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returnjourneymemes2022-02-01 02:13 pm
returnjourney) wrote in returnjourneymemes2022-02-01 02:13 pm
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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.
David | Animorphs | Inmate
Hey - hey! It's not fair! I should get a different body!
[Thought-speech isn't directional; David's voice doesn't seem to be coming from the rat, or anywhere else really, but it does 'sound' like a teen boy's voice. The rat pulls back a bit from any larger creature looming over it, but manages not to scurry off.]
Where's that infirmary?
cw unreality
Volk is going to, with a complete poker face, check to see if anyone else in the room is reacting to that without looking up from his e-book. Tinted glasses help a lot with this.
Yes. Okay. There's a warden looking around the room, openly confused. Amateur.
Step two, as usual, be the only competent person.]
So we're concerned about the disembodied voice, but to be frank I want to know why it sounds like it's in the eighth grade.
Where are you and - trick question - do you know what TikTok is?
Whose rat is that?
no subject
Don't ignore me! God, people are such-
[okay we have moved to not pretending he's not there, that's progress. David squints. His eyesight is better than a regular rat's, he'd managed a very partial demorph before he got stuck, but humans are still bleary-faced Godzillas at this distance. It's hard to apply his old knowledge about evaluating people and how old they are and how to get what he wants out of them too. Rats are very different.]
Uh, I was in ninth grade? And I don't know what clocks have to do with it. [Fourteen is ninth, right? It's been a couple years since that so-fateful school transfer. David's moved on to 'sullen'.]
oooh this was the night notifs went down 8( i am sorry
[Volk actually sits up.]
You're stuck?
[It's not a hard one to put together with the magic Volk already knows about that the kid's in the body of a rat, but he has never ever ever seen someone not be able to get back out.
Turning into animals can be accomplished a few ways. They won't even let you pass Effects and Reanimation 201 if you can't hold concentration on four kinds of woodland creature and a superhero -
But holding the concentration is the hard part. Half of the training is because if you sneeze during the channel, or someone drops something heavy and you get startled, the chipmunk turns into a puddle of ink and blood and you snap back into your body and have to start over.]
Re: David | Animorphs | Inmate
[The voice startles him. Not that he's not used to hearing voices inside his head, but he usually knows the source of those. Des?]
[Not me, his demon replies. Pen, look at the rat.. And she shoved her own Sight over his vision.]
[He'd noticed the rat. Mostly because this place had a lack of any animal life, and he was going to need something to dump Des's chaos into, and the Bastard's creatures were usually most acceptable. Seeing the way Des saw the world, showing souls as much as bodies, made him instantly decide that was... er, very theologically forbidden.]
[Granted, whatever created what he saw was probably also Very Theologically Forbidden. Penric discarded a few theories quickly, before deciding to just go over and assist and maybe ask some questions of his own. He walked over, kneeling down, which still made him a giant to a rat, but it was the thought that counted, right?]
I know where that is. Was that you asking?
[If everyone else in the room decided Penric was out of his mind, well it wouldn't be the first time.]
[Because Penric's divine patron has exactly that sense of humor, Pen was wearing one of his better outfits, with his wife's embroidery of his god's sacred animals on the bottom of a cream tunic that split at the hips and reached his knees. As it happened, his god's sacred animals included the rat (as well as seagulls). ]
no subject
But it's still a really bad feeling to know humans are freaking Godzillas, or at least Kings Kong. All that time on the island he'd really thought of the other rats as giant rats, the birds as giant birds, giant trash, he'd known he was smaller - weight felt different - without fully internalizing how small. Plus the rat brain is saying this is a predator and will seize and eat him. All around it's not a great time.]
Y-yeah.
[No, he can't sound shy and cowed! David's ears twitch again and he arches his back in the look-bigger reflex. He tries to sound tough and firm, like his parents whenever they were given substandard food at a restaurant. (he'd better not think about them)]
Yeah. I'm David. Why are you wearing a dress?
no subject
Which was for the best. A rat's eyes might not notice the braided cords pinned to Penric's shoulder, but had David been from his world, he'd see not just the cream and white cords of a devotee of the Bastard, but the silver braid of a temple sorcerer. And would know what, exactly, that meant. Certainly even having those had been trouble for Pen more than once.
no subject
<Oh. You're... sort of a priest? That's cool I guess. I'm Episcopalian.> Maybe. It's the first denomination that came to mind. With how often his parents moved David's been taken to a lot of different churches and it was always a drag, even the cool ones that didn't care if he played Gameboy in the pews. Had always been a drag; being on the island has recontextualized a lot of things that had seemed very unpleasant at the time. The point is more that he wants to try and get in good with someone who seems like he's in a position of authority and maybe even well-inclined to someone like David. Not that he's entirely sure how. He thinks of himself as good at manipulation, but getting people upset at you is a lot easier than getting them to like you. <So they let you be a jailer for that?>
no subject
Penric made a note of the word, intending on seeing what the library had to say about religion. His current impression was that once you get past the idea that other worlds had other forms of divinity, there was so much that he couldn't even narrow it down.
"The administrator didn't provide reasons. But, if he is focused on reform rather than simply warehousing prisoners, some form of spiritual counseling seems necessary. And perhaps my own theology was considered more appealing than other options."
The Bastard was the patron god of many sorts of criminal activity. And the god of last resort for those denied human justice. And the patron of executioners. When one's portfolio encompasses all that does not fit easily within society, it leads to strange bedfellows.
no subject
The crackle of television static. TOE articulates one metal palm to temple (the image shifts: a man in a maze) — lays it flat at his side again.
A moment. He deliberates, ]
What isn't fair?
[ It's difficult, by the swivel of steel and screen, to say whether he's spied the rat at all. ]
no subject
This. If I'm supposed to get a second chance and learn my lesson and all I should get turned back.
no subject
His head tracks the arc, long after any sign of squirming tail's gone. Ah. Someone small. For the moment, TOE doesn't choose pursuit.
(Do adjust your television yet; David isn't the only new arrival.) ]
Who were you before?
[ Plainly not 'shy'. ]