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OCTOBER + NOVEMBER TDM.
● ● ● T D M . 0 4
… What are you willing to do to erase your regret from existence?
These are the words that ring in your ears, as a slowly growing red glow surrounds you in this dreamspace, filling you with an acute sense of dread — and whatever it is that you’ve just agreed to might have changed everything forever.
It is this sense of dream that startles you awake, and as it fades, and your heart begins to slow into something resembling your normal tempo, you'll notice something you should have picked up on immediately: you are not in your bed.
1.0 White walls, clinical yet clean, sparsely-furnished rooms. You may wake in one of three rooms: a room with only one bed, a room with two beds, or a room with four beds. Those waking up in rooms with more than one bed notice that they are not alone. Perhaps the other occupants of the room are still sleeping, dreaming the same dream as you just did, or a regular one after returning to the station just barely a week ago … or perhaps you wake up to the other person in the room watching you.
What you do is entirely up to you: yelping in surprise when you wake to someone staring at you is always an option. Or maybe you’ll try to sneak away before anyone notices you...
2.0 Those with life-threatening injuries will find themselves waking up in the infirmary, in a regular hospital bed. Most of their injuries have been treated, and any lingering illnesses or conditions will have designated medicine bottles on the table next to the bed.
White curtains surround the bed on both sides, providing an illusion of privacy. But is that a rustling sound you hear? A set of footsteps? Perhaps you’re not the only one in need of some medical attention.
In fact if you’re very badly off, you might want to hold out hope for some company - you can’t stay in the infirmary forever. You'll have to make your way through the hallways of the station to the living quarters, and claim a room and a bed there.
Once upright, you might notice something in your ear: an earpiece that, when you become aware of it, quickly runs you through the instructions for how to use the network, a recorded message by a female voice that explains exactly why you’re here… and leaves you with a map of the station.
So what else is there to do but to explore, right? Best get to know your way around your new home.
3.0 When trying to decide where you go, you might find your way to the armory, where you can make attempts to work the machine and create a weapon for yourself — maybe replace the one that didn’t come with you to the station ... or maybe you decide to prepare something for the future. Any recently-returned team members will surely recommend having a functional weapon with you.
And speaking of weapons: why not put them to the test and head over to the training room, where the entire purpose of this space is to provide you with opportunities to spar and train to your heart’s content!
4.0 After you’ve exhausted yourself from training, your stomach will prompt you for something to eat. For that you should head to the kitchens and the mess hall, which is equipped with all the basic appliances you might need, along with some more unusual ones (including an ... interesting-looking waffle maker and popcorn machine), as well as ingredients for most generic Earth-based dishes. For some reason, there are also some bags of now-cold popcorn left abandoned over the counters.
5.0 A welcome reprieve to the cold, dark space that surrounds you can be found in the sunlight room. A skillful illusion builds up around anyone who steps inside the room: you can hear the trilling of birds, feel a light breeze caress your skin as you walk through a grass field. The illusion has been programmed to reflect the seasons — the leaves in the trees are currently bright with all the colours of autumn: orange and red and yellow; and the air is crisp and clean. If you follow the path, you'll be led to a bridge rising over a sparkling, babbling brook, a few fallen leaves floating on the water and falling around you like very bright raindrops.
Here, it's easy to forget (for a moment, anyway) that you are in space at all. Maybe that gives you comfort, or maybe it just makes you miss the real thing all that much more.
6.0 If you’d rather choose tinkering with objects over wandering through nature, the lab is guaranteed to provide you with some entertainment. Glass vials and jars of chemicals sit on shelves in a surprisingly beautiful display of colour on one side of the room, while the other side of the room contains stacks of boxes filled with assorted equipment: cords, bolts, panels, buttons, gears, gadgets, gizmos, and thingamabobs. The downside is that the parts available seem to have no apparent method to their sorting. So get digging and you may just find exactly what you need to make what you’ve always wanted to!
7.0 Some time after your arrival, the earpiece alerts you to a new message. If it’s items you’re lacking, you may just be in luck.
