test drive!

[lilypadmin]

Code

arrival.

We don't have a brilliant arrival prompt as of yet, but you're welcome to take a look at the arrival page and post your character's arrival if you desire! You may count this test drive as a canonical arrival if you decide to keep the character in game. Many of the below prompts are in possible arrival locations, but do not need to be arrivals.

Shopping, or something like it.

Maybe you want a toothbrush. A swimsuit. Enough sun protection to ease the transition for a vampire who'd lived their entire life safely tucked away on a space station far, far away from anything remotely sun-like. Maybe you just want to put yourself someplace everyone else is bound to go, sooner or later. Maybe you're just someone who will always default to "let's go hang out at the mall", for that matter.

Maybe you're used to shoplifting, and won't notice anything about the mall's security levels, at least at first. Maybe you're a scrupulous goody-two-shoes, and you're going to have a problem when you realize that not only is nobody asking you to pay, but there is literally no way to pay for anything you wanted to purchase.

Maybe you're just going to have to throw a temper tantrum when you realize that the Orange Julius-like storefront is also completely unstaffed, and no more automated than any other Orange Julius you've ever seen, and so you don't have any way of getting the perfect smoothie.

(Unless, maybe, you can find someone else who's got more experience with a blender than you have.)

On the shoreline.

Look. You've been to the beach before, haven't you? You know what to expect when you get there: salty water, some sand, the general sinking dread that the overpowering chemical reek of artificial-coconut-scented sunscreen is coming to get you; the usual, right?

This is maybe not your usual beach. Possibly because it's a little more like a coral reef or atoll; possibly because it's a little more like someone got carried away with programming fractals into a really big 3D printer; possibly because it isn't all that much at all like the beach you were just at, if you were maybe at a beach just before you came here anyway. No toddler temper-tantrums in earshot, no seagull con artists waiting for you to be the slightest bit distracted so they can steal your food right out of your hands, no overpowering chemical reek of artificial coconut...

Don't worry too much, though. There is sunscreen, over at the little vending machine over that-a-way, along with coverups and hats and sunglasses (oh my) — pity you can't tell what they're going to look like before the machine has spat them out at you, though.

(The water does, at least, feel like water, and taste like salt, even if the sand is disconcertingly perfectly-just-off-white, and only a few inches deep above the hull.)

By the way—if you came here in a boat, this is going to be home, at least for your boat. These are the only berths you're going to find; you can claim a berth, and if it was empty when you did, you can—presumably—keep it. Some berths are already filled with other boats. Some of these boats were clearly meant for public use, and others seem as if they used to have people living in them, or at least had private owners. Nobody's living in them right now, though. Strange.

Enjoy the spa.

Or else, you can try to enjoy the spa, if you’re motivated or don’t require any staff.

Because there isn’t any. Much like the shoreline, like the mall, like the apartments, there is a whole lot of absolutely nothing unless you can figure out how to wake up the AI—and even if you do, the AI doesn’t have a clue about how to do a massage or a stretch or a chemical peel.

But you can still enjoy the saltwater pools. Or the salt room.

Or the really nice lounge.

Or the lotus pond grid.

You can also get some good skin care supplies, or put up a note on the digital bulletin board stating what you’re looking to get done. There might be another new arrival who can give you the stretch or facial you’re looking for. If you’re someone with those skills? Better stick around. Someone might be in need.

Wildcard.

If none of these inspire you—or if all of them do and you just want to add another thing to respond to, it's up to you whether you want to put one response or several in a top level comment, we're good with anything you like—you've got a whole chunk of an empty solarpunk island to do something with. The further you stray from that shoreline the harder you will be to locate by others, but we encourage you to have fun!

Anything that the setting page inspires is probably fair game! Feel free to ask before posting if you've got any questions that reading through the mod journal doesn't yet clarify; consider this a sort of beta run. ♥

Comments

on the shoreline.

[thegirlunderthefloor]

Octavia has watched this guy go in and come out more times than was probably necessary. If she weren't herself, she'd wonder if this is how Diyoza felt, but she knows she's not, and it's not. She hadn't come down to the shore because of him, but he'd been here doing this since she got here, so she was watching.

Maybe some part of her wanted to know if he might make it.

Maybe some part of her was counting how many times before he gave up.

Octavia hasn't moved in long enough she's stopped thinking about, when he drags himself out. Not so much because she's hiding, but because she used to hate having to look at Diyoza's face every time she came back still not there. Which might make her presence come as quite a surprise when she reveals her entirely silent and still perch in a tree nearby replying to his ludicrous assumption, "Really? That's what you're going with?"

[armeyets]

The voice makes him go still and his jaw snaps upwards, peering towards the trees until he can pick out the dark-clad woman in the branches. And Bucky could kick himself.

Unforgivable slip-up. He should've noticed that he wasn't alone, that somebody else had approached and gotten close enough to watch him— but he'd been distracted by this stupid Sisyphean attempt at escaping. Going down over and over and over, trying again and again to find some answer to how he got here, and instead coming out gasping. He's stubborn and a strong swimmer, with serum-enhanced muscles and lungs, and even he can't find anything out in the water.

"You got any better theories?" Bucky asks, straightening in his beach chair and tipping the sunglasses down to get a better look at her. Boots now planted on the sand, too, to give himself a better center of gravity and be able to leap up into motion if he needs to.

Old habits die hard. He hasn't been able to turn off those paranoid instincts, particularly now that he's in an unfamiliar place, without allies, and no answers.

[thegirlunderthefloor]

The guy telegraphs tension like a floodlight, but that's to be expected. It wasn't like she introduced her existence when he'd gotten out of the water or before he'd managed to sit. She hadn't been sure she would at all unless she'd decided to move before he'd decided to leave the shore. For all she knew, he could have been out there, diving for the bottom for hours still to come.

It doesn't affect her any. At least not more than it lets her continue to consider him, turned like a wall, poised at the sheer cliff that isn't loosed movement but could be given the order beyond just the readiness. It's not hard to spot a fighter, even though he stays in his chair. Shifting so that he's looking at her more head-on. Save the two, almost, three tree limbs in the way.

It prickles an all too easily recognizable itch under her skin. But Octavia doesn't shift from where she's seated at all. Heavy boots flat on the branch before her, back against the trunk. Dark eyes watchfully still before they narrow, and she shrugs a shoulder, letting one eyebrow arch briefly. "Maybe."

[armeyets]

Ah. Playing hard-to-get with her theories, then. Bucky tries to stop himself from rolling his eyes and doesn't entirely succeed, his next words coming out droll: "You gonna share 'em with the class? Otherwise, I'm sticking with aliens."

He's still running the risk assessment while she sits in the trees. Far enough away, he thinks, that he's probably safe — but there are guns, so she could take some shots at him. Then again, if she'd wanted to snipe him from afar, she easily could've done so before ever announcing her presence. So maybe that means she's just another wayward stranger, scooped up and deposited in this city as he has been.

Part of him relaxes with that logic, but just an inch.

"I came from the water, out there somewhere." He tips his head toward the ocean. "Haven't been here long."