Second Test Drive Meme

[ourearth]

Second Test Drive Meme



Welcome to the SoE TDM!

Due to the premise of the game, everyone on this testdrive must be the modern day reincarnation of the characters we all know and love. Please take a quick look at our navigation to familiarize yourself with the concept and setting of the game before you jump in.

If you have a relationship plotting post comment for your character (which is NOT mandatory to play in this tdm), please link to it when putting up a toplevel on the TDM. That way, other players can easily get an idea of what kind of character they will be tagging.

Other than that, you know the tdm drill - when commenting, please put your character's name and canon in the subject line, and write one or more threadstarters so others can tag you easily. Below, you'll find some prompts that you can use or discard at will to write those threadstarters.

1. A ghostly apparition

There are many places in Mossgate Council where one may spot ghosts, but the place that yields such sightings most frequently is the ruins at the top of the cliffs. So one beautiful night, you're up there - for a date? To smoke weed? To watch the stars with a bottle of whiskey? - as you suddenly notice something out of the corner of your eye. Perhaps it is a bearded man in a long cloak, or a woman in historical clothes, or something much more outlandish... What do you do?

2. Old ships

A new exhibit at the museum has opened! ...Or rather an old exhibit has reopened after some repairs and an overhaul of the presentation. So now the old pre-Roman-times ship that is the pride of the museum can be visited by the public again, and of course there are all kinds of advertisement around town, and a large sign in the entrance are of the building guiding visitors towards the correct room. The ship sits elevated on a platform in the middle of the room and other items and explanations are placed along the walls. A volunteer guide is always close by to explain more about the ship (if your character is the volunteer guide - just make something up!).

3. Moss Manor gathers

In Moss Manor, there is reason for curiosity, gossip and free drinking. Wait. No. Of course it's just that the village gathers to warmly welcome the new vicar of the local church, and since that church is so important locally, even those who aren't directly related to it show up to say hi.

But while they're there, why not take advantage of the free food and drink and the opportunity to talk to everyone else at the welcome festivity?

4. Water activities

In Folkton, summer has begun. People are boating on the little river, sitting near the water while studying or take an afternoon nap there, older relatives try to keep children from falling into the water or at least not going in without supervision, and occasionally someone is yelling at a dog that just took a leap into the cool waters and splashed them at everyone in the general surroundings. An ice cream van is parked near the river, and some kids play football near the river.

5. The wonderful everyday

Being people living in our regular, modern world, people need to work or study, eat and commute, shop and relax... Just that all those regular, normal tasks can hold unexpected difficulties if you were just sitting at the tills at Tesco's, and this noseless customer suddenly made you remember the day you lost your parents. Or maybe you were getting some exercise, and running down the street you developed superspeed and have no idea how to control it yet...

6. How many times will they have to tell you?

Twice a year, there are guided tours through the tunnels under the cliffs east of Mossgate. Those tunnels, dug into the chalk throughout centuries or perhaps millenia, were built without a general plan, so their layout is an absolute confusing mess. On top of that, there are cave-ins and unsafe areas. It is strictly advised to not stray from your group, as people have been harmed because they got lost in them before. But you just had to get distracted, or perhaps think that it would be more fun to explore on your own, and now you are lost without a blip of signal to call for help with...

7. Fun, fun fun!

At Mossgate's seaside, a Victorian pleasure pier extends about 40 metres into the sea. The platform at the end of the pier holds fairground rides such as a merry-go-round, a small rollercoaster and a helter skelter and along the pier kiosks sell candy floss, rock candy, roasted nuts and other goodies. A small distance down the street, a minigolf site can be found and on the street along the coast there are fish and chips shops, family-friendly arcades and souvenir shops. Maybe you are actually here for the fun, or maybe you just work here or are trying to track down a wayward friend...

8. Wildcard

And, of course, the obligatory do-what-you-want option.

Comments

[lovedramamoron]

"What?" Jimmy was more than a little horrified. "You've never heard of her? But she's one of the most popular mystery authors ever. Her books have sold more than 2 billion copies! You've heard of Hercule Poirot? Right? And Miss Marple? What about the movies?"

[runs]

Nope, sorry, he only gets the blank face of someone who definitely hasn't heard any of those names yet.

She is, after all, more of an Enid Blyton kind of age.

[lovedramamoron]

Jimmy had been tragically precocious. He learned to read young, and was reading classic detective novels by first grade. Many of his teachers had despaired over his refusal to read anything else.

Unfortunately, this left him with very little understanding of what was normal for kids to read.

"What about the movies? You've heard of "Murder on the Orient Express", right? Or "And Then There Were None"?"

It was a stretch, but he'd take anything at this point.

[runs]

"...No?" She pulls her legs up so her knees rest against her chest and she can sling her arms around them. "Why is there a murder on the Orient Express?" Whatever an Orient Express is. Probably a special airport route served by National Express?

[lovedramamoron]

"Because that's the story," he points out. "They're traveling on the Orient Express, and there's a murder."

He didn't understand what was confusing about that.

[runs]

"But why is there a murder? Wouldn't it be easier to wait until they got there?"

Sure, it's a story, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't have some logic.

[lovedramamoron]

"Of course not. In that story it wouldn't have worked if they'd waited. The reason is that when you have a group of people on a train, no one can go anywhere when it is in motion. So it was possible to predict exactly where the target of the crime would be."

He'd spent time thinking about this.

[runs]

"Couldn't they just have tracked the victim until they walked into a dark alleyway at the destination?

Since they knew where they were at that point, so they could have followed, and then they could have run away after much more easily once people started looking into it."

[lovedramamoron]

"What reason would more than ten people have for all following one person into an alley?"

That made no sense at all. Not to mention Murder in an Alley didn't have nearly as much appeal as a name.

[runs]

"...So ten people killed that one person together?

.........Like that one Roman king!" She suddenly brightens up. "The one that went to war in France a lot!"

[lovedramamoron]

Jimmy stares at her blankly.

"Roman King? But the Romans didn't have kings. They had consuls and emperors."

[runs]

"No, no, they had that one king! But they didn't like having a king, so they wanted to kill him, but nobody wanted to be the one who did it.

So a whole group went in together and stabbed him, so that afterwards nobody could say who had done the stab that he died from!" She got this. Rude, doubting her.

[lovedramamoron]

"Do you mean Julius Caesar?" he asks skeptically. "He wasn't a king, you know."

[runs]

"He totally was a king. They elected him at first, but then they elected him to be a king. Because they said that he could tell everyone else what to do as long as he lived, and that's what kings do. Or queens.

Except for Elizabeth because she doesn't want to deal with how stupid politicians are, my grandma says. If she told people what to do she would just get a headache, she says."

[lovedramamoron]

"Actually he was voted to be dictator perpetuo," Jimmy points out. "And before that he was a dictator or a consul. He never had king as a title. The word king most likely comes from an Old English word, so it wouldn't make sense for a Roman to have it."

Trivia was one of Jimmy's hobbies. He could rarely resist the urge to correct inaccurate information.

[runs]

She shrugs, never having held much interest in boring details. "Dictators are just kings whose parents weren't kings and whom nobody likes, anyway."