returnjourneymemes | TEST DRIVE 002

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test drive meme

TEST DRIVE 002

RETURN JOURNEY: TEST DRIVE 002

Welcome to the Return Journey's test drive meme! We appreciate your interest. Our TDM features a small sample of events your character might encounter in game, which you're free to embellish or improvise with your own ideas as desired. Don't worry if you haven't read everything yet; while we recommend skimming our FAQ for relevant questions, critical information should be contained or linked within the prompts themselves!

TDM threads can be used as samples for applications. Players can mutually keep threads as game canon after being accepted into the game, though threads featuring non-canon squalls or events may need to be adjusted.

We suggest putting your character's name, canon, and potential role (warden or inmate) as the subject. If you're not sure which role you want to choose, feel free to try your hand at both!

If you have any questions about the TDM, please ask here.

1. Welcome Aboard!

Welcome aboard the SFS Peregrine, a ship in the Admiralty's Transformative and Penal Reparation Fleet. It is presently circling the outer perimeter of the Oos Ring Galaxy.

Wardens have been approached personally by the Navarch with a job offer: Come aboard the SFS Peregrine to assist in the redemption of an inmate, and receive a miracle known as a windfall as payment. Even if you don't ask as many questions as you should, every warden will be treated to a short Warden Orientation video explaining their expected duties and conduct.

Inmates have died and been placed aboard the SFS Peregrine as candidates for reformation. You may have come willingly, offered a choice between death or redemption, or you may have been collected against your will. Inmates are also treated to an Inmate Orientation; you'll find you have less privileges than a warden, but more motivation for...latitude. Violence? Chaos? Bribery? Blackmail? Well, no one said the path to redemption was without a few bumps along the way.

Given staff shortages, some wardens may be asked for a favor. Rather than leaving directly for the Peregrine, you've been asked to pick up an inmate from the limbo between death and redemption. During this mission, wardens will have clearance to enter a snapshot of sorts, where the inmate died (so devoid of other living beings). You either have to talk them into willingly coming along...or bring their unconscious, fresh-from-death not-corpse with you in the Avro provided. Better hope they don't wake up on the way!

Inmates, in this case, you'll be presented with the choice of death or redemption from a warden rather than the Navarch. Or possibly not provided with a choice at all, if death has rendered you unconscious. Good luck when you awaken to find yourself in a small ship, with someone you've never met. Try not to cause any trouble.

2. Pairings

Pairings are a critical aspect of the dynamic between warden and inmate. While interactions between wardens and inmates are not restricted to those in pairings, this relationship is a bit more...inescapable. Inmates test the limits of a warden, whether they take a more typical or unusual approach to matters; likewise, wardens learn what makes an inmate tick (and hopefully cooperate). Chances are, your values will clash.

A pairing of any sort is as varied as the individuals involved in them. And today, courtesy of the Navarch's monthly announcement, you and your sorry partner have been paired. Temporary or permanent, with a warden for an inmate or an inmate for a warden, it's your first day together — out of at least a month, so good luck setting some ground rules and figuring out each other's breaking points.

3. Life on the Peregrine

Hey, inmates! Ever gone to summer camp? Had a sibling? If so, you might see where this is going. If not, welcome to your first experience with shared sleeping arrangements!

The dorms are lined with bunks, though maybe they're better described as pods: futuresque capsules stacked two high, with sleek white paneling and cool blue LED lightning. Each bunk can be closed off with a sliding door privacy and boasts a bladeless fan for temperature control. Bedding is adequate. If such modest conditions do not appeal to you: consider not committing crimes against other people.

And just like with siblings or summer camp, you don't get a say in who your bunkmate is. Maybe you'll luck out and get a light sleeper who doesn't toss and turn in the night. Maybe you won't, and you'll end up with someone who will kill you if you snore. Whoever you get is who you're stuck with until further notice!

Wardens get much more hospitable quarters, but they may want to keep an eye out on the inmate dorms. Just in case an inmate does try to kill their bunkmate.

