pluviosamods: (Default)
Pluviosa Mods ([personal profile] pluviosamods) wrote in [community profile] pluviooc2024-07-19 05:35 pm
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TEST DRIVE 03

TEST DRIVE

Hello, and welcome to the third Pluviosa Test Drive!

This Test Drive corresponds to Days 20-27 in the ship calendar, and will run until around the game's next major event. You can get a better idea what's going on in the most recent Game Update which covers Days 19-27, including the end of our previous event. Because some of the prompts in this test drive have differences based on whether they occur on Days 20-23 or 24 and on, you may wish to choose a firm date for your character's arrival and note it in your top level for other players.

Test Drive threads involving characters who are accepted are considered canon to the events of the game unless otherwise agreed by players/mods. Pluviosa does not do welcome mingle logs nor does it have any kind of in-character welcome information, making your test drive threads your character's arrival to the game setting. That said, mod-run interactions such as formal exploration and/or interactions with the Ship as an NPC are not available on the Test Drive.

It is advised that potential players familiarize themselves with the Premise page, the Rules/Session Zero page, and at least the first few paragraphs of the Setting page. As Pluviosa is a horror game, we especially encourage players to be aware of the content warnings that will be major themes of the game. If you have any further questions, you can ask them on the QUESTIONS header in the comments!

If you're test driving a character, you're welcome to join the game Discord and hang out and meet your fellow players!


ARRIVAL - GAZE FROM THE CLOUDS

Something jerks hard around your stomach, like a movement adruptly stopped. Something trickles through your hair, down the back of your neck - it's warm, and you get the feeling you know what it is.

But when you lift your neck to check, all there is is water. Somehow, counterintuitively, you feel a flash of disappointment. You feel someone's eyes on you...


As characters gain awareness of their surroundings, they will feel as though their head and neck are damp, as though they had just been in a light rain without any protection (even if they are, in fact, wearing a hat or hood). Unless they're particularly unlucky in the location where they wake up, though, the rain is in fact on the outside of the ship, and they are at most subject to humid air. Although the rainstorm in fact ends on Day 23, characters who arrive after that time will still be convinced that there is rain outside, complete with a hallucination of the sound of raindrops in the background, until they go to a window or an open-to-outside place (balconies, topside decks, etc) to check for themselves.

Rain aside, the feeling of being watched is stronger in the upper decks where characters arrive, which may send them seeking to go down instead of up. This might pose a problem in terms of actually making their way to the cleared, prepared-for-use parts of the ship... Especially with all that fresh rainwater breathing new life into the plants in the lower decks.

Note that prior to the rain ending, looking out the windows, glass balcony doors, or up into the domed roof of the passenger lounge will make it appear that the ship is underwater until late afternoon on Day 22. More information on this can be found on the So Below event posts. Additionally, the rainfall hitting the deck of the ship has a tendency to flood into the lower decks of the ship, particularly via the stairways and in rivulets down the hallways. It falls freely on the top deck and down into the open space in the center of the ship, though with less intensity than it does outside the ship's protective barrier.

SOMEBODY'S FOOTSTEPS

And while going down decreased the feeling of eyes on you, it brings about other complications. Ghosts have been present on the ship for around a week now, and their time being visible is nearing its end as the ship comes above the old sea-level line on Day 22... At least as far as the longer-term passengers are concerned.

New arrivals, however, will continue to be able to see ghosts haunting the decks for the first 24 hours of their stay onboard the ship, regardless of the exact date of their arrival. These ghosts largely take the form of vacationers and researchers (as described here under the Haunting Feeling and Growing Shadows sections, respectively), and do not respond to attempts to interact with them any more than they did during the event. Less, even - once the ship is above the sea level line (evening of Day 23 and on), the ghosts perform their loops without registering any attempts to communicate with them. No matter what a character does, their attempts to interact with the spirits are for nothing - even standing in their path just gets you walked through as though you weren't there.

However, there are also a few new ghosts who only appear to the new arrivals, and are invisible to characters who were on board the ship previously:

-> A young man in extremely worn clothing, nursing a bruised jaw wanders the upper parts of Fern deck. When he sees the newly arrived character, he says "Oh, not more of this shit," aloud before turning and booking it off in another direction. Characters who chase him will find that he is visible and audible for a decent amount of time, but that his knowledge of the twists and turns of the Ship exceeds theirs and that he is unhindered by any of the overgrown vines as though they weren't there. As such, characters will inevitably fall behind and lose track of him.
-> At night, a dark-skinned woman can be seen in the lounge, looking back and forth between a glowing tablet she's holding and the sky above. If she notices a newly arrived character in the dimmed-to-nearly-nothing, she tells them in a firm voice, "You're not night shift. Go back to bed, you need your rest," before going back to whatever she's doing with her tablet screen. She fades slowly out of sight afterwards.
-> An androgynous person with a nearly-shaved head and a small flower dangling from a green marking over their ear comes out of the communal showers near the cafeteria. They glance around and ask, "Hey, did you see where that new guy with the eyepatch went?" but head off down the hallway without waiting for an answer, scrubbing at their cropped hair with a towel wrapped around their head.
-> A young woman in an open bathrobe with bandages around her middle looks out the back of the ship from the cafeteria deck, sitting with her feet dangling over the edge over where the ship's protective bubble attaches. Her light brown hair is blowing into her face constantly by the cafeteria's slight wind tunnel effect, but she doesn't seem to care, supporting herself by leaning her arms onto the lower rung of the railing. If approached, she gives a tired smile and says, "It's alright. I'm just waiting for that nice angel to come back," and resumes her watch out the back, not responding to any further questions or interactions.

These ghosts do not seem to register the presence of those who have been on board the ship more than 24 hours, even if pointed out directly. New arrivals who attempt to interact with the ghosts will be able to see and hear them, but not touch them. Attempting to touch a ghost in a way that 'proves' that they're not physically there (eg walking through them) causes the ghost to disappear, and they will not reappear.

JUST ANOTHER WORKDAY

Of course, the upper floors of the ship are not exactly free of eyes. A rather sizeable fleet of motorized drones zips around the hallways, ranging in size from knee-height to large enough to contain a moderately sized couch. The former are often equipped with scrubbing devices along their undersides, and work hard at portions of the floor in the hallways; the largest are functionally dumpsters on wheels, and other drones with long unfolding arms prune and rip plants from the walls, floors, and even the ceilings to fill them. These top two levels of Fern - not the open deck but the two floors immediately below - are clearly undergoing renovations, and renovations start with getting the plants out of the way. A few are even doing electrical or plumbing work, once things have dried up enough after the rain that it's safe to do so.

Since these are also the primary floors on which new arrivals wake up, it's very difficult to not come across some form of cleaning bot soon after arrival. However, there seems to be something a little... off about the ship's cleaning crew if you're a new arrival. They don't seem to register new arrivals as passengers yet; as a result, new characters may find themselves sprayed down with hot soapy water or subject to a set of surprisingly strong mechanical arms trying to shove them into a dumpster. Even if you aren't actively being aggressed by cleaning bots, they don't provide the kinds of loud "warning: backing up" noises they do for other passengers, nor do they slow down to avoid running you down in the still-mostly-dark hallways. The drones either have very good night vision or have some other way of finding their way around, since the only thing that brings them to a halt is particularly bad patches of floor.

Ship drones will continue to treat new arrivals as part of the walls (at best) or particularly stubborn plants in need of pruning (at worst) until either a light is shined on them - but beware, because this will cause any plants in the area to experience a surge of growth - or another, more known passenger intervenes. Admittedly, at that point the drones will be positively apologetic, as much as robots not equipped with voices can be. Soaked characters will be given a complimentary warm-air drying (if they stick around long enough) and anyone thrown in the dumpsters will be appropriately rescued - but it's still not all that great of a first impression, is it?

IDEAL CAMOUFLAGE

Or perhaps it's not the ghost of a person or the drones of the ship that you first encounter. It could be something significantly less civilized.

Strange animals have begun to appear in the ship's jungle - but you'd be forgiven for not noticing them at first. At rest, anyone would dismiss them as strangely shaped bundles of plant matter, because that's exactly what they are. Tails formed out of plaited vines; pelts and feathers formed of interlocked leaves; legs grown out of twisted wood with roots formed into toes. And, occasionally, sharp claws made of bent nails, fangs made of shattered glass, and antlers of rusted pipe, and, always, eyes like black pits that could swallow you up if you stared into them too long.

The 'animals' occupying Fern deck, if they can be called such, are formed out of plant matter with scattered bits of debris from the ship itself. They are, by and large, animals appropriate to the environment of the temperate rainforest that consumes the deck - no elephants or giraffes here. Deer, foxes, the occasional big cat or even a bear, and any number of smaller creatures... Smaller being a relative term, because the animals aren't always to their proper scale relative to humans. A deer might be only knee-high (antlers included), while a squirrel may come up to your waist. On most decks, they're limited to the height of the ceilings above them (9 feet or so), but if you manage to encounter them either on the open upper deck (with its much less height-limited tree canopy) or at the bottom (where the gap in the ship's decks, down the center, leaves lots of space for clearance above the mud and standing water), they could easily be taller.

