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

[lie]

[ You were there.

Natasha frowns, briefly staring at a point next to Barnes's face. It keeps her peripheral on him, but lets her mentally process something else. It's not the first time, or the last, that there's a straight line between you and missing time, which isn't exactly something she enjoys thinking about. Quantum physics provides a more accurate theory, but even then. She's long had enough of being blindsided. Six months is a while.

She exhales. The sound's tinged with something a little frustrated, maybe wry. Her attention flicks back to his face, the set of his eyes, and— ]

Steve was with you?

[ No telling whether it's like now, with Steve and his beard. But she assumes. She's seen what they do for each other. ]

[freightcars]

[ The good news is he totally gets it. The bad news is... well, every other facet of this situation as a whole.

He nods slowly. ]

He doesn't remember either. Stark does.

[ Which might be a pretty big bomb to drop considering the last time him and Stark were in the same room together they were trying to rip each other's heads off. Considering about half the reason she got involved in Liepzig was because of them being at odds. Stark and Steve never did get around to getting along, not even there. Ironically, though, after a nice long heart to heart about the parent murdering, Tony and Barnes walked away with an understanding. Funny how things play out.

A beat passes, and he figures maybe he should give her at least a little more context. Just so she understands why he looked at her the way he did. Why he went out of his way to come over here and make sure she was alright. Why he might have a hard time breaking the habit any time soon. ]

We lived together.

[lie]

[ What was it Stark had said? "A brief interlude somewhere thoroughly unpleasant." Characteristically hyperverbal.

It's the next sentence that makes her still. Natasha's expression cycles through expressions too-quick to track, surprise being at the forefront, paranoia the loyal dog trailing behind. Tension settles into her shoulders.

"Lived together." To have had him in her orbit, steady, sharing a space. ]

It wasn't me.

[ There's something a little— gentle in there, quiet in the way she says it. It could mean something defensive, a you don't know me, and part of that's true, but Natasha doesn't think that he's after some return to the status quo he knows. It's more that... coming over here, and telling her, it's an allowance. A kindness. She pays her dues.

A beat— a tense one. Then, her mouth ticks. ]

Sounds complicated.

[freightcars]

[ The thing is... he knows. It wasn't her, and even if it was a person is the sum of their memories. If she doesn't remember, it doesn't matter. Not to anybody but him, and he's nothing if not capable of compartmentalizing significant things until they're repressed away into nothing.

Just figured she should know, because it'll take a while to squash it completely. He thinks she kinda gets it, thinks she might, but he's not about to ask. They tend to operate on a few wavelengths at one time, he's never completely sure how much of it gets lost in translation between the two of them, but they pick up more than they miss.

Usually.

Besides, it's easier to play this whole thing off and minimize it, so his answer's a dry: ]

Nah, you're an open book. Always leaving towels on the bathroom floor. Putting the toilet paper roll on backwards.

[ Not a single bit of that's true. Or, rather, it might be but they didn't actually share a bathroom so what the hell does he know. ]

[lie]

[ For a second, he sort of reminds her of Clint. The ease in it. Who knew interdimensional space travel would be the thing to make her see James Barnes a little more?

Natasha huffs a laugh. The amusement lingers, genuine, before it naturally falls away. ]

Stealing your shampoo, I bet.

[ The joke almost doesn't land. It's ridiculous and foreign and something that happened to someone else. That personal disconnect, if she gave enough time to it, might take her to a different place. So she doesn't chase it. Instead, the silence settles. Parallel to companionable but not quite, before: ]

So. What's your play?

[ She knows what she's doing. She's taking advantage of it by asking what his plans are, in so much as any of them can, you know, make plans right now beyond 'don't starve'. ]

[freightcars]

[ Yeah he could've told her that back in Liepzig. Hey, Natasha, I know we don't see eye to eye right now but one day down the road we're gonna wind up on a fucking space ship and bro it out.

No, just kidding, life is weird, what the hell is going on. She doesn't even know the half of it. Probably better that way, she didn't have the easiest time where they were before this anyway. At least they have an understanding now.

(At least she knows he's not out to put a scar on the opposite side of her waist to match.)

The humor fades out when the talk of plans comes into being, his expression goes a little grim. A little solemn. ]

If you're looking for a long term community strategy, I'm probably the wrong guy to ask.

[ Rallying the victims, getting 'em all to be functional contributing members of Team Space so they can find a way to charter a course back to Earth or wherever. Solve the Great Space Mystery. Talk to the creepy uncanny valley robot girl in charge of the whole operation. Most of that sounds like more of a Stark thing, or a Steve thing, or an anybody but him thing.

He's barely got a running track record of organizing himself. ]

Truth be told all I'm thinking about right now is how to not eat the stuff we woke up in, and what's on the other side of the doors we can't get through.

[ Why lock it if there's nobody else on board and nothing to hide? Are they locked in or is something else locked out? ]

[lie]

[ Beats winding up fucking on a space ship. ]

Yeah.

[ But the syllable sounds far away, thoughtful. Long term survivability has to be measured somehow; a good metric is food, water. Climate control and oxygen. Things she knows about but isn't exactly an expert in keeping sustainable. It's not much of a surprise that to hear his cornerstones mimic her priorities — locked doors and goop for breakfast is terrible — and Natasha briefly considers the merits of working with him.

Discards it. Too much, too soon. Maybe sometime, but it's an environment of unknowns and potential hostility. Adding to it now isn't in her purview. ]

I'll do some triage. [ She nods towards the pods. ] Walk the steps, see what I find later. Figure out if we need a defensive strategy. [ A little recon. Practically old hat. There's a pause, almost like a hesitance, but— ]

Keep in touch? [ It has motive, in terms of being aware of where he is. But the olive branch isn't unkindly meant, either. ]

[freightcars]

[ You'd think that, but frankly after the experience he had in Duplicity space is almost a relief. At least there's no city-mandated touching up here. Nobody's sticking anything into anyone who doesn't want anything stuck into them, once those cables are out of the way.

So far.

He's not expecting them to team up and fight crime together either, but the reality of the matter is there aren't a whole lot of people here. A good chunk of them are familiar to him, but some are complete strangers. There are a few dozen at most, they're restricted to a few close quarters, and they're all in the same boat (literally). It means one way or another they're gonna wind up working together to survive.

So.

Goop priorities can be shared. It'll come up eventually anyway. She can knock herself out with all that triage in the meantime. He gives her a little nod, olive branch accepted as the goodbye it's meant to be. He makes no move to shove off the counter or follow her. ]

Don't fall out an airlock.

[ Bambi legs. ]

[lie]

[ #gooppriorities

She eyes him for another moment; a straight up and down for mental inventory. As a closing goodbye, the pause is a little long for it, extending it out beyond its natural bookend.

Still. Natasha does move eventually, without anything else to say or a question in-hand. She just straightens, if slowly, frowning down at her previously offending knee. At least upright is fine, and so is the next ginger step, so the rest of it will just have to follow suit.

She arches an eyebrow at Barnes anyway. ]

You first. [ Roomie.

Then she's back into the fray, picking up a few sheets and other offending tracksuits before pod patrol.

Avenging nudity. Yay, space. ]