» 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

001.

[donkeyballs]

[Alex startled awake, in an incredibly uncomfortable position, lying on the floor with one knee bent and the other let braced up against the wall of - well - wherever the hell he was. What woke him up was very obvious, very quickly - two large feet at either side of his rib cage, in magboots. He put his hands out, gripping the boots as if he was expecting whoever owned them to pull them in and try to crush him.

Look, it wasn't the best wake up.]

Hey-- Hey now! Easy there!

[He looked up, past the jump suit of the person standing over him, his flashlight trailing up with his gaze to illuminate a familiar face.]

Amos? What the hell is going on?

[tumang]

[ Honestly, Amos feels like he shouldn't be as relieved as he is to realize it is Alex at his feet, waking up very suddenly and grabbing onto him. A stranger might have got a punch to the face - even if only for Amos to be able to work in peace.

But it's Alex. Amos holds a large hand down to help him up. ]

Don't know, woke up here like you. Kinda like that deathtrap on the Donnager, only smaller. And without a door.

[ Amos looks at Alex straight in the eye. He's expecting his pilot to have a brilliant idea, already. ]

[donkeyballs]

[He takes the hand, pulling himself upright, but there ain't a lot of space - so they're smooshed pretty close.]

Great. Exactly the sort of thing I love to hear. [His brows furrow as he says it, but honestly? He'd be a lot more worried about being trapped in a metal box if Amos wasn't trapped with him in it. Amos is definitely on his short list of people to be trapped in anything with.

He grabbed the flashlight clipped to his chest, and angled it around to get a good look of the place for himself.]

There's gotta be a way in - not like anyone's gonna build a box up from scratch around us. But this ain't Martian, I can tell you that much.

[A beat.

Two.

Oh.

Shit.]

Uh - how much air do we got in here, exactly? [He's just gonna start feeling around to see if he can find a vent.]

[tumang]

[ Amost almost asks if Alex wants to hear even better, but then Alex beats him to it. No airflow, which means, they have a very, very limited oxygen supply, right now. ]

Not enough for you to start hyperventilating.

[ It's a jab more than an actual concern - it isn't either of them's first rodeo, after all. Dying of a lack of air stuck in a tin can? They've done it before, and under worst circumstances. ]

I'd say an hour, at most. We better get to work getting out.

[donkeyballs]

[He knows the jab for what it was: gallows banter more than anything else. Though he can't really help but think of the last time this had been a major problem. And that time he'd ended up in a heap on the floor with a man dying in his lap from trying to save him. Well. Okay. Not the last time, but definitely the most memorable. He realised with a pang that despite Shed saving his life, he hadn't spared the man a thought in a long time.

Damn.

Not the time now, Alex.]

Don't have to tell me twice, brother. [He reached out, running his hands over the metal walls, before leaning in to press his ear against it. Then he knocked sharply on the metal - and let out a relieved breath.]

Well, some good news. It ain't vacuum out there. [He could hear the echo of the knock in the room beyond, rather than just the dull sound as it travelled through metal. That meant there was air on the other side.]

[tumang]

[ Yeah. Let's not pretend Amos is ever sensitive. He remembers the Knight, and Alex's near death experience, Shed -

Fuck. Whenever he gives himself a moment to think about Shed, all he sees is the railgun shot, the clean hole he'd patched up, the bubbles of blood that had exploded all over the floor when gravity and pressure had been restored in their room.

He hasn't thought of it in a while, either, but he doesn't feel any guilt over it. The system was going to shit, and people were dying all over the place.

Amos nods after Alex's test, putting his fingers to the metal as well, testing whether or not it had any give. ]

Okay. It doesn't feel load bearing, either. We need to cut through.

[donkeyballs]

[Alex shifted, patting himself down as he checked himself for any tools, or a torch, or literally anything other than his god damn nails. Nothing.]

Gonna have a problem, there, unless your hiding a torch in that suit. [He frowned, running fingers over metal, trying to find a catch, or a groove--]

There's gotta be a way to get this thing open. [He muttered it to himself, more than saying it to Amos, but it was loud enough to hear.] We got in to this mess, somehow, gotta be a way out of it...

[He just wished he had any idea how they'd got here.]

[tumang]

[ Amos looks around for a moment by the light of his own torch, but there's nothing. Nothing, a whole lot of it, until -

Well. Okay, then. ]

What if we improvise a can opener?

[ And with that, he slams his wrist against the wall, shattering the screen of his communicator. It falls to the floor and Amos crouches, going through the pieces and putting most of them in his pocket until he finds a small, pointy piece of plexi. He holds it up to the light. ]

Just need something to exert force on it. It's going be a long day.