( MEMES ) TEST DRIVE >> 7

[contagio]

THE TEST DRIVE



Like it or not, you've been dragged from your world into the sanctum. It's a pretty nice city, all things considered--sci-fi, high-tech, glamourous.... Except, of course, for the giant dome encircling it, and the threat of glitching, contaminated zombies at your door. Looks like humanity's built itself a fortress that looks suspiciously like a cage, too. Toss in the odd memory blanks and the everpresent logo of Bifrons incorporated and it's enough to make someone paranoid.

The object of this meme is to get people familiar with the world of the Sanctum, and to try to see if their characters would fit in a sci-fi utopia such as this. Here are your options:

1. Intro: Waking Up. Make your intro post, folks. You wake up in a strange place, and get a strange transmission to go with it. There's a pair of glasses connected to some sort of communications network, but otherwise not much else in the room with you. What are you going to do?

2. Pet Adoption. Maybe you have the perfect genetically engineered pet in mind. Maybe you found a stray little escapee--do you keep it or turn it in? There's a reward if you let Bifrons know where the potentially dangerous little bugger is at, after all.

3. Alterations. Feel like you need an edge in the city? Find yourself injured and looking at options? Why not consider genetic alterations or, better yet, upgrading to a better, healthier you? Be warned, some of the side effects can be a little unpleasant.

4. Network Glitches. Strange garbled messages keep trying to come through in audio and text, but no way to track where they're coming from. Do you try to make contact? Compare notes with others? Surely it's nothing to be concerned about, right?

5. Dome Glitches. What was that in the window? There, again, in the bathroom mirror! Is that another you, living another life? Or maybe you spot an ominous shadow lurking around in the corner, something like a dysthrope but...worse. You're not going crazy, are you? Others see it, too, don't they? Oh, I wouldn't touch that reflective surface if I were you, or you might end up thinking you're living in that strange other world.

6. Outside the Dome. You're out and about without an armed escort, suited up against the atmosphere and dysthropes. It's supposed to be a green sector in this run down shell of what used to be a suburb, right? Nothing could possibly go wrong

7. WILDCARD. Choose your own adventure or create a cocktail from the presented options! The choice is YOURS.

Comments

Red | Transistor { Sanctum AU }

[tothecountry]

network post; heavily encrypted

[ It takes her a few times to get out what she wants to say. The first few attempts: ]

It's like we're conditioned to never care about anyone

It's like we have zero attention span here. What goes away can be replaced. Well I don't believe

[ Are erased; unseen. She tries again. ]

It's a funny place, this city. Out with the old, in with the new. Some of us don't want the old to go away. We shouldn't have them taken from us. --R


action

[ Meet Red. Just Red, no last name needed. District 1's new darling on the music scene. With the voice of an angel, her self-written songs will soon be played throughout the city. Her first single is out now. Maybe you've heard it played somewhere? Or seen the ads featuring her face? She knows most of the elite won't read anything deep in her music, but if she can get some people to think and not be sheep, then good.

What intrigues people about Red is the mystery. She plays her cards close to the chest and let's people interpret things as they will. She hasn't taken well to the celebrity lifestyle and spends most of her time holed up in her apartment. Recent events have made her disinclined to talk, but today she heads out to do some shopping. She starts in D1, but eventually she ends up at the memorial in D3, reading some of the names of the fallen. If only there was a place for the names of those who have disappeared since the dome was finished. ]

Lieutenant Koudelka | The Vorkosigan Saga | Tags or prose

[trainable_lout]

bar option

[A tall young man is sitting at a bar, a walking-cane (functional, not decorative) propped at his side. He's staring into his vodka drink with the glassy look of someone who is not nearly as drunk as he intends to be.]

street option

[Later, he is out on a walk, limping down the sidewalk and glancing around as if trying to make his way to some unseen destination. A couple of goons are giving him interested looks. The wrong kind of interested, unfortunately. Kou's cane, while it has no particular ornament to it, is clearly extremely well-made and expensive, and it's not long before the goons are following him. Kou grips the stick, looking grim and pale, and keeps limping forward, quickly as his broken body will allow.]

The Warden | Dragon Age

[sistertohermen]

Waking up

[Too much about this place is extremely strange. There's so much metal here, strange surfaces, a message from what seems to be another place and time somehow visually brought to her, and a bunch of her things...and things that are not hers (but surely are now).

The first thing that is for certain is: she cannot stay in this room. It's likely that everyone else is trapped in here the same as her, like the sloth demon but with...very different dreams. So the first thing she does is sneak down whatever halls she can, trying every single door that is available to her. She doesn't think leaving this place out the obvious exit is going to get her anywhere, not until she finds her party.]

Network

Has anyone lost a mabari? Or a warhound of any kind? ...A dog. If you can call it that.

