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]

"Seattle?" Well, either one or both of them are far from home.

"Well hold on now." Doc also rises to his feet and glances over at the sliver of fog curling up from under the door.

"We shall look for your friends, once the weather improves. I promise, I will help you find them if they are here. Until then, perhaps you should get some rest first?"

[enduresurvive]

Ellie is looking off at the wall or something, but she swings back to look at him. The way he says Seattle like it's shocking. You know, she definitely hates this place. That's not Henry's fault, but she fucking hates it.

"Where did you come from? Obviously not Seattle." Honestly, he seems like he might have walked out of some western flick or something. She's seen a few of those. But that would be bonkers.

"Listen, could you rest in a place like this? Because I sure can't." It doesn't help that she barely sleeps anyway. And the past few days have been particularly stressful. Seattle is a nightmare, one she couldn't have even imagined.

[thering]

"Oh about seven hundred miles away. Small town called Purgatory." He doesn't expect her to have heard of it.

"Not if I was alone, I probably couldn't. But you are not alone ma'am." He approaches her and breathes out a quiet sigh. "You won't find anything but misery out there right now and there's no sense pacing and fretting. You'll have a lot sharper eyes once you've rested."

[enduresurvive]

"Wait, do you know where we are here, then?" Ellie asks. She has no idea what state this is or anything, after all. It's not like they gave her a map. Maybe Henry recognises some of the landscape or something. Who knows?

She scoffs a laugh at the name, though. "Purgatory? Sounds like a condition and not a place."

She's still tense but she doesn't back away from him or anything. He seems like he's probably not about to turn on her. Probably. She'll be ready if he does, sure, but maybe he really is actually that polite? She can't imagine how someone like him exists. Even the nicest people she knows are cynical about some things, jaded about others. Her world isn't a great place, to say the least.

"You can just call me Ellie, you know. It feels weird being called ma'am, y'know?" Most people have given up on that kind of formality in her time and place. A lot of those old social norms just don't matter when literally everyone still alive is trying to make sure they stay that way for as long as possible.

"But I just woke up a few hours ago anyway. Figure however long I was out for was long enough. Meantime, we could check upstairs like you said, though? I didn't find much down here, really. Few matches. Set of batteries, fat lot of good that does me." She doesn't have anything to put batteries in, and who knows if the batteries themselves are even still good?

[thering]

"Sorry but I do not. None of this looks familiar." He meant he was taken from a place located 700 miles away from Seattle, so. Either someone's gone to great lengths to pick them up and plop them here or someone's moved Seattle while he wasn't looking. To be fair, there was a lot of tequila involved in last night's little binge. He's not as certain about his grasp of reality as she is about hers.

"Let's venture upstairs then, Ellie." The matches and batteries are plenty useful enough, but good things come in threes, or so they say. He treads warily down the corridor towards the stairs. The floorboards creak under his weight but so far, so empty. He would have assumed that if someone, or something was upstairs, they would have ventured down to investigate the two noisy people by now, but. It's never safe to assume.

[enduresurvive]

She settles a little again, nods. Of course not. No one knows where this is. It might as well not exist. There aren't any clues for where they are. The northwest had been so...hot. Steamy. Kind of like she'd imagine a jungle. Much different from the mountain forests of Wyoming, or even the Appalachian forests they'd passed through. This doesn't look like any of that.

She follows a couple feet behind him, far enough that she's not up in his space (for both their sakes, really), but close enough that they're not likely to get pulled too far apart (also for both their sakes). She still half-expects the telltale signs of the infection, bits of the fungus somewhere, on or in the walls, that weird musty smell that comes with it. The only thing covering the walls here, though, is dust. There's so sign of anything else. That's a lot creepier to her than the infection, of course. She grew up with that just a part of life. This complete desertion? Freaky.

She's not expecting any sort of inhabitants, though. Surely if anyone was still here, they'd have made their presence known by now. There's not even animals, though. No rats or squirrels or little mice. Everything is just...gone.

"This place gives me the creeps," she says, more to the air than to Henry himself.

Once upstairs, there's a lot more nothing. There are two bedrooms. There's one of those pull rope things that leads to the attic, presumably, but she thinks fuck that the second she sees it. Whatever might be in that attic can just stay there, as far as she's concerned.

"You wanna take that one, I'll check this one?" she asks, pointing down the hall to the bedroom at the far end.

[thering]

"That it does," he agrees quietly as he sticks his head around the stairs before ascending it. Just because there's no little feet scurrying or any other noises doesn't mean he feels he can relax. Can't trust an old abandoned place until he can spot at least two dead rotting rodents in the corner and old abandoned cobwebs with morsels of devoured insects dangling off the thin, stringy balls of fluff.

Doc uses the tip of his shoe to push the first bedroom door sitting slightly ajar fully open. There's some bedding they could repurpose, at a glance, maybe take down the curtain if it's required, but it's otherwise quite ascetic and barren. Certainly no sign of life.

"Sure thing lil' darling," he says with a warm smile and an air of confidence once he lays eyes on that rope that betrays his own anxiety about potentially crawling into a small, dark space all by himself. If it's just as empty as the rest of the house, he has nothing to fear. And he'll keep the door hanging open so it should be fine, right?

He gives it a firm tug and the door comes open with a loud bang, the stairs nearly unfolding on top of him. He just about catches it in time to set it down gently, but it's definitely going to leave a bruise on his arm.

