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

[themainevent]

Their location is too quiet, too devoid of the signs of life. It’s a valid answer, even if it’s low hanging fruit. What does this person, who knows how to follow someone this well without the cover of a populated place, want with other people? The other guy asking a similar question—about someone who can spot such a tail.

Rache isn’t about to trust him just because he professes to be on the same side (or despite it). Still, people are people, and they’ve what they got to work with. “Wasn’t sure what to expect of this place,” Rache says. “How much of it have you checked out?” In lieu of any immediate threats to his life, information’s the way to go.

[armeyets]

It's almost a familiar ritual: that immediate focus on practicalities, on intel, on exchanging actionable information. (Soldat; report.) So when Bucky speaks again to answer the question, it's a frank and to-the-point recitation of what he knows so far:

"Been to the mall— that building over there, with all the shops— and picked up this jacket. I've spent most of my time on the beach trying to figure out what's going on there, though, since that's where I arrived." A beat, before he adds, "On a boat. Not from this planet. Yeah, I don't know how that works, either."

This guy (or woman? or alien? impossible to tell under the mask and armour) had an arrival that made a bit more sense, at least: a spaceship screaming down out of the sky. At least that tracks.

"Did you land here on purpose?"

[themainevent]

The arrival via boat, via transportation from one habitat to another, not in space, falls under the type of impossibility that is even more impossible than gate travel, so far as scientists studying wormholes could explain it. That fits with the lack of a gate present on this end (not that shuttles are good options to use traveling through a gate). It’s alarming.

“There were not any other contacts detected on this half of the planet,” Rache replied. “Until there’s a steady source of fuel, I deemed it best not to waste it in a new sector of space.” He paused.

“I’m not a local of this system.” It was not any of the Twelve Systems. Rache had been to them all.

[armeyets]

"Me either."

The mention of the lack of fuel leads to a twitch at the corner of his expression, a quick flicker of disappointment. Part of Bucky's brain, on autopilot, had started considering either stealing the ship or teaming up with the stranger to go flying off-planet in search of Sol, and Earth, and home — because surely it's gotta be out there, right? They're not in Kansas anymore, but maybe they're just very, very, very far away.

Maybe.

Part of that stoic facade finally seems to crack and he sighs, scrubs at his face. All that wary caution starting to splinter in favour of just— tiredness. Walking on your toes all the time is fucking exhausting.

"Okay," he says, as if the stranger had actually asked a question. "I'm James."

[themainevent]

A flip switches in the man before him. Rache doesn’t fully relax. Too many assassins have been sent after him. Too many betrayals from both crew and allies. It’s a bad sign from someone who has clearly been here longer than him. Rache extends the timeframe by which he hopes to return to System Hydra and the Fedallah.

Names. If no one here knows Admiral Mikita’s face, David Lichtenberg’s face, or Casmir Dabrowski’s face, Rache could take off the hood and the mask and melt into the marooned population in this place. Awkward to do in front of someone, but it would potentially read as a similar level of relaxation. Rache hasn’t explored enough of the area to know if that’s true. Not everyone studies military history of centuries past. In somewhere completely new with people that haven’t heard of him, Tenebris Rache as a name stands out like a sore thumb. There isn’t time to ponder a new identity for this place.

“I’m David,” Rache says and gives a Star Kingdom bow. Standard, no knights’ flourish. David Dabrowski. Rache almost snorts.

[armeyets]

Bucky watches the bow, a little taken aback and bemused at the unexpected formality of it. Bowing feels old-fashioned, like a vestige out of an older century, compared to someone who can soar across the galaxy in a spaceship. "Nice to meet you, David. Where I come from, we usually just shake hands," he says, and then extends a polite palm.

And like this is his own little test — maybe his own mark of still not letting all his guard down at once — it happens to be his gloved left hand which he holds expectantly out. If David takes it, the grip will be carefully-calibrated standard pressure, but the hand surprisingly hard and ungiving, the metal unrelenting beneath his fingers.

[themainevent]

Behind the mask, Rache smiles. Either James is not from the Kingdom or he does not want to be known to be from the kingdom. His accent has not been characteristic of the Kingdom, but that tell can be trained away along with the rest. Plenty of other systems and literature usually just shake hands. Rache has his doubts that this man is from any of the Twelve Systems. The only way he could have grown up ignorant of the Star Kingdom was if the AI's on Verloren Moon adopted a baby and raised it, restricting its access to human communications. This place is beyond the Twelve Systems. He gives a small nod of recognition.

He matches the greeting gesture, proper and firm. Surprise, surprise, James is cybernetically enhanced. It's more obvious than Rache's enhancements. His hands are strong, but Rache isn't using their enhanced strength. Beneath his gloves, they look like human hands, flesh and blood. He wonders whether James's replacement is the result of a conscious choice or grievous injury. People in one or both situations have joined the Fedallah, joined him. "I'd offer to buy you a drink," Rache says and shrugs, "but I doubt I have local currency." Plus, he was cut off from the banking system and the overwhelming majority of his liquid and illiquid assets.