» TEST DRIVE #001

[reveriemod]

TEST DRIVE #001

( 0 0 1 ) » WAKE UP

Were you asleep or were you unconscious? It doesn't matter: when you come to, there's an odd taste in your mouth and there's a low-level mechanical hum in the air. Your head hurts and you feel nauseous. You aren't anywhere you know: everything around you is metal, from the floor you lie on all the way to the ceiling. You are dressed in a jumpsuit you definitely weren't wearing before.

"We tried to save the world. I think— I think we did the opposite."

The message repeats on a loop. If you look for its source, you find a comms device on the floor next to you. The logo on its wallpaper says REVERIE TERMINAL. Upon closer inspection, you find the same logo on your jumpsuit.

Welcome to your new home. What choice do you have but to explore your surroundings?

( 0 0 1 . 1 ) » WAKE UP WHERE?

When you wake up, you find that you're not alone. But more importantly, you find that you're in a closet. An empty closet, bar you and your new companion. It's small, cramped, and there is no door that you can see. The ceiling is low, there is barely any lights, only some coming from the tiny flashlight clipped to your suit's shoulder. You cannot be sure that there is any air coming in to the room.

Are these grooves in the wall supposed to mean something?

( 0 0 2 ) » OBSERVATION DECK

There were no windows in the corridor you woke up in and no windows in any of the crew quarters you might have checked for occupants — but there are plenty of windows on the uppermost level of the station, deck 1. In fact, there are windows from floor to ceiling all along the circumference of the station's circular deck, and it's possible to walk along it all. What it shows is a strange solar system you've never seen before and a planet that might resemble one you know, but certainly isn't the same.

You're in space. You don't know where you are. Neither does anyone else.

( 0 0 3 ) » BAR

On deck 3, you find the bar. Tucked away from the crew quarters, it's dimly lit, there are bar stools thrown down on the floor and what looks like some very old drink spills, crusty and dark against the bar top. But there is alcohol here, or at least, what you think is alcohol, in bottles with faded labels, most of them indecipherable. Take a drink, get drunk, start a fight, or start a party? You're stuck on this station, might as well make the most of it, right?

( 0 0 3 . 1 ) » VIRTUAL

But the alcohol isn't even the most interesting part of your discovery (depending on who you are, of course). No, what catches your interest is a second, smaller room off from the main bar room, which looks to be some kind of arcade. There are a few VR sets lined up against one of the walls, and surely, they can't be working, right? Nothing is on this rust bucket. And yet, if you put it on, the display comes to life.

It's a pretty simple HUD, and when you move around in reality, you move around in the virtual world you've just entered. It's a luxurious world, full of brightly, saturated colors, making it just a little obvious that it isn't real. Ahead, there is a jungle, a temple, and a city. You can play around, slay some monsters, have some fun, but you can feel yourself growing hot, like the VR helmet is burning your forehead.

And when you try to take it off, you find that you can't. The HUD glitches, the sound cuts off to a blaring alarm, and an error message appears, in glowing, blinking red letters: FINISH THE MISSION. Will you, despite not knowing what the mission even is, or will you fight to get the helmet off?

( 0 0 4 ) » MALFUNCTIONS

(cw: body horror, bodily functions, gore, blood, death)

The fabricators function well enough, until they don't. One day, one moment, everything's all right — the food doesn't generally taste amazing and sometimes downright awful, but it's nourishing and filling no matter what your dietary needs — and the next, things go a little haywire.

In short, the fabricators are malfunctioning.

Oh, they're still producing food that looks and tastes much the same as before, but now there are some unexpected side effects.

NB: Characters may experience any of the following side effects: nausea ranging from slight to debilitating, the sensation of being happily and affectionately — but not overwhelmingly — drunk, bone-deep exhaustion and weariness that makes it hard to move, or repeated hallucinations of loved ones screaming for help, reaching out to characters and leading them down abandoned corridors or being killed by unseen forces.

The extent to which characters are affected is up to players, as is whether you'd prefer to play this more lightheartedly or tackling more serious themes. If the latter, please provide warnings in subject lines where necessary.

( 0 0 5 ) » NETWORK

The comms device you found next to you when waking up connects to a station-wide network, REVERIE NET. You have the option to post video, voice or text messages.

What will you share?

( 0 0 5 . 1 ) » NETWORK USERNAME

When you first turn on your communication device, it requests for you to pick a username to identify you on the network. It can be anything you want. However, as you try to input a username in your wristband to access the network, you get the following message, along with a small, but irritating, warming sound:

this username is already in use.

What does this mean? Is there other people around? Were there other people around?

( 0 0 6 ) » WILDCARD

The station features a variety of locations, from sleeping quarters free for the claiming to a dirty swimming pool and a bar that still holds alcohol (though some of the bottles seem to have been opened a while ago).

Go wild, but don't wreck the place. It's your home for the foreseeable future, after all.

Comments

005。1

[dvmn]

[He's thinking this guy's got either a real flair for the dramatic or is a really big fan of the artist formerly known as Prince.

Anyways:]

TEXT | UN: AKIRA
as if we'd be that lucky
this place sure as hell doesn't seem like it was built to entertain

[Sure, there was the fitness center, but that seemed to be perfunctory. And then there was what stood to be the "arcade," but it almost seemed like an afterthought.]

space

[(Very helpful.)]

