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penumbramemes2024-11-16 04:50 pm
penumbra: test drive meme #1
TEST DRIVE MEME #1
↪ Test Drive Meme plot and interactions can be considered game canon as long as both parties in the game are accepted and agree to keep it canon!
↪ There are currently 50 player spots available!
↪ Threads on the TDM can be summarized for Activity Check
[art credit]
The last thing you remember is either simple or very complicated - you were asleep, or unconscious, or perhaps...you died. Whatever the circumstances, you closed your eyes at home and dreamed of a storm, and when your eyes opened again you were staring at the ceiling of your new home, injured perhaps, but with wounds bound and safe enough. For now.
Upon waking and exploring your new surroundings - a relatively nice, furnished apartment - you will discover a BlackBerry style phone, your apartment key, mail key, and a sensor for "buzzing" into the building, as well as a list of rules to live by in your new home:
The apartment you now find yourself in looks well-kept, the fridge is full, the lights are on, and the whole place looks as if whoever lived in this apartment before you simply packed up and left, minutes ago.1. don't use the elevator between 1:11 and 3:33 am.
2. you will receive mail from 'the building manager' shoved under your door. read it once and then burn it immediately.
3. if someone claiming to live on the fourth floor tries to speak to you, ignore them.
4. never enter the basement, or any area of the building below ground level
5. if you see a shadowy figure in the hallway, run.
If you leave that apartment, you'll find yourself faced with a dim hallway that leads to a small lobby with an elevator door. You're going to have to explore this new place sometime! Why not now?
Eventually, everyone will make their way to the lobby, the heart of the building, with its empty concierge desk and mail room. Like most of the other common areas of the building, the Lobby is a little dimly lit in a way that could be cozy or creepy depending on your perspective, with patterned carpet that hides nasty scuffs, and sturdy paint and drywall that's not likely to get broken too easily. All of it hardy and meant for a space that's open to the public.
One other major feature of the lobby of Penumbra Place is a large corkboard stationed on the wall behind the concierge desk. And on this corkboard is a large map of the city, burnt around the edges, torn and replaced with transparent tape in places, and scribbled on with large swatches of colour here and there. There are some pertinent places marked with these colours - the Dry Waste, Wet Waste, and the Chasm, as well as where Penumbra itself is located. See a picture of the markings here.
Underneath the concierge's desk can be found a small stockpile of supplies that looks strangely out of place in the dim lobby. The majority of the items look like they were salvaged or scavenged from the Dry Wastes outside, dirty and rusty and generally like a tetanus hazard from hell. The items cover a broad spectrum - shovels and pickaxes, makeshift weapons including a bat with nails driven into it, a large plastic waterskin half-full of stagnant water, first aid kits from the pharmacy that have seen better days. There are also a rather large stack of something that can't be found elsewhere in the apartment building - MREs, or meals ready to eat. These rations are light and shelf-stable for years, each providing a full day's food for an average human, and excellent for packing to eat on camping trips or expeditions.
How will you divide these spoils? Eat the MREs, or save them for an exploration mission? And what about that map?
Most importantly - just who left these items out for you to find?
There's a treat waiting for anyone who happens to venture outside and explore the businesses that are installed in the main floor of the building - Skidooch's Pub has a welcome banner above the open doors!
Echoing off the nearby buildings, all of which are collapsed and in ruin, is the sound of cheerful music, beckoning you into the dim, somewhat timeless interior of Skidooch's. The sound of the music contrasts sharply with the grey rubble and dead silence of the rest of the world, leaving it sounding a little tinny, and are there whispered voices somewhere in that recording or are you just imagining things? Best not to dwell on it, perhaps. Better to get into the mood for a party, because that's what's going on in Skidooch's!
Anyone who enters the pub will find refreshments set up, a dance floor cleared, and a huge very-spiked punchbowl ready and waiting at the end of the bar. There are delicate crystal plates and cups for the refreshments and punch. The foods are generally...a little old-fashioned. Some of them look quite appetizing, like the huge platter of completely normal deviled eggs; others are a little less so, like the ambrosia jello cake and towering aspic that stands in a place of honour at the center of the spread. Surprisingly though, if you take a closer look and the aspic doesn't put you off your appetite, there are quite a few good foods there, including stuff you might recognize from home. The punch is, as mentioned, heavily spiked, but has a lovely light fruit punch flavour.
