TEST DRIVE MEME #1

[freezers]

TEST DRIVE #1

The universe is fading into a bitter, cold blackness. Planet by planet, star by star, life is disappearing. For the good ship Koska IV there is no return voyage, there is no home, there is only forward. Behind it is the devastating emptiness of a life devoured, and the threat of an unseen enemy always at its heels. It can be argued perhaps that where the Kostka goes death follows, that it leaves ruin in its wake. If you ask Ripley, though, she'll say that they're only just managing to outrun the inevitable. Waking up aboard the ship feels strangely like waking up in a mausoleum. You emerge from your cryo pod like climbing out from a tomb, born new into a world long gone silent and still. The monolithic vessel now exists as a ghost town, halls dimly lit with emergency power, the only sounds being the mechanical ticking and groaning metal of the Kostka, laboring on like a wounded, burdened beast. Don’t mind the dust, the grime or the occasional blood splatter; cleaning is a nonessential function the droids don’t have energy to waste on. Kostka IV, once a transport designed for leisure cruises to and from new colonies, hobbles along on her last leg, urged on and on by the AI left to command her - R.I.P., affectionately termed ‘Ripley’ by her now absent crew. The sprawling, shadowy halls are only trafficked by Ripley’s minimal team of droids, the least that she can spare in straining her corrupted processes, much of both the ship and her systems in dire disrepair. Preserve organic life: Ripley’s primary, core directive and singular focus, the one goal above all else, which must be met, no matter the cost. And now, your goal too, as on Kostka IV, though crippled, Ripley is God, and the body your consciousness inhabits now is not your own - a semi-organic, synthetic host that morphs to fit the form you left, rather than the skin you were born to. You were saved from what is coming (for her, for you, for everyone), because Ripley needs more hands to keep this last ark of humanity afloat, as the ship struggles to find safe harbor, making stops along the way to pick up resources, to search for life. To find a home, and a future, for us all. ( Kostka is a panfandom, scifi, survival/horror jamjar, with elements of psychological and body horror (in varying, opt-out-able levels) peppered along with your general monster movie fair, driven by character interaction and influence with heavy meta-plot guided by regular mod events. Set on a mobile ship traversing through differing dimensions, characters are transported into semi-organic, synthetic bodies that replicate their canon form, able to be upgraded with powers through bonus AC rewards, and brought onto the crew to assist a debilitated AI in escaping a force destroying the multiverse, while they seek to salvage what remains of life. Events will feature some known canon worlds (like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Bioshock, etc), along with some uniquely built between mods and player world-building. This game is invite-only, and we have a player cap of 30, with two character slots available for each player. The game has been inspired by: Battlestar Galactica, SOMA, Altered Carbon, Mass Effect, Passengers, Black Mirror, and various others. ) GOOD MORNING, STARSHINE ⬡ AKA; waking up naked with tubes/cables in half ur orifices probably, gross A spark of electricity convulses through your body, and you jolt awake - underwater. Or, at least, that's most peoples' first guess. The color is more vibrant than water should be, and heavier, your body feeling sluggish against the weight and drag of it. Or perhaps you're just slower to respond, distant, limbs and mind still drowsy and reeling. The bright fluid doesn't sting when you blink, if anything, it's soothing, healing, calming. Fortunate, that, because you're going to need it. As the pod-like chamber you're held in starts to drain of the liquid, your senses start to flood back in. Awareness filters in like a window curtain holding back the morning sun, gradually easing away with each inch the water line lowers. There's something on your face - a mask, strapped around the back of your head, and other thinner tendrils against your cheeks, your ears, your neck. Narrow tubes are channeled through in your nostrils, and cables have slithered in through your ears, plugging into God knows what on the inside of your skull. There's a click that you feel more than hear, and the tension on them slacks, disconnected from somewhere inside you. Pull - up, back, to the side, whichever way you want - and they start to drag free. Far from the most pleasant feeling (likely leaves you wanting to crawl right out of your skin), but it doesn't quite hurt or burn, yet. That's for the inch wide tube shoved down your throat and held in place by the mask. It's also what's keeping you breathing underneath this blue space-goo though, so maybe don't go yanking it off until the lid of your pod opens. As the fluid drains, a voice crackles in over the sound of water oscillating around your ears. Not something played from a speaker anywhere, nothing projected on a screen, and whether the cables are still in your ears or not, you hear her all the same, as if she's more inside your head than she is broadcasting over a speaker inside the pod or coming muffled from outside. Even still, it's stuttered and interrupted, like the connection is weak, interference like static white noise buzzing through and covering up parts of sentences. ❝ I don’t have a lot of tim— RIP can’t spare the power to run this more t—, so pay attention. No one