Welcome to Ryslig's test drive meme! If you're considering apping here, this is where you can try your characters out in the game's setting. A few things to note:
Lots of people have asked good questions on the FAQ, so do take a look.
You can only app ONE character per round so choose wisely.
Test drive meme threads can be used for your roleplay sample!
Sample scenarios:
SCENARIO ONE: You've just been released from the hospital in Vandare and no one really seems to know what to do with you. The locals offer polite advice but don't seem to want to spend a lot of time with you. You and the other new arrivals stick out like sore thumbs, so perhaps one will spot you wandering about town.
SCENARIO TWO: You've become hopelessly lost in Lager Woods. Paths don't seem to lead where you remember them leading, and you feel as if you're going around in circles. Childlike giggling can be heard from no direction in particular. Suddenly, you stumble upon another character, who seems to be just as lost as you! Perhaps you can find a way out together.
SCENARIO THREE: The time has come and you've found yourself becoming a monster. Is the change instant, or gradual? Are you familiar enough with monsters to know what's happening, or is it a complete shock? NOTE: Feel free to pick any monster type for this prompt, but note that you may not get the same one in game.
"Months, probably," he says, shifting where he sits. "I didn't start tracking right away. "Long enough to make the lack of answers infuriating..." A sigh, folding his arms over his knees.
"So far, there's no good reason why people wash up here – except that they always wash up. I'd been on a boat beforehand, so it wasn't that strange for me, I guess. But people who were nowhere near the water wound up in the same way. Up at that port town. And apparently everyone changes, one way or another...and not in the exact same ways."
His expression clouds over, getting that murky, oh-no-here's-something-miserable look he's apt to get. "Some told me they start fighting new instincts. Aggression and violence...Some have been killing people outright, worse than animals. And those ones say it's inevitable. But I don't know."
He's been fervently refusing to accept it. But now that Lina's here, and the potential to kill someone he knows and cares about? He swallows down on a thick knot of dread in his throat.
"So I guess," he's trying to stay monotone, "I guess that means we're not going to have a lot of time to work on this together before I become some kind of raving monster."
She listens. Lina's good at that, she's good at listening. When the time calls for it, that is. Sometimes, when someone's droning on, she has a tendency to tune it out after a little while, especially if it's something she's heard before. Zelgadis being depressing and self-hating and calling himself a monster? Please remove her name and mailing address from the repeated greatest hits collection.
She casually puts her fist against the side of his head -- nothing rough, just enough to nudge him a little. God, she's going to have to get used to him not being solid rock. Jeez, she might actually hurt the guy if she's not careful. She never worries about Gourry, he's a tough guy, he can take it. But Zel? Zel started really fighting only after he got that tough skin from Rezo as far as she knew; she's not sure he knows how to take hits with a fleshy squishy body.
"You're not going to become a monster, Zel. I told you, I'm going to find a way to help."
Is she done giving pep talks? Who knows. Usually when Amelia and Gourry are with them, she can give a starter lead-in and the other two can take the rest. She's never had to cheer Zelgadis up herself.
Without much resistance, Zel's head – and most of his upper body – is pushed to lean at a side while he still wears that perplexed look on his face.
"And I told you," starting to frown, pushing her hand away. "You don't know what you're in for. Nobody really does, and that's the problem. Our best bet at this point is hunting down one of the people that's completely changed, but they're probably out of their minds and feral at this rate, if this is how it goes down. Where, exactly, do you intend to even start?"
Really, it makes sense to her. Zelgadis has only talked about talking to the others like them about these changes, and if the ones that have been here long enough to know really are feral monsters...
"They're scared of everyone pulled from the water for a reason. So they must have a better idea of what's going on. I'll take anything, facts, books, superstitions. Whatever we can get our hands on, our locals are the best bet."
He gives her a Look. A what do you take me for– an amateur? look. Did she think he just spent his days wallowing in self-pity and despair?
Please. He only spent about half of those days wallowing in self-pity and despair. He's a multitasker.
