empatheias_ooc | TEST DRIVE: JUNE

Entry tags:

!mod,
*test drive

TEST DRIVE: JUNE

— TEST DRIVE: JUNE —

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, May 25th and Applications open Monday, June 1st.
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.
IMPORTANT! We have 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? The following emotions will have more effect than usual: hope, despair, fear, and bravery.

• 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.

• 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: The latest entry in the hot 'Forgefires' series is about to come out, and lines in front of bookstores are blocking the streets! How will you get to your destination when your path is full of frenzied cosplayers who don't dare move lest they lose their spot in line? You might want to be careful, too—some fans are getting into heated arguments about their favorite characters so things might start literally flying if left unchecked!

• Prompt E: Things have been getting a little gloomy lately, so a group of youths have designed the first ever Verens Rock-Paper-Scissors Tournament. Somehow you've won through the lower ranks, and are now a finalist. The state of the city is riding on you (or so they claim), so face your opponent and somehow manage to make this farce exciting enough to lift the moods of the spectators (mostly kids). Just be careful. If you do poorly, you might find a tomato or two thrown at you.

• Prompt F: Welcome to FEAR FACTOR! An exciting new brand of entertainment where contestants participate in various challenges that touch home to the most innate fears humans share. Lying in a pit of creepy crawlies; climb up high, precarious structures; go one-on-one with wild animals—can you handle it? Are you brave enough to go for the 1 million sylv prize? Or will fear cripple you and leave you with nothing!? Only one way to find out! Oh, and one more thing—your emotions will definitely effect everything, so if you're climbing up that rusty, half broken steel tower and it starts shaking, that's probably because you're scared out of your wits. Don't let it crumble!

• Prompt G: Make your own! It could include giant cheese wheels and/or bucket of nails.

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!

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She wanted to comfort him, and if he needed to tell his story for that to happen she would give him all the time he needed.She sat, hands resting in her lap and letting him set the pace.

Cryostasis? Cryo was cold, if she recalled her Latin and stasis was an unchanging state, so it made sense, to a degree. He was somehow held in time allowing him to look young and vital some seventy years later. She nodded and let him continue, perhaps there were scientific advances she had not been a party to in her work with the S.S.R. and Erskine.

She stiffened slightly at the topic of Captain Rogers, but she didn't flinch. "We had hoped the serum would allow for survival in a multitude of conditions. But Sargent, we never found him. Howard and I looked for a year. When I was reassigned to New York, Howard continued to look on his own. But eventually we had to call it off." She reached out her hand to lay it atop his.

"I'm so sorry, but we never found him." Still believing this to be the conversation he needed to have where she explained about Steve.

"You didn't," he agreed, eyes on their hands for a moment before he turned his gloved hand over to hold hers properly. He wasn't the one who needed comfort right now, though the reaction interested him. She truly did seem to be sympathetic.

He raised his eyes to meet hers. The tone of her voice spoke volumes as to what she thought of Steve, and he shared that kind of feeling. If he'd been forced to think he died for such a long period of time, only to discover he'd survived... he doesn't imagine her reaction will be very subtle.

"Someone else did. An organization. Steve was thawed in 2012. He's been on this island for three months."

Her hand tightened on his as he continued. This was not a meeting where he had questions or needed her to offer comfort. He was trying to tell her something and it was not an easy thing to hear.

She squinted and looked down, lines furrowing between her eyes. "I'm sorry, you're saying..." She swallowed hard and her voice came a little breathlessly. "You're saying Steve is alive in the future. And that he's here?"

Thank God she was already sitting or she might have found herself on the ground in that moment.

He did his best to put forward some kind of calming presence, but he wasn't exactly good at channeling his emotions into much of anything but violence. The most he managed was to project a stillness in the air--not likely very helpful. He kept his eyes on her face as he answered.

"Yeah. He came out of the ice the same state he went in. Nearly died again a few times since, but." He shrugged with his right shoulder. That was typical Steve, he'd managed to relearn. "He's as good as he can be."

For all he was trying, and the effort would have been appreciated if known, the intensity of Peggy's reaction would have overridden it. There were too many of her own emotions racing through her and wrecking havoc around her. Shock, elation, fear, anger at least with herself and Howard and all the men who made the decision to quit looking. The environment reacted in kind, though it shifted with the speed of her own feelings.

"He's safe." That brought the flashes to an end and Peggy's ramrod posture melted. She fell heavily back into her seat and exhaled a shaky breath. "He's safe." She failed him but he had made it somewhere alive. Perhaps long after she herself was gone. A lifetime later, maybe literally. He had a life, one that existed without her. "As good as he can be and nearly dying are not exactly the same thing."

Well, at least nothing was broken. It was about as much as he could ask for. He nodded in a way that was sort of a shrug, eyes moving away. Those were indeed not the same thing, but it wasn't as if Steve ever stayed out of dangerous situations.

"He recovers from one thing and jumps into another," he replied. "He wouldn't really be Steve if he didn't."

As much as he hated that, he was resolved to it. He just did his part to look out for the captain.

That saving grace was possibly due to her rigidly held composure. Peggy had faced Steve's death with a poise that made even her wonder how she was capable of it.

