collectedmemes | TEST DRIVE #1

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TEST DRIVE #1

Hi shoppers! Welcome to the first Test Drive Meme for COLLECTED. A few things before we get started:

» For the time being, our TDM’s are closed to those eligible to apply based on our invite system. This means that you must be on one of the mod’s plurklists, or invited as a +1 by someone on those lists. Thanks for understanding!

» TDM Threads will NOT be canon.

» Because of that, feel free to assume/handwave CR, and assume your character has been in the setting for a little bit.

» When the game opens, characters will be able to try their hand at going outside. But, during the TDM, all doors and windows to the outside will be locked, and characters will be unable to venture out there.

» These prompts are not exhaustive - feel free to make up your own within the setting of the mall! Anywhere on the Second Floor of the mall is free game. And if you have any questions about what you can and can’t do (or about anything else) reply to the QUESTIONS comment below, and we’ll get back to you soon.

Most importantly, have fun! And thank you so much for your interest in Collected; we’ve been so stoked over the turnout!! 🧡

PROMPTS

There’s one big problem about getting around the Mall - and no, it’s not the bottom floor that’s flooded.

The other huge problem that the dilapidated infrastructure causes aside from making everything smell weird and leaving tons of crumbled debris around is that at some points in the mall, it’s impossible to get across large gaps in the flooring where it’s fallen through to the waters below. In fact, to access the side of the mall across from where you are right now, there are no paths that are safe for walking across. But there is one way.

One attraction of the mall has stayed (mildly) in tact - and that’s a Hi Wire Bicycle. The one way across to the other side of the Mall is this rusty, dusty bicycle attached to a thick wire, with signs around the attraction describing how much the fare used to be to ride across - if you were daring enough, that is! Obviously, no one’s ridden across this thing in years - much less for the overpriced payment required.

More than that, it seems a little… less than safe. The net that probably provided mall-goers with some degree of self-assurance has aged, sagging and unraveling at the junctures of some of the knots. If you were to fall onto it, would it still catch you…? The wire affixed to the bike doesn’t seem too steady, either, not to mention how hard you’ll have to push against the rusted pedals to get them to move. As it stands, though, it’s the only way across to get to the Second Floor’s other half of stores. Luckily (or maybe unluckily?) there’s a seat for you and a friend. So, at least you won’t go down alone.

To make it across, you’ll have to be brave, be creative, and most of all, be lucky!

II.

A.
Near the heart of the food court, decorations for what used to be Santa’s village are still laid about. How many Christmases ago were these left here? By the looks of things, a lot. A thick coating of dust has settled on the nooks and crannies of what is supposed to be the elves workshop, alongside the seat where Santa must have sat to take pictures with children.

In the Elves’ Workshop, you’ll find a massive amount of animatronic elves. They’re all positioned to be working on toys, putting up decorations, or singing from carol books - it looks like these little guys were put here to perform for kids, not unlike an interactive (and more Christmas-y) version of It’s a Small World. There’s even un-opened (and therefore okay-to-eat!) boxes of chocolate chip cookies that must have been for the Mall-goers around Christmastime stashed inside an open cabinet, which was most definitely only for employees to access.

The only problem is that once you enter and make your way inside the workshop… something strange happens. Is something grabbing onto your clothes? Your hair? Maybe a stray finger? It’s the little wooden hands of one of the elves. Your first thought is that you just brushed past it and got caught on it - but, on the second thought, it’s not letting go. In fact, it’s grip is getting tighter. Painful, even. All while it smiles blankly ahead, eerily still aside from it’s tiny hand squeezing you. Take your eyes off these cheery boys and girls for too long, and you’ll realize they’re not staying put like good little elves - they’re moving closer to you only when they’re out of sight.

If you’re unlucky enough for several to latch onto you, you’d better ho-ho-hope someone can break you free.

B.
Outside the Workshop, more towards where the line to meet Santa would be, there’s a big snow machine. Unluckily for you, the machine’s sensors, which would have known to start putting out snow whenever people walk by, seem to still be working despite the Mall’s run-down state. As soon as you get near the thing, it starts spewing out tons of fake snow. It’s completely unlike the delicate sprinkling you’d find in a shopping center: it’s plain blasting you with the stuff, more like a hose than anything else. Too bad that the part of the machine that broke was whatever controlled the volume and speed of the snow instead of the sensors, right?

The fake snow is sticky and old, and will stick to you and the floor the more you get caught in it - better hurry and stop that machine!