"Based on the locals," of whom he's spoken to, thanks (actually, just heard about being spoken to second-hand, but. but still), "this is unprecedented. And the local lore has next to nothing about anything people are starting to morph into."
Ouch. Touchy, Zel. Lina's just making sure he covered all his bases, that's all! No need to give her that look (which sadly is not as threatening in his current not-statue state). But color her curious. Her tone evens out, genuine interest piquing in favor of what she'd consider to be banter.
"...Just what are they morphing into exactly? Or have you not seen any of them?"
Out of impulse, his eyes drop down to a hand still settled on his forearm. Even in this dark, he can still make out the details. "I can't get too far away from water anymore, so I guess I'm going to wind up something aquatic...but others I know look more like Mazoku in ways. Or trolls. It's a mix of a lot of things."
Like chimera, he guesses. But if he says that aloud he's probably going to get for-real punched.
"Aaaah, so that explains these," she grins and reaches over, pinching at just the edge of one of his face scales. Not enough to pull, just to feel it. Personal space? Never met Lina Inverse.
"And I'm guessing there's no obvious rhyme or reason, but surely there's some purpose for it." Surely there's a method for who's turning into what. And if she can find the pattern, then maybe she could stop it happening to herself...
Her eyes focused on the moon's reflection of the lake's surface, narrowed as she thought. A habit she picked up over the last few years, keeping the more difficult-to-verbalize ideas and thought processes to herself; it usually goes over Gourry's head. Things that the poor guy didn't need in his head even though sometimes talking at him helped her talk her way around a problem too.
Everything in a world makes sense. Everything has some reason behind its force. Lina just has to find how this world works and make the rules do what she wants.
"Gyih–!" What the heck does she think she's doing?! Zel flinches from the touching, his hands clutching at portions of his hood and fighting instinct to pull it up outright.
And, of course, she's already zoned off in her own little world before he can protest. He can only hold onto his flared-up agitation for so long before it's just a useless burden and it's huffed out in a breath, his shoulders relaxing again. Honestly, though...she needs to respect boundaries! Especially now; she got away with roughhousing with him before, but now would be particularly unpleasant. She'd wind up choking him–
–or he would. It'd be a bit too easy, come to think; even without the brute force his old body had, he's still stronger than her. Just get one hand around her neck and push her under the water and–
"–!!" He startles out of that morbid train of thought, instantly filled with dread and disgust. It's enough to push him quickly to his feet and stand there, lost for a minute, before finding some excuse to be moving at all.
"I'm. I'll go get...fire started." Fire. Yeah. Yeah...it's dark. It makes sense. She can't see in the dark anyway.
The noise didn't bother her much, still too deep in thought. It's the standing up part that got Lina's attention, feeling him shift so suddenly and rising above her.
"Oh-- Right..."
She didn't notice at first, the adrenaline of being pulled here, the anger at not having magic, the reunion with her friend, but it is cold. Her hair was finally starting to dry out from being fished out of the water too. A fire would help.
Still... She watches Zelgadis step away to do that (at least as much as she can in the dark). Come to think of it, it really has been a long time since it was just them. Not in a, 'okay every body split up!' battle plan. But in the 'it's just you and me stuck here'. Her lips quirked into a smile; Zel really has changed since then but not completely it looks like.
That...came out a bit too fast and abrupt, but there's no fixing it now. Flustered, he stomps off in a hurry, ducking branches and nearly tripping over roots in his haste. Actually, the head trauma's almost a welcome notion at this point; he feels very cluttered up there, clogged with a flurry of unpleasant and half-baked ideas and accusations.
Really...the temptation to smash his head against a tree trunk gets a little hard to resist at points.
Fix this, she says. No problem. Sure. Right. No. No way. Not when practically everyone ever keeps telling him he should be bracing himself for turning into some soulless...thing! Like the girl he saw dragging the drowned body out by her...whatevers. Tentacles. Gods. Gross. And she said it's what everyone was going to be like? Him, too?
