TDM #1

[goneawaymod]

TEST DRIVE #1

So it's your first day at your new job! Welcome to the Jorgmund Family™! It's time to settle into your new workplace on the Piper 90 rig, the coziest place of employment this side of the Livable Zone. A leader in its industry, Jorgmund is excited to have you join them in enthusiastically envisioneering team-driven paradigms.  

The Piper 90 rig's mission is not only an impressive undertaking in terms of impactful customer-oriented deliverables, it's providing a vital backbone to the Livable Zone by creating a safe region for citizens to live, work, and play. Jorgmund's "outside the box" thinking means they understand the importance of wisely investing in their human capital - you! You'll soon find that you'll take pride in this vital work - and the benefits can't be beat.

Rest assured, Jorgmund's multidisciplinary approach to our world's period of recovery means we know how to keep it real when facing this opportunity for restructuring and growth. Jorgmund: Even if most of the world has gone away, we can make a world of difference!

Synergy!

USEFUL LINKS
It is recommended you check out the following links first for info on the rig, rig conditions, game mechanics, and the intro and slideshow your characters would have to endure that takes place chronologically before the Test Drive Meme: 

Welcome/Arrival  | Rig Weather & Hazards | Rig Setting Page | Game Mechanics

SCENARIO #1 - MOVE-IN DAY!

After the bewildering and unpleasant onboarding process, you've finally been unleashed on the rig. (Well. To places you're allowed to go on the rig.) It's time to get acquainted with your new surroundings, process some of All Of That™, and meet your fellow captives - err, coworkers!

a) A BIT OF A MESS
Perhaps you're hungry? The mess hall food isn't amazing, but it does the job. Characters that have higher metabolic needs than your average human might be left feeling a little hungry, though. The worst part is actually the electronic sliding door: a small sign helpfully informs you that if you want inside, you need to smile for the camera! In addition to being patronizing, this may be a problem for characters who refuse to play ball, or characters with sufficiently nonhuman faces the door sensor can't read them. Remember, if then company doesn't see people like you, it's not discriminatory -- it's just indifferent! And that isn't legally actionable!

b) GOING NOWHERE FAST
The rig's elevators are a little off-kilter today. Overhead announcements mention this, but downplay the severity and are easy to miss -- which means you and your threadmate are stuck in here, somewhere between the fifth and sixth floor. You can complain into the emergency intercomm, but it might take from a few minutes up to an hour before the elevator gets rolling again. How do you pass the time?

c) SHOULD'VE TAKEN THAT LEFT TURN
You're really just trying to get somewhere else on the rig, but you've gotten hopelessly lost. Oh well, at least you're not alone! Did you run into your threadmate here? Did you lead them astray? Are they at fault? Even worse, are you somewhere full of AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY signs, mysterious equipment, and a worrying number of security cameras?

d) NEED A HAND?
You've been assigned a room and some relatively spare possessions to put in it. Unfortunately, it seems that the staff assigned to help move in new hires are all busy at the moment. Unless you want to wait around, you're going to need to lug and assemble your new assigned foldable den furniture yourself. Do you team up with another newbie? Do you try it alone and find yourself needing help? Do you come to the rescue of someone else who did that?

e) SPECIAL DELIVERY
Somebody in processing decided to give you two a quick little errand: you're supposed to take a couple boxes of files up to the executive deck. Unfortunately, a skeptical security staffer is giving you a hard time on your way there, on account of your funny-looking face, insufficient ID or sketchy-looking package. How do you deal with this and accomplish your task?

f) BLOW OFF STEAM
You're likely still a bit sore from Jorgmund fitting you with the nanochain, but you were promised a gym and you are going to use that gym, dammit. It looks like you're not alone in deciding to try out the training area. Do you train together? Spar to let some frustration out? Or are you gonna argue about whose turn it is on which piece of equipment and resent your lost solitude? You'll also find you have to contend with the communal showers when you're done.

g) NO REST FOR THE WEARY
It's the middle of the night on the rig. You're displaced from home, it's not very warm, your door doesn't shut because privacy is a "privilege" nobody has earned yet, and occasional mysterious clanging noises ring through the rig. You can't sleep, not yet, and perhaps you're not the only insomniac wandering the crew deck?

