( TDM | #1 )

[spellbindmods]

TDMs can be used for anyone interested in the game and/or testing out a new muse.

Test Drive samples are encouraged to be used for your application sample, though they are NOT a requirement.

Feel free to use one prompt, multiple prompts or make up your own!

These threads can be considered game canon upon game opening if you so choose.

Telepathy and magic can be used at any point in time on the TDM, from Prompt A to your wildcard prompt. A specific prompt exists, however, that makes sure all characters have an equal chance to use this mechanic within the TDM. You're encouraged to have characters use telepathy and their magic accidentally or even purposefully on any TDM prompt.

If you aren't set on your character's power yet or want to try out a few, you're still able to use the test drive. Maybe your character is a late bloomer and hasn't fully unlocked their intuitive drive yet. In the case of multiple powers, only prompts that contain the power you choose for your application will count as potential game canon threads.

While only one character can be apped or reserved during a cycle, feel free to post with more than one character if you like! This is for those who are uncertain of their first choice or who would like to try out different characters within the setting.

You blink and that's all it takes. At first the picture doesn't come in clear, like you're waiting for a screen to fully load -- more aptly, it's like you're waiting for a camera to focus so you can find image clarity. Before you happened to rapidly close your eyes and open them, your life was normal...well, normal for you, anyway. Fighting an alien, making a quesadilla, dying. And then that blurry picture suddenly takes over. Depending on your situation and ability to acclimate, you may not fully understand what's happening. A dream, a hallucination. But when you feel the trunk of the trees surrounding you, it's oddly...real. The smell is real. The moisture on the ground is real. The small grass snake you find slithering close to your feet seems very real as well. There are a few other sensations that also begin to feel a little more like reality with every passing second. Like the fact that your intuition is trying to tell you something that doesn't seem plausible. One is more obvious -- you now have a new piece of jewelry inserted snuggly between your collarbones. Maybe that's when you realize it is real. When you realize that there's no delusion here -- you aren't where you once were. But if that's the case...where are you? A ▢ Your character's first experience here will be waking up in a forest. Specifically, located here. It's up to them to traverse and try to figure out where they are, whether they make it to the beach or the main house area. There's also a mysterious trail of soft, felt bags, tied off with thin rope, leading your character to what appears to be a specific destination. These items can be as useful as a granola bar to as seemingly useless as a stapler. Let's just say that some of these mysterious objects are pretty out there. They're free to travel off the beaten path, but that comes with its own perils. Maybe your character has a power that could fend these creatures off...? They aren't exactly happy about sharing their territory.

After an hour or so of trekking through the forest, you finally come upon a break in the tree line that reveals to you an area that appears to be inhabitable. Your first stop is the large mansion that sits in the valley of the opening...if anyone is here or there's a way to get out of here, the house makes the most sense, right? There are a variety of rooms in this mansion, and you're free to explore them. You also spy a lot of crates sitting in the middle of the floor in one of the main rooms...are you curious enough to open them? B ▢ Feel free to have your character explore the mansion (the won't find much but you can take some liberties with the TDM), and they're free to open these mysterious crates. In them they'll find edible fruit and bread, modern clothing in a variety of sizes and portable medical kits. Characters who apply using the TDM are free to carry these objects into the game opening. If you want some specifics, there are a few rooms of note: the game room (containing a working pool table, non-electric pinball machines and a card table with supplied chips and multiple decks), the cellar (filled with a variety of liquor and wines, all aged quite well) and a large room upstairs that contains a glass ceiling and a variety of books in a foreign language. One more thing -- if you happen to go rummaging around, you may find tiny pin cameras. They're minuscule...you may not even notice them unless you look hard enough. At this point you notice that you aren't alone -- there are other people in the same boat as you! When they're around you, that signet you feel in your chest tingles slightly. The sensation isn't unpleasant, but instead like a warm tingle is spreading from their neck outward. You instinctively attempt to talk to your fellow kidnapping victims, and that works just fine...but what are all these voices you hear in your head now? Are you crazier than you thought you were? C ▢ Here's where you can play around with the telepathy mechanic. It's likely your character won't be used to it which can lead to accidental broadcasting. If they happen to tap the signet purposefully or try to pull it out, everyone within a radius of 100 feet will feel a throbbing pain in their head. But your character won't know that, will they? For those more inclined to adventure, there's also another building to investigate. From the outside, it looks very circular and unidentifiable, but upon entering you'll discover that it's a fully-functioning bath house. D ▢ Despite containing steamy water and luxury bathing accommodations, the bathhouse is currently being overrun with crabs. The not-so-smart members of this species have fallen into the extremely hot water, flash boiling themselves after being unable to get back out. Others are a little more intelligent but equally aggressive. Characters: watch your toes and be cautious if you really want to take a much-needed bath! They may also want to check twice before using the restroom, otherwise the experience might be more painful than they're used to.