Dammit. Dammit, dammit...He really did catch himself thinking of doing the worst to Lina, didn't he? He sure as hell did. Gods. Was that just...paranoia flaring up? His mind trying to really insist that she was wrong, that he's done for? Or is he really–?
And what if it's not just Lina? Gods, if Amelia suddenly appeared, he'd...
"Dammit!" Dammit, dammit! Shut up about it! He can feel himself panicking, his chest too tight for easy breaths and head swirling too much for straight thinking. He digs his fingers into his hair, curling and clawing at his scalp, trying to scrape the thoughts out. Even if this is the case, he can't let himself lose it! Otherwise, Lina's going to wind up being out here on her own against who knows what else...He can't just abandon her! If she had her magic that'd be a different story. But.
"Dammit..."
He doesn't know the right thing to do. Deferring to Lina seems...seems wrong, despite his need for her confidence. But what's he going to do? Really?
He's not going to win, one way or the other. That's kind of how the universe works, even in a place like this. Cured one minute, a slow transformation into...something the next. Alone on a peninsula full of nutcases at one turn, then Lina. It figures, doesn't it? Thinking about it that way, it's almost funny; too bad any attempt to scoff or laugh it off just comes out as a bitter grunt or cough.
Most of this gets worked out of his system before he returns with his armful of kindling, mutely preparing the pit and fire, keeping all his attention on just that. Anything more and he's likely to go spiraling back down that maddening drain.
It's good. It's fine. See? No problem getting an easy flame going.
Lina is never one to have idle hands. She digs through one of the pockets in her cape and pulls out ink, pen, and scraps of paper, some as small as her hand, some a normal letter size, but she keeps two large, folded pieces specifically for situations like this. Being somewhere lost and needing to start making a map. She can't do much in the dark, but she gets some heavier rocks and sets the four corners down on the flattest bit of clearing she can find and starts drawing out the current location: pond.
When that doesn't fill up all the time before her friend comes back, she grabs another sheet and starts mapping out star patterns she can see through the opening in the trees. Zelgadis had said they were different than home, so she needs to memorize these. Memorize the position if she ever wanders off and needs to find this place again (at least, judging by how fast they got here and the bag nearby, this must be where he's been camping out).
She takes one of the smaller pieces and starts writing out the information she's confirmed between the locals, the other water-arrived she met along the way, and Zelgadis. So far what matches up are: there are worshippers of a fog god, the fog is bad, water-arrived people turn into monsters. She'll have to find out from Zel where any sort of library or school is so she can do some research. More things to do later. She carefully tucks that paper away.
She's back to studying the star map against the beginnings of an actual map when she hears footsteps and gets her pen ready to use as a small knife (anything can be a weapon if you try hard enough). But then sees the familiar sway of a depressed walk and sighs. But she's smiling.
After more than a beat, Zel grunts vaguely, only barely acknowledging the remark. He's not doing anything until this bit of fire feeds itself on its own, and even then? What's he going to do? Think about things? Thinking's not going so great tonight, so...
With flames as kind of a barrier between himself and Lina, he looks up, mouth screwed up in a frown.
"It's half a day in two directions back to a city," he says, squinting. How long has she been wandering, anyway? "South and northeast. The other ways are just to the coastline. There's islands up that way, but...nothing you want to head out to right away."
At the initial silence, she's worried. He was gone for longer than he really should have been for all intents and purposes and then came back this quiet? He probably got caught up in his thoughts and couldn't bring himself back fast enough.
But then he does speak and it's not at all anything to do with what she said. So dodging the topic. She can work with that.
"What are the towns like?" She's content to wait to add more to her map until morning. For now, she works on getting her shoulder armor off and folding her cape into a makeshift pillow and lays back against it. This'll have to do for now, no problem roughing it either.
"Kind of a mixed bag," he replies, jabbing at the fire with a stick to kick up the flames. "They're kind of hapless and backwards without magic in some ways, but the technology here's trying to compensate. Some of the transportation is really weird, too...I'm not sure what the big factors are into one place being the way it is versus the other. Haven't spent enough time between the biggest two."