SCENARIO #2 - YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO PANIC

Around dawn on the morning of Day Two, something goes wrong. (Wrong-er?) You awake to the sound of alarms, and a voice over the speakers telling you NOT TO PANIC! A Stuff storm has caused a brief and contained leak onto Piper 90. You may encounter strange sights or sounds. Any anomalies should be reported immediately to rig security. Thank you for your cooperation!

The nature of the problem isn't immediately clear, but over the next handful of hours you find yourself embroiled in a bizarre fracas: a Stuff leak has caused numerous inanimate objects on the rig to come to life. Furniture and appliances small and large are roaming the decks. Some of them are docile, but others are aggressive (or just troublesome due to their size). Some examples:

• A rogue photocopier spewing paper and ink
• A mahogany conference table with old clawed feet and a brand new gaping jaw
• A water cooler that scuttles the halls, squirting people with jets in varying temperatures
• Small office supplies like pencils and paperclips that swarm in large numbers
• Dressers and drawers that spit their contents at high velocity
• A room's worth of folding chairs that hunt as a pack
• An emergency fire hose that attempts to ensnare crew members in its coils
• The angriest coffee pot you have ever seen

The objects can be dangerous, but are more strange, troublesome, and determined than deadly. If a foe seems to be incapacitated or "plays dead," even the aggressive conference table or hose will leave them with bruises and move on. Crew members who get in over their heads will be bailed out by security personnel as the incident dies down. Jorgmund staff stresses that the leak has been contained (so no new anomalies will appear), but after the initial surprise it's everyone's job to help hunt down and dispose of the Stuff-altered... stuff. It's gonna be a long morning, and you haven't even been properly briefed yet!

h) GOOD MORNING, PIPER 90
Rise and shine! There are alarms going off, announcements blaring, and people are scrambling around trying to figure out what's going on. You're one of them. Freak out? Spring into action? Team up with someone to shake down a staffer for more details? Run into someone new, perhaps literally?

i) INTERIOR WRECKORATING
You've been ambushed by an animate object that seems to have it in for you, or you've heard the shouts of someone who has and come running to help. What's ruining your morning now, and what are you going to do about it?

j) ON THE RUN
The folding chairs from Presentation Room B operate as a unit, harrying their prey through the halls with much scrambling of legs and flapping of seats. They're after you, at the moment. Can you escape, or perhaps lead them into a trap? Or do you stand your ground?

k) HERE'S THE PLAN
You and your threadmate have found somewhere secure (for now) and are deciding how to deal with a larger enemy. Are you hunting it, or is it hunting you? Are you planning to take it out of commission, or just how to get away from it? Or are you just gonna hide here and lay low until this is over?

l) PROP HUNT
Things are getting back under control, thankfully. Large disturbances have been disposed of, but that leaves the little things like elusive chains of paperclips, a small but vicious stapler, pens and markers that write rude words on walls, and utensils from the mess hall. These anomalies are stealthier, but must still be dealt with, and it's up to you to flush them out.

m) CLEAN UP IN AISLE EVERYTHING
The chaos has passed, and now you've been instructed to clean up a mess. Ink or loose paper from the copier, coffee from the rampaging pot, mopping up after a water cooler, scrubbing marker off a wall, etc. You might get roped into contending with the Yuck Puddle, which is a permanent fixture and not a new development, but someone's always contending with the Yuck Puddle.

OOC DETAILS
➤ Feel free to play around with powers. If your character has powers from canon you want to play around with, go for it. If you'd like to test out possibilities for game powers, also go for it. Feel free to change it up from thread to thread if you need to. This can be handwaved as exposure to Stuff making characters' powers shift a few times before settling.

➤ Potential players may use test drive threads as their log samples. However, at least one post in their thread must fit the requirements for apps, both in length (200 words) and in quality. If you do plan on using a thread as a sample, please make sure the writing throughout your threads is a good example of your writing skills and has some solid examples of the character's voice.

➤ Players can eventually count TDMs towards AC. They can only count towards comment-based AC proofs.

➤ Potential players can opt to keep these threads as game canon when they app in, or start over fresh, based on preference. The Stuff bringing them to the game universe can fog their memories, if players don't want their character to remember TDM threads when introing into the game.

➤ The game is invite-only. Players without invites are allowed to tdm since some of them may know someone in game to ask for one, and since some people enjoy TDMs just for fun in games they don't plan to app into. But an invite is required during the apping process.

