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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.”
merlin | fate/grand order
[Merlin could introduce himself like a normal person and make a good first impression. He could.
However, he is Merlin, and so, naturally, he chooses violence instead.]
h-hewwo?
is anyone thewe?
[this motherfucker.]
ii. wildcard roomba edition
[You know that cleaning robot from the December log? The one that gets mad at people existing around it causing dirt and such. Yeah, that one. Merlin here is botnapping it. Where is he taking it? What is he going to do? Don't worry about it. (If you try to follow him, this shifty bastard will just illusion his ass into disappearing out of view)
When the robot returns, it has a kitchen knife attached to it. Because of course it does. Merlin looks particularly pleased with himself.]
Well now, that's better, isn't it?
poor roomba
But suddenly there was this round thing, with a knife badly taped on it, just rolling? is it rolling or hovering? around.]
What is that?
no subject
It's a Roomba.
[Or something like a Roomba, anyway. Whatever. This explains nothing, but Merlin does not look like he intends to elaborate.]
no subject
Then glares.]
That tells me nothing, human.
no subject
But if I explained more, it'd be denying you the pleasure of figuring things out for yourself.
no subject
That's all Malleus is doing, just glaring at this horrible person.]
And where would I find this information?
no subject
The journey is more important than the destination!
no subject
you're not helpful, at all.
no subject
no subject
...Fine.
Why does it have a knife?
i. Text, un: Kirigan
god bless u and i'm so sorry in advance
yes
pwease hewp me
i'm scawed
Let's be sorry together.
Have you tried screaming really loudly?
me n u out here paving the road to hell like a boss
HEWWO!! HEWWO!
HEWP ME
Oh no, there are no good intentions. Only bad decisions
Someone should find you. Eventually. The station isn't that big, really.
only the best bad decisions. (also lmk if this isn't cool!)
He thinks this is hilarious. He is not even a little bit sorry.]
do you think that was loud enough ☆⌒(ゝ。∂)
This is fine- canon blind, but lemme know if this isn't how it works for him
He does manage to startle the Darkling hard enough for him to throw out his hands, shadows leaping at his call to swirl like angry smoke along the floor.]
What?
I'm sure someone will come along shortly. Do not do that again, or you will find that I have no patience for trickery.
the illusion's meant to superimpose on reality but he's a dreamwalker so this works too tbh
Which is to say, the Darkling gets a minute of mental peace, just long enough to think the other has given up, before the next ping arrives.]
pwease mistew kiwigan
extra prompts, non-shitpost edition
[The ship reminds him of Chaldea, in a sense. The facilities are Just Slightly in disrepair, in that charming way that suggests being understaffed and overwhelmed by the weight of an undertaking but carrying on regardless. The apparent commander is elusive and mysterious, and almost certainly hiding something. The orbs might as well be Holy Grails, for how they appear to operate. The only thing missing are Servants, perhaps, but even the humans on board are reminiscent of the last Master of Chaldea, in their way; earnestly striving with their whole hearts for a better future. In truth, this is what he truly accepted the orb's contract for, and he has not yet been disappointed. He is extraordinarily well-fed without even having ventured into any dreams as yet; the emotions are heavy in the air, absorbed as though by osmosis just by being present.
He finds his favorite place to be the sunlight room; human ingenuity is often fascinating to him, and this place in particular delights him. He has the designation of Grand Caster, and yet the grass and the sun feel as realistic as they might in any of his own illusions. Should he ever meet the designer, he should like to congratulate them -- reproducing anything near his level of ability with technology alone is no mean feat.
When he's not trolling the network, he often finds himself back here, again. It feels like a fitting place to go, in the absence of the Garden, of his Tower in Avalon. But sometimes, he is not alone there; sometimes, company finds him, or maybe he goes investigating when he Sees someone about enter.
He cuts a strange figure, tall and hooded, flowers growing under his feet where he walks, but instead of any proper introduction, he regards you curiously, rather like a cat might regard a new toy left in its space.]
Tell me, don't you think it curious, that so many have answered the call to change their fates, and yet the actual regrets held so deeply in your hearts are so rarely spoken? Humans guard their privacy so steadfastly, even when they find over and over that they must band together to survive. One has to wonder what is gained by the secrecy.
[If you think this is a callout about you then it totally is. But it's also a callout for Someone In Particular who is not here to hear him.]
iv. who am i to disagree? [ graveyard ]
[Merlin isn't here to practice the orb mission, not really. There is a grave nearby he is steadfastly ignoring, epitaph labeled Artoria Pendragon, the Once and Future King. The Orb itself holds little appeal to him, a cursory wish made to establish the contract. Of much more interest to him are the others that enter the simulation. He is curious about their motivations, their intentions -- their hesitations, even.
Perhaps you are one such individual who looks particularly conflicted at the realization of what must be done--please enjoy the hooded stranger who has no problem waltzing on up to you as though you're old friends.]
Quite the dilemma, isn't it? To defile the past in order to change it ... you bear no obligation to go through with this now, if you are not ready. But it's a good question to keep in mind as you pursue your goal.
iii
he was dimly aware of a stranger's presence, but his focus was elsewhere...until that little nudge in his mind that warns him he's being acknowledged. he looks over just as the other starts to speak, fixing him with a placid, thoughtful look. most who approach him are a lot more...excitable than this presence, so he's already a bit curious.
his eyebrows lift.]
...What do you think...there is to gain in...knowing those things? When we are all us...from estranged worlds.
And not all of us human.