"Oop- my apologies," he mutters before testing the sturdiness of the first few steps. Nothing came scurrying out despite the commotion, so that should be a good sign. He keeps one hand on the higher rungs of the steps and the other in his empty gun holster, a bit of an empty comfort for himself if nothing else, and makes his way up into the unknown, one creaking step at a time.

He's just given himself a heart attack so whatever's waiting for him should be somewhat tamer. At least he hopes. His hand goes to keep his hat down as his head sticks up above the floor level of the attic. There's some boxes within arm's reach, old as anything to the point where the cardboard corners have withered away, but they look to be storing items belonging to a personal collection so Doc isn't about to start rifling through them. He squints into the darkness but other than making out shapes of large objects that are blacker than the ambient black, he can't see much beyond that.

And yeah, Doc's just going to take a pass on going all the way up and crawling around up there. Doesn't look like there's anything to be gained, anyway.

Heading back down, he folds the stairs back up and pushes the attic door closed. This time he's figured out the mechanism, so there's no awkward loud bang.

"Just some old furniture, personal effects, and I do believe there was a plastic tree lying on its side," he reports to the young lady. Why there was a plastic tree is anyone's guess. He's been trapped at the bottom of a well for the past 130-odd years - he missed quite a few holiday traditions, cultural changes and technological advances.

[enduresurvive]

Ellie moves away to the other bedroom. She feels herself reach for a gun she doesn't have, just out of habit. She scolds herself, feeling dumb about it, but it's not like there's anyone to see, with Henry poking into the other room. This room is the master bedroom, and there's a bathroom, but there's really nothing in it. Some towels. Empty pill bottles. Some bandages, which could be useful. She grabs those and the half-full bottle of antiseptic. Could be a worse haul, maybe, but could be better, too.

She left her bag downstairs, forgotten in the weirdness of the fog. That's something else she should probably scold herself about, but she doesn't. She doesn't have anything in that bag worth stealing now, with all her weapons gone. And it's quiet enough they'd have heard if someone else came into the house.

The bang of the attic ladder has her rushing back into the hallway, ready to fight or run, whatever. She wouldn't leave Henry to get hurt by something if she could help. Her heart pounds in her throat, because she can't stand the thought of being too late to help. That's a hard thought, pulls at her memory, threatens to suck her under.

In the hallway, Henry's just going up the ladder. Nothing is wrong. Nothing is wrong. That doesn't really calm her down, but it lets her recover from the threatening flashback.

She draws her arms in around herself - a bit awkward with the bandages and bottle of peroxide or whatever it is - and waits, still tense and ready to run. She's lived her life like that, on high alert. They got more complacent in Jackson, but that's over now. She's not sure she'll ever feel safe or complacent again. Maybe that's a good thing, considering how stupidly fucking dangerous the whole world is. This place hasn't been dangerous yet, but she figures they just haven't found the active danger yet.

"Plastic tree?" she asks, a little confused. She hasn't seen a fake Christmas tree, or at least hasn't recognised one as such. They do have Christmas in Jackson, but they have enough real trees to go around. "Weird."

She forces herself to physically unwind enough to show him what she found in the bathroom.

"Other than this, there's nothing. I mean, looks like the towels and bedding are all okay. Useable. What the fuck happened to the people in this town?" It's rhetorical, of course, but she's frustrated by it. At least if they had bodies, they'd have something to go on.

[thering]

Well, he doesn't know about her, but he's kind of relieved that they haven't really found much beyond a few useful items. His eyes dart around her haul and he gives her a few nods. Hopefully they'll be able to scavenge a bag to put everything in, unless there's space in hers.

"Whatever happened, I do not think they will be returning anytime soon." This place is as good as any, if not better, to bunker down for a while until the weather clears up and they figure out their next move. Of course, he's not planning on a long term stay, and they'll need to find food and other people. But he wasn't planning on coming here either, so. One step at a time.

"I think it is safe to say that we are fine to stay here a little while. Just-" He raises his hands with his palms facing her in case she thinks to protest. "Until the fog rolls away."

[enduresurvive]

"Yeah, me either," she agrees. "I mean, they're probably dead." It's a bit blunt, definitely, but why beat around the bush about it? Even without bodies, it seems unlikely to her that this whole town just up and left. Something happened to them. She's sure of it.

She considers his words and doesn't protest for now. "Well, I think we can't really go anywhere in that fog anyway. There might be other people out there but...there might be something dangerous, too." She can't help but consider how fog in the Wyoming mountains obscures Infected hiding in it. This kind of impenetrable fog can be deadly. Even without any sign of Infected, she's not taking chances, especially without weapons.

"Let's go back downstairs, I guess," she says, going back to the stairs. She can fetch her bag once they get down there.

[thering]

"Mm." Can't say for sure? But no evidence pointing to the possibility that anyone who used to live here is still alive, either. For all intents and purposes it's just an abandoned house.

"Best not to dwell too much on theories we cannot confirm, I think," he suggests. He lets her take the lead heading back downstairs, though he's sticking close in case anyone or anything else has decided to pay them a visit while they were poking around upstairs, ready to jump ahead at a moment's notice. Not that he doesn't trust her to defend herself, but she does have her hands full with supplies they had looted.

"You uh..." As they get to the bottom of the stairs, Doc regards her carefully with a tilt of his head. "You come across death quite often?" It's just that, most people would have assumed something else. Maybe a town evacuation, impending fire or something like that.