No; he's been busy fighting for his life in underground labyrinths and trying to decode ancient languages on ruins and...y'know. Turning into a whatever.
"Both Vandare and Bavan have libraries, but I haven't uncovered anything that really sheds much light on the situation outside of folktales that...sometimes line up, telling to telling. But not always." Such is the way with the oldest tales. But all strong stories have some seed of truth in them, otherwise they'd not be told at all.
"Taking my findings from some ruins up north from place to place to find some way to decode the language..." He sighs. "That's what I've been trying to do."
Lina gives a low whistle, still not looking at him. He seemed to want to distance himself so she'd let him. For now.
"Been busy then. Maybe I can help make the work go a little faster if we work together. Maybe I can see something different."
That's what usually happens for her. She thinks she has a problem almost worked out except for that one little thing, and then Gourry or Zel or Amelia comes along and makes it seem like the most obvious thing in the world. She wants to help Zelgadis with this, sure. But also really reeeaaally wants to know for herself, wants to stop it from happening to herself if she can.
"Wait. Why hasn't anyone else been helping you with this?" She cranes her neck around to glare at him.
"Did I say I was doing this by myself?" He shoots the look right back at her, his tone deadpanning. He huffs, shaking his head. "No, there's a few people. More than a few, I guess, trying to figure this out. But not everyone is on the same level..." Some are just outright nuts, or borderline.
"One I was working with decided it was better to split up." His look sours. "Said he's worried he's going to want to start murdering me or other people because of whatever he's becoming."
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graveyardsmash2014-11-19 04:36 pm
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"So far, there's no good reason why people wash up here – except that they always wash up. I'd been on a boat beforehand, so it wasn't that strange for me, I guess. But people who were nowhere near the water wound up in the same way. Up at that port town. And apparently everyone changes, one way or another...and not in the exact same ways."
His expression clouds over, getting that murky, oh-no-here's-something-miserable look he's apt to get. "Some told me they start fighting new instincts. Aggression and violence...Some have been killing people outright, worse than animals. And those ones say it's inevitable. But I don't know."
He's been fervently refusing to accept it. But now that Lina's here, and the potential to kill someone he knows and cares about? He swallows down on a thick knot of dread in his throat.
"So I guess," he's trying to stay monotone, "I guess that means we're not going to have a lot of time to work on this together before I become some kind of raving monster."
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She stares at him, completely deadpan.
"Are you done now."
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She casually puts her fist against the side of his head -- nothing rough, just enough to nudge him a little. God, she's going to have to get used to him not being solid rock. Jeez, she might actually hurt the guy if she's not careful. She never worries about Gourry, he's a tough guy, he can take it. But Zel? Zel started really fighting only after he got that tough skin from Rezo as far as she knew; she's not sure he knows how to take hits with a fleshy squishy body.
"You're not going to become a monster, Zel. I told you, I'm going to find a way to help."
Is she done giving pep talks? Who knows. Usually when Amelia and Gourry are with them, she can give a starter lead-in and the other two can take the rest. She's never had to cheer Zelgadis up herself.
Lord what has she gotten into.
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"And I told you," starting to frown, pushing her hand away. "You don't know what you're in for. Nobody really does, and that's the problem. Our best bet at this point is hunting down one of the people that's completely changed, but they're probably out of their minds and feral at this rate, if this is how it goes down. Where, exactly, do you intend to even start?"
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Really, it makes sense to her. Zelgadis has only talked about talking to the others like them about these changes, and if the ones that have been here long enough to know really are feral monsters...
"They're scared of everyone pulled from the water for a reason. So they must have a better idea of what's going on. I'll take anything, facts, books, superstitions. Whatever we can get our hands on, our locals are the best bet."
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Please. He only spent about half of those days wallowing in self-pity and despair. He's a multitasker.
