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test drive | 1
Welcome to the first test drive for Systemwide! We are excited to have you. All prospective players are welcome to tag in and test out their characters, be they unplugged or free born. We would like to offer a range of scenarios that can be expected during gameplay, which are also useable prompts for app samples, and of course, if something else about the setting strikes you, feel free to come up with your own!
Please put your character name and canon in your subject line, and indicate which prompt you are launching from.simulation | maybe this is your first time. perhaps you've been here countless times. it's a room, as confined as a boxing ring, as expansive as a battle field, whatever you need it to be, whatever you're here to train for.
1. Before you is a city of rooftops, empty of human life. This is a safe place, because while it may hurt you, at least it won't kill you. Perhaps you are practicing your influence over reality, leaping from rooftop to rooftop. Are you successful, or are you failing to free your mind? Perhaps you're helping someone else overcome their fear of heights.
And of course, an operator can always load up some Agent-like training programs to make it interesting.2. Congratulations, you know kung-fu, or maybe some other system of combat, like crazy parkour archery, cartwheeling with guns, or sword fighting on horse back. Perhaps you're trying out something even more fantastic, a magical skill or a superpower.
Show me. Or a friend.mission | whether on board a ship or with your mind sunk deep into a Matrix, you will have to join the battle eventually. sometimes things go terribly wrong. what are you gonna do about it?
reality | as much as many Matrixes are designed to be a comfort, you have to face the real world sometime. or maybe this is the world you have only ever known.3.
Something's gone wrong with this extraction.There's a lot of information to process. Your target's been extracted, and that's the good news -- your ship, in reality, is heading to their location now -- but the bad news is your team has been scattered. You could be anywhere within this Matrix, deep in the jungle, or lost on a subway train, or staggering out of the crashing waves of a night time beach, and the operator needs a minute to figure out your exact location before they can direct you to a port out of here, or send another operative to collect you.
All you have to do is stay alive for that long. Easy, right?4.
You were warned of this. You've been prepared in endless simulations, with a dozen cautionary tales, training sessions with the EMP. Still, it's nothing like you imagined, when the operator shouts: "Sentinel closing in at seven o' clock. It's gaining."
And then the shriek of metal.5. Annual celebrations are rare to come by, but the anniversary of Neo's Truce is one that always draws in the crowd. The event takes place in a massive cavern in Zion known as the Temple, and there is music, and there is dancing [a little NSFW].
Everyone is there.
Where are you?6.
The wind on your face, up here on the desolate surface, tastes bitter, different to what it feels like in a simulated reality. It's freezing cold and always dark, but sometimes, you need a reminder about what it is you're fighting for. Or maybe you're seeing the wasteland of Earth for the first time.
Either way, you shouldn't be out here for too long. The machines might find you.wildcard | choose your own adventure.
7. Perhaps you're riding with the Dothraki, or sitting under the Sorting Hat for the first time. Maybe the pleather bodysuit is pinching under your armpits as the traffic of the 90's roars by, or the Nova Empire's sprawling city glitters, towering above you. Maybe you're showing someone around the place you called home for your entire fictional life.
Or perhaps it's nothing as fantastical as that: the Council meeting droned on for two hours, and you're just happy to be home, even if it's a tiny enclosure with rust-edged furniture. Maybe someone's coming over for lunch, and there are real greens in the protein slurry today; maybe you're about to ask to join a crew.
There are infinite worlds to explore, but try to remember that only one of them is real.
Sirius Black | Simulations & Real (cw indications of past trauma)
[It's fairly obvious when Sirius Black figures out what his mutation is. In the middle of the street, he entirely stops paying attention to the girls in bell-bottoms and the blokes with big hair and the squashed-looking American cars and how tight and structured all the Muggles clothes. He falls sharply silent, his head turning steadily on its axis as his feet keep moving, his attention fixed, unmistakably, upon the big yellow dog leashed to the parking meter there.
His face changes a little. His fingers start to open, telegraph a reach, almost, for the little furry face, the friendly tilt of ears, the nose coming to meet his palm.