➤ The game is at a starting cap at 30 players. Right now the current number of invitees is likely to not exceed the game's 30 slots, but if we go a few over they will still be allowed to app during this first round. Future apps will be rolling apps and will have a wait queue if the cap has been exceeded.

➤ The first game round will be apps only, no reserves. Apps open: Sat 4/11/20. Game start: Fri 4/17/20.

Comments

[heterochrocatic]

Catra hurries inside before the door decides to change its mind, glances back at Saturday.

"Glad you're willing. I'm not the smiling type." Which isn't true. She smiles all the time. Just not on command.

[wheyoftheadept]

"If you can't control your emotions, you can at least control your face." She sounds like she's quoting someone, there. "They're just muscles. If they want me to lie to them, good. It means they think I'm stupid."

[heterochrocatic]

"I'm tired of being controlled," Catra grouses, looking around the mess hall with a wrinkle of her nose. She hadn't gotten inside before, so this is new to her. It also reminds her how hungry she is. The girl's stomach rumbles and she glares down at it, like it's betrayed her.

"...What kind of ration bars do they serve here? I hope it's not the green ones."

[wheyoftheadept]

"They serve real food here. It's just shitty. C'mon." Without waiting for Catra's response, Saturday janders to the counter and does her best. There's not a lot of food, and none of it's hot; this is kept out for the late workers. But there's carbs and protein and veg, and Saturday begins assembling two magnificent sandwiches to go with their coffee.

"Grab a table, I'll be there in a sec."

[heterochrocatic]

Catra stares at the food. And stares. And stares. Her eyes are getting big and wide and round, pupils dilating. She hasn't seen anything like this before. Her food in the Fright Zone had always been ration bars, dull and barely flavored and usually too dry or too sticky or too... something.

"...That's food?" She asks, seemingly dumbfounded, then nods and wanders over to a nearby table to sit, tail flicking wildly as she stares over at Saturday's progress with the sandwiches.

[wheyoftheadept]

"Yep. Sandwiches. Bread's here, some lettuce and tomato - oh, but you wanna put some spread on first. Don't trust the mayo here, let's see - "

She narrates as she constructs the sandwiches, indicating what she's talking about as she talks about it, doing her best to clue Catra in without taking too teacherly a tone and stepping on toes.

Saturday's assessment of the Horde's childcare abilities is now somewhere in the negatives.

[heterochrocatic]

"Bread?" This is new. And amazing. If she had known the food would be like this she might have smiled earlier. Catra peers, watching intently each step of creating. Lettuce, tomato, cold cuts, the sandwich spread, whatever it is? She's not really familiar with any of this stuff, but uh. Wow. It definitely looks way more appetizing than ration bars. Leaning forward, she sniffs at one of the sandwiches. It smells good, will wonders never cease?

"It looks really good," she says in a slightly awed tone, then coughs. "I mean. It's probably fine." Be cool, Catra.

[wheyoftheadept]

This is the second person Saturday's met who genuinely thinks the rig food is good. Saturday is in pain. The metaplanes are apparently a place largely without decent cuisine of any kind.

"Dig in and find out." She adds a spear of pickle on the side of Catra's, and pushes it over.

[heterochrocatic]

Catra first sniffs her coffee, which smells amazing. Then the sandwich, which also smells amazing. The sandwich is lifted in both hands and then she takes a large bite. Chews. There's a smile, a genuine smile, on Catra's face.

"It's good!" She says. "All we had, you know, were the ration bars. Which were usually gray." She's talking between bites, wolfing down the sandwich and hardly stopping to chew.

[wheyoftheadept]

"God, I need to find some real food for you lot," Saturday says, a real smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "This isn't actually good, it's just edible - I mean, I've had worse, but not by choice."

Nonetheless, she starts wolfing it down. They won't give her as much as she needs in each meal, which means more meals per day; the cost comes out the same but mysterious are the ways of corps.

[heterochrocatic]

Catra takes a sip of hot coffee between bites of her sandwich. It's definitely hot and bitter, but in a way that's kind of pleasing? She hmms and nods.

"This is pretty good," she says. Catra is quiet for a long, long moment as she contemplates her food, then says in a quiet voice:

"Thanks. For the food." She says it as if the words might cause some sort of catastrophic failure where all these good things from the last few minutes are taken away. She doesn't know what else to say. Or how to say it. She hesitates, then:

"...Is there something you want?"