[She looks down with her glasses on, aimed down at what, to those from Ferelden, looks to be a mabari indeed. But pint-sized. It even has some war paint markings on it, but while the tail is going a mile a minute, she can't help but think it looks...pathetic.]

She isn't mine. Mine was nearly as tall as I am, and a male. I'm not about to steal someone's hound if she's bonded to someone. [She might steal most things, but pets? Not likely.] I found her barking at a few cats in an alley, so at least she's got the voice of a mabari. Big things in little packages. [She can relate.]

Wildcard

[For whatever else appeals to you!]

[pain_train]

Oh hey look, another from the gimp squad. Wrath is finally allowed to drink again, so she's doing the rounds at her old haunts, and there's this guy. Has she seen him before? Well, he looks like he could use a friend. Leaning on her own cane, she heads over to him and eases up onto the stool.

"Beer me!" she shouts to the bartender. "You're a gem."

[trainable_lout]

Koudelka is completely unused to having, well, other crips around. Barrayar does not have very many of them. So for a beautiful woman using a cane to sit by him at a bar and use "beer" as a verb leaves him stunned for a moment.

He turns and opens his mouth. And closes it. And reddens and looks intently into his beer.

"Hi," he manages at last.

[pain_train]

"Hi!" She grins at him. "Haven't seen you around here before. I mean, it's been a while, but you're definitely not a regular. What's your name?"

[trainable_lout]

"Koudelka." He coughs nervously into his hand. "Lieutenant Koudelka. Call me Kou. Um. Are you...from..around here?"

He speaks that last sentence like the air hissing out of a balloon, offering up the words in despair because he realized as he began them that they were the lamest possible thing he could say.

[pain_train]

"Oh, Lieutenant? In the army? I don't remember seeing you in there." She nods. "Yeah I was born here and stuff. Been in the army all my life, too. My name's Wrath. I was the Lieutenant of Wrath Platoon until I got mustered out a couple months ago."

[trainable_lout]

"Oh." So it was recent for her, too. A female soldier. He's only met one in his life, Lady Vorkosigan. And Miss Droushnakovi almost counts, he supposes. "I'm not from here. I...just barely escaped a medical discharge myself. A stroke of good luck made my CO the Lord Regent of Barrayar--ah, the planet I'm from. He needed a secretary, so he asked me."

He's relaxing, thinking she'll be easy to talk to, being in a similar situation. Well. There's an obligatory war story swap coming up.

"What happened?"

[pain_train]

"Ah, you're one of the Immune! Lucky on escaping discharge. I'd give anything to even be riding a desk right now." Because she'd still be in the army, then. She'd still be part of something big and worthwhile. "But Whiskey--the guy in charge of medical--said I was out so that was that."

Still not quite over it. Probably never will be.

"There were some assholes in power armor tearing up the Hub and I got dispatched in. They were on floor 99 by the time I got there with the security detachment they provided. Those guys were fucking jokes too, it was pathetic. They were basically just distraction while I took out the targets, I guess. I had them all down when their backup showed up. Got one of those, and the other threw me out the window. I hit the sidewalk kind of hard. How about you?"

[trainable_lout]

Wait nope nope nope you are not getting off that easily. Kou's jaw drops and his eyes widen, an incredibly sincere expression of shock and awe. And, possibly, gullibility.

"You fell ninety-nine floors?"

[pain_train]

"Yeah. I like... bounced off some stuff. And got my sword in the wall of the Hub and rode it down. So that helped slow me a bit."

[trainable_lout]

"Shit. Er. I mean--"

He winces and blushes a bit.

"Sorry. I mean, that's...rough. And a lucky escape. It's...damn heroic, really." He sounds a touch envious, somehow. "All I did was get hit with nerve disruptor fire."

[pain_train]

"Sorry about what?" Did he miss her casually dropping the F-bomb?

"They scraped me off the sidewalk and then I was in traction for two weeks while they regrew my bones. Didn't grow well enough, though." She tilts her head. "What's a nerve disruptor?"

[trainable_lout]

Swearing in front of a woman is just not kosher on Barrayar, no matter what she says. Her swearing is also pretty shocking, but he's not about to berate her for it. There is not actually any reason a woman can't say whatever she damn well pleases, but it doesn't excuse him to be impolite.

"It's...sort of a ray gun that fr--kills nerves." Fries is a better descriptor for how it feels, but he'd rather not let on that it hurt. "Sort of a bell-shaped barrel. The center of the blast was right about here."

He gestures vaguely toward his lower torso.

"Spent the next year having surgeries to replace dead nerves with prosthetics. It wasn't as bad as it sounds. I'm just glad I can walk. People who survive nerve disruptor fire usually wind up...not like me at all."

His smile twists a bit.

"I met a guy who was hit in the head with it and lived. I guess his mother takes care of him now. Couldn't even talk. He's probably in diapers these days. So I'm pretty lucky."