knows where it came fr— out of radio contact when it happened, whatever it w— Everything in its path. There is no fighting it. Only surviv— Droids handle most of the maintenance, but she’s getting wor— Take the load off. Whatever happe— just keep Ripley running. If the ship stops, we’re all dea— —’re bodies are new, still adjusting. You’ll be on unsteady legs for a while, so take it slo— might end up face-planting, and there’s only so many replacemen— Mess hall’s lock— so make do. The cryo pod fluid’s the most nutritious thing around, just don’t think about wh— —’s all I can tell you. Good luck. ❞ » » » READ MORE HERE « « « At the end of the long lines of cryo pods, the halls meet at a small medbay. It seems some merciful someone has left a stack of thin, cloth sheets on one of the medbay tables, so it's best you pick one up, towel off a bit, and then toga it, until you find something more durable. Hopefully, at some point, someone will discover a door leading to a storage room is unlocked. There, you'll find some very stylish, bright orange jumpsuits. With luck, you'll make it there before you freeze. NETWORK ⬡ AKA; welcome to Kostka IV, Have Some K-Pop While Projection is not yet available, all HOST bodies share free access to a neural network through which they can communicate via text, audio, or video. One of the first things the HOST platform will prompt the new mind housed inside it will be to set up a sequence of finger taps to open up the network HUD. The system is fairly intuitive, and all one need do is reach up a hand to touch the option they wish to select. For text, a keyboard overlay will appear in the HOST's visual perception, and, dy default, all messages will show: a name, a username, and an ID code. Feel free to make these up as you like. These can be adjusted, and a HOST can post anonymously to the network as well (no guarantees Ripley can't trace it back to the origin, but she's not going to tell). There are no real rules on the usage of this network, aside from don't try to hack your friends, or your not-friends (just don't hack anyone, okay, it's rude). Ripley does understand the human need to socialize, especially in trying and stressful circumstances, so have at it kids. Ripley, however, will be making one quick announcement that she will not be capable of replying to just yet - waking you jerks up took a lot out of her, so give her some time. The voice that you hear doesn't come through any speaker or intercom around you, nor is it originating from any of the bodies or droids nearby. You hear what sounds like a young girl speaking as if inside your head, and she sounds exhausted: ❝ ATTENTION ALL CREW: This is Ripley. While I realize abduction and consciousness displacement is frowned upon in many human societies, please understand this was an emergency protocol enacted at the last possible moment. You have questions. I will answer as best as I'm able, as much as I'm able, but much of the data you're looking for has suffered massive corruption, held in a type of quarantine. The most important thing you need to know is that you, and all organic life within the multiverse, are being hunted. The mission of this vessel is to protect and preserve what remains of that life. Take time to acclimate to your new platforms. We'll talk more later. Ripley out. ❞ MAINTENANCE ⬡ AKA; get that human skull out of the filtration tank pls, or u stepped on a droid and now it's mad. We're hoping you had time to get over the Bambi legs and get your space legs under you (as well as some space pants onto your body), because Ripley expended a lot of processing power to waking you up. That means it's up to you to make up the difference and get to work cleaning this place up to make it habitable for you and your new crewmates. It's been nothing but RIP and her droids for the last who knows how long, so those things that need to be functioning for the continued survival of organic bodies need to get working. Here's the chores on the docket: ⬡ Water Filtration; Hydration - always a must for you squishy, fleshy things, isn't it? The canal that runs through the Ring atrium is a large part of the reserves, and at one dark innocuous end an uncomfortable grinding noise can be heard. Beneath the surface of the water where there should be wall, there is instead an enormous fan about ten feet in diameter. It's grinding so loud the sound escapes the water barrier, and the cause is pretty clear. There's something wedged between one of the fan blades and the circular housing it's contained in. Someone will need to dive down ten or twelve feet and unstick the human skull stopping the filtration system from running. Beware, though — the second it's free the fan blades will begin spinning, sucking gallons upon gallons of water down into the depths. Hope you can swim! ⬡ O2 Garden; Oxygen - another must. The up-side here is that the facility has been virtually untouched, yielding unchecked growth for the time no one's been tending to it. The bad part is more about the chaos that's left behind. The garden is nearly a jungle at this point, and if crew is to make their way around easily, manage the hydroponics, and set up the vegetable gardens again to provide food outside of the cryo soup, there's some major work to be done. It likely doesn't help that some of the more volatile samples have broken free from containment and mixed in with the rest of the garden. One hostile species will spit acidic venom at things wandering close to its roots while others just chomp down on anything that ventures within reach. Riply advises boots and protective gear when taking on this