TEST DRIVE MEME, JANUARY 2017.

[officialnotice]

TEST DRIVE MEME

There was an accident. That's basically the only thing you know for certain. Maybe a car wreck - metal and broken glass everywhere, and the sirens and the screaming. Or maybe there was an explosion. Maybe your bike hit a rock and you careened uncontrollably off a mountain path. You can't can't quite make out the details, not who was at fault or why. Try as you might, the chaos is all you can remember.

It's also the last thing you remember from before you wake up here.

When you open your eyes, the accident is gone. Instead, you're in a hospital bed – the nursing staff greets you with a cheerful smile.

Welcome to Wayward Pines, they tell you. You'll make a full recovery here.

option one       WELCOME TO WAYWARD PINES

The hospital staff had seemed very friendly, but ultimately unhelpful when it came to answering your questions, insisting you shouldn't worry about such things, and that it was smarter to just rest until you'd fully recovered.

That was some time ago. You've since managed to leave the hospital – either via escape, or simply by waiting patiently and filling out paperwork until they finally agreed to release you. Now you've found yourself in the small but hearty town of Wayward Pines, Idaho. It's a charming little place, and the people there are all friendly enough, more than willing to greet you on the street, or give you directions if you need them.

Unless you're asking for directions out of town, of course.

Some will simply smile and give you a hearty pat on the shoulder and ask why you'd ever want to do a thing like that? Others will get quiet for a moment, and direct you to the nearest sign posted near the doorway of every building.

Don't bother taking the road, either. Whether you walk or get your hands on a vehicle, you won't get anywhere. The road simply takes you away from town for a short while before looping around and bringing you right back in.

There's no use questioning things, and it seems pretty useless to try to leave. So really, why not stay a while? Everyone's convinced that you'll find something to love in Wayward Pines.

(For the purposes of this test drive, you're welcome to handwave the existence of basically any local business or activity.)

option two             INTO THE WOODS

You've just heard a scream from the woods.

I mean, it could've been an animal. There's bound to be some kind of wildlife amongst the trees, right? But then again, it did sound awfully... human.

Though all of the locals nearby conceal a flinch at the sound, they'll assure you it's nothing, if you ask them. Why, you're probably just hearing things! (But with an anxious undertone of stop asking questions.) If you're curious, though, and brave enough to go see, they won't make any move to stop you from going into the wooded area surrounding the town.

The trees are tall, and their branches are thick enough to block out a significant amount of sunlight from breaking through the canopy, leaving the forest floor a little dimmer and cooler than the streets of town.

Whatever the source of the scream was, you won't be able to find it out here. An experienced hunter might notice some signs of a struggle, and a few faint boot prints, but they don't really seem to lead anywhere in particular.

What you will find, if you walk far enough, is a fence. A big one - at least 30 feet tall, made of metal and concrete. It goes on quite a ways in either direction as well; follow the wall far enough, and you'll see that it connects with the steep, sheer cliffs that surround the rest of Wayward Pines, effectively boxing the town in.

In actuality, you'll probably feel it before you see it. A full 500 yards from the wall, when it's hardly a shadowy smudge through the trees, you start to feel a little bit tired, a little bit weak. Trouble is, the closer you get, the weaker you feel - like the wall itself is sapping the strength out of you, and the closer you get, the worse it feels. Any powers you may have had grow weaker in kind as you make your way to the fence, but even ordinary humans will find their strength sapping away. By the time you're close enough to read the signs and to feel the crackle of electricity radiating from the thick wires criss-crossing the wall's metal surface, you're too weak to stand.

Do you crawl closer still and risk electrocution, or do you crawl away and assess the situation once you're far enough from the fence to be able to stand?

option three          YOU DONE HECKED UP

It's hard to say what it was, exactly, that crossed the line.

It might have been all those questions you've been asking about the town and the people within it. It might be all that talking you've been doing, about your life outside and the family you miss. It might have been the number of times you've not-so-subtly referenced the fence in the woods.

In any case, the Sheriff has taken notice of it, and you've been charged with disturbing the peace. It's his hope that a few days in a jail cell will teach you that such things aren't appreciated in Wayward Pines.

Until such a time that he deems to let you out, you and your cellmate have some time to kill.

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), but Wayward Pines does in fact have a network to accommodate its citizens.

Go ahead, post a network post! Just note that the network, at current, is audio-only and can only be accessed from the telephones in each character's home.

( a few notes )

Welcome to our first test drive here in The Pines! Just a couple of things to note:

( 1 ) 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.

