test drive meme # 3

[acatamods]

I ▫ main IV ▫ premise       XI ▫ applications XIV ▫ activity II ▫ logs V ▫ rules VII ▫ bestiary   IX ▫ canon updates XII ▫ taken XV ▫ drop/hiatus III ▫ ooc VI ▫ faq VIII ▫ setting   X ▫ mods XIII ▫ reserves XVI ▫ players test drive meme #3 It happens in the blink of an eye. One moment, you are home. Perhaps you are with your family, perhaps you are at work. It's a completely normal day . . . and then, suddenly, your stomach drops. You are overcome with a sudden sense of vertigo. You cannot see up, or down, or where you are. All you hear is a voice -- light, bubbly, warm, soothing, in your ear: Don't worry, darling. This won't hurt a bit~ ♥ For those who recognize the voice, it will sound a bit strained. Possibly tired. But the moment happens so quickly it's hard to pin down, and once that moment is over, you fall flat on your face. It's bright, warm, and humid. It takes a few seconds for you to gain composure and catch your breath. You think, for half a moment, that a hand is on your back, rubbing between your shoulder blades in comfort, but when you open your eyes, no one is there. You are surrounded by ancient stone buildings, with carvings you do not recognize etched into the stone. There's a sense of nausea, overwhelming and sudden, when you realize you aren't in Kansas anymore. Even worse, it looks like the tinier inhabitants of the Forest of the Fey are acting a little cheeky. THE TEMPLE OF BEGINNINGS. Welcome to the "Home Base" of Astoria's Circle. What the actual name of the base is called is lost to the ages, and there's no sense of where you could find it, unless you started asking around. At any rate, this is a central hub of the Circle, a place of powerful magic and mysterious energy. It is a scattering of ancient stone buildings and for the most part, it looks abandoned . . . except for what seems to be a few items, some rooms taken, items moved or organized, even a small garden planted. These are just the smallest hints that there are people here that have been here before you arrived. Overall, it's fairly beautiful. However, it is definitely not modern. Upon exploration, you find that the buildings are kept up by some kind of magic. Some of the rooms have items, things from other Circle members already settled, and others appear to be unclaimed. Pick your rooms, explore the grounds, see the beauty and wonder all around you in such a magical place. However, be careful -- the sprites that reside within the Forest of the Fey seem to be exceptionally active, today, and tricks abound wherever you look. KINGS AND QUEENS. Typically, the sprites of the Forest of the Fey remain within the protective canopy of the surroundings. However, there seems to be something different in the air, and these little bastards are flitting about and giving out flower crowns to everyone. They are beautifully made, intricate and gloriously decorative, and most people would be happy to adorn one! There's just one problem, though -- they don't come off. No matter how hard you try, those damn flower crowns are stuck on your head, and you cannot remove them no matter how hard you try. Hope you enjoy being a fairy princess for a day. And, if you are alighted with a flower crown, your skin turns the same color as whatever flowers now sit upon your head. A wreath of blue roses? Congratulations, Violet Beauregard -- you're now as blue as a blueberry. The effect wears off in about an hour, and you can remove the flower crown then -- but have fun being every shade of the rainbow as the sprites take their time to torment the new arrivals. BALLOONS FOR EVERYONE. Normally, there are some animals that wander within the ancient stone buildings of the Temple. Tiny little white bats, sheep that grow on the vine . . . that sort of thing. However, the sprites have elected to add a little bit more flair the Temple, and balloon animals have invaded the living space. Where the sprites got the idea for balloon animals, no one can really be sure -- Astoria seems to think the sprites are waltzing through the spirit realm and seem to have garnered an idea there, whatever that's supposed to mean. So, no matter where you go, there are balloon animals. Little dogs, brightly colored fish, dinosaurs, giraffes . . . except they seem to move, and make noise, and act like their real counterparts. Tiny balloon dogs nip at your heels, balloon fish flicker about in the waters that sprinkle themselves throughout the Forest, and balloon birds float through the skies. Bonus? If you pop them, they explode into (biodegradable) glitter. DECAYED DECADENCE. Despite the shenanigans from the sprites, however, there seems to be something happening within the Temple that may be cause of concern. Flower crowns and balloon animals aside, there seem to be odd spots of the Temple that suddenly wilt . . . flowers that bend over and wither at a moment's notice, saplings that seem to creak as if suddenly dried from the inside out . . . and it seems, oddly enough, that it happens whenever you, an Arrival, get closer to the wild life. Astoria seems to think that something is wrong . . . perhaps something the Circle members brought back from their last trip. An illness, or something more? Care to poke about and see how far you're willing to take it? Or does your magical gift enable the protection of plant growth? Try out your green thumb and see if you can help. COMMUNICATIONS. Upon arriving, you will notice on whichever is your non-dominant hand, you will have a fairly simply screen. A smart watch, if you will. Upon exploration, you will find that it has a directory of all those here with you at the Temple of Beginnings- names, and access to a direct message to them. The watch also has video, audio, and text capabilities, as well as what looks like a collection of messages sent to everyone who wishes to open them. This is your 'network', and also how Astoria can reach out and communicate with you. There is nothing keeping you from removing and/or losing your watch! But remember that you will not have access to this network without it. OOC: Also feel free to join us and other possible players on our discord server! enjoy! ♥