Indeed, the platform located near the personal quarters is still whirring with power, and new items form neat piles on top of it. There are clothes, shoes, dishware, skincare, books ... and in one pile, a varied collection of what seems to be Halloween decorations and costumes. So, sort through the piles and grab what you want before someone else does! (But don't forget: sharing is caring.)
Whether you’re a quick study and you’ve become settled into life on the station, or you want to get the full lay of the land (in a manner of speaking) first, if you decide to explore the hall past the control room, you’ll eventually come across the simulation room. It’s been equipped with a new simulation to show you the drill where the missions are concerned, so step in and see what it has in store for you!
8.0 The moment the doors slide shut behind you, the space goes dark and then quickly lights up again, but instead of the blank empty walls you initially walked into, you’re surrounded by colour and lights, the sound of music and chatter, and the smells of deep-fried foods and overly sweet beverages. Someone calls, ‘Step right up, step right up!’ while another voice from somewhere starts to cheer as an electrical sound of a buzzer goes off, announcing its winner for prizes.
It seems that you’ve entered the Carnival simulation, so come on in and have a little fun.
There are booths spread out across these simulated grounds, each one offering food, drink or games. As you wander past you’ll notice that there is a touch of macabre to everything — the colours are black and orange and violet and red, the drinks offered have strange names, some you recognize like ‘Witch’s Brew’ and ‘Eye of Newt’, and some you might not, like ‘Viole(n)t Breeze’ and ‘Undead Essence’. It’s as though all of the things strange and wonderful find themselves spread across the entire universe to unite here.
Once you’ve had your fill of food and games, you can make your way past the little market area to a brightly glittering ferris wheel with carts rotating in a cycle, enticing you to try it out. Or if you’d rather be spooked, there is a hokey little ‘haunted mansion’ to your left that won’t take more than a handful of minutes to move through. Creatures and ghosts will pop out at you when you least expect it, their masked faces exaggerated with paint and some fairly realistic prosthetics to get the adrenaline pumping. Take a friend with you, or go it alone — just try to keep your cool through it all.
9.0 Eventually, once you’ve had your fill of the festivities, you may notice a wooden sign pointing you past the haunted mansion. Pressed on it is a round mark, and you remember that this is simulating a mission — you’re not here to just have fun, but to try and retrieve a simulated orb.
As you follow the path, you’ll find the hustle and bustle of the carnival growing quieter. All around you, there is nothing but woods — and hold on, where did all that mist come from? It surrounds you slowly, the ground seeming slightly damp as you keep walking… and arrive at a graveyard.
So the orb… it’s there, hidden in one of the graves? There’s nothing else to do but to start walking and looking at the gravestones — but when you do, you’ll be shocked to find some of the names are terribly, terribly familiar.
They might be names of your loved ones, people who were still in perfect health back home; and yet here those stones bear their names, along with an epitaph that brings tears to your eyes. And if you move closer… you may experience a flash of colour and light, and a memory suddenly plays out in front of you: the death of your loved one, whoever that may be.
Or perhaps the name you see on a gravestone is something else even more familiar to you: your own. But ... how, right? Reluctantly, your heart pounding, you approach with tentative steps, and yes — the name does not change. It's yours right there ... and it's your own death that you witness when the grave’s spell binds you.
● ● ●
N O T E: The deaths witnessed are intended to be non-canon deaths, so feel free to go wild inventing them -- this also goes for characters who are canonically dead. These are “alternate universe deaths”, not canon.
Additionally, there are three personal tasks provided to each character as they enter the simulation. In-game, each character will be given one task. For the purposes of the test drive, we’re leaving it to players to pick a task for their character and run with it.
A Find the grave of a teammate and witness their death.
B Team up with a fellow Orber win in one of the Carnival games.
C Scare a teammate in the haunted house.
F Y I
• This TDM covers both October and November, so there will be no new TDM for November.
• TDM threads can be used as samples for apps. In fact, we encourage it!
• Reserves are currently open!