"Based on the locals," of whom he's spoken to, thanks (actually, just heard about being spoken to second-hand, but. but still), "this is unprecedented. And the local lore has next to nothing about anything people are starting to morph into."
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"...Just what are they morphing into exactly? Or have you not seen any of them?"
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Out of impulse, his eyes drop down to a hand still settled on his forearm. Even in this dark, he can still make out the details. "I can't get too far away from water anymore, so I guess I'm going to wind up something aquatic...but others I know look more like Mazoku in ways. Or trolls. It's a mix of a lot of things."
Like chimera, he guesses. But if he says that aloud he's probably going to get for-real punched.
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"And I'm guessing there's no obvious rhyme or reason, but surely there's some purpose for it." Surely there's a method for who's turning into what. And if she can find the pattern, then maybe she could stop it happening to herself...
Her eyes focused on the moon's reflection of the lake's surface, narrowed as she thought. A habit she picked up over the last few years, keeping the more difficult-to-verbalize ideas and thought processes to herself; it usually goes over Gourry's head. Things that the poor guy didn't need in his head even though sometimes talking at him helped her talk her way around a problem too.
Everything in a world makes sense. Everything has some reason behind its force. Lina just has to find how this world works and make the rules do what she wants.
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And, of course, she's already zoned off in her own little world before he can protest. He can only hold onto his flared-up agitation for so long before it's just a useless burden and it's huffed out in a breath, his shoulders relaxing again. Honestly, though...she needs to respect boundaries! Especially now; she got away with roughhousing with him before, but now would be particularly unpleasant. She'd wind up choking him–
–or he would. It'd be a bit too easy, come to think; even without the brute force his old body had, he's still stronger than her. Just get one hand around her neck and push her under the water and–
"–!!" He startles out of that morbid train of thought, instantly filled with dread and disgust. It's enough to push him quickly to his feet and stand there, lost for a minute, before finding some excuse to be moving at all.
"I'm. I'll go get...fire started." Fire. Yeah. Yeah...it's dark. It makes sense. She can't see in the dark anyway.
Yeah.
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"Oh-- Right..."
She didn't notice at first, the adrenaline of being pulled here, the anger at not having magic, the reunion with her friend, but it is cold. Her hair was finally starting to dry out from being fished out of the water too. A fire would help.
Still... She watches Zelgadis step away to do that (at least as much as she can in the dark). Come to think of it, it really has been a long time since it was just them. Not in a, 'okay every body split up!' battle plan. But in the 'it's just you and me stuck here'. Her lips quirked into a smile; Zel really has changed since then but not completely it looks like.
"If you need help, let me know."
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That...came out a bit too fast and abrupt, but there's no fixing it now. Flustered, he stomps off in a hurry, ducking branches and nearly tripping over roots in his haste. Actually, the head trauma's almost a welcome notion at this point; he feels very cluttered up there, clogged with a flurry of unpleasant and half-baked ideas and accusations.
Really...the temptation to smash his head against a tree trunk gets a little hard to resist at points.
Fix this, she says. No problem. Sure. Right. No. No way. Not when practically everyone ever keeps telling him he should be bracing himself for turning into some soulless...thing! Like the girl he saw dragging the drowned body out by her...whatevers. Tentacles. Gods. Gross. And she said it's what everyone was going to be like? Him, too?
Dammit. Dammit, dammit...He really did catch himself thinking of doing the worst to Lina, didn't he? He sure as hell did. Gods. Was that just...paranoia flaring up? His mind trying to really insist that she was wrong, that he's done for? Or is he really–?
And what if it's not just Lina? Gods, if Amelia suddenly appeared, he'd...
"Dammit!" Dammit, dammit! Shut up about it! He can feel himself panicking, his chest too tight for easy breaths and head swirling too much for straight thinking. He digs his fingers into his hair, curling and clawing at his scalp, trying to scrape the thoughts out. Even if this is the case, he can't let himself lose it! Otherwise, Lina's going to wind up being out here on her own against who knows what else...He can't just abandon her! If she had her magic that'd be a different story. But.