All that babble to avoid any chance of depressing questions by radiating cheerfulness about it all.

[pain_train]

Wrath nods. "That sounds really rough. But yeah, could have been worse. I have to keep reminding myself about that too. Be happy to be alive."

Some days, it's really hard to remember that. "Really glad you got that desk job though. Being stick as a civilian is... not fun."

[trainable_lout]

His forced cheer wilts and his voice goes quieter.

"On Barrayar, you don't...see people like..."

He gestures. Us.

"Admiral Vorkosigan probably saved my life, giving me the job. And it's not really as cushy as all that. It's a lot to keep up with. He's been good to me."

A faint smile.

"He issued me this. Try it."

He hands her his stick. It's a lot heavier than a usual cane, and upon further inspection, has a button on the side.

"Just don't point it at anything important," he adds, a jovial twinkle returning to his eye.

[pain_train]

"You don't really get that here, either. Most of the time when someone's fucked up enough to be crippled, they just die. Artificial limbs and organs aren't even really discernible from the real thing if you have enough money." So yeah, don't expect to not get stared at. She sighs. "So you're either a curiosity or everyone thinks you most be a beggar from D4 since they can't afford anything."

Wrath's eyes light up the minute she has the stick. She recognizes the heft. "Nice!" She points it toward the floor and releases the sheathe, catching it in her hand. She draws the blade from there with the fluid movement of someone who has done that countless times. "Too long for me, of course." She grins. "But this is some good work. Wow!"

[trainable_lout]

Kou grins, obviously proud of the blade. "Lady Vorkosigan found it. I'm not allowed to own weapons, technically, so the Admiral issued it to me."

[pain_train]

"How are you not allowed to own weapons? That's weird." She sheathes the sword and gives it back, then offers her own cane. There's a blade hidden in there too, one she's had to use a time or two.

[trainable_lout]

Kou inspects it with interest. "I'm not Vor, Miss. Only Vor are allowed to own weapons. They're our..."

He looks slightly pained to try to explain. They're our Vor, duh.

"They're...military aristocrats, I suppose. Some of them are our feudal lords, but the rest are just...Vor. They're there, they have the privilege and the money. Used to be all the officers were Vor, till the Cetagandans invaded. Now I can be a lieutenant, where, say, my grandfather couldn't, but I can't privately own weapons. All the weapons I use belong to the military, if you follow."

[pain_train]

She frowns. "Yeah, we don't have anything like that here. So that's really interesting. I mean, there are career military families and stuff, but they're not anything special. And all the weapons I used to have belonged to the army or the militia. But a friend gave me that. Anyone with the credits can buy weapons, though. Lots of people have them. So you don't have to worry about that here, at least!"

sera / dragon age: inquisition

[buttsbuttsbutts]

[waking up thing]

[Sera reacts to finding herself in a strange place wearing strange clothes like a cat might react to being shoved in a bag -- wildly, and entirely willing to hurt anything that gets too close.

She runs. Her elf-y, rogue-y stealth seems to have disappeared with her weapons, her clothes, her friends.

She runs until she runs into a person, and to that person she shouts:]

Eat it, piss-bag!

[Before throwing a wild punch at the stranger's face.

Because that's what you do when there aren't any arrows.]

[pet thing]

[By all accounts, Sera is one of the very last people in all of everything, everywhere, that one might decide should have a pet.

But that doesn't mean she can't want one. Or...pretend she wants one in order to harass a poor boutique employee, as the case may be.

Anyone passing by the boutique might take notice of a shabby elven woman arguing loudly with the clerk inside.]

-- But you can do it, so just friggin' do it! I've filled your stupid papers. [She's actually just wrote "Blackwall!!! ROAARGH!!" in the animal's name field and drew an enormous cat devouring stick figures over the rest of the form.]

Right, so. Dragon-sized cat, pink, big stupid wings, [she counts off on her fingers] shoots swords or something from its mouth...and her name is Blackwall. Do it. Do it and I won't throw a knife at your bits.

Oh! And make sure it comes with a saddle. Obviously.

[It might seem that she's suddenly decided to embrace the weird and magical and possibly-demonic but she's having more fun making a scene.]

[forcemageure]

[ Hawke ...ducks, although by closer a margin than he would have liked. ]

Well, all right, if I must eat it. Is 'it' full of jam, whatever it is? That would help quite a lot with the sales pitch. The 'eat it' one.

[buttsbuttsbutts]

You mean like me jamming my fist through your crooked little teeth? Because --

[She draws back her first for emphasis, but stops before actually throwing another punch.]

Wait. You're the Champion What's-it. The birdy one that Varric's in love with.

[She sounds almost accusing, as though he were deliberately withholding information from her by not being instantaneously recognizable.]