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TDM I: The Silent Towns

OPEN SPACE: TEST DRIVE MEME #1

welcome.
This is the first test drive meme for

openspace! We hope to be a plot-driven, space-fantasy, pan-fandom game, with a day-to-day focus on player-run plots and a metaplot about the nature of creative energy.

arrival.
You appear in a city square. The buildings around you are retro-futuristic, all chrome and curves. The dust beneath your feet is red, the sky is pink and dotted with pastel clouds, the sun is slightly smaller than normal, and two misshapen moons hang low in the sky. The air is breathable, the weather temperate.

A moment later, there’s a strange sensation, like a pair of warm, slender arms settling over your shoulders in a draping hug. If you try to turn and look for the source of those arms, however, you'll find that you're momentarily unable to move.

"I have five stories for you to tell. Finish them all, and I’ll grant you a wish."
It sounds like a voice whispering in your ear, but it's still impossible to turn and look. A beat after that, you know what your five tasks are, even though some of them may sound preposterous. The warm arms on your shoulder vanish, and you can move again. And you’ll notice, for the first time, that there are other people in the square with you: other new arrivals.

So, will you do as you’re told, or find your own way?

tasks.
Choose five tasks from this list for your character. (Or RNG, if you prefer.) These are the tasks your character was assigned by the unseen voice. Characters know which tasks they have, but no one has the complete list of tasks, and no one will know what tasks anyone else has unless a character chooses to share. It’s up to your character whether they complete their tasks by charm, bribery, trickery, force, wit, or a mix of all of these. Or whether they ignore them entirely.

The overall goal of the tasks is just to prompt both cooperative and hostile interaction, like icebreaker bingo meets capture the flag meets Lord of the Flies. There will be no IC reward for completing any of the tasks-- though characters are free to assume that there is (the aforementioned "wish"). However there is an OOC a reward for participation. More on that below. The tasks are as follows:

1. Save the princess
2. Restore the rightful heir to the throne
3. Make a person with brown eyes ruler of the city
4. Make a person with green eyes ruler of the city
5. Make yourself ruler of the city
6. Become the first person to drink from the Holy Grail
7. Cast the Holy Grail into the fires of volcano before anyone can drink from it
8. Destroy the Dark Lord
9. Destroy the superweapon
10. Make peace between unlike peoples
11. Make a sacrifice and commit a betrayal
12. Protect books
13. Solve the mystery of the empty city
14. Shake hands with everyone born in February
15. Kiss two people with black hair
16. Prevent public displays of affection
17. Become the world’s greatest idol
18. Throw the Holy Grail through a basketball hoop
19. Throw the rightful heir to the throne through a basketball hoop
20. Throw a basketball into the volcano

setting.
As your character tries to fulfill tasks or thwart others (or do nothing...) they may end up exploring. Here’s what they’ll find.

The City, Generally
Most of the city resembles an idyllic 1960s urban center, though all done in curving chrome and brilliant bubbling glass. Oh, and it’s abandoned. There aren’t even any animals. The streets are deserted, and every interior surface is covered in a thick veil of red dust. There’s no evidence of a disaster, or a hurried evacuation, or even an instant disappearance. Clothes are hung, beds are made, dishes are stacked away. Really, it looks as though everyone tidied up, went on vacation en masse, and never came back.

The city is bisected east to west by a large, placid canal spanned by several elegantly arching bridges. The city is densely built, but the local parks have started to overgrow their bounds, so the city is dotted with masses of red-tinged, unkempt vegetation. It must be summer or fall here, because the bushes and trees are heavy with edible fruits.

The Palace
At the north of the city is a palace, a graceful, shining cluster of four minarets. The palace had a low wall, once, but the wall has been swallowed up by an enormous bramble, with thorns as long as an arm and roses the same rusty color as the sky. The palace grounds are overgrown, but thankfully less thorny. The minarets are filled with the usual palace things: kitchens and ballrooms, stables and treasure rooms, bedrooms and war rooms. The library is filled with books in a language that no one will be able to read; the armories are stocked with everything from swords to crossbows to revolvers to rayguns, though, mysteriously, nothing more technologically advanced than modern-day technology is functioning, and none of the futuristic technology can be rehabilitated. The largest room, located in the northernmost minaret, is the throne room, a great arching room that draws the eye to the red-gold throne. The throne is empty, of course.