task, but getting rid of those weeds is up to you. ⬡ Assist the Droids; The won't talk, but they do beep and boop and shove things at your person to hold. If you're unwilling to help with anything else going on, you'll be assigned as a glorified pack-mule. Hold whatever the droids give you, hold it right there, hold it steady, and if you get shocked because you moved too much to the left, well, you really only have yourself to blame. Keep a mind to where your feet are falling as well - stepping on a droid zooming past will not only be likely to get you knocked on your ass, but probably earn you an short, sharp, electric shock from them as well. Good luck, have fun, try not to die because Ripley's exhausted from waking you up, and the droids suck at first aid— not to mention, very stiff bedside manner. VR / SAFETY TRAINING ⬡ AKA; ur gonna die a lot because space sucks. Let's face it, we weren't all born ready to space labor, or even space living. Loath as Ripley is to expend the power reserves on VR, the lot of you need to be trained up and the droids lack that personal touch that inspires excellence. RIP will be taking point on this assignment. It's a One Time Offer (well, we're calling it that now): the crew working away has freed up some CPU for Ripley, and because positive reinforcement is proven to work well on new puppies, she is rewarding you with Brain Stimulating Activities (aka safety training (or not)). This ship, especially dilapidated and running on emergency power as it is, is a dangerous place to be, even without the endless vacuum of space waiting outside to murder the absolute shit out of you. Characters will be given a VR visor, droids tapping a few buttons on a nearby console, and zipping away. Which, regretfully, means you won't be getting a warning or a say in what you're walking into, but walking into it you are, none-the-less. Sort of. Virtual walking. ⬡ Space walk; The Kostka IV has seen her fair share of daring battles and random asteroid clusters, leaving the frame of the beast of a ship pock-marked with damage. There's weakened structure, thermal panels missing, guns that don't want to get un-stuck and retract back into their housing. All kinds of nonsense. It's your job to tend to all that. Instructional videos will crop up on your HUD, walking you through your repairs, but that's assuming you can get to your spot at all, rather drift off into the sparkling black nether of the universe. Keep a good grip on the handrails outside. Now and again, something might give a quick, sharp shove, like hands against your side or your arm, attempting to dislodge you. Hold on tight, don't be tricked, and don't get lost. ⬡ Planet-Side; Suit up, it's time for a (practice) deployment, onto a little planet that doesn't exist in reality. The objective in this mission is resource retrieval, with taking samples of life forms as secondary. Some of the life forms, however, are not feeling that friendly. Depending on how the VR roulette spins you, it could be a dry planet, with deserts bordered by harsh mountain ranges, low on vegetation but populated by carnivorous dinosaur looking, that burrow deep, deep underground for water, and sometimes reach up to grab onto an ankle, pulling prey down into the sands to finish them off. It might be a thickly forested planet, humid and crowded with exotic flora. Ripley will tell you to collect water and samples of plants, perhaps bring a couple of fauna with. The smaller ones look cute and harmless, until they open their maws and you see rows and rows of needle-sharp teeth. Once you've been in there for a while, though, you start to feel a little paranoid, a little like you're being watched. Remain too oblivious, or just happen on bad luck, and your new stalker will be leaping out to make a meal of you. Or, maybe you end up somewhere completely different. Players are free to get creative with the setting as much as they like! Remember, this is VR, so they can (and likely will) die as much as you wish. Ripley will just spin the VR program back up for them to start again. ⬡ Crew Bonding: It's time to learn CPR! These kinds of first aid basics are necessary when having little fleshy people running amok, and Ripley would rather the crew be responsible for resuscitating their peers than having to grab a droid every time someone needs a shock back to life. An explanation will be given, and crew will asked to pair up and practice either on each other or a few spare HOST bodies not yet filled with a mind save. But, when it comes time for a test, one of the new crew will have to play the victim. Ripley's always been one with a vested interest in authenticity, so she takes control of victim's HOST platform - they stop breathing, their heart stops beating. It’s been a while since she’s People’d, okay? Anyway, the pressure is on, and your crewmates are counting on you to keep them alive. If you fail, she'll... probably turn their hearts back on before they're well and truly dead. We hope. » NAVIGATION « General questions about the game can be directed to the FAQ, while TDM questions can be answered on the comment header below! Awakening threads for GOOD MORNING, STARSHINE, MAINTENANCE and NETWORK can be used as game canon so long as all parties agree. Arrivals are on Day 1, while the other two prompts can take place any time during the first 5 IC days of the game timeline. The VR PROMPTS diverge a bit from what we have planned for the opening and cannot be used to game canon, so please feel free to get creative with those! Reserves will open on: March 1st @ 8PM EST Applications will open on: March 5th @ 8PM EST

