TEST DRIVE MEME #12

[expiationmods]

Test Drive Meme #12

Welcome to Expiation, a pan-fandom adventure game with elements of fantasy, science fiction, and some subtle horror.

THE STORY SO FAR (click to expand!)

-Characters have arrived in Expiation, a seemingly idyllic fantasy world where they have been told they will be judged and sentenced for crimes they were charged with upon arrival.

-Every two months, several characters are chosen for sentencing, where they’re brought to the Courthouse (formerly City Hall) and told to perform a task related to their assigned crime. Their only contact at the Courthouse is a mysterious and long-suffering man called Jerry.

-Over time, characters have begun to realize that not all is as it seems in Expiation: as it turns out, the entire world is a simulation that seems to be run by an artificial intelligence. This AI claims that its purpose, and thus the purpose of Expiation, is rehabilitating the Chosen after their crimes.

-In September 2024, that AI needed to be reset as a consequence of some catastrophic systems failures. So far, there has been no downside to this reset–but the AI has also been strangely absent since then.

-In November 2024, a strange event overtook Aldrip and turned it into a week-long eternal night where technology ceased to work. During this time, the simulation that generates Expiation seemed to malfunction, causing a strange crack to appear in the surroundings. Through this crack, characters were able to see some sort of metal enclosure. They could reach a hand in, but little more than that. This crack has disappeared, for now, but what it means for Aldrip's future remains to be seen.

TDM top-levels are open to all, whether you are already in-game or not. New characters, please put TDM in your subject header so we’ll know you’re trying things out! You can also put your top-level in the TDM DIRECTORY at the bottom of the post. New folks are welcome and encouraged to use TDM threads as samples in their application. Current players may use TDM threads as part of their AC proofs.

The missile toads can be found throughout the rest of the month of December, and there will be one prompt that is during the Solstice.

You can view our CALENDAR to keep important dates in mind. RESERVES open on December 21 and APPLICATIONS will open on December 24. After this, applications will next open in February 2024.

**REMINDER ON NEW CANONS AND CANON UPDATING**

A note about spoilers. There are a lot of canons coming out right now that players are inevitably interested. This is good! However, we’d like to remind you that we have an app wait time of two months for new canons and one month for new material, ie canon updates.

In addition to the wait times, we request that any players (and potential players!) be sensitive about spoilers. Warning for spoilers is encouraged; you can even put spoiler content behind a details tag or block it out in text. Additionally, please do not use spoiler icons in top-levels or top comments, and ask before including spoiler content (including icons) when tagging out. Thank you!

For those who may not know how to do a details tag, we'll give you a handy-dandy code!

<details><summary><b>TITLE HERE</b> (click to expand!)</summary> this is where the text for the drop-down goes! spoilery tl prompts can go here so players who aren't interested in getting spoiled can keep scrolling OR interact with a non-spoiler prompt if there is one!</details>


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Arrival

You wake.

Or…you think you do.

The first thing you notice is…well, darkness, even when your eyes are open. Reaching out, you realize that you’re in a very narrowly enclosed space. You feel as if you’re probably standing up. Beyond that…well, it’s impossible to tell…

It’s a strange awakening that greets new Chosen this month: they arrived encased in coffins. Most of these, they’ll be able to open themselves. It’s possible that some of them may get a little stuck, though, meaning they’ll need some help from the outside. These coffins begin to appear in the sidewalks and open spaces of Aldrip overnight, appearing at random, and they’re all standing upright. Huh, it’s almost like they’re a specific reference or something. For an added festive touch, they’re adorned with seasonal bows and may even have wrapping paper prints on them.

Welcome to Aldrip?

JUST HEAR THOSE DRY BONES JINGLING [missile toads]

The holiday season has come to Aldrip, bringing with it all manner of festive cheer! Buildings are adorned with decorations and festive depictions. Skeletal Santa and his eight zombie reindeer, Frosty the Lavaman, Rudolph with menacing red eyes, glowing with a strangely haunting light… What, isn’t that just the normal holiday fare? Don’t your yuletide decorations spontaneously burst into flames, or grow terrifyingly sharp teeth?

Doesn’t your mistletoe come with amphibians?

That’s right: they’re back. Mistletoe has appeared throughout the city, and with it comes a seasonal infestation of missile toads. These nefarious creatures will do anything they can to get Chosen stuck under their namesake foliage, even shooting sticky substances at their feet to trap them! This substance only seems to disappear when the missile toads’ demands are met. They’ll pelt you with a little scrap of paper to tell you what those demands are, one of the following three:

”Now kiss!” Need we say more? The type of kiss required is up to you. Pucker up!
”Now fight!” Feisty little fellas, aren’t they? These toads want a show, and they won’t be satisfied until someone walks away sporting bruises.
”Now talk!” Maybe the physical stuff is too easy. This toady audience wants to hear secrets–the juicier the better! Whether one participant or both needs to confess something is up to you, as is the severity of the secret.

These creatures plague Aldrip through the end of December, but given the questions we’ve gotten about how to use them (you know who you are), this might not be the last we’ve seen of them…

[img courtesy of titsay @ twitter]

The Winter Solstice

Aldrip’s traditional Solstice feast is set to happen just after the longest night of the year, and what a feast it’s shaping up to be! Even before the Solstice itself, the town is decked out with twinkling lights and snowy decorations. In the daytime, there will be snowy fun and games: snowball fights, ice sculpting, snow fortress building, and wintery sports like ice skating. Even the locals seem to be put in a better mood!

However, Aldrip’s tradition comes with an attached superstition. The locals say that all must be indoors the night of the Solstice itself, beginning at sundown on December 21st. Tricks and misfortune await anyone outside when the dark and the cold sets in, so they say!