( 2 ) The above link to the FAQ won't actually load for the first few hours this is up - we're sorry about that, we just have to port the FAQ into HTML. The FAQ is now live! We'll also be tossing up a few more vital pages over the next 24 hours, then opening reserves at 12:01 AM EST on the 17th. Keep an eye on thepines for updates.

Comments

[deprivates]

[ The figure in front of her is something El doesn't recognize. It's one more thing in a sea of unfamiliarity, but in some ways, this one is less frightening. He's not like the rest of this place. El isn't supposed to know who the figure is, or what he is doing here.

She still doesn't trust him, however. But she is curious. Quietly, El slips up to the figure until she's just a few inches away, craning her neck up to get a good look at his face. ]

[keephimtalking]

[ Lantar watches her approach, mandibles slanting nervously and head drawn back. He feels like he should know the procedure for being approached by strange, distrustful kids by now, but he's not entirely sure why- or what the procedure actually is.

She goes out of view under the curve of his cowl plating and he puffs. Seems like there's a bit of a flaw in his 'stand still and don't look scary' methodology, damn his oversized blind-spot.

After a brief moment of debate and staring the bare sliver of brown-furred head he could see, Lantar eases back slightly and sinks slowly down to one knee. She barely reached the tops of his shins, the human was so tiny. ]

I haven't got any cash to nab, you know.

[ El gets bemused and rather avian-like teal green eyes staring her down. This close and she can probably see the faded strips of pale lavender on his chin and mandibles, glimpses of sharp teeth behind rough mouth plates as he spoke. ]

[deprivates]

[ He's like nothing El has ever seen. At least, El doesn't think that she's ever seen a creature like this one, because she can't remember much from before the hospital. There might have been other monsters. There may have even been monsters that tried to hurt her friends, bad, strange things.

Friends? What friends? That's probably not right.

The creature kneels, which is good, because that means that El can get an even better look at him. Then he speaks, and the way he speaks is so strange. His mouth moves differently, and El works her own jaw, trying to imitate.

Her brow furrows at the term "cash." El hasn't heard that before, not that she can remember.

But that doesn't matter. Now that he's kneeled down, El gets a good look at the creature's face. Of course, the only way to fully understand something is by touching it.

So El reaches out one tiny palm and presses it up against his nose and mandibles. She's examining. It's all perfectly normal. ]

[keephimtalking]

[ He's about to say something wry about the way she tried to mimic his jaw movements, watching her raise her hand. The words die on the tip of his tongue.

Her touch is gentle, gentle as can be, itty bitty palm and weird, nubbly fingers warm and soft against his nose. Lantar still flinches, a full-bodied, fearful jolt that he doesn't entirely know the origins of, heart rate spiking sharply in panic.

It's just a kid, the Turian tries to reason with himself. It's just a kid. She's just curious. Why are you so scared?

He doesn't know. He keeps very still, not wanting to scare her. There are fingers on his mandibles now.

El will notice that they are a little different. The left one is the same, uniform roughness throughout- but the right one has strange smooth spots, hard, deep notches and keloid bumps. It sits a little oddly under the arc of his cheek. ]

... You hungry? [ Lantar asks shakily after a long moment, carefully, carefully exhaling a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. ] There's a grocer's nearby. I can grab you something.

[deprivates]

[ El lets her hand rest evenly on the mandibles before shifting ever so slightly to the right one -- the interesting one. She lets her fingers dip into the notches, noticing the contrast between bumpy and smooth. She likes that it's different. Perhaps the creature feels as strange here as she does.

Once she knows that the creature isn't angered by her touch, El smiles, her mouth not moving very much but her expression warm all the same.

El doesn't know about grocers, but she understands hunger very, very well. And one of the few things she remembers is what cures hunger. She nods. ]

Eggos?

[keephimtalking]

[ This kid is definitely up there in the strange department, walking up to a complete rando and touching their faces. Didn't seem like a street kid, although she had that look in her eyes that many of them did. That hollowness.

But he... doesn't remember ever seeing a street kid before.

Lantar scowls at the thought. Or at least he did until he realizes she's smiling at him and then the expression fades into something a bit more carefully neutral. Probably not too much of a change on El's end though, considering how comparatively inflexible Turian faces were to human ones.

She didn't seem the sort to smile a lot. ]

Eggos, huh? [ he echoes softly, quirking his free mandible in amusement before shifting to stand up, careful of her hand. ] You're going to have to point those out to me, kiddo.