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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.
Fara fa Edilion | OC | Silliness
It was hard to believe that Fara had once been a quibbling, quivering young noblewoman trapped in a bubble in a land of high magic and psionic oddities. After her extraction -- and months of training -- she had deigned to make good on the suggestion that she was an excellent candidate to help in the translation of humanoid minds from fantastic dream-worlds to the real. In some ways, coming from lands in which computers, technology, and AI had no concept was much harder than being yanked from worlds in which at least describing words could be found.
In some ways, it made the mind-boggling shifts of reality easier. For example, at this moment she was working with a team of other fighters in her home dream of Avengaea. This wasn't her first extraction, but she was by no means the ring-leader... or at least she hadn't been until their leader had dropped off their radar. Now it was up to Fara to communicate with the daemon populace in the same way that natives of more familiar matrixes might tap into phone networks: the variegated species sometimes dropped into fugues in which Operators could dump information on extraction points, which meant that those trained to understand daemon me's could simply follow the strains of gossip to make their objectives.
The network was coming up empty, however; either the asandus Agents had managed to dampen Operator commands, or they were all simply unlucky.
Whatever the case, Fara was sending out other pings: they might get lucky in another way, even if it was terribly risky. She had been hiding out with her team in an abandoned caetran bolt hole, in which a family of daemons had been making use of the lintels. "Find Kaitan," she'd said... well, it'd been more complicated than that, but even though it had been hammered into her head that one couldn't simply trust humans who were still plugged in, there were always exceptions to the rules. That was how she'd discovered that Avengaea was merely a dream, after all.
(Simulation :: 2 :: Open)
Fara isn't training to leap across roofs or to punch or kick people into submission. There are few enough people who have been freed from their various versions of the matrix that understand what facing down magic is that she has been called in to help. Where she's from, humans cannot perform magic as a daily part of their lives, but since she's been extracted Fara has had time and proclivity towards mastering the study. She has a good number of styles down by this point, and she wants to help pass that on.
"You see before you a number of different anchors: focuses to help bend reality." The dark-haired young woman is kneeling before a low table. On it, items as small as a wand or a set of stones are resting, up to the size of staves and other oddities. "These are just a sample. If you're here, it's because you want to learn to manipulate their worlds in a way that is acceptable and even required in some dreams. If you're looking to transfer to a ship that fights mainly for these waiting souls, you're going to need to learn to master the art. Luckily," she grins cheekily, "I'm here to help."
Mission :: 3!
Still, there were times when it worked brilliantly, and especially so if a body knew how to listen in. After the events of the last year, Tunada had learned enough from Qensuna to be able to keep his ear to the ground deliberately, rather than passively taking part in the informational exchanges as most of his compatriots still did, and it had proven useful on a number of occasions. He thought he was getting fairly good with it, even if the experience of circumnavigating the "pay no mind to this" mes still engendered a kind of psychic discomfort in the blue daemon.
When today's gossip arrived through the grapevine on an evening walkabout, Tunada spent some time picking it apart. The usual dreck, of course, plus some interesting updates from the southern diaspora...
...but it was Kaitan's name that brought him up short, and then the confusing signature on that message that sent him leaping to his feet and dashing for his rider.
Soon enough they were out, riding madly for the hubs from whence the message had came. It was all careful layering and implication, but to a miniscule fragment of people -- exactly at whom she had been aiming the message at, no doubt -- it all resolved to suggest that the sender was someone who it patently couldn't be.
And Kaitan and Tunada both agreed that even if it wasn't Fara (and how could it be?), they had to find out who might be sending messages in her name.
It was hard to pinpoint the source, but they managed it. Soon enough the pair of them were circling a thin rock formation, tiny and unmarked on a map but home to a distant cousin lineage of the ubiquitous scaled daemons that skulked in Fensirt's bluffs. The way in was unclear, and there was a kind of silence that was, even for the desert, eerie. On high alert the pair circled again, but all the entrances they could spot were far too small for the pair of them.
