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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.
lestat de lioncourt | vampire chronicles.
[ He says this out loud when he senses someone approaching, or rather, entering the simulation, and only tips a look back at them after the fact.
It is pre-dawn, a world confined to the laws of an Earth where vampirism is impossible, and so he is some in between thing -- no strength and no weaknesses, but his projected self-image is far departed than the creature strapped into the chair in the control room. He is white-skinned, his eyes feline bright, his hair yellow and long. Inhuman, by all appearances.
His clothes are simpler than he was once accustomed. Not unlike that standard fare offered by Zion, but cleaner, less ragged. His nails are long, and seem as strong as diamond. ]
If it is all the same, to you.
[ Each word carries a special sort of weight, an inherent drama, an ironic lilt. The setting is a rocky beach, and he is perched on an outcropping of ocean-facing cliff, with a dark sea passive beneath him. The beginning of a sunrise is beginning to warm the horizon, and an artificial wind rustles artificial dunes in the background. ]
no subject
her hands are clasped behind her back, her hair pulled away from her face. she comes to stand beside him, all regal placidity, and eventually she says, )
And are you satisfied by it?
( without any particular expectation that he will answer her. )
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[ The corner of his mouth turn sharp, setting his gaze back towards the creeping spill of light over the oceanic edge of the world. ]
How far conceived is this fantasy. Do you think if we went to meet the sun, we would simply drop off.
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the corner of her mouth quirks, something slightly less humourless than the blandly pleasant affect she adopts most of the time, and she tilts her hand in invitation. by all means, lestat, you first. you know, for science. )
It is built to serve a need.
( as are they. not the one she so fervently believed in, though; it tastes bitter, and the dry edge of her is a knife. )
no subject
[ Latent anger is a restlessness in his tone, but kept bridled for now. He doesn't want to ruin this for himself, anyway, and he's had enough tantrums ever since he had energy enough to conjure them.
Besides, there's nothing to be angry about.
But the sun is thoroughly rising. He would be burning by now, but the air is still cold off the water, but more alive. Lestat doesn't move at her gesture, silent and still for a moment, then; ]
There it is.
no subject
All you'd hoped? ( --a touch sardonic. )
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It turns out this new world doesn't have sunrises either. Just the electrical storms, the endless black clouds. ]
All I expected. There could have been some music, non. Some theatre.
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she always thought that she would rather have the truth. it is an ugly thing to swallow that perhaps she only wished for the truth when she believed she knew it.
eventually, )
Non, ( not quite mocking. ) We cannot be having with frivolous beauty, Mssr de Lioncourt.
no subject
[ He sighs, audibly. ]
We are here now, in the Savage Garden, and there is nothing frivolous about its beauty. Why did you want to wake up? Anya.
no subject
( there had been doubt - enough doubt. she had believed enough to listen, to cooperate, to swallow what she was given and wonder if she was hoping it would work or hoping it wouldn't. she hadn't been sure, though, until she opened her eyes for the first time, that it was not all some foolish madness, that she had not simply been poisoned, that she would not wake some days later without her valuables and cursing herself for her curiosity.
but she did, didn't she. only, somewhere other than she had anticipated. )
no subject
[It's a level comment as Deucalion comes to a stop nearby. His attention's more on the visual than the man, taking in every detail, the slowly blooming glow at the horizon, the sea-wind and all its scents against his face. Less obviously something else than Lestat, like this, but he can't deny the feeling of freedom, as false as it is.]
no subject
[ Lestat has crouched down by the time Deucalion has made his observation -- as the wolf does behind him, he too takes in the details of his simulation. His white hand brushes over the gritty damp rock, fingertips exploring a crevice, only lifting his head as more light sets to dawn. ]
I so often sleep right through them.