TEST DRIVE: MAY

[empevents]

— TEST DRIVE: MAY —

Welcome to empatheias' test drive meme. This test drive is to help interested players test their characters in the game's environment. We've included a few prompts that incorporate specific elements of the game, though you'll find all of them have a lot of leeway for players to get as creative as necessary. Before diving in, here are a few things we'd like to remind everyone about the game in general:

• Date reminders. Reserves open Monday, April 24th and Applications (Canon | OC) open a week later on May 1st.
  
  
• OC Reminder! Just a quick reminder that original characters are allowed. Those interested can also use the test drive. OCs do not need to be reserved.
  
  
• Emotions are key! Empatheias' premise focuses on how anyone's emotions can affect their environment, be it big or small. While not every emotion will cause a reaction, significant ones definitely will. How much effect a character will have will ultimately be up to you, the player. Also, while we're giving a lot of leeway for the test drive, keep in mind that there will be some limits in the actual game.
  
  
• Everyone has an amulet. All characters have a unique amulet that is specialized for them. It will contain all of their emotion drops and it serves as the network device. Remember, communication is telepathic. Otherwise, it works basically the same.
  
  
• Assume the character is already in the game. Because "OMG WHERE AM I IS THIS REAL LIFE" threads aren't going to be very helpful in this test drive! Plus those are going to happen in-game, anyway. So to make things easier, just assume that they've been around at least a week or so. Still learning the ropes, but not a complete "first day" experience.
  
  
• First or third person allowed. Your threads can be in either first or third, but we'd advise being flexible about it. Remember, these threads can also be used in your application for samples! Reminder: We only require one sample and it can be done in either format. We have also made a change to our sample requirements, so look over the Applications page!

Now with that out of the way, here are some prompts you guys can work from!


PROMPTS

• Prompt A: How about giving the emotions a try?

• Prompt B: Refer to the Task Board and choose a task your character may be interested in taking up. For this prompt, you could have your character ask for help, already be in the middle of the job, or react to it in some way. Perhaps they were an unfortunate victim or want to create a job countering an existing one. You could even have a prompt making a job request. Creating jobs for the purpose of the test drive is absolutely doable.

• Prompt C: How about giving the amulets a go? Start a telepathic conversation and see how it works. Remember, the amulets are sending out the owner's thoughts so might want to be careful about how the stream of consciousness goes...

• Prompt D: Elios’ land was a great place to hold this year’s festival, but it’s always best to leave a place as you found it. This is especially important for the surface, as there’s a lot of work put into trying to heal the different domains that span the land down below Verens. Anyone who volunteers for cleaning duty is getting paid, and vouchers to several of the cafes up in Verens as a reward! For anyone not interested in cleaning but interested in a new closing ceremony of sorts, they can instead attend a fireside dance that will be held for the next few nights at the site of the festival once things are tidied up.

1. Cleanup Ordeals. Not too much mess was left around luckily as most people who helped organize the Festival understand the importance of cleaning up the mess you make, but it looks like the tent areas have a lot left to clean up and take down. Removing flowers and string lights, packing up fabric and blankets, and generally picking up trash here and there left by festival goers is the main job. It’s a big job, and the festival organizers encourage anyone with special skills or dunamis practice to use whatever they have at their disposal to speed things along.
   
2. Fireside Dance.It’s a small, simple gathering done once the sun has gone down and the sky is dark. The fire is stoked hot, surrounded by worn black stones painted with Elios’ symbol in red and orange tones of paint. The dance is a quick one, requiring two circles, an inner and outer one. Partners on the outer circle travel the inner circle and wind up dancing with each person in turn. Luckily it’s pretty quick to learn and everyone spirits run warm to match flushed cheeks. At the end, each participant is asked to throw a small twig into the fire and express a moment of love or hate, in the pursuit of balance.

• Prompt E: During the festival this month there was a curious prize at one of the game booths. Some of the Elios plushes from the bobbing for ducks booth seem to not have been plushies at all! After a few days of having one in your possession, The plush will engulf in non spreading flames and burn completely out, revealing one small egg, white or black. Depending on your mood the past few days, the egg will either hatch a leathery or feathery winged creature. Hopefully you’ve been in a good mood! Luckily, the creatures are only around long enough to perform their duty before winking out of existence again.