But then again, nothing really happened last year, so it should be fine. Right?

Well…

Any Chosen who wish to test their luck will find misfortune awaiting them in the form of snowmen patrolling the streets. These snowmen are on the lookout for any creatures out of bed, and beware–if they see you, you’ll be pelted with snowballs until you’re out of sight. Can they be snuck past? Sure, probably. They’re just snowmen, after all. You’d be right to try sneaking, too: anyone hit by one of their snowballs will find their body slowly turning to ice. Brr! Oh, and, because we’re sure someone is going to ask: the snowmen can be melted, destroyed, fought, or otherwise messed with. They melt down just to ordinary water.

Anyway, the icy affliction can only be melted by a show of affection (platonic, friendly, romantic, etc), either by the affected Chosen or toward them. It can be as simple as a funny joke or sweet story, or as complicated as you wish, but it must be genuine. The longer the afflicted Chosen goes without, the more their body turns to ice–eventually, they may become one of the ice sculptures on display around town! They can still be turned back if it comes to this point, but obviously they’ll be at the mercy of someone else’s gesture of affection, as they will be unable to move. Oh, and they’ll probably need some time to warm up.

The snowmen disappear at first light after the Solstice, and the feast begins as soon as people are able to leave their homes once more. All will be able to enjoy the festivities in peace at this point…well, except for the missile toads. They’ll still be around for the rest of the month.

Wildcard

Make your own fun! Just because it’s not in the prompts doesn’t mean it’s not possible. Have at it! Go crazy! Try not to break anything (too much)!

♡

Comments

[variantcover]

Okay, phew.

[ The only significant element of the pink elephant is the color. Really, she was just trying to think of something so insanely specific and out-there that Quentin would have to know it was coming from her brain and no one else's. ]

Alright, so... Real people. AI simulation. Anything else I need to know about this place? There was... [ She pats her suit for something, finally remembering where she put it, and reaching into one of her pouches. ] I had this piece of paper inside the coffin with me... Didn't get a chance to read it, before.

[querulus]

Right, yeah. That would be that crime I mentioned. They give you that dumb little paper when you show up to make sure you look at it or whatever.

[He pauses in thought for a moment. There is one thing Gwen needs to know, but... oof.]

Oh. Not about this place, but uh, you should know. [Quentin clears his throat. This sucks.] Krakoa's gone. Guess you've been busy and stuff, but... yeah. Another mutant island bit the dust.

[variantcover]

[ Gwen pulls her paper out of the pouch she had tucked it in, finally opening it up and reading it. ]

Kidnapping?! C'mon, they could've come up with something way more terrible and interesting than that.

[ Except her ranting is interrupted by the next bombshell of news that Quentin drops. ]

Krakoa's... gone? What happened?

[querulus]

Orchis happened.

[He shrugs nonchalantly, but his voice is a little quieter, a little more somber than normal. Gwen's the first person to appear here who's even lived on Krakoa, and Quentin would be lying if he said he hadn't been avoiding talking about it.]

Hellfire Gala went tits up. You know, sentinels, everybody dies, the usual. I was, uh... [Look, there's no better way to say this.] well, kinda dead for most of the aftermath, but guess it all worked out.

I'm alive now, obviously [This is important to mention, and he gestures at himself emphatically to communicate this fact.] and most anybody who's anybody is back to life. Just... no more island paradise.

[variantcover]

[ Gwen's quiet as Quentin explains. She's heard about similarly devastating events before— what comics nerd hasn't?— but it hits different somehow when the devastation is happening to people you know. People who you have made yourself ostensibly a part of. Retconning her history into making herself a mutant may have kept her relevant enough to stay in Marvel's storylines, but it also made her a part of a group that goes through near-extinction level events every handful of years. It's kind of a sobering realization for Gwen, but even as she's coming to terms with the meta-level knowledge of it, she understands that Quentin experienced that loss on a much more personal, less detached level.

She bites her lip, not really knowing what to say. She never was good at these kind of emotion-laden coversations. ]

Shit, Quentin, I'm sorry.

[ She thinks about saying she wishes she could have been there, but really, what good would she have been able to do, if an Omega-level mutant like Quentin couldn't even stay alive through it? No. No platitudes she could offer would be able to make this better, so she's just forced to kind of sit with the sorry feeling in the pit of her stomach. ]

I guess it's kind of... Back to square one for mutantkind, huh?

[querulus]

[We're not going to talk about the fact that he got murdered by Sabretooth with no involvement from Orchis at all.

And therein lies the reason why Quentin hasn't told anyone else about Krakoa. The awkward "sorry"s and platitudes. There's nothing worse than having to watch people struggle to find words when he can literally hear their thoughts, and Gwen wasn't Gwen he'd interrupt her before she even got to that self-conscious, clumsy apology. Gwen's a mutant of Krakoa, and she deserves the right to choke out her condolences without some asshole telepath butting in, no matter how painful it looks.

Quentin shrugs, absently taking off his glasses to clean them on his shirt. Are they dirty? Probably a little, but mostly he just needs something to do with his hands.]

Eh. Not the first time, won't be the last. You get used to it.

I'm up in Alaska these days. Not too bad, if you don't mind being cold as balls and having three hours of daylight. Got myself a team, too. Obviously they're basically my sidekicks, but they're not complete morons, which is nice.

[variantcover]

Alaska, huh? Never would've figured you for the frontiersman type.

[ She's sure this team he's talking about is as much his "sidekicks" as the rest of the WCA was, which is to say, only in Quentin's mind. But whatever. She knows that's just how he sees people. ]

I've been kind of laying low in New York lately. I went back to school, which is actually kind of weird for me? But it's not bad. I'm... pretty happy.