( 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

[windeity]

[This should probably not be a conversation he's having and part of him briefly wonders if Dave would care. On the other hand...]

I've never met him, but Dave used to talk about him a lot. All of the training and strifing and stuff they did and everything his Bro taught him. ["His bro is probably busy kicking his ass. That's probably all there is to say on the matter."] I never quite understood why he thought the guy was so cool, but Dave seemed to think he knew everything? Anything that Bro thought was cool was too ironic for normal people to consider cool, but, and I do not think Dave really realizes this, but all of those things are the opposite of cool. The weird puppets and the rapping and stuff.

[There's a little sigh though.] When we fix everything, I guess you could ask Dave himself?

[splinten]

[It sort of makes sense. He figures he would've trained Dave, that makes sense. And he likes puppets and rapping, and he knows people think they're weird.]

What... is Dave like?

[windeity]

[It's a question that gets him to stop fucking around with the Christmas lights for a second since that seems to be something worth consideration.]

He's a pretty cool guy. [Which probably says a lot, seeing how he just finished talking about how much he finds Dave's Bro uncool.] Sometimes he rambles too much and he can be a jackass but he's actually pretty funny. Sometimes he agrees with the dumb shit his Bro's into but the stuff he does on his own is pretty cool, like his mixing. [He thinks about what else he knows of Dave.]

He is also probably one of the most loyal people I've ever met. I do not know if you know his aspect, but he used Time to watch out for us in our session while we were all playing. He actually stopped me from making a mistake…I mean it was already made in one timeline, but after that. [Anyway.] He's been my best friend for years. They all have been. [He doesn't even realize his tone's shifted to something a little more melancholy. It's the reason he has to fix everything and get off of this dumb planet to get home. Or, at least, get back to LOWAS and talk to Typheus.] I hope you get to meet him soon.

[splinten]

Me too.

[He's quiet.]

I'm glad he has a friend like you to look out for him.

[windeity]

["What, a friend who was too late?" He keeps that to himself though. Instead, he simply provides another short smile before he finishes wrapping the Christmas lights around Vrillyhoo, moving forward again.]

Yeah. [If only because it seems weird not to respond to that at all.] But you would do the same for your friends, too, wouldn't you?

[splinten]

{lmao John is resisting it but how about]

Yeah, and I failed them.

[windeity]

[What the fuck man.]

You failed them as much as I did then. [How about that? It's not something he'd normally dwell on, but his optimism wavered a little the moment he found himself here and not flying to LOWAS.]

[splinten]

[No??????? FIGHT HIM]

That's bullshit, dude. You weren't there. I was.

[...in a weird way but hey]

[windeity]

[Are they really going to fight about this? Bring it.]

That's the whole problem, Dirk! I did not zap back to the right session in time because I don't know how these stupid zapping powers work yet. If I did, I would have been able to come back sooner instead of letting everything happen.

[But.] What really happened then? [Prove it. Prove that you're more at fault than he is, Strider.]

[splinten]

How could you have zapped in with powers you didn't understand?

[Apparently it's a guilt-off and Dirk is determined to win.]

What really happened was that I stupidly tried to rip out the soul of the person who was powering the source of my existence, and my damned sword was left behind to impale two of my best friends.

[windeity]

I could have figured out how to zap to the right place before I started zapping all over and unsticking from existence, that's how.

[Huh?] What are you talking about? [Soul-ripping and swords and ???]

[splinten]

It's stupid and complicated. [He doesn't want to talk about it.] The point is you couldn't have figured out what you were doing if you didn't know and had no one to help you. I had a splinter of me there, and I could have stopped it.

[windeity]

[He knows Dirk is right, but. He takes a breath and pauses enough to think for once.]

...a splinter...?

[splinten]

A fragment of myself. A piece of who I am, an iteration of me, left inside Jake's mind, that Jake was able to make real with Hope powers.

[windeity]

If it was a fragment of yourself inside someone else's mind, then how could you have stopped it? Mind control doesn't always work like that. [But on the other hand...] Being inside Jade's grandpa's mind, could you see everything that was happening?

[splinten]

He made it into a real person, and that iteration of me tried to stop it.

[It isn't mind control, it's sheer efforts to interfere. And it failed.]

I saw some of it, yeah.

[windeity]

"It." [Semantics, John.] So what you are really saying is you are blaming a different version of yourself and taking on his mistakes even though you just said you did not see everything that happened.

[splinten]

That version of myself is me. We aren't any different and I would've done the same thing, because we are the exact same dude.

[windeity]

Fine, maybe I just don't understand how it all works. [That much is obvious, but he also goes quiet and continues on their trek through the woods.] But I still should have been able to stop this and show up sooner. I am not the one torn in multiple parts. [Somehow, he thinks that's worse.]

[splinten]

Being torn into multiple parts is exactly why I should have been able to stop it. You're just one dude, Egbert. You can't expect yourself to do everything.

[windeity]

And you can't--[...okay you know what. He's going to stop arguing for right now because this is all so stupid. It'll be fine when the timeline is fixed. Dirk will have to see that.]

Okay. Maybe you have a point. [He's just going to shut up about it and pry open another bag even as they're getting closer to the edge of the woods. This one contains a small toy car, like a Hot Wheels or whatever.] Once we get out of the forest, what is your next plan?

[splinten]

[He doesn't quite buy it but well. Probably worth dropping the argument.]

Look for my friends. If Jane, Jake, and Roxy are here—

[Well.]

I'd like to see if I can find them.

[windeity]

[There's a nod. Roxy's alive, he knows that, but he's also aware that he and Roxy are probably the only ones still alive from the current timeline because of how things played out. He has yet to meet the others so he can't even really fathom how they would look by now, but that's something he can understand.]

Me too. I mean my friends, not yours? [Well.] Terezi told me about Dave and Jade, and Rose was with me and Roxy before. [Before she died on them, he means.] Maybe we will get lucky and find some of them. We ended up here for a reason. Why wouldn't they?

[splinten]

I don't know, dude, why wouldn't something end up sucking way more than it otherwise would?

[life is STUPID john. EVERYTHING is STUPID]

[windeity]

[He shouldn't, but he laughs anyway.]

Good to hear you're just as optimistic as he is.