1. Bad Egg. Negative emotions have lead to a sour and dark winged creature who is up to mischief. They will not listen to their “owner” and instead are quite often out to make things difficult for them. 3 misfortunes or specific instances of bad luck will happen over three days to their possessor while they run amok. A claw shaped trinket is left behind as a reminder to try and enjoy life and not get caught up in bad moods.
   
2. Good Egg. Positive emotions will lead to a happy, bright and angelic feather winged creature. They’re mischievous as well, but often in gentler ways, and sometimes try to play cupid for their owner. These playful creatures will grant 3 small wishes over three days for their owner, such as desires for better weather, tastier food or small trinkets. No wishing for a million sylvs here! Once it poofs out of existence in a puff of glitter it leaves behind a small pearl as a reminder to value the things they have and experiences they get that make live worth living.

• Prompt F: A small ring of Circus performers from Thesthai have traveled up to Verens and set up a tent out near lake Niras. It’s a small Circus performance, a prelude to something that might be bigger in the future. All performances are done by the Circus members themselves, from acrobatics and magic tricks, to displays of fearless daredevilry with the help of Verens steam-punk inspired vehicles. Overall it seems to be garnering a lot of attention, causing a several day repeat showing of the activities. Performancy plays a central role in some setups, and they seem to be the most popular...

1. Animal Experience.Enjoy the animal menagerie, all sorts of creatures are here. They’re all well taken care of, and seem to enjoy the food and pettings they’re getting from the attendees. Happy animals make for happy animal loving customers afterall! There IS one catch.. mischevious circus performers will cast performancy on those who aren't paying enough attention to their surroundings, and circus goers in the menagerie area may find something new if they look in a mirror. Animal ears and tails and a host of other features! Don’t worry. It’s temporary and all in good fun.
   
2. Carnival Games. Carnival type games have been set up outside the main tent, including a lot of familiar games that may have been seen during the Zephyras Flower Festival. Ring Toss, water laser races, darts, and the good old fashioned strong arm competition are all part of the setup. The prizes here range from simple small toys to bigger 4 foot tall plushies. Careful though, some of these setups might actually be rigged. The house has to have an advantage, in the end. Where would they make their money?

• Prompt G: Make your own! It could include geese and/or potatoes.

For your threads, put the Character Name and the Canon in the subject line to help readily identify them. You're also welcome to use more than one prompt for respondents to choose from. If you have any questions or want to brush up on the game information, refer to the Game Information entry. Otherwise, tag around and have fun!

Comments

Hawke | Dragon Age series

[questionablewit]

B

[Hawke had naturally gravitated towards the Task Board. Do random favors in exchange for unspecified rewards? Pretty much her raison d'etre, or at least the way she'd always gotten by in her life.

That said, the favors usually involved killing things or rescuing people. Chasing squirrels was a new one. It'd sounded simple enough, compared to fighting a dragon or finding Wexler's lost hat, especially with her mabari's help and a sling. What were a few squirrels, even exceptionally intelligent, metal-eating ones?

A bloody big nuisance, it turned out. Killing them would probably be frowed upon, since she was supposed to 'rehabilitate' them. Someone else would have to take care of that part, assuming she ever managed to catch any. She nearly snarled, scrabbling at her hair as one of them jumped on her head to get to the next branch. It turned around to laugh at her when it landed, she was sure.]

I should have taken the job with the wasps, or gone to explore that new island. Anything but these Maker-blighted, buck-toothed, bronto-baiting squirrels!

[It was rare for Hawke to get annoyed, but the squirrels were definitely managing it.]

F-2

[Hawke was actually enjoying herself at the carnival. Some of the games were familiar to her, some not, but she'd always enjoyed testing her luck and this was no exception. Some games were obviously too rigged to be won, others possible.

She was busy with one of the latter, throwing darts to pop balloons. Her deadly aim had already earned her one of the prizes on the next-to-highest shelf; if she hit a few more, she'd get one of the giant stuffed animals. Maker only knew what she'd do with it if she won--give it to some random small child, most likely--but that wasn't her motivation. She just wanted to win.

She picked up another dart and let it fly, barely seeming to look at the target first, and grinned as balloon snapped. Some of the onlookers she'd attracted cheered. The next targets were much further away and the balloons much smaller, but they seemed to believe she could do it. So did she.]