"That is very Steve." She sniffed, refusing to cry or be otherwise betrayed by her emotions.

"He was never one to stand back and let others take a risk for him, damnably stubborn some times." She shook her head at that. "And damned heroic." she concluded.

Heroic. That certainly was a good word to describe the man. As stubborn and stupid and reckless as he could be, he was a hero to a lot of people--hell, in some ways, he was a hero to Bucky, too.

But he was still a stubborn, stupid, reckless hero.

"That's why he needs people to drag him out of it when he gets too deep." The soldier shook his head at the thought with a sigh. "He forgets he's not invincible."

The soldier leaned back in his chair, taking a sip of his water.

"He'll probably have a lot to tell you."

"He always finds his way, it's one of his strengths." Of course hand in hand with that was the weakness that he would, of good intention, get himself in over his head to begin with.

"He's near it, but no, not invincible." She'd faced that fact herself, Steve's mortality had hit her hard knowing what it had taken to end him.

Peggy drew her hands together again, flat on the table in front of her.

"If he has survived, he's surely gone on with his own life." She stared at her still fingers. "Seventy years is a long time, if so much has changed then seeing me may not be the best thing for him." The last thing she wanted to do was hurt him.

"I think that's his decision to make."

The soldier wasn't one to typically consider taking away someone's choice a positive option. Not to mention the fact that the more he talks with Carter, the more he gets the feeling their connection is more than just that of fellow soldiers, and he's not willing to keep something this important from Steve in the first place.

Not to mention that if she was going to be around for any length of time, they'd likely find each other eventually anyway, and if they could arrange a (slightly) calm meeting, it would probably be for the best, both for them and everyone around them. It's really only due to the emotional effects of the island that he even considers offering to wait for her sake, but it's better than not offering.

"I can wait to tell him. But I'm not going to keep it a secret."

"I don't believe it is, his alone."

And that was something Bucky would need to understand, this wasn't just his decision or Steve's. Especially since Steve was here and had been for some time. He'd made his way without her and who knew what effect thrusting her back into his life might have.

"Steve and I had," She hated to be pressured into these sorts of declarations, she felt it cheapened her memories. "We had grown close. There were feelings involved and given how things ended it could be complex or painful for him."

She wasn't hiding but surely the idea of disrupting Steve's life for her own feelings wasn't fair, was it?

Maybe it wasn't Steve's decision alone. But like he said, he wasn't going to keep it a secret.

"So what happens when he sees you anyway?" he replied calmly, leaning forward to meet her eyes and resting his left arm on the table with a muffled thump. "You can't avoid him forever. Am I supposed to wait until then to tell him we met? Then have him get mad at me for not saying anything?"

"There is that." She could concede the point, but it didn't mean she could just walk in on his life.

"People change, I just want things to be easier for him." But how to make that work? She had had an easier time planning missions on massive Hydra bases than having any inkling of how to go about this. "If you would perhaps ask his feelings about his life and his situation we might know better how to move forward."

The soldier took a quiet breath before nodding a few times. He wasn't opposed to making the meeting easier if he could--and given the fact that many of his conversations with Steve centered on the past, it wouldn't be suspicious to occasionally come out with a question about who they'd worked with during the war.

"Alright."

He wondered, however, what kind of information she was looking for, exactly. Steve was sure to have more than a few thoughts about how his life was going.

"What kind of feelings are we talking about?"

Men. They were never good at talking about feelings and in their time this was not looking at getting any better. But she could allow that the question was a fair one. Just how would they ascertain Steve's feelings on the matter.

"I suppose what he is doing with his life now, if he regrets the past." He might look back on their time and wish it hadn't happened. Or his feelings about her in general may have changed, there was no way to know he would welcome her. "If he has been involved with anyone." She tried to make that sound casual, as if just listing another pertinent question but it was more than that.

Involved--the soldier was perceptive enough to know what that meant, even with her attempt at brushing it off. He tilted his head and peered at her curiously a moment, wondering. If Steve did have some kind of lover or something, he sure wasn't aware of it. He'd think that might be important enough to come up--he'd spoken some of the friends he'd made, after all.

"I don't think he has," he replied, zeroing in on the question that really seemed most relevant, "but I'll ask him."

It was important to gather accurate information before planning anything--that applied to personal situations as much as missions.

"As I said we had been close, and I would hate for that to cause him problems with his current situation. Whatever that may be." It was true, if delivered with less emotion than she felt on the subject. Feelings could be such awkward things, especially in times like these. As if there were ever any other times like these.

Peggy tried not to look too relieved at the confirmation that Steve was not, to his partner's knowledge, seeing someone. "I think it might be best, to avoid conflict or awkwardness."

James gave Peggy a nod to acknowledge her concerns. He wasn't so knowledgeable about relationships these days, but he could imagine that Steve having another romantic partner would make things somewhat uncomfortable.

So, that was it on that front, he supposed; he'd just have to ask Steve a few things later. After another moment or two, he decided to continue with another topic.

"How are you adjusting?" he asked, gesturing with his head to indicate the surroundings. "Some people have a hard time. Not a lot of technology here."

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TEST DRIVE: JUNE

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