4. Squalls

Occasionally, the ship passes through squalls, the equivalent of cosmic turbulence that can mess with little things like, say...the fabric of reality. These are shipwide effects, though who they hit is variable. Sometimes you might fall victim; other times you might be the one standing by, exasperated, as you deal with those affected.

(In other words, it's up to player discretion. And feel free to make up your own squalls!)

This time around, the squall comes with an interesting side effect: whenever you lie or someone lies to you, you experience an immediate rush of anger — whether you consciously know someone is lying or not. Think of it as a temporary lie detector, but instead of being hooked up to a machine, you might punch someone in the face.

5. The Peregrine

The Peregrine's layout and protocols have been designed with its intended passengers in mind, who are primarily Earth humanoids and inclined towards certain social and cultural practices. If you're wondering why you are on a ship of Earth humanoids despite not being one yourself, please understand that all ships in the Admiralty have a population capacity. At times it may be necessary to assign other species to a ship of this type, based on availability.

As a warden, you have full run of the ship map. Inmates...less so, but that's nothing a little creativity can't fix, right? Just remember, if a warden catches an inmate somewhere that inmate shouldn't be, it falls on the warden to handle the matter. And if the warden turns a blind eye...well, let's hope neither of you get caught. While it won't result in anything as extreme as a demotion, wardens can expect to get a stern dressing down; inmates, meanwhile, will be reprimanded by the warden who found them.

6. Networking

Now that you've powered on your CommLink for the first time and sat through the short tutorial and appropriate orientation, you're ready to explore the wonders of messaging. Video, audio, or text, the world is your oyster and you surely have opinions on it.

There is no anonymous option and IDs must be some variation of your name. (IC, characters will have to try their luck and see what the communicator will or won't accept when they register; OOC, it's up to players to decide what name to use if the character has multiple names or aliases.)

Wardens have access to a group network filter, something that inmates lack, and can track inmates throughout the ship with their CommLink. Inmates, best avoid getting your device confiscated or monitored.

7. Wildcard

If it's in our game pages, you can use it as a prompt! The sky's the limit.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

1. brand new

[Here is a warden. This one's as fresh as it gets. He is pale, gaunt, distinctly asymmetrical in posture and, thus far, seems a little uncomfortable to be anywhere.

This warden, he's been more or less mesmerized by the CommLink since it was given to him, eyes alight and face awash in blue (of course it's blue, it should be blue, it's miraculous). The shape, the negligible weight, the smooth hinges—this screen—it's the most elegantly fabricated device he's ever held. What are these materials? How did they make a motor so tiny? There's a storm on the horizon for that owl: a storm of technical questions that are almost certainly irrelevant to what he's actually meant to be doing here.

Finding it difficult to effectively navigate the UI one-handed, he has now stopped, crutch under his arm and kit bag on his shoulder, and is standing directly in a doorway. Maybe that's how one encounters him—who left this weird scarecrow here, it's blocking traffic—

or maybe it's when he's messing around with the camera (there's a camera in here??) at eye level, pivoting on the spot, and a face suddenly fills the screen.]

Oh... sorry, I didn't, eh... excuse me.

2. little machines

[This warden, he's moving down some lonely corridor in slow pursuit of a three-unit convoy of the Peregrine's autonomous cleaning devices. His attention is fixed, his footfalls quiet, the foot of his crutch less so.]

Where are you off to, I wonder.

[Obviously they don't answer.

After a suitable period of non-interference, he overtakes the last in line with a couple of longer strides and carefully stops it with his foot; listens, hunched and squinting, while the motor strains; releases it to catch up with the rest. In a moment he's after it again, this time to raise the little caboose with his toe, leaning to glimpse the whirring undercarriage—]

3. short-term besties

[This warden (called Viktor, surely he's been introduced by now), he's slipped away to explore by himself. Again. It's fine, as far as he's concerned, since any sensible onboarding will have a grace period; besides, there's a lot still to see. Aimless mingling can happen later. (Never would be fine too.)

The inmate dormitory resembles stacked shipping containers fashioned into homes—or some sheltered dreamer's sanitized idea of that. Doesn't seem so bad, really. It does feel tacky to play tourist while there's someone here, but oh well. They'll all have to get used to each other at some point. Still, to be courteous:]

Feel free to ignore me—just looking.

