There was an accident. The details are hazy and obscure, but it's still the first thing you remember. Maybe a car wreck — metal and broken glass everywhere, and the sirens and the
screaming. Maybe your bike hit a rock and you careened uncontrollably off a mountain path. Maybe something less mundane, even impossible seems to have happened to you. You can't quite make out the details, not who was at fault or why. Try as you might, the chaos is all you can truly remember.
It's also the
last thing you remember from before waking up.
When you open your eyes, the accident is gone. Instead, you're in a hospital bed, and the nursing staff greet you with cheerful smiles.
Don't worry, they tell you. You'll make a full recovery here. Where is here? Why, home in Wayward Pines, of course!
option one | (SLICE OF LIFE) | A HOPPING GOOD TIME |
Easter may not be for another month, but this year the festivities kicked off early (possibly due to the unseasonably warm weather? temperatures have reached highs that could almost be mistaken for summer, especially by veteran residents). Yards are decorated with inflatable bunnies and chicks, and you'll find your eyeballs assaulted by pastels virtually everywhere you go.
(Linda's house boasts the most elaborate and yet
perfectly tasteful of decorations. No one dares declare otherwise.)
Mid-April culminates in an Egg Hunt (for the kids!) that doubles as all-purpose revelry: a townwide gathering on the lush green expanse of the Play Field. Easter ham is provided in quantity; with sides to be provided by, well, you!
(Does "sides" mean alcohol? Probably. Does it mean "anything that isn't ham?" Hopefully!)
Wayward Pines’ moderate handful of children scatter about in the meantime, their attention span significantly shorter than an all-day event; by the time they've wandered off, most if not all of the brightly colored plastic eggs have been plucked from the field and loaded up into baskets, where their plunderers will later find little Crackerjack-style toys. Though... that doesn't seem to be the end of the eggs after all; the observant may note a few still winking from behind a tree or under the bleachers. More interestingly, they may further note these seem to be more the Fabergé variety, at least in size and ostentation.
Go on, investigate! It'll be fun! At least, for a certain type of person who enjoys a certain type of prize. The contents look like they might be from the estate sale of an elderly eccentric: old jewelry, an ornate spoon, etc (....wait, was that a pair of dentures? huh). Occasionally, a slightly less innocuous prize can be discovered - is that hand-sewn doll with real human hair a child’s toy, or something subtly occultic?
Oh well. Given the monsters outside the fence and the hallucinogenic mushrooms in town, that's probably not the weirdest thing you'll see this week.
option two | (HORROR) | LET'S SEE WHAT'S IN SPORE |
The stowaway came through the fence unnoticed, clinging imperceptibly to the the clothes and shoes of an unsuspecting team of homecoming expeditioneers - at least, that’s what Ortech’s mycologists will conclude in their thorough investigation in the weeks to come. Here and now, there’s a new, colorful addition to the flora of the town. Seemingly overnight, clusters of
mushrooms (vivid blue and shaped a little bit like brains) are sprouting in dark, wet places throughout the woods. They’re quite pretty and also
large, reaching roughly a foot in height.
Perhaps you’re curious about this new addition and reached out to touch one by choice. Perhaps you’ve stumbled upon it entirely by accident. Perhaps you have no idea they’re even present until it’s too late.
The mushrooms release spores into the air, almost cloyingly sweet in scent, though it doesn’t seem like anything is wrong right away. No itchiness, no watering eyes, no trouble breathing. Colors may seem a little brighter, but that’s about it.
In roughly thirty minutes, that all changes.
For anywhere between an hour and a day, characters experience
many or all of a host of symptoms including nausea, loss of appetite, dry mouth, uncoordinated movements, and intensified sensory experiences. But oh, that's not all. It can also come with visual disturbances (maybe even hallucinations), disordered thinking, paranoia, mild or dramatic mood changes, mixed senses ("seeing" sounds, "hearing" colors), detachment from reality, outright panic, and changes in the perception of time itself.
Don’t worry: It doesn’t seem to be fatal. Here's hoping you have someplace quiet and comfy to ride out the trip, because it’s probably gonna be a
bad one.
option three | (ACTION-ADVENTURE) | A SAMPLE EXPEDITION |
The crisp morning air finds you lingering at the base of a watchtower just inside the northwestern fence. You’ve signed up for an expedition - maybe your first, or maybe you’ve lost count - and here’s hoping you’re a morning person, because you’ve been told to rendezvous at this patch of fence at no later than 8 AM.
Your
teammate in this expedition has yet to arrive. Maybe they’re a friend - someone you know from home, or a friend you’ve made here in Wayward Pines - and the two of you signed up together. Maybe you’re paired up with a stranger, another solo adventurer looking to make tracks outside of the safe zone without waiting for a solo expedition to show up on the roster. Maybe you’re a designated expedition chaperone, assigned to guide someone who doesn’t have clearance of their own. Maybe
you don’t have clearance, and your teammate is the chaperone assigned to guide
you. Either way, they have five more minutes before they’re late, so they should be showing up pretty soon!
Your
destination can be any number of things depending on the make-up of your expedition duo. Two combatants might be fetching a rumored supply cache, or maybe they’re routing and destroying the home nest of a small band of
abbies that have wandered a little too close to Wayward Pines for Ortech’s comfort. A team with a scientist may be on an expedition to catalogue or discover the local flora and fauna - or a more generalized academic might be in search of a private library documented to exist nearby. A techie or mechanic may be responsible for repairing and fetching a valuable vehicle (for example, a helicopter), or maybe they’re assigned to repair functionality to a nearby radio tower. Basically: Go ahead and wing it. Make shit up. The apocalypse is your oyster and we’d rather you go nuts with the details than worry about not getting things precisely right.