Once you're inside Skidooch's, the music seems to lose that weirdly-echoing tinny sound and more just like lyricless jazz music, easy to dance to and also easy to talk through. The chairs and tables are comfortable, and the dance floor is beckoning. The longer you stay inside the pub, the more you forget your troubles, feeling them slowly ease away, ebbing and flowing until they become nothing, and you're suffused with a haze of nostalgic joy, whether you've been drinking or not. Why not sit down a while and get to know your new fellow tenants?
Just don't leave the party too soon, because if you come back, all you'll find beyond those open doors at Skidooch's Pub are discordant, repetitive old music, a spread of familiar food and drink that looks rotten, crawling with maggots and flies, and a complete lack of the people you just left there. The further you creep into the pub, the darker it gets, and you walk much further than you should to reach the full depth of the pub as it was before. Eventually, you'll find yourself in pitch darkness, with only that music playing.
Dare you continue walking?
Anyone who looks out of a window facing the "inside" of the U-shape of the building will see a gorgeous courtyard garden with winding paths to wander, trees and wildflowers, and gardening patches that are ripe for the taking. The only entrance to this area is a gate in the tall wall that protects the garden from the public on the opposite side of the bottom of the U-shape of the building, featuring the security of a small pad for you to use your individual sensor to "buzz" into the gardens. The words "Back Paths" are scribbled onto this gate in red spray paint.
It's understandable that you'd want to explore the gardens, when everything else in this world seems to be, for the moment, dry and in ruins, devoid of any life save the people in Penumbra Place. All that ruin and decay can get wearing on the psyche, if you're not used to it.
Upon entering the back paths, you'll find yourself at the start of that beautiful winding path. The gardens themselves are mostly grass and idyllic wildflowers, dotted with evergreen and deciduous trees, with wide grassy patches perfect for tossing a baseball with little Timmy, and the occasional garden plot. The weather in the back paths is always balmy, like a warm spring day just after the rain, the scent of loam and petrichor perpetually lingering in the air. It's a beautiful walk!
But...shouldn't that walk have been over a while ago? Haven't we walked much further than the visible length of the path as seen from the building? The path seems to go on and on, twisting and winding through the trees and grass, and have you seen that picnic bench before or is it just identical to the last one you saw?
Whether it's for an hour or 6 hours, you wander the back paths looking for the exit, until you finally, finally come to it. That gate, spray-painted in red on this side with the words "No Return." Stepping outside the gate, you find yourself back in the post-apocalyptic backyard of Penumbra Place. Walking around the building, you're captivated by how quiet it is, with no birds or animals making noises, no traffic, no signs of life. No lights in the windows of Penumbra Place. In fact, Penumbra Place has collapsed, with no sign of the building you left behind to come into the back paths.
The only place to go is back into the back paths. Any further exploring reveals only the empty ruin of the place. And once you're back in the gardens...how long will it be until you find the real exit?
The dawning of the second day of your new existence in Penumbra Place greets you with a song. A song that's stuck in your head, that is. It's a cheerful tune, melodic, a definite earworm, but one you've never heard before. It repeats over and over again, at first easy enough to ignore, but as the day goes on it gets louder and louder, drowning out the background noise of thoughts in your brain, eventually drowning out the ability for conscious, logical thought. It dominates your brainwaves, repeating over and over again, the music cheerful but the lyrics that you somehow know much more sinister:
The only thing scary is the void in my brain
Everything is burning, I am lonely every day
I'm just a tiny cell and my body is made of clay
The only thing scary is the chasm in my brain
Will you sing along?
As the night falls, the song abruptly comes to a halt, for everyone who can hear it at the same time. And then there are monsters.
In fact, to anyone who sang the song aloud there are suddenly monsters in the building, tall and with charred-black skin, looking as if they'd been burned and wearing crowns of moss, their mouths open wide and leering, full of sharp teeth, the long, crooked fingers tipped with claws that drip blood.
Or at least that's what those who sang see their fellow tenants as. Anyone who sang the song aloud will see their fellow tenants who didn't sing as monsters trying to chase and kill them, while seeing those who did sing as they really are. Team up with your fellow singers to slay the monsters! Or, well, if you didn't sing? Time to run from whoever did!
If your character sang the song aloud, please reply in this comment thread, as whether or not they sang will be very, very important during the game's first event.
no subject
This young man before him is so very interesting, though. What's with his eye colour? Is he like Hyun-su? A half-monster, maybe? A neohuman? Usually this entity is able to detect fellow monsters, and he can't quite smell one in this boy, but then again, monsterkind is evolving. Maybe he's something new entirely.
