ateratooc | Test Drive

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Test Drive - 001

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

A. Welcome to the Jungle - Housing Square

He followed the strange little man in a sort of daze, wondering how this could have possibly happened, if he was having some sort of out of body experience, or if he'd finally gone fully mad. He was dressed in dark colors, slacks, a casual jacket, and thin leather gloves. He was the sort of thin that came from regularly forgetting to eat, and his dark hair was the oily that came from running your fingering through it often.

The edifice of the Historium dominated the square and he found himself staring up at it, blinking as he turned back toward his guide only to find the little man was nowhere to be seen.

"Speedy little wanker." It was muttered under his breath and not directed at anyone in particular, and he swallowed afterward. Scared? Maybe a little. It's not everyday you get teleported to another world, after all.

B. We've got fun and games

Jagger did make his way to the tavern...inn place, just off the market district. Sitting about in cafes was one of the best ways to hear local gossip, and if any of his various forays into fantasy literally had taught him anything, a tavern was just as good as a coffee shop when you wanted to know what was up.

He'd ordered an ale (really?) from the innkeeper (really?) and taken a seat at a table from which he could see the door. He wasn't sure what he was looking for but it was at least something more familiar than running around a stone and mortar city straight out of fiction. His head was still reeling from it all. There are other chairs at his table, though, and he doesn't seem the type to shrug people off, at least not with the way he's looking about curiously from time to time.

D. What's that smell?

The smell wafting from the wall and the sealed gate is enough to turn anyone's stomach, though it thankfully doesn't travel far from the cemetery itself. Still, his investigator's sense wouldn't let him simply turn a blind eye to something so strange (as though the rest of this place is completely ordinary) and so, against his better judgement, with every instinct screaming at him to run in the opposite direction from that place, Jagger approached the door. Unlike the entrances to the other districts, there didn't seem to be any guards around here.

"This is going up there on your list of stupid ideas, Jagger." He breathed a sigh and coughed at the smell before pulling off one of his gloves. "And now you're talking to yourself."

He was a psychometrist, he could know things from touching surfaces, read imprints, thoughts, emotions tied to it. It was just a gate, but it might have some sort of answer as to why the cemetery was sealed...and smelled like rotting meat.

E. Speaking Crystal

Is it even work- oh. [There's a clearing of his throat before he continues.] These bugger's are really sensitive when you touch them. [There's a self-deprecating sort of chuckle.] I know I'm not the only one who recently popped in to...what? Help rebuild a world? Nor pressure or anything. How much of this are we supposed to buy?

Edited 2020-06-25 03:33 (UTC)

"Hey! Get back here!" Yuna ran through the square, only to stop a few yards from Jagger. She was breathless and gasping for air. If Jagger looked around, he'd notice that there wasn't anyone there or it didn't look like there was.

The girl frowns. "He got away again." She met Jagger's gaze with a pair of mismatched eyes; one blue, one green. "Oh. He must have guided you here too. You don't happen to have seen where he went? He vanished on me and I still had questions."

Yuna was stubborn and it was probably no surprise to Jagger that the gnome didn't want to be on the opposite end of her inquiries.

Jagger could relate. He was inquisitive by nature and that coupled with his inability to remain patient for too long often put him at odds with other people. He looks annoyed when he turns at the sound of her voice, slipping the key he'd taken from the satchel into the inside pocket of his jacket as he does so.

"You and me both. Looks like we're on our own, miss...?" He trailed out the last, trying to prompt her to give him her name.

"Oh!" She grinned. "My name is Yuna! From the Island of Besaid. Though-" Her head tilted to the side. "That doesn't mean to much here... huh..."

She looked back at Jagger as if shaking off her thoughts. "My world is called Spira." She didn't know if he had ever heard of Spira but she had hoped. Then again, she's never met someone from Spira who didn't know who she was. Maybe, at least that part, was a good thing. It was nice being a stranger in a crowd and very different from what she was used too.

"What's your name?"

He raises an eyebrow at her earnestness but does his model best to keep the smirk of amusement from his face. She's a helpful one. It's yet to be seen whether or not that's going to be worth anything, but it's good to be prepared.

"Sorry, Yuna. I've never heard of Besaid or Spira." He rolls his shoulder in a slight shrug, but doesn't offer to shake her hand. Maybe people on Spira didn't do that sort of thing anyway, and maybe she wouldn't find it rude. Wouldn't that be nice?

"I'm Jagger from Detroit." And considering she's from some place called Spira, maybe she won't find his accent, vaguely from the south of London, to contradict that statement. "My world's Earth." He looks over to her as though to ask, does that mean anything to you, though he assumes he already knows the answer.

She shook her head in response. "Its alright. I didn't really think you would have. I'm not sure where this is or if we're even close to Spira anymore." She looked around as if expecting to see something extraordinary here. "This isn't how I imagined another world looking but I never really thought about leaving Spira."

Not that she minded, Spira was safe again and they didn't need her there but it was strange being away from the place that was her home.

Yuna smiled at Jagger. "It's nice to meet you. Considering the situation." She didn't reach for his hand but instead laced her fingers together behind her back. "I don't know Earth but I'd love to hear about it."

"Well, if it's all the same, miss Yuna, I've never even thought about what another world might actually look like." He frowned, looking around, disconcerted. "Stuff like this happens in...stories, you know? It's not real." Or maybe it was just that they hadn't expected it to be real.

Then he turned, confused, tilting his head to the side as he regarded this woman. "You know, I don't even know how to start talking about Earth."

She smiled. "Maybe but some stories come from bits and pieces of truth." Yuna has found that many stories and histories from Spira were formed from only a fragment of truth but this feels different from that. It almost felt like she'd been plucked from her world and placed in another's history.