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When the daemon-human pair came scouting out, two of her team raised pebbles, psionically skilled as they'd proven to be, ready to send them spiraling through the brains and hearts of the suspected threats. Fara hissed a ceasefire, recognizing the shapes immediately.
She spoke first to Tunada, a terse chatter of me's that enfolded trust-locking mechanisms. It didn't always work to keep information out of the hands of the Agents, but it was more prone to work in those who were suggestible. There were layers of trust here that couldn't simply be programmed. Fara stepped out of the shadows a few moments later. "Kaitan," she bowed, lacking skirts to curtsy with.
Fara had changed in the time between when Kaitan had last seen her and now, and not simply because she'd been trapped in isolation against her will. Things were rather more complicated, and her expression reflected the terse nerves she was trying to hide between grateful appreciation and the stabbing pangs that she couldn't quite extricate. This Kaitan was still dreaming. That meant that she technically wasn't 'real'... and it meant that unless she was ready for it, she wasn't going to be more than a temporary help. That didn't mean that the younger woman didn't feel deeply about her... but those were all from a very vivid dream.
"Kaitan," she greeted. Fara was dressed in a simple Erysan travelling smock, the various blues of it already spattered with blood and red-orange dust. She had a sleek line and moved with a liquid certainty more effective than the bearer of the Everen Stones herself... it was impossible to hide that leap in self-confidence even under the stress of everything that had gone so wrong! "I know it's impossible that I'm out here, but I need you both to trust me: I've gotten myself and some friends into rather a lot of trouble and we need the utmost secrecy. I need your help again."
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It was impossible, and yet somehow there wasn't a moment where Kaitan doubted that this was Fara. Maybe lack of physical presence had left her with a feeling of unreality for the Fara inside the bubble... but maybe not; it hardly mattered. In her gut Kaitan knew, although her head appealed sanity and, a little too late to make an impact, suggested that this could be an imposter.
The rest of her shut that part down. Her expression hardened back into something competent, rather than the breathless, yearning shock it had been a moment before.
"What can I do?" Her tone was firm, all business. The rest could follow later: if Fara was in trouble, that needed to be dealt with now. Tunada rumbled from behind her back, circling around to keep an eye on the exit, though he was not exempt himself from the shock.
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"I've been working behind the scenes on something very important, but it's the sort of thing that is going to get us royally in trouble... sort of like last time, but worse," she admitted. She turned towards Tunada now, dipping her head again to show respect. "Sorry to put it all on you, but 'do or die' doesn't even begin to nail it."
In the meantime, she said to Kaitan, "we need access to other bolt-holes that potential asandus and caetran forces aren't aware of, or that they can't get to. We're wearing down our welcome in this one."
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That gave Kaitan a moment or two to gather herself up behind the competent facade she'd shoved in place against her shock. Now she was frowning and chewing on the request.
Her eyes flicked over Fara's companions, gauged them for desert travel. They did not rustle up to par against her checklist -- in fact, as a whole they failed miserably. What were those shoes? "Our options are limited for places nearby," she let Fara know grimly. She was familiar with this stretch of dunes and stones, but not as familiar as she was with others, which was a shame. But if she could take them in little leaps further south... "There's one place. But we'd be out in the open for a long stretch."
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She gave the pair of them one last, nearly longing look, then marched back to the trio in the rocks. A heated discussion appeared to take place, where Fara laid out what exactly was likely to happen, shooting down their more preposterous suggestions. "No, it doesn't work like that," she could at one point be heard to raise her voice. "You don't just wave a wand here without generating a field the Goddesses themselves would notice! We need to tap into what exists."
And then, "No! Fennel, it's too dangerous to try to exit out any old node; the organizational threat is too great. They could track us back to the Meridian and we're running a risk with the extraction as it is! We have to put them off the trail for as long as possible..."