"Dammit..."
He doesn't know the right thing to do. Deferring to Lina seems...seems wrong, despite his need for her confidence. But what's he going to do? Really?
He's not going to win, one way or the other. That's kind of how the universe works, even in a place like this. Cured one minute, a slow transformation into...something the next. Alone on a peninsula full of nutcases at one turn, then Lina. It figures, doesn't it? Thinking about it that way, it's almost funny; too bad any attempt to scoff or laugh it off just comes out as a bitter grunt or cough.
Most of this gets worked out of his system before he returns with his armful of kindling, mutely preparing the pit and fire, keeping all his attention on just that. Anything more and he's likely to go spiraling back down that maddening drain.
It's good. It's fine. See? No problem getting an easy flame going.
Gods. He's thirsty.
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Item number one: stay busy.
Lina is never one to have idle hands. She digs through one of the pockets in her cape and pulls out ink, pen, and scraps of paper, some as small as her hand, some a normal letter size, but she keeps two large, folded pieces specifically for situations like this. Being somewhere lost and needing to start making a map. She can't do much in the dark, but she gets some heavier rocks and sets the four corners down on the flattest bit of clearing she can find and starts drawing out the current location: pond.
When that doesn't fill up all the time before her friend comes back, she grabs another sheet and starts mapping out star patterns she can see through the opening in the trees. Zelgadis had said they were different than home, so she needs to memorize these. Memorize the position if she ever wanders off and needs to find this place again (at least, judging by how fast they got here and the bag nearby, this must be where he's been camping out).
She takes one of the smaller pieces and starts writing out the information she's confirmed between the locals, the other water-arrived she met along the way, and Zelgadis. So far what matches up are: there are worshippers of a fog god, the fog is bad, water-arrived people turn into monsters. She'll have to find out from Zel where any sort of library or school is so she can do some research. More things to do later. She carefully tucks that paper away.
She's back to studying the star map against the beginnings of an actual map when she hears footsteps and gets her pen ready to use as a small knife (anything can be a weapon if you try hard enough). But then sees the familiar sway of a depressed walk and sighs. But she's smiling.
"Wondered if you got lost out there."
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With flames as kind of a barrier between himself and Lina, he looks up, mouth screwed up in a frown.
"It's half a day in two directions back to a city," he says, squinting. How long has she been wandering, anyway? "South and northeast. The other ways are just to the coastline. There's islands up that way, but...nothing you want to head out to right away."
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But then he does speak and it's not at all anything to do with what she said. So dodging the topic. She can work with that.
"What are the towns like?" She's content to wait to add more to her map until morning. For now, she works on getting her shoulder armor off and folding her cape into a makeshift pillow and lays back against it. This'll have to do for now, no problem roughing it either.
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No; he's been busy fighting for his life in underground labyrinths and trying to decode ancient languages on ruins and...y'know. Turning into a whatever.
"Both Vandare and Bavan have libraries, but I haven't uncovered anything that really sheds much light on the situation outside of folktales that...sometimes line up, telling to telling. But not always." Such is the way with the oldest tales. But all strong stories have some seed of truth in them, otherwise they'd not be told at all.
"Taking my findings from some ruins up north from place to place to find some way to decode the language..." He sighs. "That's what I've been trying to do."
no subject
"Been busy then. Maybe I can help make the work go a little faster if we work together. Maybe I can see something different."
That's what usually happens for her. She thinks she has a problem almost worked out except for that one little thing, and then Gourry or Zel or Amelia comes along and makes it seem like the most obvious thing in the world. She wants to help Zelgadis with this, sure. But also really reeeaaally wants to know for herself, wants to stop it from happening to herself if she can.
"Wait. Why hasn't anyone else been helping you with this?" She cranes her neck around to glare at him.
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"One I was working with decided it was better to split up." His look sours. "Said he's worried he's going to want to start murdering me or other people because of whatever he's becoming."