The Temple
To the very south of the city is the temple, a red-stone pyramid whose rustic materials and sharp lines stand in sharp contrast to the chrome-and-curves of the rest of the city. The temple, too, is filled with everything you’d expect from a temple: work spaces, spaces for worship, spaces for rest, even a weapons cache almost as well-stocked and diverse as the palace’s – although again, anything more futuristic than modern-day technology is dead and cannot be repaired. Parts of the temple are opulently decorated with gold and jewels, others are spartan. In a humble room at the very top of the pyramid is a single wooden altar, upon which rests a simple wooden chalice.

Outside the City Walls
Several miles east of the city lies a smoking volcano, belching a slender but constant ribbon of soot into the pink sky. The land to the north, east, and south of the city is reddish-brown. Most of it looks like it was farmland once; there are picket fences and empty farmhouses and barns, mostly clustered around the banks of the canal. But the fields and orchards are overgrown now, and the dirt roads are being overtaken by restless vegetation. It will go on forever like this, no matter how far you walk or run or fly. To the west, the canal flows into a salty indigo sea that stretches as far as you can see (or swim, or sail, if you manage to build a boat. It’s big).

power nerfing.
The arrival power nerfing is in place for all characters: all magical abilities are nerfed; any being larger than 20 meters is scaled down to 20 meters; the magical component of any magical weaponry is nerfed; any technology more advanced than 2015/2016 technology is nerfed. (Powers can be regained and weapons repowered in game! But for now, nerfed.)

have fun!
Reserves open on December 18 and applications open December 23rd (for reserved characters) and December 24th (for unreserved characters). We hope you'll come back to apply!

Additionally, because of the game’s meta-premise, your characters will not remember this TDM when they arrive in the game. They may remember it several months into the game as part of a planned event, if you choose. However, you can convert activity in the TDM into "solar quartz," which allows characters to gain or regain abilities in-game. For every 500 words written by you or 15 comments posted by you, your character will receive one piece of quartz upon arrival in the game. (Maximum trade-in, three pieces per character.)

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[ Yes good, kill the Jedi while she's distracted looking for a basketball hoop.

She purses her lips thoughtfully, as though thinking about cups and hoops rather than murder, then nods. ]

So long as no one drinks from it before I destroy it.

I think I can manage that.

You help me look for a basketball hoop, and I'll fend off any wayward would-be drinkers. Sound good?

[ Ugh. Working with a Jedi -- even pretending to work with a Jedi -- again? How is it that Vestara can't shake these people off? Still, a short period of cooperation will let Ves pump this girl for information on the rest of the Jedi in the area... ]

Good, [ she says, the bright confidence in her voice betraying none of the it's murder-scheming o'clock of her inner narrative, ] though I can't say I know what I'm looking for.

[Ahsoka shrugs and then drops down to Ves's level from where she was standing with the cup in one smooth movement.]

Beats me. Vaguely hoop-shaped objects?

It sounds like some kind of sport.

[ It's stupid, but she's relieved that the Jedi doesn't know, either. That means it's not one of those things Ves doesn't know just because she grew up in isolation on Kesh. ]

If it's a sport, there should be a stadium for it. Did you see anything like that on your way over here?

[ Be appropriately helpful, be appropriately helpful, be appropriately helpful... ]

Hmmm. [She thinks about it, trying to scan through her memory of the things she passed on the way here.]

Maybe. Well, there's only one way to find out. Either way, we should move out of here before someone else comes along. The last thing we need is a free-for-all.

[ She doesn't need to tell Vestara that, not when Ves recently escaped a Jedi assault. ]

Right.

[ Oh, camaraderie. She needs to build camaraderie. She can't use her real name with a Jedi -- probably not her Savara alias either, after the disaster at Base Prime. ]

I'm Muura, [ she offers, her half-smile broadening into a real one. It's her old maid's name, and she's quite confident that it's not in any widespread Jedi dossier on her. ] And you?

[Ahsoka returns the smile genuinely.]

It's good to meet you, Muura. I'm Ahsoka. Ahsoka Tano.