C.
There’s a huge, luxurious chair that was most certainly reserved for the Santa employee in the center of the village area - tall and wide enough for at least a few people to clamber onto. Even though the paint is chipping off parts of the throne, and the wood is decaying in places - it still doesn’t look too bad, all things considered. Even the camera is still sitting in front of the chair, balanced on a tripod as though there were kids coming to take pictures with Santa today.

You’ll find that walking into the frame of the camera with more than one person causes the camera to go off. The camera will even print your picture, and never seems to run out of film - no matter how many times it fires. Did it catch your bad side, the first time? Feel free to try again! Dress up, find props, take pictures with your newfound companions to your heart’s content!

The only thing to be wary of is that in every few photos, someone else is in the photo. It’s a smiling, bright-eyed child, despite their transparency compared to you and your companion in the image. Judging by the sitting pose, and the performative smile, the added kid is none other than a reflection of a child who had taken pictures here with Santa long, long ago.

III.

With the size of the mall, and the variety of the stores inside, it’s only natural to think to forage for items that might be of use - there’s got to be something left behind here that will help you, right? Or a portal home?

Not too far from the department store you’d wandered in from, there’s a clothing store with an… interesting problem, for lack of a better word. The store has been overrun with rats. Big ones, too, scurrying about the floors and what’s left of the shelves, gnawing on what remains of the carpet and the remnants of cardboard packaging. Anyone sane would steer clear of this mess!

But, there’s something off about this store. Not only do all the rats somehow stay mysteriously contained within the walls of the store, never scurrying out of it, and with no signs of other stores being infested at all, but there’s also something that’s very familiar to you in this store. It could be a weapon, an item of clothing, or something as simple as your most favorite phone charm - point of the matter is, the rats have a hoard akin to a dragon’s behind the cashier’s counter, full of trinkets and belongings to all who have come through this place. They’ll work to keep their paws on what they have, too.

If you want your special something back, you’ll have to brave the vermin.

NAVIGATION

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...So it seems.

[What an interesting person, just at first glance. It's always said not to judge someone by their appearance, but there's something to be gained by appearances, isn't there? Things that are chosen, specifically, as a way a person presents themselves... Either through their own decisions or to protect themselves. Well. He just thinks the skull paint is Different.

Eichi is much more focused on the obstacle at hand, however, and he looks carefully out over the net stretched out and sagging, humming thoughtfully.]

What a shame. I don't believe someone like me could manage a task like that. At least, I don't feel as though it's worth the risk... "The grass is always greener," or so they say, but I wonder if there's really anything of worth that direction?

I suppose I won't know, simply by standing here. [He smiles.] Are you plan on trying it yourself?

( funnily enough, the other seven houses would agree with him — there was no house in any of the Emperor's retinue so thoroughly and unflinchingly goth as the Ninth, and they took it very seriously — and harrowhark, fervidly so. she knows that she stands out like a sore thumb (and one swathed in dense black fabric, lace, and human bone), but the attention of others was of no concern to her. there is only this building and the puzzle that it posed; she is convinced that solving it would grant her passage home, or at least some understanding of how to make the trek herself. )

Can you not swim?

( it's not as though the fall would kill him. though, this question is rather ironic: harrowhark, the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House of the Deathless Prince, could not swim. but she was also not concerned that she would fall. )

It is less accessible. The stores are not so ransacked. ( spoken with the assuredness of someone who had been over there already.

harrow isn't really the type to laugh (and if she did, there was usually something dreadfully wrong). she merely gives him a cryptic smile at the question, the vertical lines drawn across her lips in charcoal giving her the visage of a skull grinning in the gloom. )

How much does your curiosity cost? ( she needles further, ) If I could get you across, what would you offer?

[Now that makes him lift his eyebrows a little, smiling on even as a short laugh escapes him. Not just judgement over whether or not he can swim, but bargaining? Selling services? Then she was someone with a head on her shoulders. He could appreciate that.

But he’s not some child who would excitedly take it at nothing.]

Your risking my safety rather than me risking it myself hardly seems a better deal... After all, we’re nothing more than strangers. Before we could even begin negotiating the idea of costs, I’d have to have some sort of understanding in your skill.

So, if you were to move across and back, then perhaps I’d hold some understanding and be able to make an offer? Of course, the issue of trust puts a damper on that quite a bit, but it’s not as if I can gain anything by taking no risks. It’s just that I’m a man who’d like to minimize them, you see.

It’s valuable information to hear that they are in better condition, however small that is, though, so I thank you for that.