For the sake of this Test Drive, your
expedition route can be whatever you’d like it to be, but this
example route will be the same regardless of destination.
Your destination is about five miles from the safe zone within the fence. You depart through a well-concealed and well-guarded gate in the
northwestern fence, where the map you’ve been given tells you to curve to the right up a path that leads to the top of the northern cliffs. From here, all of Wayward Pines is visible below you - but you definitely can’t afford to linger long if you plan to make it back by nightfall. The path back down is steeper, with a scattering of loose rocks that make footing tricky.
From there, you head due north through a river valley. Your map strongly suggests you detour through the trees, indicating aberration activity along the clearer riverbanks, but the forest is dense and will absolutely slow you down. The choice is yours either way.
Your destination is just past the end of the valley, but nothing in life is simple, and the river seems to be damming up behind a fresh new rockslide that blocks the mouth of the valley and your destination along with it. This is the final obstacle to clear before your destination - but you’re likely behind schedule, and it’s time to decide if you dare stay the night out here in the wild or try to hoof it back to the fence in the fading light.
(If you’re in the mood for some
combat, you’re welcome to toss in an aberration attack if they choose to trek along the riverbanks... Or at the rockslide, a terribly convenient place for an unexpectedly well-designed ambush.)
option four | ON THE NETWORK |
Though it's not as high-tech as you might be used to (or hell, maybe you're ren faire and it's centuries beyond anything you've seen), Wayward Pines does in fact have a network to accommodate its citizens.
Go ahead, post a network post! The network has text, audio, and video functionality via the smartphones provided to each character when they arrive.
MOD NOTES
Welcome to our pre-opening test drive here in The Pines! Just one important thing to note:
Upon arrival in Wayward Pines, characters find themselves struggling to remember entirely who they were or where they came from. Memories return progressively over the next two weeks. You're welcome to play with this mechanic in any of these prompts, but it's definitely not mandatory! For more details on this temporary memory loss, see our FAQ.
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bumfuckidaho2019-03-21 09:59 pm
TEST DRIVE MEME
emil västerström | stand still stay silent
This is a roundabout way of saying Emil's befuddled by Easter, and not because it's happening out of season for some reason. After waking up from the hospital, collecting his things in a daze, everything seems to be befuddling. There are various hints this isn't his clan. There's an accent to his speech that isn't present with the hospital staff. There's no surety that where he is is home -- if it was, wouldn't he remember it as such? Wouldn't he have an idea of where he lived, went to school, hung out?
Instead, it's nothing but absence. The few memories he does have give him very little clues about where home might be. )
( His confusion is his to own, however, because the world is still spinning. It's evident in how he's going down the street, minding his own business, when suddenly the sleeve of his jacket is grabbed by a young boy. After a short explanation, Emil's been tasked with trying to grab a Fabergé that's been placed ridiculously high for a game primarily played by children. It's perched in a real bird's nest, glittering so it can easily be seen.
Well. He has nothing else to do. It's relieving to find out he can climb the tree, with a bit of huffing and puffing, but it's a somewhat quick trip to get to the lower branch where the egg is hiding.
One wrong move, however, and everything happens in a flash. There's a yelp from below, hurried footsteps and Emil's staring dazed at the sky. Falling out of a tree seems par for the course today, somehow. The wind is taken out of him, so getting up...isn't really on the agenda right now. )
( Of course Emil noticed those Fabergé eggs sitting around. Outside of his failed tree-climbing incident, there are a few hidden eggs he's noticed here and there. Most of them he's taken no time to pick up or attempt to collect.
This egg, however, is very different. Not even necessarily egg shaped, even. While some mushrooms are sitting in clusters, Emil's introduction is this lone fungi, youthful and not yet sprouting friends. He could recognize a normal mushroom if he saw it, but this species is certainly enticing.
After plucking it, the reality is discovered -- it's some sort of ground fruit? He doesn't dare eat it, but it certainly does smell good. Emil isn't so out of touch that he'd eat it...immediately.
When he woke up, one of the few things Emil remembered was a large firebird: the heat of it, the size, the smell of how it singed the air itself, it seemed like. It's such a fantastical memory, it's certainly just a very vivid dream. After a half hour of walking, though, a cold sweat sets in -- and then it heats up expectantly. He can't see it, and he knows he'd have to see it, but it's somewhere. That bird is near, he can feel it all over his body. It's going to come after him, and soon.
He breaks out into a run, only stopped once he slams into another person, breathing heavy and obviously panicked. )
Can you feel it? ( He grabs you, whether by the shoulders or your clothes. ) We have to get out! It's coming!
-- -- -- -- --
( Smartphones? Another thing long forgotten where Emil comes from. Maybe you can find one and sell it as an antique, but the form and function of this device is completely lost on him.
He's asked someone to show him the basic function of it. Some of it sounds pretty neat, but otherwise he's a little unimpressed. After the network is shown to him, the idea of using it is...maybe something to master? In the meantime, he's truly a fish out of water with it. )
What
( Yeah, that's all he sent out. )
a hopping good time!
when that becomes apparent, simon, ever the compassionate protagonist, races over to emil, letting his loot fall in favor of kneeling down and checking to see if emil's been knocked straight out. he's awake, thankfully, but the shocked and still thing isn't totally reassuring. ]
Are you alright? [ he asks, putting a hand on emil's shoulder. any kind of response he'll take as a good sign. ] That looked like it fucking hurt.