[armigers]

[ Or both, assuming Prince can be licensed by Square-Enix. ]

Gee, couldn't have figured that one on my own.

[ It's not like they're surrounded by nothing but infinite darkness on every side. ]

Do you at least know who's behind the crappy jumpsuits and the whole kidnapping thing?

[ He doesn't expect a better answer than before, but 'Akira' is the only one responding at the moment. ]

[dvmn]

[Holy shit... we blew the lid way offa this thing.]

happy to help

[Cue shit-eating grin, if they were talking in person.]

believe me, if i knew that i wouldn't be sittin here talking to you about this
i've been looking around for a while but all i can find are the logos for this reverie terminal thing

[armigers]

No sign of any crew? Not sure if I want to know what happened to them all.

[ Or maybe they are the crew. If that's the case, who is even piloting this thing? ]

Any more bad news while you're at it? Wild daemons on board?

[dvmn]

from what I've seen, nothing
this whole place feels like it's barely holding itself together, so it checks out
and yeah... I've seen enough sci-fi movies to know the answer to that is probably a nasty one

[That possibility is a bit too mind-bendy for Akira, here. He's too busy worried that whatever happened to the crew, and whoever else might've been on this ship, was an imminent and possible future for them.

And, fuck, dude. Don't go talking about demons around him all willy-nilly; it's a bit of a touchy topic back home.]

nah, though that'd certainly make things a lot more complicated

[People on Earth back home had started to tear themselves apart as hysteria swept throughout them, desperate to weed out demons among their number that might or might not actually exist. Akira did not want that sort of thing starting here.]

the food's pretty awful. that's the worst news I've come across, besides, you know, being stuck here in the first place

[armigers]

You sure you should be eating the ship food? What if that's what killed them all?

[ A braver soul than he himself is. Noctis took on look at the bar and noped right past that place to the arcade, but they got to find some way to survive here in the meantime... ]

Could've been an outbreak of unwashed vegetables or something.

[ No good can ever come from eating things that grow out of the ground. ]

There's no blood anywhere, so it probably wasn't an attack. No bodies either. Kind of weird.

[ Which is putting things very mildly. ]

[dvmn]

[...Shit, that's actually a good point.

But, a better one:]

if that's the case I'm either dying from poison or whatever or dying from starvation
I'll take the option that involves food in the meanwhile

[He's a growing devilman and he can't afford to skip meals, alright?]

the only reason the food'd kill anyone is that it sucks. beyond that, I haven't noticed anything weird

[But it did suck. Akira would never complain about the Makimura's vegetable-centric meals ever again; even they were better than the facsimile of food that Akira had discovered in the mess hall.]

not in this part, anyway
maybe they sealed us off from whatever happened to the rest of the crew

[armigers]

[ Touché. ]

Haven't hit that level of desperate yet.

[ Though it's only a matter of time if they continue to remain stuck in this floating garbage can. ]

And they could just be waiting to do to us what they did to the crew. I'm not taking my chances, no way.

[ If there's a way off this ship, he's taking it. He doesn't care, so long as he can get himself back to Eos stat. ]

[dvmn]

[Suit yourself, dude.]

you'll get there

[Akira just hits that rock bottom at a breakneck pace, as his body requires ridiculous amounts of fuel.]

got any bright ideas then, prince?
space'll do us a hell of a lot worse than whatever mysterious end we might face in here

[armigers]

[ He almost chokes on a breath at the address before realizing that he canon did pick that username. Hiding in plain sight, right? This guy probably doesn't really believe he's a prince... ]

Sure, I've got a plan. I'm just working out the details.

[ No, he's really screwed. Their resident-plan guy might be a whole universe away. ]

But if that plan doesn't work and say I end up having to eat the same stuff, how bad was it?

[dvmn]

[He doesn't. And he'd absolutely think you're full of shit if you tried to tell him you really were a prince.]

well, don't do anything until it's foolproof
not really talkin about you. just everyone else on board. you never know who might fuck it up

[(He might.)

He might not believe he's a prince, but he'll believe that he has a nonexistent plan. Akira's mostly a pretty trusting guy, unless it's something absolutely ridiculous (unless it's Ryo telling him it, and then he believes him immediately).]

hmmmm
so
imagine you're explaining what food tastes like to an alien that doesn't have a mouth and has never eaten anything. and then that alien makes a machine that tries to recreate what food is like based on what it heard
it's kinda like that

[Like an edible version of the telephone game.]

(2/2) i didn't even intend for this but

[dvmn]

[... wait a minute -

Immediately, like a bolt of lightning:]

dude, do you think it was aliens????

[Missing his mental segue, but: the reason why all of this weird shit was happening. In space? Strange planet? No one can tell him it's not at least a possibility.]

[armigers]

[ That makes two of them as potential fuck-ups. Go Team Fuck-up?

As for Akira's epiphany, Noctis has no real clue who's behind all of this. ]

Couldn't tell you. I didn't even know Earth was a thing until today.

[ All his life, he had thought Eos was the only planet habitable to humans, so he's been dealing with one culture shock after another since he woke up in this place. ]

Don't sound so excited either. Pretty sure they brought us here for a reason, and it doesn't look like it's a good one so far.

[dvmn]

[Team Fuck-Up, hell yes.]

wait what
really????
where are you from then???
are you an alien??

[An alien prince?!

After settling down a little bit:]

but... yeah. I guess you're right
if that message on the phone is right... it's really bad