If Kaitan was looking and watching closely enough, she might hear suggestion of continuing the process. The man in the shades was giving her a pointed stare. Fara went stock upright for a moment, turned to look at Kaitan, and then shook her head. "Too dangerous. Much too dangerous." She cut in on any other objections, swiping her palm flatly. "We'll simply have to keep moving." She returned to Kaitan and gave her final decision: "I don't want to split us up, but I'm afraid we'd better work our fastest to spread word under the noses of those that are trying to track us down."
She pulled a stone from out of a pocket at her breast, handing it to Kaitan to tie into Tunada's many braids. "If you're willing to fasten this to your Rider, it will give you a good sounding board to find us... don't let it be touched by anyone but another daemon!"
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"If I'd known, I would have brought Laedo," Kaitan shook her head. The asandus would have been able to get them to a teleportation node... would have been able to side-step the trouble that it seemed might be brewing alongside Fara's need to get into contact with the daemon network.
The last part, too, worried the redhead. She looked to Tunada, who nodded, and began to fasten the bead without hesitation. She unclipped one of the blue braids, weaving the stone in with rapid, practiced fingers. "Find you," she asked, for clarification. "You need me to go with Tunada? I thought I could guide you to the next bolt-hole."
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Then Kaitan spoke and Fara pursed her lips sharply. "Laedo's not in a position to help anybody at the moment." She seemed to hesitate for a moment, then took a deep breath. Her compatriot, sensing what she was about to do, put a hand on her shoulder, but Fara shrugged it off. "That's why we were here. Over the months that I've been gone, he'd been questioning very specific things that brought my friend's attention to him. We decided to see if he was willing to question things further, and he was, he did. I suspect that you might have that potential... but I'm afraid my feelings might be getting in the way."
She felt a hint of giddiness, but it was only an echo of the kind that she'd first felt when with Kaitan. She was giving Kaitan a stare now, a hard eyed one like she wanted to find trust there, but that she was afraid at what might happen if she did. "If you come with us and Tunada sends daemons to help us eke out a position that we can stay until we find our leader, I'll answer anything you might be wanting to know."
"Fara," Fennel tried, voice soft. "You're too close to this. You can't just divulge information to bluepills. Jorgand is going to sideline you for the next year if we get out of this alive. You're never going to be able to visit Ave--the desert again."
"All the more reason to be upright about it now," Fara replied, face hardening into a frown. She looked Kaitan in the face again and there was clearly etched sorrow in her features.
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This was a side of Fara she had never seen before, and it drove into her a need to know more.
She looked at Tunada who butted her in the shoulder with his big, rectangular head. "Do what you have to do," he told her in a rumble just for her ears. Before she could respond he rose his voice and told her and the rest of them, "I'll do my part."
It wouldn't be the first time she and her companion had been separated at dire moments, and even if Kaitan hated it she was getting used to it, and had already surrendered to the fact that, at times, they were more useful apart than together.
"Do you need an unbroken chain or just fast movers?" Tunada was asking, casting the question to Fara and her companion both. Fennel seemed competent despite her apparent objections to whatever Fara was suggesting, and he hadn't an inkling that her lack of knowledge about the lay of the land extended so deeply that she might not understand the question.
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Fara paused for a moment, licked her lip, and stuttered a me that was short and sweet and more dense than a human throat should manage. Unfolded it produced a starkly vivid image of a creature that didn't look like a daemon. It was a white rabbit. It was the symbol that Jorgand had learned when Fara had helped them finally parse Avengaea's 'conversation' that was the matrix, and it would be the symbol attached to any messages their lost captain might try to use to help them locate him...
But first they needed to secure a connection with their Operator, and that meant casting their nets wide, which was why Fara had mentioned the wavering appellation; their Operator would be working hard against the system to get in contact with them and determine which teleportation nodes would allow the humans to disengage from the matrix and back into their bodies.
Could they secure a node for long enough for Fara to bring Kaitan up to speed, and if so what about Jorgand? Could the Meridian haul her tail to pick up their original extractee quickly enough to capture Kaitan's body? There wouldn't be time. Fara might never get to see the Erysan again.