[She might not have the Force to assist her here, but she's still nimble and fit as all get out, so she starts making her way descending down the levels of the Temple with agile ease. Then she throws a look over one shoulder to check if "Muura" is keeping up.]

Do you have any other quests? Maybe we can help each other out. [Really, this is going MUCH better than her last encounter.]

[ She wrinkles her nose in genuine distaste, letting some of her real irritation into her voice. ]

Four more. I'm more worried about getting out of here -- unless completing all five is the only way to get out of here.

[ It had better not be the only way to get out of here. How the hell do you complete "protect books"? That could go on forever. ]

Surely not. It just said we'd get a wish, right?

Whatever "a wish" means, anyway. Talk about your vague instructions.

[ Well, good to know they heard the same thing about wishes. If the Jedi is throwing this "grail" into a hoop and Vestara is throwing it into a volcano, that means that people have different tasks, even if they were given the same incentive. ]

If it can grant wishes, it must be powerful.

[ Force-powerful, Abeloth-powerful, maybe just money-powerful. The Qrephs could grant plenty of wishes with only credits and mad science. Then she shakes her head and smiles again, a little, almost teasing smile. ]

Or it could just be lying.

Something about this place is powerful, that's for sure. I've never been anywhere I couldn't use the Force at all before.

The Force? You're a Jedi?

[ She funnels some of her earlier genuine surprise into it. She's a talented actress, especially when she uses her real emotions to back it up... and especially when no one can read her feelings.

Of course, her ability to lie is limited by her worldview. The absolute safest route would be to deny knowing what the Force is... but Vestara doesn't know about worlds where people don't know at least a little about Jedi and the Force. And so, she's damned herself by revealing that she comes from the same or a similar universe as Ahsoka. ]

[Ahsoka also hasn't heard of a place where the Force and the Jedi aren't known, so the question doesn't strike her as anything out of the ordinary.]

That's right. Well, padawan learner, technically.

[ Technically doesn't matter: what matters to Vestara are I could probably kill this girl and I bet her master is around here somewhere. It's concern about the latter that's keeping Vestara playing nice. It would be difficult if that master walked in on Vestara sticking a parang in his apprentice's back... ]

No wonder you got up here so fast. Stuff like this must be second nature for you.

Well, sort of. It's harder without the Force. This planet is giving me the creeps.

[ Ves too, though she can't mention it without blowing her cover. ]

"Without the Force"? A planet can do that?

Beats me. It's like we've entered some kind of... freaky alternate dimension.

[ The closest Vestara has come to an alternate dimension, the Base Prime Monolith, was the opposite of that -- it was so imbued with the Force that it could give non-Force users the ability to use the Force. Well, at the expense of their sanity. So she supposes it's possible to have a world without the Force... and hopes that it won't rob her ability to touch the Force long term. ]

That shouldn't be possible, unless both of us flew down a black hole without noticing.

Stranger things have happened.

Maybe to Jedi, [ she says dryly. ] Tell me, do the "stranger things" every end with people getting back in one piece?

[ She either doesn't notice or chooses not to notice the dry skepticism in Ves's remark. At any rate, she remains unruffled. ]

Usually. ... Don't worry, Muura. My master's not far from here, and he's he best Jedi there is. You're in good hands, I promise.

[ There it is, the confirmation she's been afraid of. Her lips thin reflexively; she masks the gesture by turning it into a small sigh and then throwing Ahsoka a smile, relying on the scar at the corner of her mouth to make the expression look more rakish and care-free than she's actually feeling. ]

I thought you looked a little young to be travelling on your own.

[ It's offered in the good-naturedly ribbing tone of an older teen to a younger teen, with just enough teasing to stop it from seeming too saccharine. This girl is a Jedi, after all. Jedi can't go five minutes without teasing each other. ]

Wow. I'm old enough, thank you.

I'd say "old enough to get lost," but... [ She looks down at herself as though to say but hey, look at me, shrugs self-deprecatingly and throws Ahsoka another small, crooked smile.

Honestly, Ahsoka is probably about the same age Vestara was when Vestara inadvertently wound up on her first solo mission on Dathomir, which is one of the reasons that Vestara's ribbing is so gentle. Well, that and because the ribbing is calculated to endear in the classic Jedi heckling fashion. ]

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resnipstance - 2015-12-11 13:09 (UTC) - Expand

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