ateratooc | Test Drive

TEST DRIVE 001

Welcome to Aterat!

Here is our first ever Test Drive Meme! There are a lot of areas of the city to explore, so please have a look around! In case you need a little help getting started, I've included a few prompts below, or feel free to start your own! Exploration and player initiative are the names of the game here!

NOTE: While you do need an invite to apply to the game, you do NOT need one to tag or top level on the Test Drive!

Helpful Links to Get Started

Arrival & General Information | Locations & Bestiary | Residences & Housing Info | Rules & FAQ (ask questions here!)

A. Welcome to the Jungle

The URBAN jungle, that is. You have just arrived and received a strange satchel from a tiny, strange little man and are left more or less to your own devices (more information on what to expect upon arrival can be found here)! Follow directions to the north and check out the housing, or maybe have a look around the Historium, see what you can waste your meager starter coin on in the Market District, or maybe just meet the neighbors.

B. We've Got Fun and Games

At least there's entertainment. In various parts of the city, there are street performers, slight of hand tricksters, and probably a game or two of poker in one tavern or another (there are several to be found, after all). Start up a game of darts, or just sit broodily in a corner and watch the others coming and going.

C. You can have anything you want but you better not take it for free

The Harbor District is a rough joint. There are pickpockets, swindlers, but also hardworking folk and more than a few buildings that seem to be locked. It sure would be a shame if someone were to go about performing some casual Breaking & Entering...you know, as long as you don't get caught. There are guards around, though not nearly as many here as in the other districts. It's almost as though they like to avoid the place. People talk about wererats in the shadows at night and it's not unheard of for the unaware to go missing when they're traveling around here after dark...

D. What's that smell?

As if being carted off to what looks like a city out of a video game weren't bad enough, there's an entire district to the northeast that seems to be walled off, warded, and in all ways inaccessible. According to the sign, it's the cemetery...and boy does it smell.

E. Speaking Crystal

You could always take a look at the instructions that came with your crystal and see who else is listening. Remember, though, these devices are Voice Only and cannot be filtered. If you speak, anyone with a crystal can and will hear you. Now, whether or not they choose to respond is another thing entirely.

If you have any questions at all about setting or what is or isn't acceptable, please submit it on the FAQ!

If you would like to explore any aspect of the setting more indepth, please PM the mod account OR comment here! All comments are screened!

» N A V I G A T I O N

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Syeira looked up towards the sky and frowned. "It's why they're bringing people here..." Her gaze dropped to those collecting in the crowds around them and her relaxed expression dropped into a frown. "We are all brought here... not forever but for a time beyond our control." She wasn't looking at anyone in particular but she knew. This was going to be her home until fate returned her to her time and place.

"Time is strange here. It touches us all differently, like we've been plucked from one cloth and placed into another... I don't- understand it."

He looked at her sidelong, the woman barely visible past the edge of his hood. Altaïr didn't understand much at all of what she was saying. What was time but the passage of moments? Heartbeat to heartbeat? How was someone touched by time except in the way everyone was?

He shook his head a bit. "Time is time. It isn't to understand. It's to experience."

"That is true for most but-" She lightly brushed her fingers against her lower lip, thoughtful but also uncertain. "For me, time is more than that. I am able to see it's fullness and it is something that I must strive to understand. Choices and cataclysmic events can cause the weave of time to knot but this- there was nothing like this in the weave of Earth and the weave here is different... simple in comparison."

Which told her more about this world than she was comfortable knowing.

Her words. He understood them individually, but strung together as she was speaking them? They made a sort of sense, but a sort of sense that only stretched as far as her words themselves. It was as if he understood her intention, but his inherent disbelief had his nose wrinkling.

Until he remembered that he had already seen magic.

"I know nothing of what you speak," he said. "And can offer no insight."

Syeira smiled then and shook her head. "It's alright." One day these visions would drive her into madness. There was no changing her fate but it was nice to talk to someone about it... someone who, for the moment, reminded her of her bother. Of home.

"I just felt comfortable speaking to you. I hope that's alright."

"It is confusing. I am no one's brother." Especially not now. Especially not anymore, when his lifelong mentor, as conditional as his care may have been, had driven a dagger into his gut. "But speak as you will. I cannot guarantee I can answer."

Syeira thought about it and after a brief pause, spoke. "Could I think of you as my brother?" An ally, she supposed but also a friend. Someone who was familiar to her in a sense but a stranger in another.

She honestly didn't expect him to agree to such a thing but she hoped...

An odd request. He looked at her, brows furrowed beneath his hood. He'd been called Brother by others - even one who had intended his death. Many he barely knew except in passing.

He shrugged. "I am not practiced in ways of family. Expect little of me."

It wasn't a no.

Syeira smiled. "I expect nothing but I'm happy." She didn't want to ask for anything he wasn't willing to give. Maybe it was friendship and strength... or simply the sensation of being connected to someone. Syeira didn't like being alone. It was an uncomfortable sensation like drowning in a sea of darkness: constricted, endless and overwhelming.

That was all she desired from him and he didn't have to do anything but what he's already done.

"I should finish my shopping, would you like to walk with me?"

All of this confused him. She was welcoming without question, seemed to think nothing of the weaponry he carried, and even wanted to think of him as family. None of this made sense. Or was it, he wondered even as he fell into step slightly behind her, just the difference between Masyaf and the rest of the world?

Or was that 'worlds' now.

No matter, truly, but it was easiest, now, to go along with what she suggested than to let his natural stubbornness get in the way. Especially when there were things he still needed to learn both about this place and this woman. And perhaps, said a small thought deep below his consciousness, himself.

ooc: You okay with fading this thread to black?

((Yep! The confused Assassin will just trail around behind her in a daze.))

Test Drive - 001

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