Exploring the mansion and the bathhouse was fun and all, but aside from the crates they didn't prove to be very useful. When you came into the clearing, you also saw a row of very colorful buildings down near the beach. It makes sense that this area may be more beneficial to any escape plans you have, and taking a dip in the ocean might be nice! It's not until you reach the beach huts that you realize that murky blue color you spied wasn't the ocean. It's outter space. There goes any hopes you had of swimming to safety. E ▢ Time to explore the beach huts! Most of them are abandoned, but your characters will notice they seem to be more livable than the mansion somehow. This is in part due to a little note tacked to the door of each beach hut that reports in scrawling script "Claim your hut, please!" Will your character listen or reject the sinking feeling that they may not be leaving anytime soon? Some huts are also bigger than others, and a few even contain small sinks and softer beds. Grab these while they're available! Even though it turns out the ocean was a lie and you're precariously close to falling off the edge of the world, the area around the huts is decidedly beachy. Sitting on the beach is a lobster trap, though about 10 times the size of any you might have seen before. Inside are more felt sacks, though larger. The weirdest part is that peering through the bars, you notice each has a nametag attached. The reason you know this to be true is because you just spied your own name written on one of the labels. There's also something else underneath it. The descriptor may not mean much to you yet, but it will soon: it's the title of their newfound magic. In each felt sack is a sort of starter kit: a set of dated and drapey plainclothes, a bag of dried boar jerky, a leather flask filled with water and a small tube of sunblock (the writing is in a bizarre pictograph language, but the giant picture of the sun on the tube should explain the purpose). There's also a rolled up paper tied with a string that reads as follows: "Welcome. Things will be explained in due time. For now, understand that you have been blessed with a gift of magic. Look into your brain and feel the instinct for both. Practice makes perfect." F ▢ Here's the official prompt for playing with newfound magic (and telepathy if you want more practice). It's likely characters have already accidentally broadcast their thoughts, utilized the C prompt or used their magic inadvertently, but maybe this new information and small explanation has motivated them to try and see what they're truly capable of. Don't worry. If they're lucky enough to stick around, all will be explained. ...What if you're a wildcard, though? Someone who doesn't play by the rules and follows a different path, no matter what direction the world may be guiding you in? This island is large and contains many areas of interest, from crystal streams to hidden locations. Maybe you want to do something different...so break the mold and explore! G ▢ Wildcard prompt. Go nuts and utilize your own creativity within the setting. This can mean striking out on your own or utilizing a certain location in a different way. The world is your oyster!

GAME NAVIGATION

Comments

[p_mortem]

[ squints real hard at Dave

Minato can accept a lot of things, but that is also A Lot of Things. ]

...Are they really all teenagers?

[ Okay, so first things first. He would hate to die and be condemned to an eternal existence surrounded by a bunch of teenagers; he would never know peace. ]

[parodeity]

I mean, yes? Just teenagers who exist for eons never growin' up because they died too young.

[ a pause. ]

Honestly our afterlife kinda sucks?

[p_mortem]

[ That sounds terrible in all ways imaginable tbh ]

Why all the same age, though...? [ He pauses, then goes ahead and asks. ] You know this because you were there?

[ Also dying too young. ]

[parodeity]

Uh, most of them are the same people, who died around the same time. People were usually like...thirteen to nineteenish?

[ a shrug. ]

Also the other dumb thing is like, living people could pass through these like, dreams, which were big bubbles floating in space so if you were flyin' through space you could fly through them? It's dumb.

[p_mortem]

[ Don't shrug like that, Dave :(

"Dumb" isn't really the word he would use, after hearing all that, but he isn't sure how he feels about it all either. It's... unbelievable, really. Hard to accept unless he sees it with his own eyes, but this world's had a similar feeling too. ]

Dreams could be fun, or not. You could do whatever. See whatever. Whoever.

[ Even dead people. Minato doesn't look like he would mind it. ]

[parodeity]

I mean, yeah, you could mess around with them. But also, people don't really...grow, after death. Or at least not so much that I've seen.

[ maybe that's just a troll thing though. ]

But it's kinda irrelevant here, since this isn't that?

[p_mortem]

[ That sounds like it should be a given, but the semantics are complicated. Dave's right, though, in that it doesn't seem to matter here where there are less bubbles and more dirt. He wishes it were only a dream, but he also can't be dead yet. ]

Yeah. I'd like to taste butter again before I die.

