test drive meme.

[fablemods]

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away... You snap awake with a sudden jolt, the sounds of nature surrounding you. The ground is warm beneath your hands, a press of fabric under your head. Sit up. Look around. This isn't where you fell asleep. Not even close to it. But with no one around you, answers as to how you got there in the first place are a little beyond your reach for now. If you decide to head off, don't forget your bag. You'll want that if you plan on making it out here. If you want to survive. And if you don't want to move, well...good luck. There's a shadow on the prowl. A rustle of leaves, a snap of twigs. Glowing eyes in the distance... -------------------- Characters find themselves waking up on the bare ground (or a bed if they're very lucky), a leather pack beneath their head, and entirely alone. It's not where they fell asleep that night. Isn't even close. The sky is the wrong shade, the ground isn't quite right. The only note of familiarity are the clothes on their back. Searching through their pack, characters will find a change of clothes, a few food rations, and something personal to them. They'll also find a pouch of wooden coins and a shard of mirror. Before they get a real chance to investigate those items though, they'll hear a rustle in the distance. The sounds of something moving around. It's their cue to get moving too. And somehow, all characters find their feet guiding them in the same direction. Off towards the Great Lake, less than ten minutes walk away, no matter where on the island they first woke up. Welcome to the island of Leutheria. Welcome to the Fablelands test drive. Above is an arrival prompt that players are welcome to use to introduce or test out any characters they are interested in bringing to the game. Below is an on-going event that takes place throughout the first two weeks of a character's arrival.(Though the wolf will still remain a constant presence on the island for the months to come). And of course, you are free to use this post for any other prompts you wish to use, or mirrorshard conversations too. All threads are able to be used as game canon, providing both players agree to it, and can ultimately be used for bonus AC if you wish to. If you have any questions, please direct them to the FAQ. And without further adieu, let's get on with the show! premise | faq | locations | wishing well | taken | reserves | applications | hiatus/drop | bonus ac

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away... You wake to the feeling of being watched. Of a set of unfamiliar eyes, of warm breath on the back of your neck. A jolt back to the land of the living, and it's gone. No matter how quick you are, how sneaky, the source of the disruption has long since disappeared, so you have no choice but to try and ignore it. To continue on with your day and try to set that moment of strangeness aside. You eat, drink, speak with others. Perhaps you explore a little. Whatever it is you choose to do for the day, that feeling from the morning won't return. And by the time the sun sets and the moon glows brightly above, you've likely set those moments of strangeness aside. It's not like it's anything new, after all. It's the same again for the next few days. No better, no worse. Something best ignored, right? A speck of blood on the doorframe. That wasn't there before, was it? A snap of twigs in the distance. A crunch of leaves. Claw marks gouged deeply into the door. Into the wall above your bed. Scraps of red fabric, turned darker with blood. Pieces of fur. Of flesh. Do you run and hide? Do you fight? Whatever you choose, it's definitely time to make sure your body parts aren't scattered next... ...what a horribly big mouth you have. -------------------- Since first waking up on the island, characters have been stuck with that feeling of being watched. It isn't a constant. Isn't more than a few seconds at a time, dotted throughout the day. Investigation has never turned up much, and there's never been any sightings of the cause of it all. Until now. Throughout the first half of the week, characters will find themselves suffering from that feeling of being watched on a far more constant basis. Rather than it being a one-off, few seconds occurrence each day, that feeling will last for minutes at a time, and on multiple occasions. However, it isn't until the fifth day that they'll start stumbling across physical signs of their monitoring. There are claw marks on doors. Spots of blood on the paths outside. A crack of twigs in the forests, or the imprint of bloodied paws in the snow. Ten days in and those signs start finding their way indoors. Wet footprints, tinged with red. Claw marks in the walls, the floor. Torn sheets and the smell of wet...something. Whatever it is that's been watching you, its finally decided to come and say hello. Two weeks in and characters will begin to have sightings of the creature, its fur dark and its eyes a glowing yellow. At times it looks like a wolf, prowling in the distance. At other times, it's walking on its hind legs, almost human were it not for the muzzle full of gleaming sharp teeth. Get too close, and it slips away like a shadow, gone between one blink and the next. It decides when to reach out to characters, not the other way round. It's after characters finally get a good look at the creature that it starts leaving...gifts. Characters will start to find familiar items from their home worlds amidst the mess. The remains of a childhood pet, perhaps. Photographs of loved ones, faces torn almost beyond recognition. It's only once it delivers its final gift that the creature retreats to the trees again: a blood-splattered item of clothing that clearly belongs to the person the character misses the most at the time, alive or dead. [credit 1 & credit 2]

Comments

[arrogator]

“The only message I can think of is that it mauled the crap out of whoever these gifts are from.”

Or at least that's Mordred's take on it. But she knows that's not exactly right either because she can't really see that person getting wrecked by a wolf. There are other options too, like they're hurt and the wolf is bringing them these things to get their attention, like some sort of dog trying, to help, but that doesn't match with the other things that've been left behind.

“And even if it's not that, it's definitely trying to screw with us by leaving a bunch of weird pictures and crap around.”

She's just assuming that's the wolf, not that it makes a lot of sense for a wolf to have pictures and things like that. But then again, magic and magecraft don't have to make sense to her, they just work, and not being a Caster or mage, she doesn't put too much thought into it.

[clawandscars]

"Ever think it might be getting them from someone else? That it might just be the messenger?" It might explain the frustrating elusiveness that it seemed to have, if it's bringing them from someone else. It might not want to communicate because it didn't have anything yet to say.

"Well, hunt it if you like, but you won't get any help from me." Indeed, the next time he saw the wolf, even if it was at a distance, he was likely to give it a warning. Tsume's inaction had cost the lives of wolves before and he won't do it again.

[arrogator]

No, no, she did not think about that.

“Hey, if somebody else is putting it up to it, I'll teach them a lesson about sending people creepy shit too.”

She's got this. Kind of. There's a confidence in her tone that totally isn't there to hide the fact that the possibility didn't occur to her until just now. But that's fine, she'll just keeping going on her way and try to not think about that one too much. If he's not going to help, why should she put too much stock into it anyways? Thoughts like that are probably a part of why she's not making any progress with this, but that's not something that really occurs to her either.