Test Drive

[snowblindmods]

TEST DRIVE MEME

If you'd like to apply to Snowblind and would like to test the waters first or get a sample set up for your application, this meme is for you! We've even provided some prompts for you to use if you want (but feel free to make up your own). Here's how it works. ✭ Reply to this entry with a character you're considering apping into the game. You can include the name of your character and the fandom in your subject line. ✭ Comment around to others on the meme, whether you're in the game already or not. ✭ Now you have a sample ready for your application! ✭ So go reserve and apply when reservations and applications are open. ✭ Seriously, do it. Network Prompts ONE: DRUG PUSHING What luck! You've found a bottle of medication...only, oh, it looks like it's a prescription for one of the other people trapped here with you. You have a lot of power in your hands now: you could do the right thing and give it back without a fight, demand a worthy trade to see how badly they want it, or auction it off to the highest bidder. They're not the only ones who could use a painkiller or an antidepressant, after all. If you don't need it for yourself, you're sure to be able to fetch a high price (or bank some high gratitude points) for it from someone. TWO: CHECK YOUR RECEIPTS After a long day of traveling, you reach into your bag to scrounge up some dinner but you find that all of your food has gone bad. Everything, including the rations you stocked up on just yesterday, is covered in a thick layer of mold. Even the packaged nonperishables are somehow spoiled. Your whole backpack reeks of rot, and nothing edible has been spared. Maybe you can restock tomorrow, but what if you're not the only one whose food has been tainted? And what about the meal you had for lunch just hours ago? Your stomach turns. You'd better take to the network to get to the bottom of this Action Prompts THREE: WRITING ON THE WALL You've just settled into a building for the night with your traveling companion when you notice a message left somewhere on one of the walls. It's signed by a username you don't recall ever seeing before. It tells you discoveries and facts about the town you don't think are really real or should be followed. Tells you that they're heading in a direction they're convinced has the exit, and urge you to follow their lead. One of you thinks it's worth consideration. After all, why would anyone leave a message like this if they didn't mean it? But there are risks involved in chasing the assertions. Do you have the resources left to try? FOUR: CORPSE PARTY Just before lockdown, you and your traveling companion are about to seek shelter in the nearest building when you spot a huddled figure nearly buried in the snow. When you get a little closer, you see that it's a person wrapped tightly in a blanket. Neither of you recognizes them, but you can't be sure; the blanket covers their face. They seem to have succumbed to the elements, but it looks like they're still breathing! You manage to drag them into the building with you with seconds to spare. Good job, you've saved somebody's life! But, as you pull apart the blankets to check on your new companion, you realize that they're not a "somebody" at all... And you're locked in with it until morning.

Comments

[srsbat]

We won't kill anything. [It's not a suggestion.] We don't know who or what it is, and it won't die on my watch.

[His boot steps on the knife because he's not stupid.] Get back.

Do you have rope? Chain, wire, anything with length?

[devoutish]

Look at its eyes. It's dead. It's a fucking liability.

[He looks at Bruce steadily.]

You're don't make the decisions here, mate. If you don't want to take part in killing it, you can just go in the other room; it's all right.

[srsbat]

No one will be killing. [His hand extends a bit at Alfie, non-threatening, palm-up, but demanding.]

Do you have anything that can be used as a securing device? We don't have time.

[devoutish]

No, I don't.

[It's a lie, but a good one; he doesn't look away furtively, or glance guiltily towards the bag where his jumprope is kept.]

Because, you see, mate, it works the other way. I am gonna have no part in restraining it.

[srsbat]

That's fine. [Even if it's a lie. Bruce does understand how people can be in tight situations; he can understand the instinctive parts that make people do things people normally wouldn't do, despite not condoning it.

It's not unlike how his parents died, after all.] Stay back. [In a swoop, he bends and gathers the knife up from beneath his boot, then hastily passes it along his cape by his shoulders. The sturdy material can be cut, and the knife peels the cape away easily.

Looks more the sillier for it by losing ten points of intimidation, but whatever. He slings the knife away, and twists the cape long and solid. Then he leaps into a restraining take-down.

It's not brutal, but it's heavy handed; a foot goes into the back, and the cape goes around the neck, then down around the wrists to lock them together. (He can touch it, so it's real?) Movement for escape will cause choking, if it even matters. (Being this close, though, makes him feel strange in the head.) He's fast, and his knot is at the elbow and unbreakable.