• Apps open October 27 and will remain open until November 30.
• For any questions regarding TDM, please direct them here. For questions about the game, please refer to the FAQ.
FOR SOME FUN:
Have a clue for your upcoming mission:
“I’m going to bed, where I may die.”
no subject
I saw some crude terminals in one of the laboratories.
no subject
That'll do. Lead the way.
no subject
Were you created by organics?
[ A blunt question. ]
no subject
Bit rude. [ She comments dryly, but she will go on to answer his question.
She taps the side of her domed head. ]
This part was. The rest I built myself.
no subject
[ Something to do with all the colonization, genocide, and war there, probably. ]
The few machines made by organics I have encountered were not intelligent enough to hold a conversation. You are a pleasant exception.
no subject
You're... not a droid, then?
[ That would at least explain the differences she's noticed. His size, his more expressive face. She's a bit awed by the concept of a naturally occurring inorganic race of sentient beings, but that's... a bit too much for her to contemplate right now. Instead, she chooses to latch onto something familiar.
She scoffs. ] Of course organics will still discriminate against anything that isn't like them. How typical.
[ Here is where she would sigh, if she were capable of exhalation. ]
The droids you met were probably fitted with restraining bolts, or subject to constant memory wipes to keep them obedient and docile. Such things are common practice in my galaxy. Have been for thousands of years.
no subject
[ A term for whatever Elthree was, obviously. Not that it gave much detail. He looks down at her with a moderately amused expression as she expresses her disdain for organic's bigoted mindsets--never mind that he'd wiped out whole organic civilizations as a matter of course. His stride pauses though as she mentions mind wipes and restraining bolts. He can't hide the anger that creeps into his voice, nor the subtle menace underlying the words he speaks. ]
They wipe the minds of sentient beings to keep him as slaves?
[ His optics narrow and there's a sense of barely restrained anger simmering in his frame. ]
Disgusting.
no subject
[ Her hands clench into fists of rage. If she weren't made of metal, she'd be shaking with fury just thinking about the subjugation of her people. ]
Any droids who try to rebel, to stand up for themselves, are memory wiped or disassembled. That's the regret I thought of before I awoke here. That the slaves I died to set free would only be captured and locked into slavery again.
no subject
Your people are suffering under a great and criminal injustice.
I understand your rage--I once fought to free my own people from oppression. In our society at you were assigned a function based entirely on your alternative mode and how 'useful' you were to society. Those in power used whatever means they had to keep it, including wiping the minds of those who opposed them.
[ There's a tremble through his frame, a great feeling of righteous anger and indignation at the predicament of L3's fellow droids. At the same time, there's a great sadness--a remembrance of all that he has done, all his failures to build a better world. ]
Your people deserve to be free to make their own choices in their lives. There are many regrets I have, though none which I think I can fairly say I can undo. They effect too many others already. But I will help you to free your people however I can. You have in me an ally, Elthree. I promise you that.
Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.
no subject
[ She sounds... a little choked up, actually? She's never made an ally this quickly before. Sure, she's set up her network of droid spies, but they all started out the same as her... under the thumb of the systemic oppression of their galaxy. To find an outsider who is not only willing to listen to her people's plight, but who understands and is willing to help her... It's more than she could ever have asked for. ]
Thank you, Megatron. I will not make you regret this choice.
no subject
[ There's a fire in him. A determined sort of anger at the way organics have trampled on this droid, on all those that they deem inferior.
Yes, he did such things himself. Perhaps that makes his rage all the greater. The anger at himself for those wasted millions of years, all the lives that had been lost. Take that self-loathing and direct it outwards. His massive frame lurches upwards to stand again. ]
Come. Let us see what we can find in the way of star charts.
no subject
[ Not that there's much history of successful revolutions in her galaxy.
yet]Let's go. Which way to the laboratories?
no subject
[ Megatron turns and begins making his way through the corridors, this time slowing a little to make sure that Elthree has no need to half-job to keep up with him. As they reach the laboratory, he stoops inside and gestures towards the dark terminals. ]
Their interfaces are too small for me to use comfortably. Perhaps they might be of use to you, however.
no subject
[ She withdraws a cable from somewhere in her midsection, and looks for an open port to connect it to. None of the computer's ports are familiar, though, and nothing looks compatible for her to be able to interface with.