She balled her fists for a moment as Tunada made final arrangements with Fennel and then she took Kaitan aside. "I have the weight of the world on me," she spoke quietly but urgently. "I don't want to put you in danger and I don't want to take you out of here without your permission; and ultimately the decision has to be yours. People get time to dwell and decide, Kaitan, but I might never see you again... and it would be too much to bear."
She was being given a warning look by the man who was standing watch over them, and their last party member who'd come down out of the rubble. It was time to get a move on, wasn't it?
"I came to my choice because the splinter was already wedged in by the Goddesses. How can all this be right and true and real? How can so much loss and so much stupid tragedy be condoned for the petty games of Goddesses?" Fara tried to work out the passion she'd felt behind that grief. She couldn't come right out and tell Kaitan anything, could she?
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Furthermore, she was beginning to sense that the urgency, or at least the urgency between Fara and her, had more to do with words than it did with actions. Kaitan's competent front was fracturing and between its edges Fara could see a desperation in the other woman, a hot need to understand. There was truth in what Fara was saying but Kaitan had struggled with those thoughts more than once in her life. How could there be meaning in the absurd, tragic things that were a part of being alive?
The problem was she'd never come to the same conclusions. She had never thought to question the fact of existence itself. Maybe it was a part of who she was, or maybe it was that circumstance had never allowed her to see the truth -- it was impossible to know. "What are you talking about? How can you even be here?!" She was an inch away from grabbing Fara's arms with the frightening urgency of her need to understand. She was being left behind, maybe literally, and she sensed that it all hung on what she said to Fara now. It terrified her.
"I would follow you anywhere," she whispered, voice rough.
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At least her compatriots were consistent enough to fall into line with them as they moved along, allowing Fara to do the speaking, even if a couple of them seemed uncertain about the prospect.
It takes time. Fara had grown up trained in the art of posing delicate matters to ears that didn't want to hear them, but that paled in comparison to the veil between Avengaea and the harsh truths of the real... and the risks at stake here were not simply whether Kaitan would choose to accept those truths or reject them: they were surmounted by the fact that somewhere in the huge tunnels lacing the underbellies of tumble-down megacities her ship, the Meridian, was racing through the mire of 01's slurry for someone else. They were surmounted by the fact that Jorgand, their Captain, had been taken and was likely to be held at ransom. There were choices to make and Fara was afraid that doing this meant that the chances of losing Kaitan entirely were far better than managing to pull off this miracle...
On the other hand, she'd been imprisoned on Avengaea for miracles she hadn't even performed yet. She might as well get to committing the crimes whilst she was beyond capture. In any case, she had always listened to their Operator complaining that her job was awfully boring... and though Fara wasn't a betting type, she suspected that after today she wouldn't be complaining any more.
Fara started with the basics: the idea of something beyond the reality of the desert and the Goddesses that lorded over it during this crisis. She wondered if Kaitan had always feared or suspected that the flow of events in her life had been strange and unrealistic... had she ever questioned it? Truly?
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What did bother her was that she knew there to be more to the world than what she saw, and it was that that kept her ears open. It wasn't even a guess, really; there had to be things in the universe that the Powers that Be of Avengaea didn't understand or control, else why would they meddle, and not simply set their toys to play out their pre-determined paths?
It was also clear, blazingly clear that Fara had answers now that she hadn't before. And so every time Fara asked her a leading question, she filed it away as a piece to put together, and every time she had a chance, she pressed back for more answers to her own questions.
'When she had time' at least in part because they had begun to move. The hideout to which Kaitan was leading them was a long ways over rocky dunes on foot, though she did her best when she could to keep them out of open view from the air. Tunada parted ways with them there, following a route that suggested more daemons in concentration among whom he could begun to hunt for the telling package. Beyond that small hideout was an even longer trot, and it was lucky they were where they were -- on the grid map of where teleportation nodes sat in the desert, they were reasonably close to one of the northwesterly ones. But it was still a long, hot walk.
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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.