Wildcard! Bring it.

!!!!!!!!!! (/ﾟДﾟ)/ B!

[mewnifestos]

[ The squirrels aren't Anders' excuse for being out here in this particularly infested patch of wood, and yet he's still had enough of their chattering and rattling about through the low branches overhead, anyway—

If not quite enough to have to utmost sympathy for whoever that is shouting and carrying on after them. Even if that particular choice of expletives is startlingly familiar. Brushing himself off as he stands out of the brush and dirt, satchel and staff in hand, he casts a look around through the trees for the source. ]

Do you mind? Carrying on like that's only going to attract something much worse.

Not sure if this will work but figured I'd have a go. Pardon while I flail around!

[questionablewit]

[It's one thing to hear that emotions manifest themselves in various ways in this place. It's another to see it happening, to walk by a person and see them literally glowing with happiness, or to see flowers wilting when someone else passes by.

Hawke, who usually can take things in stride (even when she's in a foreign world completely unlike her own and rather at a loss for what to do with herself there), finds that it's an entirely different thing to have it happen to you. Particularly when a wide range of rather dramatic emotions are involved.

The range of emotions she feels on hearing Anders' voice starts with astonishment and disbelief. Seeing him involves flares of grief, anger, dismay--and yes, still love, under all of it. The fact that he looks younger and less worn than when she last saw him, less like the revolutionary she left and more like the healer she who used to make her laugh, only adds to the tangle. Her amulet flickers through a rainbow.

More alarmingly, the world around her changes. The trees nearest her warp, twisting inwards on themselves, then out, trying and failing to find a new form that fits with what she's feeling. Flowers bloom, but in the wrong colors. Leaves wither, then grow back to health, then shrink back to nonexistance. The ground trembles under her feet.

Which is what makes her stop, close her eyes briefly, take a few controlled breaths, force the inner whirlwind of emotions to still. Her amulet flares a bright, periwinkle blue. With her eyes still closed, she mutters.]

Blight. 'World-shaking meeting' is not supposed to be so damned literal.

[She opens her eyes and looks at him steadily. The air still wavers around her, and anyone looking at her could tell that while she's trying to be calm, she's not really succeeding. It's the calm of water with turbulent currents underneath.]

Hello, Anders.

[mewnifestos]

[ Well, it's not as if he was expecting a friendly reply - shouting at strangers in a forest has tended not to go well, by past experience. (It's this place, though, making him soft. And careless.) But the small tempest that more than literally rocks through the forest is a bit of an overreaction, really.

Not that the sound of his name unsettles him any less, a shockingly chilled gust of wind rattling through the trees around him, sending a scatter of leaves spiraling to the ground. ]

We've met?

[ Not well, apparently. But his luck only ever holds out for so long. The wry tone of his voice is a thin veil over unease, the subtle, almost casual way he's shifted back to put his staff between them as telling. ]

[questionablewit]

[Her eyes widen at his response. She doesn't question it. For one thing, Anders has always been one of the worst liars she's ever met, and she knows him more than well enough to tell if he's trying to hide something. He isn't. Besides, it makes sense of how much younger he looks. She knows the coat he's wearing, and remembers when it finally wore out to pieces, and he gave in and got a new one. It should be impossible, but she's heard that it sometimes happens here: people from the same place but different times, or even from different versions of the same world.

Well. That complicates things. Or maybe simplifies them. Even so, Hawke feels a stab of grief at the realization that Anders honestly does not know who she is. In the various ways she's wondered in the past what would happen if they met again, that's not an option she ever considered.

Of course, with the emotional response comes a real world reaction. The sky, which had already darkened somewhat above them, covers further, and raindrops begin to fall. She glares up through the tree covering.]

Rain? Seriously? Are you going to give me my own personal cloud to follow me around next?

[She sighs and runs a hand back through her hair, which is getting a bit wet, and looks back at Anders; half-rueful, half-grimacing.]

No, apparently we haven't. Sorry for the theatrics; you're probably aware of how this place overreacts to things.

[Teo has been standing silent and tense by her side during all this, unsure of how to act; she reaches down to scratch behind his ears, a signal that he can relax, though he probably won't while Anders has his staff raised. Teo knows the difference between a large stick and a mage's weapon.]

Please don't lob any fireballs at me, hmm? I promise he won't bite. Neither will I.