Test Drive Meme 014

[voidtreckermods]

Welcome to the Test Drive Meme! Here is the place to see how your character might fit the setting, grab samples and have fun!

1. Post with your character, including their name and series in the subject. We’ve written out some prompts but feel free to make up your own, you have a whole train to play with!

2. Assume they've been around long enough for threads to jump right into the action.

3. Have lots of fun. Mandatory, mod-sanctioned fun.

Happy testing!

Making Music

The latest addition to the train is the Music Carriage, a double-decker space with reasonable acoustics and more tambourines than you can shake a drumstick at.

Upstairs, a small stage in the middle holds a piano, and seating aisles on either side run back to the ends of the carriage and the stairs back down. Curtains and basic stage lighting give some control over the performance space, or act as tools to annoy your fellow 'treckers.

Downstairs, boxes and racks of acoustic instruments up to the size of a guitar litter one side, along with sheet music, manuals, music stands and stools for the budding musician. The other end has several screens set into the wall, through which you can access either a jukebox or an extensive but ecclectic music library from millions of unknown worlds. Your SCA can store up to a hundred tracks for your personal enjoyment, so find your favourites. Or maybe you're the unfortunate soul who found that entire crate of recorders...

Green Fingers

The greenhouse is a surprisingly bright room, its vaulted ceiling made of a transparent, incredibly tough material that shows the light of the Void along the entire length of the room. The single metal support beams is bedecked in roses. The aisle of grass running through the centre of the carriage is riotous with strange plants and flowers, small stone paths leading off to this flowerbed or that.

Usually, this is a fairly calm place to be. Usually, someone hasn't smuggled a bag full of magical seeds back from a mission, and planted them all through the greenhouse. Seemingly overnight, the room has filled with a multitude of strange and wonderful plants. Dare you investigate?

Unplugged

The latest mission has the Voidtreckers in a strangely barren city, its citizens wearing skinsuits, wired gloves and headsets. Just like the ones the dressing car put you all in..? It makes more sense when you turn on the visor and the world comes alive around you. Welcome to Amp Online! The danger this time is in the virtual world overlaid with the physical, as a wave of animal-themed viruses sweep through the cyberscape, destroying livelihoods, and perhaps lives.

Team One

Primarily the fighting is limited to the virtual world. The locals are happy to upload basic combat software into Team One's gear, but the good stuff is locked behind paywalls. Hackable paywalls, definitely, but, luckily, the viruses seem to be dropping something called amp-cred when slain. Which... is apparently money, because the balance in the corner of your vision just ticked up. Time to grind. Wait, are those... limited edition skins?

Team Two

The technicians and sysads insist that the viruses are totally foreign to Amp Online. So... where did they come from? Team Two is tasked with deep-diving into the network, through back-end servers rendered by their gear into dungeon-like labyrinths. The 'monster' viruses are fewer here, but instead, paths are blocked by worms and barrier-like popups. You all have tracking apps and hacking software that looks oddly gamified. Go!

Team Three

Not all threats are online - after a while, a virus manages to follow a link back to the real world, and hijack something. A combat drone, a refridgerator, someone's car... Another follows, and another. Team Three are ejected from Amp Online to troubleshoot in the physical world, protecting data centers and civilian housing stacks from rogue machinery... or their own smart-homes. Ever fought a toaster? Alexa, play Ride of the Valkyries.

Comments

[futuresetin]

Boring? I thought you'd like all the gathering things.

[nocawsforconcern]

Yeah, but none of it's real. It all goes away once I take the face-thingy off.

[futuresetin]

That's true. It seems more like a game, don't you think? Like when you finish a game of dice, but you're not playing to keep what you win. Then again, to these people it sounds important... not that games aren't. You saw how big the horse racing bets got that one time on Cepheus.

[nocawsforconcern]

Yeah, but that was real horses and real money. Even if it's a game, I don't like it.

[futuresetin]

Then we should take care of this and get out quick. Left!

[Xenia gestures and moves to block another virus monster before it can attack.]

As long as they're mobbing us, my sense won't stop going off.

[nocawsforconcern]

... If you can sense them, I guess they must really be dangerous.

[Enna gets low to the ground, and then with her top speed, just slices through the viruses like she's filleting them.]

But I don't get it.

[futuresetin]

Me neither. They're destroying things in here, but how does it connect to the real world?

[She flips over one and stabs it on the landing.]

I guess we'll find out.

[nocawsforconcern]

[Enna lifts her headset, then lowers it again. She repeats that a couple of times, and then...]

... What if they're spirits?

[futuresetin]

Spirits? [She dodges another attack, but doesn't counter.] Do you think? How?

[nocawsforconcern]

Caw... I dunno. It's hard to explain, but...

[Enna plants her knives in one's head.]

... They're not there, not really. But they still do things. Still affect things. You can't touch them or see them, but they are there.

[futuresetin]

So it's like this entire place is a spirit?

[Xenia slices up some viruses with her feathered sword.]

And these smaller spirits are attacking it.

[nocawsforconcern]

May... be?

[She caws again, flapping her cloak.]

That's the best I can figure out.

[futuresetin]

It makes as much sense as anything.

[Stab, and that's the last of the mob.]

They just keep coming for us. If we keep drawing them, that keeps the others out of the line of fire, you think?

[nocawsforconcern]

I hope so. But there's a lot of them... We should find their source.

[futuresetin]

Right. Find where they come from, stem the tide. And whatever's bringing them out.

[nocawsforconcern]

Right. That shouldn't be too hard, right?

[futuresetin]

Probably. How to find them, though... They were coming from all over the place, it felt like.