--but then he pulls back, nonchalance settling firmly into place. He looks nearly like he did as a free man, none of Azkaban's cold and hungry years having left a shadow or a tincture to his square jaw. Not here.] What've you got then? [he asks, looking up. His hand goes in his pocket.]
Real Party
[He's supposed to like a party. 'Party.'
There are any number of excuses that might suit: it's not very British, this mad knot of bodies. It certainly isn't very wizardly, the organic intensity of it, music beating through like the air itself has a heartbeat, sweating with the passion of every person contained therein. He's been to London, he's seen how dense the Ministry is, and the Quidditch games would in the greatest championships, attract turnout that was physically impossible for the arenas to hold. You know, were it not for magic.
But magic isn't real. Just as mutation is not real, and Azkaban wasn't real, and the disparate pieces of his life were not real, from the wand that chose him to the peculiar matter of thestrels. This sequence of thoughts is completely irrelevant to anything, but it's still what he thinks about as he stumbles around a table, upends himself over a recently-emptied keg and vomits inside its reverberating hull.
Five minutes later, he's well beyond the crowd. The stone is cold on his shoulder. He tries to compose himself, but they don't produce mirrors here with either magic or mechanical manufacturing processes, so his efforts are a little unbalanced. His hair smears black across his forehead; his eyes blink green.]
[OOC note: I'm quite RLed at the moment at least until Tuesday, please forgive for slowtags.]
Real party;
It just wasn't a part of the way society had functioned. Sex wasn't important, there wasn't this kind of dance and music, and people didn't allow themselves to be as close as they all were right now; it was entirely too intimate.
He struggled with the idea that this was reality, and everything back home was not. It was easier for him to just explain it as some kind of traveling. Eben had left his home using a form of travel long since practiced, passed out, and when he'd woken up, he was here. That was over a month ago, and he still believed he'd go home some day.
But, it was too much. He'd been adjusting, but everything happening behind him was a bit hard to understand. Eben's head turns upward sharply when he sees the other, and he stops, hands up and out. He didn't think the other was going to hurt him, but he figured it best to immediately show he wasn't dangerous, just getting some space.]
Sorry. I don't mean to interrupt.
no subject
His hand comes up empty of anything except shirt, of course. He isn't even wearing a robe because Muggles-- well, Real people don't fucking wear that kind of thing, apparently. There's more sweat than anything else clogged on Sirius' eyelashes as his eye rotates underneath, seeking blurrily, until he finds the other man making peace gestures in his direction. It stings his pride too much to be caught in a sweaty, defensive clinch by some cheerful party-goer who will obviously think there's something wrong with him, so he makes him stand straight.]
Interrupt what? [his accent is still there, even if there is no England, has been no England for centuries. Interrupt wot? He tries to make his voice sound less grinding, less hostile; only partially succeeds. Doesn't succeed at all for the aristocratic indifference that Sirius is actually trying for.] The wall's free for pissing on-- whatever you fancy, mate.
no subject
[Not that there was much of that around here, rather, very little of it. Eben drops his hands, shrugging.]
Yeah, sorry 'bout that. It's my first party here, and I had no idea it was going to be like that.
[All the people, all the touching, it was a bit of culture shock.]
Thought I'd take a break, probably just cut out altogether.
was super RLed, back now! i understand if youd rather not
And defensive, which feeds into it when he says, tightly,] Well piss off then.
[He's being rude and after he says it he knows he's being rude, but the realization takes a couple seconds to tick in.]
no subject
[Eben's flustered, and his cheeks bloom from nervous pink to frustrated red. He's not sure what he's done to make the other guy mad, but he's the least confrontational person ever, so he's going to go.
Swallowing roughly, his hands come up again, and he starts backing up the way he came.]
No big deal buddy, just couldn't handle it back there. Needed some space. My fault.
no subject
I'm sorry. Do what you like. I'm Sirius, [he adds, because he realizes he probably still doesn't look incredibly friendly. Even before he went to Azkaban and wound up with weird metal Muggletech ports lodged all over his body-- even at his most handsome, he didn't generally look exactly friendly.]