't justified it so he hadn't given it much real thought or consideration. Just because he didn't believe her didn't mean he thought she was a liar; only that he didn't know how to wrap his head around it.

"At least four in total, so far but I assume there are stragglers, people I haven't seen yet." His eyes narrowed a little bit.

"Daisy asked me a question that I didn't think was important but.. Where are you from? And when?"

Ellie shrugs, but it's mostly just a nervous habit. "Yeah, I've met a couple people. I wonder if there will be more, or...if it's just us lucky ones." She's not even entirely sure where everyone is coming from. It's not like they all woke up next to each other or whatever. They just seem to be wandering in from...wherever. But not from the same wherever.

"When?" she asks. That's something she hadn't even considered. She has to think about it for a second. "Uh...2039. I was...in Seattle." Not I'm from Seattle. Honestly, fuck Seattle. But that is where she was just before she woke up here. It had been nighttime. She's been trying to shove it to the side of her mind, because she has no idea what Dina and Jesse are going to think. She can't abandon them.

She can't abandon the terrible quest she's on, either. But she's got to get her goddamn weapons back and get out of here. So far, the fog has kept them in. She's only calm on the outside, really.

"I need to get back there, but I have no fucking idea where we are in relation." Her face crinkles up and she finally asks, "Why, where are you from? And, uh, when, I guess." There's obvious scepticism in her tone, but who can blame her?

"Anyone's guess," Raylan replied, hoping his tone was comforting enough to be exactly that.

He watched her process the question, happy that he wasn't the only one to be a little sideswiped by it. What a weird question, but one he was starting to think might be important for context. Unfortunately, he was just as equally sideswiped by her answer.

"We're in the north, but I can't tell which coast," he answered unhelpfully, face still screwed up with his own confusion. 2039?" he asked, amazed.

"Lexington, Kentucky. 2015... We got flyin' cars yet?" It was better to suspend the question, much as he'd done with Daisy until he could sit down and really think about it. He played it too cool to get flustered now.

"It doesn't seem much like Seattle. It's...I don't know, less humid, I guess?" she says. She's mostly just rambling, trying to process. "I used to live in Boston, but I didn't like hang out in any forests up there really." She'd spent time in a lot of forests, but this one still didn't seem like anywhere she'd spent time. But who could tell? Obviously this is...somewhere different than where she came from, no matter what coast.

She isn't actually sure when Daisy was from, but she knows that the Infection didn't exist there. Daisy has powers Ellie can't explain, like something out of a comic book.

"Flying cars?" She snorts. "That sounds pretty cool. No. The world went to shit in 2013, I think it was. There's an infection. Um. Cordyceps. It's...a fungus. It gets in your brain and controls you, or whatever. All we have is a bunch of shitty Infected and a bunch of shittier humans." She's distant talking about it. It's history. It was before she was even born; that's the only world she's ever known.

"You're from 2015. There's...that really didn't happen where you were? You're not just fucking with me, right?" She doesn't really think he is, after meeting Daisy. She's read comic books, sci-fi shit with alternate worlds, but it's still so hard to believe that this is happening.

"Never been too far up the West Coast to quite hit Seattle. Been up and down the East Coast plenty though never in a fog like this one." He'd seen plenty of Kentucky and Florida forests, but this wasn't that. Far too cold and wet for the south.

"I mean, 2013 wasn't the best year but I don't recall any bodysnatcher type events happenin'. It wasn't that bad." Definitely not in comparison to brain snatching or whatever Ellie had just described. "You sure you're not the one messin' around here 'cause.. I mean that's.. Right outta a Stephen King Novel or somethin'." Dreamcatcher, to be exact.

No bounce, no play.

Ellie shakes her head. "No. It's not...it's not like bodysnatchers." She doesn't really like horror movies but she's seen a few of them. "It's, um, an infection. You kind of...go crazy. Attack other people. Stuff like that."

She's never seen a zombie movie, of course, but if they exist anywhere back home, she'd have avoided them. Infected aren't the resurrected dead, but they're certainly bad enough. She feels somewhat guilty just talking about it, knowing that she's technically infected, too. For some unknown reason, she just...didn't turn into one of them. She's immune, which some days is more curse than anything else.

"I wish I was fucking with you," she says, no hint of a smile on her face. "I thought Daisy was fucking with me when she didn't know what I was talking about. But...I guess she wasn't. I guess you probably aren't either. But how is it even possible, you know?"

