test drive | 1

[unplug]

test drive

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?

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.

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.

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.

Comments

[neverenstones]

It was a long, hot walk in which Fara and her compatriots seemed to be suffering about as well as a scaled daemon. They kept to the shadows, certainly, but they didn't seem like the foreigners they looked; they didn't ask for water, and they barely even seemed to sweat. Their focus on their surroundings seemed complete, leaving Fara to do all of the talking. Kaitan might notice as they made their progress that all of them possessed items that didn't necessarily seem to be of the base essentials: Fara had a pouch on her sash that clicked as she walked. One kept a staff of dark, gnarled and blasted wood that didn't look like it had come from anywhere near the Erysan. The last sported a pair of heavy-looking metal instruments that must have been heated near to searing in this hot weather: they were compact and ugly, like a crossbow missing most of its crucial elements, but with grips and places to load in bolts.

Fara didn't give Kaitan a lot of time to gawk. By the time that they got into the thick of it, she was bouncing questions back like a practised athlete. Yes, there was definitely more to it than the Goddesses could hope to control, and that was the point of it, wasn't it? Once one started looking for the cracks, one could see them all around... and once one saw the cracks, the world was less real for it. It was an ode to nihilism, of a sort, but Fara didn't seem pessimistic. She seemed frayed out, but there was hope limning her words. It was strange.

They had managed to evade detection for much of their walk, or so it would seem. As they began into pass into the rockiest portions of their journey, however, shadows raced over the dunes behind them.

Fennel placed a hand on Fara's shoulder, pausing their progress. "It's show-time," she told them.

Kaitan would note very familiar figures buoyed by the heavy, hot air. Their lazy wing-strokes belayed the speed at which they were travelling, but every so often, a tilt of the ulna would cause the golden armour and jewellery plastered across their bodies to glitter blindingly, even from a distance. They'd dealt with Askaliden before.

"How much further to the node?" Fara asked, voice terse. Her compatriots were fanning out, and their actions suggested that Fara and Kaitan begin to move quickly. Quickly enough that Fara was securing Kaitan by the elbow with one hand and reaching into her pouch with the other.