He spends maybe thirty seconds barely touching the thing before jumping back up and putting distance between them.] Has this ever happened before?

[devoutish]

[Alfie doesn't try to interfere, but he watches carefully - paying particular attention to where the knife goes.]

Haven't a clue, mate. Not in the time I've been here, and I've never seen the living dead mentioned in any of the documents. Here, shall we try talking to it?

[Without getting close enough to grab, he leans forward, addressing the creature.]

Hello, mate! Are you aware in there? If you can speak, I'll take back wanting to knife you up, and extent my utmost apologies to you.

[srsbat]

[Bruce is Not Amused. It's not that he thinks it'll respond--it's the fucking principle of the matter. No killing. He just doesn't do it, and he doesn't like to watch other people do it. Undead or not.

There's really no surprise at a lack of response.] Coherency doesn't necessarily have a correlation with being vocal. The vagus nerve could be damaged, or the vocal folds. The larynx, the trachea.

Certain viruses or injury to the brain can obscure rational function as well. They were in sub-zero temperatures for an undetermined amount of time. [Pointedly:] But they could still be alive.

[devoutish]

Nothing good's gonna come out of the living fucking dead, mate.

[He rolls an empty food tin towards the zombie, testing its reaction.]

[srsbat]

[The tin really only agitates the thing for a moment or two of gnashing- and growl-induced writhing.] Stop. [He's not afraid to scold a grown-ass man. He does it all the time.]

For now, we can find a room to put it in until we can leave. Something secure.

Does it look like anyone you know?

[devoutish]

Right. I'll let you handle that, and the guarding. I'd like my knife back.

It's no one I've seen before.

[srsbat]

Good. [He doesn't clarify what topic it's about.] You can have it back, but if you bring it out with intent to kill, I'll make sure it's broken. [Don't test him, punk gangster!!]

I'm going to put our guest in the guest room.

[devoutish]

If there's only two bedrooms in this house, you'll be taking the couch.

[srsbat]

I've slept on worse. [Hauling the thing up, even from behind and through gloves, gives Bruce the same effect as last time: curious, a rush of swimmy-headed vertigo that feels like perhaps the beginning of a migraine.

Whatever it is, human, monster, undead, it goes along easily when Bruce steers it, not putting up much of a fuss except to grizzle and stagger. If he could have some sort of link to his computer and his utility belt, Bruce thinks he might can figure out what to make of this thing.

For now, it goes inside the walk in closet of the master bedroom; Bruce figures he'll be the one sleeping in there for guarding purposes anyway. Putting the thing stomach-down will make it a bit harder to stand up, and there's a loud bang as Bruce uses his boot to split the inside handle off the door. The bolt and outside handle remain unscathed, thankfully, but Bruce wedges a chair under just in case.

Then he ventures back out, closing the bedroom door as added measure.] It's secure.

[devoutish]

So you say.

[Alfie looks both highly unimpressed and highly skeptical.]

The knife.

[srsbat]

You didn't find it? [You could have looked yourself, Alfie. Old man. He points to the other side of the room from where he's standing. Half tipped under the leg-end of the couch.]

There.

[devoutish]

[He scoops it up, slipping it back into his coat pocket.]

How's your new friend?

[srsbat]

Restrained, but not dead. [It's a petty, underhanded jab, but Bruce doesn't care right now.] In the closet of the master bedroom.

Are you sure this has never happened before that you know of? If the person is really dead, it would take quite some know-how to animate them.

[devoutish]

You'd be surprised at what this place is capable of, mate.

[srsbat]

No, just concerned.

If someone you knew had been re-animated, would you have killed them so quickly?

[devoutish]

If you reanimated into something like that, would you want to be spared?

[srsbat]

Yes, if it meant sparing someone from having the burden of killing me.

[devoutish]

Fucking hell, you're one of those.

[Not that he's surprised, given what he knows about the guy.]

I'll tell you what, mate. If you freeze to death and turn into whatever that thing is, I can take care of the killing for you, yeah? And I will sleep fine at night, after.

[srsbat]

It isn't that easy, no matter what you think. Even someone like you shouldn't be required to dirty your hands to end the suffering of another person. That's not your call to make.

[devoutish]

Sometimes, right, you do not have a fucking choice.

[srsbat]

You always have a choice.