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

[sfoils]

Yeah, Wedge. [ There's people running around with names that are just suffixes, yet it's the simple machine that gets side-eyed. ] 'Pilot' is a job description and ends up 'Antilles' was an archipelago.

[ Wedge picks up his empty glass, toasts with it. ] Nice to meet you, Regina. [ With their constant complaining, Wedge sometimes wonders why some people here choose to be unplugged. He gives them a pass because he knows they're mourning.

But it's still grating. ]

[hwic]

[ Her chin tips up at his refusal to take her bait and run with it, but it won't be the first time, won't be the last. She's done this before, gotten angry, demanded if they expect her to be grateful for what they've done to her, and the answer has always been no. Gratitude is never the expectation.

Because she chose it. This. The truth.

She takes a sip of liquor, and it's not bad enough to make her sneer. ]

You were a pilot before?

[ This, after her gaze has creeped over where his plugs may be visible at his arms. Hers are, a knit cardigan gathered at the elbows and draping at her shoulders, regal. ]

[sfoils]

[ Wedge taken to mechanic coveralls. They hide the majority of his plugs, of which there are many: three in each forearm, three in each calf, five down his spine, and the one in the back of his head.

(He isn't ashamed of them. When they freed Wedge they told him the machines must've compensated for the increasingly difficult illusion that was his life as an ace pilot/rebellion leader by adding more ports for more sensory input.

But a body can only take so much. As the illusion grew in complexity, so did its cracks.)

Right now his sleeves are rolled up. It's awfully stuffy in here, that with all the people in close proximity to other another. ] I am a pilot. [ He corrects, looking at her ports. ] Ends up over twenty years of piloting in there translates well to out here. Snubfighters, hovercrafts...it's all the same to me.

And you? [ Slightly wryly. ] What do you do for our wonderful rebellion?