Most of them are quite skittish, and will bound off into the jungle from which they came and disappear as though they were never there. A handful, though, respond as though threatened - or hungry. And while it might be funny to be stalked through the underbush by a cougar the size of a house cat, it will be less funny if it manages to sink its very real rusty claws into you, and getting trampled by a wooden deer whose antlers scrape the rotten ceiling tiles won't be fun at all.

It is possible to fight the animals, though most will make an attempt to flee if they get the chance, especially if you bring light or fire to bear against them. A 'killed' animal collapses into a pile of plant matter (leaves, branches, vines, etc) with the occasional bit of metal or glass; these heaps don't maintain their form as the 'body' of an animal and don't seem to have been connected together in any way. If lit on fire or otherwise affected by supernatural abilities, the animals react to this as an animal would be expected to, but their bodies are affected in ways consistent with the plant matter they're made of. In addition, no attempts at animal communication will work on them. On the other side of the coin, if you attempt to flee from them, most won't bother to give chase.
screwubbaboo: (fork yeah)

ideal camouflage because I love trouble

[personal profile] screwubbaboo 2024-08-31 02:41 am (UTC)(link)
Boothill's been hunting since he could handle the recoil of a rifle, and with the boredom of a few days on the ship to fuel him he's been spending a lot of time in the plant-haunted decks. He was just up taking a break in the cafeteria since there's fuck all to eat down here unless you want to cram the world's worst salad down your throat and that ain't his favourite way to get fuel (he can get fuel from a lot of things but he still has a few taste receptors so he'd rather it be tasty) and he returns to the sound and sight of someone else clashing with one of the larger foliage beasties.

Huh. Looks like he took it out in one strike, not bad.

Boothill approaches to offer his congratulations, but the guy whirls around with his sword at the ready and quite frankly Boothill's pretty sure he can't be blamed for his own reflexes, so really, this situation ain't either of their faults. But he does have a gun pointed at Flamebringer. "Woah, woah, woah, no need to get hostile now, pal. I ain't gonna hurt ya."
indifferentinferno: (Threatening)

Charisma check~

[personal profile] indifferentinferno 2024-09-04 06:04 am (UTC)(link)
Flamebringer freezes. That's the barrel of a gun.

Given his occupation, his race, and his status as an infected, he'd seen down the ends of a surprisingly large amount of the things, and come out still around to tell the tale. But it never became something he took lightly.

The owner is talking, his tone is even, calm, like he's trying to keep things from going further.

Cheap words given how much power he held in this exchange. Flamebringer's eyes narrowed. He didn't look sankta. The pinpoint of red in his eye and the flash of sharp teeth spoke of literally any other race. But just because he wasn't sankta, didn't mean he wasn't dangerous.

Flamebringer still had adrenaline pumping through his veins, "Prove it." He said, his grip on his sword tightening, chest heaving from his previous kill, "Or else I'm more than capable of making this as painful for you as it will be for me."
screwubbaboo: (huh)

[personal profile] screwubbaboo 2024-09-05 01:36 am (UTC)(link)
Boothill eyes Flamebringer, cataloguing the heaving chest, the tone of his voice - there's some real tension there. He can't help a little chuckle. "Oh, I've no doubt you could do some damage, pal. Got a nice swing there, I've never been much for swords myself but you're not fucking bad."

Still, he's never been one to shoot without cause and this guy hasn't done anything to deserve a bullet yet, so he takes his finger off the trigger and spreads his hands, redirecting the muzzle of his gun. "All right, I'll stow mine if you stow yours. Can't say I fancy having that big ol' knife pointed at me much either."

Of course putting his revolver away doesn't mean much since he's still armed with his built in gun, but that's between him and his finger. No need for his new friend to find out if things go well.
indifferentinferno: (Side Eye)

[personal profile] indifferentinferno 2024-09-18 08:22 pm (UTC)(link)
He doesn't respond to the compliments, eyes narrowing in full focus as he watch's his opponents face.

Flamebringer is slightly surprised when he actual does stand down, leaving himself open for Flamebringer to do, hypothetically, more damage if it was a bluff on his own part. It seemed like a genuine show of good faith. "...Fine by me." He says, heaving out a sigh. He lowered his katana, moving to sheath it as he kept an eye on Boothill to see if he would stay good to his word and do the same.

If the guy made any funny moves he could always torch him. He would boil like a lobster inside that armor.

Tensions lowered, Flamebringer starts to walk past Boothill, "I'm not keen on getting jumped by another beast, I don't know how many of them are wandering around, so unless you feel like picking a fight, you should get out of here too." Not his problem if the guy had a death wish.
screwubbaboo: (^_^)

[personal profile] screwubbaboo 2024-09-28 12:15 am (UTC)(link)
Boothill slides his gun into its holster and tips his hat. "Name's Boothill. What do you call yourself? Been here long? I ain't seen you around the ship before." It's a fairly big space and there aren't many occupants, but it would still be surprising if he met someone he'd never seen before and they'd been here longer than a day.