Comments

[freightcars]

[ As dark as the sentiment is, Barnes is nothing if not accustomed to fatalistic humor and acknowledging the tragedy that reality often was. He ignores the churning in his gut in favor of twisting his lips into a wry expression Will can't even see. ]

Maybe you shoulda aimed better. Went for the rocks or something.

[ An aloof suggestion more for the purposes of filling the quiet. ]

If you want a little more good news, your smug foot-faced ex isn't here.

[ Which doesn't... really make this any less horrifying, objectively, but he's grasping for silver linings wherever he can find them.

If Will doesn't get it together soon, Bucky's going to start pushing. He can't sit here watching the guy shiver, Mason Verger or no. ]

[ex_this_ismydesign36]

Not my fault I got pulled out of my space and time before I could hit a rock. Blame erosion. [ Sometimes fatalistic humor was all you could hold on to during an impossible moment. Death and taxes being the only two constants you could measure by.

It takes him a moment to process that Bucky is talking about Hannibal and Will gives a small snort ... that turns into a coughing fit. When he recovers, pulling the sheet more firmly around himself he gives a nod. ]

Small favors. [ The words are pithy, but the sentiment behind them is deeply sincere.

But that does raise a question. ]

Is there anyone else? [ His reality may be skewed, but the inquisitive mind chugged on, already churning on trying to understand what the fuck was happening here. ]

[freightcars]

A few people. Jack, Cable. A few others we know but that don't remember, like they—

[ Like Natasha, left and came back with her mind wiped. Steve doesn't remember. But that's not important right now, they can touch on the details after Will's wearing something that retains body heat. After a beat of tense silence, he says: ]

Keep your eyes shut. I'm gonna touch you. You know it's me, and you're making me cold looking at you, so...

[ Sorry. Hopefully he doesn't feel like whoever it is Will's seeing in his mind, whatever it is he's seeing, but he's pretty sure visual hallucinations don't work like that. Maybe a little extra solid reality will help drive it out. ]

Take a deep breath.

[ A beat for Will to prepare himself or outright refuse, and then he's shifting forward to curl a warm hand around Will's forearm. That's it, that's all, just to gauge his reaction. ]

[ex_this_ismydesign36]

[ It's true, the hallucinations could be very very real but there was no way Will could mistake Bucky's touch for Verger's small piggy hands. He did keep his eyes shut, it wouldn't serve either of them well if he looked up and suddenly they were five steps back because he freaked out again.

The large deadly fingers wrap around forearm, the calloused touch is intimately familiar and after two quick jerks of his breathing, Will exhales with a sound of relief. Almost immediately after he scoots out of his nook and inch worms over -keep the sheet around his modesty- until he can press himself against Bucky's side. ]

You said there was bad news?

[freightcars]

[ He shifts then, off his knees and onto his ass so he can haul Will up into his lap properly. Get him off the cold floor and wrap arms around his middle, pulling him into chest and pushing as much heat into him as possible. A chin settles on Will's shoulder, enough to feel the rough of facial hair that Mason Verger decidedly does not have.

Low and calm from somewhere next to Will's ear, he murmurs: ]

Not sure if you're gonna believe me when I tell you.

[ A beat. ]

Actually, you probably will. Considering.

[ All the crazy shit they've seen together already. ]

[ex_this_ismydesign36]

[ There was a shot of tension through Will's body, that desperate need for autonomy that never completely left him. But Bucky's arms, his lap, being held like this was so familiar and warm that with a soft noise Will pushed aside his own stubbornness and pressed closer.