[—And looking again, and then down at his CommLink, mouth turned down and eyebrows raised.]

Hm, [is soft, high in his throat: how about that.] It would seem I've just been assigned to you.

4. wildcard

[Something else? Something else.

Hello, world! Will match format, can be found on plurk @ abyssal if you have any thingies to thingy, etc, you know the drill.]

Its companions scuttle on, through the narrow hall and around a corner; ignorant to the straggler's absence.

The robot beeps soft — less protest than a register of its altered position, no longer ideal to scurry and sweep. Tiny brushes scoop ciliatic into its mouth, as though to scrub Viktor's very breath of dust.

Even the air shines here.

Crunch. Abrupt, metallic. Another impact (hard), and the exhale of something sharper; human. The alcove about the corner is dim, distant from the constant fluorescence of more-trafficked halls.

But somewhere in it, there's a glint: Light on aluminum, a blaze of refracted orange.

Edited 2022-02-04 07:23 (UTC)

Crunch, and Viktor's attention jerks up, and holds him there, listening. The bot slips off his foot, continues patiently along, shortly to be scooped up from the floor before it can make the turn—spontaneous, instinctive, a clumsy but successful juggling of hardware. (Another impact, hard.) He's got his arm around it like a bag of groceries or a teddy bear, the flat belly facing out, when he eases up to the corner and—

A conclusive beep: surface lost. Wheels and bristles go still.

The irrational reflex to shush it goes no further than a quick grimace and glance down, a quick re-seating of weight and his grip around the shell's edge. After, silent and wide-eyed, he leans just enough to see.

Beep.

Reflex finds an edge, a sliver-sharp shard of hull picked delicate as a man at cards. Fresh little teeth sink his skin; blood wetting the tip of his thumb as he readies, eye-level, to slash —

The boy gawks forward, white as a skeleton, and thought finally catches up, throws an iron grip around the coiling arc of his shoulder.

(Not yet.)

Aluminum clatters from his hand to the floor, rejoins its mechanical corpse. A single robot smashes its guts for display. The third whirrs far and out of sight.

"Ah," Silco's breath rattles — he's a liar, not an actor; there's no purpose in pretending. "You startled me."

What follows seems primed to become recognition of the sort Silco is no doubt accustomed to receiving—a stunned pause, concern and suspicion flickering, attention drawn directly to his afflicted eye—but that particular shard of awareness fails to gleam, and instead of recoiling his witness steps to the corner. To, not quite beyond. He's got nerve; he isn't stupid.

To that effect, he finishes his assessment before he answers. It's quick—a few glances here and there, a flick down to the ruined bot and up again. Beneath the ledge of his reflexive frown, his eyes are keen as that discarded sharp and twice as bright.

"What are you doing?"

Breaking shit, obviously, but he's interested in the less evident.

His head tips — reflex, again, to scour sight and memory. A spark of something, faint,

Gone again. To be chased later, from flinted dark.

"Slitting its belly," Look, it sounds less ominous if half your economy is fish. He stoops to draw knuckles across the tableau. Thin blots of red smear through the dusty pile. "It's swallowed something of mine."

A glance back up,

"Will you help me look?"

There is something persistent in the way he stares, adjacent to that absent gleam, unable to leave it unanswered. Sorting through filaments of data too variable to form anything more substantial than a feeling, miserably vague. It hangs there, not quite a question, as he watches the man crouch to smear those ashy leavings.

Dust caked on a little blood, the finest particulate grey, like the wrenching of a lever: the floor of his stomach lurches away into nothing, dragging him with it and leaving his body to continue its empty processes mechanically.

Even without such a cruel association, given the context, this is not the most enticing request.

"I won't stop you," he offers. Then, because it's the only suitable thing his brain supplies, "What did you lose?"

That'll do, pig. Silco's chin dips.

"A bracelet," There's no such thing. "Woven string."

He fishes up a knot of hair, rolled to loose bezoar by the brushes' spin. There's no telling whose biomatter matches which gun, precisely — best to bundle it all together.

