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

She hadn't stopped to give a name, instead just taking his statement to not worry about it at face value. When someone says to not worry about it, they usually mean it, right? At least that was what she went with. Perhaps though it was simply a convenient way for her to excuse herself while she tunnel visioned the destination she was interested in. Regardless, she hardly meant to be rude, even if she came off as it quite a bit sometimes.

When the same man appeared again she wasn't particularly startled or surprised. Instead she offered up a small smile and nodded her head.

"Indeed. Unfortunate for those who might need one to explore," luckily she wouldn't fit into that category herself. She tilted her head to the left inquisitively. "Perhaps someone will be able to fix her. I imagine she was quite lovely when she was whole. It makes you wonder what sort of people used her, doesn't it? Where did they sail to?" And more importantly, where had they gone to? Why had it all been left like this? Those curiosities she kept to herself though. There was no need to bombard a stranger with all the questions in her own mind.

"You're the one I ran into on my way," her tone had an apologetic hint to it. "Fionnuala," she paused briefly. "That's my name."

“If our hosts thought to abscond with a few of another world’s carpenters perhaps?” He responded with a wry smile, rather uncertain of their logic given that they had dragged him here. What good was a thief at rebuilding anything, and one who worked with a group seemed even more useless without said group. It’s an interesting line of thought that she posed though, “Indeed it does, and makes you wonder what other shores are out there waiting to be explored. Are their harbours more full of life than this? Do they have as many secrets to keep? It’s a curious thought.”

The man smiled more genuinely a moment later at her apologetic tone, waving it off with an easy shrug, “I certainly am. Hope you don’t mind my intrusion on your wandering. I’ve seen a few unpleasant sorts milling about the district, thought it best to see that you got where you were going without bumping into one of them next.”

Of course, introductions were probably in order. He tended to gloss over them until he felt like he knew a person better, if they were the sort he’d like to get to know well enough to need to remember their name. She definitely was fitting into the category, and he was practiced enough in human social etiquette to not ignore it. “Nice to meet you Fionnuala. You can call me Caelan.”

"They intend for us to rebuild, so I imagine they have. Or will." It didn't occur to her that their hosts may have lied about their intentions. Why would it? What purpose would lying about their purpose here serve their hosts? Besides kidnapping their hosts hadn't precisely done anything to them, which lent some level of credibility to their claims. Either way, Nuala had no reason to not believe their reasoning behind the kidnapping. The only odd part to her was that she had been taken at all. There was little she could imagine herself offering towards the rebuilding of a world.

"If there are ships then there are other shores. I wonder how long it has been since these people have interacted with people beyond their own shores?" The condition of the ships made it seem like they had not been used in quite a long time. How long had the people here been isolated from the rest of this place? More than anything however she wondered what might be found in the water. Though that she kept to herself.

She let out a tiny little melodic laugh at his explanation and shook her head. "I'm afraid sometimes I find myself a bit too focused on the object of my curiosity. That was a very kind of you to think of protecting me, Caelan. Now I wonder if I should have been a bit more cautious."

But what's done was done so she simply gave a slight shrug of her shoulders. "Most call me Nuala. They find it easier."

Caelan was... a little less trusting in situations like this, more prone to looking for possible angles that another might have in such a situation. He was used to looking out for the team and for others, he’d seen more than enough fae in bad situations and needing help than he cared to admit. So their hosts? He wasn’t ready to give them the benefit of the doubt yet, not until he unlocked all the locked doors and worked a few curiosities out of his system.

“I would say it depends on what happened here in the first place and why the ships were allowed to fall into such a state. Seems like a long time by the looks of it though... ” Caelan was eager to search these waters himself, though he was showing some restraint if only because there was a lot to parse through since arriving to begin with. Not to mention, there were a lot of wanderers around the harbour district at the moment. Best to wait for a time when a selkie could find a little more privacy.

He focused instead on the subject of her curiosity and the thanks she’d offered. He waved it off lightly, tone kind as he responded. “Think nothing of it, I know what it is to be too focused on something... I’m just glad I was able to offer a little protection while you got to where you wanted to go. We shore dwellers must look out for one another, right?” Caelan presumed she at least lived near water, her interest and the way she thought about the place made it seem like a safe guess.

“Oh, do they now? Well... I find Fionnuala as easy as Nuala, as it is such a lovely name. But, if you insist I shall call you as you like.” He added with a little grin, the name rolled off his tongue easily enough in his opinion.

"They did seem to leave that part out, did they not?" she pauses for a second and then repeats what the woman had said upon her arrival, "A great calamity caused the death of the world. That seems like a rather lackluster description. It makes one wonder what sort of calamity could cause such immense disaster?" And how was this small area spared? A thought flickered to life in her mind as she thought about the words they had all been given.

"What if there is nothing else left? They wish for us to be rebuild, but to what extent is the damage? Like you say, it must have happened quite some time ago for a ship to fall into such disrepair. That begs the question as to why it's simply been left like this. Is there nobody already here that could repair things or do they know something we do not?" She shakes her head as she returns her gaze out to the ocean. "Curious indeed." After a second she returns her focus back to Caelan and chuckles.

"Well, you have my thanks regardless of if I should think nothing of it or not." She smiles. "Shore dwellers. Yes, I suppose that describes me sometimes. I have always had a fondness for the sea. You could say I was born drawn to it." Well, one could say much more than that, but there was danger in revealing too much about what she was. She knew that much all too well.

"I will answer to either. Though it is nice to hear my full name for a change." She had gotten rather used to just answering to the more simple and short form of it.

The questions she posed were unsettling in their own way, but still good ones to be asked. There was too much to consider in a situation like this, especially when the average person would have no way to seek the answers other than ask. Those who could travel the waters more easily though? They stood a chance at figuring that out. “Now you’re asking excellent questions, Fionnuala.” Yes, he’s definitely going to continue to use the full name. A familiar sounding name in a strange world is a comfort in its own way.

Caelan would find himself a little more curious at what she meant by the statement. The likely answer was she was just a human that was fond of the sea, or perhaps descended from the union between an ocean fae and a human where the pull was natural but small. Or... Well, he doubted it, but she could have been like him. The first seemed more likely, but he did appreciate her clear love for the sea. “I think I can understand that... It does have a lovely voice after all, hard to resist its charm even on a stormy day.”

In some ways, one could say that like was drawn to like. Even if neither of them quite realized just how alike they were in a literal sense.

Test Drive - 001

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