The Village Mod (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
villagemod) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
villagememes2020-09-05 09:07 pm
villagemod) wrote in villagememes2020-09-05 09:07 pm
Entry tags:
test drive — autumn
test drive — autumn
nav | logs | ooc | faq
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.
— 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.
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?
OH NO I HAD TWO FAQS OPEN AT ONCE there was a knife here but it's gone now
[ She shrugs, almost jokingly. Something to keep the situation a little lighter than esoteric symbols scribbled about, some discarded. Could be they were some sort of passwords and the ones left behind were previous ones? Would be nice if they could find an explanation written down somewhere, but this isn't Raccoon City. As difficult as it was to traverse it as all hell broke loose, nothing has ever been as direct as that.
People learn from mistakes, whether they're good or bad. If this was abandoned as-is, they were either in an awful rush or they felt anything they left behind wasn't worth it. Whether it be the information was pointless -- wouldn't that be funny? -- or it wasn't enough in their opinion to stitch things together. Often their hubris is enough that it leans toward the latter. ]
No, they don't. The way things are seems abandoned rather than forced out or leaving some kind of... mess behind. With personal items here, I'd reckon that they didn't think it was valuable or there was something wrong with all of it. Stakes rising, you know. [ But she nods faintly, listening to her, adding to what she says rather than fighting against it. A conversation like this can be valuable for figuring things out. ] Have you checked out in the woods? Could be a burial mound or bodies out there. Assuming someone was cleaning up. Not sure if there's a sewer system, but might be worth checking out.
consider that knife forgotten!
[ There's something dark and utterly humourless in Ellie's tone. She can't help it, of course; her own pain is still too close to the top. Nothing she's learned has made her feel differently towards Abby or the WLF.
She listens to Jill talk for a moment, hands fidgeting in her pockets. She has a sense that she can't stay still here in the open. She can be still as anything if she needs to be, sure; she's used to hunting animals, infected, and more recently, actual people. But right now she has too much nervous energy to keep it all in. ]
You can't get very far in the woods without running into that fog. But I was out there a little. There's nothing. There's not even birds or deer or squirrels. Nothing.
[ Maybe there's more out there. Maybe all the animals are just hiding! But it feels creepier than that to Ellie, not that she's about to just admit that aloud to a woman she just met. ]
I hadn't thought about the sewers, but...maybe.
[ All Ellie can think of when she thinks about sewers is dark tunnels crawling with Infected, but...there aren't Infected here, somehow. She's still reeling from the conversation she had with Daisy about alternate realities. She kind of thinks maybe this is some crazy dream, still, but...it sure doesn't feel fake. ]
Did you check anywhere else yet?