Comments

[theseuschip]

Uh, yeah. They don’t. She’s not exactly running the tightest ship, but-

[ she’s not really acting like she hasn’t seen Simon or 9S in weeks, though, which is pretty much what it takes to remind him of how they were told that time in their own worlds would stop while they were in Hathaway’s service. ]

Wait, did time freeze back there? We’ve been here for weeks.

[ It was never particularly relevant to him when he was actually there, not when he had Catherine, in Omnitool form, and then Catherine... but not in the Omnitool... whatever. The point is, it’s not as if Earth could miss him. ]

[undeserved]

[ that makes her frown, even if she can put the pieces together almost immediately. It's easy to guess that something strange has happened travelling between dimensions when it's already happened to you once.

It's a nuisance, but not too troublesome for her. She just hopes 9S managed to hold it together all right for those few weeks. ]

A few hours ago, I was supposed to have arrived at our next mission destination. After Drakstaden.

[ She'd seen him and 9S then, too. Clearly, something went wrong. Maybe that's why he embraced her like that...? Was her absence really that keenly felt? It's... hard to imagine, mattering that much to anyone. 9S was a bizarre exception. ]

[theseuschip]

[ he goes still and eyes her, the eerie lights roaming as if trying to find her expression underneath the not-blindfold. ] I don’t remember that. We’d just-

[ Whether it’s some sort of weird timeline thing or something else, the idea of another Simon running around where — Simon thinks — he’s supposed to be, doing stuff he had no knowledge of, sits as well as it ever did. Which is not very, even when this other Simon is also a sad swamp robot. Is everyone remaining at Hathaway en route to their next mission, right now, with 2B and 9S and Simon, while all three of them are here? ]

-Never mind.

[ time to not think about that!! ] Anyway, compared to Ophelia, it feels like this group’s half robots. You might actually like it.

[ This is based only on Simon’s knowledge from their oblique conversations that 2B felt perpetually out of place in Hathaway’s service. Even if he’s sure she’ll miss it, too. It was... organized. ]

[undeserved]

[ his "expression" is impossible to read; 2B is left only guessing what's going through his mind. Upset about losing memories? For her, the idea of duplicate bodies and various instances of herself is commonplace enough that she doesn't even think to associate it with shifting timelines. ]

... Is that better?

[ she also doesn't feel particularly relieved hearing that most of the people here are robots (if they can be called people) - after all, her sworn enemies had been machines for almost her entire life. She tilts her head at him. ]

[theseuschip]

[ Is it? Simon thought it would be, possibly mainly because he’s unable to shake all of his humancentric perspective and failing to consider that 2B would have about as much in common with some robots as she has with any human. Still, that one distinction’s always seemed important to them. ]

Well, it might be less isolating than being the only two androids in a guild full of humans.

[ as he remembers the other of the important distinctions, he adds, ] They’re not all androids, but they’re not “machines”.

[ The edge that might be in his tone if he were talking to 9S is absent. Enemy machines, and that learned difference between them and androids that allows YoRHa androids to kill them, are no less elements of 2B’s life, but she’s never been as... ...vocal about it. ]

[undeserved]

[ Less isolating... She wonders. Simon had always been a little bit easier for her to talk to, even if she knew that he was really a human (or she considers him one, anyway); he fell somewhere between human and android, and she was less inclined to put him on a pedestal high above herself because of it. Yet her worldview is so narrow that she has a hard time even imagining what an interaction with a mechanical being that falls outside of the machine-android dichotomy might be like. Maybe it would be equal, familiar, like he suggests.

Or maybe it would just be sad.

2B does hold some lingering resentment towards the machines after what they did - but hers is not nearly as blinding and all-encompassing as 9S'. Her apathy towards the war smothered whatever fires of hatred might have burned in her before. She just shakes her head. ]

Most of the machines aren't intelligent enough to be recruited for something like this. [ if they can call this "recruiting." ] Why are there so many... "robots?"

[ it feels like an archaic term to use... ]