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graveyardsmash2022-09-09 09:15 am
ryslighelpers) wrote in graveyardsmash2022-09-09 09:15 am
Entry tags:
TDM: SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER
Welcome to the Ryslig Test Drive Meme! Below are a few prompts to get you started, but you may make up any prompt you desire! Please take a look at the navigation page for rules, setting information, and links to reserves and apps. Have fun!
SCENARIO ONE
(CW: Human remains)
When you awaken, you are hit with an immediate feeling of motion. A bobbing, if you will, or perhaps more of a rocking. You take a deep breath through your nose and take note of salt, along with the pungent scent of rotting wood. Creaking sounds echo all around you. Sitting up, you find yourself locking eyes with a skull.
An entire human skeleton is positioned across from you, resting limply against a pillar. Surveying the rest of your surroundings, you soon realize that you're below deck on an old, dilapidated ship. A ship that's on the move. The crew must have suffered a terrible fate, strewn as they all are across the floor. With their ripped poofy shirts, sheathed cutlasses and jaunty feathered hats, they seem to scream one word at you. "Pirates". ...Ooh, is that an abandoned bottle of rum? And a treasure chest? Surely they won't mind if you help yourself. They're dead, after all!
Once you've ascended the creaky steps, you find yourself on the deck of this vast, once proud vessel. A tattered Jolly Roger flaps overhead. Thick fog obscures most of the ocean surrounding you, but what's that straight ahead? Land ho! The ship's about to make port, and a crowd of curious onlookers has already gathered on the docks to stare up at this spooky new arrival. They appear apprehensive, perhaps even fearful, as if they haven't seen a ship come in for a long time. Will they hold you accountable for what happened to the skeleton crew? Will they praise you for 'ridding' them of pirates and allow you to keep the booty? There's no way to know just yet. Perhaps you'd best hide and find a way to disembark without being seen. Or perhaps there's someone else to be found here on this ship who suffered the same fate; someone who has a better idea of what to do.
SCENARIO TWO
You've stumbled your way into a city, and you're promptly besieged by the overwhelming sights and sounds. Cars honk at you to get out of the street, and strangers try not to look in your direction for too long. They see your lost expression and your clothes- so different from their own- and pretend to busy themselves with something else. Rarely, a look of pity is cast your way.
But some people try to reach out. Enterprising citizens and those that hope to curry favor with the newcomers pass out new clothes and bundles of food, asking if you have a place to stay the night, wondering about the details of the world you came from. A hefty laptop may be handed to you, with words of a ‘network’ used for communication. Wonder what that’s about? Then there’s the very confusing pamphlet stuffed within: "What To Expect When You're Expecting (To Turn Into A Monster)”. They may direct you to an organisation known as the Lighthouse, their members most prominently found at the 38-8 apartments and the Lighthouse Church. Or perhaps, if you're injured, they'll refer you to the Crowe Clinic instead. Unfortunately, the directions you're given are so very complicated that you lose your way in the streets after two left turns, a right and a left at the soup kitchen.
Take care when asking for more help. There are the people who aren't happy to see you at all. Glares and silent, judging stares if you're lucky, torches and pitchforks attempting to drive you out of the town if you're not. You may need a friend to help you.
SCENARIO THREE
Now that you've found a moment of peace, you open up the mysterious device that's been handed to you. Perhaps you'll recognize it as some sort of laptop, albeit an old and clunky one. Or perhaps you'll be astounded by this curious feat of technology, which is unlike anything you've ever seen before. Regardless, the moment the lid is propped open to reveal the screen and the keyboard within, you gain your first glimpse of the network.
Perhaps you'll want to choose a username and write your very first message, posing the pressing question that's on your mind at this very moment. The lettered buttons click and clack awkwardly beneath your fingertips as you type.
However, you may instead want to respond to today's most popular message.
WELCOME TO RSDOS. PRESS F1 TO COMPOSE POST. *** TODAY’S TOP POST *** 018.07.154.55 <JUSTSOMEGUY> Let's play Two Truths, One Lie! It's real easy! You just post three statements about yourself, and the rest of us have to guess the lie. It'll be fun! And you get to be a liar liar without your pants catching fire for a bit. |
SCENARIO FOUR
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? Does it fit you, or does it feel incongruous with your nature? Feel free to pick any monster type for this prompt, but note that you may not get the same one in game.
signs
[For now, at least. This place sits in her throat like a bolus, choking her, people brushing up against her skin and pushing past her even when they're feet or yards away. Crushing. Sometimes she drifts to get away from it. Sometimes she doesn't notice anything.]