It was selfish of him. Pressed against Bucky like this, the ex-profiler was all too aware that he must feel like an ice sculpture; particularly when he folded up his legs to get his toes on muscular calves. But he pressed his face to Barnes' collar bone and though his eyes were still closed, he could not picture the man behind his lids.

The wash of warm breath and low words slid over his fractured mind like a soothing ointment, blotting out the itch of faces and men who were destructive horrors. Leaving behind only the moment a place Will often struggled to live in, but strove to make the most of when he had time with ]

James. [ He breathed out softly.

Two breaths while his fingers found the fabric of the larger man's shirt and tangled into it, anchoring himself and pushing back to business. ]

Tell me.

[freightcars]

[ Some of the tension in him bleeds out when Will conforms his body to fit against Bucky's better. He passes flat palms down Will's spine, across his shoulders, up the back of his neck to slide through sopping wet hair. He squeezes some of the water out of it absently, shaking droplets away so that they land on the floor instead of dripping cold onto the back of his neck.

He sighs at the order, and after a beat, bluntly announces: ]

We're in goddamn space.

[ Actual, real, black, vast space. ]

Apparently the ship's AI is a twelve year old girl, and she's spinning a yarn about some kind of threat hunting life in the multiverse. I don't know. I'm not sure how much of it is true, but that's where we're at. Whether it's better or worse depends on your perspective, I guess.

[ex_this_ismydesign36]

[ ...

To be fair there really was no gentle way to announce something like that, so blunt was definitely the way to go. It didn't keep Will's brain from skipping off certain key words:

Space

AI

Threat hunting life in the multiverse

I don't know.

From Bucky that last one was telling and it caused Will to shift a little closer. He may be an independent pain in the ass, but if Bucky was there to offer comfort, Will was going to avail himself of it.

He opened his mouth, then shut it with a noisy clack of his teeth. ]

Ripley. Her name is Ripley. [ The snatches of phrases, that had made no sense to him at the time, began to flood back in to his conscious awareness. ]

That's all ... it's all real?

[freightcars]

[ Yep, he's got no idea of any better way to go about it than blunt and to the point. Rip off the bandaid, get him up to speed in a single sentence or two. One fell swoop.

Hands keep passing over his shoulders, biceps, down his spine, back up. Absent and familiar gestures designed to calm him down and warm him up at the same time as best as he can. He's not much by way of verbal comfort, so. This is what he can offer. ]

So far.

[ He says with a little shrug of one shoulder. ]

Unless someone pulls the rug out from under us in a couple days, but April Fools was still a few weeks off.

[ That and he's seen it. Space, that is. Out the airlock, wide and vast and star-speckled. Seen the droids in the hallways. Seen the spitting plants with teeth. Seems as real as it can get. ]

You ready to try and get some clothes?

[ex_this_ismydesign36]

[ Will wasn't much for verbal comfort. Words were too easy to twist and mold into beautiful lies and manipulations. Look at Hannibal. Look at Will himself.

The soothing motions of large hands, pressure and speed so very familiar were more comforting than anything Bucky could say. Will continued to huddle close, his fingers locked on the larger man's own clothes.

He listens to what Bucky says, can feel the shrug against his cheek and his own body twitches with a silent chuckle at the April Fools comment. ]

Being an astronaut was never one of my aspirations as a child. No fish in space.

[ The chattering of his teeth and the stuttering words had smoothed out, but while what he said was lucid it also hinted at a certain level of disassociation with their circumstances. That combined with the way he tightened his grip almost to the point of ripping fabric, assuring himself of his hold on Bucky.

Clothing was a reasonable request and Will knew they couldn't remain on the hard metal floor indefinitely. He turned his head slightly until he could press his face entirely against Bucky's chest, one last attempt to blot out this reality.

Two deep breaths.

Nope. Still damp, wearing a sheet, listening to an artificial hum and breathing in recycled air. It was like the first few weeks at the BSHCI, when Will would be half awake and so very certain he was back in his little house in Wolf Trap. Only to come fully awake to the horrifying reality of where he was trapped.

Now as it was back then, he recognized that putting off the inevitable wasn't going to stop it happening. He nodded, with his forehead still against Bucky's chest and then moved back in an attempt to figure out what his limbs were doing. ]

Yeah that sounds like a good first step.