( well i did more canon review today and apparently harrow can swim but let's just say it's not well enough to want to fall into the water again

anyways.

this is the type of moment harrow basks in: her very aware of her upper hand in a situation, her making someone else aware of it, and she trying to take them for whatever she could get. if there were anything truly valuable over there — like a hidden vault, stocked with human bones — she would act as though the suspended bicycle was cursed and there truly was no way to get across. but she had found that it was just as useless as the rest of this woe-begotten capitalist relic, so she figured she might as well leverage that to learn what she could about one of her fellow captives. )

I assure you: in this situation, you could trust your safety to no better person here.

( when it comes to her necromantic ability alone, harrowhark is confident.

but it is very well limited to this situation, this transaction, this breath, this moment. outside of her word, you would never want to trust the Reverend Daughter with your back. had any other person from canaan house heard those words, they most likely would have ended up falling into a fit of laughter, and none more so than her cavalier.

my, he is a wheeler and a dealer. she feels as though she's haggling with palamedes over the use of their keys. she adjusts her expectations accordingly. ah, well — it seems as though a demonstration is unavoidable, though she would prefer avoid the waste of preciously limited resources. )

Fine. I will move across. You will make your offer, if you so choose—but be expeditious. My endurance is finite.

( as she speaks, one of her hands dips into a fold of her robes. there is an odd, faintly ominous clacking as she does so, and after a moment she produces a handful of human vertebrae. she rolls them over in her hand in a familiar way, fingers almost intimate over the spinous and transverse processes. then she drops them right in front of her, at the edge of the gap.

the osseous matter seethes and billows, what was set and solid becoming variable and flowing. the vertebrae multiply instantaneously, and then those multiply, the effect exponential as two columns stretch across the gap. the extensions of the vertebrae reach unnaturally long, creating a serrated edge almost ornamentally along the sides. across the two sprout ribs, fusing to each vertical column and clustering thick enough that one would be able to step across the make-shift bridge without too much fear of falling.

so long as they have decent balance.

without missing a beat, harrow steps forward to go across, moving with a self-assuredness that carries her like a black-sailed ship all the way to the other side. when she gets there she turns on her heel to face the stranger across the gap, fingers interlacing in front of her. )

Speak quickly, or I go on alone.

( she's already beginning to break out in a blood-sweat, beading damp and rusty at her hairline, threatening to run down her painted face. )

[Honestly, he was expecting to watch her juggle across on that bike and get a laugh out of it, but this is even better. A real path forward, and in a way that he swears is some sort of magic. A trick of the eye? There's been too much happening here, including his very arrival, to be able to deny that mysterious forces have a play in everything.

So, when she turns to invite him to hurry and speak, Eichi only appears to be beaming in excitement over her methods, crouched at the edge of it and inspecting the "bridge" before he stands.]

Wah, you walked right across! [On a disgusting rib bridge, yes, but?]

More often than not, I'd prefer to stay out of debt... But this is something that piques my interest more than the stores on the other side. Unfortunately, I'm frail and sickly, and can't offer much in terms of helping you survive in this place... Though I wonder if that's really the sort of offer someone like you would need?

Instead... I wonder if I could promise something a little more abstract, in these times. Entertainment, perhaps?

( please—she's the next in line to act as the Reverend Mother of an entire House and foremost protector of its sacred and dreadful charge, sealed away within the Locked Tomb. so she would not juggle.

in comparison to the physical cost of more complex constructs which she could create, this make-shift bridge wasn't nearly so strenuous to maintain, but like any form of necromancy, it would wear as time went on. a feverish sort of heat flares down the nape of her neck, and she sweeps her hood back from her head, as if that could help mitigate what came from within instead of without.

any master of skeletal anatomy would find that the bones were perfect recreations, beyond any medical reproach, though they were certainly arrayed in a way that held more—creativity than what the human body carried itself with. she hears him out, though by the time he is finished speaking, a rusty sheen has begun to move from her hairline down her forehead, and she can sense she is on the precipice of a nosebleed. )

Entertainment doesn't interest me.

( sorry, eichi—you're speaking to a wretched little nunlet who's already happily conceded her life to be married to a crypt, and ideally eternally. )

So either you think of something more abstract, or you chasten yourself to a debt.

Or I stay here and ignore my curiosity?

[Eichi brings a hand to his chin, and his eyes move up from the bones to her face again. That can't just be special effects on her face, can it? He'd thought it at first, or perhaps running makeup, but now it's distinctly something more, and he wonders how safe that must be.]