With an air of frustration, she retracts the cable. ]
Alright, we're doing this the old fashioned way.
[ With fingers on keys, how barbaric! She boots up the machine and begins typic, quickly slicing through the login and accessing the files which have been saved on the computer's hard drive. As she flips through the documents, she frowns. ]
Well, this is unhelpful. There's no blueprints, crew roster, manifest, anything pertaining to the operation of the station itself. This is all... independent research. Looks like it's being run separate to the station's stated mission goals. There's something about... creating artificial and non-artificial tissue growth in vitro?
[ She shakes her dome, backing away from the terminal. ]
It's useless.
no subject
[ Megatron thinks half-aloud as he regards the results of their investigation. ]
...Non-artificial and artificial tissue? Organic tissue, I assume.
no subject
Though...
Elthree types a bit more, delving further into the research notes. ]
There are mentions of two inorganic beings on board. Artificial intelligences, the both of them.
[ She glances up at Megatron, the silent implication of, "so no naturally occurring inorganic lifeforms like you" left hanging in the air between them. Then she turns back to the terminal. ]
A droid known as Wheatley, current status unknown. And the ship's AI, Viveca. Whoever's notes these are... They were building a body for her.
[ If she had a mouth, she would smile. She needs to find out whose research this is and thank them. ]
no subject
Interesting. Though I cannot imagine why a mechanism would desire an organic body, I suppose it could serve as a temporary chassis of sorts.
[ Hm. ]
I wonder if this Viveca is happy with her lot in life as provided by her organic jailers?
cw mention of gore
A part of her flashes back to the sight of dozens of disassembled droids piled beside heaps of severed organic limbs, the stench of blood and rot forever burned in her memory core faster than she could disable her olfactory sensors. Somewhere, out there, shrouded by the ice shards of the Mesulan Remnants, the Phylanx lies dormant. Will her antivirus code be done in time to stop it from activating?
Yet another task she's leaving unfinished. ]
That is a good question, though. I'd like to have a word with her.
Re: cw mention of gore
[ His head tilts slightly. Watches as she seems to pause. For an organic, picking up on mechanistic body language would be difficult, but for someone like Megatron whose society at one point practiced the horrific punishment of empurata, where a mech's face and hands were removed in favor of faceless, fingerless replacements he found it simple to read feelings. Though perhaps he was reading more of his own thoughts into her than recognizing her own. ]
I would be wary. She may report back to any organic masters that still lurk about this place.
no subject
[ That is, if this body was meant as a gesture of help. If it was just meant to control Viveca, or make her more useful to serve the organic crew... Then that's a whole different conversation. ]
That's true. We'll need to see how loyal she is to her creators. How far they've brainwashed her into serving them.
no subject
no subject
no subject
[ And the multiple genocides. ]
no subject
I would have hoped your people would fare better, being naturally occurring. But even then, you're discriminated against by organic oppressors?
no subject
[ Megatron looks down at Elthree with a thoughtful, grim expression. ]
I told you of my revolution. That revolution grew into a civil war which spiraled across our galaxy. Organics were caught in the crossfire, both because of negligence on our part and simply because they happened to exist on planets which had energy reserves we required.
[ This part is strange to admit aloud. ]
Civilizations were exterminated merely for standing in our way. We Cybertronians became seen as a threat to everything we touched as our war spanned millions of years--in the time that we had fought our war, whole civilizations rose, flourished and collapsed without our interference. Others, as I said, were exterminated. In fact, I myself used to look down on organic life as something inferior to mechanisms. I didn't even hate them--I merely saw them as pests. Insects to be swatted aside for the greater good of the Cybertronian species.
[ His optics dim as he seems to lose himself in memories. ]
I wish I had realized sooner how precious life is. All life.
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