"What were you doing with the creature?"

The robot, still clutched to his chest.

Edited 2022-02-06 09:22 (UTC)

A bracelet, so he picks up the hairball? No one is that bad at weaving.

"They're constructs. Not creatures." An important distinction. Just as important: a handhold for scraping his composure back together. The robot, still clutched, still quiet, might be soothed were it a creature. "This is a peculiar time to ascribe life to a thing."

Being up to your wrists in its guts and all.

(He seems not to be carrying any gun, himself.)

Volk is on the edge of his bunk, a pen in his teeth. Also gaunt, also pale, six inches shorter. Round spectacles, black fingernails, leather jacket.

His bag is already packed.

"You? Great. Saves time."

He doesn't need to drag this around.

"You have a cabin next to yours, for your inmate. I'm moving in. Have fun uh..."

He tosses a disdainful glance around the coffin apartments. What's interesting? Nothing. They're garbage. This whole ship is garbage.

"looking."

Viktor is comparatively still, leaning on his crutch, his eyebrows gradually dropping—he's not angry, that's just his face, these are one-trick brows—

"I thought the cabins were meant for permanent arrangements."

Thought; thinks; knows, courtesy of the astounding device so carefully cradled in his hand. (His gloved hand. Just the one.) Meanwhile, his eyes are moving in analytical flicks, his head held at an angle that, while truly suggestive of curiosity, may come off a little condescending.

"Nobody's going to stop you, and therefore nobody but you is going to stop me."

Volk stands, lifts his bag.

"Are you going to stop me?"

Is he?

The immediate impression: that if he permits this person to occupy the cabin, he will not be able to remove him without considerable difficulty, and that will be very annoying. The pushy attitude, though, that's relatable; every major advance in his own life was made by startling someone into letting him in.

"It's quite the ask, considering we met only a few seconds ago. I'm not opposed, but... let's take this a little slower. Just to start."

"It's like, different rooms with different doors. I'm not dating you here, I'm just subletting."

But, okay. Negotiation. Sure.

Volk sits back down on the edge of his bunk and smooths down his - okay, well, he wore jeans today, he normally likes a modest skirt for business meetings, but this'll have to do. Legs crossed at ankles. Smile on.

"What would you like to know?"

Now that there's a little more distance between him and the concept of perhaps having to chase after some guy, he relaxes back into what he came to do: see the inmates' residence. Moving a little further into the space, the slight sway of his stride, the click of the crutch's foot, looking interested with a distinct sense of appraisal.

Subletting. That's a cheerful word for it. (The dating quip passes without apparent reaction.)

"The usual: first, an introduction." His voice is mild; his accent, more or less Slavic, plucks gently at the consonants. "I have your name here," an offhand gesture with the CommLink, "but it doesn't say how you prefer to be addressed."

"Volk is what I usually go by."

The pairing note says Joshua Aleksandrovich Volkhov. His pronunciation of his own name is the only slide into a Russian accent for Volk. Волк is 'wolf,' and it's totally wasted on someone who isn't even a furry.

"How about you?"

All smiles. Be charming. He wants a fucking room with a door he can lock and a shower that doesn't belong to anyone else.

Edited 2022-02-05 09:00 (UTC)

That makes two non-furries in the room—alas, this one's not even technically Russian, though he does note the phonetics seem familiar. Notes the conspicuous shift from demanding to sweet, too.

"Viktor."

Someone else might insert the usual pleasantry here, but it's likely not Volk's pleasure to meet him, and his own ego is in need of no such empty appeasement. In any case, by now he is near the bunks, in fact just leaning in to see an empty one, his gloved hand grasping the sliding door.

"I came aboard only a few days ago—so that gives you seniority, in a sense."

Edited (fussing) 2022-02-06 01:00 (UTC)

viktor / arcane / warden

2 - ciliatic isnt a word but humour me. also just lmk if u need more of a hook friend

tell that to my ciliatica

you take that *back*

nyuk nyuk

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1 what in the cuteness

:>

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you take that back