metamods: (Default)
meta moderators ([personal profile] metamods) wrote in [community profile] metamemes2022-03-04 04:33 pm
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TEST DRIVE MEME #02




TEST DRIVE MEME
Welcome to [community profile] metaheroes! As the game is invite-only, please bear in mind that new players must have an invitation from a current player to apply. Interested players who do not know anyone in the game can reach out to the mod team HERE to request an invite for the March app round. These invitations will be processed the day before reserves open. However, no invitation is necessary to play on the this test drive.

Threads from this post can be made game canon if players agree upon it. To facilitate this, this log has no new arrival prompt. Please see the PREVIOUS CONFLUENCES for general ideas as to how characters may have arrived. New characters will be arriving with the March 27th arrival log.

For players who do not want to thread out an arrival, they may backdate their characters' arrival to a previous Confluence. These characters were not picked up by the transportation spell used by the Alliance. These characters will have been living on their own for the last few months, so please address this in the 'Brainstorming' section of the application.


01. METASTRAVAGANZA — everywhere.
Things haven't been the same since Confluences started again. The last two months have been more exciting than the last twenty years! The skies are full of new heroes, the day is saved and threatened by unfamiliar faces, the media is having a field day trying to report on every single new face while companies try to snag them for brand deals.

But not everything in this world centers around costumed combat. Today is a perfectly normal day and you're tasked with the most dangerous mission of all - leading an every day life. Maybe you go to a perfectly normal job to maintain your secret identity - or maybe you've already abandoned that, living full time as your metahuman self.

The sun is shining, and even in the early hours of the morning, parties in the DOWNTOWN STREETS of those CITIES STRUCK BY THE RECENT CONFLUENCES are disrupting the reconstruction efforts that have gotten well underway. These parties celebrate meta efforts to save the day! The streets are full of booths selling food and hastily made knock-off toys of the newest heroes who haven't yet put a copyright on their costume.

But not everyone looks so thrilled about this celebration. Many people look disgusted at this celebration of metahumans interrupting their commute to work, muttering under their breath about what a pain in the ass metahumans are and how much destruction they've wrought in these few short months.

Meanwhile, school-aged metas board the bus to LOFTY HEIGHTS META SCHOOL, hidden somewhere in the sky. There, in-between learning about grammar and punctuation, they are trained to use their new abilities ... Notably, when powers training arrives, the new arrivals outshine the metas native to this world. Very few seem to have any powers on par with the new comers.

Later in the day, the Student Council holds an assembly dedicated to the responsible use of powers. They award any students who have helped save the day with accolades — as well as detention for skipping class to help out as an unlicensed hero. Whoops!

Maybe you should just skip today.


02. SEEDY UNDERBELLY — central city.
Central City is a hard place to live. The city is in almost constant peril, with constant power vacuums in organized crime and city government being filled by worse and worse people. Despite having the Guardian Alliance stationed at its center and doing their best to uplift the people and their citizens, the city suffers from a corruption so deep that it seems to be baked into the very concrete.

The Alliance does what it can to make the city a better place but it's a bandaid over a bigger wound. Because the nigh constant metahuman-centered destruction is the source of so many of Central City's problems - meta organizations are often the last resort for its people. Still, the Alliance makes sure to keep heroes on hand to punch muggers as well as run soup kitchens. Their healers provide healing free of charge, and many of their psychics are trained therapists who use their powers to soothe the citizens' many traumas.

But the real power in the city is held by people like FRANK KAFKA, a crime lord with a finger in every pie. Both guilds leave Kafka to his own devices because he officially possesses no metahuman abilities and he avoids any dealings with them. Tonight, his goons are running their favorite extortion scheme with a twist. A group of them marches through a run-down street, shaking down vulnerable families and businesses for protection money. If an individual resists, the gang threatens to bring the spectre of newly created metahumans down upon their head. Though Kafka himself is not present, his goons will give up his location under enough pressure.


03. NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM — excelsior.
With how often the city is destroyed, one wouldn't expect the MUSEUM OF EXCELSIOR to get much in the way of priceless artifacts, but the museum's basement vault is one of the most well guarded facilities in all the country. Practically impenetrable, it stores every conceivable relic of value. But today, thanks to some villainous meddling, there's a lapse in their security that aligns perfectly with the planned time for the changeover of an art exhibit, affording some enterprising thieves a chance at millions of dollars in priceless artwork.

Heroes affiliated with the Guardian Alliance are asked to patrol and keep these relics safe, while the members of the Society of Villainous Reformation are called upon to pay favors forward by getting in their way. As the untested new kids on the block, player characters draw the short straw and are sent in pairs to complete their task, regardless of whether it's to steal these artifacts or guard them.

Villains, now's the chance to get rich quick! Heroes, protect these treasures from falling into the wrong hands!


04. DINOTOPIA — excelsior.
Confluences are back.

And that means new unaffiliated supervillains are running rampant in the streets, causing the kind of directionless, clumsy chaos that the Guild typically frowns at. A little mischief is good if it serves as distraction for a heist, but this is...

Well...

This a very large velociraptor with human arms standing in the middle of Excelsior. If anyone asks, he calls himself DINO DAN. But why would you ask when he's busy transforming people into dinosaurs - or partially into dinosaurs - using his aptly named Dino-Ray? The people of Excelsior are used to a lot of chaotic shenanigans, but this is a little much even for them. The newly transformed dinosaur-people are losing themselves to their instincts and charging at bystanders. Of those that retain (or regain) their senses, some appear strangely delighted to have this new experience, while others wail in horror at their lost humanity.

As heroes line up to stop him, he'll tell anyone who listens about his displaced rage and the revenge he seeks on an unfair world that let him turn himself into a dinosaur. Not surprising, out of an Excelsior local. However, confronted by metas who can stop him, Dino Dan hooks the Dino-Ray on his belt and grabs a second ray-gun. Anyone he shoots with this one disappears with a comical POP!

Those unfortunate enough to be hit by this ray will find themselves standing in a land before time, right beside a research station. Those clever enough to pull out their cell phones will notice that they still have reception, and rule out time travel.

In addition to clippings of ancient and extinct plants, characters who venture inside will find a half dozen prehistoric humans have apparently been displaced through time and held captive in Dino Dan's remote island research station. If that wasn't obvious enough, his research notes suggest the use of time travel — though like all other dimensional travel, it stopped working in January.

Characters may trigger a trap in the research station and find themselves also temporarily transformed into reptiles, or they may take it upon themselves to rescue the poor folks this mesozoic maniac has been holding hostage! Whatever the plan: if he's causing havoc in the city, that has to mean there's there's a teleporter in his lab to get back. But there's no shortage of Guard T-Rexes blocking the path.
wordiness: (009)

[personal profile] wordiness 2022-03-06 09:25 pm (UTC)(link)
[ despite everything billy knows about loki, he is a cute kid, and his excitement about the bacon kind of reminds him of his younger brothers. ]

Yeah, we used to get breakfast after saving someone or putting out some kind of emergency.

[ he leads them over to the other stall, pulling out the alliance card to buy the food in question and passing the little paper container of bacon over to loki. ] So what point are you from? Before we met, or is it some kind of time-space thing?
thecoolerloki: (03.)

[personal profile] thecoolerloki 2022-03-07 03:15 am (UTC)(link)
[Give him a moment, he has to eat the bacon first. Loki truly looks like he's in Heven as he does, though. The only thing better than this would be bacon milkshakes.]

