test drive meme #1.

[seeingyou]

Hello, passengers and potential passengers!! Welcome to the first-ever eyemind Test Drive Meme. Here you have a chance to play around in the game's setting before deciding to app, test out new characters, or just roll around and have some fun. Enjoy!

No invite is necessary to play in the test drive, but please remember that eyemind is a (semi)private game and you must request an invitation before submitting an application. Request an invitation here!

Please note: Threads from the test drive meme DO NOT count toward AC and ARE NOT considered game canon, but you are welcome to use them for your app samples.

SCENARIO ONE: LIGHT UP THE NIGHT



The ship has stopped on Arion, near the settlement of Taunican, at the height of harvest season, and since the planet is largely agricultural, that means there is a big harvest festival a-happening.

What's neat about this festival is that it's not just a celebration of the harvest - it's a celebration of the community, and of the planet as a whole. The dominant local religion (for lack of a better term) isn't exactly experienced in term of worship but of honoring the planet itself - the seasons, the landscapes, the crops. Natives talk of Arion as if it is a living, breathing entity, because for them? Arion is.

Every evening while the ship is docked, there is a bonfire in the fields outside the town square, starting at dusk. There's a giant potluck feast, with everyone in attendance encouraged to bring dishes to share, but no one will be turned away if they arrive empty-handed. Fiddles and flutes and drums provide the soundtrack for the folk songs about Arion the locals sing around the fire; dancing and games and laughter are everywhere. This is a peaceful, joyous celebration, and you're invited!

SCENARIO TWO: WE NEED TO GO DEEPER



You're asleep, but maybe you don't know that - in the middle of a dream, it's not always easy to tell the difference between reality and the scenes your subconscious creates. You find yourself somewhere that may or may not be familiar, doing something that may be mundane or fantastical, but you're not alone. This is a dream you're sharing with your shipmates. What secrets and truths will you learn about each other?

SCENARIO THREE: STOP HITTING YOURSELF



Ope, looks like Navi’s wandered a little too close to an interdimensional rift in space-time, and now things are getting a little weird. If you happen to have superpowers, you may find that you don’t have quite as good of a hold on them as you do normally, or maybe now there are unintended side effects that occur when your powers are used. Maybe your character usually possesses enhanced strength or speed, and now they suddenly find themselves too swol to handle ordinary objects without crushing them, or they may have uncontrollable zooms and be physically unable to slow their roll.

No superpowers? No problem! Non-powered characters may find themselves deprived of one or more of their natural senses, i.e., sight, hearing, smell, taste, etc. Have fun being suddenly and temporarily blind! Walk into walls, eat trash, be free.

Comments

[unnecessaryflourishes]

[Slight though it is, he absolutely doesn't miss the way the tension seems to go out of Gaius, as he releases that breath.  Unclenches his fist and lets his shoulders sag, for all that it might not be anything that he's done consciously.  True, there is no denying that this will complicate matters should the truth come out.  But that truth would have been a difficult one regardless; he is more than glad to put it off for a time.  Still, he has managed to foster some fragment of belief, in Gaius.  All he needs to do now is to maintain that self-same belief.  And that is hardly a difficult task.

(He cannot do anything for the fact that it might yet seem impossible.  But the ship itself is beyond anything either of them might have had cause to experience, prior.  If he can leave the oddity of his current appearance merely an artifact of that it may yet remain an impossibility that doesn't completely jeopardize his attempts.)

He blinks, at Gaius' answer to why he should not appear as he does.  It's not a surprise, of course. He knows full well that he had done so, and that his passing would no doubt have been mourned by at least some of his subjects.  But the way that it's very nearly an accusation is surprising, and if he's using that to stand in for the surprise Solus would have no doubt had to hear of his death at least the emotion is still genuine.

It's just as well, too, that Gaius takes a moment to clarify how he'd died. If only in that it spares him the necessity of feigning any further concern. Or at least, any further concern for the idea of his person, which gives him freer reign to focus on the larger problem.

(The theoretically larger problem. He knows full well that he had created the Empire in large part to sow chaos. That the chaos should, on occasion, take place within her borders is no great surprise.)]

How so?

[He knows, of course, of his own plots, and is not unaware that Elidibus has his own agenda, if not where that might take him. But if there are other agendas, far better to hear of it - and he cannot deny that he has been too busy elsewhere to keep fully abreast of matters on the Source.

Still, it is no significant trouble to marshall his expression into an appropriately concerned frown. Though he might not care overmuch for the majority of the Empire's people, it is still his Empire, and his hand that has guided it for so long.]

Or is it a matter to which there is no concrete proof, as of yet?

[forgarlemald]

[It's surprising, actually, how much reassurance he finds in Solus reacting to the news so calmly. The concern is there, oh yes, and appears to deepen by the moment, but the man wouldn't have been the Emperor that he was if he had been anything less than completely control of himself. He was the rock that their nation was founded on; ever steady and ever confident, as all Garleans should aspire to be.]

[A shame, really, that even that calm makes it no easier to answer the man's next question, Gaius' gaze falling for just a moment before he answers.]

Less so now that Varis has been killed, I'm afraid.

[And doesn't that still sting to say. It wouldn't be this way if he'd been a little bit faster, then, had ignored his emperor's command and simply ended Zenos when he had the opening to do so... But it's far too late to wallow in the what ifs and if onlys. His failures can't be changed now.]

[Nor are his lingering injuries from each and every one of them going to let him ever forget. Once upon a time, standing at rapt attention came as easily as breathing. Now, he moves with a certain stiffness as he turns, pale eyes searching their surroundings, before he looks back to Solus, exhaustion in every line of his features.]

May we speak elsewhere? Away from others?

[unnecessaryflourishes]

Varis?

[Though he knows he and Varis haven't precisely seen eye to eye of late (and not without good reason) it is a name he hadn't expected to be involved in anything to do with.  That he has been killed in whatever unrest has happened is only all the more concerning, to say nothing of the fact that Varis' involvement at all complicates the already-delicate balance of misdirection and partial truths that are all that are keeping his true identity hidden.  Regardless of how well he might have managed such things so far. Still, his appearance does allow him some leeway. Enough that it would not be unreasonable for him to know Varis' name, if naught else. Enough to explain away his confusion at hearing the name spoken in reference to anything nearly so concerning as what Gaius has already mentioned.

Still, confusion or no, it's easy to see the stiffness with which Gaius holds himself and the exhaustion written through him. Easy, too, to see why he might wish to speak elsewhere. This may not be anywhere even so much as remotely near their own world, but the topic is no doubt delicate all the same.]

Ah, yes. Of course.

[There's a nod with words. An indication of a request granted, mostly, as if it is only now occurring to him that Gaius might prefer such things. Still, it's a simple enough thing to manage, though unless they mean to simply find a quieter place among the party there are precious few places to actually sit.

It takes very nearly every fragment of willpower he has, to turn his back on Gaius, knowing that should his facade falter but an ilm Gaius would undoubtedly seek to strike him down. He does it anyway, and without so much as a flicker of hesitation. As if he expects that Gaius will follow along in his wake, as he goes; the unconscious habits he'd left behind when he'd left Solus behind falling back into place the longer he spends returning to the role of emperor.]

Though I doubt most here would understand the details of what we speak.

[Still, he does continue on even as speaks, heading away from at least the worst of the crowds.]