cursedcontent | TEST DRIVE MEME #1

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TEST DRIVE MEME #1

A Blood Offering

You wake up cozy in bed at the Saturn Motel. As you observe the room you may realize that it looks a little dated. Or, perhaps from your point of view the lamp and TV are wildly futuristic. Or, like Goldilocks, it may seem just right: close to the world you just left behind. Either way, you just had a very strange dream (see the arrival scenario) and now you're here. And you're not alone: there's a bed next to yours and someone else is waking up just like you are.

You can chat for a while if you like, but if you try to leave you'll find the door is firmly locked and no amount of kicking, punching, or hitting it with an object will do you any good. Instead, there's a letter on the nightstand which reads:

"Good morning and welcome to your new home!

You may be wondering why you're trapped in this room. Fear not, the door will open easily if you offer a bit of blood. More than a few drops but not enough to be a serious wound. A handprint's worth will do, let's say, and it only needs to come from one of you.

I'll let you sort that out yourselves. See you on the other side.

Sincerely,
The Mayor"

And indeed, a handprint's worth of blood pressed against the door will unlock it and let you out into the world. Do you volunteer your own blood? Do you take it from the other person by force? It's up to you! But there's no food in here, so you better figure it out eventually.

Roller Rink

As a celebration of your new lives here (and an apology for the whole blood offering thing - they were just testing something out, really) the Mayor has invited everyone to the Crazy Eight Roller Rink for a private, after-hours party.

Attendance isn't mandatory, but it is heavily encouraged so that you can meet your fellow Cursed and know who's in on the whole secret. It'll help you down the line at some point if your Curse gets out of control and you need someone to wrangle you.

As a reward, everyone who shows up and completes at least one lap around the roller rink (you must be wearing skates, but you can crawl the lap if you can't get the hang of them) will receive a free walkman with a mystery tape inside. The color, style, and mystery tape your character gets are up to you.

Mallrats

Everyone loves the mall! Right? Right! And this group of newcomers is lucky enough to be here for the White Pines Mall Grand Opening celebration! Feel free to walk around the mall and partake in sales galore, check out the attractions, or just get to know the layout of the place.

The Mayor has given everyone a gift card for $100 that can be used anywhere in the mall as long as they attend the Grand Opening.

They also strongly suggest that you familiarize yourself with the mall and its layout, just in case you ever get stuck there for a while and have to compete with others for food and resources. But that probably won't happen.

Extra Info

The test drive meme and the IC intro log will have the same prompts, and threads between two accepted characters can count as game canon.

The first prompt is flexible: technically you're supposed to be with one other person, but if you want to do larger groups that's fine.

Rooms at the Saturn Motel initially contain two beds for the prompt, but upon leaving and returning characters will find that they all have their own rooms with one bed. If you want a roommate, someone better be ready to sleep on the floor or snuggle up! The room doesn't have to look exactly like the reference image as long as it's not too fancy and suitably dated.

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"Uninhabited solar system," comes the snarky reply like clockwork. Will you give it a rest already.

"Except for all that curse business, yeah. Unless of course it's this place that curses us and getting out of here is actually what would save us. If the curse is even real."

But of course it's too early too tell. They need more information, on this world, on the Mayor, on the ominous Curse itself. And instead here they are, sliding around the room like they're trapped in some bizarre nostalgia show on late night TV.

"This is humiliating."

Well, nothing would surprise me at this point.

[John makes a face, and goes over to the table, picking up a letter opener.]

And I'm the guy who might have to punch our way out of here, if it comes to it?

[He wants to poke fun at the whale thing but Rodney's seriousness cuts him short, plus the realization that they've had the same dream. Which points to the fact it very well may be real.]

It's not just a dream if we both had it. And if there's really a curse? We have to get rid of it first. We can't risk bringing it back to Atlantis.

yeah, it's a weird place, isn't it
any theories about it?

[ Vasiliy casts her a sympathetic smile. ]

It is fun if you are good at it. [ Again—like ice skating. Probably why he's having an okay time, at least, compared to most of the other people here, even if he's not particularly proud of his performance. He was hardly a figure skater back home, but he could at least do enough to not look as awkward as he knows he does right now. ]

It is hard to get used to. Do you need help to go back to rail?

One or two, but they're less theories and more guesswork-based-on-past-experiences.

you've had past experiences like this?

I'm sure. [ that's firm, but she's smiling while she says it and nodding when he mentions keeping an eye on it and letting her know if it gets worse. he seems like the kind of guy to be nervous about injuries. possibly prone to exaggerating about them, but christine's not going to mind telling him he's fine after having a look. first, better safe than sorry. second, it'll be something she knows how to do. this place feels like an extremely old-timey holovid; it's throwing her off balance. or it would, if she let it.

she takes care of his hand with quick and sure motions, although she's already missing the state of the art equiment of enterprise's med bay. it's not that she needs it for a wound this small, but —

all she's saying is, there people here had better already invented antibiotics.

(she's reasonably sure she knows which century this is, at least, and what she knows of medical history means penicillin was discovered earlier, but that's assuming she's been somehow transported into the past of the earth she knows, rather than some other earth. and given how no one's mentioned knowing starfleet yet to her network ping, she's not so sure she can make that assumption.) ]

There, all done. You'll live.

[ she drops his hand. ] Food's this way.

"Still a solar system."

So no, he won't give it a rest.

"There is that." It's something he thought about already, maybe the whole curse business is a proximity thing. If it's even real.