[wheyoftheadept]

Saturday takes a big bite and chews as Catra contemplates. When she thanks her, Saturday shakes her head.

"Listen, you work here. You're entitled to get fed. The smile thing is obnoxious, but I'll be around; if you can't do it, just holler. And there's other smiley folk who'll do it, too."

She swallows.

"I haven't met anyone here yet who actually wants to be here, which means whatever personal drama we had going on before, we're in this together and if we don't look out for each other, Jorg is gonna ruin all our fuckin' lives."

She's speaking quietly, intently, trying not to be overheard.

"If you think this is worth paying back, then help out someone else some time, and tell 'em the rig crew's gotta stick together."

And then her speech is over, having been delivered as if what she was saying was something Catra already knew and just needed a refresher on, because things have been very stressful lately.

[heterochrocatic]

"Thanks," Catra says again. It feels almost embarrassing to have someone extend this much consideration and her instincts scream at her to push Saturday away now. She has to want something, and Catra isn't sure she buys this pay it forward thing. For now though, she has to take it at face value.

"I don't know. Why should I trust any of you more than I trust the Jorgmund people?" Catra asks. "Seems like a good way for me to get tangled up in stuff I don't want to be tangled up in."

[wheyoftheadept]

Saturday has taken a bite of her pickle as Catra speaks. Now she brandishes it in Catra's direction like a pointer finger. But she's smiling a bit as she does it.

"Cause I didn't stick a nanotube in your gut and I ain't makin' you smile for your meals like a goddamned dancing monkey. And because I'm not asking you to trust me. Just telling you where I stand, and how I plan to operate."

[heterochrocatic]

Catra wrinkles her nose. She's already finished her own sandwich and is moving in on the pickle, which tastes amazing: salty, sour and fresh. She takes another bite as Saturday's pickle is waved towards her and she lets out a small 'huff' of reproach.

"Okay, okay. I get it." She takes another bite. "I'm just not used to the "we're all in this together" thing. It was... a lot more cutthroat back home." And she'd played that game, too. And won. Even if in the end, she had really lost.

[wheyoftheadept]

"Things are gonna be cutthroat here, too. That's why you have each other's backs." She reclaims her pickle and finishes it.

"The other people from Etheria who're here, it sounds like there's a history. Is it really bad enough that you'd still consider them a bigger enemy than Jorg?"

[heterochrocatic]

"Yes. Maybe. I don't know," Catra says, her voice turning into a sullen snap at the mention of Adora.

"It's complicated." She's finished her food and coffee and has nothing to do with her hands now, so she leans her chin into them both, looking at Saturday over the table.

[wheyoftheadept]

"Complicated how?" Saturday is a very patient conversational predator, you see, and she will get the deets one way or another. "Because you'd be amazed how much a common enemy simplifies things."

[heterochrocatic]

"It's not your business," Catra retors sharply.

"It just is, as far as you're concerned." She might be grateful for the food, but she really doesn't want to go digging into her history. Especially when Adora is involved.

[wheyoftheadept]

"All right." Saturday shrugs and goes back to eating.

[heterochrocatic]

Oh. Good. That seems to have actually worked for once and Catra stands to go get more coffee, swaying off with a pleased tilt of her tail. She's even more surprised that someone listened and stopped prying when she said no.

She's not used to people listening when she says no, if they're not her subordinates in some fashion anyways.

[wheyoftheadept]

Saturday is patient. Saturday can wait.

When Catra comes back, she asks: "So, what did the Horde actually do? Like, day to day?"

[heterochrocatic]

Catra plops down with another cup of bitter jitter juice and sips. Her ears perk up, swiveling a little towards Saturday.

"We trained a lot. Made plans to attack the rebellion. Carried out raids on rebels. Trained some more. Always training. It was dull, most of the time." At least until she suddenly cared about being a Force Captain.

[wheyoftheadept]

"How can they be rebels if they lived there before you?" Saturday is sipping her coffee, perfectly innocent, merely asking questions as they occur to her.

[heterochrocatic]

"I dunno," Catra admits.

"That was just what they were called. Hordak saw Etheria as his by right of conquest, or something. So they were the rebels." She hadn't paid terribly good attention in what few history lessons she'd been given, all of which were naturally from the Horde's point of view.