I wonder if the state of you currently indicates that you have a limit on your work. Is that why you aim to rush me? Poor decisions are made in a rush. In that case, perhaps I'll hold off, after all, though I thank you for the consideration.

Still, if I should ever need a bridge crafted from bone, perhaps I'll come to you with a sturdier offer, once I've had time to consider my worth? After all, I have no idea what does interest you, miss.

Or that.

( the answer to "how safe is necromancy, really?" comes down to a flat answer of "it depends," and there are many variables to take into consideration. harrow has worked herself to physical exhaustion more times than she could count on two hands, but it is an art she has mastery over, so she feels little need to be wary of it. she is aware of her own physical limits, and she would not surpass them for something like this.

there is a jagged shard of something lodged in her that seems remiss to simply walk away. a bizarre feeling, certainly — if there had ever been a side of harrowhark that had yearned for meaningful companionship, she had smothered it in the crib. but it comes to her gradually as he continues, materializing simply: knowledge. there was only so much she could surmise; she is a stranger here, and very little of the pre-Resurrection world made much sense to her at all.

so she poses a slightly different offer: ) Information, then. ( she raises one sleeve to dab at her nose; it's started bleeding by this point. ) Cross. Walk with me. Answer my questions about this place. ( her lips curl faintly in a sneer. ) I am being more than generous with this.

( but her silence before was a tacit acknowledgement: her necromantic stamina does have limits, so he would have to move quickly if he wanted to make it across unhurried (or at all). )

That's an offer I can accept easily, of course. To share information about a place like this is ideal, I think.

[People can work together, though he's not so blind as to ignore the realistic side of things. Not everyone is going to care about everyone. But this person, at least, he's decided is worth his time. She gave in a bit, with this offer, and he's going to remember that. She has a point where she'll back down, even in the slightest.

Carefully, he stretches his foot out to walk along the bridge, gracefully, though he is moving cautiously as well.]

Why don't you begin with your questions as we walk? Ah, if you could stay close so that I don't fall, that would be nice, as well.

Good. ( said quickly, hoping to put this whole matter and this God-damned chasm well and truly behind them.

it's not a very good trade, and she's aware of that, but considering there was already 1) another extant (if dubious) method of crossing the gap and since 2) she didn't really think there was much of worth or mention across regardless, she will settle.

if she felt as though she were safeguarding something of importance, however... he would find her an impenetrable and treacherous wall.

the bridge holds. it is surprisingly sturdy, and if one decided to get a brave look closer at its construction, they would find that gobs of cartilage reinforce the integrity of the spinal columns and the rows of ribs—macabre, certainly, but it does its job. she turns on her heel and begins to lead him across, not wanting to waste any time (especially as she's starting to feel an uneasiness in her chest that she knew would lead to a cough that would resemble a minor fit of septimus', if she held up this construct too much longer).

it's up to him to match her pace; she doesn't slow. she does, however, say with confidence, ) I wouldn't let you reach the water.

( but hopefully it won't come to that. how comfortable are you with skeletons, eichi?

she mentally flips through several of the encoded messages and questions she had written in the margins of her journal, but they were either too granular or too broad-scale to broach now. instead she starts simply. ) What does a place like this mean to you?

Hm? What an interesting question.

[The bones are eerie, and something he's definitely going to mention to those he knows later in casual conversation. They're grim, but somehow it looks so fake that it doesn't bother him. Or perhaps it's that he's too focused on staying close to her and not falling? He keeps up with her, even if it does take effort from him, and focuses ahead more than below him.]

I've rarely ever been to malls. Until just the other year, I'd never been to one, you see, so a lot of it is still a mystery to me.

( please don't ever mention any of her necromancy looks fake, eichi, you have no idea how many years went into the absolute anatomical perfection of her constructs — put any of the vertebrae beneath their feet before a medical professional and they would remark how it seemed to leap from the page of a textbook.

regardless; it seems her luck is poor. of all the strangers she is locked in here with, she has to fish out one that is just as alien in a place like this as she is. )

Remarkably unhelpful.

( the sweat is beginning to plaster her hair to her forehead; the heavy black Ninth vestments are feeling more and more uncomfortable by the step. but they are nearly across. maintaining their bridge is not yet untenable, just annoying. )

There are no such places where I am from. ( the idea of a shopping mall in drearburh was honestly hilarious. she feels like nav would get a kick out of that — "what would they even sell there, anyway? bone polish? arthritis medicine?" or something like that. ) And while playing archaeologist for a time was novel, it has gotten old.

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TEST DRIVE #1

i. ok I summoned more energy

im love u

im love YOU

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