"You're telling me. Come on, why not just try? Listen--"

He reaches over and attempts to pry one of his hands off his vest. Thing is, he's not entirely sure that even he could loosen Rodney's death grip.

"Just stand to the side of me, and do what I do."

No problem.

[ Vasiliy pauses for a moment, regarding her stance. Then, gently: ]

Try to bend your knees more. And do not lean too far forward. That is how you lose your balance. [ Well, one of many ways he's figured out over the past half-hour. He's not having a great time himself, but he gets the sense that if he had time to figure out more than how to move forward and stop without falling it'd probably be pretty fun. He'll have to visit this place later, once he's gotten his bearings a little bit more. ]

You can close your eyes, if it'll help. [ christine's quick to say, because fukawa is looking a little pale. unsure, too, and christine's too much of a healer, deep down, not to want to soothe that, even if she's been told her bedside manner leaves something to be desired. ]

I'll just clean it out and wrap it up, all right?

[ it's not really a question so much as it is making noise and keeping fukawa appraised of what she's doing, like she would anyone looking that spooked.

and while she doesn't say it out loud, she has to agree: this place is creepy, it's good to be cautious, and who knows what else is going to happen. the blood to open a door was the stuff of a bad horror movie, christine figures, which doesn't bode well. not to mention the abduction, which is even worse. ]

If. Let's not give the disembodied nightmare voice too much weight yet.

[Rodney pulls a face even though he knows Sheppard is of course right.]

Except maybe Atlantis has equipment to get rid of multidimensional Curses.

[Still. Probably not a chance they can take, depending on how bad this might get.]

I've never been told I'm cursed, but I did end up in an alternate future once.

really? how did you get back to your own time?

The cosmic cube and a guy with a time machine.

"Do I have to?"

Rodney pulls a face, his voice taking on a whiny tone as he is forced upwards. When Sheppard finally gets his hand off the vest, he clings to his wrist instead, pulling on his arm for balance.

"What do you mean do what you do, I don't know what you do! What do I do?"

"Yes. Now you move your feet like you're pushing forwards, like you're shuffling your feet. If you feel like you're gonna fall, bend your knees and squat."

And don't yank him down with you. He holds onto his hand securely when he clings to him.

"Look, I won't let you fall, okay? Try to use your own balance instead of depending on mine."

Which isn't all that great on skates.

what's the cosmic cube
i haven't seen anyone with a time machine around yet, so i guess it's back to the drawing board

A glowy cube that can turn a bad day into a good one, or a good day into a really bad day depending on who's holding it.

I think it's broken, but don't quote me on that.

That doesn't mean there isn't one here, unless we really did all arrive by the power of dream.

Edited 2022-08-21 19:28 (UTC)

Doesn't mean we can't take it into account.

[But it's actually pretty terrifying to think about if it's true, especially when they don't know what it is yet.]

You willing to bet the city on that?

[He's just saying. He takes the letter opener and quickly slices his palm, wincing.]

You owe me. Also, I feel like this is pretty cursed in and of itself. Doesn't this feel like a scene in a horror movie? I better not get haunted cause of this.

[He puts his hand against the door, not realizing it wasn't enough blood.]

that sounds pretty amazing and pretty scary

and yeah, i don't think dreams normally do that
and if there's really some curse thing going on, quarantining us may not be the worst move

but i really want to know what the actual hell's going on

[ she's fine, it's fine. ]

It's a sort of dark relief that, with all that he's missing, Matt's greatest and most persistent superpower seems intact: underestimation. He's not about to correct her or give her reason to realize that he couldn't feel any more different than he does right now. Like he's been locked into a body that doesn't belong to him -- something heavy and foreign. Matt sinks to the edge of her bed and chuckles. "Good guess."

When the younger girl jumps right into hypothesizing, he bows his head to listen. There are a million explanations for what's happened that seem logical enough, given his own history, but what matters to him much more is how they're going to find their way out of here. How they break the hypnosis or overcome whoever's twisting their minds. "You're probably right," he agrees. "So what do you think? How do we get out?"

Scary's about right.

( the last time peter had anything, personally, to do with the cosmic cube, he'd wanted nothing to do with it. it had helped where he was under the impression it was totally broken instead of just a little broken, but getting rid of it had been a relief he hadn't been able to put into words.

that much power absolutely should never come into the hands of someone like him. )

Yeah, I get that. It's kind of weird that there are so many isolated cases, I've spent the better part of a decade in the company of the same people, so why they're not here as well is beyond me.

( quill to quill: maybe it's because he deserves it and they don't. )

[ christine's not really grasping the whole cosmic cube thing properly, and that's probably for the best. one brain-breaking event per day is really quite enough, and she's still trying to make sense of this place and how she's even here. ]

i was on a ship with several hundred people with comparable biology to mine
statistically, it doesn't really make sense it'd only affect me

[ so maybe there's something else goin on here. or maybe it's not a disease like she knows it at all ]

( and for his part, peter's deliberately avoiding explaining it in any great detail. it's not a period of time he's especially enamored with, and they don't even have a cosmic cube, so he doesn't see any real point to it beyond 'shiny thing do stuff'. )

10? or so? ( peter's not sure — keeping everyone on board the ryder had been an impulsive decision made when he was decidedly not sober, and now he's not sure he could even name all of them. Moondragon, Phyla, Groot, Bill, some guy that was a skeleton and also on fire—...? )

Including a talking tree and a horse, so...

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TEST DRIVE MEME #1

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cw: blood

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