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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
( he says, because it must be. this is how they work — brutal, bare honesty, all their words see through as they connection they share, guiding from one mind to the next. rhysand's trust in feyre was never the part in question — she could tell him anything, and he'd believe it. unthinkingly, even. that's the level of faith he has in feyre's word.
bending, he presses his lips more solidly against hers. an oath, pressed to her mouth, where rhys can stomp out the doubt littering his own faulty, broken heart. feyre wouldn't lie, she's not the type. she'd let him know exactly what she needed, and he'd provide it. distance, time, space. the moon on a string. lassoed stars to decorate the shine in her eyes — any of it, all of it, hers to have. he'd find a way to make the impossible possible, for her. like treaties between the humans and the fae. like inviting nesta over for dinner, and actually having her show up.
she loves him. as true and as obvious as his love for her. )
I'll be with you, of course. I'll figure it out.
( he's sure alina will understand — sure he'll see pain in her eyes regardless, but he can't imagine she'd be too angry at him for needing this. he can split his time. maybe he can ask daisy to make sure alina doesn't sleep alone, for a few nights. it'll be ... not fine, but better. he'll make it the best he can for everyone. )
I know you're not her, by the way. Amarantha. ( gods, does he know that. even in her worst moments ( which is certainly not now ), feyre is a summer rose compared to that bitch. even speaking their names in the same sentence makes rhys want to blanche. ) I just feel so full of feelings towards you, I don't know what to do with myself. All I can think about is pawing your skirts and crying. Gratitude. ( he lets out a bright, watery laugh. ) I'm so grateful you exist. I'm grateful you're here, even if that makes me selfish. I never want to be apart from you again.
no subject
but she also knows that she needs space to process what has happened, what is happening. there are times when she can be quick to adapt but when it comes to matter of the heart, she needs time or things become... too heavy. she cannot help how that might make rhys feel torn or alina feel abandoned by him if he chooses to spend more time with her, feyre has as little say in how all this makes her feel as it makes them feel. she can only control how she feels, how she will keep her own jealousy at bay should rhysand spend the night with alina. after all, she'd been facing down countless nights without him, possibly sharing a bed with or without tamlin in the spring court. she could handle sleeping alone if she needed.]
I'm not asking you to choose between us and I never will, just... all I ask is that you give me some time. [ to get used to this place, to get to know alina, to find some sort of peace with the whole situation.
her hands move to cradle this face at that tearful laugh, drawing his mouth to hers for a kiss and then another after he finishes speaking.] It's not selfish, if I had known you were here, if I had known about any of this, I would have turned the world over to get to you. Cauldron, I would have unleashed Amren upon the world, if it meant finding a way to be here with you.
no subject
( his mate, his wife. she's perfectly within her rights to ask him not to see other people, and while that opens up the possibility of rhys saying no, i will and trashing their relationship, he doesn't want her acceptance to be born on her fear of losing him. it's a nonstarter, a reality that doesn't exist — because leaving alina would feel awful, would make a liar and traitor of him, would probably break something unfixable inside of him, but he'd do it anyway, because leaving feyre would hurt even more.
still, he's tired of crying about it now. happy, really, to give feyre her space to digest it all — because all he wants now is to take moments, hours and days, just to bask in her warm glow. greedily, because he likely doesn't deserve them, but if feyre is offering? he'll be a glutton on the sight of her, on every inch she wants to give. )
Such a wicked, terrifying female. ( feyre, not amren. though — while it's certainly accurate for both, rhys knows who he'd rather have pissy with him. with the lighthearted eagerness of being as close to her as possible, rhys bends to scoop feyre up, locking his arms tight underneath her ass, pressing his face to his stomach and breasts. ) You're here now. Would you like to hear more about it? I do have plenty of gossip, which is always best shared over a shower or meal. ( or more sex. ) Lady's choice.
no subject
but by now, she's exhausted by all of it. it feels as though a whole day has passed when it hasn't even been two full hours since she woke up here. so she lets him change the subject, gladly. and she lets him hoist her up into his arms considering the options he lays out before her as her hands hold his head for balance.
she has no appetite at the moment, however--] What's a shower?
no subject
Mm. It's like a bath, under rainfall. ( yeah, no explanation will do it justice. distractedly, he swipes his fingers around the handfuls of feyre he holds onto, fingertips brushing her sopping folds. ) We don't have to get you too clean, though. ( his smile is conspiratorial — a nasty, feral part of himself that feyre is privy to. he drags his fingers down the mess he'd made of her, pointedly pushing his cum back inside her with a clever twist of his wrist. ) Keep that where it belongs.
( warm and safe inside her, like so many other parts of rhys. feyre is sanctuary — she's his home. )
no subject
[ of course, when he touches her, pressing his fingers between her thighs in that possessive way, she rolls her eyes, letting out a bit of a laugh. his obsession with keeping her marked, filling her with his come has always been humorous to her (when she's not in the middle of said act and riled up by the idea of it).] You're impossible.
no subject
No, a waterfall would be most unpleasant to bathe under. Though, I suppose the motions are all the same. Imagine a nice, gentle, warm waterfall. Actually — don't imagine it. Let me show you.
( he walks lazily forward, toward a room near the back. of course, this bathroom has none of the very fancy bath products rhysand had pilfered from various places, but the standard, generic stuff works just fine too. he's well aware that feyre is the opposite of picky, much to his own chagrin. at the door, his wings disappear into his back, and as the lights come on around the bathroom he lets feyre lean away to look around.
though, he doesn't put her down. at least, not willingly, still thrumming his fingers through her messy folds. )
no subject
[ oh, she'll miss the luxuries of their home eventually but it's true that when you go from having everything to nothing to everything once more, it's hard to place value on such things. it could all be gone in an instant.
of course, she gets distracted from whatever thoughts of past baths she might have been having by the room they enter. every bit of it a curiosity. however, while rhys might have adjusted his hold on her so she could look around, he seems keen on distracting her with his touches, fingers sliding over skin with his come and her own, earning him a quiet groan.]
no subject
he still smiles wolfishly at her groan, arching a knowing brow. )
Oh, is that the spot?
( he says, as if he isn't aware of all of feyre's spots, and how she sings when he strokes them.
holding feyre close with one arm, his free one slips, pulling aside the door to the shower and letting her look inside. with now perfect grace, he twists one of the knobs as a rush of nice, steaming water comes raining out of the dual showerheads. )
Feel it, ( he offers, taking more interest in putting his mouth on her neck, refinding her cunt with his wayward fingers and stroking her more intently. there's just something about showers. ) so warm.
no subject
she throws him an annoyed (but mostly feigned) at his smugness at how he can play her body like a finely tuned instrument. her body, at least, hasn't been too complicated to figure out.
she lets out a sound of surprise when the water bursts out of metal spouts sticking out of the walls. and for a moment, she can forget the way he's touching her, the hot press of his lips in favor of reaching out to put her hand beneath the spray, the movement a little skittish in the way she jerks her fingers back at the warmth and feel of it spraying out.
she lets her hand stay beneath the water after a second attempt, drawing in a breath that has only a little to do with fingers moving more intentionally.] Is it magic?