Before we met. [he says through another mouthful of bacon.] The year was 2012 on Midgard when I left it. I've already been informed of what happens... after.
wordiness: (018)

[personal profile] wordiness 2022-03-07 06:01 pm (UTC)(link)
[ loki's pleasure at the snack food is so weirdly unguarded and honest that despite himself, billy finds the affection he'd felt for him threatening to block his throat. and.. this is the kid that loki had only been pretending to be, isn't he? unless it's all a lie or a game, of course, and billy really shouldn't risk it. he shouldn't, and yet..

he steers them toward a less crowded area, taking a bite of the fried heart-attack on a stick he bought for himself, eyes cutting to the boy as he admits that he knows.

who the hell told him? that's truly fucked up. ]
.. Whoever told you is a dick, [ he decides after a few moments, quiet. ] I guess you do have a right to know it, though.
thecoolerloki: (07.)

[personal profile] thecoolerloki 2022-03-07 06:14 pm (UTC)(link)
[While he technically agrees with the first part...]

I figured it out. Everyone tries lying at first, but. [Loki sighs.] I am the Prince of Lies, after all.

My elder self attempted to soften the blow when I met him, though which one of us he was protecting is difficult to say. He claimed he was me from the future, a spell of yours had changed us, but that I needed to trust him. Little half-truths that ultimately fell apart.
wordiness: (024)

[personal profile] wordiness 2022-03-07 06:25 pm (UTC)(link)
Well.. [ he hesitates, wincing a little. ] I guess that's partially true. I did give him that body. [ well, sort of. his powers had. it's complicated, and anyway, not particularly relevant right now.

he's kind of pissed, though, that loki dragged him into his lies to his younger self, but he's not all that surprised. ]


He's a pain in the ass, [ he sighs, long-suffering, but reaches over a moment later to gently squeeze the boy's elbow. ] Sounds like it's been pretty weird for you here so far.
thecoolerloki: (10.)

[personal profile] thecoolerloki 2022-03-07 06:32 pm (UTC)(link)
It was my body.

[Even the older one! Just so they're clear!

At the elbow squeeze, he flinches slightly, unused to this sort of touch. It's been more frequent lately, but it's still strange.]


... Not particularly. When I compare this to a troll posing as Thor or a spell that turned us all into Midgardians or me literally rewriting my uncle's memories, well. My pet bird stealing my body isn't too far off from everything else.
wordiness: (024)

[personal profile] wordiness 2022-03-08 02:11 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah. [ yeah, it was. and no matter how much he ended up caring for the other loki, that's something he can't forget.

.. also, the other loki was a bird? wild. he's really going to have to ask him about that if he ever sees him again. ]


I don't think I've ever met a troll. Could one really pass that well for Thor? [ on one hand, thor is built like a brick wall. on the other, aren't trolls ugly? and thor is not. ]
thecoolerloki: (13.)

[personal profile] thecoolerloki 2022-03-08 08:12 pm (UTC)(link)
It was magic.

[Billy, you might be pretty, but Loki thinks that's obvious for anyone like them.]

He didn't technically pass for Thor anyways, the spell erased everyone's memory of the God of Thunder and replaced it with a new one. I was the only one who knew this Tanarus was not my brother. Naturally, I saved the day and everyone was very grateful.

[Technically, he only helped to return Mjolnir to Thor who did more of the heavy lifting with Heimdall.]
wordiness: (009)

[personal profile] wordiness 2022-03-08 09:34 pm (UTC)(link)
[ he huffs, but he's smiling a little as he does it. ] Pardon me. [ to be fair, he has no idea what trolls are or aren't capable of. he wouldn't have expected magic, though. ]

What was the deal with replacing him, anyway? [ there are probably half a dozen reasons for it, but who knows. ] Pretty cool, saving your brother. [ after all, it's thor. ]
thecoolerloki: (05.)

[personal profile] thecoolerloki 2022-03-08 09:53 pm (UTC)(link)
The usual. Karnilla wanted to mess with Asgard, the trolls were going to kill the All-Mother, boring things like that.

[he shrugs]

I've done it dozens of times.
Edited 2022-03-08 21:54 (UTC)