It was unsettling.

"But, I admit, this is still unexpected." She was used to strange things and she was trying to take it in stride... as best she could.

Yuna gently rocked from side to side, her expression thoughtful. "I could explain Spira but it's the people who make the world truly amazing. Everyone tries their best and with Sin gone, they're able to rebuild." There was more chaos after that but Vegnagun wasn't common knowledge.

"You should have brought a plague mask. Stuffed it with herbs so you couldn't smell the funk." Unfortunately, the reek was something Cassandra had inured herself to long ago. She moved quietly, much like a stalking cat, looking up at the cemetery gates and narrowing her eyes.

"Don't let me interrupt you." Though it's very clear that this woman has absolutely no intention of moving off and letting him get down to business. The street may currently be empty, but with the way she acts, one might expect a monster to leap out at any moment.

She loosened her knives in their sheaths. Just in case.

"Well, shit. I left my plague mask in my other jacket." His voice was slightly accented, perhaps from the south of London, but it had the worn edges that came from being in the States too long. He lowered his hand, taking a step back from the thick wooden gate as he did so, sliding his thin leather glove back into place almost as an afterthought. It wasn't that he didn't want to touch the door and have his psyche flooded with the thoughts of all the men who'd ever closed it, or perhaps the have-rambling ravings of whatever was on the other side, it was just that he didn't necessarily want to do it right now. He wasn't a coward or anything, honest.

"It's waited this long. I wager it can wait a bit longer." He gave her a closer look over, trying to determine what, if anything, he could discern from her mannerisms. He wasn't exactly Sherlock Holmes, but he was fairly good at reading people. "You find big gates surrounded by the smell of rotting meat often? You must live a charmed life."

"A shameful oversight! Coming to a graveyard without one?!" She's got that similar hint of an accent, though hers is by way of Italy with just the faintest dash of New York. Her tone is completely teasing, however. Sometimes it's not cowardice but intelligence, a streak of self-preservation to take that sort of action.

Cassandra simply watched the man, but it was akin to some sort of predator, watching to see what this interesting individual did next. As if she had all the time in the world and could wait forever, until he chose to move or something made him move.

"Just lucky, I suppose, though usually, then I'm asked to excise what is inside of it, if you must know." Between the call of her magick and the call of her mother, she knew that some day, it was likely she'd be called to cleanse this cemetery, too.

"You know, where I come from, we haven't needed one in several hundred years to go to a graveyard."

Her choice of wording caught his attention, though, and he turned to face her more fully, taking more careful stock of her. It wasn't his abilities telling him there was something different about this woman, that she was decidedly dangerous. That was pure, unadulterated instinct screaming at him to run.

It was probably smart to listen to his gut, but he'd never been particularly good at it. "You can excise the dead?" He had absolutely no reason to believe that undead wandered on the other side of this wall, but the stench coupled with the fact that he'd just been teleported to another world had opened his mind up a little bit.

"I can send them back to their proper place." Which meant killing them again--destroying them entirely, if she had to--and then sending the souls inhabiting them back to their proper places--whichever place that was, Heaven, Hell, or someplace inbetween. "There's many a thing I may do with my...calling, and that is one of them."

It didn't sound like bragging. Just more of a surety, if not a promise.

Cass walked up closer to the gate, though she was truly as loathe to touch it as he had been. She couldn't really blame him. The threads of fate were fuzzy here, and she wasn't sure if things could be changed--human interaction was both a wondrous and a chaotic thing--but if things were simply left, the Euthanatos was certain the gates would break and whatever was behind them would spill out into the streets to wreak havoc.

She'd seen zombie invasions before. Cass didn't want to see another.

[ There's a moment of silence as Jagger's words hang with no response, but he's eventually rewarded with a rather sardonic tone. ]

Based on the technology here, I imagine we're supposed to buy it all, though I'm less inclined to believe there are few expectations of us. [ There's a pause, then he continues a little bit more quietly. ] I also wonder what it is that we get out of all of this.

Yeah, there's that, too. [He pauses here for a moment also.] I don't think there's much of a point in whispering, mate. I think this tricket's either on or off.

[But something he said made Jagger uneasy, not because it hadn't occurred to him, but rather because it had.] Have, uh, you ever dealt with anything like this before?

[ There's a small noise as the muttering was called out, as if it wasn't meant to be heard. There is a pause. ]

Dealt with a world ending? [ A pause, a consideration of how much to say. ] Not me personally, but where I am from had a Calamity in the past.

Really? [There's a beat before he adds-] Not that I mean to sound disbelieving or anything. It's just so many people here seem to come from worlds in a lot of turmoil. I wonder if that's a thread...

It doesn't really matter to me if you believe me or not, it doesn't change what happened. [ A pause, perhaps considering that he might be too harsh. ]

Considering I'm not the only one wondering what we get out of this deal, I imagine it would be hard to find people who would help if they weren't sympathetic to the cause. [ He didn't sound very sympathetic. ]

I never said I didn't believe you, mate. Just implied it's hard to believe. As far as I know, you don't have a reason to lie about anything.

They kind of gave me the impression they don't really care whether we help or not.

They are treating it all rather blasé, I agree. It makes little sense to me, though. If they really did not care, would we be here?

To me, if a world was recently brought to ruin it seems counterintuitive to bring in a group of strangers who consume resources and expect nothing of them. There must be a catch that they are not sharing with us.

Unless what they need is people. Maybe all the natives here died in...whatever it is that happened.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Test Drive - 001

Jagger Crowe | Original Character

A. Welcome to the Jungle - Housing Square

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D. ooh that smell

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E. Speaking Crystal

E. Speaking Crystal

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