"Anything takin' over my body and making me do what it wants and not what I want, I count as bodysnatchin'." But now that he'd said that, the gears in his head were turning. If she came from an infected world, how'd she skip out on getting said infection? Vaccines, Raylan assumed, but if the world is still hell in 2039 from 2013, he couldn't help but not put a lot of stock into that kneejerk explanation.

"I don't know. I don't know what it means. I thought Daisy was crazy, if I'm honest. I still haven't decided about you," he said, but not unkindly, with a curl of his lips. "Did she show you the food? What do you make of that?"

He was fresh out of ideas on a lot of things and that was a very strange, disquieting place for Raylan Givens to be. If he could get a reasonable answer to anything, he'd feel better.

Edited 2020-09-17 01:39 (UTC)

"I guess that's a fair enough assessment." She'd seen the stages, after all, and he wasn't too far off. People would scream and yell and rage as if they were actually in pain in the first stages. She's seen enough runners to know. By the time the last past that stage, anything that seemed human about them other than the way they move (sometimes) is gone. The strongest most dangerous ones don't even seem like they were ever human at all. Those ones are somewhat easier to shoot, really, at least on some level.

She keeps all that to herself, pretty sure that Raylan doesn't want to hear the gory details.

"Don't worry. I haven't decided about you, either," she says back, one side of her mouth almost managing a smile. It's true, really. Ellie only made a real decision about Daisy because she'd seen Daisy do...whatever the hell that vibration power was. She has no idea how to explain that, or this wild trip into some unknown town with only that creepy symbol to go on.

"Food? No, I haven't actually looked for food, really." She forgets to eat sometimes these days, too focused on what's going on, or too busy not really working her way through trauma. "Why, what's up with the food?"

Raylan hadn't processed and wouldn't process all these outworld things until much later when he was alone and it was mostly quiet. He could get more information later but the first big stones were going to be a hurdle and he didn't know how well that would go. Maybe after that, he could take some gory details.

Gore wasn't the problem.

He smirked at her answer and looked back the other way. "It's fresh." Hazel eyes swung back. "As dead as this place is, all the dust all over everything and the crap in the fridge seems.. perfectly fine. I don't know how much I trust it. I was hopin' we could find someone dumb enough to eat it first."

Ellie frowns like she's not sure she heard him right. Food, like everything, is scarce where she comes from. They do really well in Jackson, of course, but they're dependent on the weather not sucking long enough to grow things, and on avoiding the Infected that come through when the seasons change, getting to the good game before they do. She figured it would be the same here. She hadn't even checked the fridge in the house she'd been in earlier; hadn't occurred to her to bother.

"What? Seriously? That sounds like bullshit." But she doesn't think it is. "It's probably poison or some shit, or...I don't know. Drugged." She looks away, considering. "Do you think there's anyone dumb enough to try it?"

She doesn't say that if they're stuck here long enough, they'll all be dumb enough. She's eaten some pretty questionable things herself, after all, because when you get hungry enough you'll eat anything you can to keep yourself alive.

Food was sacred to people like Raylan simply because he didn't grow up with much and looking back on it, he wasn't sure how his mother managed to put food on the table some months. Not many of Arlo's Grand Scheme actually worked out but his mother was resourceful.

"You'd think but I know sour milk when I smell it and I didn't, and that's weird." Super weird. "I don't know," he admitted with a laugh. "But after a certain amount of time, I become that person so if no one else steps up.." He would. "No one will miss me when I'm gone anyway."

"How much of this place have you covered?"

She laughs a little when he does, because of that attitude. "Uh huh. Well, don't ask me to clean you up after you barf, then," she says, dry but amused. She can appreciate humour about the dark shit. That's one of the only ways you make it through, in her opinion.

At his question, she shrugs. "Couple houses before I gave up and said fuck it. There might be some stuff, but there's still no weapons. No animals. No sign of whatever happened to whoever used to live here." No infection, she doesn't say, because he's not sure he even believes it's real, which is...a mindfuck on its own.

"I came here before, obviously. Copied the symbols. But it's weird, because that big black one, it's like...there's something about it, you know? Sounds pretty lame out loud." But she can't help feeling like there really is something to it, if only they could make sense of it.

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test drive — autumn

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