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

[onyourfeet]

[ He's quick to slap his palm against the off switch when she calls no, not in the business of fucking around in case there's something wrong -- even in simulation, no one gets the kind of resets he had access to. The robots twitch, swing to static, lights blinking to idle.

Which doesn't mean he's letting up. ]

I'm with you on that one. Maybe try dodging it this time. Shooting it. They can take it.

[ His hand lifts, hovers over the button. ]

[hacker]

Do you know what the definition of insanity is? [ She throws her hands up, shifting her weight and looking from him back at the machine. Like she's sizing it up to try and wrestle with it or … ride it. One or the other. Reaching forward, she tugs at the edges of her gloves, adjusting them on her hands, rolling tension out of her shoulders and trying to decide what exactly she's gonna go for here. Her eyes dart back to Cage, narrow and incredulous all at once. ] What you're doing. Right now!

[onyourfeet]

[ He grins. It's a bright, white grin, a movie star grin, a practiced grin, but one of impulse too. Funny she asks. It lasts a second, before he agrees; ]

You could say I'm familiar.

[ The switch is thrown again. Behind her, one of the mechanical stars swoops on by in a wide circle, barely avoiding collision with another. The one she's sizing up starts to life, spinning a short circle, its lights blinking, its claws extending -- as if it's staring back at her.

In the same motion, Cage steps over the line, and onto the training ground. He is not a huge guy, on the compact side of things, but there's a confidence at his core. He's equipped with a sidearm, but little else. Perhaps his role as trainer gives him some immunity. ]

You have a distinct advantage that you didn't have before. Everything around you -- gravity, friction, these machines -- are following orders. You're making decisions.

Decide to be better. Than these things, than gravity.

[hacker]

Yeah. Sure. I'll just …

[ She swings her hands forward, clapping them together to psych herself up and adjusting her footing. ]

Decide to be better than gravity.

[ It sounds exactly as ridiculous when she says it as it did when he said it, and her tone deflates comically to reflect her lack of faith. Her brow furrows, creases lining her forehead, but she nods, ready to try. ]

[onyourfeet]

Sass my platitudes at your own peril.

[ His tone is pitched easy and lighthearted, but so it was the last time she got thrown across the room by mechanical spinning monsters. He's a salesman at heart, more than soldier.

And the programme hardly needs more than a signal from her to get started. The one she'd been eyeing off makes an immediate dash, sliding smooth and spinning with bone smashing zeal, quick enough to push her reflexes but thankfully within her line of sigh.

But there's one creeping up into her blind spot, and it makes a winding turn for her at the same time, the sound of whirring machinery and slicing air giving it away. ]

[hacker]

[ Well, shit.

Successfully dodging one puts her right in the path of the other, and she can't move quickly enough to get out of the way of its moving parts. The machine plows straight through her, but instead of simply taking the hit, Skye leans away from it, raising her gun between them to fire a shot into it from close range while it drives her back into the wall (and to her knees). ]