"Not like I came down here on accident." Boothill is bored of the ship. He's used to being foot-loose and fancy free, roaming the galaxy in his own ship and running evildoers to ground. Here, there's not even any prominent evildoers, let alone much room to properly roam. The plant animals that have been forming lately are dangerous enough to hunt, and Boothill lives for the Hunt. "It's like a shootin' gallery down here, except with actual challenges. Most fun I've had in days." He follows Flamebringer, though - a new friend is marginally more interesting than a few beasts he can come back for later.
indifferentinferno: (Talking)

[personal profile] indifferentinferno 2024-09-28 12:39 am (UTC)(link)
Wow this guy is chatty, Flamebringer keeps himself from rolling his eyes, good first impressions and all that crap the Doctor shoved down his throat. "Flamebringer.... No." What he'd seen of this place didn't look all that friendly for inhabitants, so he was surprised he even found another living being. Then again, he seemed to be armed to the teeth, so maybe his original assessment was correct.

Flamebringer gives Boothill a side-eye, "... So you you were picking fights." Although not with himself he guesses. Probably with the plant-beasts. The next words out of his mouth confirm Flamebringer's assumption. The plant-beast he'd killed had been a pushover, but in this strange new environment, with all these factors and weird and wrong things happening- he couldn't bring himself to find the idea of hunting them for sport charming. Doing so wasn't his style in the first place. Blood for blood's sake could be left to those who made it their calling.

Boothill does follow him. He glances back at the stranger, but besides that he doesn't acknowledge him, picking his way back through the underbrush and to where he came from. He needed to find some place where he could sit down and think about everything that had happened. Hopefully away from unwanted company.
screwubbaboo: (totally hinged)

[personal profile] screwubbaboo 2024-09-28 12:59 am (UTC)(link)
"Flamebringer, huh?" Not a bad moniker at all. Definitely matches the edgy vibe Boothill is getting off of him. "Nice to meet you."

He shrugs. "A man's gotta keep in practice. Wouldn't do to lose my edge just because I'm trapped on a giant fucking derelict ship walkin' across the world, would it?" He's pretty sure the plant beasts are a creation of the Abundance or something similar, so putting them down doesn't bother him. He's fairly certain they're more 'avatars' than 'animals', and while he does regret not being able to use them somehow, the way he'd hunted for food and other uses when he was home, he does pick any bits of metal out most of the time. Gotta make ammo somehow.

Flamebringer is apparently not the chatty type, Boothill can pick up on that. He'll wait until they're out of the main mass of plants before continuing the conversation, one-sided as it might be. "So, where're ya from? We got all sorts of people from all sorts of worlds around here."
indifferentinferno: (Side Eye)

[personal profile] indifferentinferno 2024-09-28 05:29 am (UTC)(link)
Flamebringer grunts, "Charmed." he says flatly.

Flamebrigner's ear twitches in a subconscious acknowledgement of the words he's hearing. Trapped in a derelict ship huh... that would make some sense of a few things. He thought maybe the place was falling apart, given how sometimes the rooms would shift abruptly, but if they were on the move that made sense. 'Trapped' was slightly more concerning, especially given he didn't know how he'd gotten here. He could've stepped in something big by accident. Or Rhodes did. Same difference at this point.

He could relate to the feeling of not wanting your abilities to stagnate. On that one point, he could agree he thought the same.

He paused, gritting his teeth and holding in a long, irritated sigh. It was going to be twenty questions with this man, wasn't it? He turned back to look at him, taking in the entirety of his appearance and demeanor for a moment.

His entire attitude and equipment reeked of mercenary, maybe Blacksteel or Penguin logistics, although nothing about him felt signature to either group. He was slightly too colorful for Blacksteel and not branded enough for Penguin Logistics. Maybe he was independent, or one of those start ups that were often doomed to fail in the face of the systems already in place. He certainly felt too plucky to be experienced, but sometimes it was the plucky ones that had the most experience. Experience enough to know when you could play games... and when you had to get serious.

Regardless of background, he doubted there was much he could say to spook him off if he wasn't flinching away at the originium crystals or the obvious Sarkaz traits, so he turned back towards his intended path, exploring more empty, bland, decrepit hallways.

He was annoying. But making an enemy out of him just because he was irritating would be stupid, if not straight up suicide.

"Kazdel." He grunted, stalking down the hallway. Maybe a wild card would shake him off. He hadn't associated with Kazdel in years, it'd be more accurate to say Rhodes. But if the Pharmaceutical companies name being emblazoned down the side of his coat didn't clue the guy into that, it was possible he'd never heart of it.