reveriance | » TEST DRIVE #001

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Apollo had watched the young woman come in from his spot in the corner of the observation deck. 'His corner' changes as the station drifts in its orbit, but it's always the sunniest one. Wherever there's a patch of soft golden sunlight, Apollo is within it - soaking up the rays as if this was a beach holiday instead of a intergalactic kidnapping.

And he had watched her still, quiet and curious, as she approached the window. She isn't the first to be entranced by the view; Apollo is largely immune to the grandeur of space nowadays but he can't blame her. Not at all. ]

Pretty, isn't it? [ He speaks up finally, then lifts a hand in greeting. ] Hi. Don't mind me. Carry on.

[ wanda's aware that there's someone else present, but she's not paying much attention to them. there have been people coming in and out throughout the day, and they've all been minding their own business. there's been one in particular who keeps moving around, which piques her curiosity, but not enough to intervene. until he addresses her himself. ]

It is. [ pretty, that is. as wrong as it looks. ] Is the view better wherever you keep moving?

[ He smiles - practically beams - at that question. ]

Not better, just sunnier.

[ Which is a pretty fair explanation as far as Apollo's concerned. He absently rearranges his foot from where it has fallen in to shadow, moving it firmly back in to the sweeping rectangle of sunlight he currently occupies. ]

You're a new arrival too, right? Do you recognise that planet down below?

[ she nods, not quite understanding the significance but getting that it's something that's necessary. she takes note of how he makes sure his foot is within the square of sunlight along with the rest of his body and wonders how he's going to survive here, since this is one of the only places on the station she's found with exposure to sunlight. ]

Yes. And no. Nothing about this looks familiar, aside from them being planets and stars. [ a beat. ] Do you?

[ Disappointed but not surprised, Apollo shakes his head. ]

No. Haven't met a single person yet who does.

[ Call him an optimist but he keeps trying, with every new face he meets. Somebody somewhere must have some information about the solar system they've found themselves dumped in. Apollo moves closer to the window, reaching out to press a hand against the glass as he scrutinises the hypnotic swirls of the weather patterns over the planet below. ]

I wonder if it's inhabited, [ He adds absently. ] If the people down there were the ones who sent the station up here...

Interesting. [ wanda cups a hand over her eyes, trying to make out what he's moved to get a better look at. there are swirls indicating clouds and storms, she thinks, but she can't discern much more than that. except if there's active weather, it's possible that something's still alive down there. (or maybe not, if mars is anything to go by.) ]

Have you spent a lot of time in space, too? [ she's running into a lot of those. ]

Yeah. I'm something of a frequent flyer. [ Apollo smiles; space isn't as scary as the horror movies made it out to be, as far as he's concerned. But perhaps that's more to do with the fact that there isn't much in space that's capable of scaring a man who can walk on the sun.

He crosses his arms nonchalantly, leaning one broad shoulder against the reinforced glass. ]

You?

No. This is the first I've seen of it outside of movies. [ and yes, most of those have been horror. ]

How do you mean, frequent flyer? Something tells me you're not referring to a profession as an astronaut. [ the others she'd talked to had mentioned being familiar with stations, but they'd all had different reasons and different rules. ]

[ He doesn't answer immediately. Instead Apollo turns his face back out to space, gazing along his shoulder and past the glass, out in to the sea of stars beyond. Stars that are achingly familiar and yet completely alien. Strange starscapes haven't bothered him in the past, not really, but that was when he the Carrier was only a thought away. ]

It's my home from home, I suppose, [ He says thoughtfully after a measured pause and turns his eyes towards the distant sun. ] I live on a ship, the Carrier, and it orbits Earth. Well, sometimes it does...

[ He trails off - explaining the Carrier's abilities is hard - and settles for something else instead:. ]

What do you think of space then?

Not much, so far.

[ but then she's spent most that time sick, between the general adjustment to space that everyone who's new to it seems to be suffering from and whatever went wrong in the mess the other day.

she's quiet for a moment when he is, watching his reaction to what she'd said. he seems...homesick. lonely. ]

You're familiar with Earth? [ that's something of a surprise, but wanda supposes it shouldn't be, given how he'd asked her if the landscape had looked familiar. and most of the people she's spoken to who make their home in space seem to have been from there at one point. ] Is it still there?

[ there's got to be a reason why he's living on a ship, right? ]

[ Is it still there? The question catches him at an angle; Apollo isn't sure what to make of it. A flicker of alarm crosses over his expression as he wonders if the question is meant to imply in her world the Earth is no longer there. That something has happened, some drastic and devastating, something that maybe the Authority of her world couldn't prevent. ]

Yes - yes, it's still there, I mean. Why?

[ well, where she's from there's someone trying to take it over or destroy it every few years, but no. it's still fine. she notices that she's alarmed him, his expression and sudden spike in worry giving it away, and she turns to fully face him, trying to reassure him. (sort of.) ]

I've just talked to a lot of people who have had to leave, for one reason or another. Sometimes that's had to do with the planet being unlivable.

[ He watches her as she explains and by the end of it Apollo is still a little unsettled... but his expressions settles, a little, eventually. Things happen. Planets die. People like him are supposed to stop those things from happening. And sometimes people like him just aren't enough to stop the inevitable, Apollo gets that. It's just not a particularly nice way to go. ]

No, my Earth is still intact, last time I was there. [ And now he's a little more thankful for it. ]

...'Last time I was there', [ Apollo repeats his own words back to himself with a short laugh of disbelief. Did he really just say that? ] I mean, 'before we were all kidnapped', of course.

» TEST DRIVE #001

( 002 ) » OBSERVATION DECK

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