His mouth curves at the question — a challenge — and the monster tilts his head to the other side, like he's very curiously and intensely studying an insect. The boy isn't afraid of him, or at least he's putting on a very good surface mask. Maybe the monster can break that wide, wide open. (...He also just enjoys scaring people. Sorry Allen, you absolutely do not deserve this.) ]
I don't think you want to test what I know, or can do.
[ Why play it safe? He lets his eyes turn, that bright blue swallowed up by an alien black that takes over the entire sclera like spilled ink. Still, his voice is eerily calm and smooth, almost velvet as he keep smiling at the boy. ]
Now answer my question. Is it toxic? This "cat".
[ (The cat in question gives a very adorable meow, seemingly oblivious to any threats on its life.) ]
1/2
...but maybe a Noah. Or something similar.
Something Dark. Something that's the opposite of him.
...or the same as him, but opposite of his weapon. What an unsettling thought. ]
That's what people who are bluffing and just want to be threatening generally say. [ It isn't flip or saucy this time, but it is still flatly blunt. No-nonsense. ]
2/2
Regardless, how many people do you see eating cats? [ He scratches a touch at his cheek, as if the conversation is giving him a bit of a headache. Do you hear the scorn in his tone? There's a lot of very dry, very British scorn in it. ]
I've eaten just about everything all over the world and never seen anyone desperate enough to eat them. Besides, have you seen how weird it looks? It looks sick and unnatural even for a cat. It's probably got all sorts of diseases.
[ Sorry cats. Or not, Allen's never really been much of a cat person. They make him a little uncomfortable... doesn't mean he wants to see them get eaten though. Or worse. ]
no subject
Still, it's not every day that someone doesn't react with fear in the face of a monster, no matter how experienced they are with them. To look into a pair of black eyes generally means nothing good can come next, in his world.
.....He's actually caught a little unsure by what to do here, exactly. Usually, the monster would default to outright aggression — transform his right arm into the deadly weapon it can become, show exactly what he can do. But Hyun-su's body is still recovering, and he really doesn't have much energy to spare right now...
(And he needs to find her, a thought that needles and persists under everything else. It's irritating as fuck. Almost as irritating as the thought of not finding her.)
So no wild arm transformations into giant bladed wings in the apartment lobby. At least not right this second.
He spares another glance down to the creature in question. It does look like it could have at least three diseases. Slowly, his eyes travel back up to the other's face, looking him over with fresh interest. ]
But the problem is my body's hungry. So maybe I should just eat you.
[ Stop...... ]
no subject
Well that's a good thing because Allen also doesn't want to invoke his left arm in the middle of the lobby. They can have a one-off later about who can do the better one-winged angel schtick.
But god, again with the threats? You know... ... you know he's just so tired of this. Do you have any idea how used to being hunted he is? Dogged to literally the ends of the earth as a fugitive from both sides of a holy war? If you haven't stabbed his eyes out or rooted around in his chest cavity to grope his heart or otherwise fucked around inside his head with some kind of coy existential dread nightmare stuff you can just bloody well get in line with the rest.
Expression shuttering, he gives a small huff. ]
Sorry, I'm far too bony.
[ Actually he really is too. Have you seen how impossibly skinny he is? Hobo fugitive life when you're broke and Victorian is rough. ]
no subject
...It's maybe also pretty interesting that the other isn't just backing down in fear of him? This is a first?? (And what would the monster do if he knew he wasn't the only guy with a one-winged angel motif going on, here? His interest would probably surge even further.)
He grins. He's amused, he thinks, still not so familiar with emotions and sensations, but this feels like amusement. ]
Then it seems you have no use to me.
[ Except for as a plaything, apparently. He could be very fun to play with. ...And as a source of information, because the monster is very much believing what he says about the cat probably having diseases. The boy did say he'd eaten from all over the world; he has that kind of experience.
(Okay, fine, he has some use.)
Abruptly, the monster rummages through the tattered backpack that was on his person when he arrived here and pulls out an MRE package, thrusting it roughly at the boy. He'd nabbed it from the concierge's desk earlier, mostly because it seemed important to other people he'd noticed stepping up to claim one. ]
What is this? Answer quickly.
[ Bossing... ]