[Right now she notices. Even the dim light of a Fog day is painfully bright to her, so much so that she can see every line in the old woman's face, the way her skin wraps around bone, stuck like it's been attached with glue but only haphazardly. Like someone lost interest halfway through.]
[Harrow reaches to pull cheekbones through paper-thin epidermis. Nothing reaches back.]
[This is how it comes to be that the silently standing skull-painted sentinel comes to be staring at this very old, stupid woman. Her eyes are black like a lightless planet. Her gaze is uncomfortable. She is thinking: what's baseball?]
[Eventually, grating:] He came through with the rest of us. You see what you want to see.
no subject
[Like a wave of water splashed over him- Emporio startles, aware of a voice from behind. Like a switch, flipped-
Any warmth that was there in the old woman's voice is gone, melted, evaporated and scattered with the foggy haze surrounding them. Maybe for someone else this could have been someone to trust- maybe not. It's not as if he doesn't know people who change their opinions on a dime like that, but it's still jarring to be the subject of it.]
Oh dear... [There is something cold there.] I see...well...
[Appraising, studying, testing even. An old woman can't hope to take on too much at the best of days even if the monsters yet have the strength of mere humans, but one can almost see the question in her eyes. Do something? Don't do something?]
May the Day shine on you both then... [Is all she murmurs before leaving, and Emporio can only feel a pit in his throat that wants to say You don't mean that..
But of course now, he realizes, he's not alone either. Now he's...well.
...
She's the reason that old woman left. ...So...] Th....thanks, [he manages cautiously, looking back to his unexpected savior with wariness. She has a familiar aura in the way that most people would have in his home- something with weight, something that marks a person in a way a 'normal' life does not.
(It can never precisely be identified in the source. Everyone is different.)
(But it's familiar.)] I....
[...He doesn't really know what to say from here. He has nothing to offer, and nothing to bargain with either.] ...How did you know? [Is what he manages to ask, because part of him has to wonder.]
no subject
[Her brow furrows. Not in anger, but in confusion. Gratitude isn't something she's got much experience with, and it feels like a statement with a trapdoor, a yes, and rather than the end of a statement.]
[She didn't do anything. She doesn't like him looking at her. She wonders if this means she dislikes children. She's never had the opportunity to find out. Is that what this feeling is, like she wants to pull her skeleton out through her own skin — dislike of the species of youth as a whole?]
[The question, at least, is easy to answer.]
I saw you.
[Said as though it should be obvious. She took some pains to remain unseen, but not great ones. If everyone had been watching, they would have seen her — but most of them weren't. No one here watches as much as they should.]
[Except for him, she realizes. He watches very, very closely indeed. And the small hairs at the back of her neck prickle.]
. . . I saw everyone, [she rephrases, answering the question more thoroughly despite her misgivings.] What is based ball?
no subject
Being seen 'in general' shouldn't feel like this. It shouldn't, he's not at home anymore.
(It still does)
Emporio swallows at the rephrasing of her last words. It feels...a little better. Just a bit.
And then the boy has to blink, tension dropping like a stone.] Based-
[..........................What?
Did he hear that right, even? Did-] You mean....'baseball'..?
no subject
That's what I said.
[Based ball! He just repeated her words!! Tightly-tensed shoulders bunch as she pulls her arms close to her sides, folds them protectively over her stomach.]
She said your uniform meant you were a based ball player. I don't know what sort of affiliation is meant. Or how playing is involved. I need to understand. Explain.
no subject
On the other that's probably because of the shock.]
It's...a sport- players wear uniforms like this, and compete against the other, by having a 'pitcher' throw...or uh...pitch a ball, and another from the other team hitting it with a bat. ...If they hit it, they have until the ball is caught from the ground, and they get caught by that player, to run around the field to all four bases- first, second, third, and 'home', where they started. Does...
...Does that make sense..?
[Somehow he feels he wouldn't be surprised if he had to explain sports in general.]
no subject
[She does look mystified, though. There's no hiding that. For many, many seconds after Emporio stops speaking, she frowns to herself, the explanation he's given percolating in her brain. Until, eventually:]
Yes.
[And then:]
You don't have the muscle tone of an athlete.
[he is like FOUR YEARS OLD HARROW]
no subject
...Ah. The boy blinks, and looks a touch awkward, looking to the side.] O-Oh... ...I don't really play exactly...I can throw pretty well? But these are just my clothes.
[...Do 12 year olds have athlete muscle tones? Come to think, he doesn't actually know.]