[ He takes one of the medkits, and continues mechanically stabbing the crates full of holes, leaving Dave to check their contents as he moves onto the next. ]

[parodeity]

[ dave has his own sword and could like help out, and yet. he does take medkits - more than one, because he needs to parcel them out to the others, probably - and finds mostly...clothes in the others. ]

Yo, dude, what size jeans do you wear? We can probably get you new shit to wear while you wash that all.

[p_mortem]

[ Minato pauses his stabbing to provide Dave with whatever size he wears, and wanders over to where the clothes are, crouching down by the side of the crate without touching any of the clothes inside because he never did get to wash his hands yet.

He wouldn't be opposed to a new change of clothes, after dozens of terrible first impressions on this day alone, but jeans can get hard to run in; maybe he can find comfy sweatpants around here. ]

Probably best to throw my clothes out. Can't salvage it.

[ His phone has no internet. He can't google how to get blood out of fabric and can't remember what the trick is. ]

[parodeity]

Got any preferences on clothes?

[ he'll like pick whatever out for minato and. carry them until minato can wash his hands i guess??? he's being helpful okay. ]

Anyway you don't have to throw them out. I can get the blood out if you let me wash 'em.

[ years of practice. ]

[p_mortem]

That's helpful, thanks. If you could find something light, comfy, bullet proof, flame resistant...

[ He's not joking. But he's glad Dave has his back, even though he should probably be concerned with his familiarity in getting blood out of clothes? ]

[parodeity]

The first two are gonna be easier than the last two, although if you don't mind knit shit my sister can maybe eventually help you out there.

[ since making magical knit stuff is her Thing here, apparently.

but dave sorts through the crates, looking for...sweats and probably a decent shirt? ]

[p_mortem]

[ Oh heck yeah, sign him up for magical knit stuff. Whatever fits, Minato will take it with little to no other preference in clothing so he sits back for now while Dave rummages through it all. ]

That'd be great. Is your sister here?

[ Because eventually could either mean once they get out of here, or that it'll take forever to knit a sweater. ]

[parodeity]

Yeah, she is. If you see a girl who looks a lot like me but...like, a girl, and also purple eyes? That's Rose. She's also wearin' a bunch of orange and yellow right now.

[ god tier clothes... ]

[p_mortem]

Oh. That's helpful. Easy to spot.

[ Considering both the eyes and the clothes. He makes a mental note to keep an eye out for Rose, so he can get a head's start on that sweater while it's still... winter? Not by the looks of it outside, different worlds meaning different patterns of seasons. ]

...I guess for now, let's find scarves and hats too. Who knows what the weather is like here.

[parodeity]

Jackets would be good, too, yeah. No tellin' when everyone else will go through this shit, so it'll be good to have extras before it's completely ransacked.

[p_mortem]

[ Minato looks up again, at that. Yeah, there are a lot of people here, and he's had some experience with having to outfit an entire team, but it's also a micromanaging nightmare. ]

Think we're going to have to be nomads, moving from place to place?

[ There's really no reason to stay here, anyways, as abandoned as it looks. But they have little direction for where to go, exactly. ]

...I wonder if crab jerky is a thing.

[parodeity]

I think you can make any meat into jerky if you try hard enough?

[ HE'S NOT SURE... ]

As to nomads...I'm not sayin' we don't need to explore, but there's no reason we can't make a base camp and stick to it until we figure out what the fuck is goin' on, you know?

[p_mortem]

I guess I'll try, then.

[ That is, try to find somebody who knows how to dry meat into jerky. He's glad for the idea of a base camp, though, because he's honestly kind of sick of moving around all the time. ]

This isn't such a bad place to stay while we think of what to do next. There's food and water. [ someday, they'll find butter ] Have you seen the rest?

[parodeity]

Just the woods and some of the beachfront property...it seems like there's an entire island to explore?

[p_mortem]

Where's the tour guides who dropped off these crates and disappeared... Maybe if we stick around, they'll come back.

[ He doesn't want to explore a whole island. What if it's not an island, but a peninsula, and he'll never get to rest. ]

[parodeity]

Maybe. But they might just watch us through the spy cams the entire time, too.

[p_mortem]

...Spy cams.

[ It's the first he's heard of it, for tiny hidden cameras not being something meant to be found unless one is actively searching for them, or whoever placed them did a terrible job of hiding them. ]

[parodeity]

Yeah, they're scattered around the mansion.

[ DAVE...is used to looking for spy cams, is the thing. ]

[p_mortem]

[ Minato has complicated feelings about spy cams but ]

Can you show me?